The Butler Did It!

Since most of us don’t have servants, it’s sometimes tough to picture what people in service in the grand houses of the past actually did all day. If you've read my post on the housemaid’s job, you may have concluded that the upper servants had a far easier time of it. And that’s true, though it depends on how large the household actually was.

In the grandest of houses, the head of the staff would be a house steward who was in charge of hiring and firing servants and paying the tradesman’s bills, but in the merely grand houses, those duties would be split between the butler – assisted perhaps by an under-butler – and the housekeeper.

While the housekeeper is (naturally) in charge of the house, the butler is in charge of the dining room – including protecting, polishing, and counting the silver and maintaining the wine cellar – and overseeing all the male servants. If there was no valet to wait on the master of the house, the butler took care of his clothing and dressing room.

While the pattern of a butler’s day varied greatly depending on the size of the household and the activities of the family, here’s a pretty normal pattern for the butler in a medium-sized house:

It is the butler’s duty to set the breakfast table, bring up the food and drink, wait on table, and clear after the family has finished – a pattern which is repeated at luncheon, dinner, and with the evening tea tray just before bedtime. After each meal he supervises the cleaning of all the silver, china, glasses, and serving dishes and makes sure they are put away in their proper places.

Between meals, he takes up his other duties. He take care of the master's clothes, laying out what he'll need next, cleaning or brushing or mending, and straightening the dressing room. He checks the wine cellar, tending to any wines which may be off in taste or color, or bottling wines which were delivered in casks. He polishes the silver (no tarnish-proof strips in those days!), and he’s on duty to answer the door from morning till night. After the household has retired, he makes sure all the menservants have gone to bed, then locks up the doors and windows before (finally!) retiring himself.

By the Victorian era, when paying calls over tea became a standard afternoon activity, the butler had it a bit easier. The fashion for Victorian ladies was to have a very attractive parlormaid who would answer the door and wait on the ladies and their afternoon callers at tea time. Since the butler was not required, he could rest for an hour.

Pay during the Regency period? From 30 to 80 pounds sterling per year – depending on the size of the family and the household staff. But he also received his master’s cast-off clothes, as well as the leftover pieces of the wax candles, once they were too short to burn! 

Sources: The Complete Servant, by Samuel and Sarah Adams, published 1825
Etiquette, by Emily Post, published 1922

Greystone Manor Tour Continues

My apologies for abandoning the blog for a couple of months -- and my thanks to the followers who have followed up with me to say they've missed the posts, especially the promised tour of Greystone Manor, the miniature house that my husband built for me.

One of the "residents" of Greystone is a little girl about eight years old. Not a very neat little girl, you'll notice from the way her toys and board games are strewn around her bedroom -- but one with varied interests, from dolls to soccer. Yes, that is a dollhouse at the foot of the bed -- a 1/144 scale Victorian farmhouse that even includes a few pieces of furniture. All the drawers open, and one of these days I really must get her coverlet finished and on her bed...

The tour continues...

This is the dining room of my miniature house, Greystone Manor. The chandelier is electric, but the red candles on the side tables are real. The tea cart at the far end of the room is set up and ready to serve, and the art lying on the dining room table -- waiting to be framed -- are actual watercolors painted by favorite artists. The swinging doors to the left lead to the kitchen, and just visible across the hall is the living room.

Now if I can just get the teeny-tiny maid to come in and tidy up -- straighten the chairs, gather up the used mug, and take those watercolors to the frame shop.... :)

Taking A Bath

While I was in the shower this morning, I found myself thinking about bathing through the ages.

Across the Roman Empire, public baths were popular not only for personal hygiene but for socializing. Sometimes the location of Roman baths was dictated by hydrothermal springs which preheated the water -- as in Bath, England (which wasn't called that until after the end of the Roman occupation. Go figure.)

With the passing of Roman civilization, bathing fell out of favor. By the time of Queen Elizabeth (the last half of the 16th century) doctors thought that bathing wasn't healthy and advised people to wash only body parts which were visible to others.. Exposing the entire body to water at one time? Horrors!

On the few occasions per year when a bath was unavoidable, a large wooden tub was dragged out, lined with cloths to protect the bather from splinters, and filled  with water heated over an open fire. After the bath, the used water was removed by the bucketful and carried outside to discard.

By the start of the Regency period, people were more enlightened about cleanliness and they had better equipment -- metal tubs, often a "hip bath" which allowed the bather to immerse more of the body. But by the time someone set up the tub, heated and hauled the water in, and emptied the used water by the bucketful -- well, she probably needed another bath.

A few very wealthy people started to install special bathing rooms with permanent tubs. The biggest advantage of the permanent tub was a drain hose leading outside, so the used water no longer needed to be dipped from the tub after the bath. But water still had to be heated and carried by the bucket to fill the tub.

Though the Greeks had communal showers which were something like today's locker rooms, the indoor shower didn't become practical until about 1850 -- when indoor sources of running water made it feasible. The earliest Victorian showers were used mostly by men, because doctors of the time considered women too frail to stand up to the pounding of water.

Day in the Life of a Housemaid

One of the many challenges in writing historicals is finding the right details to surround the characters. If, for instance, I have my heroine notice what a housemaid is doing, then I need to know what sorts of things the housemaid would likely be doing.

I recently got my hands on a copy of The Complete Servant, first published in 1825 and written by a married couple who had been in service their whole lives. They worked their way up from footboy to butler, and from maid of all work to housekeeper. It's fascinating (and exhausting) reading.

The housemaid tidies up each downstairs room and cleans the stoves, fireplaces, and hearths -- including taking out the ashes, scouring the fire-irons, rubbing the backs and sides of fireplaces with black lead, washing the marble hearths (you'll be glad to hear that the chimney pieces only need to be scoured once a week!) Then she sweeps the carpets after strewing damp tea leaves on them to catch the dust, sweeps the floors under the carpets, shakes and dusts the window curtains, brushes the dust off the windows and the ceilings, and puts all the furniture back in place. When all the downstairs rooms have been cleaned, she goes up to the bedrooms of the master and mistress of the house, empties the slops, refills the water containers, and cleans the fireplaces there.

And that's all before breakfast.

The rest of the day she spends making beds; laying fires; cleaning the landings, staircases, and passages; doing needlework; making and caring for all the household linens, and helping with the fine laundry. On Tuesdays and Saturdays she'd give the house a real cleaning, scouring each room instead of merely wiping or sweeping it, including rolling up the carpets so they could be beaten or shaken outside.

According to The Complete Servant, "If the housemaid rise in good time and employ herself busily, she will get everything done in time to clean herself for dinner." Wages? The grand sum of 12 to 16 guineas a year.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to be whining less this weekend as I swoop through my house with Swiffer and vacuum cleaner!