Old Country Life

Duke's servant. What wretches are ordinary servants, that go on in the same vulgar track every day! eating, working, and sleeping! – But we, who have the honour to serve the nobility, are of another species. We are above the common forms, have servants to wait upon us, and are as lazy and luxurious as our masters. Ha! – my dear Sir Harry —

(Enter Sir Harry's Servant.)

How have you done these thousand years?

Sir H.'s serv. My Lord Duke! – your grace's most obedient servant!

Duke's serv. Well, Baronet, and where have you been?

Sir H.'s serv. At Newmarket, my Lord. – We have had dev'lish fine sport.

After a while they retire, then enter Lady Bab's Maid and Lady Charlotte's Maid.

Lady B.'s maid. O fie, Lady Charlotte! you are quite indelicate. I am sorry for your taste.

Lady C.'s maid. Well, I say it again, I love Vauxhall."

The Spectator (June 11th, 1711) says, "Falling in the other Day at a Victualling-House near the House of Peers, I heard the Maid come down and tell the Landlady at the Bar, That my Lord Bishop swore he would throw her out at Window, if she did not bring up more Mild Beer, and that my Lord Duke would have a double Mug of Purle. My Surprize was encreased, in hearing loud and rustick Voices speak and answer to each other upon the publick Affairs, by the Names of the most Illustrious of our Nobility; till of a sudden one came running in, and cry'd the House was rising. Down came all the Company together, and away! The Alehouse was immediately filled with Clamour, and scoring one Mug to the Marquis of such a Place, Oyl and Vinegar to such an Earl, three Quarts to my new Lord for wetting his Title, and so forth… It is a common Humour among the Retinue of People of Quality, when they are in their Revels, … to assume in a humorous Way the Names and Titles of those whose Liveries they wear."

What was done in a "humorous Way" in the days of Addison, was a relic of what was actually done in sober seriousness a couple of centuries earlier, when surnames were possessed by the few only, and these men of consequence.

Does the reader remember the charming account of the servants in the household of Sir Roger de Coverly? "There is one Particular which I have seldom seen but at Sir Roger's; it is usual in all other Places, that Servants fly from the Parts of the House through which their Master is passing; on the contrary, here they industriously place themselves in his way; and it is on both Sides, as it were, understood as a Visit, when the Servants appear without calling… Thus Respect and Love go together; and a certain Chearfulness in Performance of their Duty is the particular Distinction of the lower Part of his Family. When a Servant is called before his Master, he does not come with an Expectation to hear himself rated for some trivial Fault, threatned to be stripped, or used with any other unbecoming Language, which mean Masters often give to worthy Servants; but it is often to know, what Road he took that he came so readily back according to Order; whether he passed by such a Ground; if the old Man who rents it is in good health: or whether he gave Sir Roger's Love to him, or the like.

"A Man who preserves a Respect, founded on his Benevolence to his Dependants, lives rather like a Prince than a Master in his Family; his Orders are received as Favours, rather than Duties; and the Distinction of approaching him is Part of the Reward for executing what is commanded by him."

It is singular to see how small the wages paid were formerly for domestics, and what a leap up they have made of late, synchronous with deterioration of quality and character. For a farmer's daughter £7 was a high wage, and now £17 is sniffed at by a ploughman's wench. Pepys took a cook from the house of his Grace the Duke of Albemarle, and paid her £4 per annum, and complains at the wage. He says he never before did spend so big a sum on a wage. She must have been an energetic and active woman, for here is the menu of a dinner she cooked. "We had a fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie, a most rare pie, a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts – most neatly dressed by our own only mayde." How did she manage it without a kitchen range with hot plates?

The account-book of Mrs. Joyce Jefferies, a lady resident in Herefordshire and Worcestershire during the Civil War, comprises the receipt and expenditure of nine years. She lived a single person in her house in Hereford, and by no means on a contracted scale. Many female servants are mentioned, two having wages from £3 to £3 4s. per annum, with gowns of dark stuff at midsummer. Her coachman, receiving 40s. per annum, had at Whitsuntide, 1639, a new cloth suit and cloak; and when he was dressed in his best, wore fine blue silk ribbon at the knees of his hose. The liveries of this and another man-servant were, in 1641, of green Spanish cloth, and cost upwards of nine pounds. Her steward received a salary of £5 16s., and she kept for him a horse, which he rode to collect her rents and dues, and to see to the management of her estate.

I have myself a book of accounts, a little later, where the "mayde of my wyfe" gets £3, and the footman £4 and his livery.

In some houses a whole series of account-books has been preserved, showing, among other things, the rise in wages paid for servants, and very instructive they are.

Here is from an account-book of 1777, in a country squire's house. Wages were paid on Lady Day for the whole year, and not quarterly.

There died only a year ago an old woman who had been a servant since she was eighteen in two of the greatest houses in the neighbourhood. When she first went into service, she told me, it was at K – . She received £4 as her wage, and managed to save money on that. She was, however, given a washing-dress by her mistress at Lady Day. After some years she went to L – Park, where she received £6. This was after a while raised to £7, and she invariably put away some of her wage. When after tried service her wage was raised to £10, the climax of her ambition was reached, she regarded herself as passing rich, and never hoped to obtain more.

"For certain, sir," she said, "my work wasn't worth more."

In my own parish churchyard, one of the best of the monuments is that raised by my grandfather to the memory of an old servant of his grandmother's.

MR. THOMAS HILSDEN,

WHO DIED FEB. 21, 1806,

AGED 70,

HAVING LIVED IN THE FAMILY OF

Mrs. Margaret Gould, of Lew House,

44 YEARS

THIS STONE WAS ERECTED

IN CONSIDERATION OF HIS FAITHFUL SERVICE

There is an ancient family I know of historic dignity. It has lost its ancestral estates, lost almost all of its family portraits; but one great picture remains to it, so poorly painted, that at the sale of the Manor-house and its contents no one would buy it, – it is the portrait of an old servant, a giant, a tall and powerful ranger, who, partly for his size, chiefly for his fidelity, was painted and hung up in the hall along with the knights and squires and ladies of the family which he had served so well.

The mention of this picture leads me to say a few words about a worthy man who died some twenty years ago. Rawle was hind to the late Sir Thomas Acland of Killerton. Sir Thomas introduced Arab blood among the Exmoor ponies, and greatly improved the breed. About 1810 he appointed Rawle in charge of these ponies. He was a fine man, fully six feet high, and big in proportion. His power of breaking in the ponies was extraordinary. He was quite indifferent to falls, often pony and man rolling over and over each other. The sale of the ponies generally took place at Bampton and at Taunton fairs. The system was this – a herd of the wild little creatures was driven into the fair. Buyers attended from all parts of the country, and when a dealer took a fancy to a pony, he pointed him out to the moor-man in attendance, who went into the herd, seized upon the selected one, and brought him out by sheer strength. This is no easy matter, for the Exmoor pony fights with his fore-feet in desperate fashion. It usually took, and takes, two men to do this, but Rawle did not require assistance, such was his strength. Indeed so strong was Rawle, that he would put a hand under the feet of a maid-servant on each side of him, and raise himself and at the same time both of them, till he was upright, and he held each woman on the palm of his hand, one on each side of him, level with his waist. Sir Thomas Acland was wont, when he had friends with him, to get the man to make this exhibition of his strength before them.

Sir Thomas had a hunting box at Higher Combe (called in the district Yarcombe); he occupied one portion of the house when there, a farmer occupied the rest. It was a curious scene – a remnant of feudal times – when Sir Thomas came there. His tenants, summoned for the purpose, had accompanied him in a cavalcade from Winsford, or Hornicott. John Rawle could never be persuaded to eat a bite or take a draught when his master was in a house; he planted himself as a sentry upright before the door when Sir Thomas went in to refresh himself anywhere, and nothing could withdraw him from his post.

In connexion with these expeditions to Higher Combe, it may be added that the cavalcade of tenants would attend Sir Thomas to the wood where a stag had been harboured. Among them was a band, each member of the band played one note only; but it was so arranged that a hunting tune was formed by these notes being played in succession. When the stag was unharboured, and started across the moor, the band commenced this tune, and until it was played out the hounds were kept in leash. The time occupied by this tune was the "law" given to the stag, and when it was ended the hounds were laid on.

A famous china bowl was made in China, and presented to Sir Thomas by the Hunt. This bowl used to be kept at Higher Combe; it represented a stag-hunt. And twelve glasses were presented to Sir Thomas along with it, each engraved with a stag, and the words, "Success to the hunting."

One day Sir Thomas said to Rawle, "Rawle, I want to send a gelding and a mare in foal to Duke Ludwig of Baden, at Baden Baden. Can you take them?"

"Certainly, Sir Thomas."

The man could neither read nor write, and of course knew no other language than the broadest Exmoor dialect – and this was at the beginning of the century, when there were not the facilities for travelling that there are now. He started for Baden Baden, and took his charges there in safety, and delivered them over to the Grand Duke. He had, however, an added difficulty, in that the mare foaled en route, and he had a pass for two ponies only.

Is the old "good and faithful servant" a thing of the past? Not perhaps the good servant, but the servant who continues in a family through the greatest portion of his or her life, who becomes a part of the family, is probably gone for ever; the change in the signification of words tells us of social changes. A man's family, even in Addison's time, comprised his servants. "Of what does your family consist?" A hundred and fifty years ago this would have been answered by an enumeration of those comprising the household, from the children to the scullion. Now who would even think of a servant when such a question is asked? The family is shrunk to the blood-relatives, and the servants are outside the family circle.

We are in a condition of transformation in our relations to our servants; we no longer dream of making them our friends, and consequently they no longer regard us with devotion. But I am not sure that the fault lies with the master. The spirit of unrest is in the land; the uneducated and the partially educated crave for excitement, and find it in change; they can no longer content themselves with remaining in one situation, and when the servants shift quarters every year or two, how can master and mistress feel affection for them, or take interest in them?

Does the reader know Swift's Rules and Directions for Servants? They occupy one hundred and eighteen pages of volume twelve of his works, in the edition of 1768, and comprise instructions to butler, cook, footman, coachman, groom, steward, chambermaid, housemaid, nurse, etc. They show us that human nature among servants was much the same in the middle of last century as in this. Only a scanty extract must be given.

"When your master or lady calls a servant by name, if that servant be not in the way, none of you are to answer, for then there will be no end of your drudgery.

"When you have done a fault be always pert and insolent, and behave yourself as if you were the injured person.

"The cook, the butler, the groom, and every other servant should act as if his master's whole estate ought to be applied to that particular servant's business.

"Take all tradesmen's parts against your master. You are to consider if your master hath paid too much, he can better afford the loss than a poor tradesman.

"Never submit to stir a finger in any business but that for which you were particularly hired. For example, if the groom be drunk or absent, and the butler be ordered to shut the stable-door, the answer is ready, 'An' please, your honour, I don't understand horses.'

"If you find yourself to grow into favour with your master or lady, take some opportunity to give them warning, and when they ask the reason, and seem loath to part with you, answer that a poor servant is not to be blamed if he strives to better himself. Upon which, if your master hath any generosity, he will add five or ten shillings a quarter rather than let you go.

"Write your own name and your sweetheart's with the smoke of a candle on the roof of the kitchen, to show your learning. If you are a young sightly fellow, whenever you whisper your mistress at the table, run your nose full into her cheek, or breathe full in her face.

"Never come till you have been called three or four times, for none but dogs will come at the first whistle.

"When you have broken all your earthen vessels below stairs – which is usually done in a week – the copper-pot will do as well; it can boil milk, heat porridge, hold small beer – apply it indifferently to all these uses, but never wash or scour it.

"Although you are allowed knives for the servants' hall at meals, yet you ought to spare them, and make use of your master's.