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Mr. Wickham did not play at whist, and with ready delight was he received at the other table between Elizabeth and Lydia. At first there seemed danger of Lydia’s engrossing him entirely, for she was a most determined talker; but being likewise extremely fond of lottery tickets, she soon grew too much interested in the game, too eager in making bets and exclaiming after prizes, to have attention for any one in particular. Allowing for the common demands of the game, Mr. Wickham was therefore at leisure to talk to Elizabeth, and she was very willing to hear him, though what she chiefly wished to hear she could not hope to be told — the history of his acquaintance with Mr. Darcy. She dared not even mention that gentleman. Her curiosity, however, was unexpectedly relieved. Mr. Wickham began the subject himself. He inquired how far Netherfield was from Meryton; and after receiving her answer, asked in an hesitating manner how long Mr. Darcy had been staying there…
(Pride and Prejudice,Chapter 16.)
I have often seen this game described in notes to editions of Pride and Prejudice as a game of tomboloa, and this is incorrect, the confusion probably arising by the reference in that passage to lottery tickets.
Some notes also think it is a reference to the National lottery, not that now run in 21st Britain, but one that began in the early 18th century as an attempt by the government to regulate the taste for lotteries as a form of mass gambling. This was a craze that had by the end of the 17th century become a source of disrepute, lotteries being run for the benefit of corporations and private individuals without much regulation. By 1699 it was felt necessary to introduce a General Prohibition.
Despite this, private lotteries were still run in the early 18th century. Government intervention therefore had to take a different tack and in 1709 the government attempted to regularise them by taking over the running of the lotteries. It passed an act to allow this state control take place. Throughout the majority of the 18th century lotteries were, therefore, in the main under state-control, and in fact, by 1776 state- run lotteries had become annual events. They were especially popular during the reign of George III. The records show that from 1769-1826 some 126 state lotteries were held- 110 while George III was King and 16 during the reign of George IV.
However, in the early 19th century the English Evangelical movement began to voice opposition to them, most famously in 1807 when leading Evangelicals William Wilberforce and his colleague Henry Thornton committed themselves to doing what they could to further the total abolition of state lotteries. After the success of the campaign for the abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire in 1806, a campaign that had been promoted strongly by William Wilberforce as the anti- slavery movement’s main representative in Parliament, he realised he would now have time on his hands. He turned to Thornton and cried playfully:
Well, Henry, what shall we abolish next?’ The reply was: ‘The Lottery, I think!’
In 1808 a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to investigate how the evils attending state lotteries might be remedied and eventually reported that:
In truth, the foundation of the lottery is so radically vicious, that your Committee feel convinced that, under no system of regulation which can be devised, will it be possible for Parliament to adopt it as an efficient source of revenues, and at the same time divest it of all the evils and calamities it has hitherto proved so baneful a source.
Eventually in 1823 the government enacted provisions for the discontinuance of the lottery which were to come into effect in 1826.
But that is not the game Lydia Bennet was playing at Mrs Phillips’s house in Chapter 16 of Pride and Prejudice.
She was playing a simple card game called Lottery. The rule of this game are included in my copy of Hoyles Games of 1817:
And here they are- remember you can enlarge these images merely by clicking on them:
As you can see it is merely a game of chance, no skill required:
The cards being shuffled and cut by the left hand person, one dealer gives every person a card, face down, for the prize, on which is to be placed different values of counters from the pool,at the option of the person to whom each card has been given.
The second dealer then delivers to each player from the other pack, a card for the ticket. Next the cards are turned, by order of the manager, and whoever happens to have a corresponding card takes the prize upon the card dealt to him and those remaining undrawn, are returned to the hand…..
Just the sort of game to engross Lydia, a girl not known for her towering intellect.
For gaming counters at Mrs Phillips’s Meryton home ,we understand that the company used “fish”:
Elizabeth went away with her head full of him. She could think of nothing but of Mr. Wickham, and of what he had told her, all the way home; but there was not time for her even to mention his name as they went, for neither Lydia nor Mr. Collins were once silent. Lydia talked incessantly of lottery tickets, of the fish she had lost and the fish she had won; Mr. Collins, in describing the civility of Mr. and Mrs. Philips, protesting that he did not in the least regard his losses at whist, enumerating all the dishes at supper, and repeatedly fearing that he crouded his cousins, had more to say than he could well manage before the carriage stopped at Longbourn House.
(Chapter 16)
Fish counters were commonly used in 18th and early 19th century gaming tables and could be made from a variety of materials.
These are some early 19th century examples of gaming fish from ,my collection, and include some made from bone
Some from ivory…
And some made of mother of pearl.
Of course, not all early 19th century gaming counter were fish shaped.
Some were very beautifully engraved with values and intricate designs on the reverse.
And if you were well to do, you would have had a set of counters engraved with your coat of arms or cypher, as here in this one, again from my collection, engraved with the initials, J.A.
I don’t for one moment think that Jane Austen was wealthy enough to have her own counters engraved in this way, but I’m glad it is in my collection nevertheless.
Parlour games were played throughout Christmas and during the 12th Night celebrations in Jane Austen’s era.
One favourite at Godmersham Park was Bullet Pudding, as described by Fanny Knight, Jane Austen’s niece, in a letter written to her friend, Miss Dorothy Chapman of Faversham:
Godmersham Park, 17 January 1804
…I was surprised to hear that you did not know what a Bullet Pudding is, but as you don’t I will endeavour to describe it as follows:
You must have a large pewter dish filled with flour which you must pile up into a sort of pudding with a peek at top. You must then lay a bullet at top and everybody cuts a slice of it, and the person that is cutting it when it falls must poke about with their noses and chins till they find it and then take it out with their mouths of which makes them strange figures all covered with flour but the worst is that you must not laugh for fear of the flour getting up your nose and mouth and choking you: You must not use your hands in taking the Bullet out.
Here is an illustration by Francis Hayman of the game which was a favourite throughout the 18th into the 19th, century but not, I daresay, with the chambermaids who would have been charged with cleaning the resulting mess. This picture shows the moment when the bullet fell:
Bullet pudding was also on the menu of seasonable activities Fanny enjoyed two years later at Christmas in 1806:
Different amusements every evening! We had Bullet Pudding, then Snap-Dragon, & . . . we danced or played at cards
What was snap- dragon? It was another parlour game, but one specifically played in winter in the dark, for it involved picking raisins and almonds out of a punch bowl of flaming spirits, usually brandy. The blue flame of the lit brandy would have looked spectacular in a darkened room, very similar to effect producted by the tradition of flaming the Christmas Pudding with brandy.
In his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1811) Francis Gosse defined the game as follows:
Christmas gambol: raisins and almonds being put into a bowl of brandy, and the candles extinguished, the spirit is set on fire, and the company scramble for the raisins
Though brandy does not burn at a particularly high heat it was still possible to be scorched and the point of the fun was to watch peoples expressions as they darted their fingers through the flames, picking out the fruit or nuts. Jolly.
The end of the Christmas Season in Jane Austen’s era was marked on Twelfth Night by many with a celebration, which often included games, charades, punch and the all important Twelfth Night Cake.
Celebrations on Twelfth Night had long been a tradition in England dating from the medieval period. The celebrations- or revels- of Twelfth Night had always incorporated elements of disguise, elaborate display and social role reversal, often led by a Master of Ceremonies or a Lord of Misrule, but more often by the Bean King, so-called because he was elected by him discovering a dried bean cooked in his chosen slice of the Twelfth Night Cake. His Queen Consort was similarly discovered: she was the woman who found a dried pea in the cake.
This topsy-turvy world where the “king’ and “queen” could be the lowest members of the household, empowered to give out orders to their betters for the duration of the night survived after the Interregnum and the attempts to ban such festivities, but in a slightly changed form.
Samuel Pepys wrote about the great expense of his Twelfth Night Cake ( it cost him 20 shillings in 1668). His cake was cut into twenty pieces to be distributed among his guests, but no bean or pea was concealed within it. The “king “ and “queen” and other characters were found by guests picking slips of paper containing names of their characters from a hat.
The characters varied, and often took their inspiration from popular books or plays.
During Jane Austen’s life time, the celebration of Twelfth Night was at the height its of popularity. And during the 1790s sets of “characters” were available to purchase from enterprising stationers, and above is one example. They were cut up and chosen from a hat, the person having thus chosen having to maintain their “character” all though the evenings party.
This is Issac Cruickshank’s satirical view of a Twelfth Night party in 1794- enlarge the picture to take a look at the saucy verse to get the gist of his barbed wit.
Fanny Knight, Edward Austen Knight’s daughter and Jane Austen’s niece, wrote about some of her Twelfth Night Celebrations at Godmersham, the Knight’s country estate in Kent. Here is her report of the 1809 Twelfth Night Party:
…after Dessert Aunt Louisa who was the only person to know the characters…took one by one out of the room and equipped them, put them into separate rooms and lastly dressed herself. We were al conducted into the library and performed our different parts. Papa and the little ones from Lizzy downwards knew nothing of it and it was so well managed that none of the characters knew one another ..Aunt Louisa and L.Deeds were Dominos; F.Cage, Frederica Flirt (which she did excellently); M.Deeds, Orange Woman; Mama, Shepherdess; Self Fortune Teller; Edward, beau; G, Irish Postboy; Henry Watchman ;William, Harlequin; we had such frightful masks that it was enough to kill one with laughing at putting them on and altogether it went off very well and quite answered our expectations.
Though by Jane Austen’s time the cake was no longer used to assist in the choosing of characters, it was still and important part of the proceedings. They were costly and complicated to make properly and many people if they could manage to afford them bought them from confectioners shops.
In towns it became a tradition for the highly decorated cakes- garlanded with sugar paste- pastillage- or Plaster of Paris figures and crowns-to be displayed in confectioners shop windows which were illuminated small oil lamps. In the winter evenings people would go from shop to shop admiring the displays.
The first known recipe for a Twelfth Night cake is given in John Mollond’s recipe book of 1803 (this is the 1808 edition):
And here it is:
This was the recipe we followed at Ivan Day’s Taste Christmas Past course which I attended in the summer. The cake was a light fruit cakes, yeast risen, which had a similar texture and taste to the mixture used in German Stollen cakes today.
Lets see how it was made, shall we?
First you have to prepare your hoop :these were the fore-runners of cake tins, most often made of wood, and had to be lined with cartridge or brown paper smothered in softened butter, to prevent the cake burning and sticking.
The yeast is prepared and mixed with the dry ingredients.
Then it is put in font of the fire to rise, covered with a damp cloth.
When cooked and cool it is decorated.
A paste of marzipan is coloured with cochineal and covers the cake.
Then the important decoration begins. Or in reality it began a few days before for the tiny crowns ,which always were part of the decoration of this cake, have to be made in advance.
They are made from moulded sugar paste –or pastillage- made from a mixture of icing sugar and gum dragon or tragacanth.The moulds are made of box wood and are extremely fine grained, which makes them a perfect medium for fine carving.
This is the mould we used to create the crowns, and as you can see all the component part are here in one exactly carved mould.
The part of the mould that is going to be used has to be prepared with a dusting of cornflower, to try to prevent the pastillage sticking to the mould.
The pastillage is worked into the mould and pressed down very hard to “take” the impression well.
The excess is cut off using a sharp blade,
and the completed piece removed from the mould by tapping it sharply on a hard surface
I can testify from my experience on the course that this is no easy exercise! No wonder people bought them from confectioners.
Once all the component parts are made,(above are the purple “velvet” cushion for the crowns) the cake can be decorated with the assembled crowns of coloured sugar paste, and edged with borders of roses
You can hopefully see from this close up just how beautifully intricate are the moulded pieces of pastillage .
These crowns can them be guided and painted and additional pastillage decorations can be added to suit.We ran out of time on our very hectic but fabulous course,and Ivan Day finished the cake after we had left to rest! This is the beautiful end result and I thank him for permission to use this image here:
So there you have it – Twelfth Night Regency Style,and as perhaps Jane Austen celebrated it. Sadly the tradition of celebrating Twelfth Night complete with character and cakes in England dwindled in the mid 19th century and now is virtually unknown. The Christmas Cake eaten in England today has more in common with the bride cakes of Jane Austen’s era (as we shall see in a few days time when our Emma season of posts begins) but I thought you might enjoy this excursion into this old celeration.
Like this:
Yesterday we considered some of the domestic duties of the housekeepers of Jane Austen’s era. Housekeepers in grand houses had another more public role for they tended to be the person who would conduct guided tours of the house to paying visitors.
Let’s consider this process and a rather famous housekeeper….
We know from our reading of Pride and Prejudice that the procedure for getting admitted as a visitor to an important house in the English countryside of the early 19th century was quite simple, provided one had the means of transportation and the correct attire : you applied to the housekeeper for a tour of the house, and if you were lucky, the gardener might also show your party around the gardens.
Tourism in the UK,- visiting grand country houses for example- developed apace in the 18th century. Why? First, because of the developments in travel .If you couldn’t “get” to a country house easily you couldn’t visit it. Improved roads and the system of posting horse and carriages for hire, made travel easier for those who could afford it. Secondly ,The Grand Tour of Europe , as undertaken by Edward Knight, Jane Austens’s brother, was tourism on a grand expensive and foreign scale, but the wars with Napoleon curtailed foreign travel to a large extent, so people turned to touring England and Wales for their leisure and education.
The rise in the cult of “taste”, as advocated by Edmund Burke, especially with regard to his “Philosophical enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful “(1757) and the “Picturesque” as developed by William Gilpin and his books, meant that people at last began to explore their own country, equipped with sophisticated guides for the evaluation of art, architecture and natural scenery. The late 18th century/early 19th century tourist saw the visiting of country houses, not only as a pleasant activity, but one which gave them an opportunity to develop and exhibit ones “taste”.
Many houses were open to the public. Horace Walpole, the famous antiquarian, regularly opened his house, Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham.
It was a roaring success. Much of the ephemera of that period associated with the openings have luckily been preserved and give us some idea of the process for the owner and the visitor.
He wrote in 1783 ( in a letter to Sir Thomas Mann)
“I am tormented all day and every day by people that come to see my house, and have no enjoyment of it in summer. It would be even in vain to say that the plague was here. I remember such a report in London when I was a child ,and my uncle Lord Townshend,then secretary of state,was forced to send guards to keep off the crowd from the house in which the plague was said to be-they would go and see the plague. Had I been master of the house, I should have said….”You see the plague! You are the plague”.
Poor old Horace was so inundated with visitors to his extraordinary house, that after he had been disturbed at dinner by the arrival of three Germans Barons who wished to visit his house, he eventually would only allow his housekeeper to admit people to his house if they could show her a signed ticket obtained from him in advance.
Such was the demand for these visits that Walpole had tickets printed- he still signed them and inserted the date of the proposed visits as you can see here, in this preserved blank ticket:
Indeed ,he went so far as to print ” a page of rules for admission to see my House”:
“…..Mr Walople is very ready to oblige any curious persons with the sight of his house and his collection….it is but reasonable that such persons as send, should comply with the rules he has been obliged to lay down for showing it.
No ticket will serve but on the day for which it is given. If more than four persons come with a ticket, the housekeeper has positive order to admit none of them…..
Every ticket will admit the company only between the hours of twelve and three before dinner,and only one company will be admitted on the same day.
They that have tickets are desired not to bring children…..”
He also had printed a Guide to his house and its contents. This was not unusual as we shall see below:
As I have said other grand houses opened their doors to the respectable paying public: Holkham on the Norfolk coast, the home of Thomas Coke and subsequently the Earls of Leicester was open to tourists while it was being constructed and afterwards. Visitors flocked to it in quite surprising numbers bearing in mind its somewhat isolated position on the North Norfolk coast.
There is no visitors book which recorded the visits, but there are entries about visitors in the wine books, which have been kept since 1748. The servants recorded whom they had served with refreshments from the cellars ,together with the details of the type and amount of wine consumed . This very civilised habit was so unusual in country house visiting that it caused numerous visitors to record their astonishment in their diaries. Sir George Lyttelton wrote in 1758:
I was not offered the least refreshment ,but a glass of wine at Lord Leicesters ,at any House I visited in the whole county
Mrs Lybbe Powys a kinswoman by marriage to Jane Austen and friend of the Leigh Perrots, and one of my favourite diarists of this era, wrote of even more generous hospitality:
…we had breakfast at Holkham, in ye gentlest of taste with all kinds of cakes and Fruit placed undesired in an apartment we were to go thro’; which as ye family were from home I thought was very clever in the Housekeeper, for one is so often asked by people whether one chuses chocolate which forbidding word at once puts (as intended)a negative on the Question
There was no official entrance fee to these grand houses, but visitors were expected to tip the servants who escorted them around the building. And it had to be a substantial tip. Horace Walpole wrote slightingly about Lord Bath and his wife who left a tiny tip( in his opinion) after visiting Holkham:
Lord Bath and his Countess and his son have been making a tour at Lord Leicester’s; they forgot to give anything to the servants that showed the house: upon recollection- and deliberation , they sent back a man and horse six miles with- half a crown! What loads of money they are saving for the French!
As Leo Schmidt observed in his history of the house, Holkham, obviously one was expected to leave rather more than this sum as a tip for a tour of a great house. The house was so popular with visitors that it also had a guidebook which was published in 1775, and it could be had from Norwich booksellers. It stated that
“ Holkham could be seen any day of the week, except Sunday, by noblemen and foreigners , but on Tuesday only by other people”
indicating that at some houses a sort of class distinction regarding admittance was made.
A visitor to Holkham in 1772, Lady Beauchamp Proctor, wrote:
..when we came to the House the servant told us we cold not see it for an hour at least as there was a party going round…we were obliged to submit to be shut up with Jupitor Ammon in the Smoking Room below the Saloon, and a whole tribe of people till the Housekeeper was ready to attend us, nothing could be more disagreeable than this situation ,we all stared at one another , and not a creature opened their mouths, some of the Masters amused us with trying to throw their hats upon the Heads of the Busts, whilst the Misses scrutinized one another’s dress…at length the long-wished for time arrived. The good woman arrived and we rushed upon her like a swarm of Bees. We went the usual round, all but the wing my Lord and Lady used to inhabit themselves, this was new done up…when we came down the party vanished ,but we were conducted a second time to Mr Jupiter where we poured libations of Chocolate on his altar, that is we had some set out in great form in the Leicester style
Another guide published in 1817 entitled The Strangers Guide to Holkham Containing a Description of the Paintings ,Statues etc of Holkham House In the County of Norfolk, the Magnificent Seat of T W Coke esq, M.P.,…Printed and published by J Dawson ,Burnham gave the following advice, which confirms Lady Proctors experience, that visitors were to
” congregate in the Vestibule under the Portico and the Saloon, to wait for the Person who shews the House”.
Interestingly, the Guide describes a route around the rooms which is still the route taken by tourists today.
Chatsworth House in Derbyshire, the home of the Dukes of Devonshire was the first house to adopt the habit of reserving “open days” for tourists and as early as 1760 it was open though only on two public days each week.
Derbyshire was a very popular destination. Guides like the Reverend William Gilpin’s book, Observations on Several Parts of England, particularly the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty made in the Year 1772, provided potential visitors with a route and expectations of what they could see in these somewhat remote areas.
Indeed, the route taken by Elizabeth Bennet and the Gardiners through Oxford, Blenheim Palace, Kenilworth ,Warwick etc was the one recommended by Gilpin in that book . Mrs Lybbe Powys also took that route on her trip to Jane Austen’s most northerly destination,Hamstall Ridware in Staffordshire. This book seems to have influenced Jane Austen tremendously, with its descriptions of Dovedale, the Peak, Matlock, spas at Buxton and houses such as Chatsworth, Haddon Hall and Kedelston.
Back to housekeepers.
The picture above is of Mrs Garnett who was the housekeeper at Kedelston Hall in the late 18th/early 19th century.
Kedleston was the Adam designed home of the Curzon/Scarsdale family, in Derbyshire.
She was famous for her excellent guided tour. In her hand, as shown in the portrait, you can see a copy of the Catalogue of Pictures, Statues, &c. at Kedleston, which was ready to be put into the hand of the next enquiring visitor. Such guidebooks had been produced at Kedleston since 1769, with subsequent editions revised to take account of the ever-expanding art collection. It was an important means of recording the identities of the sitters in portraits, which were of greater interest to 18th-century visitors than matters of attribution or iconography!! A consequence of not having such aids was recorded by Horace Walpole, who described how at Petworth the 6th Duke of Somerset refused to let his servants have new picture lists, so that when he died, half the portraits were unknown by the family!
Although it was by no means uncommon for house servants to act as guides, it was unusual for the housekeeper herself to be painted. That she was immortalised in this way perhaps indicates the respect and affection in which this long-serving and highly capable servant was held; indeed, she was given a gravestone describing her as ‘sincerely regretted’.
In 1777 she took Samuel Johnson and James Boswell around the house:
‘Our names were sent up, and a well-drest (sic) elderly housekeeper, a most distinct articulator, shewed us the house… We saw a good many fine pictures… There is a printed catalogue of them which the housekeeper put into my hand; I should like to view them at leisure.’
James Plumptre, the playwright and Anglican clergyman was clearly very impressed by her when she met him in the Marble Hall and showed him round in 1793:
‘she seem’d to take a delight in her business, was willing to answer any questions which were ask’d her, and was studious to shew the best lights for viewing the pictures and setting off the furniture’
(see: James Plumptre’s Britain: The Journals of a Tourist in the 1790′s)
I am of the opinion that this famous and beloved servant was the model for the depiction of Mrs Reynolds in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. And I often wonder if on her travels, or of those of her kinspeople, she heard about this paragon and if her reputation influenced Jane Austen a little when she gave us the full and wonderful pen portrait of a sensible devoted housekeeper in her most famous novel.
No, not a technological impossibility…but a BBC Radio 4 Programme, which I think listeners both in and outside the UK can listen to, if you click on this link to the BBC here for the next six days only. The BBC’s New Year present to Janeites all 
This programme appeared yesterday,and for a while it appeared it was not going to be available to people to “listen again” but that decision appears to have been altered to the good.
I’ve been looking forward to it for some weeks since I heard about it being made.
It’s a rather jolly programme about nine books of manuscript music newly rediscovered (the property of her descendant Richard Jenkyns)and all transposed by Jane Austen’s hand .They are now on loan to the Jane Austen House Museum at Chawton(where the programme was recorded) and Southampton University is studying them. Commentary on the whole process of the era’s music making, balls, musical theatre etc is provided by Deirdre le Faye .
Why did Jane Austen like Scotch airs? Did she compose some of the music ? How did she get hold of music?What was her taste in music ? What sort of Aunt was she( nursery rhymes are included in her collection) All is revealed in this 30 minute programme.
I do hope you like it.
This is the first in a series of posts about Jane Austen and Servants, looking at the roles of servants in her novels and in turn what their roles entailed in a Georgian household.
We hear a lot about housekeepers in Jane Austen’s works. Mr Knightley’s Mrs Hodges sounds a redoubtable woman, cross at his sending Jane Fairfax the last apples from his store, but described by her admiring employer as clever, or at least as clever as the Elton’s housekeeper , Mrs Wright:
I will answer for it, that mine thinks herself full as clever, and would spurn anybody’s assistance
Emma Chapter 42
Wright herself is shown to be full of professional rivalry unchecked by her appalling employers, and holds Mrs Hodges reputation as “cheap” . On that fateful visit to Southerton Court in Mansfield Park we meet Mr Rushworth’s housekeeper who finds a soul mate in Mrs Norris(*shudder*). Of course the housekeeper we know best is the wonderfully voluble but correct Mrs Reynolds in Pride and Prejudice, the venerable servant at Pemberley House full of affection for her employer and discreet scorn for the dastardly Wickham.
What exactly did the role of housekeeper entail?
Her role in a household was described with minute exactness in Samuel and Sarah Adams’s book, The Compelte Servant (1825). As might be imagined the Housekeeper was the most senior female servant.
… she is the locum tenens, the Lady Bountiful, and the active representative of the mistress of the family; and is expected to do, or to see done, everything that appertains to the good and orderly management of the household.
She was responsible for the provisioning of food and spices and linen in the household:
The situation of a housekeeper, in almost every family, is of great importance.-She superintends nearly the whole of the domestic establishment,-has generally the control and direction of the servants, particularly of the female servants-has the care of the household furniture and linen-of all the grocery-dried and other fruits, spices, condiments, soap, candles, and stores of all kinds, for culinary and other domestic uses.
She was also in charge of the Still Room- that most fragrant of places, much preferable to the heat and bustle of the kitchen-where she would make cosmetics remedies, and preserves:
She makes all the pickles, preserves, and sometimes the best pastry.-She generally distils and prepares all the compound and simple waters, and spirits, essential and other oils, perfumery, cosmetics, and similar articles that are prepared at home, for domestic purposes…
(Illustration of a Housekeeper at rest in her Still-Room taken from the frontispiece of Nathan Bailey’s Dictionarium Domesticum 1736)
The Housekeeper now (after dinner has been served-JFW)begins to find herself at leisure; by this time too, the maids will have done the principal part of their work above stairs, and the cook, kitchen maid , and scullion, have washed up, and cleared away every thing, and cleaned up the kitchen.-After tea, the provident housekeeper will begin to think about tomorrow; evening being the best time for preparing all things that are likely to be wanted soon.-Small quantities of spices should be pounded and ground, and laid by in bottles, well corked, ready for use.-Much less spices are necessary, in gravies, &c. when thus prepared, than when boiled whole.-Raisins may be stoned, if wanted next day.-Currants may be washed, picked, and perfectly dried.
White sugars should be broken, or pounded, rolled with a bottle, and sifted. Some of the oranges and lemons, to be used for juice, should be pared, and the rind put by to dry; and of some, when squeezed, and the pulp scraped out, the rinds may be kept dry for grating.
This would not apply to Mrs Reynolds at Pemberley, but in households where there was no house-steward, the housekeeper was responsible for all items of domestic expenditure and marketing:
In families where there is a house-steward, the marketing will be done, and the tradesmen’s bills will be collected, examined, and discharged, by him; but in many families the business of marketing and of keeping the accounts devolves on the housekeeper. It is therefore incumbent on her to be well informed of the prices and qualities of all articles of household consumption in general use; and the seasons for procuring them, in order that by comparing prices and qualities, she may be able to substitute those that are most reasonable, but equally to her purpose, and best attainable, for others that are most costly or more scarce.
She was also responsible for ascertaining that the household was not being swindled by unscrupulous suppliers( remember that in the 18th and 19th centuries adulteration of food stuffs was rife) :
But, by whomsoever the provisions may be bought, it behoves the housekeeper to examine them as they come in,-to see that in weight and measure they agree with the tickets sent with them,-and to make the necessary arrangements, in conjunction with the cook, for their due appropriation
When the food for the family was actually prepared and ready to be sent up to the dining room, the housekeeper’s responsibilities increased, overseeing the butler’s arrangements:
The etiquette of the table being arranged by the bill of fare, previously made out, and the dishes laid in order below stairs; it is the province of the housekeeper, when dinner is served up, to see that the butler has placed them properly on the table above; this requires a quick glance of the eye, and a correct taste to measure distances,-and to see that the dishes accord with each other, and thereby form a pleasing, inviting, and well-grouped picture
In some households she had to be au fait with the art of carving- a skill not contemplated much today, but in Jane Austen’s era it was a skill that both masters, mistresses and senior servants had to acquit themselves well in or betray ill-bred manners:
In the situation she will have to carve, and as she will occasionally be required to assist the cook in dissecting a dish to be sent up stairs, it is indispensably necessary that she be proficient in the art of carving: and besides, to carve meat well, is a great saving. It would argue prudence and economy in her, to see that the pieces of bread which are brought down stairs, be eaten at this table, or in the servants’-hall, and it would be extravagance to suffer new bread to be eaten below stairs.
(Carving diagrams taken from The Young Woman’s Guide to Virtue Economy and Happiness etc (1813) by John Armstrong)
She was also responsible for the moral tone of the household of servants in her charge, as such it was recommended that:
She ought to be a steady middle-aged woman, of great experience in her profession, and a tolerable knowledge of the world.
For the tone of the household reflected upon her conduct:
In her conduct, she should be moral, exemplary, and assiduous, as the harmony, comfort, and economy of the family will greatly depend on her example; and she must know, that no occurrence can be too trifling for her attention, that may lead to these results, and whereby waste and unnecessary expense may be avoided.
When the entire management of the servants is deputed to her, her situation becomes the more arduous and important. If servants have hardships to undergo, she will let them see, that she feels for the necessity of urging them. To cherish the desire of pleasing in them, she will convince them, that they may succeed in their endeavours to please her. Human nature is the same in all stations. Convince the servants that you have a considerate regard for their comforts, and they will be found to be grateful, and to reward your attention by their own assiduity: besides, nothing is so endearing as being courteous to our inferiors.
Female servants who would pursue an honest course, have numberless difficulties to contend with, and should, therefore, be treated kindly. The housekeeper in a great family, has ample means of doing good; and she will, doubtless, recollect that it is a part of her duty to protect and encourage virtue, as the best preventive from vice.
Mrs Parkes in her book, Domestic Duties (18125) combined practical domestic advice and conduct book strictures. Domestic Duties was written as a series of conversations between the inexperienced Mrs L and the older and much wiser Mrs B, and has this to say about the qualifications necessary to be a housekeeper:
Trust-worthyness is an essential quality in a housekeeper; but if she be not as vigilant as she is honest she cannot discern her duty well. As she is the deputy of her mistress, she should endeavour to regard everything around her with the keenness an interest of a principal, rather than the indifference of a servant..
(Frontispiece to Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy)
She also had this advice for the employer,which contradicts the oft held view that elite women in this era had little practical ”hands on” experience of housekeeping in their own households::
Even if you should be perfectly satisfied that your housekeeper is a woman of great integrity you will still find it desirable to fix your eye continually upon her that her vigilance and integrity may not relax for want of this incitment. Symptoms of neglect on her art should never be over looked as they would tend to throw the whole house into confusion and irregular habits.
This is a situation of which the famed Mrs Rundell was aware ,as she wrote in her book A New System of Domestic Cookery:
There was a time when ladies knew nothing beyond their own family concerns ; but in the present day there are many who know nothing about them
A elite woman who know much about her domestic concerns was Susannah Whatman, as portrayed her by Rommney:
She was the wife of James Whatman,
proprietor of the famed Turkey Mill paper mill in Kent which supplied most of the famous artists of the day. She left to us a housekeeping manual prepared as advised by the wise Mrs B in Domestic Duties
Mrs B: Have you provided yourself with a cookery book?
Mrs L : Certainly .I have purchased Mrs Rundells and the Cooks Orabcle.How could I go on for one day without them? Yet my study of these important books is not always satisfactory, not are the effects produced from them at all equal to my expectations..
Mrs B… as it is not always well to follow these receipt books implicitly I recommend you to form one for yourself …
Susannah Whatman in her manual for the instruction and use of her staff at Turkey Court and then at Vinters,which was her home till her death in 1814, provides many details of her housekeepers duties which other manuals omitted:
The housekeeper washes and irons her own small things and her Mistresses .A board at Vinters has been put up for her in the mangling room that the heat might be avoided in summer.
The housekeeper mends her master’s silk stockings , ruffles his shirts and new collars and risbands them. All the linen looked over in the Store room Monday morning and stains taken out etc. Housekeeper to put any stitches in Mr Whatman’s muslin neckcloths that Mrs W has not mended for him…The first thing a Housekeeper should teach a new servant is to carry her candle upright. The next thing is those general directions that belong to “her’ place in particular such as not setting the brooms and brushes where they will make a mark and all those common directions.
A housekeeper by practise must acquire so quick an eye that if she comes occasionally into a room that is cleaning she must see at once if it is going on properly…
The payment for this onerous and important work in a household was not that great:
The Salary of the Housekeeper is from twenty-five to fifty guineas per annum, dependent on the extent of the family, and the nature of the business she undertakes.
Note that a House Steward would expect to receive remuneration of between £100 -£250 per annum and perhaps more. A butler could expect to earn £50 to £80 per annum in large households. Hmmm……..
But of course a housekeeper could expect to receive an addition to her income in grand households, in the form of gratuities earned by showing guests round the house as Mrs Reynolds does in Pride and Prejudice. And we shall look at that aspect of a housekeeper’s role in our next post on the role of the housekeeper in Jane Austen’s era.
This book ,by Emma Rutherford, was an unexpected and very welcome Christmas gift this year made to me by a very dear friend. It is the most beautiful and sumptuous book on silhouettes I have ever seen. I have always been interested in silhouettes as they have always been present in my homes. I have a small collection of family silhouettes dating from the early to mid 19th century,and even had one taken as a child. This is one from my collection and it dates from around 1810:
(Do remember you can enlarge all the pictures on this blog merely by clicking on them)
But it is the book’s fascinating explanation of the history of silhouettes that I have found very intriguing.
Silhouettes in the 18thcentury were known in England as “shadows” or ”shades” and in the early 19th century as “profiles’. Dorothy Wordsworth wrote to her friends in 1807, asking them to
send their profile
to her.
In France they gained the term “silhouette” by association with Etienne de Silhouette who was appointed France’s Comptroller General( an equivalent post to our Chancellor of the Exchequer) during the year 1759 by Louis XIV. He levied land tax on France’s nobles and reduced their pensions, and furthermore hurt their pockets by taxing all external signs of wealth. Opposition from the ancien regime,the nobility and the church-previously exempt from such audacious taxes -was loud. After only eight months in office he was forced to retire from his post to his château in the countryside.
There are two theories regarding the adoption of the term silhouette for this type of portraiture, and both reflect Monsieur Silhouette’s unpopularity. The first comments upon the fact that taking a silhouette is a very quick process and as such it reflected Etienne de Silhouette’s very short tenure in office. The second theory has it that as this type of portraiture was, in it’s simplest state, the cheapest form of portraiture available at the time, it deserved to be named for him. Etienne ‘s hated penny-pinching methods of raising tax may therefore have associated his name for ever with this type of portraiture for, in France, the phrase a la silhouette came to mean to do anything ” on the cheap”.
It may interest you to know that the “science” of physiognomy used silhouettes to determine a sitter’s character. Physiognomy is of unknown origin,but it formed an integral part of ancient Greek medicine,and the revival of its popularity in the 18th century was attributable to the idea that the study and judgement of a person’s outer appearance – particularly the face- would give insight into that person’s character. Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801) used the term silhouette in continental editions of his very influential book, Essays on Physionomy ; Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind (17 75).
In English versions the term was translated as “shades”.This was a sensationally successful book both in Europe, England and the United States.By the middle of the nineteenth century over 150 edition had been published. As Emma Rutherford writes:
It is easy to imagine that,at the height of the book’s popularity to turn sideways for others observation was to ask for analysis of one’s personality. Later in the 1830s Charles Darwin found that the captain of the Beagle had done just that:
“Afterwards on becoming very intimate with Fitz-Roy I heard that I had run a very narrow risk of being rejected on account of the shape of my nose! He was an ardent disciple of Lavater and was convinced that he could judge of a man’s character by the outline of his features and he doubted whether any one with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage.”
I wonder if Ang Lee and Emma Thompson were thus trying to tell us something about Willoughby’s appearance when Marianne Dashwood takes his shadow in their adaptation of Sense and Sensibility in a scene reminiscent of this plate fromLavater’s book…Hmmm…..?
The book is sumptuously illustrated with the many, many different types of silhouettes, a term that was eventually popularised in an unsuspecting England, by the French artist Augustin Edouart in the 1820s, and describes in great detail the many different methods of taking a “profile”. There were those made by cutting paper
….those painted on paper….
and on the reverse side of glass, or on ivory.
I adore this foursome : it reminds me forcibly of Admiral and Mrs Croft , Captain Wentworth and Edward Wentworth of Persuasion.…
We are all of course familiar with this paper silhouette which is possibly of Jane Austen:
It was found in a second edition of Mansfield Park with the inscription, “L’amiable Jane“.
This book is marvellously readable, and is sumptuously illustrated. It will enchant anyone interested in silhouettes, and clearly explains the very many different types which were made. The explanation of the development of this form of portraiture in this book is admirably and carefully done. The wonderfully reproduced silhouettes also give us the chance to examine in exquisite detail tiny aspects of domestic life in the late 18th and early 19th century as recorded in them, as here demonstrated by this silhouette of a lady serving herself a cup of chocolate.
I have lost myself in this absorbing book over the Christmas season and I can highly recommend it.
