I often see considerable license given to the treatment of staff and servants in historical romance. I think its often to make the mucky-mucks of the book seem more sympathetic, but often it falls pretty flat. Here is some advice from a 1823 book on Domestics that gives some instruction to the treatment of servants. The audience of these types of instructional books were often the burgeoning middle class, but I think it offers a window into the general attitudes of upper stairs towards downstairs.
A New System of Practical Domestic Economy(1823)
