Regency Reader Questions: Servants of the Upper Orders

I put out the call on Twitter for some ideas for new blog posts, and got this great suggestion from @Anne Hawley: “I would love to know more about the lives of servants in the upper class homes of the more typical Regency novel characters. I’m writing a servant centered story now and would value any resource recommendations or insights into pay, job mobility, etc.”

I wrote briefly and included an excerpt on the advice of treatment of servants here.  Here is a chart showing the hierarchy of staff.

This and many more maxims come from the 1825 The Complete Servant: Being a Practical Guide to the Peculiar Duties and Business of All Descriptions of Servants … with Useful Receipts and Tables which offers a lot of insight into the lives and values of household staff.  Written by a couple that were in service for decades, it includes recipes, maths for wages and expenses, descriptions of various household staff duties, and a fair amount of prosing like the above.  A lot of the resources I have stumbled upon press down on the notion of the divine in service and a real sense of the innate need for masters and servants.  This became more prominent as the Victorian era marched on:

Hints to domestic servants, by a butler in a gentleman’s family (1854)

Patriarchal notions are strong in this noblesse oblige (see Relating to Fathers and Children. To Masters and Servants, 1841)  And the goodness of master to servant was expected, at least with a sense of fairness and generosity.

Servants were expected to rise above much of the vice and represent the virtue of Society as prosed about in Serious Advice and Warning to Servants (1807).  No doubt this kind of world perspective caused them considerable amusement/bemusement with the behavior of some of the less than virtuous Upper Orders.  I like to think of it a bit in how fascinated/horrified much of modern culture is with the ultra rich and famous.

As this behavior became less praised as the Regency gave way into the Victorian era, however, the proselytizing continued in earnest.  The early Victorian era is a treasure trove of books that provide some insights:

Hints to domestic servants, by a butler in a gentleman’s family

The Servant’s magazine was published in the 1840s.  A few editions are available on Google and worth a glance.

Also a bit later: The Servants’ Behaviour Book; Or Hints on Manners and Dress for Maid ..

The Servants’ Guide and Family Manual: with New and Improved Receipts …(1830) goes into some depth about the responsibilities of each type of servant.  This is a great primer if you have ever wondered exactly what different types of staff did.

I hope these resources help inform the live of  Regency servants.  I also recommend review of the blog posts from other noted authors below:

A Primer on Regency Era Servants

Servants in Regency England

http://www.rth.org.uk/regency-period/family-life/servants