Category Archives: Thank Goodness We Don’t Have To Do That Anymore

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have to Do That Anymore: Know How to Treat Servants

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By the way, it is unlikely that your servants will become your BFFs.

Back in the day, having servants, even in a modest household, was very common as labor was very affordable and the day to day work of running a household was very, very difficult. Today, if you are in the position of having live in help, most of this is still likely to apply. I’ve sourced this information from Emily Post in 1920 and Amy Vanderbilt in the 1960s and the basics are very similar, so they are likely to hold up today as well.

Hiring Servants:

  • Interview candidates in your own home, making sure to state all the bad parts of the job as well as the good parts. Be upfront and clear about the wages.
  • Be sure to have your children present when interviewing nannies and nursemaids, as you shouldn’t hire someone who your child instantly dislikes.
  • Always be in charge during the interview- if a servant starts bossing you around from the beginning, they will always be in charge in the relationship
  • When introducing a new servant to the household, make sure to introduce them to everyone, even the men! (ed: yay, sexism!)
  • References are the standard currency of servants and withholding one is a very serious matter indeed. Always make sure you check references when hiring and offer them to departing servants.

Servants in the Home:

  • Children are called by their first names by servants. In very formal household, teens are called Master John and Miss Jane. Adults, of course, are called Mr. Smith or Mrs. Smith.
  • If you can, call servants Mrs. Jones instead of Lucy, unless she prefers to be just Lucy. This is especially important for more senior servants like a housekeeper.
  • Introduce servants to guests, but don’t introduce the guest to the servant.
  • Always be polite to servants, say please and thank you.
  • For adequate service you need at least three servants: a cook, a butler (or waitress), and a housemaid. But if you can only afford one, both Post and Vanderbilt helpfully provide menus for entertaining that can be handled by one servant. (ed: no servants is unimaginable!)
  • Live in servants must be given as much independence as possible and their room should be comfortable and be a place where they can visit with a friend. The furniture should be comfortable- spend a night in your servant’s quarters to test it out!
  • In the US it is customary that the servants eat the same food as the family, except for perhaps, special delicacies. If the special foods do disappear, you can buy a locked food safe!
  • In households with minimum servants, the employers have to be more aware of fitting into the cleaning schedule and making sure they are out of the way so things can get done.

Post stresses that if you have “servant trouble” the cause is probably your poor management and poor treatment of your servants.

Examples of poor servant management are:

  • Allowing poor work to slip by, too much leniency is just as bad as too much strictness.
  • Reprimanding a servant in front of another person.
  • Reprimands for work left undone when there are more tasks than time.
  • Being distrustful: locking up all valuables, watching the servants at all times.
  • Not allowing them to have some space for themselves in the house where they can entertain friends.
  • You should know how to do all of a servant’s tasks so you can teach and direct instead of complain.
  • Be careful when servants do the household ordering- some merchants give kickbacks to servants for bringing in business and pad their bills, or they charge for things they don’t send. Always ask to see receipts!

Etiquette for Servants:

  • Always be neat and speak in a low voice.
  • Always say “Yes, ma’am/madame” or “No, sir”
  • Everything is always presented to employers on a tray.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have To Be Constantly Worried About Walking

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These pigs seem to have it figured out

These pigs seem to have it figured out

There are few places in life where you really need to worry about how you come off, and one of those instances is plain ol’ walking around. As long as you don’t bump into people or disrupt sidewalk traffic, who could possibly judge you? People who wrote etiquette books in 1893, that’s who.

In Etiquette of Good Society, Lady Gertrude Elizabeth Campbell has a whole section dedicated to walking, writing that “servants can be distinguished by the short abrupt steps they take, so doubtless a true lady can be discovered by her manner of walking.” This does not bode well for me. She goes on to quote a Frenchman who wrote about walking in the 13th century:

“Do not trot or run, and as you walk look straight before you with eyelid slow and fixed, looking forward to the ground at five toises (thirty feet) before you not looking at or turning your eyes to man or woman who may be to your right or left, nor looking upwards, nor changing your look from one place to another, nor laughing, nor stopping to speak to anybody.”

Lady Campbell expands on that notion, saying for women “let her step be firm and her gait steady, let her not walk in too great a hurry, nor yet drag slowly along. Let her arms move with the natural motion of the body, they must neither swing to and fro nor dangle by the side.” You know, just act natural. You know how easy that is once you start thinking about it? Right. Moving on.

“A man’s walk should differ from a woman’s,” explains Lady Campbell, “in that he should take a longer step, but steadiness of carriage and firmness of tread are as necessary in the one as in the other. Horace Walpole is described as always entering a room with knees bent and feet on tiptoe as if afraid of a wet floor, but we are told that this affected style was quite a la mode in his day.” Men: bring back the Horace Walpole.

If worrying about the way your body looked while you walked wasn’t enough, you also had to worry about what to do when you encountered other walking people. Here are a few tips from American Etiquette and Rules of Politeness by Walter Raleigh Houghton:

  • “Do not try to ‘show yourself off’ upon the streets. The true secret of street deportment is to do so as nearly as other people do.” [STREET DEPORTMENT???]
  • “No one, while walking in the streets, should fail, either through carelessness or willful neglect, to recognize acquaintances.”
  • “Persons walking together on the street should keep step.” [Still accurate]
  • “A gentleman walking with a lady may take either side of the walk, but he will always give her the preferred side or that on which she will be least exposed to crowding, usually the side toward the wall.”
  • “Look in the way you are going both to avoid collisions and because it is bad manners to stare in any other direction. If you chance to see an acquaintance at a window you should bow but by all means do not stare into houses. Avoid looking full into the faces of strangers whom you meet especially of ladies.” [Did this really need to be said?]
  • “No gentleman is ever guilty of standing in public places and offensively gazing at ladies as they pass.”

So go walk freely and un-self-consciously!

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have To Do That Anymore: Figure Out Which Servants We Need

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And yet people still feel guilty about having someone in to clean their house once a week.

So you’re thinking of getting some servants. Do you even know what all the different kinds do? Here’s a handy little guide (if you’re living at Downton Abbey, that is!):

The Different Kinds of Servants:

The Butler:

  • The Butler is the most senior male servant, but he is only a butler if there is other staff below him. A single male servant with no other servants in the house is called a houseman (and is mostly called a houseman if he is part of a husband and wife team of servants, though you could call him a butler.)
  • Butler’s Duties:
    • Answering the phone and the door
    • Serves as valet to the men of the house if there is no specific valet
    • Serves the dinner, with help from footmen or maids if there are any.
    • Generally in charge of the dining room and pantry, especially taking care of the wine and silver and choosing which dishes will be used to serve meals.
    • In smaller houses, he does more hands on work, in larger houses he oversees the work of the staff.
  • Butler’s Clothing:
    • Butlers generally wear a normal suit during the day, with perhaps a more formal suit with vest and tail coat in the afternoon. After 6pm, the butler wears a dress suit with a vest, white tie, and tails. A butler is distinguished from the gentlemen of the house by the simplicity of his suit and lack of all jewelry and adornments.

The Valet

  • Valet’s Duties:
    • It is always pronounced val-ET and not val-AY. Beau Brummel called the valet the “gentlemen’s gentleman”. (Do you guys know about Beau Brummel? I think he needs a post of his very own!)
    • Helps his employer dress
    • Manages his clothing, shopping, keeping everything repaired and shoes shined.
    • Often does things like making travel/restaurant/theater reservations
    • Packs and unpacks luggage for the male members of the household and any male guests.
  • Valet’s Clothing:
    • A regular, dark business suit

Footmen

  • Footmen’s Duties:
    • Footmen are the male servants who help the butler serve meals
    • They also help clean, especially heavier tasks like moving furniture. And especially, in very large houses, one footman, when not serving meals, spent all of his time polishing silver!
    • They also help answer the door
    • In many places, footmen were especially chosen for their looks- they often had to be a particular height and have nice legs (given what they had to wear!)
  • Footmen’s Clothing:
    • Footmen traditionally have a particular livery they wear when serving meals consisting of knee breeches, stockings, and fancy coats. Many very fancy families also had their footmen powder their hair (in the 20th century! in this country! people paid other people to dress up like servants in a French Court EVERY DAY!).
    • Usually a household will have a set of colors- like cream and navy and the footman’s livery and the females servants uniforms will be in those colors.

The Chauffeur

  • Chauffeur’s Duties:
    • Drives the cars and cares for them
    • Often doubles as a butler or gardener/stableman
  • Chauffeur’s Clothing:
    • A strict chauffeur wears a traditional livery.
    • Nowadays, most chauffeurs have multiple duties and wear a regular gray or black suit with a dark tie.

The Housekeeper

  • Housekeeper’s Duties:
    • The Housekeeper is IN CHARGE!
    • She totally runs the household, standing in for the mistress of the house if she is unable or not inclined to do it herself.
    • Housekeepers are treated with great respect and always called Mrs. Lastname (even if she isn’t married!)
  • Housekeeper’s Clothing:
    • She wears dark clothing of her own.

The Social Secretary

  • Secretary’s Duties:
    • Handling much of the household’s business and correspondence.
    • She often does the general bookkeeping and bill paying.
    • In households without a housekeeper, she often takes on many of those duties, such as meal planning.
    • She helps with party planning- guest lists, menus, invitations, etc.
  • Secretary’s Clothing:
    • She wears her own clothing.

The Cook and Kitchen Maid:

  • Kitchen Duties:
    • A professional cook only cooks. She will also keep control of the kitchen and see that it is properly stocked. She often does the shopping. She collaborates with the mistress of the house on menus.
    • In larger households, there might be a second cook who mostly cooks for the servants and only helps the main cook with simple dishes.
    • The kitchen maid assists the cook, especially prep work and does the washing up.
  • Kitchen Clothing:
    • The cook wears her own white dress, white stockings, and neutral shoes.
    • The kitchen maid wears the same short sleeved uniform dress as the rest of the servants with an apron over it.

The Parlor Maid:

  • The Parlor Maid’s Duties:
    • The parlor maid takes care of cleaning the downstairs rooms. She might also answer the phone and the door.
    • Sometimes she might also help serve meals and wash up.
  • The Parlor Maid’s Clothing:
    • The parlor maid wears the uniform dress of all the servants with an apron. In some houses, the maids also might wear some kin. Don’t you wish you could have this many people doing every little thing for you?

The Lady’s Maid:

  • Lady’s Maid Duties:
    • The lady’s maid has many of the same duties as the valet: tending to the clothing and person of the lady of the house.
    • She draws baths, lays out clothing, does mending, sometimes does the laundry of just the lady’s clothing.
    • Often she does the hair and nails of her mistress.
  • Lady’s Maid Clothing:
    • A lady’s maid may wear her own dark clothing or she may wear the uniform of the other maids.

The Chambermaid (or Housemaid):

  • Chambermaid’s Duties:
    • The chambermaid is in charge of all the bedrooms of the house.
    • She makes the beds and cleans the upstairs rooms
    • She makes sure the bathrooms are clean after every use.
    • She is in charge of the linen room and makes sure it is all clean and mended. She collects the family’s laundry.
  • Chambermaid Clothing:
    • She wears the same uniform dress as the other female servants.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have To Do That Anymore: Tiara Etiquette

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Princess Margaret (the Queen’s sister) wore her tiara in the bath.

The good news is that none of this tiara etiquette really exists anymore (except for people who go to state banquets and the like), so feel free to wear tiaras whenever you want.

  • Unmarried women shouldn’t wear them- this is why they are often worn on a wedding day.
  • Being able to wear a tiara isn’t dictated by your social rank but rather by the occasion (um, and actually being able to afford one or pull strings to borrow one.)
  • Tiaras are worn for white tie, occasionally black tie, and state events. This means only very, very fancy times.
  • Tiaras are eveningwear. The QUEEN OF ENGLAND did not wear a tiara to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s morning wedding, so neither should you.
  • Often for “tiara events” the invitation will state “tiaras will be worn”
  • Tiaras shouldn’t be worn in hotels or public ballrooms. Only if your friends are fancy enough to have their own ballrooms. But you can wear them to dinner in a private home if the dress code is white tie- go figure.
  • Tiaras should be worn so that the jewels are parallel to the ground or at a slight angle to the ears, never as a “headband”.
  • Not etiquette but a fun fact: many royal and other famous tiaras easily break apart into sets of necklaces, earrings, and brooches so the pieces can be worn more frequently. Who knew royals were so thrifty?

Coronets are a different matter and ARE linked to rank and can only be worn by people of that rank. Peers wear a coronet (a silver gilt circlet) along with along with ceremonial robes at the coronation of the Monarch only.

Thank Goodness We Don’t Have to Do That Anymore: Churching

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The author, at a church but not being churched.

The author, at a church but not being churched.

I love Renaissance Faires and hanging out in fake Medieval Times as much as the next person (erm, except for Jaya who does not like it), but outside of awesome turkey legs and jousting, there were a lot of not-so-fun parts. And life especially sucked if you were a woman.

Take for instance, the concept of churching.

Due to some Levitican nonsense about women being impure after childbirth (Leviticus 12:2-8)  and some Virgin Mary copy-catting (Luke 2:22-40), the thing to do in Medieval Times was to stay at home for 40 days after giving birth and then head to the church to be blessed and become pure again.

When it was time to be churched, a woman would go to the Church with her midwife and the other women who had attended the birth. The new mother would have to wear a special veil to show her impure state. Then they would have to wait OUTSIDE for the priest to come perform the ceremony before the new mother was able to enter the Church.

During the 16th century, the Church began to worry that churching was based on Jewish rather than Christian beliefs and in 1549, Edward IV declared that the service must change from a purification to a Thanksgiving (Medieval Times had both misogyny and anti-Semitism, so fun!). Thereafter, the ceremony was more of a blessing of the woman and about being thankful that she had survived giving birth. The most controversial part became the difference in wording to use if the child had or had not survived the birth.

Technically the service still exists in the Catholic Church (and other more orthodox churches too!), but it isn’t commonly practiced. However, apparently, it was still a common practice in parts of Ireland well into the 1970s and was still making women feel ashamed or dirty because of their post-partum state.