Aristocrats (30 page)
In compensation for his arduous duties Bere had a substantial salary, his own servant and a parlour to himself. He lived on a friendly footing with the family and often dined with them. But the Duke took care that Bere remained a servant. He was forbidden to shoot or hunt, he was told ‘not to encourage visitors’ and his first duty was ‘to live always in the country’.
The housekeeper, the butler and the clerk of the kitchen were collectively responsible for the day-to-day running of the house. The housekeeper took, or anticipated, commands from Emily herself. Her provinces were the laundry and the rooms in the main house. The housekeeper’s maids, divided into upper-house maids and lower-house maids, washed and cleaned, laid fires and made beds. Immediately below the housekeeper in the female hierarchy were the wet nurse (one was more or less continuously resident at Carton in the 1760s), Emily’s own maids and the nursery staff. Lastly, grouped among the lower servants – who were the cleaners and washers rather than the fetchers and carriers – was the plate maid. Her job was to wash the plate in bran and water, and then polish it to a sparkle with lamp spirits, whiten and alcohol. She worked for the butler but came under the housekeeper’s protection.
The Carton housekeeper was paid £30 a year. She had a
maid of her own and, in deference to her gentility, she was in charge of the tea caddies and sugar loaves. After 1762, she also had a bell pull, a luxury which, Emily explained to her husband, had become a necessity because of the laziness of the maids. ‘Mrs. Clarke grumbles sadly about the maids; they won’t get up in a morning and she catches her death with cold going to call them. I have given her leave to have a bell, which she is mighty desirous of, tho’ as I told her it will do no good, and that the only way to make them get up early was to make them go to bed early; that they won’t do – why, because they have nothing to do, and so sit up gossiping and prating – give them work to do, make them mend and make the linen, you’ll find they will be ready enough then to go to bed as early as you please.’
Working closely with the housekeeper was the butler Stoyte. Stoyte operated from his sanctuaries the pantry and the stillroom, where the plate, linen, tableware, bottles, candles, condiments and groceries in everyday use were stored. The pantry and the stillroom formed the command centre for provisioning the household. Under-servants brought candles there from the chandlery, bread from the bakery and butter from the home farm. Maids carried freshly washed and ironed damask tablecloths and napkins from the laundry. Pantry boys took empty wine bottles out, brought new ones in and replenished the ale casks. Footmen, to the fury of the Duke, hurriedly put on their uniforms there, as guests arrived and bells began to ring. The Duke, aware of the noise and merriment issuing from under the pantry door, once sent the butler a stiff reminder that ‘he must not by any means admit the pantry to be a meeting or gossiping place for the under servants’.
Such laughter and intrigue were snatched and hurried, at least until the household was settling down for the night. Footmen and other liveried servants had to be in constant readiness to attend the family, as did the Duke’s personal servants, his groom of the chambers and valet. They lurked in
corridors and antechambers waiting for a bell or a sign: footmen in the public rooms, the valets de chambre in the family’s bedchambers and dressing-rooms. Eight pounds a year, board and lodging and an allowance for their splendid uniform was their reward. Not surprisingly it was a job for young men; married men could not live in the house and, besides, one of the job’s few compensations was the after-hours social life.
In the late 1760s Carton footmen wore black worsted shag breeches, tailored coats and fine felt hats with a silver chain loop, a button and a horse-hair cockade. Thus attired they waited on family and guests alike, expecting from the latter handsome tips for their assiduity. The abolition of tips, or vails, cost the Duke £4 a year for each footman by the 1770s, a sum they could add to their wages. Still, they left in numbers, tired of the drudgery, moving on to other houses perhaps or departing for matrimony and family life. In a desperate attempt to keep his servants with him the Duke introduced a bonus scheme in the 1760s, adding a year’s wages to the pay packets of those who would stay with the household for five years.
If the pantry was one social centre for servants, the others were the kitchen and the servants’ hall, run by the clerk of the kitchen, the cook, the confectioner (a specialist sweetmeat and pudding maker recruited in France) and their staff. It was the duty of the clerk of the kitchen to make sure that all the Carton servants, both indoor and outdoor who lived in the house, got fed. Married servants who took board wages to pay for their board and lodgings elsewhere – outside the gates in Maynooth, for the most part – were only fed on Sundays, ‘to live in harmony’ with the rest of their workmates.
Planning, ordering and co-ordinating meals was a complicated business. Like much of the work around the house, meals were timed by the ringing of bells and they were eaten in shifts and at different times according to circumstance and season. A simple rule of thumb prevailed: the lowlier the servants the earlier they ate because the earlier they began work.
For those at the bottom of the heap, the Carton labourers, the day began as soon as the sun crept up above the park gates. ‘It is my orders,’ the Duke wrote in 1765, ‘that all the workmen and labourers do come to work as soon as day in the morning, at which time the bell is to ring as warning and a quarter of an hour after that time to go to work; the bell to ring at nine o’clock for them to go to breakfast; quarter past ditto to go to the place of work, and twenty minutes past ditto to go to work. The bell to ring at one o’clock for them to go to dinner, half an hour past ditto for them to go to their place of work and three quarters past ditto to go to work and to work as long as they can see till further orders from me … NB any workmen or labourers that don’t conform to these orders let them be discharged.’
From daybreak to dusk with only an hour and five minutes rest was a punishing stint, even allowing for the Duke’s anger being in proportion to his failure to enforce the rules. Other servants, particularly upper-servants in the public and family rooms of the house, had a better time. They too rose early, to set and light fires, and to clean rooms before their master and mistress got up for breakfast. But their duties were less exhausting than those of outside labourers or the staff in the kitchen and laundry. For maids and footmen there were times of quiet, after meals, or when the family went out, when they could loiter in anterooms, tell jokes and swap gossip and stories.
When meal-times came round servants made for different rooms according to their rank. At the ‘second table’ in the steward’s parlour sat the higher servants and any guests they might have. The wet nurse and all the maids dined in the still-room, while the other servants headed for the servants’ hall or the kitchen. Though meals were snatched, food was plentiful and loaded with good cuts of meat. The Duke was careful to prescribe a hearty diet for his workforce and eager to impress visiting stewards or factors with the quality of his servants’ table. ‘Particular care must be taken that all meat is well and
cleanly dressed and good of the kind.’ Servants dined at one o’clock if the family was in residence, at four if they were away. On Saturday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday they ate ‘boiled beef, cabbage and roots’. On Thursday they were given ‘boiled mutton with turnips etc, if convenient, or boiled pork, pease pudding and potatoes instead of mutton’. Friday was a fish day, in deference to the religion of the vast majority of Carton employees; usually it was salt fish with potatoes and cheese. On Sunday they enjoyed ‘a piece of beef roasted and plumb pudding or any kind of pudding’.
Supper, served between nine and ten, was bread and cheese: a quarter of a pound of cheese for each servant, with a pat of butter for the men. While the servants waited for supper the butler or the clerk of the kitchen held a roll call, checking off the servants’ names against a list. After supper the servants’ hall was supposed to be locked, but secluded as they were in their own wing of the house, it was easy for servants to flout the Duke’s orders. Sometimes there was gaiety, drinking and dancing. House parties in the main part of the house meant parties for servants too. Ladies’ maids, valets de chambre and coachmen all came with their employers to house parties and they brought with them bustle and fun, new faces for intrigue and fresh material for gossip. In the turbulent summer of 1769, when every post and every visitor seemed to bring bad news, the servants’ merriment was too much for the Duke, and he sent his steward a curt note. ‘I will not for the future permit any dancing to be in any part of the house without my leave or the Duchess of Leinster’s, which occasions neglect, idleness and drinking.’
Almost every year, to the delight of the staff left behind, the Duke and Duchess left Carton. If Emily was about to lie in she went to Leinster House in Dublin, where she remained for the birth of her child and her month-long confinement. Sometimes Parliament was sitting. Sometimes (though less and less) they went to England. With the state rooms closed and the family away, the housekeeper and her charges had
little to do; they might mend and sew, she sometimes showed visitors around. But life slowed and they were able for a few weeks to ape their mistress’s habits, getting up after sunrise and eating dinner in the afternoon.
When the family were away, Carton servants dined at four o’clock, even later than their employers. They ate the very best that the Carton kitchen gardens offered, feasting like merchants or squires on melons and peas and jugs of milk and cream. ‘Dinner to be on the table at exactly four o’clock. To consist of one or two dishes such as roast or boiled [beef] with garden things, mutton and broth, mutton chops, harricot or hashed roast or boiled pork with pease pudding and garden things or steaks roast and boiled, veal with garden things when veal is killed at Carton. Once a week to have mutton or beef pie and on every Sunday roast beef and plumb pudding or any other kind of pudding. Supper and breakfast to be of such meat as is left at dinner, either cold hashed or broiled as they like adding some potatoes or any kind of garden stuff, cheese or eggs.’
While they ate, everybody drank. Ale, strong and dark, was served, a pint to each servant. Throughout the day, from the time the breakfast bell rang, servants could drink unlimited quantities of small beer, a very weak, pale beer brewed for refreshment rather than nourishment or intoxication. Those whose duties were hot or demanding were given extra rations. The cook had a quart of ale at eleven o’clock and at two o’clock, laundry maids had a quart twice a week and the wet nurse a pint at night.
The rules which the Duke laid down for the government of his household conjured up an imaginary scene of order, in which servants came and worked to the ringing of bells, goods were weighed, measured and written up and punctuality and good manners universally cultivated. But try as he might, the Duke could only create a dutiful household on paper. Whenever he lifted his eyes from his desk he saw pilfering, disloyalty and disobedience. Powerless and enraged he
would hurry back to his desk and compose lectures to his staff on their professional conduct. ‘The way to perform and get everything done is to be regular and not to do anything but that all the world may know it; for once that anything is done that Lord or Lady Kildare is not acquainted with, and should be displeased if known, he puts himself in the power of others and then all authority is over and not to be got again.’
For higher servants such disquisitions might have served some purpose. With lower servants it was useless, despite ringing calls to loyalty: they worked for the money, the food, the lodgings and the social life. The Duke disciplined them with threats of punishment and dismissal. ‘Carton Dec. 23 1764. I desire that the shepherd be stopped sixpence for every sheep and lamb that is found in the plantations and that he goes round the fences everyday to see that they are not broke or damaged. If they are he is to put a hurdle or bushes in the place and give notice immediately to the office when they are broke or damaged, for no excuse will be allowed for the sheep getting in. Signed K.’ ‘Jan. 10 1767. I desire that after this day Mary Kelly (commonly called Cocker Kelly) be not admitted within my park gates without my order in writing … If I find she has been admitted I will stop half a crown from the Gate Keeper at whose gate she has got in and if I cannot find out, from each gate keeper half a crown.’
The disorder continued. Footmen, young and unmarried, were spotted loitering without leave in the countryside; other undesirable women, Anne Strong and Mary McDannatt, got into the park against orders. Labourers pretended to be sick or left without explanation. Carters, allowed five and a half hours for the journey between Carton and Leinster House in Dublin, unaccountably took longer, throwing the Duke into a rage and bringing down heavy fines on their heads. He suspected that they diverted their carts between leaving Dublin and arriving home. Despite the rules and regulations, the ringing of bells and the docking of pay, the Duke felt barely
in command. Sometimes he lost control of himself, too, and his anxiety about the estate peeped wickedly out from behind his unbending, authoritarian prose. At the end of an angry letter to Mr Brown at the home farm he wrote: ‘I expect these things all done and not altered or changed without my being first acquainted with it, as I shall lay all blame upon you and will take no excuse for neglect.’
Cumbersome, leaky and above all expensive, the household at Carton creaked through the years like an ageing man-of-war, industrial in its scale and cost, a centre of employment and production that had few parallels for size and scope. When major works were under way two or three hundred people might be employed there (although the permanent members of the household, employers and staff numbered about a hundred); even the largest linen manufacturies in the country had not yet grown to that size. Only armies and fighting ships, with their crews of four hundred, were bigger.