Life Below Stairs (11 page)

POLISHING THE ‘PLATE’

The footmen or butler were responsible for the appearance of the vast array of silver or silver-plated cutlery known as the ‘plate’ as well as the table
silver. The cutlery would be washed every day and wiped clean with a soft rag or leather cloth. At least once a week it was also cleaned with a paste made from hartshorn powder, otherwise known as
ammonium carbonate, which was obtained from the dry distillation of oil found in the horn of a red deer stag.
Cassell
’
s Household Management Guide
maintained, ‘Towels
boiled in a mixture of a hartshorn powder and water are an excellent rubber for plate in daily use. Rags – old chamber-towels of huckaback (a style of rough weave) are best – boiled in
a solution of a quart of water to six ounces of hartshorn powder, are excellent for the purpose.’

CHAPTER SIX

Special
Occasions

FINE DINING

L
ED BY THE
love of opulence often displayed by King Edward VII, the Edwardian upper crust regarded lavish dinner
parties as an essential way of maintaining their status in society. It was not unusual for a society hostess to throw two dinner parties a week, and weekend guests would be treated to two lavish
feasts with a lunch party in between.

Margaret Thomas remembered one London house where entertaining was a weekly event:

While the downstairs staff dined on cold meats, potatoes and bread, the food which formed the nine or ten courses that graced the dining-room table was of the finest. Oysters,
caviar, lobster, truffles, partridge, quail, ptarmigan (white grouse), pressed beef, ham, tongue, chicken, galantines, melons, peaches and nectarines were all ingredients for the Edwardian banquet
and a typical dinner party for twenty people would cost up to £60 – five times the annual salary of a scullery maid.

Those below stairs who made these lavish feasts possible would benefit the next day, having an array of leftovers for their own meals in the servants’ hall. Even so, it must have been hard
for a maid who could barely afford her own stockings to witness the amount of money lavished on these meals, when the wastage in some of the richer households could have fed their family back home
for weeks. Margaret Powell began her life in service as a kitchen maid at a house in Adelaide Crescent, Hove. She recalled, ‘The amount of food that came into that house seemed absolutely
fabulous to me, the amount of food that was eaten and wasted too. They often had a whole saddle of mutton […] And sirloins. Sometimes with the sirloins they would only eat the undercut and
the whole top was left over, so we used to eat that for our dinner. Even so we couldn’t eat everything and a lot got thrown away. When I used to think of my family at
home where we seldom had enough to eat, it used to break my heart.’

In houses where the staff was not sufficiently large to wait on a dinner party, outside help was brought in on special occasions, often in the form of a local greengrocer.
The
Servants
’
Guide
, published at the end of the nineteenth century, frowned upon this practice: ‘The traditional greengrocer from round the corner or a waiter from a
confectioner’s are not the best class of waiter to employ for the purpose, or from whom good waiting is to be expected,’ it sniffed. ‘Servants out of place, personally known to
the butler, or persons who have formerly been gentlemen’s servants, are most to be depended on.’ A satirical cartoon in
Punch
magazine suggests the practice was already common in
1876. It shows a haughty-looking shopkeeper and a well-dressed customer and has the caption: ‘Comely Greengrocer (who waits on Evening Parties to Lady Customer): “Shall I ’ave the
pleasure of meeting you this evening at Lady Fitzwiggle’s, Ma’am?”’

In
Cassell
’
s Manners of Modern Society
the writer urges hosts and hostesses never to use anything other than trained waiters at their table: ‘Dexterity, rapidity and
above all quietness, added to a thorough knowledge of his duties, form the essential requisites of a good waiter. In this department, as in others, only practice makes perfect.’ He adds that
the common practice of using outdoor staff to serve at big dinners was doomed for disaster:

Invitations

Invitations to dinner were engraved on card and delivered by the footmen. It was customary to give three weeks’ notice, although that rose to five or six by around
1910, and the hostess expected an immediate reply. Guests were expected to arrive fifteen minutes before the appointed time and arriving later was considered a faux pas. A typical invitation might
be pre-printed with gaps left for the guest’s name and date. For example:

Setting the Table

The table was the hostess’s chance to make the best first impression and she relied on her footmen or parlourmaid, under the instruction of the butler, to make it
spectacular. First, a felt or cloth covering was placed on the table and secured at the legs to stop it slipping. This protected the highly polished surface and deadened the sound of cutlery and
china being set down. A starched white damask cloth was laid on top, and the footmen made sure the fold of the cloth was exactly in the centre, with the same drop each side. A dinner plate was then
set at each place and the table laid with the cutlery, starting with the soup spoon or oyster fork on the outside and working inwards towards the knife and fork for the main course. Dessert forks
and spoons were brought in when required. Wine and water glasses were
then set on the table and a bread roll placed to the left of each place in a starched white napkin,
half-covered and half visible. Salt and pepper were provided between each two places, flowers placed on the table and silver candelabra placed symmetrically in the centre.

How to set the cutlery, according to the
Manual of Household Work and Management
(1913)

Arrivals

As the guests began to arrive at the front door the footman, or butler where no footman was employed, was on hand to greet them and take their coats. He would then
announce their presence to the host and hostess who would be waiting for their guests in the drawing room. Dinner was never served before the last diner arrived and, while the guests chatted with
their hosts in the drawing room, the footmen put the finishing touches to the table, filling water glasses, bringing up the butter dishes and possibly laying the first course out, depending on its
content. Seafood or canapés would be waiting for the party as they entered but soup would be served after they were seated.

While an air of calm and conviviality reigned in the drawing room, the kitchen was full of frenzied activity with all hands on deck helping the cook, or in the more fashionable households the
chef, add the final flourishes to the meal.

At 8 p.m., providing all the guests were in attendance, the butler announced dinner. Each man was paired with a lady to
escort to dinner according to their rank. The host
would accompany the highest-ranking lady, who would then be seated on his right, while the hostess would take the arm of the highest-ranking man, who sat to her right. The remaining guests were
paired off and seated according to their position, with the hostess informing each gentleman of the lady he should escort before the meal was announced.

Inside the dining room the footmen held the chair out for each diner and the host remained standing until all the guests were seated. Constitutional expert Alastair Bruce explains that the
posture of the Edwardian upper class meant their spines rarely came in contact with the chair backs: ‘The dining room chairs may have a back on them but the back is for the footman to push in
and out and not for them to rest their backs on at any time.’

Serving Etiquette

Despite the declining numbers of servants in the early twentieth century, the favoured style of service was
à la Russe
(or Russian style), said to have been
introduced by the Russian Ambassador at the Court of Naples. This meant that all courses, except perhaps the first, were served by the footmen, butler and waiting maids, and each plate removed from
the table in between.

Contemporary cookery and etiquette expert Janet McKenzie Hill in her
Guide to Edwardian Servants
advised: