The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, by Tessa Boase

The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, by Tessa Boase

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The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, by Tessa Boase

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Working as a housekeeper was one of the most prestigious jobs a nineteenth and early twentieth century woman could want - and also one of the toughest. A far cry from the Downton Abbey fiction, the real life Mrs. Hughes was up against capricious mistresses, low pay, no job security and grueling physical labor. Until now, her story has never been told. The Housekeeper's Tale reveals the personal sacrifices, bitter disputes and driving ambition that shaped these women's careers. Delving into secret diaries, unpublished letters and the neglected service archives of our stately homes, Tessa Boase tells the extraordinary stories of five working women who ran some of Britain's most prominent households.

There is Dorothy Doar, Regency housekeeper for the obscenely wealthy 1st Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire. There is Sarah Wells, a deaf and elderly Victorian in charge of Uppark, West Sussex. Ellen Penketh is Edwardian cook-housekeeper at the sociable but impecunious Erddig Hall in the Welsh borders. Hannah Mackenzie runs Wrest Park in Bedfordshire â?? Britain's first country-house war hospital, bankrolled by playwright J. M. Barrie. And there is Grace Higgens, cook-housekeeper to the Bloomsbury set at Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex for half a century â?? an era defined by the Second World War.

Revelatory, gripping and unexpectedly poignant, The Housekeeper's Tale champions the invisible women who ran the English country house.

The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, by Tessa Boase

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182606 in Books
• Brand: Boase, Tessa
• Published on: 2015-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 7.75" h x 1.00" w x 5.00" l, .0 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, by Tessa Boase

Amazon.com Review from The Prologue (Hatfield House, Hertfordshire 1890)

On Thursday, 16 October 1890, an advertisement appeared in The Times and The Morning Post, London: HOUSEKEEPER WANTED, for a large, country house. A person is required, of a good address, who has filled a similar position. Write, stating qualifications, to S. N., May’s Advertising offices, 162 Piccadilly, W. Fifty-nine women read the advertisement, considered their options and replied in slanting copperplate handwriting, stating their particulars.

A studio portrait of Hannah Mackenzie Hannah Mackenzie celebrating her 100th birthday

‘I am a Protestant’, wrote Mrs Phillips, 40, from Lambeth, in quavering black ink, ‘an abstainer, early riser, very methodical, punctual in all duties and judicious in supervision of servants. ’ She was experienced in looking after linen, valuable china and stores, she ‘fully understood’ cooking with economy and she required wages ‘from £35’ a year. That is around £2,100 in today’s money. Mrs Catherine Coleman, housekeeper to the Lord Mayor of London at Mansion House, also applied for the job. She prided herself on being ‘a careful and industrious manageress, possessing a large amount of discretion, tact and judicious firmness necessary to control servants’. She was educated, tall, ‘of good appearance and address’. She was leaving the post because the Lord Mayor elect would be bringing his own housekeeper. From temporary lodgings at Kemp Street, Brighton Mrs Ridout wrote too. Well educated for her ‘station in life’, she thoroughly understood the making of ‘all Preserves, Marmalades, Cakes, etc’. She had been ‘disengaged’ at the precarious age of 50, and was hoping something would turn up.

There were replies that appealed to a prospective mistress’s vanity, promising to pander to her every need. ‘I shall not consider anything a trouble which will add to the comfort of the household’, wrote Mrs Davidson of Mayfair. Kate Corrigan, manageress of the Mosley Hotel in Manchester, understood ‘all the nice little refinements of a wellordered establishment’. Her hotel was about to be pulled down and rebuilt; in any case, she would much prefer a position in a ‘house’. There were replies from career servants seeking to better their position, such as Miss Bessie Kelly, writing from a ‘gentleman’s establishment’ near Warrington, Cheshire. ‘I want to change now to gain more experience. My age is 38. I think I may say I have a very good address & appearance. ’ Mrs Jennings from West Dean Park, Chichester, was disgruntled with her current job as cook-housekeeper, wishing to drop the ‘cook’ part. ‘I do not like the management of the cooking and it’s more then I thought it would be, but I took the situation through the wishes of Friends. ’ She had been there less than a year.

The words ‘large, country house’ acted as a clarion call. This was the top job for a working woman in the nineteenth century. You could do no better, nor live more comfortably or with greater security, and all under your own steam. Uniquely, it was a life that had no need of a man – and was far more exhilarating, perhaps, than housekeeping for a husband. The Victorian years were the housekeeper’s apogee, a time of supreme confidence and expansion for the English country house. She started the century a more subordinate, explicitly feminine figure – pickler, preserver, sweet maker, distiller; in charge of all store cupboards and material things, a large bunch of keys clinking at her waist as she checked her housemaids’ work. She ended the century in a black silk dress, a senior management figure of absolute authority, whose wages might outstrip both cook and butler... She answered only to the mistress of the house, hiring and firing dozens of maids and controlling the entire household budget. She remains one of the most caricatured figures of the age.

The housekeeper is invariably one of two types. She is a stern-faced, elderly spinster dressed in black – meticulous, repressed, asexual, perhaps nursing some secret bitterness. Or else she is a bluff, apple-cheeked Yorkshirewoman, spaniel-like in her devotion. Dickens, himself the grandson of a country-house housekeeper, delighted in the caricature – in Hard Times (1854) there is the ludicrous Mrs Sparsit, a widowed gentlewoman fallen on hard times with a ‘Coriolanian style of nose’ and ‘dense black eyebrows’, her preposterous sights set on marrying her master, Mr Bounderby. In Bleak House (1853) there’s her counterpoint: the inoffensive treasure Mrs Rouncewell, ‘a fine old lady, handsome, stately, wonderfully neat’, an indispensable part of the grand Dedlock Estate for fifty years. Scotswoman Mrs Hughes of the television drama Downton Abbey (loyal, astute, a spinster by choice) belongs firmly in this second camp... For all its status, it was a surprisingly insecure job (1890 was a year of sharp financial recession), many women blaming ‘restructuring of establishment’ for their being let go. It was also a job for the desperate: widowed and orphaned gentlewomen, young and old, down on their luck. Their letters make poignant reading.

Holkham Hall

On black-edged notepaper from Bridgnorth in the old county of Salop, a 24-year-old widow applied for the post. ‘Owing to my husband’s recent death I have been obliged to depend upon myself ’, wrote Frances Christy in intelligent, legible handwriting. ‘I have never been out before, but am a lady and used to house keeping of my own, and am fully qualified for the post, being used to a large house in China, and having the command of a staff of servants. If you think it likely I should do’, she added, ‘kindly let me know as soon as possible, as I am anxious to get something to do. ’ ‘I am a widow and I have one child who is at school’, wrote Mrs Cleary from Southampton, a 36-year-old with ‘the highest references’ from a canon of Westminster Abbey. She admitted that she had not worked since she was married, ‘but I am a competent housekeeper and would soon get into the routine of a Gentleman’s house. Wages, £50. ’ Death, in this sheaf of replies, is everywhere. ‘I am the orphan daughter of a Gentleman, of very good family and connections, many of whom have held important posts in the Army, Navy, Church, Legal and Medical professions’, wrote the ‘very energetic and cheerful’ Miss E. Illingworth, aged 31, in a rather defensive four-page letter posted in London. Harriet Robinson from Micheldever, Hampshire is another: ‘My father now dead was for many years in the Bank of Scotland, Edinburgh & a Notary Public. ’ She did not state her age but sent a piteous photograph, ‘taken about 4 years ago’: very young, very slim, with a frizzled Princess Alexandra-style fringe and a yearning face. She holds a portrait of her dead father. ‘Salary £35 to £40.’ Just one woman, 54-year-old Fanny Tagg from Birmingham, asked for more information...

Contents

• Prologue
• Part 1 - Dorothy Doar of Trentham Hall
• Part 2 - Sarah Wells of Uppark
• Part 3 - Ellen Penketh of Erddig
• Part 4 - Hannah Mackenzie of Wrest Park
• Part 5 - Grace Higgens of Charleston
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• Bibliography
• Index

Review ' Terrific. The depth of research and the elegant writing make this an excellent book. I am full of admiration.' -- Kathryn Hughes 'In this masterly re-telling of their lives and experiences, Tessa Boase breathes vivid life into the forgotten figures of housekeepers. Her forensic research into their stories and her sparkling evocation of their country-house world restores to these working women an individuality often overshadowed by the servant caricature.' -- Lucy Lethbridge 'It is no easy task to find the voice of the professional domestic servant before the 20th century, but the author has done an excellent job piecing together the stories of these five lives through her painstaking research into letters, memoirs and accounts.' Country Life 'The truth is more scandalous than film or fiction - this is one of those social history studies that makes the reader howl with rage.' The Daily Mail "Wiped clean of romantic sheen, this is a fascinating perspective into our upstairs/downstairs history.' Sainsbury's Magazine 'This is a compelling and beautifully written account which tells fascinating stories of some very different, and intriguing, women.' Eastern Daily Press 'Boase has written humanistically, and (perhaps unconsciously) opened a door to a profoundly Feminist Marxist understanding of modern English history.' -- Karen Dahood BookPleasures.com 'Serves not only as an account of those who worked below stairs but also the lords and ladies who were their employers, thus providing an admirable social history.' Scottish Home and Country

About the Author

Tessa Boase read English at Lincoln College, Oxford, then worked as a voiceover artist, a children's scriptwriter, and as a commissioning editor for The Daily and Sunday Telegraphand The Daily Mail. As a freelance feature writer she contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times, The FT, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Observer and various magazines. She was co-founder of the Salon des Amis (a London salon of ideas, debate and entertainment), and more recently restored a ruin in Italy's Sabine Hills where she produces olive oil. She lives in north London with her husband and two young children.

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Most helpful customer reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful. Housekeepers - Domestic Goddesses! By bookbuzz Modern day existence of antiques - ceramics, textiles and furniture is directly attributable not to days-gone-by owners but to those women of sterling qualities and boundless energy; housekeepers, who worked long hours to preserve the beauty and as near as humanly possible, perfect condition of the objets d’art in their care while running large country houses.Tessa Boase, tells the stories of five British housekeepers who through their labour and devotion to duty made it possible for their employers to live a lifestyle most of us can only dream about.The factual accounts of these extraordinary women’s experiences – mostly miserable working conditions with upper class penny pinching employers, spans the 19th century, two world wars, ending in the present time with the examination of the duties of a housekeeper employed by an English aristocratic family, who, to survive financially, open their home and surrounding estate to day trippers and tourists.A housekeeper’s lot may not have been an easy or happy one but in the nineteenth and early twentieth century it was relatively well-paid and with live-in accommodation, a sought after career path for single working women and middle-class widows.Researching secret diaries, unpublished letters and documenting excerpts from the service archives of British stately homes, Tessa Boase has written The Housekeeper’s Tale in an intimate day-in-the-life of style which empathises with each woman’s daily grind of duties and provides a vivid commentary on the social niceties and customs of the day. The hardships the housekeeper’s encountered to make sure everything was ‘ticketty-boo’ for their employers evoked in me a response which labelled each and everyone of them ‘domestic goddesses’ - the work they either did or organised daily ‘downstairs’ so that ‘upstairs’ could continue to live removed from the need to clean, cook or shop was amazing.Thoughts of having a close encounter with the floor polisher or turning out the cupboards enough to bring on a migraine in my good self, I was intrigued and a touch horrified by the tasks the housekeepers were expected to perform without the aid of a robust sprinkle of Ajax or electrical appliances to preserve heirlooms and clean and cater for their employer’s family and an endless supply of guests.The book begins with Dorothy Doar, Regency housekeeper for the fabulously wealthy 1st Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Trentham Hall, Staffordshire. One of five housekeepers in the Duke’s employment, Dorothy was responsible for the smooth running and interior maintenance of Trentham Hall.The Duke and Duchess, spent time travelling between their stately piles, housekeepers hastily scrawling letters to allow counterparts to prepare for the arrival of their employers.After fourteen years of exemplary service, housekeeper, Dorothy falls pregnant and requests six weeks maternity leave. A married woman, she has sacrificed family life with her husband and first born child to serve the needs of the Duke and Duchess.The request refused, a chain of events starts that leaves Dorothy barricaded in her room and Trentham Hall in uproar. This incident provides a fascinating insight into the lack of rights of the servant class in the 1800’s; Dorothy is forcibly evicted and cast out without pension or reference.Tessa Boase was unable to discover any record of whether Dorothy Doar was delivered of a healthy baby, or indeed, anything about Dorothy’s life post her role as Trentham Hall’s housekeeper. Sad, and indicative of the upper class habit of discarding servants who were no longer useful.Sarah Wells, the mother of H.G., at age 63 was quite elderly to begin a career as housekeeper to Fanny Bullock of Uppark in West Sussex. Fanny’s sister, a milkmaid, married ‘the-Lord-of-the-Manor’ and as the union had no issue Fanny inherited Uppark estate. A mean and critical mistress, Fanny exploited Sarah’s need for money to clothe and feed her family by keeping the wages low and the hours long.All the housekeeper’s stories make involving, compelling reading, particularly Grace Higgens, cook-housekeeper to the Bloomsbury set at Charleston farmhouse in East Sussex. Vanessa Bell, her sister, Virginia Woolf and others in the Bloomsbury Set while undeniably talented, tidiness was not a concept they were familiar with.Grace Higgens, married with a son, gave them fifty loyal, loving years. Unlike the other housekeeper’s work experiences, Grace’s service was appreciated and acknowledged as the force that made Charleston a happy haven for family and friends.The Housekeeper’s Tale – a sometimes sad but always interesting, lovely read.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Great read By Victorian Catmom This book is fascinating. I couldn't put it down. It tells the stories of five very interesting lives and elaborates within each story on estate life in general throughout the whole country at those times. The writing style is very conversational and so full of reflection on the interpersonal dynamics and emotional aspect of the stories. Very balanced accounts, so exhaustively researched with so much actual text from letters and other documents included. Photos too. Highly recommend for anyone who loves to immerse themselves in true history. Will look for more work from this author for sure.

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. May I also recommend Rose and Diamonds for Dinner By Joyce L. Buckley Cudos to the author who did much research tracing these women. These are stories about seldom thought of workers whose main job was to be invisible. May I also recommend Rose and Diamonds for Dinner. These are buried treasures revealing a world I never thought existed

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The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House, by Tessa Boase