Open Writing

If you are planning a picnic for 40 persons, you might wish to pack a joint of cold roast; a joint of cold boiled beef; 2 ribs of lamb; 2 shoulders of lamb; 4 roast fowls; 2 roast ducks; 1 ham; 1 tongue; 2 veal-and-ham pies; 2 pigeon pies; 6 medium-sized lobsters; 1 piece of collared calf's head; 18 lettuces; 6 baskets of salad; and 6 cucumbers.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I say you might wish to pack all this? How remiss of me. I meant, of course, that your domestic servants will pack it for you.

And that is just the start. There is also a long list of puddings and desserts of all kinds, followed by things not to be forgotten, such as plates, tumblers, wine-glasses, knives, forks, spoon, teacups and saucers and 3 or 4 teapots.

The servants would also bring the tables and chairs, of course, and arrange them to your liking at your chosen picnic spot.

It's a far cry from 'Chuck another prawn on the barbie' but it does refer to what one did 150 years ago if one was a better class of person. The wondrous details are clearly given in Beeton's Book of Household Management.

Mrs Beeton also lists the various categories of domestic servants and explains their duties, with the proviso, 'The number of male domestics in a family varies according to the wealth and position of the master, from the owner of a ducal mansion, with a retinue of servants... to the occupier of the humbler house, where a single footman, or even the odd man-of-all-work, is the only male retainer'.

And so we learn about the butler, footman, coachman, groom, stable-boy, and the valet, who is an 'attendant on the Person'. Female domestics will possibly include one or more lady's-maid, upper housemaid, under housemaid, maid-of-all-work, dairy-maid, laundry-maid, upper nursemaid, under nursemaid, and others when one's wife is with child.

Mrs Beeton explains, 'The sensible master and the kind mistress know, that if servants depend on them for their means of living, in their turn they are dependent on their servants for very many of the comforts of life; and that, with the proper amount of care in choosing their servants, and treating them like reasonable beings, and making slight excuses for the shortcomings of human nature, they will, save in some exceptional case, be tolerably well served, and, in most instances, surround themselves with attached domestics'.

She reminds her readers that their servants are humble dependents who have children whose only prospect is domestic service — 'To them, it presents no degradation, but the reverse, to be so employed; they are initiated step by step into the mysteries of the household, with the prospect of rising in the service'.

Come to think of it, my grandfather William George Barratt was at that time a humble servant of his betters. His father and his sisters died during a cholera epidemic in London. His mother moved away and remarried. He was sent to a boarding school for poor boys. As a 16-year-old in 1854, he went into service with a gentleman at Hexgreave Park in Nottinghamshire. In the 1870s he was working at the Bishop's Palace in Southwell. By 1881 he was a steward at Highfield Hall, Uttoxeter, in Staffordshire.

He certainly appears to have risen in the service but I'm not sure if Mrs Beeton would have approved of his final position. He became the licensee of The Railway Inn, a public house at Burton-on-Trent, also in Staffordshire. We know that in his own drinking habits he occasionally suffered from 'the shortcomings of human nature' but I somehow doubt that he ever organised a picnic for 40 persons, with or without pigeon-pies.

© Copyright Brian Barratt 2011