The Complete Servant is a practical household manual published in London in 1825, written by Samuel and Sarah Adams, a married couple who describe themselves on the title page as “Fifty years Servants in different Families.” It sets out the duties, wages, and proper conduct of every rank of domestic servant, from land steward and housekeeper down to the servant of all-work and the foot-boy, and packs in hundreds of receipts for cookery, pickling, winemaking, perfumery, and household medicine. The book is addressed as much to masters and mistresses as to their servants: the authors argue that no social relation is so universal as that between employer and employed, and that defining its duties clearly would relieve family life of half its anxieties.
“It is a species of knowledge as important to the head of a family as necessary to the servant ; and, if thoroughly studied, would relieve life of half its anxieties and vexations.”
The Case for a Servant’s Manual
The Adamses come to the project as working servants, not authors, and they say so plainly. Samuel Adams entered service as a footboy in 1770 and rose through groom, footman, valet, butler, and house-steward; Sarah began as maid of all work and ended with more than twenty years as housekeeper in a very large establishment. They had noticed the want of such a manual in the servants’ halls where they lived, and made notes toward it for years, but constant avocations of servitude deferred the work until they retired on a moderate competency. The book, they write, may be regarded as the legacy of their old age to servants present and future.
Their complaint against existing literature is precise. Sermons on the moral obligations of masters and servants existed, and books of religious advice addressed to servants, and all were good in their way—but none addressed the actual personal practice of duties, defining them as they belong to the various classes and instructing servants in the mode of performance. The dedication extends the claim upward: by instructing servants in their moral and practical duties, the authors best evince attention to the interests of the heads of families who are their patrons, and the same precepts remind masters and mistresses what to expect. The book, they insist, is equally useful in the parlour, helping a family arrange its establishment and estimate the merits of valuable servants.
The Book’s Provenance and Title Page
The volume in hand is a Leeds University Library copy, digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015. Its title page presents the work as a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of every description of servant, from the housekeeper down to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy, with useful receipts and tables. The authors are Samuel and Sarah Adams, described simply as “Fifty years Servants in different Families.” It was published in London by Knight and Lacey in 1825, priced at seven shillings and sixpence, and printed by D. Sidney & Co. of Northumberland-street, Strand.
The Preface: A Legacy of Service
The Preface makes the case that no social relation is so numerous and universal as that between masters and servants, and that household duties therefore ought to be well defined and understood. Such knowledge matters as much to the head of a family as it is necessary to the servant; thoroughly studied, it would relieve life of half its anxieties. Yet no special attempt had been made to define these relations and illustrate these duties. Sermons on the moral obligations of both parties existed, and books of religious advice addressed to servants, all good in their way, but nothing addressed the actual personal practice of duties, defining them as they belong to the various classes and instructing servants in the mode of performance. The want of such a manual, often noticed in servants’ halls, led the authors years earlier to make notes toward such a work; constant avocations of servitude deferred the digesting of materials until they retired on a moderate competency. The publication may thus be regarded as the legacy of their old age to servants present and future, and the last duty they are likely to perform in this world.
The author was educated in a foundation school and entered service as a footboy in 1770, serving successively as groom, footman, valet, butler, and house-steward. His wife began as maid of all work, then served as house-maid, laundry-maid, under-cook, housekeeper, and lady’s maid, and finally spent above twenty years as housekeeper in a very large establishment. They profess no skill in authorship; their sole object was to set down everything likely to be useful in language understood by all. The book, they argue, will be equally useful in the parlour, assisting masters and mistresses in arranging establishments, advising them of their own duties, and enabling them to estimate the merits of valuable servants. A lady of high rank in whose family Mrs. Adams resided honoured her with advice and assistance in some articles, particularly that of Governess, though delicate reserve prevents acknowledgement by name. No general collection of receipts like Mr. Mackenzie’s, published two years since, existed when the work was prepared, so many receipts became less necessary; the most important identified with servants’ duties are retained. The authors promise to receive thankfully and incorporate in new editions any suggestions from intelligent servants addressed to them at their publishers. The Preface is dated Edgeware Road, June, 1825.
The Dedication: Economy and the Head of the Family
The Dedication is addressed respectfully to the Heads of Families of the United Kingdom as immediate patrons of the numerous class of servants. By instructing servants in their moral and practical duties, the authors best evince attention to patrons’ interests and promote domestic comforts, and the same precepts remind masters and mistresses what to expect. Though servants are the principal agents transacting household concerns, many branches of family arrangement fall within the sphere of heads of families, some exclusively their own and others connected with servants’ business but admitting no instruction to servants; on these the authors offer observations before the General Directory for Servants.
Dr. Johnson held as a maxim that “Every man’s first care is necessarily Domestic.” Independent of public engagements—politics, arts, sciences, literature, horses, hounds—the first care and peculiar province of the master of a family is his revenue: attention to land-stewards, agents, and tenants, and to expenditure, most immediately solicit his regard. Only when net income exceeds expenditure may he consider himself independent, for “it is not abundance that maketh rich, but Economy,” and Lord Chesterfield remarked that great fortunes frequently seduce possessors to ruinous profusion. Bacon observed that he who would live even with the world should calculate expenses at half his income, and he who would grow rich at one-third. A few minutes daily keeping a regular account of monies received and spent, Dr. and Cr., will show the true state of affairs, operate against excess of expenditure, teach practical economy, and enable appropriation of due portions of income to different establishments.
The Housekeeper’s Pickles
Pickling, the text observes, supplies many articles of family convenience, and it opens with a warning against the common trick of using brass utensils to colour pickles, a pernicious practice avoided by heating the liquor and keeping it warm before pouring it on. Stone or glass jars serve best; pickles should be lifted with a slotted spoon, never handled with fingers, and the strongest vinegar must be used without boiling, since boiling drives off the strength of vinegar and spices. Parboiling in brine halves the work, provided the articles are cooled and dried afterwards, and piercing them with a larding pin lets them drink in the flavour.
The receipts themselves run through walnuts, onions, saur kraut, and peccalilli. Walnuts soak a week in brine, are pierced in half a dozen places, simmered, aired until black, and stored in stone jars under a spiced vinegar heated for three days and replenished weekly — praised as the best and cheapest pickle, and an excellent savoury sauce for cold meats. Onions spend nine days in salt and water changed daily, then receive two pourings of boiling brine, and go into wide-mouthed bottles with distilled vinegar, ginger, mace, and a teaspoon of sweet oil to keep them white. Saur kraut is chopped cabbage pressed into a cask, left near warmth four or five days to ferment with a fetid acid smell, then moved to the cold; aniseeds among the layers give it a peculiar flavour, and boiled two hours it proves nutritious and anti-scorbutic for winter. The Indian peccalilli scalds sun-dried vegetables in vinegar and stores them under a spiced mustard vinegar sealed with bladder and leather. Samphire is steeped in spring water, then vinegar over a slow fire until green and crisp — removed instantly, or spoiled if it softens. Mushrooms are rubbed with salted flannel, heated briefly, and bottled with distilled vinegar, mace, and sweet oil, with ale or Allegon as substitutes. Cucumbers, the smallest and spot-free, lie nine days in salt and water until yellow, are greened under vine leaves with repeated boiling water, then covered with hot white wine vinegar and spices. Artificial anchovies press sprats with bay-salt, saltpetre, prunella, and cochineal for six months; salmon keeps a month under its strained liquor. Sugar alone, the text insists, keeps fish fresh and gives no disagreeable taste — a tablespoon of brown sugar suffices for a salmon of five or six pounds. Hams take half a peck of salt with prunella and saltpetre, three days’ lying, then a fortnight in boiled pickle strong enough to bear an egg. Beef and pork are rubbed into every niche and buried in salt, and saturated bay-salt brine preserves beans, artichokes, olives, samphire, and herrings.
British Wines and Their Management
The wine-making processes are laid out in order: gathering, picking, bruising, vatting; vinous fermentation, flavouring, drawing the must, pressing the husks, casking; then spirituous fermentation, racking, fining, bottling, and corking, with vats, a vat-staff, fruit-bruiser, strainer, hair-bags, wine-press, thermometer, and bottling-machine as the apparatus. Gathering, citing Mr. Carnell, belongs to fine weather, and berry fruit often looks ripe before it is, unripe fruit yielding harsh wine.
Then follows a long run of receipts. Lemon wine steeps pared rinds in juice and brandy, is strained through flannel, and stands three months until pale and fine as citron water. Apple wines take loaf sugar to the gallon, are boiled, strained, yeasted, worked two or three weeks, racked after a year, and fined with isinglass, with beet-root and red tartar giving a red version. Quinces are gathered dry, rubbed of their down, laid in hay ten days to perspire, pressed in a hair bag, and warmed without boiling, with Malmsey, raisins, and cinnamon added. Orange wines use fifty oranges with sugar, egg whites, and Rhenish; orange and lemon wine, made with clayed sugar and Malaga raisins, loses its grosser flavour with age until it approaches bergamot and citron. Parsnip wine boils sliced roots with loaf sugar and stands a cask twelve months. The meads follow — white, red or metheglin, walnut, and honey wine, the last mixed with cider and strengthened until the liquor bears an egg. Cowslip red, white, and mead combine raisins, beet-root, flowers, and brandy; cider wines marry cider with honey and tartar; grape wines in red and white variants call on treacle, barberry leaves, elder-flowers, and sassafras.
The Cook’s Day and the Order of the Kitchen
The cook’s work begins before the fire is lit, since soups, sauces and made dishes are best prepared the day before or early in the morning. While these simmer, joints, cutlets, poultry and game are trimmed and trussed, vegetables picked, washed and laid out in dishes or cullenders, and shalots, onions, herbs and spices set within reach. Once the bill of fare is drawn up, the clock governs everything: each article goes to the fire in its turn so that all arrive together. The cook needs a cool head and a double attention—an eye to the roast and an ear to the boils—so that vegetables and sauces keep pace with their dishes and everything reaches the dining room smoking hot. A clean cloth is laid on the kitchen table and the dishes arranged exactly as they will stand upstairs, letting the footman carry them in regular order. After dinner the meat is removed into clean common dishes; fricandeaus and stews are taken from their gravies, regarnished and covered with thin slices of bacon; gravies from roast meats are saved separately in stone pans; leftover soups are strained through sieves lest the bread and vegetables turn them sour; blancmange and jellies are melted and run into smaller moulds. Potted meats, collared articles, anchovies, oysters, cold ham and tongue, stewed peas and tarts stand ready for suppers. Then the fire is reduced, the utensils scoured, the dressers and tables cleaned, and the day’s principal business is over—except for the larder in hot weather.
Hints for the Hearth
The cook earns no credit sending up more than one dish with its accompaniments at a time. Old meats need less dressing than young, since they may be eaten with gravy in them; pickled pork needs longer than any other meat; hashes and minces should only simmer, for boiling hardens them. Meat hastily cooked is indigestible and wastes its juices, and the warmer the weather and staler the meat, the less time it takes. Overdone meat is spoiled past correcting, while thorough cooking makes it short and tender; meat to be eaten cold must be well done, especially in summer. The best skill avails nothing without good provisions. Fish goes up as hot as possible, and essence of anchovies makes a fine sauce on its own. A hot bath is an excellent mode of cookery, and a Papin’s digester dresses a steak deliciously and boils water in minutes. To keep meat hot, set the dish over boiling water under a deep cover and a cloth. Wines and spices go into soups late, lest heat evaporate spirit and flavour; vermicelli stays no more than fifteen minutes or becomes paste; dripping bastes as well as butter. When the palate dulls from tasting, wash the mouth with milk or eat an apple; a bit of bread on the knife’s point keeps onions from stinging the eyes; a kettle of boiling water over charcoal purifies the room. Judicious cooks use less coal than those who think a great fire brings dispatch—time, not fierceness, suits roasting and boiling—and small coal wetted and thrown at the back of a good fire becomes coke and improves it.
The Lady’s Maid’s Receipts
The lady’s maid’s section turns to remedies and cosmetics. For toothache, a blister behind the ear or burning the ear’s lap with a cloth dipped in boiling water; to prevent it, teeth and gums are rubbed nightly with flowers of sulphur, or washed behind the ears with cold water each morning alongside Spanish snuff used as powder. Bad breath yields to muriatic acid in barley-water with lemon, or to a draught of magnesia, calumba and infusion of roses taken monthly. Palma Christi oil thickens hair; Macassar oil is compounded of common oil, spirit of wine, cinnamon and bergamot, coloured with alkanet and filtered through blotting paper, rancid oil being cured with onion slices. An oil of southernwood boiled in sweet oil and port wine, with bear’s grease added, promotes growth; a lye of burnt hemp root and vine root strengthens the hair. An infallible corn-plaster combines gum ammoniac, yellow wax and verdigris. Raw potato liquor cleans silks, cottons and woollens, its pulp worsted curtains and carpets; furs are kept from moths by a tallow candle, clothes by cedar shavings and camphor; a sealing-wax varnish revives old straw hats.
The Steward’s Books and the Survey of an Estate
A complete land steward, the book insists, must join theory to practice. Books let him profit from other men’s experience and learn faster than long practice alone can teach him. No steward or ordinary farmer should be without Young’s Farmer’s Calendar in its latest edition, improved by Middleton; Mr. Lawrence recommends Tull and Miller as the great originals on tillage, Ellis on sheep and live stock, and the Board of Agriculture’s surveys of the several counties. For live stock the best veterinary treatises are named, and Sir John Sinclair’s Code of Agriculture should stand beside Middleton’s Young. These, with Mackenzie’s Receipt Book, ought to be the standing furniture of every steward’s room.
He should never take on more business than he can faithfully execute, and so should have no other occupation; collecting rents and giving discharges is the least considerable part of his duty. On entering office he should survey every estate entrusted to him, form an inventory, and open clear books, entering a correct list of all writings, deeds, schedules and court-rolls. From that survey he should make regular memorandums of everything to be remarked or done — deficiencies, possible improvements, buildings and repairs, insurances, lease dates, rates, nuisances, trespasses, stock, game, timber, fencing, draining, roads, commons, rivers and sea coasts — never trusting such matters to loose papers or to memory.
Watching Servants, Tenants and Boundaries
He must learn the characters of inferior servants for himself, taking nothing on trust but observing their performances early and late with his own eyes. A faithful steward will promptly detect peculations and break up combinations among servants prejudicial to his principal’s estate, replacing them with servants of fair character at ample wages, and dealing out job work impartially so that all are equally benefited and satisfied.
Every farm should be correctly described in a map, with a copy for the tenant. A terrier should be kept of commonfield lands for tenant and lord alike, and dubious bounds fixed and marked out by a jury impannelled at the manor court. Parish boundaries should be ascertained, and the lord’s property kept entire by the annual custom of perambulation on Holy Thursday. The steward should ride round frequently and make eye surveys, to obviate disputes, prevent encroachments and give timely advice. He should see repairs done according to covenant, ditches cast and scoured, water courses kept free, common rights fairly enjoyed, commons not overstocked by one man to the prejudice of others, underwood cut at stated periods, trees properly lopped without damage to the lord, and poaching discouraged by fair and moderate means. Tenants should not suffer lands over-run by moles, nor commons and woodlands by swine unrung; nothing fit for manure should be carried off; neighbouring surveyors of highways should be watched lest a bridge or road be neglected; stray cattle and dogs should be prevented and punished. Ancient manorial rights are to be supported, though heriots from copyhold estates should be taken not in kind but as a moderate hue. Improvements in cultivation should be encouraged — the best heads of cattle introduced, successful modes of culture recommended among the tenantry, and tenants stimulated to plant fruit-trees, which add produce without encumbering the land.
The Steward’s Integrity and the Limits of His Power
His transactions, the book urges, should be pure, incorruptible and free from suspicion. He ought never to sell preference for money or indirect consideration; such a concession is robbery of the tenant or the employer, who is entitled to all the advantages of his estate. If money is covertly given for preference in a lease, the lease is worth so much more and the proprietor is defrauded of the difference. Nothing is more pernicious than these underhand dealings: modest industry and merit are subverted by the audacity of knaves, and the steward who has thus sold himself becomes dependent on the honour of the parties. Preference to kin ought likewise to be avoided; every gentleman is justified in being jealous of his steward’s kindred being brought onto his estate, often to the prejudice of old and attached tenants.
Many stewards become tyrants of their neighbourhood by impertinently interfering with the domestic economy of tenants — prescribing their dress, habits and amusements — seeming to consider them vassals instead of freemen, to whose industry the landlord owes his ease and luxury. With such affairs the steward has no concern; every farmer and family should be left to their own discretion so long as they pay the average rent and do not manifestly deteriorate the estate. In domestic and personal concerns, and in religious and political opinions, they are as independent of the steward as he is of them. Such interference has retarded the civilization of the agricultural classes, placing them a century or two behind town inhabitants in many districts.
The Law Between Master and Servant
The book closes not with narrative but with the apparatus of daily life, and it begins with the legal ground on which the household stands. A servant may lawfully leave a master who starves or ill-treats him, though a justice must sanction the departure. Should a warned servant turn insolent or refuse his duty, a magistrate may commit him to prison for the remainder of his term—yet the master must keep paying his wages while he sits there. A servant who strikes his master or mistress can be bound to good behaviour or jailed for up to a year at the discretion of two magistrates. No agreement made by a servant under twenty-one binds him. A married woman must serve out her time, and her husband cannot pull her from the master’s service; a pregnant woman hired in ignorance may be discharged with a magistrate’s consent, but a master who knowingly keeps her must maintain her through her delivery and a month beyond.
Church, Dice, and the Drunkard’s Shilling
Masters may compel attendance at church, and a servant absent a month without excuse costs his master ten shillings for each month. Gaming in a public house draws a fine of five to twenty shillings, a quarter to the informer, with hard labour for a month if unpaid. Drunkenness before one justice costs five shillings or six hours in the stocks; a second offence demands security. Cursing and swearing within eight days runs a shilling, then two, then three, or ten days’ hard labour.
The Master’s Shield and the Servant’s Fault
A master may sue for injury to his servant, for enticement, or for detention; he may recover for loss of service when another’s fault maims the man. He may defend his servant, even assist his action, and the servant may stand up in his master’s defence without punishment. The servant’s acts are generally the master’s acts: whatever trespass a servant commits by order or tacit consent, the master answers for, and he is liable for faults committed in lawful business. The servant remains criminally and civilly answerable himself; he is not liable for loss without wilful neglect, but fraud or gross negligence binds him. A servant who negligently fires a house pays a hundred pounds or serves eighteen months. Embezzlement is felony past eighteen; purloining goods worth forty shillings is transportation for fourteen years; stealing twelvepence from a room whose key was entrusted to him is felony too. Pawning the master’s goods forfeits forty shillings and the value, or three months in the House of Correction with a public whipping.
Wages, False Characters, and the Hackney Coach
Wage disputes under ten pounds a year go to a magistrate—except coachmen and grooms, who fall to the Commissioners of Hackney-Coaches. False characters carry a twenty-pound forfeit, half to the informer, half to the parish poor, plus ten shillings costs, or one to three months’ hard labour; an accomplice who informs is acquitted, and no action lies for a bad character unless it was both false and malicious. Then come the fares: a shilling for a mile up to fifteen for twelve, sixpence per half mile, sixpence for half an hour up to four shillings for four hours, with tables by measured distance and by place, and fares to the Opera House, Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and Vauxhall.
Titles, Abbreviations, and the Latin Tags
The final appendix is pure reference. A table of honorifics styles the Duke of Clarence “His Royal Highness,” ambassadors “Your Excellency,” judges “My Lord,” barristers “Esquire,” mayors “Right Worshipful.” Abbreviations follow—A.B., A.M., D.D., F.R.S., G.R., K.G., N.B., P.S., Viz., Xmas. Foreign phrases are glossed: aide-de-camp, billet doux, carte blanche, double entendre, douceur (“a bribe”), ennui, faux pas, ich dien (“I serve”), petit maître (“fop”), sang froid, tête-à-tête. Latin follows with pronunciation: ad infinitum, audi alteram partem, bona fide, de facto, felo de se, imprimatur, ipse dixit (“mere assertion”), memento mori, multum in parvo, ne plus ultra, pro bono publico, requiescat in pace, sine qua non, summum bonum. Roman numerals run from I to MM, with the rule that a lesser figure after a greater adds and before it subtracts. Commercial signs are decoded—L.S.D., Cwt., quarters, folio and octavo—and sample documents supplied: a receipt for a quarter’s wages, a promissory note for twenty-five pounds, a draft for seventy-five, to be accepted in writing.
Serving Well, and Knowing One’s Station
The moral core of the book sits in the long “Advice to Servants in General,” and it is sterner and more psychologically shrewd than the recipe pages around it. Servants should serve with goodwill and readiness of mind, “not with eye-service as a man-pleaser, but in simplicity of heart as a Christian,” and should cheerfully perform any lawful necessary service even if it was not agreed for when hired. Honesty comes first: whatever qualifications a servant possesses, if not scrupulously honest they will soon be detected, considered worthless, and dismissed, and no civility or diligence can recompense dishonesty. Waste and carelessness with household goods are a kind of robbery, and “WANT NOT WASTE NOT” should be painted over every kitchen fire-place.
The Adamses are acute on the small slippages that lead to ruin. Young persons, and female servants especially, think with horror of murder and prostitution but little reflect that idleness, self-will, love of dress, petty dishonesty, refusing reproof, wasting money, breaking the Sabbath, and rambling in idle company on Sabbath evenings may lead by no long or winding path to those atrocious crimes. A servant should never make friendships with milk people, butchers’ or bakers’ servants, chandlers, or charwomen, who mostly seek only their own interest; if a new and unexpectedly profitable proposal forces itself on her notice, she should not act on her own opinion but confidentially consult her mistress or some relation, lest she be ensnared to her utter undoing.
Running through this advice is a social vision the authors never question: the happiness of society arises from each keeping in their station and being contented with it. Yet the same pages contain a sharp critique of the distance that habit creates between mistress and maid. For want of confidence and esteem, there seem to be in most families two separate interests, that of employers and that of servants; some servants communicate none of their personal affairs to their mistresses, so the mistresses are never moved to take a special interest in their future welfare, and though such parties may live long together they are almost strangers. If servants expect confidence placed in them, the Adamses answer, they must be sincere in expressions and open and communicative in dealings. The book’s ideal household is one where the two interests have been talked into one.
The Household as a System
What distinguishes the manual from mere sermonizing is its insistence that domestic work is a coordinated operation with a clock at its centre. The cook must be cool, collected, and attentive, with “an eye to the roast meat, and an ear to the boils,” consulting the clock and laying articles to the fire in succession according to their cooking times so that every dish arrives upstairs smoking hot together. A clean cloth is laid on the kitchen table and the dishes placed exactly as they will stand in the dining-room, so the footman can carry them up in regular order. After dinner the meat is removed into clean common dishes, gravies saved separately in stone pans, leftover soups strained of bread and vegetable matter lest they turn sour, and sweets melted and run into smaller moulds.
The same systems-thinking governs money. The dedication offers heads of families a rule in round numbers for apportioning a large income: one-third for household expenses, one-fourth for servants and equipage, one-fourth for clothes, education, medicine, and private expenses, one-eighth for rent, taxes, and repairs, and a small reserve for contingencies. A few minutes daily keeping a regular account of monies received and spent, Dr. and Cr., will show the true state of affairs and operate against excess of expenditure. The authors quote Bacon—he who would live even with the world should calculate expenses at half his income, and he who would grow rich at one-third—and Lord Chesterfield on great fortunes seducing their possessors to ruinous profusion. Economy, not abundance, makes rich.
The book’s practical range is enormous, and its confidence in detail is total. Carving is treated as a useful and elegant accomplishment that heads of families cannot understand too well, with instructions for dismembering a surloin, a calf’s head, a haunch, and a saddle down to the eye and the palate. The still-room maid distils aromatic waters and makes pickles, preserves, pastry, and confectionary for eight to twelve guineas a year. The pickling section warns against colouring pickles in brass utensils and against boiling vinegar, which evaporates its strength; the wine section runs through cowslip, parsnip, raisin, ginger, and rhubarb wines, the last recommended as a warm cordial medicine for weak stomachs. The lady’s maid’s receipts cover toothache, bad breath, hair oil, and an infallible corn-plaster; the head nurse is told to bar windows, secure scalding water, fence ponds, and guard fireplaces with wire fenders. The governess section, contributed with the advice of a lady of high rank, prescribes the interrogative system, globes, a microscope, and Blair’s Governess’s Register, and warns that a governess who contents herself with mere personal attainments compromises her own character and sacrifices her pupils’ interests for life.
A Legacy of Service
The book closes as it began, with the servant’s own life. The chamber nurse ought to be past middle age, clean, free from drinking and snuff-taking, and above all free from superstition or belief in charms, omens, and dreams. The final pages turn to family medicines—the practical care of bodies that the earlier pages fed and clothed. What holds the whole together is the authors’ conviction that domestic service is a profession with a body of knowledge, a code of conduct, and a dignity of its own, and that the people best qualified to teach it are those who spent fifty years learning it. Their manual preserves, in minute and unsentimental detail, the working world of the early-nineteenth-century English household—its kitchens and still-rooms, its accounts and its hierarchies—and the voice of two servants who turned their accumulated notes into a last duty performed in this world.
