It is not often known, or, indeed, cared about, that the publishing phenomenon that was Isabella Beeton spawned many imitators, most of whom vanished from view in fairly short order.
Poking around in a fourth hand bookshop I chanced upon a book that looked just exactly the right thickness for propping up our wonky table leg. Having paid my hard earned 15p I was unsurprised to discover that the thickness was not entirely confined to the paper content. It will be my pleasure, for as long as you can stand it, to read you lovely little extracts, gems, well grit anyway, from this book that is so precious I cannot throw it away.*
Mrs Beetroot begins with some handy hints to do with the servants. One can only speculate how difficult it must have been in those far off days to be constantly surrounded by people with personal grievances and long wet mops.
Keeping an eye on the butler.
The butler can be characterised as the foremost of the servants, yet it should be recalled that his principle duty is to the wine cellar at all times. The butler stands between the householder and the purveyor of wines and spirits to the household and so prevents regular contact between mere merchants and persons of quality, such as the genteelly raised mistress of the house. However, this position affords him opportunities to appropriate monies and intoxicants to his own benefit so that the wary mistress of the house is advised to spend an entire day per calendar month in the close company of the butler, observing his behaviour.
It is notable that the presence of the mistress of the house may have an effect upon the dishonest butler to such an degree that he will amend his behaviour during the day upon which he is so accompanied; thus his employer may never discover the true extent of his culpability.
Therefore the mistress of the house is advised to provide herself with a number of dresses that disguise her presence and make her undetectable around the house. If available, spare wallpaper from the dining room should be made into an ankle length dress with, necessarily, a matching face mask, gloves and ringlet covers. Thus attired she may, by dint of standing still and not breathing much, fade into the background in the dining room and thus observe the butler attending to the Tantalus on the sideboard, replenishing the port decanters and topping up the brandy flasks upon the salver. When the butler has left the room she should remove the mask, to avoid ingesting wallpaper paste, and quickly but thoroughly sample all of the bottles that the butler has reprovisioned to satisfy herself that the contents are commensurate with the label and of adequate strength. Should she suspect watering or other practices to dilute the strength, she is advised to drink a full glass of the questionable bottle, bottles, or decanter, noting all attributes but keeping ready at all times her mask lest the butler return unexpectedly.
Work in the dining room completed, the mistress should repair to her room, changing, without the aid of a maid, into her pantry disguise. This is simply obtained by sewing wooden shelves to a plain white dress ( or indeed if the pantry has cream walls, a plain cream dress, and also in the case of householders who have been sufficiently ill advised to take advice from one of the new so-called ‘interior decorators’ a striped dress with matching cushions and a rug ) subsequently stacking them with jugs of milk. Readied for her work the mistress should slip into the pantry and stand quietly behind the door observing, when the butler enters, what he is doing. As the duties of a butler in his own domain are to supervise the wine standing in the wood, draw it off and bottle for the household, this may take some time. Indeed the butler is not likely to leave until he has located and washed any emptied bottles about the pantry and dried them, subsequently storing them for further use. As soon as he has departed the mistress may move, as much as her shelves permit, tasting a mere sampling from each bottle recently filled, no more than a glass or two of each. Having satisfied herself that all is well the mistress repairs to her room again, here to change into her floorboard dress for the penultimate butler supervision duties of the day.
When bedtime arrives at last, how glad she will be to remove herself unobserved from the parlour floor, replace the drained decanters on the what not and take herself upstairs where it may only be necessary to lie under the carpet until the butler has replenished the night stand flasks and so to bed; unless of course, the night stand flasks are particularly numerous, in which case she may prefer to remain quietly resting under the carpet until daybreak.
* I cannot throw it away because it is propping up the table leg; I’ve had to type all of this with one hand – the other is preventing the dinner from sliding onto the carpet.
More from Mrs Beetroot next week.
JaneLaverick.com – purveyor of mangled history to the gentry.
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