Maidservants

Ladies expected their female domestics should be clean and tidily dressed in muslin (not lace) caps, cotton and stuff gowns and petticoats, sturdy shawls of demure colours, and straw bonnets when going outdoors. In Persuasion, Mrs Musgrove complained that her daughter-in-law Mary’s ‘nursery-maid... is always upon the gad, and...she is such a fine-dressing lady, that she is enough to ruin any servants she comes near.’

And in Mansfield Park, Mrs Price was discomposed if she saw her servant Rebecca 'pass by with a flower in her hat' when out walking on Sundays.

A good master or mistress ensured that their servants received good, plain, plentiful food, and paid their medical expenses if ill. Servants were permitted to visit their friends and relations occasionally; Sunday was usually the most convenient day.
Ladies took great care to select servants with good references, and if possible hired those recommended by friends or family. A careless or slovenly maid could cause havoc in a household.

In January 1802, Jane Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra, 'We plan having a steady cook and a young, giddy housemaid, with a sedate, middle-aged man, who is to undertake the double office of husband to the former and sweetheart to the latter. No children, of course, to be allowed on either side'.
Illustrations: 'High life below stairs'. George Cruikshank, 1799.
‘Work for the plumber’. Thomas Rowlandson, 1810.  Both courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Hugh Thomson illustration for Mansfield Park. Author's collection.  

Dinner Time!

Dinner in the 1780s.

In Jane Austen’s day, dinner was a moveable feast, depending on whether you kept fashionable hours; country hours where normally earlier than in London. The haut ton did not dine until at least five or six o’clock, or even later. When Lady Newdigate (Hester Mundy) stayed at Stansted Park in 1795, she commented that: ‘The hours of ye family are what ye polite world w’d not conform to viz. Breakfast at 8½, dine at 3½, supper at 9 and go to bed at 10, but Everybody is at Liberty to order their own Breakfast, Dinner or Supper into their own Rooms and no questions ask’d.’

The Austen family dined at half-past three when living at Steventon Rectory in the 1790s. However, over Jane’s lifetime, their dinner hour changed. While staying with the Bridges family at Goodnestone in 1805, Jane mentions dining at four o'clock, so that they could go walking afterwards. Three years later, when the Austen ladies lived in Southampton, Jane noted in a letter, ‘We never dine now till five.’ During a visit to her brother Henry’s new residence in Henrietta St, London, Jane wrote to Cassandra (15 September 1813) that soon after five o’clock, shortly after her arrival, the family sat down to ‘a most comfortable dinner of soup, fish, bouilée, partridges, and an apple tart.’

Dessert time at the Ashmolean.

Following dinner, tea and cakes were normally served around seven, and the day ended with a light supper and wine (unless one had dined fashionably late). As the dinner hour got later and later, some people had a snack, perhaps some cold meat, in the early afternoon to fill the gap. By 1817 Sir Richard Phillips noted in his Morning’s Walk from London to Kew that the dinner hour of the polite world had ‘shifted to the unhealthy hours of eight or nine’ at night. 

Image © Sue Wilkes: A table set for dessert in the 1770s at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

A Visit to Whitchurch

Whitchurch Town Hall

Jane Austen's birthplace of Steventon was a small village, so she often went shopping for necessities in nearby towns and villages like Alton, Basingstoke and Whitchurch. In a letter to Cassandra (November 1800) she wrote: 'Martha [Lloyd] has promised to return with me [after Jane's visit to her], and our plan is to have a nice black frost for walking to Whitchurch and there throw ourselves into a postchaise, one upon the other, our heads hanging out at one door, and our feet at the opposite'. 
If you explore Whitchurch today, you can still see

White Hart, Whitchurch

some of the buildings which would have been familiar to Jane, such as the Town Hall, built in the late 18th century, and the White Hart Hotel, which reputedly dates back to the mid-15th century.  

The fashion magazines of Austen's day like La Belle Assemblee and the Lady's Monthly Museum often mention silk gowns and cloaks.  

Whitchurch Silk Mill

Whitchurch Silk Mill was built after Jane Austen moved away from Steventon in early 1801. It was probably constructed about 1813, although it's possible that there was an earlier mill building on the same site. There was also a silk mill at nearby Overton, another place mentioned in Austen's letters.

Whitchurch Silk Mill is still a working factory, and it has produced silk for film adaptations of Austen's novels including Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility. 

Brightly coloured silks wound on swifts at Whitchurch Silk Mill.

Photos © Sue Wilkes.