Was Pemberley well-staffed?

How many people lived in Pemberley, Downton or Chatsworth? 

When we read  novels of  life among the nobility or watch tv and film on a similar topic, we are rarely given details of life as a servant. The great houses were the major employers of the day right up until the Industrial Revolution. A  lord, and certainly a duke, would own several properties and each would have a resident staff. Mining, tree felling, forestry and a home farm would all be done within the estate by estate workers. In the 1820s entertainment was done on a grand scale, and since guests often brought their own staff,  it is difficult to pin down the exact number of staff in a house at any one time. 

One way of obtaining a reasonable estimate is by checking lists of salaries and other payments held in archives of houses like Dunham Massey. The old rule of payment once a year had changed to twice a year by 1820. Servants were either resident at one house all year or listed as "travelling" staff, in which case they moved from house to house with the family. 

A typical number of resident servants would be twenty-one, broken down as six women ie housekeeper, housemaid, two still-room maids, a kitchen maid and a dairy maid. Of the men, only four were indoor servants ie the house steward, the porter, the brewer and usher. Outdoor servants included the  land steward, head gardener, two gamekeepers and five out-gamekeepers, one groom and a stable-boy.

The travelling indoor servants were listed as the cook, the valet. the butler. two under butlers and three footmen, first housemaid, and two lower housemaids, four laundry maids and two ladies maids. Outside there would also be the coachman, under coachman, a postilion and two grooms.

Across the whole estate, the typical number of servants might number seventy-eight. When the obnoxious school teacher in Downton accuses Lord Grantham of not knowing his kitchen maid's name, she might actually have had a point!

A Downton Binge

Season of mists indeed.

Can't help myself. I've been on a Downton binge lately. Here in the UK we've been watching a re-run of the whole series. I caught up to the fact by the episode where Sybil and Tom confront the family and watched all of it from there on to the very end - which I hadnever seen first time around. Then a friend and I went to see the new film the week it came out. This morning I've decided to purchase the original script as there is no novel version.  I'm very much  curious about the Edwardian period, so much so that  it could feature as the setting for my next historical romance!

As for the film, I feel it was  done because the tv series was so popular. Nothing wrong in that, but there was little of the plot that structured each episode for tv. Every character was given consideration and a chance to play their part, so in that sense, it was good, but added little to their character arc.

Only Barrow had moved on, accepting what he was and making the best of it. It was good to hear Dowager Lady Grantham spouting her acerbic lines again, to see Mary and Edith being less bitchy with each other and Tom finally getting romantically interested again. Seeing how well he dresses it occurred to me that he must have inherited whatever money Sybil had, which gives him the independence he so badly needed. All in all, an enjoyable evening watching  characters doing what they do best.

Strictly, Lewis, Downton and Createspace

Soon I should be free of the Createspace thing that has dominated my life for the past fortnight. I have just submitted the third, or it might be the fourth attempt at a clean ms. Fingers crossed - I think this is almost it!
It will be a relief to get back to more normal pursuits for a while. Once Amazon has it up for sale I'll have to start the dreaded Promo work, but until then I can relax for a bit and enjoy other things. Such as Strictly Come Dancing, which was on last night. I think it is week five and I'm finding it is not so interesting as it used to be. There may be several reasons for this - one might be that I've had too much of a good thing and am simply bored. It might be that I do not recognise many of the so-called celebrities - that so overworked word these days. I don't want to watch girls - it is usually girls - who look as if they've just stepped out of ballet class. (Pixie Lot, anyone? Who is she?) I want to watch people like Steve Backshall who has a lot to learn and may be good, may be terrific, or maybe will have a disastrous night. The constant clapping, booing and hissing is turning Strictly into a juvenile arena and Tess has to take a lot of the blame for this. She is far too partisan these days - she's on the side of the contestants and appears to dislike the judges and their comments. Craig is the only one who gives an honest assessment. Darcey wants to be fair and encouraging, Bruno is usually fair
unless there is a very pretty girl or a handsome young man who takes his fancy and then he scores them high. Len usually sticks with his trademark seven unless he is in a grumpy mood, which he often is these days.

Lewis seemed a bit odd on Friday, though dh assures me it was me and not the programme. Watch it again, he advises, and you'll catch on. I prefer it in its two hour slots when I could settle down and really concentrate. Having one hour episodes a week apart means I forget all the clues in the previous segment, and then can't join in the detection. Thank goodness there's Downton to watch tonight, and double thank goodness it has found it way again after the first two episodes were fairly lacklustre. I think there will be a glass or two of wine to be had in chez Black this evening. Cheers!

Pictures taken on a walk on Friday. Good weather actually, though I photographed the worrying moments when we thought we were going to have to run for it!

Matho's progress

Final edit run through complete. One of the strange things I noted was my use of a certain phrase. I'm not going to say which phrase because then people will look for it and start counting when they read the book. Needless to say, I've removed some uses and changed others, so it should not be so noticeable now.

I'm so nervous about this that I keep hesitating about trying to load it on Createspace. What if I've missed something horrendous? Maybe I should do just one more run through, to be sure? We all know how correcting one phrase can shake two more loose somewhere in the manuscript and odd things keep happening as the computer tries to anticipate the word we want - and gets it wrong. But I could go on like this forever. So I've made the decision - I'm going to take the plunge very soon.

Autumn is creeping in and changing colours in the landscape. The days are still warm, up there in the 19s and 20s, but the nights are cold now. We've occasionally put the central heating on, and once or twice used the gas fire in the living room but on the whole we are fine. Our gas bill is going to be so much lower this year because we've used it so little.

All the good winter programmes are back on TV - Downton, Scott & Bailey, Strictly, Cilla. to mention but a few. Downton had better pick up its skirts and get going as the first two episodes have been a tad off the mark. Cora and her sickly sweet smile are flirting with Bricker the art critic, and Edith keeps visiting her love child and treating it rather like a doll. The child is going to get sick of that quite soon, I imagine. Cilla proved to be very good and Aneurin Barnard was a big surprise as Bobby Willis. He had played Richard III so woodenly in the White Queen that I despaired of him, but here he was all Liverpudlian and full on even if his dark roots kept showing.

Twitter and Downton

Sometimes I feel things are getting out of hand. I have 134 followers on Twitter, yet I see streams of posts from people I  don't know, and have no interest in. Consequently I whizz down the lists looking for the icon of those I do know and am interested in. If it goes on like this, using Twitter will soon be a complete waste of time.

Yahoo gets no better. I'm on two Facebook groups now, and think I'd do well to come off the yahoo groups altogether. I'm almost at the end of the most recent edit on To Capture a Queen and I've been thinking it is time to re-vamp the blog pages that display my books. Surely I could make them more interesting than they are? I suppose this is where being an ex-copywriter or a journalist pays dividends and ex-library managers fall by the wayside. I have been exploring new ways of promoting my books but have not found anything startling except hordes of people like myself! Everyone, but everyone is writing a book these days!

At home, I'm starting the Big Clean, as we expect guests from the other side of the world in a few days time. One of them dislikes dogs, ("I prefer my animals rare and on a plate") and the other is allergic to them, so there are going to be happy times ahead. No doubt Tim and I will be relegated to the proverbial doghouse, but hey! he lives here! So, the Hoover (or should I now say the Dyson?) is creeping out of the cupboard, the Dettol impregnated wipes are standing by waiting to be opened, and the lavender scented spray is on the bookcase in my study. This is where a house the size of Highclere Castle comes in handy, for it must contain rooms where no dog has ever got his nose over the threshold.

I mention Highclere because I understand the new series of Downton is about ready to roll across our TV screens. I wonder if it will be as gripping as the previous episodes? Actually, some of them were not gripping. I could have dispensed with the long-drawn out scenes of Bates in prison looking like no woman's romantic dream. Instead it would have been entertaining to watch Sybil getting to grips with life as the chauffeur's wife in Dublin. Lady Mary, of course, will be seeking another spouse, but now her blue-eyed husband is dead (darn - I've forgotten his name!) who will inherit Downton? The chauffeur's child, I suppose. so who he marries next is going to be of great interest to the Crawley family. The simplest thing would be if he marries Lady Mary! They're not related by blood, so.....is it possible?