The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House
This was one of the most prestigious jobs a 19th or early 20th-century woman could want – and also one of the toughest. The housekeeper of an English country house might manage a hundred servants and a domestic budget on a par with a small bank. She had no need of a home of her own – or, for that matter, a husband. But for all her importance, she has been invisible to history.
The Housekeepers’ Tale draws on entirely new sources to tell the extraordinary stories of the women who ran some of Britain’s most prominent households. There is an unwanted pregnancy, a forbidden love affair, a prison sentence and several cases of summary dismissal. Far from the cosy, complacent world of Mrs Hughes in Downton Abbey, real housekeepers worked surprisingly hard, often in humiliating circumstances, for very little financial reward. This was not, as it turns out, such a cushy job.
In researching The Housekeeper’s Tale, I was less interested in the minutiae and logistics of running a country house than in the human stories: the women entrusted with this weighty job. It was, in many ways, an isolating role. She was too senior to fraternise with her maids; too dignified to let her hair down. She was mocked both upstairs and downstairs for putting on the refined airs and graces of her employers. She was trusted with the family’s most intimate secrets; she handled huge sums of money – yet the housekeeper’s position was ambivalent, even supplicatory. She was entirely at the mercy of her mistress’s good humour.”
“A fluent study… Boase builds a deep, rich account of their individual lives, returning from the archive with some telling tales.”
Kathryn Hughes, Times Literary Supplement
“Boase makes history sing, packing her stories with details of family life and class distinctions and the minutiae of everyday living in a house with 10 or 30 or even 100 servants. A great read.”
Liz Braun, Toronto Sun
“The truth is more scandalous than film or fiction – this is one of those social history studies that makes the reader howl with rage.”
Roger Lewis, Daily Mail
