Complete Servant Maid, The.
Rare
[Domestic]. Barker, Anne. The Complete Servant Maid: Or Young Woman’s Best Companion. Containing full, plain and easy directions for qualifying them for service in general, but more especially for the places of lady’s woman, housekeeper, chambermaid, nursery maid, housemaid, laundry maid, cook maid, kitchen, or scullery maid, dairy maid. To which are added, useful instruction for discharging the duties of each character, with reputation to themselves, and satisfaction to their employers. Including a variety of useful receipts (proper to be known by all young persons) particularly for cleaning household furniture, silks, laces, gold, silver, wearing apparel, &c. &c. London: Printed for J. Cooke, (n.d., but 1770).
Slim 8vo.; all edges stained red; light occasional foxing; endpapers lightly offset; rebound three-quarter marbled boards, darkened; brown morocco spine; red leather title label affixed to spine; stamped in gilt. In a specially made quarter-morocco slipcase.
First edition of this instructional by Barker; “Who having for many years discharged the office of housekeeper in the most respectable families, wishes to communicate her experience to those of her own sex, whose circumstances oblige them to live in servitude” (title page). OCLC locates no copies; and only one copy is known to be in institutional hands, at the British Library (ESTC and Maclean).
In ten chapters, separated according to specialization: “Necessary observations to be attended to by all female servants,” “Necessary qualifications and business of the lady’s woman,” “Directions for the housekeeper,” “Instructions to the chambermaid,” “Directions to the nursery maid,” “Directions to the housemaid,” “Instructions to the laundry maid,” “Directions to the cook maid,” “Instructions to the kitchen or scullery maid,” and “Directions to the dairy maid.”
Barker begins by listing qualifications that all female servants should have, including good temper (“possessed with a strong desire of pleasing, you will seldom fail of doing it,” [p. 5]), conscientiousness (“if you appear careless and indifferent whether you please or not, your services will lose great part of their merit,” [p. 6]), as well as cleanliness; avoiding gossip; diligence, tenderness, truthfulness, humility, a modest deportment, and above all, honesty.
In each successive chapter, she lists particular traits and expectations a female servant should have in her specific expertise; for instance, a “lady’s woman” should be able to produce fine pieces of needlework, and be well-read; a housekeeper should have good management skills over the rest of the household; a chambermaid must “attend properly to the care and management of her mistress’s clothes” (p. 17), and Barker provides hints and tips on how to clean various fabrics; housemaids must keep furniture clean, follow instructions from the housekeeper, and be industrious and cleanly, and Barker provides suggestions on how to clean various pieces of furniture; laundry maids must keep all of the linen clean; cookmaids should be very clean, and should know about all provisions and how to cook them, and how to be economical; scullery maids seem to have the worst lot of all servants:
let the young woman, therefore, who is obliged to submit to that drudgery be content with the station in which Providence has placed her, without repining, always remembering that humility is the road to preferment, and the more submissive she is in a low stations, the better will she be qualified for an elevated one. (44)
They were expected to take orders from the cook and to clean all of the dishes. Dairy maids were expected to know how to make butter and cheeses. Nursemaids had the most responsibility of all, the children of the house. Barker explains,
Never suffer them to go out of your sight, not trust them into any one’s hands except their parents. Never cross them with angry words, nor chide them severely when they do anythin
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