I mean real, authenticated journals, not fiction, kept by people who were servants before the Great War.
Reason I ask, I’ve been watching the original Upstairs, Downstairs. Someone mentions that Mr Hudson, the butler, keeps a journal. Someone else says “You could publish it someday!” as if the idea is ridiculous. But I was :eek: for a second, thinking, “Imagine if he did. Imagine what it would be worth!”
And there might be such journals. I would imagine if there are any, the writers of Downton Abbey, Up/Down and so forth would probably refer to them a lot. Anyone know of any published non-fiction, like “This is the diary of Mary Smith, housemaid to the Richenfat family from 1851 to 1900”?
There’s The Lady’s Maid: My Life in Service. Not so much a journal or diary as a biography of a sort. It’s a retrospective written by a woman who was a maid to Nancy Astor. I’ve read it, and very much liked it.
There’s also Below Stairs, which is supposedly the book that inspired Upstairs, Downstairs. I haven’t read this one, but now I want to.
Not at all what you’re asking for, but a good perspective of working-class life in post-war England is Call the Midwife, both the book and the series. Very worth the read (or the watch, though I like the book better), even if the initial prospect doesn’t sound very interesting to you. It didn’t to me, but it’s a lot more about what life was like in 1957 London than it is about midwifing, and that worked for me.
"Hannah_Cullwick (1833–1909) was a Victorian era diarist and domestic servant. She is known for her unusual relationship with Arthur Munby, which they both documented in diaries, letters and photographs".
Reviews are mixed. I haven’t read it, but learned about it in The Perfect Summer: England 1911, Just Before the Storm, by Juliet Nicolson. Tom Stoppard used it for historical & social background while writing the script for Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End, shown on BBC last summer & coming to HBO Real Soon Now. I really enjoyed the book because it covers more than the upper classes (& their servants)-although you do see life inside those Unnecessarily Large Houses. The summer was unusually hot & sunny, which people enjoyed at first; then the deaths began. There was also serious labor unrest. (Maybe the dullards of Downton thought everything was just ducky before the Great War; it wasn’t.)
I learned a lot & it was an entertaining book. As I said, Amazon loves to offer more in that genre; the success of Downton Abbey has prompted the release (& re-release) of books explaining What Lord Fellowes Didn’t Know–or Preferred to Ignore.
Dinner Is Served is the memoirs of a man who spent his life in service, including to Winston Churchill. He was a reference for Gosford Park so his words certainly live on in the new Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey.
There are two television series called The Victorian Kitchen and The Victorian Kitchen Garden, made in the 80s, in which people who were formerly in service (a cook and a gardener) try to re-create the places they used to work. Like Arthur Inch’s book this is memoir and not journal, but still fascinating.
There is another I’m trying to dig up; a manual for butlers, written by a good one, and quite old. I’m afraid it might’ve been called Robert’s Rules of Service and my search results get swamped with Robert’s Rules of Order…
Not in Front of the Servants by Frank Dawes has a lot of interesting information. It’s not a journal, but has interviews and letters from people who were servants. It’s still readily available online.