HOUSEKEEPING IN 1700.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19947, 16 May 1928, Page 7

HOUSEKEEPING IN 1700.

HOW A BUDGET WORKED.

Nobody in his right mind would deliberately pick out a set of household expense books for a lazy Sunday afternoon's reading, but for a really sprightly afternoon let me recommend the hoitiiehold books of Lady Grisell Baillie, who flourished in the days of good Queen Anne, states a writer in an American exchange. Lady Grisell began keeping books when she was a young married woman in comparatively simple circumstances and kept right on through a long life and great prosperity. Even so, she could make a penny go pretty far, and for years she maintained a family of five, a dozen servants and two houses on something like £550 a year. The Servant Problem in 1715. People nowadays can talk about the good old days when the faithful family servant came as a child and stayed on to close the dying eyes of her mistress. There was nothing like that in the Baillie household. In her first three years of married life Lady Grisell had 18 servants. In the next 10 years she had 60. Sometimes they stayed out their month, but left without a "character." In 1715, which seems to have been a very bad year for cooks, she had 80. One of them remained only one night, because the constable came next morning to carry her off to gaol. When you read how brave Lady Grisell was and how charming everybody thought her, you begin to wonder about that constant procession of servants. Still, sh« did keep one or two about her through a decade or so, in spite of the heavy fines she could administer for breaking her precious china and for getting drunk. Liquor and Tea. That brings up another item of household expense. Lady Grisell spent onequarter of her household budget on wine and spirits, and this sum does not include beer. Claret, brandy and ale occupy a large part of the expenditure, bnt sometimes burgundy and champagne appear on the expenses. Another extravagance in these days was tea, which sold for 40s a pound. No wonder Lady Grisell had to be careful how she served "bohea" and no wondw she got on with green tea as much m she could, because it was cheaper. Most of the time she bought her tea in quarter and half-pound lots and not until "her dearest" became a Lord of the Admiralty and a great man in London did she begin to serve it more plentifully. "Her dearest," by the way, had a great respect for her and left everything, even his own allowance, to "goodwife" to settle. Once in a while ther9 is an entry "To my dear's poket, 2," and again "To my dearest's poket, 3." He was a most docile husband in a day when husbands were not always gentle. A Simple Holiday Dinner. Here is Lady Grisell's Christmas dinner in 1715, the year of the many cooks. There were 14 people present at this astonishing meal. The spelling, let nio add, really isn't very bad, after all. There were other perfectly nice ladies in Queen Anne's time who spelled far worse than this. ,

Plumb potage with sagoe and a few frute relief minsht pies fricascy chickens Bran plumb puden

2. a rost' goos cold toung Bran oyster lovers wild foull Desert Ratafia, cream butter and cheese sillibubs Jacolet walnuts and almonds stewd pears chestons Jellys butter and cheete Everything at a big dinner was served up in two courses. If you wanted soup, you got that with the plum pudding and the mince pies. Then about the middle of the course came the "relief," which merely meant that something else was brought in. Through page after page of this entertaining book you can see how much Lady Grisell expended on snuff; how much it cost to send "the bairns" to the opera once in a while, when opera in London was new and very, very smart; and how in every month's accounting there was always an expenditure of a few guineas for losses at cards. She made every penny go a long way, in spite of her spelling and in spite, too, of a very occasional mistake in addition.