HOUSEKEEPING IN DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18500, 22 February 1930, Page 11 (Supplement)

HOUSEKEEPING IN DAYS OF QUEEN ANNE.

TEA AT FORTY SKILLINGS A POUND. Lady Grisell Baillie, who flourished in the days of good Queen Anne, began keeping books when she was a young married woman in comparatively simple circumstances, and kept 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.

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 eye of her mistress. There was nothing like that in the Baillie household. In her first three years of * married life Lady Grisell had eighteen servants. In the next ten years she had sixty. 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 eighty. One of them remained only ope 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 she 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. That brings up another item of household expense. Lady Grisell spent one-quarter 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, but sometimes burgundy and champagne appear on the expenses.

Another extravagance in those days was tea, which sold for 40/- a pound. No wonder Lady Grisell had to be careful how she served “bohea” and no wonder she got on with green tea as much as 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.