Free Private Life in Britain's Stately Homes by Michael Paterson Page B

nineteenth century’s opening years and, in keeping with the spirit of that time, a reaction against the formality of the previous century, became a British institution.
    Because the gentry and aristocracy were spending more time in the country, the entertainments in these houses became bigger and grander. There was a distinct revival, at the end of the eighteenth century, in the practice of hosting large dinners for the local tenantry, to celebrate the usual family, local or national events. These were more than mere gestures of goodwill or charity. They served to demonstrate concern for the poor and thus to emphasize – in an era dominated by the French Revolution – that the English aristocracy were closer to their people and more aware of their needs than the haughty members of France’s Ancien Régime . For the upper class, at the same time, the country house acted as a sort of extended club, to which anyone in polite society might, given an introduction, gain admission.
    Facilities also became better. Running water had been available in country houses since the seventeenth century. Before the middle of the eighteenth it was possible to have this on all floors thanks to efficient pumping. Baths and water closets were widely used. By the late eighteenth century there were small baths for individuals (as opposed to a large plunge bath) and efficient lavatories. Joseph Bramah’s water closet – if that can be taken as a general benchmark of comfort – was patented in 1778. They became ubiquitous in country houses after that date, though they were not, of course, installed for the servants’ use. The latter would probably have continued the immemorial custom, formerly practised by all classes, of simply going down the garden to do their business (‘going to pluck a rose’ was a phrase then equivalent to ‘powdering one’s nose’) – the results, of course, were useful as fertilizer. Lighting was, even by Jane Austen’s time, becoming a matter of oil lamps rather than candles, though these in turn began to be supplanted by gas within her lifetime. Steam heating arrived in the early nineteenth century and crude radiators were used, as at Stratfield Saye where the Duke of Wellington installed them in the 1830s.
    In spite of this, there was a curious reluctance to adopt all the technological advances that were now available. On the other side of Europe, William I of Prussia had been appalled when told that flush lavatories could now be installed in his palaces, and exclaimed: ‘We’re having none of that new-fangled nonsense around here!’ The King also refused to have his own bathtub. Once a week he borrowed one from the hotel across the road. Though his is an extreme example, it illustrates the suspicion of both new technology and physical comfort that was characteristic of a certain northern European mindset.
    The British in that era were intensely aware of their country’s power, wealth and greatness. They feared that this could be diminished through the moral softening caused by wallowing in luxury. This was one reason for the preoccupation of the upper class with vigorous sports such as hunting, stalking and shooting. Although they might be waited upon hand and foot, they would earn their ease through exertion and by acquiring sporting prowess. The country houses which they visited or in which they lived had, by the early decades of the nineteenth century, such advanced plumbing, heating and lighting that they were the wonder – and the envy – of aristocracies throughout Europe, enjoying a level of comfort that was at least a generation, if not half a century, away for many more modest English homes. Yet as Mark Girouard has written in his seminal Life in the English Country House : ‘In the next fifty years, advances in the available technology were not matched by equivalent advances in comfort. Luxury, to the Victorians, tended to be a suspect word.’ It is clear that, whereas our own definition of