Wipe the floor

MRS BEETON, in the opening sentence of her influential “Book of Household Management”, declared: “As with the Commander of an Army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with the mistress of a house.” What sort of establishment was it that resided in the solid, brick Victorian houses that still characterise so many British neighbourhoods? Six million such houses were built over 75 years, reflecting both the prosperity and the separation of work from home that arose in the burgeoning industrial age. New businesses and better transport meant that a man was more likely to work some distance away from home, leaving his wife to hold the domestic front.

Judith Flanders's examination of the Victorian house, room by room, reveals very clearly the society within: stratified, status-conscious, with its own rigorous codes and practices. Each room—the bedroom, nursery, kitchen, scullery and so on—is accorded a chapter. Drawing on contemporary diaries, novels and books of practical advice, she describes the furniture, decoration and accoutrements appropriate to each room, all of which lead on to an analysis of the behaviour and customs of the time.

The dining room gives rise to a discussion of ways of serving food, meal times (which changed with better lighting) and cooking (large carrots should be boiled for up to two hours, Mrs Beeton recommended). The sickroom not only allows for a survey of common diseases and their treatment, but also for a description of that monstrosity, Victorian mourning. A widow was expected to wear black for two years; after that she could look for something a little less sombre in the Mitigated Affliction department of one of the new stores. Pages on laundry (exceptionally labour intensive) are fascinating. So is drainage. Ms Flanders admits that she is more interested in S-bends than in sex.

Victorian house-dwellers all aspired to servants. The census of 1871 showed that Britain had 1.9m servants, of whom 93,000 were cooks and 75,000 nursemaids. A workhouse child would be paid £5 a year. Conditions were hard—heavy manual labour, little or no time off—and the duties clearly delineated, whether for blacking the grate or whiting the doorstep.

Ms Flanders is as acute on the social niceties and solecisms—the etiquette of leaving visiting cards was full of pitfalls—as she is on the position of the woman of the house. The wife's mission, apart from monitoring the servants, making useless beaded objects and keeping up social standards, was to ensure that her husband was untroubled by domestic matters. A little bit of knowledge, in order to keep abreast of men's conversation, was desirable, but to impart it was not. The heroine of one popular novel is “gradually brought to understand that the pinnacle of womanhood is the renunciation of the use of her intelligence”. “I have spoken with becoming infrequency, and chiefly about the Zoo. I find the Zoo is a subject which is almost certain to be received with approval,” wrote one American lady.

Rich and well-ordered, this study casts brilliant light on the world of Pooter and his predecessors. Curious facts tumble from the pages—that the aspidistra owed its popularity, for example, to its ability to withstand the fumes from gas lighting. Or that the clothes of a woman of fashion might weigh as much as 37lb. Or that before the creation of the mackintosh she was unable to go out in wet weather because umbrellas didn't cover her voluminous garb. Coat hangers were not invented until 1900, but flush loos were seen at the Great Exhibition of 1851. There were 178 toll gates around London which charged vehicles to enter the city: a taste of things to come.

There is, however, one striking omission, and that is men. This book, like the house, is a woman's domain.