Need Help With Some Fashion/Etiquette Questions (Circa 1700s)

I've worked a lot with the French court in that period, so I may be able to help you out with specific questions.

You can't get a better primary source for that subject than the Memoirs of the Duc de St Simon, who was very gossipy and opinionated about his fellow courtiers. There have been several English abridgements/extracts published, take your pick.

Also a good, very biased source are the letters of the Princess Palatine, "Liselotte," who was Louis XIV's German sister-in-law (Duchess of Orleans). Again, there have been a few English translations/selections printed over the years.

A couple key areas of etiquette at Versailles involved who was allowed to sit on what in whose presence,who could keep their hat on under what circumstances, and what order you entered a room. (One of the reasons playing cards was so popular, even though ruinously hazardous, was because the only time the typical courtier was allowed to suit down in the presence of anybody was while actually playing cards. Watching a game didn't count.)

More tidbits: it was considered impolite at Versailles to knock on a door. A well-bred person scratched it.

And Versailles was open to the public -- any person who wasn't obviously dressed in rags was allowed to wander about nearly anywhere except the king's private suite. The only rule was that if you were a man, you had to have a sword on. If you showed up at the gate and you didn't have a sword, enterprising vendors on the spot would be willing to rent you one for a modest fee. More enterprising entrepreneurs (the men wearing swords) carried on a brisk trade selling refreshments, clothes, souvenirs, etc. to the crowd of tourists, courtiers & tradespeople. One of the purposes of court etiquette, therefore, was to provide a way for Those Who Belonged to court circles to recognize each other & distinguish themselves by behavior from the much larger group of those who were there but Not One Of Us.

Master/servant relations were pretty variable, but tended to be not nearly as formal/rigid as you see in the 19c. A lot depends, obviously, on the size & nature of the household & the kind of work the servants would be doing, as well as the personalities.

The best book on the subject I know is Domestic Enemies by Cissie Fairchilds (Johns Hopkins Press, 1984).

A couple more semi-random general points on the topic:

-- Everybody had servants, unless you were practically destitute yourself. Most household had a single servant, who was usually a woman (the maid of all work - literally). This includes households consisting of a single person, as well as households of families.

-- Servants who slept in the house (not universal) slept on the floor, generally in the room where they did most of their work - for the householder's personal attendant(s) this meant, yes, they slept in the bedroom. It was considered proper for servants to be provided with bedding of some kind (e.g. a straw pallet that could be moved out of the way during the day).

-- Women servants were frequently seduced or raped by men in the household (sometimes the master, often the master's grown sons, sometimes by other servants). If they got pregnant or a scandal of any kind occurred, they'd be out of a job. If not, it might continue for years. Same thing for male servants, except less frequently, and they never got pregnant themselves. (But there could be scandal, oh yes indeed. The Princess de Condé was locked up for life after a somewhat murky incident involving a former page, who ran for his life but didn't get far, and slightly higher-status youth in the household who had to flee the country and make his fortune abroad.)

The wealthier & grander the household, the more important it was to have lots and lots of servants (generic term: valet or lackey, the English version is usually footman or groom) who basically were hired to stand around and do nothing all day. Conspicuously do nothing, that is, somewhere people could see them doing nothing while wearing the household livery (typically denoted by a bunch of ribbons on the shoulder). In principle their job was to stand ready to run errands when needed, but really their job was to stand around and demonstrate that the household was rich enough to be able to afford to keep a dozen or more able-bodied young men hanging around doing nothing. Same for the pages hanging around an elegant lady -- they were handy to run errands & such, but were mainly prized for being pretty & mostly pointless impedimenta. Idle lackeys were notoriously insolent and quarrelsome - they tended to consider themselves superior to everybody who wasn't part of their own household, and they had lots of time and cash to get drunk and rowdy in the streets.

"Upstairs" and "downstairs" were therefore not really much separated in the 17-18c. If you needed a servant for something, you shouted. If you wanted to have some private time (solo or in company) without servants watching or listening. well... you were probably out of luck unless you paid them to leave you alone for a while. (If you were in the habit of wanting private time, you probably made a standing arrangement with your servants so they would know when you really didn't want to be disturbed.)

Another point I nearly missed - larger households often also included members who were technically servants, but of a more elevated level. The maitre d'hotel/steward/butler who was in charge of the whole inside & outside staff would fall into this category. So would the various secretaries, clerks, librarians, tutors, doctors, chaplains, accountants, etc. who worked for the family -- some of these might be persons of considerable professional repute in their own right.

The most important households might also have a military component - a household troop to protect the house & its occupants, provide armed escort in traveling, intimidate the hoi polloi, that sort of thing. By the late 17c this was extremely frowned upon, though, for anyone less than a Prince of the Blood.

I have a list of the official household of the Prince de Condé that lists the 184 people who were actively in service on the day of his death in 1709 (the higher status by name, the others just enumerated by role), & several similar lists drawn up at earlier dates going back to 1644 - I would be happy to share them, if there is a way.

What's brutal about morganatic marriage? I thought it was mostly about regulating inheritance (property & titles) - not worse than any other sort of marriage as long as you knew what was involved going in AFAIK.

(But my knowledge is limited on the subject. Morganatic marriage seems to have been mainly a German thing, which is not my area. What Louis XIV did with Mme de Maintenon is often called "morganatic", but that's not actually a thing in French law, or in English either for that matter.)

You got a lot of info on Versailles - however, I would say that etiquette differs from one country to another and very much between different groups. Are we talking court nobility, rural gentry, merchant barons, wealthy farmers? England, France, Denmark, Hungary?

Anyway, in case Versailles is sorta what you want, I wrote a pretty extensive post on who could sit on what in the presence of whom on my history blog, which also touches on the etiquette of the English court: http://theragsoftime.blogspot.se/2011/11/to-sit-or-not-to-sit-etiquette-at-court.html I list some of my sources too in case you're interested in reading more.

There's also a very good book called The Stuart Courts edited by Evelyn Cruickshanks, if your interest is in the English court. It talks a lot about the day to day life at the English courts during the 17th century and tells you stuff like where people slept, eating arrangements etc. Even better is a book I can't remember the name of now, about the exiled Stuart court at St-Germain (under James II and James III) because it lists exactly what different courtiers (and to some degree, servants) there were and what their respective tasks were and even has maps of the rooms with info of who slept where and how food was transported from the kitchens etc. Even if that's specific to St-Germain, it gives a very vivid picture on how life functioned in a royal household.

My next book is set from 1719-1726, so I'm happy to see the resources people are listing--anything helps.

To add to the original question--hopefully without derailing--does anyone have resource suggestions specifically for the Austrian part of the Habsburg Empire? So much is in German, which I can't read, and beyond a few court biographies, I'm really having to dig for material. I can find quite a lot on French customs and fashion, some German, but little to nothing on Austria--and even less on the lives of middle class burghers and merchants.

Contributing my own bit to this thread: this link is from Questia, a free e-book, with quite a few details about eighteenth century travel.

The Grand Tour in the Eighteenth Century

1. Ask the research librarian at your local library for help.

2. Look at the bibliographies in any remotely applicable books you can find. See if you can borrow these books through interlibrary loans or, if they are old enough, online.

3. Check the resources available at any university libraries in your area. The catalogues are almost certainly available online. The books are generally available through interlibrary loans.

4. There is plenty of material available, both primary and secondary sources, through all of these sources.

A costume website I like (it has a nice glossary page, among other things) is:
Nicole Kipar's Late 17th Century Clothing History.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Hmm. He's just after your dates and a little aristocratic, but try Anton von Maron, Austrian painter.

Click to expand...

Mm, love the paintings. He really didn't flatter, did he? Quite a bit of realism for an eighteenth century painter of the nobility.

Thanks!

Just wanted to add some English resources: For England, a great book on life in general around 1700 is Maureen Waller's 1700: Scenes from London Life. For late, 1600s, there's always Samuel Pepys wonderful diaries that give you a close look on everyday life. For court life in the 1720s-30s, Lucy Worsley's Courtiers is a really good read.

For the 18th century in general, I recommend Amanda Vickery's books; both The Gentleman's Daughter (about rural gentry) and Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England. Also Horace Walpole's letters and memoirs - a fun (and free since they're free online) way of peeking inside a Georgian head (the first part of his memoirs contain quite a lot of court stuff, but they're really nothing but malicious gossiping andf hence very entertaining).

If someone wants a closer look on relationships between master and servants, fiction from the period gives some snaphots - there's always the classics, like Moll Flanders, Tom Jones etc, which are free on Gutenberg.

But Austria... Hm... I'm going to have to ponder that a bit. I think there's a great risk most of it is only in German, but I'll look around to see if I can find anything in the books I have (you know I absolutely adore the first decades of the 18th century, especially the War of the Spanish Succession - I read Mérode-Westerloo's memoirs about that, but I think he's the only Austrian I've come across re 18th century).

I recently read an excellent book about the generals of the 17-18c Hapsburg empire, which includes some good details about their social background (from a prosopographic perspective, not biographical), education, skills & interests, etc.

Erik Lund, War for the Every Day: Generals, Knowledge, and Warfare in Early Modern Europe, 1680-1740

A fascinating book, and I highly recommend it if you have any interest on the military side, but that said, it is a rather specialized focus and only touches on purely social matters incidentally.

Thank you both! A lot of material is in German--there seems to be a dearth of interest in translating source materials on the Austria of the period. Even the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana lacks a ready English translation--though provisions of it, mostly the ones on torture, are referenced in different sources. I'm chipping away slowly, but it's piecemeal. Information on reforms, on law, on war and finance, some on serfdom and the rights of landowners, but daily life for Joe Common is so far the most elusive. Nor have I found any comprehensive resource on pre-Theresian Austrian law--still digging, because I can't believe someone hasn't done it somewhere.

I'd hate to do it, but this is one book I could see needing to pay a German-language researcher to assist with.

It's odd, because European countries aren't usually anything like this much trouble to research. Austria seems to be a bit of a black hole, at least for English speakers with no background in German.