High Life Below Stairs
High Life Below Stairs
1774
James Bretherton (printmaker; 1770-1781), after Thomas Orde (1746-1807)
Etching and drypoint, hand-colored, on laid paper
26.7 x 29 cm
James Townley’s farce High Life Below Stairs was first performed on the London stage in 1759. Famous on both sides of the Atlantic, it provoked outrage among servants for caricaturing their manners. The play’s protagonist is a white Jamaican landowner, Lovel. Believing that his servants are cheating him, he infiltrates their quarters. Here we see the cook between a white coachman and servant named Kingston, both drunk on their master’s wine. Although Kingston occupies a lowly position in the servant hierarchy, he too refuses to answer Lovel’s knock at the door. Kingston is referred to by the cook and coachman as “Sambo” and “Blackee,” both names frequently applied to black servants (the
latter epithet became especially common after the appearance of Townley’s play). Kingston was played by white actors in blackface.
Thomas Orde was the son of John and Anne Orde, sitters in a painting also included in this exhibition. He sketched this caricature while taking part in a private production of the play. It was common for amateur artists to circulate etchings like this among friends. The similarity of the servants’ livery to that in Devis’s painting suggests that, if Orde colored the print, he may have been thinking of his own household.
Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, Bunbury 774.02.23.01.1+
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