Perversions of the 18th century. Shocking facts about the life and hygiene of European women in the 18th-19th centuries

The life of provincial noblewomen, which took place far from major cities, had many points of contact with the life of peasants and retained a number of traditional features, because it was family-oriented and caring for children.

If the day was supposed to be an ordinary weekday and there were no guests in the house, then the morning food was served simple. Breakfast included hot milk, currant leaf tea, “cream porridge,” “coffee, tea, eggs, bread and butter, and honey.” The children ate “an hour or two before the elders’ lunch,” and “one of the nannies was present at the meal.”

After breakfast, the children sat down to their homework, and for the mistress of the estate, all morning and afternoon hours were spent in endless household chores. There were especially many of them when the mistress did not have a husband or assistant in the person of her son and was forced to dominate herself.

Families in which from early morning “the mother was busy with work - farming, estate affairs ... and the father with service” were in Russia in the 18th - early 19th centuries. plenty. Private correspondence speaks about this. The housewife was seen as an assistant who had to “manage the house autocratically or, better yet, without permission” (G.S. Vinsky). “Everyone knew his job and did it diligently,” if the housewife was diligent. The number of servants under the control of the landowner was sometimes very large. According to foreigners, there were from 400 to 800 servants in a rich landowner's estate. “Now I myself can’t believe where to keep so many people, but then it was customary,” E. P. Yankova was surprised, remembering her childhood, which came at the turn of the 18th–19th centuries.

The life of a noblewoman on her estate was monotonous and leisurely. Morning chores (in the summer - in the “fruitful garden”, in the field, at other times of the year - around the house) were completed by a relatively early lunch, then followed by an afternoon nap - a daily routine unthinkable for a city woman! In the summer, on hot days, “at about five in the afternoon” (after sleep) they went for a swim, and in the evening, after dinner (which “was even more hearty, since it was not so hot”), they “cooled off” on the porch, “letting the children go to rest.” .
The main thing that diversified this monotony was the “celebrations and amusements” that took place during the frequent visits of guests.

In addition to conversations, games, primarily card games, were a form of joint leisure time for provincial landowners. The mistresses of the estates - like the old countess in The Queen of Spades - loved this activity.

Provincial ladies and their daughters, who eventually moved to the city and became residents of the capital, assessed their life in the estate as “rather vulgar,” but while they lived there, it did not seem so to them. What was unacceptable and reprehensible in the city, in the village seemed possible and decent: rural landowners could “stay in their dressing gowns all day long,” did not have fashionable, intricate hairstyles, “had dinner at 8 o’clock in the evening,” when many townspeople “had time to have lunch,” etc.

If the lifestyle of provincial young ladies and landowners was not too constrained by etiquette norms and assumed freedom of individual whims, then the everyday life of the capital's noblewomen was predetermined by generally accepted norms. Socialite ladies who lived in the 18th - early 19th centuries. in the capital or in a large Russian city, they led a life that was only partly similar to the lifestyle of women living on estates, and certainly not similar to the life of a peasant.

The day of a city woman of the privileged class began somewhat, and sometimes much later, than that of provincial landowners. St. Petersburg (the capital!) demanded greater compliance with etiquette and time rules and daily routine; in Moscow, as V.N. Golovina noted, comparing life there with the capital, “the lifestyle (was) simple and unashamed, without the slightest etiquette” and should, in her opinion, “please everyone”: the life of the city itself began “ at 9 o’clock in the evening,” when all “the houses were open,” and “the morning and afternoon could (were) spent as you wish.”

Most noblewomen in the cities spent their mornings and afternoons “in public,” exchanging news about friends and acquaintances. Therefore, unlike rural landowners, city women started with makeup: “In the morning we blushed slightly so that the face would not be too red...” After the morning toilet and quite light breakfast(for example, “from fruit, curdled milk and excellent mocha coffee”), it was time to think about the outfit: even on an ordinary day, a noblewoman in the city could not afford carelessness in clothes, shoes “without heels” (until the fashion for empire-style simplicity and slippers instead of shoes), lack of hairstyle. M. M. Shcherbatov mentioned with mockery that other “young women,” having had their hair done for some long-awaited holiday, “were forced to sit and sleep until the day of departure, so as not to spoil their hair.” And although, according to the Englishwoman Lady Rondeau, Russian men of that time looked at “women only as funny and pretty toys that could entertain,” women themselves often subtly understood the possibilities and limits of their own power over men associated with a well-chosen costume or jewelry.

Aristocrats were specially taught from a young age the ability to “fit” themselves into the situation, to conduct a conversation on equal terms with any person from a member of the imperial family to a commoner (“Her conversation can please both the princess and the merchant’s wife, and each of them will be satisfied with the conversation”). We had to communicate daily and a lot. When assessing female character and “virtues,” it was no coincidence that many memoirists emphasized the ability of the women they described to be pleasant interlocutors. Conversations were the main means of exchanging information for city women and filled up most of the day for many.

Unlike the provincial-rural one, the urban way of life required adherence to etiquette rules (sometimes to the point of primness) - and at the same time, by contrast, it allowed for originality and individuality female characters and behavior, the possibility of a woman’s self-realization not only in the family circle and not only in the role of wife or mother, but also as a maid of honor, a courtier or even a lady of state.

Most women who dreamed of looking like “socialites”, “having titles, wealth, nobility, clung to the court, subjecting themselves to humiliation”, just to “achieve a condescending glance” powerful of the world this - and in this they saw not only the “reason” for attending public spectacles and celebrations, but also their life goal. The mothers of young girls, who understood the role that well-chosen lovers from among the aristocrats close to the court could play in the fate of their daughters, did not hesitate to enter into unburdensome intimate relationships themselves, and “throw” their daughters “into the arms” of those who were in favor. In the rural provinces, such a model of behavior for a noblewoman was unthinkable, but in the city, especially the capital, all this became the norm.

But it was not such purely feminine “gatherings” that made the weather in social life capitals Townswomen of the merchant and bourgeois classes tried to imitate the aristocrats, but the general level of education and spiritual needs was lower among them. Rich merchants considered it a blessing to marry their daughter to a “noble” or to become related to a noble family, but meeting a noblewoman among merchants was common in the 18th and early 19th centuries. the same rarity as a merchant's wife in the noble.

The entire merchant family, unlike the noble family, got up at dawn - “very early, at 4 o’clock, in winter at 6.” After tea and a fairly hearty breakfast (in merchants and, more broadly, urban environments, it became customary to “eat tea” for breakfast and generally drink tea for a long time), the owner of the family and the adult sons who helped him went to bargaining; Among small traders, the wife often worked together with the head of the family in the shop or at the bazaar. Many merchants saw in their wife “an intelligent friend, whose advice is valuable, whose advice must be asked and whose advice is often followed.” The main daily responsibility of women from merchant and bourgeois families was household chores. If the family had the means to hire servants, then the most difficult types of daily work were performed by visiting or live-in maids. “The Chelyadins, as everywhere else, were livestock; those close to me... had the best attire and contents, others... - only what was needed, and then thriftily.” Wealthy merchants could afford to maintain a whole staff of domestic helpers, and in the mornings the housekeeper and maids, nannies and janitors, girls taken into the house for sewing, mending, mending and cleaning, laundresses and cooks, over whom the housewives “reigned”, received orders from the mistress of the house. , managing each with equal vigilance.”

The bourgeois women and merchant women themselves were, as a rule, burdened with a lot of everyday responsibilities for organizing life at home (and every fifth family in the average Russian city was headed by a widowed mother). Meanwhile, their daughters led an idle lifestyle (“like spoiled young children”). It was characterized by monotony and boredom, especially in provincial cities. Rarely among merchant daughters was well-educated in reading and writing and was interested in literature (“...science was a monster,” N. Vishnyakov sneered, talking about the youth of his parents at the beginning of the 19th century), unless marriage introduced her into the circle of the educated nobility.

The most common type of women's leisure in bourgeois and merchant families was needlework. Most often they embroidered, wove lace, crocheted and knitted. The nature of needlework and its practical significance were determined by the material capabilities of the family: girls from the poor and middle merchant classes prepared their own dowry; For the rich, handicrafts were more of a form of entertainment. They combined work with a conversation, for which they met specifically: in the summer near the house, in the garden (at the dacha), in the winter - in the living room, and for those who did not have it - in the kitchen. The main topics of conversation among merchant daughters and their mothers were not the latest in literature and art (like among noblewomen), but everyday news - the merits of certain suitors, dowries, fashion, events in the city. The older generation, including mothers of families, amused themselves by playing cards and lotto. Singing and playing music were less popular among the bourgeois and merchant families: they were practiced for show in order to emphasize their “nobility,” and sometimes performances were even staged in the houses of the provincial bourgeoisie.

One of the most popular forms entertainment in the third estate was visiting. The families of “very wealthy” merchants “lived widely and received a lot.” The joint feast of men and women, which appeared during the times of Peter the Great's assemblies, by the end of the century, from the exception (previously, women were present only at wedding feasts) became the norm.

There were more similarities than differences between the everyday life of the middle and small merchants and peasants.

For the majority of peasant women - as numerous studies of Russian peasant life, conducted for almost two centuries, have shown - home and family were the fundamental concepts of their existence, “lada”. Peasants made up the majority of the non-urban population, which predominated (87 percent) in the Russian Empire in the 18th - early 19th centuries. Men and women made up approximately equal shares in peasant families.

The everyday life of rural women - and they have been repeatedly described in historical and ethnographic literature literature XIX-XX centuries - remained difficult. They were filled with work equal in severity to men's, since there was a noticeable distinction between men's and men's women's work there was none in the village. In the spring, in addition to participating in the sowing season and tending to the garden, women usually wove and bleached canvases. In the summer, they “suffered” in the field (mowed, tedded, baled, stacked hay, tied sheaves and threshed them with flails), squeezed oil, tore and ruffled flax and hemp, seized fish, nursed offspring (calves, piglets), not counting everyday work in the barnyard (manure removal, treatment, feeding and milking). Autumn, the time for food procurement, was also the time when peasant women crumpled and carded wool and insulated barnyards. In winter, rural women “worked hard” at home, preparing clothes for the whole family, knitting stockings and socks, nets, sashes, weaving harness holders, embroidering and making lace and other decorations for festive outfits and the outfits themselves.

To this were added daily and especially Saturday cleaning, when the floors and benches in the huts were washed, and the walls, ceilings and floors were scraped with knives: “Leading a house is not the wing of vengeance.”

Peasant women slept three to four hours a day in the summer, exhausted from overload (overwork) and suffering from illness. Vivid descriptions of chicken huts and unsanitary conditions in them can be found in the report of the Moscow district leader of the nobility on the estates of the Sheremetevs. The most common disease was fever, caused by living in chicken huts, where it was hot in the evening and at night and cold in the morning.

The hard work of the farmer forced Russian peasants to live in undivided, multi-generational families that were constantly regenerating and were extremely stable. In such families, there was not one, but several women “in the wings”: mother, sisters, wives of older brothers, sometimes aunts and nieces. The relationship between several “housewives” under one roof was not always cloudless; in everyday squabbles there was a lot of “envy, slander, scolding and enmity”, which is why, as ethnographers and historians of the 19th century believed, “the best families were broken up and cases were given to ruinous divisions” (of common property). In fact, the reasons for family divisions could be not only emotional and psychological factors, but also social ones (the desire to avoid conscription: a wife and children were not left without a breadwinner, and from an undivided family, several healthy men could be “shared” into soldiers, despite their “seven family” ; according to the decree of 1744, if the breadwinner was taken from the family as a recruit, his wife became “free from the landowner,” but the children remained in a state of serfdom). There were also material benefits (the opportunity to increase property status if living separately).

Family divisions became common already in the 19th century, and at the time we are considering they remained quite rare. On the contrary, multigenerational and fraternal families were very typical. The women in them were expected - no matter what - to be able to get along with each other and run the house together.

Large, and even more significant than in the everyday life of the privileged classes, were grandmothers in multi-generational peasant families, who, by the way, in those days were often barely over thirty. Grandmothers - if they were not old and sick - "equally" participated in household chores, which, due to their labor intensity, represented different generations They often did things together: they cooked, washed floors, soaked (soaked in lye, boiled or steamed in cast iron with ash) clothes. Less labor-intensive responsibilities were strictly distributed between the eldest woman-housewife and her daughters, daughters-in-law, and daughters-in-law. They lived relatively amicably if the bolshak (the head of the family) and the big woman (as a rule, his wife; however, the big woman could also be the widowed mother of the big woman) treated everyone equally. The family council consisted of adult men, but the big woman took part in it. In addition, she managed everything in the house, went to the market, and allocated food for the everyday and holiday tables. She was helped by the eldest daughter-in-law or all the daughters-in-law in turn.

The most unenviable lot was the lot of younger daughters-in-law or daughters-in-law: “To work is what they force you to do, but to eat what you are given.” The daughters-in-law had to ensure that there was water and firewood in the house at all times; on Saturdays - they carried water and armfuls of firewood for the bath, heated a special stove while in the acrid smoke, and prepared brooms. The younger daughter-in-law or daughter-in-law helped the older women steam - lashed them with a broom, doused them with cold water, prepared and served hot herbal or currant infusions (“tea”) after the bath - “earned their bread.”

Starting a fire, warming up a Russian stove, and daily cooking for the whole family required dexterity, skill and physical strength. Peasant families ate from one large vessel - a cast-iron pot or bowl, which was put into the oven with a handle and taken out of it: it was not easy for a young and weak daughter-in-law to cope with such a task.

The older women in the family meticulously checked whether the young women followed traditional methods of baking and cooking. Any innovations were met with hostility or rejected. But even young women did not always submissively endure excessive claims from their husband’s relatives. They defended their rights to a tolerable life: they complained, ran away from home, and resorted to “witchcraft.”

In the autumn-winter period, all the women in the peasant house spun and weaved for the needs of the family. When it got dark, they sat around the fire, continuing to talk and work (“playing twilight”). And if other housework fell mainly on married women, then spinning, sewing, mending and darning clothes were traditionally considered girlish activities. Sometimes mothers did not let their daughters leave the house for gatherings without “work”, forcing them to take knitting, yarn or thread with them for unwinding.

Despite the severity of the daily life of peasant women, there was a place in it not only for everyday life, but also for holidays - calendar, labor, temple, family.
Peasant girls, and young ones too married women often took part in evening festivities, gatherings, round dances and outdoor games, where speed of reaction was valued. “It was considered a great disgrace” if a participant led for a long time in a game where she had to overtake her opponent. Late in the evening or in bad weather, peasant girlfriends (separately - married, separately - “unmarried”) would gather at someone’s house, alternating work with entertainment.

In the village environment, more than in any other environment, customs developed over generations were observed. Russian peasant women of the 18th - early 19th centuries. remained their main guardians. Innovations in lifestyle and ethical standards, which affected the privileged sections of the population, especially in cities, had a very weak impact on the daily life of representatives of the majority of the population of the Russian Empire.

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And if the owner doesn’t like something, then he won’t be ashamed - he’ll recoup himself as he should. After all, almost every landowner's house of those times was equipped with a real torture chamber. Well, this is what Catherine the Second wrote in her diaries, and this, you see, is an authoritative source. Torture was generally considered the most common occurrence. Any young gentleman, when designing his house, took its presence into account in advance. Here, the living room will be located, here is the bedroom, here is the office, then the kitchen, the servants' room, and right there, right behind the sheepfold, the torture room. Everything is like with people, as they say.

What about people? Cruelty, cruelty and more cruelty. And completely unreasonable. And one of the most famous such examples is the Russian landowner Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova. Initially, her life developed quite normally: she was born into a noble family, married a noble officer, and gave birth to two sons. But something bad happened to her at the age of 26 - she became a widow. She didn’t grieve for a long time, but this is understandable - the woman is still young. I decided to occupy myself with something, and bad luck - only rods came to hand, and only serfs came into view. In general, since then, Daria Saltykova has turned into a formidable and ruthless Saltychikha.

The full number of its victims remains unknown, but the fact that the number was in the hundreds is beyond doubt. She punished her “servants” for any offense, even for tiny wrinkles in ironed linen. Moreover, she did not spare either men, women, or children. Old people too, therefore. And what she did, what she did. She exposed her to the cold, scalded her with boiling water, tore out her hair and tore off her ears. Well, she also didn’t shy away from something simpler, like banging her head against a wall.

And one day, she learned that someone had gotten into the habit of hunting in her forest. Instantly she ordered to be caught and imprisoned for further “fun”. As it turned out, this uninvited hunter turned out to be another landowner, Nikolai Tyutchev, the future grandfather of the great Russian poet Fyodor Ivanovich. And Saltychikha could not catch him, because Tyutchev himself was no less cruel a tyrant. Moreover, they even started love relationship. That's it, it's not just opposites that attract. It almost didn't come to the wedding, but last moment Tyutchev nevertheless came to his senses and quickly wooed some young girl. Daria Nikolaevna, of course, became furious and ordered her peasants to kill the newlyweds. Those, thank God, disobeyed. And then Catherine II came to power, and almost the first thing she did was deprive Saltykova of her noble title and imprison her in a dungeon for life. After spending three years in captivity, Saltychikha died. This happened in 1801.

And so ended the story of one of the most famous serial killers in history. Russian Empire. Alas, this did not end the noble tyranny, because the same Catherine, although she staged a show trial of Saltykova, subsequently freed the hands of the nobles even more and further aggravated the situation of the serfs.

Servant

In pre-Petrine Rus', girls and women in service were called courtyard girls, seny (from the canopy - the non-residential part of the house between the residential part of the house and the porch or separating the two halves of the house, which was usually used for household needs, and in the summer could also be used for overnight stays) or maids (from the upper room or upper room - a clean room, usually on the second floor of the house where the owner’s daughters lived). “Some of the maids - usually girls - were engaged exclusively in embroidery together with the mistress and other female members of the master's family, others - usually married - did menial work, stoked stoves, washed linen and clothes, baked bread, prepared various supplies, others were entrusted with yarn and weaving,” writes N. I. Kostomarov in the book “Essay on the domestic life and customs of the Great Russian people in the 16th and 17th centuries.”

The courtyard and hay girls remained in the family estates, the maids moved with their mistresses to St. Petersburg. They had to learn a lot: help housewives put on hoops and lace corsets, comb and powder their hair high, decorate their hair with flowers and ribbons, wash, iron and store dresses made of new, unfamiliar fabrics. In addition, the maids washed the floor, cleaned the rooms, aired and remade the beds, and cleaned silverware. If a girl was the only servant in a poor house, all the housework fell on her.

In England, where all residents were personally free, servants were hired, and for a decent amount (a mid-level maid received an average of 6–8 pounds a year, plus additional money for tea, sugar and beer, a maid who served directly the mistress (lady's maid ), received 12–15 pounds per year plus money for additional expenses, livery footman - 15–25 pounds per year, valet - 25–50 pounds per year). The Russians were spared this need - they, as a rule, took their serfs into service. Of course, a trained maid was valued above a simple girl just brought from the village, and on occasion she was sold at a profit.

The following advertisements were not uncommon in newspapers of that time: “In the parish of the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, in the school, a 20-year-old girl, distinguished and capable of correcting maid work, and a well-ridden riding mare is for sale,” “A girl of 20 is for sale for 180 rubles.” years old, who cleans clothes and partly prepares food. Ask about it, as well as the sale of a used carriage and a new saddle at the post office”, “For excess, an elderly laundress is being sold for 250 rubles”, “For sale is a young maid of considerable beauty, who knows how to sew with gold and prepare linen. You can see her and find out the price in Bolshaya Millionnaya near the Konyushennago Bridge in the baker’s house at No. 35, at the janitor’s,” “On the Petersburg side in Malaya Dvoryanskaya Street at No. 495 there is a maid for sale, a 13-year-old girl who knows everything about maid services, and who Moreover, he has a very pleasant face.”

Very rarely, personal maids had their own room not far from the mistress's room. As a rule, maids were given rooms in attics or in a special outbuilding. Several maids could sleep in one room, and sometimes they had to share a bed. Servants were prohibited from using the same bathrooms and toilets that their masters used. Before the advent of running water and sewerage, maids had to carry buckets of hot water for the master's bath. They washed themselves in basins and tubs - usually once a week, but for now hot water carried from the basement to the attic, it could easily have cooled down.

We have seen that in Russian comedies (by the way, in full accordance with European tradition) maids often become girlfriends and assistants to their mistresses, give them advice on how to behave with their parents, how to attract a suitor, give them letters, and settle love affairs. In gratitude, the playwright usually marries the maid to a dashing valet - the personal servant of the owner of the house. In addition, they are often tasked with delivering a closing line that captures the moral of the comedy. For example, the comedy of Catherine II, already familiar to us, “About the Times!” ends like this: “Mavra (alone). This is how our century passes! We condemn everyone, we value everyone, we laugh at everyone and slander everyone, but we don’t see that we ourselves are worthy of both laughter and condemnation. When prejudices take the place of common sense in us, then our own vices are hidden from us, and only the mistakes of others are obvious: we see a speck in our neighbor’s eye, but in our own we do not even see a log.”

The maid's costume developed gradually; they usually wore a dress of a simple style, made of dark plain material (wool or silk) with a stand-up white starched collar trimmed with lace or ruffles. Then white cuffs, a headdress made of white starched lace or, less commonly, a starched round cap with two short “tails” at the back and aprons made of white starched cambric or thin linen became mandatory.

V. L. Borovikovsky. "Lizonka and Dashenka." 1794

I. E. Georgi notes that “most of the women of average wealth, as well as the daughters of many artisans, girls’ maids and servants of noble people, comb their hair every day, which is done by many hands.” By “many hands” he meant hairdressers, of whom there were many in St. Petersburg. But, of course, the maids, who, as a rule, should have been able to brush the mistress’s hair on occasion latest fashion, could easily brush each other's hair.

Portraits of the maids of the Derzhavin family have not survived, but the maids of his closest friend Nikolai Lvov can be seen in the painting “Lizonka and Dashenka” by Vladimir Lukich Borovikovsky, painted in 1794. In order to pose for the artist, the girls put on the master's jewelry and fashionable dresses in an antique style.

In addition to maids, cooks, dishwashers, and laundresses worked in the house. Female maids could help set the table, but during dinner parties and receptions they did not enter the dining room. This was the responsibility of the livery footmen. But their fate was not envied - when the owners had already abandoned wigs and powder, the lackeys were forced to wear wigs or powder their hair for a long time, which is why it often became thinner and fell out. If there were children, nurses, nannies and governesses appeared in the house. We will talk about the latter in the next chapter of the book.

Rich houses often housed many hangers-on and hangers-on, who, in gratitude for bread and shelter, entertained the owners and carried out their small errands. This public was mostly scandalous, prone to deception and theft. Primals and their tricks often became the themes of comedies of the 18th century, for example, the comedy of Catherine II “The Siberian Shaman”. Later, lonely elderly rich ladies began to take companions into their homes: as a rule, poor relatives. Among the companions there were girls taken from an orphanage, widows or old maids. Their duties also included entertaining the mistress, reading to her, writing letters, conveying orders to the servants, etc. Sometimes elderly housewives had fun by dressing their companions in their elegant toilets. A kind mistress could give the companion a dowry and arrange her marriage, but more often they grew old along with their mistresses and if they outlived them, they lived on the pension left to them and on the money that they managed to save over the years of service.

Outside the guilds: servants and day laborers The capital provided a much wider range of employment and types of labor than that described in the charters of the craft guilds. There were workers who are less often mentioned in written sources, because even if they had a constant