If Walls Could Talk: An Intimate History of the Home

by Lucy Worsley

US First Lady Letitia Christian Tyler ran the president’s household almost invisibly in the 1840s:

We’re these slaves ??? I think the Tylers were from Virginia. Pausing to look... and they were. I imagine running a household full of slaves who can be punished with whipping or separation from their loved ones was slightly different from managing a household of English servants.

‘Formal compliments and empty ceremonies’ did nothing for Martha Washington, chatelaine of the US’s presidential household from 1789. ‘I am fond only of what comes from the heart,’ she said.

I think including slave owning “chatelaines” without at least some qualifiers is a mistake.

Historically, in Europe and America (and even today in many cultures elsewhere) marriage usually began as a property arrangement, in its middle part was mostly about raising children, and ended up with love. John Boswell, a historian of homosexuality, notes that on the contrary, marriage in the West today is the other way around. It begins with love, moves on to children, and often ends in disputes about the ownership of property.

This was a hoot.