Through a Glass Lightly/Butlers
BUTLERS
BUTLERS
The institution of Butlerdom is more British than Magna Charta, more emblematical of Britain’s social slavery than trial by jury. And in our search after precedent we adduce with no little satisfaction the authority of Holy Writ. Indeed, it is hard to bring forward a stronger proof of the inspired character of the Old Testament than the subtle, albeit indisputably right, discrimination of that Pharaoh who lifted up the head of his Chief Butler and restored him, the temporarily deposed, unto his Chief Butlership, yet hanged on a high tree that over-rated official, the Chief Baker. For it is difficult to picture the use in the scale of creation of a chief baker, a superintendent of concocted flours, a viceroy of crust and crumb. Bread, corn stuffs, farinaceous medleys, are but incidents of life; the pulse of it beats in ruby depths, or bubbles in amber fountains. How, then, shall a baker, be he chief or dependent, suffer other exaltation than a halter’s?
Yet must it be conceded that opportunity, the Parent of Crime, is more exclusively the Butlers prerogative than that of any other living man. By what process it is hard to say; but he has acquired a subterranean Headship, a cellared monarchy, from which it will need a bloody revolution to depose him. He is the despot of the servants’ hall, and the Plain Cook alone among women is held worthy to mate with him. His civil list exceeds that of the other Kings of Flunkeydom, and not only does he hold the gorgeous pantry in fee, but he has a reversion also to the best public-house in his parish. If he vacates the service of some Duke or great man, he becomes the long lease holder of a “Marquis of Granby,” and acquires an importance and a rotundity of barrel worthy his high office. But though he is the emblem of British respectability, so that no house can ever hope to attain a mansional dignity without him, he is full of imperfections, and not seldom is wholly unworthy of the great price he brings. For his wages exceed the income of the inferior clergy, and his beer-money would float a fleet of nondescript writing “chaps” and literary “gents” His first duty is to give the cup into his Pharaoh’s hands, his next to see that it be full and brimming, and his third to keep it shining and bright as the sheen on a summer sea. “As Argus had a hundred eyes for his sight, he should also have (like Briareus) a hundred hands wherewith to fill us wine indefatigably.” He should have the soul of a bon vivant and the restraint of a Joseph. He should have the words of the old drinking song graven on his heart, or, at least, writ large in his pantry:—
Remplis ton verre vuide,
Vuide ton verre plein.
Je ne puis souffrir dans ta main,
Un verre ni vuide ni plein.
For ourselves, we scorn to set a watch upon our Lord High Keeper of the Vintages: we would as soon suspect one of Her Majesty’s Judges of taking a bribe as imagine a dishonesty in our butler. There are men who keep cellar books, ear-marking every bottle of every bin, so that at a glance they can see how much remains of that ’75 Lafitte, and how many bottles of the ’74 Pommery are still for self and friends; but we would put our butler on his honour, and inculcate him with the pride of cellarage, and the artistry of drinking. It may be that we err on the side of credulity, but while we remain in ignorance, we live in bliss. We have endured much at the hands of inexperienced waiters, for the name of butler predicates perfection; we have sat gloomily at dinner looking alternately at the empty glass, and the sable statue who alone could fill, standing in mute, passionless idiocy at the back of his master’s chair, and we have debased ourselves by an appeal to him for potatoes, not from a craving for those starchy globules, but from an irresistible longing to whisper into his ear, and demonstrate the all-too-patent vacuity beside us. These men deserve and receive no compensatory vail. They stand, impotent expectants as they are, at the door on the day of parting; they have unpacked no portmanteau nor laid out any shirts; they have let one go night after night suffering the aching void; yet they expect the final reward of wrong-doing in the shape of a hard-earned sovereign! Not these the men for our money: rather those who appreciate the varied tastes and discrimination of their master’s guests and “serve to palate,” as the recipe books say. Not those who fluster you at dinner with a “champagne-sherry-or-red-’ock,” but rather the kindly souls who whisper in your ear the quality or the vintage of the elixir they administer, and thus help you forward to the goal of every gastronome! The true butler, born as well as made, should supplement that scanty intelligence which is the endowment of too many hosts; he should differentiate between the quality and the fibre of his guests; he should divine that a parson’s glass should always be filled to the brim, for that he can take a little more than other people, and yet be ill-satisfied. He should know, and many do, that Hermitage has the most religion, Hock the most sentiment, Champagne the most love, and Port the most charity; that Burgundy smiles, Hock winks, Champagne laughs, and Bordeaux puts a heart into all. He should know without telling that Madeira or Sherry should follow the soup, and further, that it will drink the softer if it has been uncorked some hours before. Haply he is cursed with an economical master, who will insist that wine left over to-night shall be drunk to-morrow. Now the butler will either drink it himself, as he should, or pour it down the sink, as it deserves; for “wine kept open all night is not worth a mite.” Towards him a noble liberality should be extended: the more freedom you give him, the more zealously will he guard your interests against the plundering capacity of his underlings.
’Tis not so long ago that a feeble remonstrance was raised against one of the grandest butlers that ever died in a public-house: that there were never any cigars in the billiard-room by day. “Well, you see, sir,” was his unanswerable answer, “some of my men smoke.” Others there are who choose them men who profess teetotalism: this is to encourage hypocrisy at best, or rampant faddism at the worst. How shall a man serve the gift of the gods aright who abjures it in principle? He panders to a self-constituted crime, and he takes the edge off the flavour. And if he wears a blue ribbon on his coat and yet keeps the purple dawn upon his nose, how perilous your cellar! how subject to the gravest, because the pettiest, deceptions! Rather a butler who loves wine than one who actually or professedly dislikes it. Is it not better he should drink one bottle than give two away?
But it is part of a butler’s lot that he should do other tasks worse than keep watch and guard over the cellar key, and pour out wine for alien drinkers. He is responsible for the plate, and, if in nothing besides, he shows herein the marked superiority of his sex, for if he do not apply the rouge himself, he constrains the footman or the page-boy. In no house where woman predominates do we ever find plate kept as plate should, darkly lustrous and beautifully bright. The trim cap and dainty apron of suburban Phyllis may please and delight some, but, for solid grandeur and substantial splendour, and, it may be added, potential enjoyment, we look solely to those houses whose threshold is guarded and whose portals are opened, by that great emblem of British respectability, the British Butler. Fair Phyllis may crown our brows with myrtle or with laurel, and there is always a plenty of laurel bushes where Phyllis lives, but it takes a man to crown our wine. To fill our glass with Lachryma Christi may wring a sympathetic tear from a woman’s eye, but it was a master and not a mistress of arts, who, drinking liberally of this same wine, burst forth out of the abundance of his heart with the cry of
“Utinam Christus vellet flere in patria
nostra.”