Notebook
years ago Alec Home, who was then
4dlui leader of the Tory Party, suggested that tsliLkentployed people might do worse than "'e jobs as domestic servants — butlers, lwa,nle-keepers, cooks and so on. The idea e's greeted with groans. Who but a belted 64d would suppose that self-respecting Brit
Workers would agree to demean them
in such a way? Even national assisZ ce, it seemed, was more dignified than 7toestic service. In fact, of course, much of "dortiestic service was very far from being thelleaning or undignified; much less so e Many other forms of working-class 010Ylnent. The kitchens, stables, panWand gardens of a great mansion offered (3,,rking people far more opportunities for IfTeu.:e in work — what is now called job satis, "col independence of spirit, and even srthing akin to professional respon th than they are likely to find today on Ze factory shop floor or in the foundry. Lile genuine argument against domestic irs ice in the old days was economic rather „an social. Such jobs were non-economic, a time when industry and manufacture 1,sere crying out for labour. But this is no ger the case. Advanced, post-industrial the ne'rnies only need a small proportion of the unskilled labour available, yet still 4‘.... prejudice against domestic service per .It is felt to be infra dig, an insult to the T'uttY of labour.
Sum et -71 it is time that this myth was ckzied. Unfortunately, literature tends 'euectifirm it. lean think of almost no novels tu r PlaYs, for example, which properly capvire the authentic flavour of domestic sere ce. They tend to be all written through the Wi3res of the master or mistress; that is to say, With Patronage. Inevitably, therefore, the 2inestic servant appears as slightly cornWith only a walking on part. (Jeeves, of 3044rse, is an immortal exception.) What tol,n1, if ever, comes through is the extent th v:ilich domestic servants were very much w!'r nwn masters. Although in theory they Cre there to take orders, this was not at all :Writ worked out in practice. For the butler ' toe cook, or the head groom or the head !sardener, were very much figures of author0,.Y' th quite as many rights as duties. He Slie who paid the piper most certainly did Call the tune, since the relationship was based on a cash nexus.
The I only writer I know who portrayed this rirel'tionship exactly right was Henry Green, IS marvellous novel Loving which has 'arot been re-issued in a Picador paperback, tu,ng with Living and Party Going. The
el 15 set in a castle in Ireland between the wars, and is almost entirely about the life and loves of the English servants, who are given, so to speak, the centre of the stage, with the employers kept very much in the background. The treatment is by no means idealised or sentimental, since the mistress in question is selfish and inconsiderate and the butler dishonest and idle. But it is the butler who wins all down the line, using his relationship with, and command over, the other servants to build up a position of strength from which he can impose his will. Although the mistress endlessly complains, she is putty in his hands. Nowadays, of course, there are few castles left in private hands, even in Ireland. But this development is usually presented as a mark of progress, since it is only the rich who are supposed to have suffered. But my point is that the absence today of large houses requiring servants may well be more of a deprivation for the poor than for the rich. On the whole, the rich seem to manage quite well without indoor servants, relying on all sorts of mechanical and other aids. The people who do not do so well are those who in the old days would have been happy as servants and now find themselves with no occupation nearly so satisfying or indeed so congenial. Impracticable — that Sir Alec's suggestion may have been. But it was not at all callous or unfeeling or retrogressive in the pejorative sense of that word, rather as if he had proposed sending the unemployed down the salt mines. For domestic service, paradoxically enough, bred far more men and women of true independence, of genuine pride and dignity, than many other proletarian pursuits which today enjoy so much more prestige and status. And as for producing eccentrics — that infallible test of civilisation — quite as many could be found
on the one side of the baize door as on the other, which is very much more, alas, than can be said about the two sides of industry which produce managers and men of indistinguishable uniformity. Bring back the large country house, not for the sake of the masters but for the sake of the servants. The masters have found other ways of enjoying the douceur de vivre. But for the servants, it was their only chance of tasting power, and much else besides.
Television interviews really are maddening, and this week's one on Panorama with Mrs Thatcher seemed to me particularly so. The mistake is to suppose that there is any point in asking difficult questions. For this to be worthwhile the questioner must be allowed to argue, or at any rate ask a series of questions, which he is never allowed to do, since the viewers have not switched on to hear his views. But because the tone of the question is hostile, the victim — in this case Mrs T — reacts defensively, falling back on the prepared position which is as familiar as it is boring. How much more productive it would be if the questioner adopted a friendly stance which might encourage the
victim to speak more freely, as one tends to do when in congenial company. An adver sary posture is certain to get nowhere. At least a friendly one might stand a chance of breaking new ground. Not that Mrs T had any cause to complain, since those three accusative males Day, Mackenzie and Emery — allowed her to look very charm ingly and bravely `put upon'. Her sternest critics will have been tempted to rally to her cause, if only out of chivalry, since even a bitch — which Mrs T is not — would look like an underdog facing such formidable opposition.
Did you realise that until relatively recently — sometime in the nineteenth century — the word primitive meant simply old or ancient. In Dr Johnson's dictionary, for example, there is no reference at all to the modern meaning of backward or undeveloped. When the eighteenth century talked about the Primitive Church, there was no suggestion of it being in any way inferior. According to C. S. Lewis, this new pejorative meaning came in with the machine. Because old machines were inferior to new ones, the word primitive, when applied to a machine, began to be associated with backwardness, lack of development. And because machinery became central to the modern experience, everything primitive/old began to
seem inferior, thus engendering the modern faith in progress. But not all machinery
today does get better, vide the primitive
motor car, which is much to be preferred to the modern model. So perhaps a new scep ticism about the 'progression' of machinery will lead to a new scepticism about progress in general. Think on that, when next you have a breakdown.
Peregrine Worsthorne
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