WHAT THE BUTLER WINKED AT.
This is a complete guide to the dying art of Gentlemen's Service, Being the Life and Adventures of ERIC HORNE (Butler) For Fifty-seven Years in Service with The Nobility and Gentry WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.
Buy it is more than a guide, however valuable ; it is a most entertaining book, the very Odyssey of Butlery. Odysseus wandered for ten years and saw some very odd things and places : Eric Home has wandered for fifty-seven, and verily seen some odder. Moreover, he has the most engaging naivete in the world : a true naiveté, not the uncomfortable assumed sort : the naivete of all great primitive writers. He has produced a veritable Work of Nature. For it is not merely the sort of book that encourages one for the sake of occasional jewels to read through yards of rather dull stuff. Mr. Home is always at his best ; and that is one of the most unusual things about the book. He never pads. Like Homer, he leaps from subject to subject with the most absolute speed :— " He said, ' I have been wondering why I did not get these letters answered.' In the excitement of the procession I had for- gotten to post those letters. At that place I learnt to do crochet- work, and could beat any girl at making lace and wool-work. . During my years in service I have made dozens of jackets for babies ; in fact, I think the women used to have the babies in order to get the little wool jackets ; also, no end of woollen crossovers for old women.
A servant has to stay • within hearing of bells and tele- phones.... "
And what conscious humorist could have produced the delicious irony of the following (how well we know such a song !). The butler has been asked to take part with the " gentry " in a village concert :- " It was a crowded house. The concert began by one of the ladies showing them how well she could play the piano. Then one or two songs or duets, about the moon and love mixed. When it drew near my turn I began to ' make up.' Of course I was simply ignored by the gentry behind the scenes. I thought to myself, after all that milk and water I will give you something stronger. I had a pair of large check trousers, a white top hat with a black band, a good false moustache, black coat with buttonhole, white spats, and a cane, not forgetting the rouge. I sang my best. I never sang a song on a stage better ; it was serio-comic, and I fancy rubbed the gentry up the wrong way in parts. With a few dance steps and a trick or two I simply ' brought down the house.' I seldom suffered from stage fright, the remedy for which is to keep moving about. (!) Well, nothing but an encore would please them ; so I gave them a lively solo on my violin, which did the trick again. . . . Then came the interval. . . . Then one of the gents came over to me and said, ' We have decided that you shall not go on in the second part of the concert.' . . . There's gentry ; jealous because I got better encores than they did l " One's most natural fear in picking up a book of this sort is that it will be morbid, will make the reader go hot-and-cold. Mr. Home has a fortunate naivete that never does this. One reads him at perfect ease. Why, even on the subject of love :— " Nothing would please me at that time but that I must get married. Though whistling, singing, and courting are not allowed in good places, courting is carried on all the same, in a quiet way. Sometimes in the housemaids' cupboard, where they keep their brushes and pails ; a few words when passing on the stairs ; ways and means can always be found to dodge the housekeeper's eagle eye. Though I must admit it is not pleasant or fair to the other servants in the house when courting is going on. But ' Love' or Cupid is such a funny little fellow, and will not be denied. Try to stamp out the flame of love in one place, and it pops up in another."
As the author sadly points out, the days of Gentlemen's Service are over. Not that it was a bed of roses, as he makes abundantly clear, but it was a life with a dignity and a tradi- tion, like the Army. But they are gone : the old masters cannot afford any longer to keep up their old establishments, the new do not know how such things ought to be done. The butler can never respect them—at best he can only give them their money's worth of drities performed. So Mr. Horne is thrown somewhat against his will on the shores of Ithaca, and the first act of his retirement has been to write this most charming of books.
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