How often have you known it for the butler who is on everyone's lips one day as

the greatest of his generation to be proved demonstrably within a few years to

have been nothing of the sort? And yet those very same employees who once heaped

praise on him will be too busy eulogizing some new figure to stop and examine

their sense of judgement. The object of this sort of servants' hall talk is

invariably some butler who has come to the fore quite suddenly through having

been appointed by a prominent house, and who has perhaps managed to pull off two

or three large occasions with some success. There will then be all sorts of

rumours buzzing through servants' halls up and down the country to the effect

that he has been approached by this or that personage or that several of the

highest houses are competing for his services with wildly high wages. And what

has happened before a few years have passed? This same invincible figure has

been held responsible for some blunder, or has for some other reason fallen out

of favour with his employers, leaves the house where he came to fame and is

never heard of again. Meanwhile those same gossipers will have found yet some

other newcomer about whom to enthuse. Visiting valets, I have found, are often

the worst offenders, aspiring as they usually do to the position of butler with

some urgency. They it is who tend to be always insisting this or that figure is

the one to emulate, or repeating what some particular hero is said to have

pronounced upon professional matters.

 

But then, of course, I hasten to add, there are many valets who would never

dream of indulging in this sort of folly - who are, in fact, professionals of

the highest discern men t. When two or three such persons were gathered together

at our servants' hall - I mean of the calibre of, say, Mr Graham, with whom now,