herself beautiful. Now while I would accept that the majority of butlers may

well discover ultimately that they do not have the capacity for it, I believe

strongly that this 'dignity' is something one can meaningfully strive for

throughout one's career.

 

Those 'great' butlers like Mr Marshall who have it, I am sure, acquired it over

many years of self-training and the careful absorbing of experience. In my view,

then, it was rather defeatist from a vocational standpoint to adopt a stance

like Mr Graham's.

 

In any case, for all Mr Graham's scepticism, I can remember he and I spending

many evenings trying to put our fingers on the constitution of this 'dignity'.

We never came to any agreement, but Ican say for my part that I developed fairly

firm ideas of my own on the matter during the course of such discussions, and

they are by and large the beliefs I still hold today. I would like, if I may, to

try and say here what I think this 'dignity' to be.

 

You will not dispute, I presume, that Mr Marshall of Charleville House and Mr

Lane of Bridewood have been the two great butlers of recent times. Perhaps you

might be persuaded that Mr Henderson of Branbury Castle also falls into this

rare category. But you may think me merely biased if I say that my own father

could in many ways be considered to rank with such men, and that his career is

the one I have always scrutinized for a definition of 'dignity'. Yet it is my

firm conviction that at the peak of his career at Loughborough House, my father

was indeed the embodiment of 'dignity'.