to approach the matter as I did - as I am sure you will agree once I have

explained the full context of those days. That is to say, the important

international conference to take place at Darlington Hall was by then looming

ahead of us, leaving little room for indulgence or 'beating about the bush'. It

is important to be reminded, moreover, that although Darlington Hall was to

witness many more events of equal gravity over the fifteen or so years that

followed, that conference of March 1923 was the first of them; one was, one

supposes, relatively inexperienced, and inclined to leave little to chance. In

fact, I often look back to that conference and, for more than one reason, regard

it as a turning point in my life. For one thing, I suppose I do regard it as the

moment in my career when I truly came of age as a butler. That is not to say I

consider I became, necessarily, a 'great' butler; it is hardly for me, in any

case, to make judgements of this sort. But should it be that anyone ever wished

to posit that I have attained at least a little of that crucial quality of

'dignity' in the course of my career, such a person may wish to be directed

towards that conference of March 1923 as representing the moment when I first

demonstrated I might have a capacity for such a quality. It was one of those

events which at a crucial stage in one's development arrive to challenge and

stretch one to the limit of one's ability and beyond, so- that thereafter one

has new standards by which to judge oneself. That conference was also memorable,

of course, for other quite separate reasons, as I would like now to explain.

 

The conference of 1923 was the culmination of long planning on the part of Lord

Darlington; indeed, in retrospect, one can see clearly how his lordship had been

moving towards this point from some three years or so before. As I recall, he