An Interesting Whatsit

[backfrommars.livejournal.com]

Sorry, not an update, but a little snippet I just had to share.  I bought Bill Bryson's "At Home" the other day (a history of "the ordinary things of life as found in a comfortable home").  I haven't started reading it yet, but when I was skimming through it, I found a very interesting paragraph about servants:

"It was unquestionably a strange world.  Servants constituted a class of humans whose existences were fundamentally devoted to making certain that another class of humans would find everything they desired within arm's reach more or less the moment it occurred to them to desire it.  The recipients of this attention became spoiled almost beyond imagining.  Visiting his daughter in the 1920s, in a house too small to keep his servants with him, the tenth Duke of Marlborough emerged from the bathroom in a state of helpless bewilderment because his toothbrush wasn't foaming properly.  It turned out that his valet had always put the toothpaste on the brush for him, and the Duke was unaware that toothbrushes didn't recharge automatically."

So, as helpless as Bertie may seem on occasion, when compared to some others in his class, he might be a genius.

Comments

[storyfan.livejournal.com]

So that's why my toothbrush doesn't work!

Seriously, I can't imagine being that spoiled. And Bertie is a genius — that's why Jeeves loves him!

[muuskanuikkunen.livejournal.com]

Really interesting, thank you for sharing!

I sometimes wonder about servants. It's such an odd job, really! I can't imagine what it must've been like, to spend your whole working life pampering someone richer than you. Did they get a lot of holidays? Or just once a year? Were they well paid? I'm assumig they have pretty nice benefits because it must've been really trying profession (especially if your bosses were as thick as described in that quote :') )

Did children 'inherit' their parents' professions, or could someone (for example; the son of a priest) just decide "this is what I want to do with my life" and become a valet?

The whole "upper class-lower class" thing is so very hard for me to grasp.

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

I've always thought Bertie was smarter than he wrote himself. ;)

[mellifluous-gel.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of Bertie being more 'hapless' than 'helpless'. He seems to get himself thrown into the most extraordinary situations that just spiral out of his control. That's a rather interesting thingummy you've posted, though. It seems a bit mad that someone could be quite that clueless, but I suppose if you've never been taught something, then it's really ignorance talking rather than stupidity.

[eccentric_hat]

Oh man, there's another part of that book I was thinking of posting to the community, about a housekeeper who was secretly married to her employer. Really weird stuff!

[feanix.livejournal.com]

I'm reading that book right now :)

[violetjimjams.livejournal.com]

I'm with the above that Bertie's not as mentally negligible as he makes himself out to be. Compared to Jeeves, totally, but who isn't?

Actually, his problems seem to start from being too nice for his own good, and made worse by his inability to manipulate people and situations properly. Fortunately, that's Jeeves' forte (one of them).

But Bertie's at least observant enough to see how his life is made easier by his servant, and appreciate the talents in others' (Anatole, anyone?), and reward such with money and praise (and hot, hot sex on the kitchen table).

[trista-zevkia.livejournal.com]

I saw the author interviewed on Colbert Report, and I can't get the book right now to read, but he was talking about privacy being a new invention and how they used to have a servant sleep in the room with them. I developed a plot bunny from this, but am still working out the kinks. Just thought it was interesting and related, so decided I would share.

[polly-oliver.livejournal.com]

OMG I had the same idea! Or rather, fixated on the same tidbit. Only I can't remember which time period that was. Victorian?

[trista-zevkia.livejournal.com]

I watched the clip, and pasted the link below. They didn't give an exact date, but Bill quotes Samuel Pepys, whose Wikipedia article lists his dates of life 1633 to 1703. Hopefully somebody who read the book can clue us in...


http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/362222/october-14-2010/bill-bryson

[polly-oliver.livejournal.com]

Definitely not Victorian, then! Thanks for the link.