Word: butlered
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Hair of 'is 'ead." The notebooks show that the old butler's best tipper was a certain Captain Davenport. Housemaid Edie learns why the Captain was sometimes so generous. Going into Mrs. Jack's bedroom as usual one morning, when old Mrs. Tennant is absent from the castle, Edie draws back the curtains and the sun streams in. "She saw a quick stir beside the curls under which Mrs. Jack's head lay asleep, she caught sight of someone else's hair as well . . . retreating beneath the silk sheets." Dumfounded, Edie scuttles...
...vast Irish castle, where scores of beady-eyed peacocks strut and scream about the lawns and terraces and a moldering stone wall shuts off the outside world, an aged English butler is dying. From time to time he groans out the name of an unknown loved one-"Ellen, Ellen...
...love 'im," she cries to Housemaid Kate (who is obsessed by the mere idea of being in love). "I could open the veins of my right arm for that man." But Footman Charley is momentarily too busy to take Edie seriously. He is hovering outside the dying butler's bedroom, waiting for the brief coma between life and death when he can safely order young Albert to pop in and swipe the old man's private notebooks, priceless treasures of information about how to work the castle pork barrel-which guests can be touched for tips, what...
...Stuffing the precious notebooks into his striped-pants pocket, Charley Raunce boldly seats himself in the dead man's high chair at the head of the servants' table, determined to carry on a way of life that actually has ceased to exist. He is now "Mr. Raunce," butler-king of the castle; as he surveys the long table-the older servants mourning the dear departed, the housemaids coy and giggly-life takes on a new shape. "And the wicked shall flourish even as a green bay tree," cries the old housekeeper as Mr. Raunce, the notebooks snug...
...Butler Charley is an ambitious rogue with a bad conscience, a double man who is torn between his desire to make hay while the sun shines in neutral Eire and his realization that his manly pride depends on his returning to embattled Britain. Similarly, he is the sort of a man who loves to hide his capacity for love and loyalty under a leering, winking mask of sexy chatter and innuendo ("Let me tell you," he assured young Albert, referring to the departed French governess, "there was many an occasion I went up to Mam-selle's boudoir...