On this page we have gathered some interesting facts about the Private Service profession and we also try to shed some light on the history of Butling. Photos on this page are all black and white.

Please let us know in case you have interesting facts for us which you would like to be included on this page.

The butler name

The Butler name derives from the old French; Bouteillier; the cup-bearer or the one in charge of the bottles.  Bottle and the French equivalent both come from the medieval Latin butticula, a diminutive of buttis, a cask, which is also the origin of the word butt for a large wooden container for liquid (the beer cellar in medieval times would have contained wooden casks, not glass bottles).  So the buttery, therefore, had originally nothing to do with butter but was the place of the butts.  Only later was the word extended to mean somewhere that provisions in general were stored, perhaps because people did mistakenly make that association.

Through a complicated process that had to do with the loss of gentlemen servants and changes in social organization, the Butler slowly rose to be in charge not only of the buttery, but also of the ewery (where the napkins and basins for washing and shaving were kept) and the pantry (which did supply the bread, butter, cheese and other basic provisions), and later still he took over the cellerer's duties of looking after the wine, which indeed became one of his principal duties.  By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Butler reached his full flowering as head of the male domestic servants, in larger households sometimes having a whole suite of rooms dedicated to his various functions.  In the twentieth century, social change meant he almost vanished as a breed.  In our modern age the Butler has been reinvented as a kind of Swiss-Army- knife, all-purpose household manager, often the sole permanent servant, as much required to organize his master’s travel arrangements and supervise redecorating the house as he is to serve the wine at formal dinners.

Butler is one of those words which has survived almost unchanged in the language for several hundred years, but whose meaning has progressively changed along with his duties.  But as few of us encounter a real Butler these days, even fewer than in his heyday, our understanding of the word is stuck in a fantasy world of Wodehousian invention.

Butler

\But"ler\, n. [OE. boteler, French; bouteillier (from bouteille), a bottle-bearer, a cupbearer, fr. LL. buticularius, fr. buticula bottle.  An officer in a king's or a nobleman's household, whose principal business it is to take charge of the liquors, plate, etc.; the head servant in a large house.  N: a manservant (usually the head servant of a household) who has charge of wines and the table, receiving guests, directs the serving of meals and performs various personal services.  Properly a servant in charge of the wine (Gen. 40:1-13; 41:9).  The Hebrew word, _mashkeh_, thus translated is rendered also (plural) "cup-bearers" (1 Kings 10:5; 2 Chr. 9:4).  Nehemiah (1:11) was cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes.  It was a position of great responsibility and honor in Royal households.  Butler: a surname (very common: 1 in 1098 families; popularity rank in the U.S.: #91).

The correct pronunciation

Click here for the correct English pronunciation (small audio file).

The number of butlers worldwide

The International Guild of Professional Butlers estimates that there are yet again a few million professional Butlers in the world today.  Note that the term "butler" is defined differently by different people. According to The Guild there has been a steady increase of butlers the past 30 years with a surge the past 10 years.

The duties of a modern butler

Oversee the household staff, many times at more than one residence.  Knowledge of high social etiquette and protocol.  Receives guests and supervises the reception of visitors.  May double as House Manager, Personal Assistant, Valet, Chef, Body Guard, and a number of other positions.  Organizes duties and schedules of domestic staff.  Schedule and oversee household maintenance.  Organizes parties and events.  Performs light housekeeping duties.  Books hotels, restaurants theatres etc.  Household accounting and creating household budgets.  Maintains the wardrobe and clothing inventory for the gentleman.  Packs and prepares for the gentleman for travel.  Assists with maintaining household security.  Schedules the maintenance for miscellaneous items in the estate (stables, boats, planes etc.).  Staff hiring and firing.  Staff training.  Knowledgeable about wines and spirits and oversees the wine cellar and liquor inventory.  Strong communication, organizational and management skills.  Ability to be multi-task oriented.  Organizes trips and may travel with the employer.

The salary range of a  modern butler

Salary is usually based on a  number of factors such as the amount of experience and/or formal training and the duties and hours included in the job description.  Butlers usually earn a salary between $50.000 and $100.000 annually, plus benefits.  A Butler can be a live-in or live-out employee. Note that most butlers work an average of 60 hours per week if not more.

The butler ancient through medieval eras

From ancient through medieval times, alcoholic beverages were chiefly stored first in earthenware vessels, then later in wooden barrels, rather than in glass bottles; these containers would have been an important part of a household's possessions. The care of these assets was therefore generally reserved for trusted slaves, although the job could also go to free persons because of heredity-based class lines or the inheritance of trades.

The biblical book of Genesis contains a reference to a role precursive to modern butlers. The early Hebrew Joseph interpreted a dream of Pharaoh's שקה (shaqah) (literally "to give to drink"), which is most often translated into English as "chief butler" or "chief cup-bearer".

Eventually the European butler emerged as a middle-ranking member of the servants of a great house, in charge of the buttery (originally a storeroom for "butts" of liquor, although the term later came to mean a general storeroom or pantry).

The Victorian Era (1839 - 1901)

The Victorian era corresponds with the reign of Queen Victoria in England from 1839 to 1901. The period is beloved for its attention to high morals, modesty and proper decorum, as inspired by the Queen and her husband, Prince Albert.  The Victorian era was also an optimistic time in which scientific and industrial invention thrived.  Developments in printing produced a proliferation of Victorian scrap art, cards, and magazines.  The importance placed on civic conscience and social responsibility engendered notable developments toward gender and racial equality, such as the legal abolishment of slavery in America. In addition, humanitarian and religious organizations such as the Salvation Army reflected the Victorian concern for the poor and needy of the period.  Poverty was overwhelming.

In 1901, when the British population was 38 million and every middle-class home had at least one servant, there were 1.7 million women and 140,000 men in domestic service.  Even a modestly prosperous household could expect to retain the services of a general domestic servant, and mostly these were young single women.  In fact, right up until the start of the First World War, domestic service was the largest single occupation for women.  However, it was fading in popularity by 1891.  The hours worked were very long, the work was arduous and often lonely and it did not provide the freedom which was available to factory and shop workers.  Large households could expect to employ dozens of servants such as; Butler, UnderButler, Housekeeper, Cook, Footman, Ladies Maid, Kitchen Maid, Stillroom Maid, Housemaid, Coachman and Groom.

Hinchingbrooke House (United Kingdom)

Hinchingbrooke House has a recorded history of eight centuries. It is a time capsule where one can read about the changes in English life. Hinchingbrooke House is on the outskirts of Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, in the south-east of England. The first known building on the site was a Norman church dated to about the year 1100. On their web pages you can find out about some of the people who owned, lived or worked at Hinchingbrooke from the sixth to the twenty-first century. One very important piece of information on their web site is the Census (an official count of the inhabitants of a country).

The Census taken at the house of Hinchingbrooke in the year 1851 lists the people below;

Household Servant stands for; Laundry maid, Dairy maid, Stillroom maid, Kitchen maid, Scullery maid, Ladys maid, Groom, House maid, School room maid and more.

The Hinchingbrooke Domestic staff photographed in 1906. A similar picture taken in 1909 featured 35 staff. Notice how the social ranking of the servants is shown by the sitting and standing positions.

Butlers were typically hired by the master of the house but usually reported to its lady. Beaton in her manual suggested a GBP 25 - 50 (USD 2,675 - 5,350) per-year salary for butlers; room and board and livery clothing were additional benefits, and tipping known as vails, were common. The few butlers who were married had to make separate housing arrangements for their families, as did all other servants within the hierarchy.

The butler in early America

From the beginning of slavery in America, in the early 1600s, African Americans were put to task as domestic servants. Some eventually became butlers. Gary Puckrein, a social historian, argues that those used in particularly affluent homes authentically internalized the sorts of "refined" norms and personal attributes that would reflect highly upon the social stature of their masters or mistresses. One of the first books written and published through a commercial U.S. publisher by an African American was by a butler named Robert Roberts. The book, The House Servant's Directory, first published in 1827, is essentially a manual for butlers and waiters, and is called by Puckrein "the most remarkable book by an African American in antebellum America". The book generated such interest that a second edition was published in 1828, and a third in 1843.

European indentured servants formed a corps of domestic workers from which butlers were eventually drawn. Although not the victims of institutionalized slavery, many of these had not volunteered for domestic service, but were forced into it by indebtedness or coercion. As with African American slaves, they could rise in domestic service, and their happiness or misery depended greatly on the disposition of their masters.

Beginning around the early 1920s, employment in domestic service occupations began a sharp overall decline in western European countries, and even more markedly in the United States. Even so, there were still around 30,000 butlers employed in Britain by World War II. As few as one-hundred were estimated to remain by the mid-1980s. Social historian Barry Higman argues that a high number of domestic workers within a society correlates with a high level of socio-economic inequality. Conversely, as a society undergoes leveling among its social classes, the number employed in domestic service declines.

Following varied shifts and changes accompanying accelerated globalization beginning in the late 1980s, overall global demand for butlers since the turn of the millennium has risen dramatically. The proximate cause is that the number of millionaires and billionaires has increased in recent years, and such people are finding that they desire assistance in managing their households. The number of wealthy in China has particularly increased, creating in that country a high demand for professional butlers who have been trained in the European butling tradition. There is also increasing demand for such butlers in other Asian countries, India, and the Middle East.

Alonzo Fields, Chief Butler for the White House under President Truman When the President of the United States says he wants cocktails and dinner at 8, he gets cocktails and dinner at 8 ... even if the kitchen staff has to be tracked down by the Washington D.C. police.  President Harry S. Truman had been enjoying a relaxing family weekend in Independence, Missouri when he first learned that North Korea had invaded South Korea. This knowledge prompted him to fly back to Washington on June 25, 1950 and order a dinner meeting with his top advisors.

Problem was the kitchen staff had taken the afternoon off on account of the First Family being out of town. Alonzo Fields, chief butler for the White House, was called at 4 p.m. and told to prepare cocktails and dinner for the President and his fourteen senior advisors by 8 p.m. Fields planned the menu on the drive over to the Blair House (the President's residence while the White House was being renovated) after mentally surveying the on-hand ingredients. He also enlisted the help of the Washington D.C. police to find two of the White House chefs.

Eugene Allen, who served eight US Presidents

For more than three decades Eugene Allen worked in the White House, a black man unknown to the headlines. During some of those years, harsh segregation laws lay upon the land. Mr Allen trekked home every night, where his wife, Helene, kept him out of her kitchen. At the White House, he worked closer to the dirty dishes than the large desk in the Oval Office. Mrs. Allen didn't care; she just beamed with pride. President Truman called him Gene, while President Ford liked to talk golf with him.

He saw eight presidential administrations come and go, often working six days a week. "I never missed a day of work," he says. His is a story from the back pages of history. A figure in the tiniest of print; the man in the kitchen. He was there while America's racial history was being remade: the Little Rock school crisis, the 1963 March on Washington, the cities burning, the civil rights bills, the assassinations. When he started at the White House in 1952, he couldn't even use the public restrooms when he ventured back to his native Virginia. "We had never had anything," Mr Allen, 89, recalls of black America at the time. "I was always hoping things would get better."

In its long history, the White House - just note the name - has had a complex and vexing relationship with black Americans. "The history is not so uneven at the lower level, in the kitchen," says Ted Sorensen, who served as counselor to President Kennedy. "In the kitchen, the folks have always been black. Even the folks at the door - black." Mr Sorensen tried to address the matter of African-Americans in the White House, but in the end, there was only one black man who stayed on the executive staff at the Kennedy White House past the first year. "There just weren't as many blacks as there should have been," says Mr Sorensen. "Sensitivities weren't what they should have been, or could have been."

In the mid-1950s invitations to the White House were still fraught with racial subtext. When the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow pianist Hazel Scott to perform at Constitution Hall because of her race, many letters poured into the White House decrying the DAR's position. First lady Bess Truman was a member of the organization, but made no effort to get the DAR to alter its policy.

The first black to hold a policy or political position in the White House was E. Frederick Morrow, a former public relations executive with CBS. Dwight Eisenhower's presidential campaign operatives were so impressed with Mr Morrow's diligent work during the 1952 campaign that they promised him a White House executive job if Ike were elected. Ike won, but Mr Morrow ended up being placed at the Department of Commerce. He felt slighted and appealed to Republican friends in New York to force the White House to make good on its promise.

Before he landed his job at the White House, Mr Allen worked as a waiter at a resort in Virginia, and then at a country club in Washington. He and Helene, 86, are sitting in their living room. A cane rests across Helene's lap. Her voice is musical, in a Lena Horne kind of way. They met in Washington at a birthday party in 1942. He was too shy to ask for her number, so she tracked his down. They married a year later. In 1952, a lady told Mr Allen of a job opening in the White House. "I wasn't even looking for a job," he says. "I was happy where I was, but she told me to go on over there and meet with a guy by the name of Alonzo Fields."

Mr Fields was a maitre d', and he immediately liked Allen. He was offered a job as a "pantry man". He washed dishes, stocked cabinets and shined silverware. He started at $US2400 a year. There was, in time, a promotion to butler. "Shook the hand of all the presidents I ever worked for," he says. "I was there, honey," Helene reminds him. "In the back maybe. But I shook their hands, too." She's referring to White House holiday parties. They have one son, Charles, who works as an investigator with the State Department. "President Ford's birthday and my birthday were on the same day," says Mr Allen. "He'd have a birthday party at the White House. Everybody would be there. And Mrs. Ford would say, 'It's Gene's birthday, too.'" And so they would sing a little ditty to the butler. And the butler, who wore a tuxedo to work every day, would blush.

"Jack Kennedy was very nice," he says. "And so was Mrs. Kennedy." He was in the White House kitchen the day JFK was slain. He got a personal invitation to the funeral, but volunteered for other duty: "Somebody had to be at the White House to serve everyone after they came from the funeral." The whole family of President Jimmy Carter made Mrs. Allen chuckle: "They were country. And I'm talking Lillian and Rosalynn both." It comes out sounding like the highest compliment.

First lady Nancy Reagan came looking for him in the kitchen one day. She wanted to remind him about the upcoming state dinner for then German chancellor Helmut Kohl. He told her he was well ahead in the planning and had already picked out the china. But she told him he would not be working that night. "She said, 'You and Helene are coming to the state dinner as guests of President Reagan and myself.' I'm telling you! I believe I'm the only butler to get invited to a state dinner." President Kennedy started with two African-Americans, Frank Reeves and Andrew Hatcher, in executive positions on his White House staff. Only Mr Hatcher, a deputy press secretary, remained after six months. Mr Reeves, who focused on civil rights matters, left in a reshuffle.

Lyndon Johnson devoted considerable energy and determination to civil rights legislation, even appointing the first African-American to the Supreme Court. But it did not translate to any appreciable number of black staff working for him. Colin Powell would become the highest-ranking African-American of any White House to that point when he was named President Reagan's national security adviser in 1987. Condoleezza Rice would have that same position under President George W. Bush. The butler remembers seeing Mr Powell and Dr Rice in the Oval Office. He was serving refreshments. He couldn't help notice that black people were moving closer to the centre of power, closer than he could ever have dreamed. He would tell Helene how proud it made him feel.

Mr Allen was promoted to maitre d' in 1980. He left the White House in 1986, after 34 years. President Reagan wrote him a sweet note; Nancy Reagan hugged him. Interviewed at their home, Mr and Mrs. Allen speculated about what it would mean if a black man were elected president. "It'd be really something," said Mr Allen. "We're pretty much past the going-out stage," his wife said. "But you never know. If he gets in there, it'd sure be nice to go over there again." Mr Allen has pictures of every president he served on a wall in his basement. There's a painting President Eisenhower gave him and a picture of President Ford opening birthday gifts, Mr Allen hovering nearby. They talked about praying to help Barack Obama get to the White House. They would go vote together.

Gender and butling

Butlers have traditionally been male, and this remains the norm. Probably the first mention of a female butler is in the 1892 book Interludes being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses by Horace Smith. In it Smith quotes a certain Sydney Smith who had apparently run into lean times: A man servant was too expensive, so I caught up a little garden girl, made like a milestone, christened her Bunch, put a napkin in her hand, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals. Bunch became the best butler in the country.

Today, female butlers are sometimes preferred, especially for work within Middle and Far Eastern families where it may be culturally problematic for males to work closely with females in a household. Western female celebrities may also prefer a female butler, as may households where the wife is driving the decision to hire a butler, and in 2004 Buckingham Palace announced it was actively recruiting females for the position. In ancient times, the roles precursive to butling were reserved for chattel or those confined within heredity-based class structures. With the advent of the medieval era, butling became an opportunity for social advancement, even more so during Victorian times. Although still based upon various antecedent roles as manifested during different eras, butling today has frequently taken over many of the roles formerly reserved for lower ranking domestic servants. At the same time it has become a potentially lucrative career option.

More history

Readers of historical novels are familiar with some of the servants that large establishments employed to do all the work required to keep the place running smoothly.  Large estates had an army of outdoor servants (gardeners, gamekeepers, and grooms) and an equally large army of indoor servants. The number and kinds of servants varied depending on the social status of the employer and the size of the estate.

Male servants ranked above female servants and non-liveried servants, those who did not wear uniforms, ranked above those servants who did.  The highest ranking male servant (who in some ways was more a professional employee than a true servant), was the Land Steward. He was often the son of a minister or businessman.  Some Land Stewards were attorneys and had their own homes and own businesses on the side.  The Steward was the manager of the estate.  He hired and fired workers, settled tenant complaints, saw to the harvesting of crops, managed the timber, collected the rents and kept all the financial records.  Very wealthy men with more than one estate had several Land Stewards.

A few, very wealthy homes employed a (House) Steward.  The highest ranking male house servant was the Butler. The Butler's duties varied depending on the size of the house.  He was in charge of the wine cellar and in the days before refrigeration, that was a delicate task.  He was in charge of the silver and gold plate, china, and crystal.  He supervised the cleaning of this valuable silver and gold and guarded it against thieves.  As time passed, the position of the Butler gained more and more prestige until he became the top servant in Victorian times - in charge of the men and women underservants.  While the Butler did not wear livery, he did alter his clothing slightly while on duty - he wore a black tie rather than a white one for instance.  It would not do to mistake the Butler for a gentleman.

The highest ranking male house servant, next to the Butler, was the valet.  He cared for his employer's clothing, shined his shoes and boots, did the hairdressing and barbering and made sure the gentleman looked good.  A valet had to be well-dressed himself, but was not to outshine his employer.  When the gentleman went shopping or traveling, the valet went along since there were men who literally could not dress or undress themselves without assistance (those regency coats and boots were tight!).

The highest ranking indoor liveried servant was the footman. Footmen did many jobs around the house - both indoors and outside. Inside, he laid the table, waited at table, served tea, answered the door and assisted the Butler. Outside, he rode on the carriage, opened doors, served as an escort when a lady paid calls, and carried torches to deter thieves when the lady and gentleman went out at night. The footman carried letters to and fro and special footmen called "running footmen" ran in front of or beside a carriage. These running footmen had mostly died out by the time of the regency, but in their prime, they were colorful characters, both literally and figuratively. They often wore very bright and luxurious livery and some noblemen would organize footraces between their running footmen. The qualifications for being a footman were good looks and a good physique.  Their livery was knee breeches, often plush ones with silk stockings (footmen had to have good legs) and coats of satin and velvet with starched shirts.  Footmen had to powder their hair - a custom that did not die out among the Buckingham Palace footmen until Prince Philip put a stop to it.  He thought it was unhygienic.

A page was a young boy who was sort of an apprentice footman.  He performed odd jobs and tasks and was put into livery to stand around and look good when the lady chose to entertain. Sometimes the page was a young black boy who was put into an especially fancy livery and treated almost like an ornament.

Women servants did not rank as high as men and were not paid as much even though their work was often harder.  A footman carried letters, but a chambermaid often had to climb flights of stairs with loads of coal for the fire or cans of hot water for the bath. The highest ranking woman servant was the housekeeper. She kept the keys to all the storage closets and supervised the maids and cook. She served as the Butler's right hand helper. She kept books and household accounts and ordered food and supplies.  She very much ran the house.

The next highest woman servant is the personal maid. She dressed and undressed the lady, cleaned, pressed and mended rips in clothing and did the lady's hair.  In the Victorian age, when clothing was very heavy and elaborate (and buttoned and laced up the back) a women could literally not get dressed or undressed without assistance just like the regency fops with their tight coats. Personal maids also looked after the jewelry and served as a companion and confidante.  It was very much the thing to have a personal maid who was French, but if a lady could not find a French maid, an English personal maid who could speak a few French phrases was almost as good.

The cook was considered to be of better quality if she had trained with a male chef.  Not many people were wealthy enough to afford a male chef, so they searched for female cooks who had trained with men.  The cook was the dictator of the kitchen.  The cook had many kitchen helpers to assist her in the massive amounts of cooking that had to be done.  There were always scullery maids (the lowest of the female servants) whose job it was to clean the pots and pans. These poor girls spent their days with their hands in hot water and harsh washing soda. After a large party, there could be hundreds of greasy pots and pans to clean before the girls could go to bed.

There were several kinds of maids - chambermaids, parlor maids and maids-of-all-work.  These young women were the ones who swept, dusted, polished, cleaned, washed, fetched and carried from early morning till late at night.  The schedule of the week for maids has them working from 6:30 am till 10:00 pm with one half-day off a week.  They had to do all the cleaning and polishing with none of the labor saving devices we take for granted.  There was no such thing as polish for instance.  Furniture polish was made from linseed oil, turpentine and beeswax.

Carpets had to be brushed by hand, lamps had to be cleaned and filled and fires had to kept lit and tended. This necessitated maids lugging large amounts of coal up flights of stairs to all the fireplaces, and a large estate could have many, many fireplaces.  The sheer amount of work involved in a maid's job is difficult to imagine.  Maids wore two kinds of clothing.  In the mornings when most of the heavy work was done, they wore cotton print dresses and heavy aprons.  Later in the afternoon, they changed into black dresses with ruffled aprons and caps with streamers.  By Victorian times, all but the wealthiest had given up footmen and the maids answered the doors and announced visitors.

The era of large estates and many servants died out after World War I.  For a long time, a job as a servant was the only one a respectable young woman could get, and after jobs in offices and factories became available, few young women or men wanted to spend long hours working for little money and little chance to have a life of their own.  More job opportunities, smaller houses and more labor saving devices finally put an end to the huge numbers of servants who used to work in stately homes.

Dinner for one (The 90th Birthday) (Der 90. Geburtstag)

This little short comedy is an annual tradition in many families around the world on New Year's eve. People never get tired of it. The comedy is universal. Plot, pacing, acting and characters are all top-notch.

German Television station Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) recorded a performance of the piece in 1963, in its original English language. This short comical play went on to become the most frequently repeated TV program ever. The sketch presents the 90th birthday of elderly upper-class Englishwoman Miss Sophie, who hosts a dinner every year for her close friends Mr Pommeroy, Mr Winterbottom, Sir Toby, and Admiral von Schneider to celebrate the occasion. (Note that the plot has nothing to do with New Year's Eve, as is often incorrectly stated.There is a "Happy new year" toast, but this is purely a reference to Miss Sophie's anniversary.) The problem is that given Miss Sophie's considerable age, she has outlived all of her friends, and so her equally aged manservant James makes his way around the table, impersonating each of the guests in turn.

Miss Sophie decides on appropriate drinks to accompany the menu of the evening, consisting of Mulligatawny soup (Miss Sophie orders sherry), haddock (with white wine), chicken (with champagne), and fruit for dessert (with port) served by James, and so he finds himself raising (and emptying) his glass four times per course. That takes its toll, increasingly noticeable in James' growing difficulty in pouring the drinks, telling wine glasses from vases of flowers, and refraining from bursting into song. Even before the alcohol begins to exert its influence, he has trouble avoiding the head of a tiger skin laying on the floor between the dinner table and the buffet. Starring comedians Freddie Frinton and May Warden.

"There was no status in being in service, you were a nobody; marriage was the way out of it."
(Rosina Harrison, Rose: My Life in Service).

"As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to look after them.  I'd always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it, there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own clothes themselves, and haven't got anybody to bring them tea in the morning, and so on.  It was rather a solemn thought . . ."
(P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves Omnibus).

"The hard reality is, surely for the likes of you and I, there is little choice other than to leave our fate, ultimately, in the hands of those great gentlemen at the hub of this world who employ our services".
(Mr Stevens, the Butler, in Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day).

Fictional butlers

The real-life modern butler attempts to be discreet and unobtrusive, friendly but not familiar, keenly anticipative of the needs of his or her employer, and graceful and precise in execution of duty. "The butler" in fiction, by contrast, is typically larger-than-life and has become a traditional plot device in various literature, film and theatre. In potboilers and melodramas, butlers provide comic relief with wry comments, or clues about the perpetrators of various crimes, and are represented as being at least as intelligent, and often more so, than their "betters". Butlers figure so prominently in period pieces and whodunits that the catch phrase "The butler did it!" has become commonplace. Regardless of the genre in which they are cast, butlers in fiction almost invariably follow the "British butler" model and are given an appropriate-sounding surname.

Not all fictional butlers portray the "butler stereotype", however. Alan Bates, who played the butler Jennings in the film Gosford Park, was coached in brooding detail by Arthur Inch, a longtime real-life butler. Mr. Stevens, the butler played by Anthony Hopkins in the film Remains of the Day, was also acted with remarkable realism. A female butler, Sarah Stevens, is the principle character in Linda Howard's 2002 Dying to Please, a murder/romance novel. Howard gives detailed and generally accurate descriptions of butling.

The best-known fictional manservant, and the prototype of the quintessential British butler, is himself not a butler at all. Reginald Jeeves, the iconic creation of author P.G. Wodehouse is a "gentleman's gentleman". Probably the best-known fictional butlers are Alfred from the Batman comic and films; Hudson of Upstairs, Downstairs television fame; and, Crichton from J.M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton. Lesser-known characters include Mr. Belvedere from the novel Belvedere, which was adapted into a feature film with sequels and later a television series; Lurch, from the television series The Addams Family, based on Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons; Beach, from the Wodehouse series about Blandings Castle; and, Benson from the two series Soap and Benson.

Sources/references;  The International Guild of Professional Butlers, Victorian Household Hints by Elizabeth Drury, Not In Front of the Servants by Frank Dawes, Rise and Fall of the Victorian Servant by Pamela Horn, Etiquette by Emily Post, Victorian life and Victorian fiction: A companion for the American reader by Jo McMurtry Hamden, US News and World Report. Mrs. Beaton's Book of Household Management. Stephen Ewen: A Brief History of Butlers and Buttling, NDR Germany, Hinchingbrooke House, Wil Haygood - Washington Post.