Jeeves and the Incalculable Mistake

For those of us in service, there has, and I suspect always will be, dissension on one topic of particular importance: the wisdom of encouraging or discouraging one's employer to grow attached to you. One camp maintains that the vast number of employers are more comfortable with a natural distance; the less your presence is felt, the less constrained and more at ease your employer feels, and therefore they are more likely to retain those servants that are easily ignored. This camp also maintains that this method of behaviour saves them not only from the wilder caprices of the more emotional sort of master, but also from many hours of tedious listening.

The second camp, on the other hand and in a definite minority, feels that an employer who can unburden himself fully is less likely to dismiss you because this particular freedom not only binds you to him - emotionally, and, in some cases in a conspiratorial sense - making him dependent, but it also provides the alert and sympathetic servant with that knowledge which makes his master's behaviour easier to predict. (And, if nothing, else, it occasionally supplies the gentleman's gentleman in question some… leverage.)

I myself, however, have always been of the opinion that the correct answer depends very much on the individual employer in question. For instance, with certain of my previous employers, the less I knew of their activities, the less subject I was to criminal investigation.

But, upon entering Mr. Wooster's service, I was delighted to find a man very much of the second sort. I had not thought I possessed a preference until I found how rewarding it was to be seen by one's master - to not only be acknowledged as being in the room, but consulted and asked for one's advice, as if one's opinion was as worthy as any other's. It was something I had never expected, yet once found, it was like water to a man in the desert.

Yet, unlike water to the aforementioned individual, I did not appreciate it, or indeed even realize that I possessed it. If I had asked myself before this began what I felt towards Mr. Wooster, I would have believed my feelings were nothing more than the same general appreciation any servant would feel for a master who provides him with a comfortable situation. If pressed, I might have admitted to a certain level of vague fondness as well, but certainly nothing more. If my performance in my duties belied this impression, that was the observer's mistake; I believe in upholding standards, not slavishly serving out of devotion. Standards determine a man; devotion implies subjugation, even dependence.

And this has been my mistake.

This account is in the nature of a confession. I had first thought to put down this report in the Junior Ganymede Club book, but after many attempts to begin, I realized that it simply would not do. Sitting in front of the book itself, pen in hand, I had told myself my reasons were that it could possibly give rise to certain implications, which, no matter how erroneous, could cause difficulties not only for myself, but for Mr. Wooster. But that was cowardly, and I finally realized this account will serve no purpose if it is not honest.

No, it is the idea of exposing the shame I feel over my recent behaviour that keeps me from placing this in the Junior Ganymede book. The simple fact of the matter is that, for the first time, my master has written a memoir that is less than fully candid - or at least one that is not complete. That he does so on my behalf, pains me to no little degree. I can no longer stand for him to describe my actions in glowing terms, not without admitting to the truth, if nowhere else than in my own heart.

My master, Mr. Bertram Wilberforce Wooster, has a sunny disposition and a kindly and forgiving nature. He is an exceedingly generous employer, both in remunerative terms and in granting privileges. He is easy to care for, yet life with him is never boring. He is amenable to nearly any suggestion on my part and surprisingly considerate of my time as a matter of course. He is never harsh, never takes liberties and is extremely unusual in that not only is he not afraid to show genuine gratitude, he also makes a point of being constantly complimentary of my work.

In return, I have manipulated him often and without real thought, usually for my own comfort or amusement. I have risked his reputation and allowed - even abetted - his good name being denigrated in public. I have slandered his intelligence on more than one occasion. I have manoeuvred him into awkward and sometimes dangerous positions and, to 'make it up to him', I have fought him over or denied him the smallest pleasures in matters of wardrobe, even to the extent of destroying his personal property. I have done my utmost to make him dependent on me, and then used threats of leaving in order to have things as I wished. I have endeavoured to keep him from the comforts of marriage, and, most heinously perhaps, I have kept him from developing further relations with the only living members of his immediate family - his sister and his nieces, who will likely be the people he will have to depend on to care for him in his old age.

Feudal spirit indeed.

I can offer no excuse for my behaviour, even to myself. The only explanation I have been able to find is that a servant's life is a very insecure one, and the ability to control events is perhaps a reassuring one. However, this meagre justification is a hollow one. I now realize - with a painful amount of chagrin - that for nearly the entirety of my service in Mr. Wooster's employ, I have acted in ways that I always regarded as being against everything I stood for. Strangely though, as prideful as I am, even this disturbs me less than the idea of who it is I have hurt.

For it is a sad fact of life that one only seems to realize the importance of a particular relationship just when the state of that relationship has been rendered the most precarious. In this particular case, it was only brought home to me how much I respected and admired, and even felt affection for, Mr. Wooster at that exact time when I had unthinkingly put my position with him at the greatest risk.

But more than that, it was only when it had nearly cost me everything I hold dear - my position, my reputation, my own good opinion of myself and, far, far more importantly, the life of my master - did I feel the sickening fear of what I might lose.