YOU RANG? Mastering the Art of Serving the Rich by John P
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THOMAS FRANK: IT’S NOT THE TEA PARTY, IT’S YOU HARPER’S MAGAZINE/JANUARY 2014 $6.99 u YOU RANG? Mastering the Art of Serving the Rich By John P. Davidson THE PIOUS SPY A Taliban Intelligence Chief’s Death and Resurrection By Mujib Mashal SUBJECT TO SEARCH A story by Lorrie Moore Also: Lydia Davis, Lauren Groff, Gordon Lish u FOLIO You Rang? Mastering the art of serving the rich By John P. Davidson Stranded be- The Starkey In- tween parking lots stitute functions as in downtown Denver a laboratory simu- two blocks from the lation of a great state capitol, the Star- house. In addition key International to training stu- Institute is both a dents in household- relic of the past and management strate- a portal into the al- gies, proper cleaning ternate reality of our techniques, and the new Gilded Age. care of antiques, de- Redbrick with white signer clothing, and trim, the mansion luxury automobiles, that houses the insti- the Starkey staff tute was built by a make site visits to wealthy family in the the homes of poten- Georgian style prev- tial clients to place alent during the turn of the twentieth century. Starkey graduates, train existing staff, and carry Mary Louise Starkey—who styles herself the “First out consultations. Mrs. Starkey claims to offer a Lady of Service”—opened the institute’s doors in privileged view of “the behind-the-scenes life- 1981, just before the heady free-market reforms of styles of the wealthiest in the world.” And so, Ronald Reagan’s rst term. Now, after a genera- along with eleven fellow students, I enrolled tion’s worth of tax cuts, deregulation, and union- there in April 2012 in hopes of emerging eight busting that have spawned a new class of the weeks later a certied estate manager, qualied super-rich, the Starkey Institute (inevitably de- for intimate employment by the One scribed as the “Harvard of private-service Percent’s One Percent. schools”) claims to turn away many applicants from what the media has taken to calling its Finding good servants was once such a prob- “butler boot camp.” lem in the United States that in 1865 Catharine John P. Davidson is a freelance writer based in Austin, Texas. His novel, The Obedient Assassin, is out this month from Delphinium Books. Photographs by Moyra Davey from the Homestead Inn–Thomas Henkelmann. Davey’s work is currently on view at Satellite Gallery, in Vancouver. Courtesy Murray Guy, New York City. Borders courtesy private collection, New York City FOLIO 41 Beecher, a reformer and authority on domestic life, peared; bedrooms shrank and living spaces owed made a proposal in the pages of this magazine for together. Rising wages, taxes, and energy costs houses “built on Christian principles”; that is, bet- meant that large, old-fashioned estates became too ter designed and organized, so they could be run expensive to run. with only the occasional help of an “assistant.” The recent shift back to servants has happened (This was something of a revolutionary idea in an largely out of sight. The Bureau of Labor Statistics era of hand-cranked washing machines, fteen does not track the employment of butlers and house years before gas stoves became affordable, and managers, but there has been undeniable growth in seventeen years before the iron was electried— the professionalized private-service industry in re- but it was necessary, Beecher asserted, to avoid an cent years. Between 2000 and 2012, the number of epidemic of female laziness and the ruination of U.S. billionaires doubled, to 405, and the number children by “ignorant foreigners.”) of individuals with fortunes of at least $50 million The United States never had anything like the swelled to 45,650. Matthew Haack and Michael English servant class: people did not emigrate to Wright founded the Domestic Estate Managers become servants; notwithstanding racial barriers, Association in 2006. The association now has more than 2,000 members and estimates that 450,000 houses in the United States have some kind of regular personal staff. For some time, becoming a servant had been one of those idle dropout fantasies I entertained, along with be- coming a shepherd or joining a mon- astery. Now, having sold my house and spent ten years and a great deal of money writing a novel that my agent hadn’t been able to sell, I had a some- what more urgent interest in the six- gure jobs the Starkey Institute dangles before prospective students. And per- haps I would like being a servant. I had read somewhere that Patrick Dennis, after blowing the fortune he’d made on his novel Auntie Mame, had ended his life happily as a butler. And a friend in Atlanta had told me that his mother had a wonderful life with her butler/ houseman, taking him everywhere with her, on trips to Europe and to exclusive resorts. “Everyone in Atlanta has started using gays,” he assured me. The school urged students to come prepared to accept a job at the end of the course (though at a cost of $16,795, including a $500 application our class system was fairly uid; and there were fee and a nonrefundable $2,800 room-and-board many employment opportunities and cheap land. deposit, the urging seemed unnecessary). Rich For most of those in private service, such employ- families who wanted a butler wouldn’t wait. “Are ment was not a hereditary or even stable vocation you willing to move?” the admissions ofce asked but a temporary gig. Nevertheless, the number of me. It was best to be free of attach- servants continued more or less to keep pace with ments, ready to go. the population until World War II, when able- bodied men were shipped overseas and women, for I entered my new life of service on Easter whom employment up to that point had mostly Sunday. Mark Tollison, the institute’s director of been in private service, went to work in factories. admissions, greeted me at the door. A nice-looking The postwar economic boom further diverted both man in his fties, wearing a navy blazer and oral- jobs and workers from private service, and by 1950 print tie, he helped me with my luggage. I followed only one in forty-two families had full-time ser- him through a very big kitchen and up a short vants, as compared with one in fteen in 1900. ight of stairs. Framed photographs of previous New houses were much smaller and more efcient. Starkey classes lined the walls of the staircase and The formal dining room and butler’s pantry disap- continued down a broad central hallway on the 42 HARPER’S MAGAZINE / JANUARY 2014 second oor. “You’re in here,” Tollison said, knock- lison went through the rules and regulations. We ing on the rst door to the right. After waiting a were to address peers and Starkey staff as Mr. or moment, he opened the door just as a man in his Ms. We would stand whenever a staff member late thirties, shirtless and wearing plaid boxer or guest entered a room. And, of course, we would shorts, came striding across the room. Short and never use the front door. During the business day, muscular, with wiry black hair, thick eyebrows, we would use the back stairs. We would keep our and heavy black-framed glasses, he stuck out his rooms ready for inspection. We would not smoke hand and announced his name: David Palmer.1 cigarettes or drink alcoholic beverages in the David wore a gold signet ring overlapping a wed- house. Dinner was at ve thirty, curfew at eleven. ding band on the little nger of his left hand, and if “Placement is a big deal,” Bullock (or rather, it’s possible to look dapper when you’re almost naked, Ms. Bullock) said. “Everybody wants to nd a great he did. He mentioned that working at Christie’s job . .. There are a lot of placement agencies out after college had made him decide that he wanted there, but they don’t have the service-management to own some of the objects he was handling, which system that we do. Mrs. Starkey goes into homes was why he’d come to Starkey International. I had to do a site visit and will write a fty-page report. the impression he’d said it many times before. “Mrs. Starkey is very passionate about what Our large room was painted a pale green and she does,” she continued. “She makes had wall-to-wall beige carpeting; most of the fur- people cry.” niture looked as if it had come from an estate sale. I unpacked my things until it was time to get ready Most Americans are familiar with servants for orientation. “What do you think, blazer or from British novels and television shows— suit?” I asked. “Denitely a suit,” David answered P. G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves novels, the BBC series without hesitation. Upstairs Downstairs, and, more recently, Downton In the hall, two well-dressed, crew-cut men Abbey. But the Starkey mansion and its staff are who looked like government agents were coming part of a tradition, both feudalistic and paternal- out of the opposite room. Both, in fact, were istic, reaching back to the Middle Ages, when military aides—enlisted men who act as valets, aristocrats and wealthy gentry were, if you will, the chefs, and butlers to high-ranking ofcers. Gary original “job creators.” According to Jeremy Mus- Smith was running the household of a three-star son, who traces the evolution of the English ser- Army general in Washington and had come to vant class through the twentieth century in Up Denver for a one-week management course in and Down Stairs, by the eighteenth century the anticipation of leaving the Army and entering typical aristocratic household had between thirty private service.