It's the first morning of butler school in London, and I'm flanked by eleven classmates who paid $2,700 for the privilege of learning to be servants. We've convened in a conference room at the London headquarters of Bespoke Bureau, the elite staffing agency that runs the school. Compared with the royal grandeur just outsideâ€"a medieval stone courtyard where the lord mayor's coronation carriage is on displayâ€"the office space itself is more Dunder Mifflin bland, perhaps a first taste of the upstairs-downstairs dynamic to come. We're soon joined by instructor Steve Ford, 47, a sturdily built Welsh butler charged with teaching us formal table service, etiquette, and household management.
Ford gives each of us a good once-over, making sure we look the butler part: neat hair, clipped nails, no visible tattoos or jewelry other than wedding rings, even on the women. (Genderwise, our class is split fifty-fifty.) He checks our shoes, which, he says, should be "polished, enough that you can shave in them, but never outshine your boss's." Then he passes out our uniforms for the weekâ€"black ties and white shirts over black trousersâ€"and orders us each to take a turn at an ironing board set up in the center of the room, introducing ourselves as we press the wrinkles from our duds. (Or in my case, replace them with fresher wrinkles.)
My fellow trainees range in age from 25 to 49 and include a stewardess on the yacht of an American cosmetics billionaire, a Singaporean hotel manager, and a British-army sniper formerly stationed in Afghanistan who once worked as the concierge at a five-star hotel. All have previous experience in the high-end-service sector. Meanwhile I can't tell you if the dinner fork goes to the left or the right of the soufflé fork. Or do you eat soufflé with a spoon?
Lucky for me, my livelihood won't depend on knowing the answer (spoon). I'm here doing research, part of a larger mission to learn the truths of being a butler, a vocation that's booming. For that, you can thank our New Gilded Age, with a wealth gap that's become a yawning chasm. There are currently more millionaires worldwide than everâ€"the total jumped by 10 percent in 2012 aloneâ€"which means a huge demand for those who serve the super-rich, like the butler. The Russian oligarchs, Middle Eastern oil barons, and Asian moguls buying up expensive real estate in and around London are also exporting the Euro-aristocratic lifestyle back home. Thirty-five years ago, there were only a few hundred butlers left in Britain; today there are roughly 10,000, plus thousands more abroad, including the fastest-growing butler market of them all, China. "For the Chinese, it's a status thing," says Sara Vestin Rahmini, who founded Bespoke Bureau. "They're like, 'Just send us somebody who looks British, who looks European.' "
China now has over 1 million millionaires, with 90,000 minted just in 2012. Gary Williams, a London-based staffing agent who himself was a butler for fifteen years, credits much of China' s butler demand to Downton Abbey. Watched by millions of Chinese, it's one of the biggest British TV imports ever. The show is more than just a soapy diversion, he says; it's a guidebook for living in a stratified society. "The Chinese aren't even really sure what a British butler should do," says Williams. "It will take them ten to fifteen years to really understand that."
But they'll payâ€"and pay wellâ€"to find out. A new butler willing to go east, to Shanghai or Dubai or anywhere else suffering an Anglo-servant shortage, can start at $60,000 a year and run his employer's estate from the start. In the West, where standards are higher and the competition more fierce, a rookie typically apprentices for a few years and earns a starting salary of maybe $40,000. A butler in either market should hit six figures within five to six yearsâ€"sooner if he learns a few dirty secrets or gets poached by one of his boss's billionaire friends.
So the money is respectable and the demand is high. Yet buttlingâ€"which is the very ludicrous, very real verb for what butlers doâ€"obviously isn't a career that one takes on lightly. I couldn't help but wonder: Who wants to become a butler? There are easier ways to make a living that don't entail all-consuming servitude. So I tracked down butlers from Shanghai to Los Angeles, and even enrolled in butler school, in an effort to peek behind the velvet curtain.
What I saw was the intense, sometimes thankless existence I suspected. A butler supervises his boss's household staff, oversees his meals and entertainment, and attends to his every whim and desire. He must be equal parts concierge and Michael Clayton-esque fixer. In that sense, the basic job requirements haven't changed much in a hundred years. What has changed: the boss. Forget about the dainty lord ringing for his cup of tea. The butlers of today serve paranoid money managers, manor-owning supermodels, Chinese celebrities, and horny sheiks. And they all have storiesâ€"horrible, hilarious, sometimes hooker-fueled storiesâ€"that they never get to tell, because nobody talks to the butler. Until now.
Ford has worked as a private butler for twenty years. He' s served English nobility and Russian tycoons, but one of his recent gigs was for Claudia Schiffer and her British husband, Matthew Vaughn (director of Kick-Ass and X-Men: First Class), managing their 350-acre, seven-bedroom country estate in Suffolk, England. Ford supervised the staff of fourteen and looked after a supermodel's wardrobe. But the household, with its loose hierarchy, informal Hollywood vibe, and couture strewn around, proved too chaotic for his taste. So he quit. "I have certain standards, and I won't come down from them," he says. "I'd rather move on." He's been teaching at Bespoke for four years.
Ford's lessons cover practical matters like getting red-wine stains out of a decanter (use denture cleaner) and proper placement of the salad fork (nodded off during that one). But the bedrock of his instruction is deportment, especially the stuff a butler doesn' t do. It' s not a short list. A butler never offers his hand to be shaken. He never sits down in front of his boss. He never says "You're welcome" to a guest. "If you have to say anything at all,'" Ford tells us, "say 'My pleasure, 'because "You' re welcome" is very hotel." And if something is "very hotel" or "very restaurant," it's too lax for a butler. If a butler screws up, apologies should be succinctâ€"or not made at all. Once, when Ford served at a royal banquet, a VIP female guest abruptly turned into him, forcing his hand down her blouse. He said nothing: "Who do you think would be more embarrassed if I did?"
Ford spent nine years in the British army, where he first learned the trade. He says exmilitary are drawn to the profession, and he's seen a recent influx as Britain has drawn down its deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq: "They're lost, as I was. They can't cope with civilian life. As a butler, they get security and a place to live, and the discipline is there." Ex-soldiers make the best butlers, he says, because they come programmed to take orders and can tolerate abuse. Plus, they know how to keep a secret.
Butlers see everything, but they're expected to say nothing. Traditionally they have been bound by a code of discretion, but that's changing now, too. These days, they're just as often bound by a thick nondisclosure agreement (which Ford says Schiffer never asked him to sign). To be safe, Ford advises our class to delete all our social-media accounts, just to minimize temptation and late-night slipups. A few students groan.
Ford says the harder part is holding your tongue around your boss. Especially when he's wrong. Especially when you're only trying to help. Butlers don't wryly dispense nuggets of fatherly wisdom the way wise old Alfred chastises young Master Wayne, not if they want to keep their jobs. The gig is about fulfilling every whim of your employer, no questions asked, no excuses given.
"Imagine you're giving a VIP dinner party for a client," Ford says to the class. "It's 9 p.m. and you get a call: Your child is sick and he's gone to the hospital. What do you do?"
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