Nothing But An Unassuming Valet

Nothing But An Unassuming Valet by Kit Miller first appeared in issue Issue 104 in 2023.

Summary

It's Lord David's birthday, and his valet Jonathan talks to his guests.

Connections

This story is followed directly by An Unexpected Mole and less directly by Leisure and Little Luxuries.

Author's Notes

I invented these characters and the setting quite some time ago, but had only dabbled around with them, writing little more than snippets. I thought they would be quite the good fit for S2B2 and gave them a dust-off. Originally, I had intended the criminal element in this story to be the fact that homosexuality itself was illegal at the time. But this, I decided, was way too depressing and would just not do! I then wondered what other laws these two could be breaking. I wanted them to still remain unquestionably heroic, so my mind turned to Robin Hood; and from there, to the repatriation of colonial loot. And hey presto!

It was important to me to make clear that despite the power imbalance inherent in their master-servant relationship, Jonathan has quite a bit of power in his own right and is on equal footing with David. He may be inferior to David as his servant, but in the organisation, Jonathan is firmly in charge, and on an interpersonal level, they are equals.

The hierarchy of domestic servants in old aristocratic houses is complicated and I probably got it wrong somewhere. I also probably got the forms of address of the various aristocratic guests wrong; in fact, I'm sure I did. But, in contrast to my usual approach to writing historical fiction — which is to obsessively research every minor thing — I decided not to sweat the details with this one as much and focussed instead on having fun (not that my research rabbit holes aren’t fun, of course).

For example, the idea that a servant would be ignored or overlooked in investigations into major theft is not based on a shred of truth. It is much rather inspired by classic crime and detective novels à la Doyle and Christie, in which the butler most certainly never did it; domestic staff and servants are usually ignored or glossed over. In reality, Jonathan would probably have been found out the first time he ever nicked a colonial artefact. David and Jonathan are, of course, named after the biblical figures, but don't read too much into it; when I come up with new characters, I usually give them placeholder names, which often are some kind of reference to the characters' respective roles in the story until I come up with better ones. This time, though, I'm afraid the placeholders stuck. It then amused me to give the rest of the Prevost estate names derived from the Old Testament, as well; but the names are all I took.

The county ‘Spokehamshire,’ and the county-town ‘Spokeham’ I invented; I imagine Spokehamshire to be located somewhere between present-day Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. The 'Spoke' part comes from Swedish "spöke" meaning ghost (i.e. it does not exist, it is insubstantial, not real). I chose Swedish because of the long history of Scandinavian/Norse place names in the British Isles. Also, the word “spöke” is fun to say.

Since we are celebrating Shousetsu's eighteenth birthday, I peppered that number around the story; even the fact that Jonathan meets his co-conspirators at six pm counts, as six pm in the twenty-four hour format is 18. Some historical trivia: the Ethiopian cross is mentioned to have been stolen in 1868, which was when the British Empire sent a group of soldiers on a roaring rampage of revenge to Abyssinia, which turned out so destructive and vindictive even contemporary commentators were appalled. Ethiopian crosses are beautiful, by the way, you should look them up.

The name Featherstonehaugh is pronounced Fenshaw. Yes, really!

If you want to read an (extremely) comprehensive Victorian guide on domestic staff and household management, here's one at project Gutenberg.

External Links

This story is also available on Archive of Our Own (AO3).