A butler is a domestic worker in a large household. In great houses, the household is sometimes divided into departments with the butler in charge of the dining room, wine cellar, and pantry. Some also have charge of the entire parlour floor, and housekeepers caring for the entire house and its appearance. A butler is usually male, and in charge of male servants, while a housekeeper is usually a woman, and in charge of female servants. Traditionally, male servants (such as footmen) were rarer and therefore better paid and of higher status than female servants. The butler, as the senior male servant, has the highest servant status.
In modern houses where the butler is the most senior worker, titles such as majordomo, butler administrator, house manager, manservant, staff manager, chief of staff, staff captain, estate manager and head of household staff are sometimes given. The precise duties of the employee will vary to some extent in line with the title given, but perhaps more importantly in line with the requirements of the individual employer. In the grandest homes or when the employer owns more than one residence, there is sometimes an estate manager of higher rank than the butler.
Read more about Butler: Background, Origin and History, Training, Gender and Butlering, Historically Important Butlers, Surname, In Visual Art, In Fiction
Famous quotes containing the word butler:
“The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the Sphinx wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before we began to live consciously on our own accounts?”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
“My father is one of the few men I know who say they do not like Shakespeare. He says “Shakespeare is so very coarse.” I could forgive my father for not liking Shakespeare if it was only because Shakespeare wrote poetry, but this is not the reason. He says he likes Tennyson and this gravely aggravates his offence.”
—Samuel Butler (1835–1902)