The Lady's Maid and the Valet

Of all the staff offices in a serious household, the offices of the lady's maid and the valet are, in their nature, the most intimate. These are the staff who attend the principal and the principal's spouse in the unguarded moments of the day; who lay out the clothes for the morning, who travel with the family on visits abroad, who know the small physical and personal habits which the wider household has no occasion to observe. The discretion, judgement and private companionship the work demands are not qualities a household acquires casually. They are the result of thoughtful selection and, in the most fortunate establishments, of long tenure.

We are sometimes asked whether the offices, in their traditional form, retain a place in the modern household. Our answer is that they do, in any establishment whose principal has a sustained programme of formal engagements, considerable travel, or a wardrobe of any seriousness. The offices are also, where they survive, among the most rewarding for the staff who hold them. The lady's maid or valet of long standing is, in many distinguished houses, a member of the principal's life in a sense few other staff achieve.

The lady's maid or valet who travels with the principal performs, on the road, the same offices they perform at home, but in conditions which require considerable resourcefulness. The wardrobe is reduced to a careful selection of essentials. Standing arrangements provided by the residence are replaced, for the journey's duration, by the staff member's own discreet preparation. Small misfortunes of travel are addressed without the principal needing to be drawn into them. A lady's maid or valet who acquits themselves well in these circumstances earns, by patient demonstration of competence over many journeys, a particular trust which the home household alone would not have produced.

We close with a point about the personal nature of the relationship. The staff in these offices are not, in any meaningful sense, friends of the principal; the proper distance is preserved on both sides, and is part of what makes the relationship sustainable across the years. They are, however, presences in the principal's life of a particular and thoughtful kind. A principal who recognises this with appropriate tenure, fair remuneration and quiet personal regard has acquired the kind of household companionship no purely commercial arrangement can produce.