Sublime

John Macdonald (1741–96), a Scottish Highlander, was a famous footman who wrote memoirs of his experiences in service. An orphan who had been sacked from a previous job rocking a baby’s cradle, Macdonald found work in a gentleman’s house turning the spit. He was aged just five.

The desk clerk, whose name-plate identified him as G. O. Horner, was a thin, elderly man with protuberant eyes that gave him an expression of intense interest and curiosity. The expression was false. After thirty years in the business, people meant no more to him than individual bees do to a beekeeper. Their differences were lost in a welter of sta

Lady Duff Twysden, a character right out of a very good English novel who had lost her way. Her look was original, her chic was original, and God knows her speech and her capacity for drink were all original.