The Butler's Christmas Eve

 It’s time for the annual Clothes in Books trope of Christmas in Books – seasonal scenes from random books, for no better reason than I like looking for the pictures, and I and some readers find them cheery and Xmas-y - particularly, of course, those featuring murders and other miseries. This one is crime-related but not too miserable... 

The Butler’s Christmas Eve by Mary Roberts Rhinehart

published 1944

 

William stood in the rain waiting for the bus. In the fading daylight he looked rather like a freshly-washed 80 year old and beardless Santa Claus, and underneath his raincoat he clutchd  parcel which conained a much-worn nightshirt, an extra pair of socks, a fresh shirt and a brand-new celluloid collar. It also contained a pint flask of the best Scotch whisky… The Christmas Eve crowd around him was wet but amiable.

 I was pretty much delighted to find this picture, which seemed just right. It looks like an Edward Hopper painting,  but is a photograph showing a bus queue in 1940s Massachusetts, from Library of Congress

 

comments: Mary Roberts Rhinehart was a massively successful writer, who is often dismissed as producing romantic thrillers, and credited (if that's the word) with inventing the HIBK meme – that stands for Had I but Known, and I have described it thus: "alleged to be what dippy heroines say when they go out onto the dark staircase in their nighties with just a candle, ie ‘Had I but known the evil in that house, I would have stayed in my bed."’ 

But - you'd suspect much of the comment on Rinehart comes from people who haven’t read her. One of her books is on the blog here, The Case of Jennie Brice, and I say there how impressed I was and how enjoyable her books are. She wrote a shedload of them, over the course of 50 years.

This short story I found in a Christmas anthology, and it is a right charmer. William is going back to a house he used to work in: he was summarily dismissed a year ago by the young woman he helped raise: he was sorry to leave her grandfather, whom he had served for so many years. And now he has been summoned back…

I generally cast a cold eye on tales about servants who love their masters and put up with anything, and poor William seems to me to be appallingly treated, and Miss Sally a right soandso. But I was obliged to put me socialist pinko ways aside because I enjoyed the story so much. The fact that it is set during WW2 is key, and looms large, but even so I had to keep reminding myself that this was 1944 and not 30 years earlier. The story ambles along, not in any great hurry but beautifully written, and Rinehart knows exactly what she is doing. I enjoyed it  hugely - even the title seems to me to be a perfect inriguing phrase. 

 A Christmas tree is important, so here you go: