A butler on leave travels through the English landscape – an outwardly tranquil environment, whose greatness lies in its “very lack of obvious drama or spectacle” (29); an explicit image of the dignified professional that our butler, Mr Stevens, has endeavored to be during his entire life. A great butler, he theorizes, embodies dignity, a virtue resting on the imperturbability of his person and on the moral status of the household that he serves.
On both accounts, Mr Stevens wants to believe that he has succeeded, and he sets out to recall certain episodes in his life that reflect this success: for instance, the fact that on the day his father died, he kept working Stoically, serving the guests at a pro-German political meeting organized by his employer, Lord Darlington.
Even as he is proudly reminiscing, we get increasingly uncomfortable about the choices Mr Stevens has made – from his neglect of his dying father to his repression of his feelings for the housekeeper, Miss Kenton; and at a low point, we witness him unquestioningly obeying Lord Darlington’s order to fire two Jewish maids. “The whole matter caused me great concern” (162), he ensures Miss Kenton, but his discomfort is hardly redeeming. We can only conclude that Mr Stevens has bought his self-image at great personal and moral cost; that he has wronged himself and people close to him in order to serve a master very much on the wrong side of history – not an evil character, but a man precisely whose reactionary noble ideals made him a useful idiot to Nazis and anti-Semites.
Still, Mr Stevens has a conscience, and these events have made enough of an impression for him to recollect them perfectly; in his previous life he may have had no room to reflect with length upon all this, but now he does. When we are tempted to judge Mr Stevens most harshly, he is catching up to our judgment; “I trust I need hardly underline the extent of the discomfort I suffered tonight on account of the unfortunate misunderstanding concerning my person” (203), he confesses after he has misled his hosts about his identity.
In fact, as he continues ‘motoring’ through the countryside, his reflections become increasingly penetrative and perceptive, cushioned as they may be by euphemisms, and by a sudden switch to the impersonal pronoun when the first person would be too painful:
“Naturally, when one looks back to such instances today, they may indeed take the appearance of being crucial, precious moments in one’s life; but of course, at the time, this was not the impression one had. Rather, it was as though one had available a never-ending number of days, months, years in which to sort out the vagaries of one’s relationship with Miss Kenton; an infinite number of further opportunities in which to remedy the effect of this or that misunderstanding. There was surely nothing to indicate at the time that such evidently small incidents would render whole dreams forever irredeemable.” (188-189)
Mr Stevens uses this one vacation to visit Miss Kenton (now married but apparently divorcing her husband), following up on a letter which has made him believe that she might be open to coming to work at Darlington Hall again and revive something of the old days under the new, American employer. As he gets closer to his destination, we come to wonder to what extent his current reflective mode will allow his self-image, as a butler of dignity, to remain intact.
And indeed, after his meeting with Miss Kenton, who – as Mrs Benn – has decided to stay with her husband after all, our dear butler breaks down in a conversation with a stranger; “I’ve given what I had to give. I gave it all to Lord Darlington”, he weeps (255). “All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile. I can’t even say I made my own mistakes. Really – one has to ask oneself – what dignity is there in that?” (256)
Not much, perhaps. But at the price of this painful realization, something has been gained as well; in the evening of Mr Stevens’ life, something still remains of what he strove after during the day. For when Miss Kenton finally says that she has come to realize that she does love her husband and that one “can’t be forever dwelling on what might have been” (251) – well, one can only hope one would respond with such dignity as does Mr Stevens.