The Remains of the Day - By Kazuo Ishiguro Page 0,55
as was silver during a meal, and as such, it served as a public index of a house’s standards. And Mr Marshall it was who first caused stupefaction amongst ladies and gentlemen visiting Charleville House with displays of silver polished to previously unimagined standards. Very soon, naturally, butlers up and down the country, under pressure from their employers, were focusing their minds on the question of silver-polishing. There quickly sprang up, I recall, various butlers, each claiming to have discovered methods by which they could surpass Mr Marshall – methods they made a great show of keeping secret, as though they were French chefs guarding their recipes. But I am confident – as I was then – that the sorts of elaborate and mysterious processes performed by someone like Mr Jack Neighbours had little or no discernible effect on the end result. As far as I was concerned, it was a simple enough matter: one used good polish, and one supervised closely. Giffen’s was the polish ordered by all discerning butlers of the time, and if this product was used correctly, one had no fear of one’s silver being second best to anybody’s.
I am glad to be able to recall numerous occasions when the silver at Darlington Hall had a pleasing impact upon observers. For instance, I recall Lady Astor remarking, not without a certain bitterness, that our silver ‘was probably unrivalled’. I recall also watching Mr George Bernard Shaw, the renowned playwright, at dinner one evening, examining closely the dessert spoon before him, holding it up to the light and comparing its surface to that of a nearby platter, quite oblivious to the company around him. But perhaps the instance I recall with most satisfaction today concerns the night that a certain distinguished personage – a cabinet minister, shortly afterwards to become foreign secretary – paid a very ‘off the record’ visit to the house. In fact, now that the subsequent fruits of those visits have become well documented, there seems little reason not to reveal that I am talking of Lord Halifax.
As things turned out, that particular visit was simply the first of a whole series of such ‘unofficial’ meetings between Lord Halifax and the German Ambassador of that time, Herr Ribbentrop. But on that first night, Lord Halifax had arrived in a mood of great wariness; virtually his first words on being shown in were: ‘Really, Darlington, I don’t know what you’ve put me up to here. I know I shall be sorry.’
Herr Ribbentrop not being expected for a further hour or so, his lordship had suggested to his guest a tour of Darlington Hall – a strategy which had helped many a nervous visitor to relax. However, as I went about my business, all I could hear for some time was Lord Halifax, in various parts of the building, continuing to express his doubts about the evening ahead, and Lord Darlington trying in vain to reassure him. But then at one point I overheard Lord Halifax exclaiming: ‘My goodness, Darlington, the silver in this house is a delight.’ I was of course very pleased to hear this at the time, but what was for me the truly satisfying corollary to this episode came two or three days later, when Lord Darlington remarked to me: ‘By the way, Stevens, Lord Halifax was jolly impressed with the silver the other night. Put him into a different frame of mind altogether.’ These were – I recollect it clearly – his lordship’s actual words and so it is not simply my fantasy that the state of the silver had made a small, but significant contribution towards the easing of relations between Lord Halifax and Herr Ribbentrop that evening.
It is probably apt at this point to say a few words concerning Herr Ribbentrop. It is, of course, generally accepted today that Herr Ribbentrop was a trickster: that it was Hitler’s plan throughout those years to deceive England for as long as possible concerning his true intentions, and that Herr Ribbentrop’s sole mission in our country was to orchestrate this deception. As I say, this is the commonly held view and I do not wish to differ with it here. It is, however, rather irksome to have to hear people talking today as though they were never for a moment taken in by Herr Ribbentrop – as though Lord Darlington was alone in believing Herr Ribbentrop an honourable gentleman and developing a working relationship with him. The truth is that Herr Ribbentrop