When Downton Abbey initially aired, I had many young children. Getting swept up into a British TV drama was the best! As I would watch it, I resonated with and cheered for the stories of the downstairs servants. The maids, the cooks, the footmen—these were my people. I had spent over a decade serving my family, cleaning, cooking, organizing, and serving. Living a life of service to others is my vocation. And this does not come naturally for me; I have to choose it because I believe it matters and makes a difference.
I am reading the novel A Gentleman in Moscow. The writing is fantastic, and so I don’t want to blow through it quickly like I normally do. Every night when I crawl in bed after my nightly shower, there is a deep exhale when I burrow down into my bedding to read a novel. Last night I read this quote in the author Towles’s novel, reminiscent of Downton.
For over two centuries (or so historians tell us), it was from the St. Petersburg salons that our country’s culture advanced. From those great rooms overlooking the Fontanka Canal, new cuisines, fashions, and ideas all took their first tentative steps into Russian society. But if this was so, it was largely due to the hive of activity beneath the parlor floors. For there, just a few steps below street level, were the butlers, cooks, and footmen who together ensured that when the notions of Darwin or Manet were first bandied about, all went off without a hitch.
And so it was at the Metropol.
Ever since its opening in 1905, the hotel’s suites and restaurants had been a gathering spot for the glamorous, influential, and erudite; but the effortless elegance on display would not have existed without the services of the lower floor.
Today my daughter comes home from her junior year in college. I have been tidying her room, her dad put fresh sheets on the bed, and I made sure her bathroom is clean. I am going to get her new bathmats today and a fresh plant for her counter. I have folded all the laundry, washed my own sheets, and am looking around the house with an eye towards order and comfort. Like the unassuming help in bygone British and Russian days, I am setting an environment for my family so that in their busy lives, all can move forward “without a hitch”.
Home can be the place for the deliberation of great ideas, the platform for influence, the setting for lofty conversations. A welcoming shelter for guests to come, be inspired, and offer their own theories, art, and ideals. But creating these spaces doesn’t happen casually or automatically. There is a person behind the scenes, setting the scene, and providing the means. When an evening with family or guests unfolds without a hitch, it is because someone has been attentive. She or he has led the smallest of details to completion with grace and care, fluidly like a dancer on the evening of a recital. They make it look easy, and yet the practice and planning has taken much time.
Workers at home aren’t the elegant or the glamorous. Most of the days are spent in quiet, and without notice by society’s powerful and influential. There is an assumption that someone will take care of the small things, usually hired out or done by someone who feels called to this lifestyle. Without this careful work, the “effortless elegance” of a life well-lived won’t happen. Thoughtful caregiving and placemaking is essential, and I have grown content to do it by choice.
Off to Target for bathmats and the plant nursery for beauty,
Aimee