Reality, though, didn't halt their appeal and today's cottage weekenders were already an established caste by 1904 when Modern Cottage Architecture offered designs for buildings that could be run "with just one servant" and Heal's brought out a range of country cottage furniture.
"Traditionally, diplomatic courtesy allows you to bring one servant with you".
Cornelius Demarest, a lime dealer, for instance, lived with his family of four and one servant at 174.
Mr. Van Ness, a stockbroker, is listed next door with his wife, also named Adelaide, and one servant.
He gives Howard a sex scene with one black servant, played by Isaach De Bankolé, whose conquest of Grace looks uncomfortably close to rape.
Most had moved from town houses in Midtown and lived with one or two servants.
Never mind that the man is twice her age and that she's secretly in love with one of the servants, who is secretly a member of Neapolitan nobility.
Fensom and Karim-Cooper have high hopes for one scene, in which the Duchess (who has been having an affair with one of her servants, to the horror of her brothers) is shown a group of wax figures and persuaded they are the corpses of her lover and children.
Cash-poor, he is without the means to repair it, and maintains his household with just one domestic servant, Lao Huang (Ye Xiaokeng), an old retainer from his late father's time.
"I would love it if a panel of outside judges came in and tested everyone I have to work with," said one civil servant complaining about the lack of meritocracy in his field.
