1897: From the Diary of Blandy, Valet
In service to the Marquess of T——, Kensington, 1883–1897
I kept a pocket-book. I want to be clear about why.
I kept a pocket-book not because I anticipated that it would ever be useful to me in a court of law, but because I had, after fourteen years in service, observed that my memory was frequently required to corroborate or contradict my employer’s account of events and that my employer’s account of events was frequently shaped by his requirements rather than by what had actually occurred. I kept the pocket-book because I was tired of being asked to confirm things that I knew to be untrue, and because a man who keeps a pocket-book is never in the position of knowing something he cannot prove.
The breach of promise case. I gave my evidence accurately. The young woman was owed the truth of the matter and I gave it, not because I had any particular affection for her—I did not know her—but because the alternative was to stand in a court of law and confirm a version of events that my pocket-book specifically contradicted, and I was not willing to do that.
His Lordship dismissed me. The reference he wrote is among the finest I have received, which is the act of a man who wishes to be rid of a problem and has the wit to understand that a bad reference would create a larger one.
I have not published the pocket-book. I have not threatened to publish it. I have placed it with my solicitor under instructions that will govern its future if mine becomes uncertain.
This is not blackmail. Blackmail demands something in exchange for silence. I am simply silent, for reasons of my own, in possession of a document, like any other citizen. If His Lordship finds this arrangement uncomfortable, I would observe that I found fourteen years in his service considerably more uncomfortable, and that the asymmetry of our respective discomforts strikes me as, on balance, appropriate.
The pocket-book has three volumes. I am a thorough man.
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