Life is getting more and more diminished. Take The Footman pub, a stone’s throw from Berkeley Square in the heart of Mayfair. The pub was once known as ‘I am the only Running Footman’. In the eighties, it was shortened to ‘The only Running Footman’. But even that proved too much of a tongue-twister. So it became The Footman. Very meager indeed.
Why didn’t they call it The Junior Ganymede, I wonder. According to P.G. Wodehouse biographer Norman Murphy, Jeeves’ famous club was based on ‘I am the only Running Footman’. So it was not a club, but a pub, because even the highly regarded ‘My Man’ Jeeves, a valet instead of a butler, was not supposed to visit clubs.
The Footman, let’s just call it that, was the local pub for the “Downstairs” staff who made up the lion’s share of the households in the luxury apartments and townhouses that still characterise this upmarket district. ‘The lower classes live in pubs, the higher classes die in pubs’, as the saying goes.
A pub has been on this site since the mid-eighteenth century, when Mayfair was built, The pub we know today was rebuilt in 1936. It was the staff pub, for the downstairs in the traditional upstairs, downstairs household of the upper class.
Of course, there were also class differences within the Downstairs community, as anyone who has ever seen Downton Abbey – or Upstairs, Downstairs – will know. Those differences were maintained for decades at The Footman. The ‘Private Bar’ was for the valets and butlers; the Snug Bar was for slightly less prominent executives; the Saloon Bar for most of the other employees, while the stable boys had to make do with the Public Bar.
It is the snob in Jeeves who wants to turn his pub, where he naturally had access to the most exclusive Private Bar, into a club. Or perhaps he thought that Wooster would not understand otherwise. However, Wooster says he is surprised about the presence of a club in the street in question, while he is aware of a ‘public bar’ there. You can imagine the disgusted face with which he pronounces the words.
Anyway, the “Junior Ganymede,” a reference to the servant of the Greek god Zeus, appears in several of the brilliant Jeeves & Wooster books. One of the house rules is that members can describe the peculiar behaviour of their boss in a logbook. The notes about ‘Wooster, B.’ are the most extensive, with eleven pages. Incidentally, the members of the club are permitted only to read these writings; not pass them on.
When I visited recently, the landlord at the current“Footman,” knew nothing of its connection with Jeeves or Wodehouse. The pub is frequented by Wooster-like layabouts. However, a builder from one of the nearby buildings did drop in for a quick half pint.
I don't think Jeeves would have felt very comfortable there. But they do still serve a real bitter called The Running Footman. Incidentally, it's unforgivable that there’s no running footman on the current sign. More diminished indeed, just as I said.