Foreword

I first encountered Crale as a boy of nine, during the long summers my family spent at Hartenden. He was my grandfather's butler, though to call him that is rather like calling the Thames a stream. Crale did not merely manage a household; he governed it, with a precision that I have since encountered in no institution, military or otherwise, in the half-century that followed.

My grandfather, who was not an easy man to impress, once remarked that Crale was the only person in the house who never required instruction and never offered an opinion unless it was correct. This was, I came to understand, not quite accurate. Crale held a great many opinions. He simply delivered them with such economy that one mistook them for facts.

I recall an afternoon, I must have been ten or eleven, when I appeared at table with my collar askew and my hands in a state that Crale later described, with characteristic restraint, as "agricultural." He said nothing during the meal. Afterwards, he intercepted me in the corridor and, in approximately forty-five seconds, explained the purpose of soap, the function of a collar stud, and the impression created by a young gentleman who presented himself as though he had recently been exhumed. I have never forgotten a word of it. I have, on occasion, wished I could.

When I learned that Crale had undertaken to produce a guide, a written record of the standards he spent a lifetime upholding, I confess I felt something close to relief. Not for my own sake, for I received my education in person, and the bruises to my dignity have long since healed. But I have watched, as Crale has watched, the steady erosion of knowledge that was once simply understood. The young men of this era are not, I think, less capable than those of mine. They have simply never been told. No one has taken them aside in a corridor and, in forty-five seconds, set them right.

This guide will do what Crale has always done: tell you plainly what you need to know, without flattery, without apology, and without any particular interest in whether you find the experience agreeable. You will be better for having read it, though I would not expect him to say so.

He never was one for encouragement. He did not think you needed it. That, if you understand him at all, was the compliment.

Sir Edward Astley-Pemberton, Bt., KCVO

Wiltshire, 2024