Eric Maas’s Reviews > The Remains of the Day > Status Update

’I suffered so much over Ruth and Sarah leaving us. And I suffered all the more because I believed I was alone.’

This after just unreservedly admitting how she didn’t follow up on her threat to resign out of fear. Miss Kenton has a beautiful talent for being human. She is authentic, sweet and professional all the time. And then there is Stevens…

4. Day Three – Morning (Taunton, Somerset)

Polishing silver and welcoming Von Ribbentrop at Darlington Hall. Get your priorities straight, Stevens!

3. Day Two – Afternoon (Mortimer’s Pond, Dorset)

02. Day Two – Morning (Salisbury)

01. Day One — Evening (Salisbury)

[The great butlers] wear their professionalism as a decent gentleman will wear his suit […] he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone .

Which must be during the remains of the day…

…the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their undeniably demonstrativeness.

Stevens, making me laugh out loud. He is so conditioned, that a different reality is out of the question. And the understated British landscape being the summum would fit him perfectly of course.

And yet tonight, in the quiet of this room, I find that what really remains with me from this first day’s travel is not Salisbury Cathedral, nor any of the other charming sights of this city, but rather that marvelous view encountered this morning of the rolling English countryside.

So Eric, not the few hours of privacy remaining after a day’s service, but that which stands out most at the end of the day