The Lackersteens' butler
The tall, stork-like Mohammedan butler in white suit and pagri who waits at the Lackersteens' table. He speaks English well, which is why he is the only person in the room who understands both what Elizabeth Lackersteen has just said about Ma Hla May and what it means. His long body stiffens, and he squints down at her with his white eyeballs.
The book
At a glance
- Butler in the Lackersteens' house at Kyauktada
- He speaks English well, which is what makes the scene work
- None
- Chapter 7
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMr and Mrs Lackersteen, the English couple Elizabeth Lackersteen comes out to Burma to stay with, keep an Indian butler. He is a Muslim, and he waits at their breakfast table in a white suit and a turban, standing behind Mrs Lackersteen's chair with a tray in his hands while the fan swings overhead. Orwell describes him as tall and stork-like. He is never named and he never speaks.
He gets one moment, in chapter 7, and it works because of a fact Orwell supplies in the same paragraph. The butler speaks English well.
Elizabeth is telling her aunt and uncle about her morning at the house of John Flory, the timber merchant who is courting her. A Burmese girl came onto the veranda, she says, and Flory told her the girl was his laundress. The girl was Ma Hla May, whom Flory keeps as his mistress.
There is no such thing as a laundress in Burma. Laundry work there is done by men, and everyone at that table except Elizabeth knows it. Mr Lackersteen begins to say so, gets as far as "if you ask me", and stops as suddenly as if somebody had trodden on his foot under the table. The butler, who has understood every word and exactly what it means, goes stiff behind the chair and looks down at the girl.
How the book draws them
- How the book draws himTall and stork-like, an Indian Muslim in a white suit and turban.
- Where he standsBehind Mrs Lackersteen's chair at breakfast, tray in hand, at a table loaded with flowers, under a fan pulled by a servant outside the room.
- He speaks English wellOrwell states it in the same breath as the reaction, because it is the reason for the reaction. He is the only person in the room who is not English and who follows what has just been said.
- The stiffeningElizabeth repeats Flory's story that Ma Hla May is his laundress. The butler's long body goes rigid and he squints down at her, and that is all he does. Her uncle starts to correct her out loud and thinks better of it.