By the Great Horn Spoon!

“He would be the first to admit that being folded up in a barrel, with a bowler hat balanced on his knees, was not the most comfortable way to travel. Now he brushed off the hat and placed it smartly on his head. He hooked a black umbrella on his arm, for he never traveled without it, and pulled on a pair of spotless white gloves.”

The incongruity of a man dressed as a fastidious Englishman—complete with bowler hat, umbrella, and white gloves—hiding in a barrel of potatoes on an American ship introduces both the novel’s fish-out-of-water humor and its main protagonist, Praiseworthy the butler. This quote suggests that, despite his new, rough surroundings, Praiseworthy will try hard to retain his composure and aplomb, with mixed success.

“There were thousands of feet of lumber and enough bricks to build a hotel. He saw boxes of rifles and two brass cannons—to fight off wild Indians, he supposed. And he could make out wet bundles of grape cuttings—enough to plant a vineyard.”

The Lady Wilma’s cargo represents the raw materials of what will become the new California, after the massively accelerated growth that will come with the Gold Rush. As gold-seekers and entrepreneurs from around the globe poured into the territory, which was not yet a US state, hotels and towns sprang up almost overnight, as well as agricultural ventures such as vineyards. The rifles and cannons also augur the decimation of the Indigenous American population, who were largely displaced from the region with great brutality—though this is not explicitly mentioned in the novel. The cargo of lumber and grape cuttings plays an important role during the ship’s voyage.

“Neither Jack nor his sisters remembered their parents, who had been taken away by cholera. The children had gone to live with their Aunt Arabella… She was as young and beautiful as the house was old and grand… In times past the house had been filled with servants and guests and laughter, but the family had fallen upon hard times.”

This quote establishes the story’s central problem: Jack and his two sisters are not only orphans but are about to lose what little family and security they have, if their aunt runs out of money and is forced to sell the house where they all live. These dire circumstances explain why Jack and Praiseworthy have embarked on their dangerous gambit. The description of Aunt Arabella as “young and beautiful” (and unmarried) hints at a possible romance for her later in the story.

“There’s nothing a butler cannot do. I open doors. I close doors. I announce that dinner is served. I supervise the staff and captain the household—much as you do this ship, sir. A most exacting job, if I may say so.”

At this point in the story, Praiseworthy’s confidence seems (humorously) misplaced: A refined Boston household, after all, is quite different from a sailing vessel full of rough men. He still sees himself as nothing but a butler, with all the limitations the role entails. But he’ll discover, throughout the story, that he’s capable of more.

“Jack was eager to work beside Praiseworthy, as if it brought them closer together. Sometimes he wished Praiseworthy were anything but a butler. It imposed a slight distance between them that Praiseworthy was careful to maintain. Jack would be happy to be called Jack, just Jack, not Master Jack. But Praiseworthy wouldn’t hear of it, even though they were now partners.”

The second of the novel’s major problems centers on the relationship between Jack, who is an orphan, and Praiseworthy, his nominal butler, who is also his longtime guardian and companion. Jack looks to Praiseworthy as a potential father figure, or at least a close friend, and longs to break down some of the formality between them. But Praiseworthy is fully committed to his traditional role of butler, which doesn’t permit expressions of familiarity with members of his employer’s family.

“Oh, I shouldn’t like to be anything but a butler. Not for a moment. I was born to my calling, like my father before me and his father before him. It will please me to go on serving your Aunt Arabella.”

Praiseworthy comes from a long line of English butlers, which explains his entrenched formality and reluctance to stray from the etiquette of his profession, which is, after all, a matter of family pride. Still, there are hints that his fastidiousness may soften throughout the story. The fact that he consistently refers to Jack’s young aunt by her name (Aunt Arabella), instead of by “your aunt,” suggests that he feels something more than a servant’s loyalty.

“Praiseworthy was left speechless—and hatless. For three or four days he was not quite himself. He missed the hat. He hardly felt like a butler without it. But Jack thought he looked just fine.” 

Praiseworthy loses one of the “badges” of his trade (his bowler) to a gust of sea wind. This symbolizes that he’s beginning to break out of his traditional role of butler. As he responds to the challenges of his new environment over the course of his western adventure, he will shed the other identifiers that ground him in his staid profession (his coat, gloves, and umbrella). Jack has long been frustrated by Praiseworthy’s formality, and is glad to see him look—and feel—less and less like a butler.

“The city stretched out across the sand dunes like something that had sprung up the night before. There seemed to be more ships in the harbor than houses on the shore.”

Few cities of the world have grown as fast, over the span of just a few years, as San Francisco; its population exploded from about 1,000 people in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents in 1850 (Holliday, J. S. “Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and the Making of California.” Internet Archive, University of California Press, 1999, p. 51; Rawls, James J, et. al. “A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California,” Internet Archive, University of California Press, 1999, p. 187). About half of this influx came by ships and boats, which constituted a vast, floating city in itself, while San Francisco was still a small hamlet. Many of the buildings that sprang up in 1848-1849 were hastily and shoddily constructed, to capitalize on the short-lived Gold Rush.

“Praiseworthy, in his fury, struck like a bolt of lightning. Grabbing the ruffian to his feet by the shirt front, he slammed his left gloved fist into the man’s bandana-covered face. The bandit hurled back as if he’d been struck by a stick of cord wood.”

The habitually calm, cool, and collected Praiseworthy loses much of his composure when a highwayman threatens to steal his cherished portrait of his employer, Arabella. The knockout punch he delivers, augmented by several fingers of gold dust hidden in his butler’s gloves, will soon enter local folklore.

“He picked up Arabella’s picture and dusted it off. It seemed curious to Jack that he had brought it along; it made him feel strangely closer to Praiseworthy than ever before.”

Jack and Praiseworthy brought few belongings on their trip, yet the latter was careful to bring a portrait of his employer, the “young and beautiful” Arabella. His uncharacteristically violent defense of this picture suggests it’s his prized possession, more so than his coat, which he calmly surrenders to the bandits. Jack intuits a hint of romantic interest.

“Although Praiseworthy’s coat and bowler hat had fallen by the wayside, he clung to the black umbrella as a last badge of his calling.”

Praiseworthy’s umbrella is the last vestige of the profession he was raised to revere, and he clings to it despite the lack of rain. Exacerbating his dislocation is the fact that no one around him, besides Jack, seems to know what a “butler” is.

“A woman like Arabella marries a gentleman—not a butler. It simply isn’t done. I wouldn’t permit such a thing… Why, your dear aunt would be laughed out of Boston.”

Praiseworthy’s wistful remark reiterates one of the story’s major conflicts: Aside from money, the social pressures of class-conscious Boston stand in the way of the characters’ dreams of happiness. Arabella marrying her butler would be unthinkable in that city, considering upper-class social norms in 1849 in Boston were not far removed from those of England. Praiseworthy’s feelings for Arabella are too strong to allow her to become a social outcast on his behalf.

“‘Why, it gives me a bad conscience to wear this coat—although I was awful fond of it. I’d appreciate it if you’d give it back. Always was too tight on me anyway.’ He peeled off the linen coat and threw it toward Jack.”

After some months in the goldfields, some changes are made—befitting a land of self-invention. Like Jack and Praiseworthy, the highwayman who robbed the stagecoach discovers a new, and better, self: The fate of his fellow bandits, who were caught and had their ears cut off, has stirred self-reflection. Though he knows Jack’s gun is unloaded, the former bandit gives him the coat off his back after saving him from the coyote hole.

“There ain’t a law book within fifty miles that I know of. I hear they had one over at Growlersburg, but it was printed on thin paper and the boys took to rollin’ cigarettes with it. Speakin’ for myself, I don’t see any reason to let law interfere with justice around here. We never did before.”

The speaker is the local Justice of the Peace, who, like his fellow citizens, regards the “law” as something abstract and impractical—good for rolling cigarettes with, but not much else. He even sees it as an impediment to “justice”—that is, frontier justice, which casually dispenses with procedural bottlenecks like lawyers and evidence.

“Praiseworthy had never made a speech in his life, but the words rolled off his tongue and he could feel their effect on the crowd.”

Praiseworthy’s process of self-invention takes a pivotal turn, as he discovers a gift for public speaking. Always eloquent and persuasive—sometimes deceptively so—he now finds that he can sway crowds as well as individuals.

“It was a moment before Jack, in his excitement, realized that Praiseworthy had called him Jack. Not Master Jack. Just Jack. Plain Jack—the way he’d always wanted it to be!”

Jack and Praiseworthy have just realized their dream of striking gold, but the true treasure is the new bond they’ve discovered through their shared ordeals and loyalty to each other. The distance between master and servant has broken down completely. For the orphaned Jack, this has been his lifelong dream, far more significant than being wealthy.

“He wondered what she was doing at that very moment. Staring into the fireplace and thinking of him, perhaps. But that was nonsense, he told himself quickly, and turned from the fire. He must not forget his place… Why, Boston would never accept him as anything but what he was—a butler.”

Though two of the story’s major problems have been resolved for now—the financial one that set the plot in motion, and Praiseworthy’s emotional reserve with Jack—a crucial one remains. Praiseworthy’s sad reverie about Arabella “thinking about him” vanquishes any doubt that he’s in love with her, and she (perhaps) with him, which leaves the characters in limbo. When he and Jack return to Boston, rich or not, Praiseworthy fully expects to return to his role of butler, for he could never leave Arabella or Jack. Equally, he can’t marry Arabella, since Boston society would never allow it.

“Big as was the pride of Grizzly Flats he had a jaw like other men, and a jaw was a jaw.”

Praiseworthy’s boxing match with the Mountain Ox, like that between the biblical David and Goliath, relies on guile and skill rather than brute force. The latter’s muscles can’t protect his jaw from the butler’s studious assault. The novel suggests that an individual’s power often lies not with their innate abilities (or lack thereof), but what they make of themselves; this underscores a key difference between places like Boston and the wide-open West. Praiseworthy’s courage, intelligence, and book-learning can’t, in the eyes of Boston society, make him worthy of marrying an upper-class woman like Arabella, who inherited her wealth. But in California, where few people know or care what a “butler” is, Praiseworthy may finally have the freedom to be whatever he wants.

“The next thing Jack knew he was underwater and the gold pouches, heavy as lead, were pulling him down. He fought to come up, but the weights kept dragging him below. Then, fighting for his life, he unbuckled his belt. Buckskin pouches and four-shooter fell away into the deep.”

When the steamship to San Francisco goes down, both Jack and Praiseworthy are forced to cut loose their newfound wealth to save their lives. However, the new intimacy between them and their individual strengths represent a greater treasure than the “bits of colored metal” they lost.

“It was time to rid ourselves of that house—of the past. It’s like being free of a curse.”

With Arabella’s revelation that her grand house, and the outdated social norms it embodied, was a “curse,” it’s revealed that the crisis that set the plot in motion was never a problem at all. She was not nearly as devoted to her mansion, or Boston, as Jack and Praiseworthy believed.

“‘Out here, one man is as good as another.’ […] Aunt Arabella stood very straight. ‘I’ve always believed it.’”

This exchange between Praiseworthy and Arabella reiterates one of the story’s main points. Praiseworthy has discovered that some parts of America are quite different from Boston, and England; in California, he doesn’t feel defined, or imprisoned, by his past as a servant. In turn, Arabella reveals that she never agreed with the class prejudices of her peers in Boston, and has left them all behind. Her statement also clarifies that she thinks Praiseworthy, in particular, is a good man. Just as Praiseworthy has abandoned his forebears’ legacy, Arabella has done the same. This tale of Western expansion is, in a sense, the “American experience” in miniature: The rigid class strictures of England have fallen away amid the freedoms and opportunities of the Americas, where spirited individuals can be whatever they can make of themselves.

“Aunt Arabella was smiling through a wet sparkle in her eyes. ‘Marry you? Why, of course. I thought you’d never ask.’” 

Arabella reveals that she’s always been open to a proposal from Praiseworthy, resolving the mystery of why she never sought a match with someone else. The “sparkle” in her eyes is an echo of the sparkle of gold dust and nuggets in the goldfields—but here, it denotes true wealth, not colored metal.

“Why, he might even bring along a law book. He could read it at night. The diggings could use some book law and a man had to think of making a future.”

Praiseworthy and Arabella’s future means of supporting themselves in their new home finds an answer in the ex-butler’s budding interest (and talent) in the practice of law, which will likely become a growth industry in the rough-and-ready region. The rudimentary “miners’ law” may suffice for some, but the vast majority of those who got rich from the Gold Rush—entrepreneurs and other innovators—will recognize the many needs of a growing population, including legal representation.