"But when folks finds out?" he asked at last. "Think about it. Think how lowered you'll feel—one of your husband's servants."
—Lady Chatterley's Lover
Gamekeepers are scarce nowadays, especially around London's chic St. James's Place, but otherwise the plot revealed in court last week was a familiar one to readers of D.H. Lawrence. On trial in the Old Bailey was a handsome Irishman named Maurice O'Regan, 33, charged with forging three checks to a total of $34,400. Maurice had been butler, chauffeur, valet, handyman and cook to Sir Francis Henry Grenville Peek, 56, fourth baronet of Rousdon. But with raven-haired, Jamaica-born Lady Caroline Peek, 37, the testimony revealed, Maurice's services had gone considerably further.
Part of the trouble was that Sir Francis (family crest, according to Debrett's, "two hazel nuts slipped proper"; family motto, "Le Maitre Vient") frequently went on extended trips attending to his real estate business. That left Lady Peek alone with the butler, Maurice, who was paid only $36 a week, testified that Lady Peek began giving him money "to buy shirts."
"A man's most dangerous moment is when he's getting into his shirt," Oliver Mellors tells Lady Chatterley. "I prefer those American shirts that you put on like a jacket." Sure enough, while Maurice was trying on a particular shirt, "her ladyship ran her hand up and down my back." Came a day, after Maurice had driven Sir Francis to the airport for one more business trip, when she "entered the kitchen and said that she felt like cuddling and kissing me. I told her I was worried about my position. She replied, 'Nonsense.' "
Thereafter, Maurice testified, they had intercourse seven times in six months. Then sadly came the end of what he called "a good wicket." The Peeks decided to move to Spain's Costa del Sol. "At first I understood I was going with them, but later I learned that this was not the position because there was no room in their new home."
Lady Caroline, according to the butler, soothed him with the three blank checks and told him to fill them in for no more than $36,000—which he obeyed to the letter. "You are not going to get away with that sum for nothing," she added. "I expect to see you in Spain." Asked why he had been given such a sum by his mistress, the gentleman's gentleman presumed that "it was payment for services rendered . . . Makes me out a bit of a rogue, actually."
Considerably embarrassed, Lady Peek took the stand to deny categorically all of Maurice's statements. She insisted that the blank checks were meant to pay household bills. But her performance was less than convincing, and the judge instructed the all-male jury that her evidence was "not to be relied on." With that the jurors after 65 minutes declared Maurice not guilty, and the court apologized for the eight months he had been held in jail. "So much for British aristocracy," huffed the butler as he left court. "I'm finished with them." Gamekeeper Mellors had put it better. "I hate the impudence of money and I hate the impudence of class."