The butler’s role has changed – and seasoned ones can make $190K a year

That group’s makeup has shifted from being primarily aristocratic families, the type long associated with traditional butlers, to include a new breed of self-made, high-net-worth individuals who have built fortunes in industries such as technology and media and who see butlers less as part of the furniture and more as a flashy accessory.

Graeme Currie, 53, exemplifies the modern butler, a role that he says requires “sparkle, darling, sparkle”. He has been employed by some of Britain’s highest-profile families and was the head butler for 10 years at Weston Park, an estate in the county of Staffordshire that is the ancestral home of the Earl of Bradford and can now be booked for private events.

This summer, Currie – who has tawny hair and, often, a light tan – is planning to travel to various destinations in Europe to buttle at vacation houses. In his spare time, he breeds toy poodles, some of which have competed at dog shows such as Crufts.

Currie is the sort of person who can whip up an espresso martini blindfolded and comprehend the precise level of froth someone might prefer for a coconut milk cappuccino. He developed such skills in part from a career in hospitality that has included jobs on the Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner and at ritzy London hotels such as the Dorchester and Claridge’s and restaurants like the Ivy.

“The difference between me and an old-fashioned butler is that I’ve had the experience of people paying for dinner and of always being critiqued,” Currie says.

Seasoned butlers like him can make about £100,000 ($192,000) a year. The job’s starting salary is closer to £40,000.

For butlers with full-time positions, various costs – food, lodging, even fancy uniforms – are subsidised by employers. And those who work in Europe are typically afforded the same mandatory benefits granted to other workers, like a minimum of 20 vacation days. Many develop schedules with their employers that include regular time off on the weekend or midweek to account for other days when they are expected to work long hours.

Currie was drawn to the profession for a reason that many butlers are: he is passionate about taking care of people.

“One thing I always say is that I’m very good at remembering who people are and what they want,” he says. “You’ve got to have a whole repertoire in your brain because people ask for things they have never asked for before.”

That repertoire can vary wildly depending on a butler’s location, says Niels Deijkers, the managing director of the International Butler Academy in Simpelveld, Netherlands.

Deijkers recalls a story he had heard from an executive butler who was with a family on a yacht. “The client pointed toward the coastline and said, ‘Tonight, I’d like to have dinner on top of that mountain; please arrange it’,” he says, explaining that the butler contacted a restaurant in the area, which “set up a table for six and flew in everything with a helicopter”. (Deijkers estimates that the dinner cost “around $US300,000”.)

Andrew Gruselle, 53, has encountered similar demands in his time working on Lamu Island, off the coast of Kenya, where he has managed grand beachfront properties with staff that has included cooks, housekeepers and pool attendants.

In his typical uniform of a loose cotton shirt and seersucker Bermuda shorts, Gruselle has performed a range of duties: serving trays of fresh mango or papaya for breakfast; arranging water-skiing excursions; recommending fabric shops; securing reservations at the Peponi Hotel, a Lamu hot spot; and wrangling six donkeys to stage a makeshift Nativity scene at Christmas.

“When someone comes out here,” he says, “you have to be very careful that they are looked after properly and that it’s a seamless experience for them”.

Carole Bamford, 78, expects nothing less of the head butler at Daylesford House, her country estate in Gloucestershire, one of several homes she resides at with her husband, Anthony Bamford, the billionaire owner of the British construction company JCB.

Events held at Daylesford House by the couple, known formally as Lord and Lady Bamford, are among the most coveted invitations in the Cotswolds. This spring, Lady Bamford, who is the founder of Daylesford Organic, a popular British lifestyle brand, hosted various lunches with themes inspired by plants grown on the estate, like snowdrops and tulips.

Leading the preparations for those lunches was, yes, Daylesford House’s head butler, whose resume reflects those of traditional butlers, in that he has been with the Bamfords for more than 20 years.

“He was with the queen for about eight years before me,” Lady Bamford says.

But his job also involves many duties expected of modern butlers, too.

Lady Bamford recalls a recent lunch where the menu included lamb, purple sprouting broccoli, a cheese board, panna cotta and rhubarb bellinis.

“Who makes the bellinis?” I ask.

“Well, the butler,” she says.

Plum Sykes is the author of Wives Like Us.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.