Apology to Maria Shriver

Source: AP/Vanity Fair

Arnold Schwarzenegger's maid has cost him his reputation, and his wife. In California, his approval ratings are down to around 20%. And last Friday, Maria Shriver filed for divorce.

An anonymous maid in the Sofitel Hotel has cost Dominique Strauss-Kahn his job at the IMF, and may have cost him the presidency of France. She hasn't cost him his wife: Anne Sinclair has stood by her husband. And his reputation is on the rebound: after the media circus this weekend, his approval ratings are up 5%.

In the old days, in the Old World, a little "hanky-panky with the help" was taken for granted -- but of course. It was taken for granted by Roman emperors, who had good friends, like Horace, who yukked it up their Satires: "When your organ is stiff, and a servant from the household is near at hand and you know you can make an immediate assault, would you sooner burst with tension? Not me. I like sex to be there and easy to get." Hanky-panky was taken for granted by chaplains, like Lambert, who was proud of the sexual prowess of the lord of his house in the north of medieval France, whose bedchambers had direct access to servant girls' quarters. "Because of the intemperate tumult of his loins he was of ungovernable lust from his first adolescent impulses to his old age; very young girls, especially virgins, aroused his desire." And hanky-panky was taken for granted by the English-speaking ancestors of Maria Shriver.

Certainly, a little hanky-panky was taken for granted by Samuel Pepys. Mr Pepys was a respectable member of Restoration English society -- a Member of Parliament, Secretary of the Admiralty, Fellow of the Royal Society, and eventually its President. But for the better part of a decade, from January of 1660 to May of 1669, he made the mistake of leaving his private life in a drawer. Several Diary entries concern sexual encounters with members of Pepys' household staff. Deb Willet, for instance, a 17-year-old girl hired as a companion to his long-suffering wife, was kissed on the 22nd of December, 1667, and surprised by that long-suffering wife a year later. "Coming up suddenly, did find me imbracing the girl con my hand sub su coats; and endeed I was with my main in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it."

On the eve of the American Revolution, hanky-panky with the help was still taken for granted by the 9th Laird of Auchinleck, James Boswell, who recounted contacts with married women and prostitutes on several continents in his Journals, and made contact with several of his maids. The Laird of Auchinleck "cherished licentious schemes" for Annie Cunningham, his children's nurse; and he got an illegitimate son, Charles, on another maid, Peggy Doig. "By all means let the Nurse give my child the sirname Boswell immediately; I am not ashamed." Boswell's circle in London included the eminent lexicographer, Sam Johnson, who announced when Boswell was in the room, "A man, to be sure, is criminal in the sight of God: but he does not so do his wife a very material injury, if he does not insult her; if, for instance, from mere wantonness of appetite, he steals privately to her chambermaid." And their mutual friend, Hester Thrale, said the same. "All our unfashionable Neighbours cry Shame!" when masters got their maidservants with children, she complained. And Hester's daughter Cecilia, or Cecy, agreed. "All those who understand genteel Life think lightly of such matters."

And then things started to change. They changed for Italian librettists, like Lorenzo da Ponte. They changed for the French: even Voltaire was contrite about the jus primae noctis, the old right of the first night. And they changed for the English-speaking ancestors of Maria Shriver.

After the Restoration, thoughts about hanky-panky with the help evolved in English letters. The Fathers of the English Novel -- people like Henry Fielding and Dan DeFoe -- all wrote, critically, about the lasciviousness of the employers of maids; but Samuel Richardson's novel, Pamela, was probably most explicit. His heroine is seduced with presents, and kissed, by her sexually aggressive master; and when she resists, she's sent away to a country estate, locked up and kept under guard. She appeals to a local farmer and his wife, but they're "under obligations" to Pamela's master, their landlord. And she appeals to the minister of the parish, who responds: "What, and embroil myself with a man of Mr B's power and fortune! Not I, I assure you....It is what all young gentlemen will do." Richardson, and his readers, did not approve.

Then after the Revolution, most importantly, opportunities for hanky-panky in English houses dried up. The end of maidservice as an institution is obvious in the parish lists. The number of servants per 100 households in England was 61 in 1650-1749; in 1750-1821, it was just 51; it had fallen to 33 in rural and 14 in urban areas by 1851; by 1947, the number was down to 2.

And now a pair of poor, immigrant women -- one from Latin America, the other from French Guinea -- both employed as the maidservants of powerful men, have brought their promiscuous bosses down. Historically, how almost unprecedented that is. And politically, how important. When our forefathers, and foremothers, fought for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, they fought, not least, for the right to have husbands, instead of bosses. And for the right to have wives, rather than pickaxes or hoes.

Happy Independence Day. It looks like another stunner.