In Wilkie Collins’s novel ‘The Moonstone’, narrator Gabriel Betteredge recalled his decision to get married, completing (so he hoped) his happiness now that he had a secure position as bailiff to Lady Verinder. The woman he selected was Selina Goby, who fulfilled his simple criteria for a life partner, and also qualified in one very special way.

Selina Goby, said Betteredge, made the ideal wife for him because she was his live-in housemaid, and he reckoned that if she were his wife she would do the same work without demanding wages. He asked Lady Verinder’s advice; and taking her peals of laughter as a blessing, proposed at once to Selina, who accepted.

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