Factota

Before commencing our walks in Alexandria, we provided ourselves with two servants, who acted as our dragomen, cooks, and factota.

On my return to the village of Heiligenblut, which is the starting-point of all excursions into that region of snow, I made inquiries of the factota of the village; of the hostess of the inn, who is the chief personage in all Tyrolean villages; the priest; and the telegraph operatress.

Mozart and his librettists have created the dissidents of the day, the factota of the public-at-large. And, mischievous though they may be as domestics, they have served the opera world exceedingly well for over 170 years.

He draws much of his remuneration from the company in the form of goods and services paid for by the firm—his house and automobile, his machiai (geisha house) and club bills, and six personal servants, including two tobi (a colorful roughneck) who are bodyguards and factota; […]

The agents suspected that the appellees were driving stolen vehicles, not that they served as factota of illegal aliens.

These blacks are dressed according to white code, seen acting in white-imposed roles (butlers, drivers, plantation laborers). They register as factota representing the will of the silent and invisible white master.

The presence of the factota of the new world order on Egyptian soil will be seen as approval […] of Cairo’s indiscriminate war against its own Islamic extremists.

All of the attempts were made by factota who didn’t reveal they were working on a book for Sommers.

The harm done to the Ukrainian population by the Poles, their leaseholders, and their factota the Jews is mentioned (1:17, p. 48).

The other stereotype, summoned in his case by the silver bell, is – of course – Jeeves. Other nations have their Sancho Panzas (peasantly shrewd), their Figaros (here, there, everywhere), their Sam Spade ‘sidekicks’, their valets (to whom no man is hero), their factota, their ‘celebrity’ pas, their Passepartouts, their Moscas. The ‘witty servant’ (smarter than his master) can be traced back to the Latin dramatist Terence, but only one nation has the omnicompetent butler, the gentleman’s gentleman.