What the butler did

What has happened to butlers? They used to be the epitome of discretion and loyalty: but last week the Pope’s former butler, Paolo Gabriele, began an 18-month prison sentence for passing documents from his employer’s desk on to a journalist. The trial of Paoletto, or ‘Little Paul’, as the Pope fondly called him, follows the trial of another butler nicknamed ‘Small Paul’, Paul Burrell, who was also found to have concealed his employers’ property in his home. (The main difference was that, despite hints that a Papal pardon might be forthcoming, Gabriele was not rescued from jail by the intercession of an 80-year-old head of state.)

And in America, a film is being made about Eugene Allen, butler to every president from Eisenhower to Reagan, which promises to show what the butler saw during his years at the White House: Lyndon Johnson, for example, using racial profanities behind closed doors while pushing through the Civil Rights Act. (Conversely, Allen was the first butler to be invited to a state dinner — by Ronald Reagan, here played by Alan Rickman, who lost the black vote by opposing affirmative action.)

Why would anyone employ a butler if he can’t be relied on not to commit indiscretion? Murder, yes — ‘The Butler Did It’ has been a cliché of murder mysteries for almost as long as the genre has existed. Only in detective stories, though: there are very few reports of butlers actually murdering their employer. The most notorious case in England to come close was the murder of Lord William Russell, a Whig MP, by his Swiss valet in 1840; and, in so far as that case caused moral panic, it was because the valet was Swiss. (At the valet’s trial, the prosecution’s theory of the case was based on the claim that the Swiss always murdered their robbery victims.)