The Impatience of Patience

Since the days when he was enrolled on the staff at stately 400-year-old Diddington Hall, Rodwell Patience had been a model manservant. As an apple-cheeked footman, he was up at dawn each day to oil the lamps and trim the wicks. No faithful servitor in the vicinity could pad about with such noiseless efficiency or efface himself with such dignity as Patience, and he was a dab at removing the pips from his master's grapes before setting them on table.

In 1930, when the old squire of Diddington died, it was natural that Patience should be elevated by the new squire, Guardsman Noel Thornhill, to the rank of butler.

In private, Mr. Patience and Captain Thornhill often dropped the mask of formality and addressed each other as "Roy" and "Noel," but Patience continued his devoted and impeccable service, even to the extent of tucking the new lord of the manor in bed each night.

Grapes, Gifts, Girls. Last year, when Captain Thornhill, then 73, thought to marry his cousin Cecily, it was Patience the butler who did the proposing and it was Patience who stood by as best man at the wedding. Over the years, in gratitude for such devotion, Thornhill showered his butler with gifts of clothes and money, even of a nine-room house completely furnished. Out of sight of the squire, Patience lived like something of a lord himself. When the daily grind of grape-pitting at the manor was over, Patience would slip away, clad in the best, and whisk off 50 miles to London in his master's Jaguar to flash -L-5 notes in the eyes of a bevy of girl friends. By the time his master married, Patience himself was already paying alimony to one exwife, supporting another and paying ardent court to a prospective third. Where, wondered the local police, who kept a closer eye on Butler Patience than his master did, was he getting the money to spend? Lawyers and Legacies. Last December, as Captain Thornhill, lord of the manor of Diddington, lay dying of a stroke, the police found their answer in the bare bedrooms of the old house itself. Patience was hauled off to court and charged with stealing some -L-3,000 worth of family heirlooms. The family lawyers promptly fired him.

Twenty-three days later, without ever learning of his former butler's perfidy, the squire of Diddington died. In his will, he left Patience a handsome legacy--some $30,000 in cash and a lifetime income--on condition that the butler was still in his service when he died.

Last week, deprived of the riches his greedy impatience had cost him, Rodwell Patience, ex-butler, stood in a dock at Norwich and heard himself sentenced to six years in prison. "Thank you, my lord," he said with an impeccable bow when the judge had finished.

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