The early court of Queen Victoria

by Clare Jerrold

BARON STOCKMAR.

The chief officers of the Household were in the same position and doing the same tasks as they had filled and done for centuries, and though all the details of their work had changed gradually no new rules had been made for their guidance. These chief officers were the Lord High Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Master of the Horse. These three were also great officers of State, were changed with every Ministry—between 1830 and 1844 one was changed five and another six times—they could not reside at the Palace, and often could not be in the same place as the Court. They were chosen by the Ministers for their political strength and opinions, without any reference to their powers as good housekeepers, good organisers, or good masters. This led to the curious situation that the Masters of the Queen’s Household could rarely attend to their duties, which had to be deputed to people who were perhaps incapable, or also not on the spot, and that in many trivial ways Victoria had no authority in her own home. There was no domestic to whom she could give orders, because the servants were under absentee masters, and neither she nor the Prince could ensure having a well-warmed room to live in. She was, in fact, so great a personage that it was arranged that every order to the servants should pass through other lips than hers, and as those other lips were generally miles away from the Royal domestic scene, the orders, if they were of a serious nature and outside the sphere of ordinary servants, were not given at all. So the Queen sat and shivered in her drawing-room, paid enormously for candles to light a room which would be in darkness when needed, and could not from inside tell the state of the weather because of the dirt on the windows.

There was also a lack of co-operation or agreement among these three high officials, so that there was never any unity of action. This was the more absurd, as the labour had to be delegated or re-delegated to actual servants who dwelt on the spot, and who did not seem to have the wit to do their work in conjunction. In no part of the Royal Household was there any real discipline, order, or dignity about the domestic work. The servants themselves often did not know who was responsible for certain duties, and, servant-like, were always careful never to do anyone’s work but their own. The great officials themselves were said not to know which parts of the Castle or Palace were under the charge of the Lord Steward or the Lord Chamberlain. When George III. was King the Lord Steward had charge of the whole Palace except the Royal apartments; in the next two reigns he was also held accountable for the ground floor, including the hall and the dining-rooms. But when Victoria came to the throne he gave over the grand hall and other lower rooms to the Lord Chamberlain, which seems to have left the mastership of the kitchen, sculleries, and pantries vague.

The authority over a room conferred responsibility over the most trivial matters, such as the laying of the fire, the cleaning of the windows, the brushing of the carpet. This authority had no place outside the room, nor outside the house; thus the Lord Chamberlain or his deputy might order the windows of the Queen’s boudoir to be cleaned inside, yet it remained for the Master of the Horse, who had authority over the woods and forests, to arrange when the outside should be cleaned. This sort of thing was complicated by the fact that the housekeepers, pages, housemaids, &c., were required to give obedience to the Lord Chamberlain, while the footmen, livery porters, and under butlers, being clothed and paid by the Master of the Horse, owned allegiance to him; and the rest of the servants, cooks, porters, &c., obeyed the Lord Steward.

In contemporary writings one frequently comes across hints of the discomfort of the Royal palaces, the draughts, the cold, the bad lighting, and it is scarcely to be wondered at, seeing the curious arrangements made by Her Majesty’s Ministers for her comfort. Victoria, feeling the cold especially one day, sent a messenger to Sir Frederick Watson, then Master of the Household, complaining that the dining-room was always cold. That perplexed gentleman, who either had no initiative or who knew that interference would be useless, replied gravely to the messenger:

“You see, properly speaking, it is not our fault, for the Lord Steward lays the fire and the Lord Chamberlain lights it.”

As to the lighting of the Palace, it was the duty of the Lord Chamberlain to buy the lamps, and see that there were sufficient both of them and of candles; but the Lord Steward was responsible for filling, cleaning, cutting, and lighting them.

Supposing a pane of glass was broken, so involved were the conditions for getting it repaired that it might be weeks before the necessary authority could be obtained. If the kitchen window happened to be smashed, the following process would have to be gone through. The chief cook would write and sign a request for the replacing of the glass, definitely describing where it was needed; this was countersigned by the Clerk of the Kitchen, then it had to be signed by the Master of the Household; from him it was taken to the Lord Chamberlain’s office, where it awaited his presence and pleasure. Having received his invaluable signature, it was then laid before the Clerk of the Works under the Woods and Forest Department. By the time the workman was ordered to put in the window it was not improbable that months had elapsed, and one really wonders whether the Queen’s cook did not resort to the time-honoured use of brown paper.

It is true that while these anomalies were going on there was a Master of the Household, but then his authority, which was of an attenuated character, was confined to the Lord Steward’s Department, and was there quite undefined; while the servants under the Lord Chamberlain, comprising the housemaids, housekeepers, and pages, were entirely outside his jurisdiction.