The early court of Queen Victoria

by Clare Jerrold

This naturally had its bad effect upon the servants, who were left without any real master. They went off duty when they chose, remained absent for hours on the day when they were especially expected to be in attendance, and committed any irregularity without anyone to reprimand them. The footmen, who slept ten or twelve in a dormitory, might smoke or drink there, but if anyone were the wiser, certainly there was no one who was in a position to remonstrate.

It is almost impossible to imagine a worse regulated establishment than that of the little lady who was the First Person in the Kingdom, yet who had not power to ensure decent attendance from her servants. I wonder if she was quite conscious of the inconvenience and indignity of it all, whether she knew the straits to which her visitors were sometimes reduced, and whether she felt a pang of shame at her enforced position of inaction. Guests might arrive at Windsor, and find no one to welcome them or to show them their rooms. Proper communication was not established among the innumerable servants; for the housemaids who obeyed the Lord Chamberlain, and who prepared the rooms, did not come into communication with the guests; and the footmen, who were under the Lord Steward, were not authorised to see to this matter; indeed, it was quite possible that most of the footmen were, in light and irresponsible fashion, seeing to their own business when the guests appeared. It all seems to have depended upon the right housekeeper being more or less accidentally in the right spot at the right moment, and she was not in the department of the Master of the Household. The usual course in such a case was to send a servant, if one could be found, to the porter’s lodge, where a list of rooms, &c., was kept. It was also no unusual thing for a visitor to be at a loss to find the drawing-room at night. He or she would start from the bedroom with more or less confidence, perhaps take a wrong turn, and wander about helpless and alone, one account says for an hour, finding no servants to give assistance to them, and coming across no one of whom the way could be asked.

When “The Boy Jones”—as Punch delighted to name him—made his surreptitious visits, the public blamed those on whom depended the regulations for protecting the Queen. But there was no responsible person in the Palace at the time. The Lord Chamberlain was in Staffordshire, and the porters were not in his department; the Lord Steward was not in the Palace, and had nothing to do with the pages and other people nearest to the Royal person; nor could the responsibility be fixed on the Master of the Household, who was only a subordinate officer in the Lord Steward’s department. It did not occur to any of these good people, nor to the Government, that something more was needed than the adding of an iron bar to the front gate or placing an extra policeman in the front hall; and it was left to Stockmar to cause the whole arrangements of the Palace to be reconstructed. He advised that the three great officers of the Court, with their respective departments, should retain their connection with the political system of the country, but that each should in his own sphere be induced to delegate as much of his authority as was necessary to the maintenance of the order, security, and discipline of the Palace to one official, who should always live at Court, and be responsible to the three departmental chiefs, but at the same time be able to secure unity of action in the use of the powers delegated to him.

As the abuses had been going on for many years, Stockmar’s suggestions and interference gave rise to violent feeling and much bitterness, and it was some years before the storm subsided into calm. I have come across an account of King William’s going to Ascot in 1833, when the Royal Household seems to have been absolutely disreputable, for all the King’s grooms got drunk every day, excepting (seemingly) one man, and he was killed going home from the races. What an argument for the virtue of drunkenness! The person who described the event added that no one exercised any authority over these servants, and the household ran riot. Favourite abuses of this kind were not easily abolished, but the Prince Consort accepted Stockmar’s advice and carried his suggestions into effect, firmly resisting all attempts to evade them, and appointing the Master of the Household as the delegate of the three departmental chiefs.

One interference in the Household led to another, and soon remarkable changes were made. Stockmar was doubtless at the back of them all, but upon the Prince Consort fell the odium. He had been brought up too economically not to know the value of money, and, like any other sensible person, he abhorred waste. There was one little matter which was particularly fastened upon him by his detractors. I remember an old lady speaking of him to me years ago with energetic scorn, and on my asking why, she replied: “Oh, I remember him! He was one of the meanest of people, for he actually saved the candle-ends.” “Well, why not, if he had the chance of doing it?” I asked. On looking up this matter I found that the great rooms were lit by hundreds of candles, and that some upper servant had acquired the perquisite of every day emptying all the receptacles and replacing the pieces by fresh candles; further, if a room had not been used, the candles were changed just the same, and the licensed looter carried off a rich booty. Prince Albert enforced a rule that this should no longer be done, and that the candles should remain to be burnt within a reasonable limit. Being an economist myself, I quite sympathise with him.

The lowering of salaries, however, created a tremendous furore. Thus there were about forty housemaids at Windsor, and the same number at Buckingham Palace, whose wages had been for many years £45 per annum. In the general revision this was reduced to £12 a year on commencing duties, with a gradual rise to £18, beyond which a housemaid could not go. A little book, “Sketches of Her Majesty’s Household,” published anonymously in 1848, shows that some of the economies were peculiarly unfair, as in the case of the sixteen gentlemen of the Chapel Royal who chanted the services, and who were given £73 a year each. They were required to attend on Sundays every other month and on saints’ days, &c. From each salary four shillings in the pound was deducted as land tax, which, added to further deduction for income tax, reduced the salary to £56. The same course was pursued with the organist, composers—all getting a nominal £73—and other people connected with the Chapel who received less. Think of the violinist who had to regard himself as “passing rich on forty pounds a year,” minus eight pounds deducted as land tax! It is a little difficult to realise this, for what could the land tax have to do with the chapel music?

From the same source we learn the regulations imposed upon the members of the Queen’s Private Band, who were paid from the Privy Purse. Their salaries were reduced from £130, with supper and wine, to £80 and £90, with no supper, in lieu of which a small sum was given at each nightly attendance. Sometimes a vacancy occurred in the State Band, which was paid by the State, and then a piece of very sharp practice was indulged in. The vacancy would be filled by a member of the Private Band, and as a consequence of this promotion the man had to play in both bands, for which he should have received an extra £40 for his services in the State Band. He duly received that £40, but when his salary was paid him as a member of the Private Band he would find that the sum of £40 had been carefully deducted before it was handed to him—on the assumption that he had already received it!

In this description of the anomalies in the Royal Household I have mostly given Stockmar’s view of the case. There was, of course, another aspect, and the English officially gave voice to it. In 1846 the Earl de la Warr, who was then Lord Chamberlain, said that he experienced such an “extraordinary interference in the performance of his official duties from parties at Court,” that he determined to resign, so he made “Free Trade in Corn” the excuse, and the day after Her Majesty’s accouchement the announcement took place. Several noblemen refused the post, and at last it was semi-officially announced that Sir Robert Peel, in consequence of the uncertainty as to the life of the Government, would not at present fill up the appointment. So Lord de la Warr was virtually bribed to hold office for a time—that is to say, until Lord John Russell and the Whigs came in in July. One of De la Warr’s sons, Mortimer West, was given a commission in the Grenadier Guards; another, Charles, was made military secretary to the Commander-in-Chief in India; and a third, Reginald, was gazetted Chaplain-in-Ordinary to Her Majesty.

When Russell formed his Administration it was even then very difficult to fill the Lord Chamberlain’s office, everyone shrinking from the unofficial interference of Stockmar and the Prince. The Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Devonshire, and the Earl of Uxbridge all declined, but Earl Spencer was at last prevailed upon to take the responsibility.

The Inspector of the Palace was named Henry Saunders, and he gave in his resignation in March, 1844, because of “extraordinary interference with him in the performance of his duties by members of the Household unconnected with the Lord Chamberlain’s department”; but Lord de la Warr persuaded him to remain until the Prince Consort, who was visiting his home, returned from Germany. Saunders was believed by Anson to have given information of Palace doings to the Press, as many things had been made public, particularly about the wholesale discharge of servants in Saunders’s department, as well as other matters which had formed subjects of private inquiry. He was pensioned at the end of 1845 on £500 a year. After that different Inspectors were appointed for each Palace, to superintend the care of the furniture and to make arrangements for the reception of the Court and of Her Majesty’s visitors.