At Sandringham there is a post office inside the house for the use of the Royal Household, but at Marlborough House the huge letter-bags are sent over to the St. James’s Street post office at regular intervals throughout the day.
The King has long been a subscriber to the National Telephone Company, and he is said to spend over £1000 a year in telegrams alone, for the popular idea that Royalty’s letters are franked, and that parcels sent by them are forwarded free of cost, is a delusion.
Sir Francis Knollys
From a Photograph by Russell
Sir Francis Knollys’s duties as secretary are not confined to what are generally called secretarial duties. He has to act as his Royal master’s supplementary memory. He keeps the list of all the King’s engagements, and, what is a more arduous task, arranges every item of the Royal journeys. Princess Charles of Denmark is said to have once observed that she felt sure that if Sir Francis were suddenly awakened in the middle of the night and asked what were the King’s engagements eight days forward, he would immediately begin to recite the entire list.
Be that as it may, the position of Sir Francis Knollys is a very responsible one, and even his most intimate friends marvel how he can get through the enormous amount of work he has to do. Occasionally his labours are enormously increased, especially at times of public calamity or Royal mourning. During the Tranby Croft case well-intentioned folk all over the British Empire sent books and pamphlets pointing out the evils of gambling, and in most cases these were courteously and kindly acknowledged.
Sir Francis writes every important letter with his own hand, for typewriters have, so far, never been used in Royal correspondence. He has two assistant secretaries, who attend to the routine work, but even then many of the letters written by them are signed by him, and in all cases he looks them over and sees that they are as he would wish them to be. There is also a staff of clerks.
In 1865 His Majesty attended his first public dinner in his capacity as president of the Royal Literary Fund, and ever since he has taken the greatest interest in the unobtrusive work done by this institution in relieving distressing cases among those men and women of letters who have fallen on evil days.
The King is a warm friend of the coffee palace movement; in this connection it is interesting to recall the Alexandra Trust, founded by Sir Thomas Lipton at the instance of Queen Alexandra, for the purpose of supplying well-cooked and nourishing food to the populace at an inclusive charge of 4½d. It will be remembered that the King and Queen paid a surprise visit to the Alexandra Trust Restaurant in St. Luke’s, in the East End of London, on which occasion the various London papers circulated the most amusingly inconsistent stories of what their Majesties really ate. As a matter of fact they were satisfied with the ordinary poor man’s dinner, and were not entertained—as was alleged—by Sir Thomas Lipton with “chicken and champagne.” It was their Majesties’ great desire to be treated exactly as ordinary diners. But the Queen did break one rule—that which ordains that the metal check, received on payment of the 4½d., should be given up on leaving. The Queen insisted on keeping the disc, as she said to Sir Thomas Lipton, “as a memento of a delightful visit and a most enjoyable lunch.” Their Majesties remained for nearly two hours; they spoke to large numbers of working men and girls, and carefully inspected all the cooking arrangements, and it is recorded that the King chatted with the men’s bootblack in the basement. Sir Thomas Lipton’s comment was: “It was deeply touching to see the men’s devotion to the Princess; they almost worshipped her.”