Not in Front of the Corgis (7 page)

The gardens at Royal Lodge are among the finest of any enjoyed by Andrew’s siblings and consist mainly
of woodland and immaculate lawns. There is also an outdoor swimming pool, enjoyed by his daughters Beatrice and Eugenie and also Andrew’s ex-wife, Sarah, Duchess of York, who although they have been divorced for years, remains on excellent terms with her ex and shares Royal Lodge whenever she is in England. Theirs is among the most civilised divorces one can imagine. No animosity, just mutual affection. They just cannot live together permanently.

When Fergie is staying at Royal Lodge, the staff enjoy her company. She makes the party go with a swing and there is a warm atmosphere that affects everyone from Andrew down to the staff in the
kitchens
. Her demands are few, unlike her ex-husband who can be difficult in the extreme. His staff move around him with caution as his occasionally boorish
behaviour
, childish tantrums and his mood swings means they never quite know what to expect.

Unusually, considering his reputation, Prince Andrew does not object to senior members of the Household hosting functions in the Salon of Royal Lodge, as long as he doesn’t have to be present. One of the more recent occurred in June 2011 during Royal Ascot Week when a luncheon party was being held (Andrew was at lunch at Windsor Castle). Everything was going with a swing, when suddenly Princess Beatrice entered the room unannounced. The guests were not too sure how to react; after all this was her home, but she was in excellent form, moving among them, chatting informally and making them all feel they were welcome. It was a pleasant gesture in complete contrast to the unfortunate publicity that
Beatrice and her sister Eugenie had received following their disastrous appearance at the wedding of William and Catherine. It was the icing on the cake and made for a wonderful interlude before they left for the races.

The baby brother of the Royal Family, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, with an estimated wealth of £9 million, and an income of £141,000 a year from Government funds, lives in one of the grandest houses, Bagshot Park, with a full retinue of liveried servants and gardeners to look after the extensive grounds. The Countess has recently upset neighbours by asking the local authority to close certain rights of way that
crisscross
the Bagshot estate. She claims that it makes it far too easy for intruders to get in or for walkers to wander into their garden.

Bagshot Park has a long royal pedigree having been built originally for King Charles I as one of his many hunting lodges. Since then many subsequent members of royalty have lived there with the last, before Prince Edward took it over, being Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, a son of Queen Victoria, who died at Bagshot in 1942.

The present house is situated in grounds of
eighty-eight
acres and contains fifty-six rooms, making it at least three times bigger than Highgrove, the country home of the Prince of Wales. The annual running costs are around £250,000, with Edward paying the princely sum of less than £200 a week in rent, after
sub-letting a converted stable block for £80,000 a year to a pharmaceutical company. No one would blame him for displaying such business acumen, but the fact that he alone was offered the fifty-year lease on the property led to accusations in Parliament that the Royal Family was receiving preferential treatment by the Crown Estates. If both Royal Lodge and/or Bagshot Park were placed on the open market, the former would fetch up to £20,000 a week in rent, while Bagshot Park is currently reckoned to be worth around £25 million. The Crown Estates claim that the reason they chose the two Princes as tenants is because of the security precautions necessary in such a sensitive area so close to The Queen at Windsor Castle.

The Household at Bagshot Park is formal and correct, which is the way both sides of the green baize door prefer it. Each one knows exactly what they should do and how they should behave.

Prince Edward does not allow any of his servants to get too close, unlike Prince Charles, whose personal staff are made to feel they are friends – so long as they remember who is boss and who is servant.

Prince Edward is considered by the Household to be the most pompous member of the Royal Family, insisting on absolute formality at all times. He once was said to have reprimanded a butler because the man was not outside the house when he arrived back and Edward had to open the car door himself. His
chauffeur
is instructed to face the front at all times, even when the car is stationary, as are the police officers who protect the Earl and Countess. Edward even had his policemen given instruction by Swaine, Adeney,
Brigg & Son, the royal suppliers of whips, gloves and umbrellas, on how to correctly furl an umbrella. Apparently, one holds the tip in the left hand with the handle in the right, and then slowly brings the hand down ‘brolly’ holding it as tight as possible while turning the handle in the opposite direction.

Edward addresses his police officers, pages,
chauffeurs
by their surname. Younger staff: footmen, valets and housemaids are called by their Christian names. This is a system used by most members of the Royal Family; one former police officer, who had served The Queen for over twenty years without once being addressed by his Christian name, was invited to shoot with the Duke of Edinburgh at Balmoral when he retired. He said the only difference was that, as a guest, The Queen and Prince Philip used his Christian name.

Prince Edward is aloof and distant but, contrary to his public image, he can be helpful towards outsiders who arrive at his home to carry out a task. A
well-known
photographer drove her car to Bagshot to take some pictures of the children. When she arrived, the butler saw her struggling with her equipment but made no move to help. Then Prince Edward came out, saw the situation and immediately picked up her tripod, put it on his shoulder and carried it inside the house. No other member of the Royal Family would dream of assisting in this way. So perhaps his so-called aloofness is actually shyness.

The Countess of Wessex, Sophie, is a great
favourite
of The Queen, but staff are wary when dealing with her as she can become rather aware of her
position
on occasion, forgetting that she is only royal by
marriage, not birth. She has also become more
figure-conscious
since the former Catherine Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, joined the royal firm. After seeing the svelte, slim-line Duchess at the Royal Wedding and stealing the show at Royal Ascot, Sophie Wessex decided she too needed to pay attention to her own figure; not that she is overweight by any means. She hired a personal trainer, who visits her every morning at Bagshot Park and together they work out in the grounds.

The Earl of Wessex is fascinated by his family’s background and his enquiring mind has discovered a few interesting facts about the house he now occupies.

In 1881, the house staff records show that
twenty-six
servants lived in the main house (it was a much larger property then with 120 rooms). There was an under butler, a housekeeper, four valets, two lady’s maids, two dressers, a cook, three kitchen maids, three housemaids, three footmen, a page, a porter, a scullery maid (now they call them kitchen operatives) and a serving soldier. Outside the main house a coachman and seven grooms lived in the Mews, three agricultural workers and two further domestics lived in lodges with a gardener completing the staff. It’s not quite like that today, but the current tenant of Bagshot Park, with a mere fifty-six rooms, manages to exist with less than a quarter of the number of staff his oldest brother employs.

Both the brothers, Andrew and Edward (and other members of the Royal Family) keep small notebooks handy to make comments about service and food and drink. Remarks such as: ‘Red wine not allowed to
breathe long enough,’ and ‘White wine could have been chilled a little more.’ Or, ‘Remind footman to place spoons a little closer to the plate.’ This is so they will not have to stretch to reach them. Experienced servants take these sorts of comments in their stride. They know that if there is a serious complaint, they always have the Civil Service Union, to which they now all belong, behind them. Even though, as members of the Royal Household, they do not have to strike when other union members act. There is a special exemption for The Queen’s staff. The domestic servants also like to have a joke at the expense of the Royals when they can. Occasionally one will hear a couple of footmen chatting in ‘cut-glass’ accents about whether ‘the Lager has been allowed to breathe long enough’ and ‘has it been decanted correctly’. The younger men enjoy this sort of parody, just as long as the Palace Steward doesn’t hear them. He is not the sort of man to permit any levity about members of the Royal Family.

In the Order of Precedence, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester are higher than their cousins the Duke and Duchess of Kent, but as the Duke of Kent undertakes more public duties (the Duchess no longer plays a part in public life), he receives the larger annuity of £236,000. The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, who both are involved in royal duties, receive £175,000 a year.

Their servants and their protection officers
generally
like the ‘second division’ of the Royal Family, the Gloucesters and Kents. They are not too demanding and are probably among the most democratic of the Royals. The Duke of Kent in particular gets on well with everyone and one of his staff tells the story of how his boss even tried to give way when they were both trying to grab the same taxi.

The Duke was late for an appointment leaving his apartment, at that time in St James’s Palace – this was in the days when junior royalty could move freely without the ever-present armed bodyguards – and, seeing a taxi coming along Pall Mall towards St James’s Street he ran and waved it down, not noticing that someone else was approaching from the other side. They arrived at the cab at the same time and His Royal Highness, without recognising the man, displayed his usual perfect manners and stood back. When their eyes met, both realised who the other was. The servant bowed to the Duke and apologised. Whereupon the Duke insisted that his man had been there first. Then he asked where the servant was going. On being told he was heading towards Paddington, which is where he too was going, he suggested they share the taxi, which they did, and when they arrived he insisted on paying, waving away his fellow passenger’s offer to pay his share. It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine any other member of the Royal Family, of whatever status or rank, behaving in such a manner.

The Duchess of Kent, the former Katherine Worsley, retired from public life some years ago
through ill health, although she occasionally still appears with the rest of the family. She did attend the wedding ceremony of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, but she prefers to live away from St James’s Palace, in a small flat in central London, or at the family estate, Nettlebed in Oxfordshire, which the Duke visits only when the Duchess is absent. In the days when she was a full-time member of the Royal Family, she would occasionally invite the wives of Members of the Royal Household, who were
neighbours
in Grace and Favour apartments, to join her for meals when their husbands were abroad with The Queen. However, since her illness, her behaviour is slightly unpredictable, with her servants being invited to call her Kate one day and the next reprimanded for not using her full title. She and her husband now have separate establishments with his office in Kensington Palace and hers on Palace Green.

The Duke’s sister, the widowed Princess Alexandra, a first cousin of The Queen, is another person well liked by members of the Household. She plays a full part in the Royal Family ‘Firm’ for which she receives £225,000 a year. None of this is her salary; every penny goes towards paying her staff and other expenses. The Princess lives alone in a flat in Engine Court, part of St James’s Palace, which she shared with her late husband, Sir Angus Ogilvy, and she can often be seen walking alone towards the shops in nearby Jermyn Street. The Princess also has the lease of Thatched House Lodge in Richmond Park in Surrey, acquired by her late husband with a mortgage of £200,000, and she rents a three-bedroom house in Windsor Great
Park for her daughter Marina Mowatt for which she pays a little over £200 a week, which is said to be the market rate.

When the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were looking for a London base, Princess Alexandra’s home was thought to be ideal. It was located inside St James’s Palace, so easy to secure and the size would have suited the couple perfectly. However, Princess Alexandra resisted attempts to make her move and her brother Eddie, the Duke of Kent, fought her cause on her behalf. So it was decided to allow her to remain. Apparently, she did not want to move to Kensington Palace, which is where it was intended to rehouse her, on the grounds that she didn’t like the idea of ‘living in the suburbs’. In other words, too far away from St James’s and all the shopping attractions.

So William and Catherine moved to Nottingham Cottage in Kensington Palace, but it is only a
temporary
address for them. A much more suitable home, nearer Buckingham Palace, will be found within a year or two. It may be called a mere cottage, but it is in fact, a very roomy four-bedroom house, with three bathrooms, an elegant drawing room, dining room, study, and staff quarters. The Queen has approved the spending of £500,000 on bringing the house up to date and installing a modern kitchen for the couple. Local estate agents say if the property came on the market, it would sell for around £3 million or rent for £10,000 a week because of its location and royal provenance. Nottingham Cottage has been lived in in recent years by a succession of senior members of the Royal Household.

York House in St James’s Palace contains a number of apartments used as London homes by the Royal Family. The Princess Royal gave up her rooms at Buckingham Palace when she was offered a spacious flat in York House and Princess Beatrice, elder
daughter
of the Duke of York, must surely have been the envy of all her fellow students at Goldsmith’s College, (she graduated in September 2011) with her palatial pad in St James’s. Her rooms must be the most
exclusive
– and expensive – of any of her pals. It is believed that before she moved in, The Queen approved the spending of a quarter of a million pounds in
refurbishing
the flat that has been described by members of the Household as ‘sumptuous’.