It frequently happens at Windsor that some of the visitors
are at a loss to find the drawing-room, and, at night, if they happen to
forget the right entrance from the corridor, they wander for an hour
helpless, and unassisted. There is nobody to apply to in such a case,
for it is not in the department of the Master of the Household, and the
only remedy is to send a servant, if one can be found, to the porter's
lodge, to ascertain the apartment in question." People were rather
surprised when the boy Jones was discovered, at one o'clock in the
morning, under the sofa in the room adjoining Her Majesty's bedroom. But
it seems nobody was responsible--not the Lord Chamberlain, who was in
Staffordshire, and in whose department the porters were not; not the
Lord Steward, who was in London, and had nothing to do with the pages
and attendants nearest to the royal person; not the Master of the
Household, who was only a subordinate officer in the Lord Steward's
department. So the King of Spain, who was roasted to death because the
right Lord-in-Waiting could not be found to take him from the fire, was
not without a parallel in that which calls itself the most practical of
nations. Stockmar reformed the system by simply inducing each of the
three great officers, without nominally giving up his authority (which
would have shaken the foundations of the Monarchy), to delegate so much
of it as would enable the fire to be laid and lighted by the same power.
We fancy, however, that even since the Stockmarian reconstruction, we
have heard of guests finding themselves adrift in the corridors of
Windsor. There used to be no bells to the rooms, it being assumed that
in the abode of Royalty servants, were always within call, a theory
which would have been full of comfort to any nervous gentleman, who, on
the approach of the royal dinner hour, might happen to find himself left
with somebody else's small clothes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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