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sphere as Ladies of the Bedchamber or ladies-in-waiting or, on a lesser level, lady clerks.
Educationally and temperamentally women were not considered to be up to the top jobs
in the household, any more than they were in the political and business world of the
day. Elizabeth chose her ladies from personal knowledge or recommendation,
principally for their ability to get on with people. The Palace had to run without
friction, which was one reason why the members tended to come from the same group
or class, not to put too fine a point on it. Personal ambition for promotion or for money
was out of place; sucking up to the boss was frowned upon. For most courtiers it was an
unbroken rule not to get too close to any particular member of the family. It was no
coincidence that the top officials had public school and military backgrounds; it meant
that they were used to a clearly defined hierarchy and a chain of command. The lady
clerks and even the younger ladies-in-waiting were in awe of the Private Secretaries.
Everyone knew their place and the system worked like clockwork. It had another –
financial – advantage; everyone in the household, from top to bottom, worked for far
less money than they would have earned outside. It was considered an honour to work
for the Queen and, in return, there was a sense of community, of being looked after, of
being part of a great national institution which was run on a personal basis with the
rewards of grace-and-favour accommodation, free board and lodging. It was feudal but
not oppressive with a comforting sense of continuity, like working for a great estate.
Altrincham had hit the nail on the head when he called Elizabeth’s courtiers ‘tweedy’;
she is ‘tweedy’ herself. As a child she had told her riding master, Horace Smith, that she
would like to be ‘a lady living in the country, with lots of dogs and horses’. Breeding and
training gun-dogs and thoroughbreds are her two private interests, both of which she
approaches with her usual professionalism. She breeds labradors and spaniels at
Sandringham and is very knowledgeable about gun-dogs. ‘Because she’s the Queen,
people wouldn’t quite believe how knowledgeable she is on them,’ one of her
Sandringham employees said. ‘And she does understand them, she doesn’t put up with
any nonsense from them and if they are going to be a bit wayward she would deal with
them on the spot, how they should be dealt with.’ ‘She doesn’t have much time to train
them but she has a terrific ability to take a dog off anyone… she could go to the kennels
and take over a dog that was trained or part-trained and take it for a walk and the dog
would stick to her like glue and this is strange, really, because whoever has handled
them and fed them and trained the dog, it takes a bit to get them away from them…’
She is also regarded as an expert ‘picker-up’, directing up to four dogs to retrieve
wounded birds at a shoot, which requires knowledge of wind direction, natural cover,
the way the birds are flying and where the wounded birds are likely to make for. She
learned this on her own initiative; the King did not encourage her, feeling that it was
not right that princesses should be working gun-dogs in the shooting field. When he
wouldn’t allow her to handle his labradors at Balmoral, she would just go ahead with
her corgis; when she became Queen and inherited Sandringham, she came into her own.
Elizabeth is competitive; she looks for excellence and likes to win. She was to improve
the standard of the Sandringham gun-dogs so that over the years of her reign they were