Royal Servants.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 14 August 1914, Page 8

Royal Servants.

HOW THEY ARE ENGAGED

Most people, if they ever give the matter a. thought, would imagine that Royal servants are born and bred on the fringe 01' the purple. It happens, however, that many of them nowadays are engaged precisely as other servants at registry offices, or, more truly, usually at one registry ollice. There is, not a hundred miles from Sloane. Square, in a quiet little street, in a modest little house, a small registry of lice. It never advertises in any paper at all. Yet it has an enormous connection, and tiiose rare and priceless beings, domestic servants, flock up and down its. staircase in a manner which might make other would-be mistresses very envious. Here are engaged servants for Buckingham Palace and Windsor, for this Royal duke and that'Royal duchess, not to speak of the wearers of ordinary strawberry leaves. The oihce was started and is kept by two ladies, well connected, but not — formerly—of rich estate. They keep four secretaries, and their methods would be considered by certain more up-to-date offices very peculiar, says the ' Manchester Guardian.' All letters are hand-written, and the click of the typewriter is unknown. Wages in Royal houses are naturally extremely good. A first footman who came from a monor Royal household to a non-Royal one electrified the modest house-mifetros-r----by asking £150 a year and "all found," which was what he had been having. But then he knew four languages, an accomplishment more valuable to Royalty, in a footman, than to more stay-at-home householders.