The royals - Kitty Kelley [70]
In fact, the Queen always bet on her horses and twice topped the list of money-winning owners on British tracks in 1954 and 1957. She even advised the Palace stewards when not to bet on her horses. Yet because gambling was illegal and something that the courtiers felt a revered monarch should not indulge in, they promoted the fairy tale that the Queen never wagered.
Within four years a critic denounced these courtiers as fusty, old-fashioned, and hidebound. The critic, Lord Altrincham, derided them as “a second-rate lot.” Altrincham later renounced his hereditary title and became known simply as John Grigg. An historian, he achieved recognition as the man who publicly criticized the Queen as “priggish” and “poorly educated” and lambasted all the Queen’s men as blinkered and inept.
At the time of the coronation, such criticism was so outrageous as to be blasphemous. The monarchy was still revered enough that even those who served it were considered untouchable. The only voice of dissent being heard came from within the Palace walls, and that was the irascible growl of the Queen’s husband, who was appalled by the inefficiency he found all around him.
Pronouncing his wife’s courtiers “creaky” and their administration of Buckingham Palace “medieval,” Prince Philip scorched most of the 230 servants as “goddamned idiots who wait on each other—not on us.” Insisting on naval efficiency, he regarded the 690-room Palace as a leaky old rust-bucket that he had to make seaworthy. Beginning with the footmen, he said the practice of “powdering” their hair with a messy mixture of soap, water, flour, and starch was “old-fashioned and unmanly.” He stopped it. He pronounced the Palace communications system “hopelessly antiquated” and instituted a system to get rid of the “bloody pages running all over the place.” He ordered a modern intercom installed so that with a flick of a switch the Queen could contact him, her secretaries, the children’s nannies, even her chef. Next, the gadget-minded Duke ordered intercoms put in every office and two-way radios put in all royal cars. He introduced Dictaphones, tape recorders, and automated filing systems. He had washing machines installed in the Palace basement to replace the platoon of laundresses scrubbing overtime on washboards. He ended the Palace system of running several dining rooms at full steam all day long just so the servants could eat. He commissioned small pantries with hot plates and refrigerators to be installed in the royal suites so servants would not have to walk three miles of corridors just to take the Queen her coffee every morning. He did away with placing a fresh bottle of Scotch by the monarch’s bed, a quaint practice that had been going on since 1910 when Edward VII asked for a whiskey to counteract a cold. No one had ever canceled the order.
He did allow the Queen to keep her bagpiper. In a tradition started by Queen Victoria, the Pipe Major of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders marches across the terrace of the Palace at nine o’clock every morning, playing the bagpipes.
For the hidebound courtiers, who preferred having young pages in silk breeches run messages by foot, as they had done in the days of Queen Victoria, Philip was radically disruptive. They protested his time-motion studies of the staff and objected to his heliport behind the Palace to save commuting time. They opposed his plan for marketing surplus peas from the farmlands at Sandringham and sneered when he installed bread slicers and carrot-washing machines. They objected when he ordered that Queen Victoria’s orangerie at Windsor Castle be converted into a heated swimming pool. They especially disapproved of his mingling with the masses and said he didn’t distinguish between commoners and aristocrats. They cringed when he entertained labor leaders and shuddered when he invited movie stars to lunch with the Queen. Allowing film stars into Buckingham Palace was worse than permitting