My Servant Problem

Butler to Diana, then me. Of course, he was dazzled.

She was but a Royal Princess. How could her memory compete with the glamour of a newspaper feature writer?

I don’t care much about The British royals, but I have always envied them their servants.

King Charles does not have to go through his clothes before he goes on a state visit, winnowing out the jeans that make him look fat, because he has staff. He doesn’t worry if he ordered enough Nova when he gives a brunch. He isn’t screwed if he forgets to bring the right cable for his phone when he picks up the rental car.

Valet, my good man. Scoot back to the palace and fetch me a cable and make sure it is iPhone 16 compatible. No, don’t take an Uber – we are but a poor nation. Trot back on all fours.

The nice thing about being a newspaper feature writer, however – which, ironically is the same thing that makes us bitter and resentful - - is that while we don’t get to be the king, now and then we are privileged to nibble their scraps.

So it was, one long ago day, that Paul Burrell, one-time butler to Princess Diana, came to my Greenwich Village apartment to be my butler. This happened for the usual reason goodies are tossed to reporters as fish to seals; he was flogging a book, “In the Royal Manner: Expert Advice on Etiquette and Entertaining From the Former Butler to Diana, Princess of Wales.”

Doorman! Bring round the royal wayback coach with the white horsies. It’s parked in the garage in back of the red Mustang. And throw in some ermine wraps. It’s cold this time of year.

Destination: Greenwich Village, November, 1999. Sound effects? Why not? I just hit 4,000 subscribers. I’m feeling flush.

Here we are in the last of the last century. I am a humble New York Times feature writer. Princess Diana has been dead two years. Paul Burrell, no longer employed by the palace, is coming to my one-bedroom apartment to help me entertain.

You should also know that on the entertaining spectrum, if you have Martha Stewart at one end and the spectrum stretches to Mars, on the opposite end you would have me. The only staple I have in my refrigerator is Diet Pepsi. I order out for coffee. I once try to impress a guy by making dinner.

“Joyce,” he says, “You heat a great marinara.” ( Paying subscribers can find out if I slept with him anyway.)

The idea of having a butler who will plan, cook and oversee a party is thrilling.

I envision a day in which Butler Burrell and I will take a leisurely stroll and select flowers and wine in the morning. Then I will nap, refresh myself in a bath from the milk of unicorns and dress, while the butler prepares and serves a dazzling sit-down dinner for a dozen guests.

This plan is kiboshed in my first phone call with Burrell, who tells me, with great charm, that a sit-down dinner might be an “awful lot to do.” He suggests a cocktail party with foods featured in his book: Cornish pasties, miniature beef Wellington, leeks and mushrooms en croute, salad and a trifle. He also suggests we should get someone “to knock it together in the kitchen.”

You see where this is going?

The butler expects there to be staff. I luck out on this because my friend Steve Jones is at this time an owner of the Knickerbocker Bar and Grill in the Village. Steve volunteers the services of the restaurant cook, Aaron, a Brooklyn guy with a shaved head and strong opinions. When Aaron takes his nightly victory lap around the dining room and patrons ask how much butter is in a dish, he tells them he’s their chef, not their goddamn cardiologist. He does not care for Paul Burrell’s recipes at all – they’re bland, he tells me. But he’ll see what he can do.

Meanwhile, I have my own duties.

Burrell tells me he will need highball glasses for his signature Pimm’s cocktail. I don’t have highball glasses, so I rush out and buy some. I also don’t have a cleaning lady, so I vacuum and wash the floors and straighten up my apartment. Then I polish the silver trays and serving utensils given to me by my mother, a one time antique dealer who specialized in unwieldy antiques of no value: Butter knives and spatulas and serving spoons with a W monogram; silver trays with feet; stuff like that. I have never used them, so they have become tarnished and it takes a lot of work to make them shine. I haven’t read a lot of Jane Austen, but I think this job is called scullery maid.

The big day comes. I am tired from all the house-work, but I get up early to give the apartment a last going over. Then I put on the protective clothing I will need against the torrent of palace-dropping references Burrell, who insists he doesn’t want to talk about Diana, spritzes as he breathes.

“I’m just looking to see if you have the Princess’ favorite film,” Burrell says, scanning my bookcases when he arrives.

And, after an inspection of the fridge. “Veuve Clicquot. Did you know that was the Princess’ favorite champagne?”

We shop for flowers and wine. Burrell turns down a $35 bottle of wine for $7 and $9 bottles of cabernet sauvignon.

“There is no point serving expensive wines at a reception,” he says, a tip I store away for future reference.

We break for a long lunch, which is another thing you do when you have money.

There is, sadly, no juicy Diana gossip. That cavalry officer, James Hewitt, who had an affair with Diana and wrote a book about it?

“I knew him and he was neither an office nor a gentleman.”

The Princess’s death?

He was told at 3 a.m., when he was in London, Burrell says. He packed a small bag for himself and a bag for Diana. No, don’t ask him what was in it, he says, he would never reveal it. (“Never reveal it to you,” he perhaps meant. People magazine will report the butler packs a dress.)

Burrell’s career plans now?

“I’d like a bite out of Martha Stewart’s apple.”

It’s time to start the serious party prep. We go home and move around furniture. I borrow a large, unwieldy trolley from the doorman, steer it the six blocks to the restaurant, and pick up the food. With New York City’s pocked sidewalks and broken curbs this is trickier than you might think. When I return to my apartment, it’s like something out of a princess movie with a skinny actress and Julie Andrews.

The butler has put an antique linen runner on the table, surrounded it with scalloped and starched white linen table mats I have never used, found and laid out my prettiest, if mismatched, Limoges and Bavarian pink and white flower plates. He’s put out the flowers. Now he’s in the kitchen, slicing cucumbers and oranges and lemons and strawberries for his Pimm’s cocktails.

“Pimm’s makes me think of Ascot,” Burrell says. “The 2:30 race is about to start or Agassi on center court. There were people who said I made the best Pimms.”

Aaron the chef arrives, I retire to my bedroom to dress, leaving the staff to deal with the cooking.

Naturally, just like in the movies, when my ten guests arrive, the butler answers the door. They know I am doing a story about entertaining with help, but only my friend Herb knows the help used to work for the late Princess of Wales. Naturally, Herb asks Burrell to announce him as the Duke of Wellington. Burrell declines because, as he explains to Herb, that is not his title, but finally, in the give ‘em what they want spirit of book promotion, he relents.

The evening, though I am a little tired from my three days of preparation, is divine. The butler takes the guests’ coats and lays them on the bed. (I have explained this is an ancient custom in New York.) He asks each guest what they would like to drink and brings the drink back on a folded cloth napkin on a plate, with one hand behind his back. (If only, I think, my Aunt Shirley, who could do a Passover for a dozen people without breaking a sweat, were here to see this. She would fucking plotz.)

The butler does not invite guests to chow down as New York hostesses do, standing by the buffet and inviting, then entreating, then begging guests to be the first to get something to eat – the one thing about which New Yorkers are self-conscious. He approaches guests one or two at a time, asks if they would care for something to eat, leads them to the buffet and serves.

Eventually, we have the big reveal: the butler and Aaron the cook join the party and the book is held aloft and I toast Paul Burrell, a very good sport, and we drink until…honestly, I don’t remember.

But I can tell you one thing. It’s good to be the queen.