The Quiet Virtues of the Family Secretary
The family secretary is, in many distinguished households, the unseen figure on whom the smooth functioning of family life most depends.
The position of family secretary is one of the oldest in the constitution of the distinguished household, and yet it is rarely well understood by those outside it. The role does not announce itself. The family secretary is not the Chief of Staff, not the principal's private secretary, and not the household manager, though their work touches all three. They are, in essence, the keeper of the family's correspondence and of the small recurring matters of family life which, if neglected, accumulate into considerable inconvenience.
The family secretary takes care of the things a family ought to remember and frequently does not. The birthdays and anniversaries of the family's wider circle, including those whose names the principal cannot quite recall but whose feelings would be wounded by omission. The acknowledgements that follow gifts received and hospitality enjoyed. The private correspondence with godchildren, with old friends, with the tutors and nannies who once worked for the family and who, now in retirement, still write at Christmas. The renewal of memberships of clubs and institutions which matter to the family without anyone in the family thinking about them often.
None of these matters, taken individually, is consequential. Together, they form the texture of a family that is properly engaged with its own life. A family without a family secretary, or with one in name only, finds itself, year by year, slightly less in touch with its own circle, slightly less correct in its observances, slightly less the kind of family it would wish to be. The decline is so gradual as to be imperceptible from inside, and it is rarely reversed once acknowledged.
The family secretary requires a temperament which is, in our experience, increasingly difficult to find. They must be discreet to the point of invisibility, attentive to the point of obsession, and committed for a period of years which most contemporary careers will not accommodate. The position rewards a certain kind of person, often of mature years, often having served other distinguished households previously, often interested in the rhythm of family life as a vocation rather than a job.
When such a person is found, they should be retained at proper terms and given the seniority their work deserves. The economy of which the family secretary is the chief practitioner, that of small attentions delivered without fail over decades, has no substitute. The cost of doing without it is paid in a currency which is harder to name but which is felt by every member of the family who eventually notices that something is absent.
A great family secretary is the proof that small things, attended to without fail, become the substance of a family's life.
FamilyThe Education of the Next Generation
The education of the principal's children and grandchildren is a matter of considerable consequence, deserving the same attention as any major estate decision.
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