Harriet Phipps

The Hon. Harriet Lepel Phipps, VA (22 January 1841 – 7 March 1922) was an English courtier who served as a confidential attendant of Queen Victoria.

Family Phipps was born in 1841. She was the youngest daughter of Sir Charles Beaumont Phipps, a courtier, confidant of the Queen, and Keeper of the Privy Purse.

Career Phipps was appointed Maid of Honour in Ordinary to the Queen on 3 March 1862 (giving her the courtesy rank of a baron's daughter), and later served as a Woman of the Bedchamber from 1889

Phipps was used by the Queen to carry out confidential errands, and had access to many secrets, which she faithfully kept. Her papers were destroyed upon her death. She was decorated with the Royal Order of Victoria and Albert, 4th class.

Marie Mallet, a fellow lady of the bedchamber, found Phipps as a messenger of instructions from Victoria "the embodiment of early Victorian traditions, discreet almost to a fault, full of little mysteries,"

Her 1889 portrait, by John Lavery, is now in the collection of the Glasgow Museums.

Cultural depictions Phipps was portrayed by Fenella Woolgar in the 2017 film Victoria & Abdul.