Rhodes. In 1895, Brett became Permanent Secretary to the Office of Works, where Edward, Prince of Wales, was impressed by his zeal and dedication to the elderly Queen Victoria. A lift was built at Windsor Castle to get the elderly Queen upstairs in a redecorated palace. In Kensington Palace, Esher would push the Queen around in wheel chair so she could revisit her childhood. The devoted royal servant would work even more closely with Edward VII after his coronation in 1902. Upon his father's death on 24 May 1899, he succeeded him as 2nd Viscount Esher. During the Boer War Esher had to intervene in the row between Lord Lansdowne and General Garnet Wolseley, the Commander-in-Chief, who tended to blame the politician for military failures. He would make the walk between palace and War Office to iron out problems. Into the political vacuum, Esher wrote the memos that became established civil service procedure. When the Elgin Commission was asked to report on the conduct of war, it was Esher who wrote it after the "Khaki Election" of 1900, and continued to act to influence both King and parliament. They met Admiral Jackie Fisher at Balmoral to discuss reform of Naval structures, which relied heavily on Fisher's complex web of relatives in senior posts. In 1901, Lord Esher was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Berkshire and became Deputy Governor and Constable of Windsor Castle. He remained close to the royal family until his death. By the end of 1903 Esher was meeting or corresponding with King Edward VII every day. He lived at 'Orchard Lea', Winkfield on the edge of the Great Park. During this period, he helped edit Queen Victoria's papers, publishing a work called Correspondence of Queen Victoria (1907). From 1903 Esher shunned office, but was a member of Lord Elgin's South African War Commission, which investigated the British Army's near-failure in the Boer War. At this time he was writing to the King daily (and having three or four meetings a day with the King's adviser Lord Knollys), informing him of the views of the Commission, of party leaders, and War Office civil servants with whom he was still in touch from his days working for Hartington. St John Brodrick, Secretary of State for War, was resentful of Esher's influence. Brodrick's scope for operation was paralysed by Esher's circumvention, and the government was much weakened in October 1903