I don’t think it’s odd that Camilla never had a career. For women in her class in the UK, it’s the exception rather than the rule to have a career. She did have jobs tho - I believe she was a secretary at one of the high end interior design firms prior to her marriage. Once married, she took to taking care of the house, having children, managing the social side of her husband’s career, riding, gardening, and volunteering with different charities. It was, and to a certain extent still is, the done thing within this class of UK society. Had Diana never married Charles, her life would have been quite similar to Camilla’s (the Parker-Bowles years, and obviously without being a royal mistress) ironically enough.
I know plenty of women, and a few men, who never had a job much less a career. Most were of a different generation. I had a great aunt, that side of the family had some money. I’m pretty sure prior to her first marriage, she volunteered during the First World War as a candy striper type of thing - I recall her stories about writing letters for soldiers, reading to them. She married soon after the war, and married well. That husband passed away within a year tho from I think the Spanish Flu. She repaired to Europe to get over the grief, visit family (her brother, my great uncle, settled in Paris after the war in what I learned many years later was a mariage blanc but that’s a story for another time!). There she met an exiled Russian noble - one of the very few who still had money. Married him, settled in Europe, then fast forward a few years, and he’s dead. Back to NYC she came, and just did a lot of volunteering. She did take classes at the Art Students League (she was actually pretty talented), but never a job. She did something during WWII - I want to say an air raid warden? - but otherwise it was all charities, lunches, dinners, theatre, her art, weekends away, type of life for her. Her third and last husband was a Danish hotelier - they married in 1949. They traveled, entertained, dined out. He worked but as it was a family owned business, not very hard. He died in the early 1970’s. As my grandmother remarked “she’s buried not just three husbands, but three rich husbands.”
Auntie never worked, she had her ladies she was on charity boards with, she still traveled all over right up till the end really. She was the type of woman that always wore a dress, always had a hat and gloves, and brooches - I remember when she did die, my mother was going thru things and there was easily 250 brooches - all good stuff, no paste. She was very good to us - my father was her favorite nephew - and was always included in all events, even those from my mother’s family. She may never have had a job, but she was always active - hers was not a life lounging in her peignoir on the chaise all day waiting to dress for dinner.
