Queen's House (32 page)

Coronation day itself was less spectacular than it would have been,
but both the King and Queen were profoundly moved by the magic and mystery of the moment of crowning.
*

Unlike Queen Victoria, Edward VII was anxious to prepare his son, George, Prince of Wales, for kingship. He allowed him to see his official papers and encouraged his visits abroad. In April 1904 the Prince and Princess of Wales paid a visit to Emperor Franz Joseph at his court in Vienna. The old-fashioned etiquette and protocol there confirmed the Princess's often repeated belief in the importance of accepting change. Her biographer records that forty years later Queen Mary remarked that

the collapse of the Imperial systems in Austria and in Russia had come as no surprise to her, since she had never conceived how an order so stiff and hierarchical and so totally detached from the people of these countries, could possibly survive in a free and modern world.
¹⁶

In October 1905 the Prince and Princess of Wales set out for a tour of India, which was, for the Princess in particular, a sunburst in the mind. The vibrant colours, the ancient civilizations and the mirrored palaces awakened an intelligent mind that was hungry for new experiences. They were able to wander round the back streets incognito to see ‘the mud dwellings of the poor'. She took trouble to read up about India and the religions. ‘“Hindu, Mohammedan and Buddhism, all this knowledge”, she wrote to her Aunt Augusta, “ … helps one to take a keen interest in all one sees and therefore to enjoy to the utmost every detail of the wonderful sights.” Their Chief of Staff was impressed: “You have”, he told her, “a very good grasp of Indian affairs, quite remarkable in a woman.”'
¹⁷

In their years as Prince and Princess of Wales they were both building up a store of experience and knowledge that was to be invaluable when the Prince became King. Princess Mary was not only to introduce an
Indian note into the decoration of Buckingham Palace: she also would bequeath to her granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, an understanding of the importance of the future Commonwealth.

More and more the Prince realized the quality of his wife's mind, recognizing how indispensable she was to him. Her linguistic ability – she spoke French, German and Italian – her knowledge of history and her understanding of the world, were all qualities that would make her an invaluable Queen Consort.

It was also at this time that she developed her ‘one great hobby' – a passion for collecting, stimulated and encouraged by Lady Mount-Stephen, the wife of a Canadian railway millionaire. In the quiet, flat countryside of the Sandringham estate the Prince could exercise his skill as a crack shot or painstakingly build up his collection of stamps, while Princess Mary, like the museum curator
manquée
she was, would arrange her ‘finds', cataloguing and carefully recording their provenance.

In 1904 the King planned the transformation of the Ballroom. Verity was called in as architect, and White Allom, the Mayfair decorators, as contractors. Verity's assistant remembered ‘making his way through piles of discarded furniture that had belonged to Queen Victoria that the King was anxious to throw out'.
¹⁸

Verity and White Allom completely obliterated the work of Professor Gruner and Prince Albert. Gone was the peeling scagliola: the pillars were now white, fluted, classical Ionic, and the polychrome walls were covered with cream paint and hung with framed tapestries. Gilded swags adorned æ
il-de-bœuf Windows.
All was grand and dramatic in the Parisian style Edward VII loved.

The King was now in the pattern of life that he was to follow throughout his reign. He always spent from Christmas to the end of January at Sandringham, where he held great family parties. He occasionally left for an odd night at Buckingham Palace or for the shooting at the Duke of Devonshire's country house, Chatsworth. February was his London month, when he was engaged in public occasions, the State Opening of Parliament, and diplomatic and other receptions. He hated to be bored and, restless as always, he entertained
at the Palace or went out to dinners and theatres almost every evening.

March and April were spent holidaying abroad: first a week in Paris, which he loved and where he was a well-known and popular figure, and then three weeks at Biarritz and a month cruising in the royal yacht. In May he returned to England for the Season, when every night he dined out or gave dinners at restaurants or at the Palace. Every weekend was spent either at Sandringham or at the country houses of friends.

He moved to Windsor Castle for Ascot in mid June, and to the Duke of Richmond's for the Goodwood races at the end of the month. In August he was once more on the royal yacht for the Regatta at Cowes. After all that he needed a rest and health cure, which he took at a favourite hotel in Marienbad in Bohemia.

He returned to Buckingham Palace for a few days in September, then was off again to Doncaster for the races and Balmoral for shooting in October. Back at Buckingham Palace in November, he spent a week on affairs of state, and the last two weeks he was at Windsor. The first week of December was spent at Sandringham; then until Christmas he was back at Buckingham Palace.

This was his regular annual routine, much of it a round of pleasure, but he crowded a great deal of state business into his weeks at Buckingham Palace and Windsor, and he spent some days of every year visiting provincial cities, receiving and listening to local citizens. His energy was formidable: his restlessness, like that of George III, almost pathological. As the years passed, the Queen spent more and more of her time with her sister, the Dowager Empress of Russia, either at the house they bought in Denmark or at Sandringham.

The reign was not, however, all one of self-indulgence. When Edward VII came to the throne, the Boer War, which had broken out in 1899, was still in progress. According to the King's biographer, ‘The Secretary of State for War, St John Brodrick, appeared to be closeted almost daily in London.' He was, in fact, at the Palace with the King, who was resolved to ‘brush aside all obstacles to speedy victory in the Boer War'. Brodrick, while complaining about ‘the active intervention of
a constitutional monarch in the work of government', nevertheless considered ‘that the impetus which King Edward gave to all military progress was of abiding service to this Country'.
¹⁹

Edward VII had no intention of making Buckingham Palace the centre of political intrigue. Like William IV he endeavoured to be impartial. But, wrote Cust,

Not only did he mean to be king, but also to have a share in the government of his people. If he displayed any political leanings at all, he was inclined to a liberal rather than a conservative view of politics, even on occasion to radical changes. In this he was encouraged by Lord Knollys, himself an advanced radical.

Cust considered that none of the ministers tried to understand the King. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury was too old and ill to make the effort; Arthur Balfour could not ‘bring his intellect down to what … he considered the low level of the King's'; Henry, Marquess of Lansdowne, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, worried about the King's interest in foreign affairs; and later, Herbert Asquith was ‘too much of the don and lawyer' to have any human sympathy for the King.
²⁰

Although much of the business of government was delegated to his ministers, as Magnus writes, ‘Throughout his reign and despite failing health, he performed all his diverse duties with exemplary conscientiousness to the perfect satisfaction of his subjects.'
²¹

Often, however, the King found it more agreeable and as efficient to discuss foreign affairs while on his trips abroad. For example, his Secretary of State for War, Viscount Haldane, stayed with him for three days in August at his hotel in Marienbad, and ‘during picnics in the surrounding woods explained in outline to him his entire plan of army reform'. This method suited the King, who would have yawned over Stockmar's interminable memoranda.

Towards the end of his life the King began giving a series of dinners at Buckingham Palace for men of distinction. In March of his last year he invited senior civil servants, who were encouraged to speak openly. On this occasion he not only listened but ate a ‘huge meal of turtle soup, salmon steak, grilled chicken, saddle of mutton, several snipe
stuffed with foie gras, asparagus, a fruit dish, an enormous concoction and a savoury'.
²²

The King and Queen continued the garden parties that Queen Victoria had initiated. There were formal ones, when Queen Alexandra appeared exquisitely dressed and the King maintained his eagle-eyed watch on sartorial correctness. But there were also riotous children's parties in the garden, when, as Cust remembered, balloons were sent up, which, on exploding, scattered little toys among the delighted children. The elegant Queen Alexandra could be skittish on these occasions.

The King did everything with enormous gusto: work and pleasure were attacked with a
joie de vivre
that electrified – and exhausted – his companions. But the pace was too fast even for his tireless energy.

On the evening of 27 April 1910 Edward VII returned to Buckingham Palace from Biarritz. Although exhausted, he insisted on working on his boxes before dressing for a visit to the opera. On 28 April he received Asquith and his ministers. He spent the weekend at Sandringham, where he inspected his estate in an icy wind. On Monday he was back working in Buckingham Palace, with bronchitis. The last entry in the diary he had kept all his life reads sadly: The King dines alone.' The Queen was recalled from Corfu and arrived on 5 May. For once the King failed to meet her at the station. Fighting all the way, he insisted on dressing to receive Lord Knollys. Even after a succession of heart attacks, he insisted on remaining hunched in his armchair. The Queen, knowing that the end was not far away, with characteristic generosity sent for Mrs Keppel, quietly left her to say goodbye, and then firmly dismissed her.

At five o'clock the Prince of Wales told the King his horse, Witch of the Air, had won at Kempton Park. For that moment the King was conscious. ‘I am very glad,' he said, before sinking again. At 11.45 p.m. on Friday 6 May Edward VII died.

From 17 to 19 May, a quarter of a million people came to Westminster Abbey to pay their last respects, filing silently past the coffin on the catafalque. Edward VII's nephew, the German Emperor, came with suitable solemnity, always anxious to shine, even in the candlelit hall of death.

On 20 May Lionel Cust drove into the Quadrangle of Buckingham Palace,

where the members of the royal procession began to assemble, and horses were waiting in rows … There were eight crowned heads, King George V, the German Emperor, the Kings of Norway, Greece and Spain, of Bulgaria, Denmark and Portugal, with in addition to our own royal Princes, about thirty others, including the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. There was a babel of tongues and a clashing of hooves all round me. At last at a given signal they were all mounted and the royal cortége passed slowly before me out into the Forecourt. Then came the carriage procession with Queen Alexandra, Queen Mary, the Queen of Norway, and their suites, until at last the quadrangle was empty except for myself, and two or three officials in uniform.

Cust followed the procession to Paddington in a royal carriage ‘through a sea of faces, especially in Hyde Park, where there were many rows deep on either side'.
²³

The crowds lining the streets to Paddington watched as the gun carriage carried the King. He was much loved, because with all his faults he was like them, but larger than them. Caesar, his favourite fox terrier, followed the coffin, in the charge of a Highland servant. Behind them came the German Emperor and the eight Kings. It was the first time, noted the Emperor, that a dog had taken precedence before him. The royal train took them to Windsor, where ‘Bertie' was buried in St George's Chapel.

Lionel Cust, remembering those days, was haunted by the words of Rudyard Kipling:

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the Kings depart…
Lest we forget, lest we forget.

Never again would so great an assembly of monarchs meet to mourn the passing of one of their number.

*
Queen Alexandra instructed the Archbishop to make sure that the holy oil should reach her head through her hair piece. He did so, so thoroughly that it dripped through, running down her nose.

CHAPTER SEVEN

King George V and Queen Mary

‘The finest example in modern
times of the supremely difficult art of
constitutional kingship.'
¹

J. R. CLYNES

The Palace Reborn

For Edward VII Buckingham Palace had been not so much a home as another grand hotel into which he could comfortably move for short set periods in his peripatetic life. For King George V it was a ship, to be run with discipline and authority, and his place of work. For Queen Mary it was an enormous challenge, a confusion and profusion of furniture and furnishings and priceless objects which it was her duty and pleasure to identify and arrange. Here was her chance to use all her knowledge of history and the arts and make the Palace the showcase of the nation's history. But in the beginning, as she wrote to Aunt Augusta, ‘everything at this moment seems to me to be chaos and with my methodical mind I suffer in proportion, no doubt some day all will be right again.'
²

As for their family, now they would have to move from their London home, Marlborough House, to the forbidding Buckingham Palace. They loved Sandringham, which was to remain a refuge during the difficultyears of adolescence and was to be important in the shaping of the monarchy.

Here we should pause to look back at the childhood of the two boys who walked in their naval cadet uniforms behind their grandfather's coffin up the Windsor hill to his burial. Both were to become kings: Prince Edward, known as ‘David', for a brief spell as King Edward VIII and Prince Albert, known as ‘Bertie', who succeeded him, as King George VI.