Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  Bertie had an even more difficult time than David adjusting to life at the Naval College. In the beginning, his contemporaries thought he was both a bit strange and a sissy. He twitched when frightened, was so homesick that he cried at nights during almost the entire first year. He also had trouble controlling his bladder in the cold early mornings as he waited to use the facilities. David took the chance of arranging to meet his brother secretly in a small hidden area on the grounds where their great-grandmother and her ladies-in-waiting had once enjoyed picnics. Yet curiously, by the end of the year it was Bertie, not David, who began to make friends. He evoked a great deal of personal sympathy. He began to show a “grit and never-say-I’m-beaten spirit.” The splints were off his legs, and though he was not much better at sports than David, he was fast and had great endurance. Unlike David, he made a little circle of intimate friends, and when he relaxed with this small coterie his stammer would virtually disappear. But in class he was as tongue-tied as ever.

  On August 2, 1909—the end of the summer term—twenty-four battleships, sixteen armoured cruisers, forty-eight destroyers, and more than fifty other vessels crossed the Solent to welcome the Tsar, the Empress, the four young Grand Duchesses, and the little Tsarevitch as they arrived at Spithead in the Imperial yacht Standart. Bertie, who had contracted whooping cough, was confined to sick bay, while David, after a three-day wait, was allowed time off from classes to visit his relatives and nominated to escort them about the Naval College. David told his frail little cousin with the large frightened eyes—who was the Tsarevitch of Russia—stories about his school life and flirted with the pretty Grand Duchesses. Olga, the oldest, was closest to his age, and he had overheard his grandmother say that she might one day be a suitable bride for him. David favoured Tatiana, who was only twelve at the time. The tallest, slenderest, and most elegant of the sisters, she had deep auburn hair and wide grey eyes. The three other Grand Duchesses turned to her as their leader and even jokingly referred to her as “the Governess.” When their mother was preoccupied, Tatiana stood by to guard her little brother from any possible danger, for he suffered from haemophilia,* a disease that could cause him to bleed to death with the slightest injury. David, always sensitive, had great sympathy for the small boy and for his mother, the Tsarina, who “wore such a sad expression on her face.” But the best moments of all were when the King and Queen arrived on the Royal yacht, the Victoria & Albert, and he was allowed to go on board. The King looked dapper and more robust than ever, and he walked David round and round the deck, talking to him as an intimate and not as a grandparent or a King. He wore his sailor’s cap and carried a stick, while his small terrier, Caesar, paraded the decks at his heels.

  Like Bertie, Harry suffered knock-knees and wore the same loathsome leg splints. He was of an even more nervous disposition than Bertie, and whereas he did not stutter, he had retained his baby lisp. He was also given to alternate fits of crying and giggling, and suffered constantly from some indisposition. On February 2, 1909, Prince George wrote to Mr. Hansell, “You must remember that he is rather fragile and must be treated differently to his two elder brothers who are more robust.” In February 1910, at the age of ten, Harry was sent to live at York Gate Cottage, Broadstairs, the seaside home of the Court physician, Sir Francis Laking (who was seldom in residence). There —many miles from home—Harry was placed in the care of a nurse, Sister Edith Ward.

  The boy liked Broadstairs well enough, yet after three months, he still cried at the slightest provocation. Neither of his parents visited him during this time, although they kept up a fairly consistent correspondence with him and with Sister Edith. Prince George attributed his son’s nervous condition in part to the “thundery weather,” but never considered the total rejection by his parents and the sense of lonesomeness the child must have experienced. He wrote Harry during this time, “Now, that you are 10 years old I had hoped that you were going to try to be better. You must ... be obedient and do what she [Sister Edith] tells you and not behave like a little baby, otherwise I shall have to take you away from Broadstairs and send you somewhere else. You must behave like a boy and not a little child.”

  The letter carried a fearsome threat to the child, who could not imagine what terrible and lonely future he might be forced to endure if sent away from Sister Edith’s care. His health began to improve, and though he still wore the splints as well as special heavy orthopedic boots, he suffered no organic problems. A decision was made that for a few hours each day he would attend St. Peter’s Court, a preparatory school nearby.

  Of the five boys, only Georgie and John remained at home. The extremes between the two youngest of the family could not have been greater. Georgie had always been “something of a handful,” much more the “real boy” than any of his brothers, and more personable and charming than all, save perhaps David. He was gifted as they were not “academically, musically, culturally ... streets ahead of anyone else in the immediate family circle.” He was only seven, three years younger than Harry in the spring of 1910, yet he was much farther advanced and even spoke French better than anyone of his older brothers. If intelligence, affability, cleverness, and insight were necessary requisites for a monarch, this fourth son, fifth in the succession, was the most qualified to be King.

  Prince John celebrated his fourth birthday in July of 1909. He was a winsome child, painfully slow, and he began to suffer the first stages of an incurable epileptic illness. Grave doubts now existed that he would survive to adulthood. Placed entirely in Lala Bill’s care, he remained in the nursery at York Cottage, where his brother Georgie treated him in almost parental fashion. John did not often see his parents. His grandmother, the Queen, however, favoured him above all the other Wales children and spent long hours amusing him whenever she was at Sandringham.

  Those happy Royal Family portraits notwithstanding, Princess May and her brood of Royal Princes and her single flowering Princess were not in private the ideal family the Royals would have the public believe. Not one among Prince George and his sons lusted for power or knew how to use it to his advantage. In truth, except for young Georgie, not one of them possessed any qualities that would have caused him to stand out in his time had he not been who he was.

  One day soon Aunt Augusta was to say of Princess May, “She will indeed be a Queen!” Although her husband was Heir Apparent and her five sons in direct line to the succession, Princess May had been endowed with a quality of majesty denied her Royal husband and princely sons.

  Footnotes

  *Despite Mr. Hansell’s tutelage, David, when Prince of Wales and as Edward VIII, had several of these conflicts.

  *Haemophilia was passed on by Queen Victoria to several of her descendants. Queen Ena, as well as the Empress Alexandra, was a haemophilia carrier, and therefore her sons suffered the consequences.

  FOURTEEN

  The years of King Edward’s reign had brought Princess May forward and into constant view before the public. She possessed a powerful charisma. There was purpose in her step, strength in her voice, and a rightness in all her appearances. Whenever she and Prince George were on display, it was Princess May who caught the immediate attention of the crowds, Princess May whose photograph appeared almost daily in the press. And since she had made the long tour on the Ophir and the trip to India, her image was more recognisable throughout the world than was Queen Alexandra’s.

  King Edward had no doubts that when the time came, his heir, with Princess May by his side, would have a popular reign. But in 1910, at the age of sixty-seven, King Edward suffered increasingly frequent moods of depression. He had come to believe that the Monarchy was in serious jeopardy and that his very own Ministers were intent upon reducing him to a “mere signing machine” and eroding by degrees those “few prerogatives that still remained to the Crown.” His fear was that his heir might not have the power to remain King.

  In the nine years of his reign, King Edward had seen his Royal powers slip away with incredible steadiness. The
right to cede territory was no longer his but Parliament’s. Nor did he have the absolute right to appoint and dismiss Secretaries of State. He did not give way without a struggle that in the end caused ill-feelings with almost every one of his Ministers, and he added to the problem by virtually abandoning the practise of seeing them in audience at Buckingham Palace. Therefore, unless they should meet the King socially, his Ministers were forced to go through a third person—most likely Mrs. Keppel, Admiral Lord Fisher, Sir Charles Hardinge, Sir Francis Knollys, or Sir Frederick Ponsonby—in all their dealings. He was constantly complaining to Mrs. Keppel that his Ministers did not bother to inform him about their policies and kept him “completely left in the dark.”

  Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer under the government of Herbert Henry Asquith, later 1st Earl of Oxford, was the King’s particular nemesis. He was convinced that Lloyd George was a danger to the Monarchy and that his flaming oratory with its abiding message “that the poor should inherit the earth ... his wonderful flow of eloquence, his musical cadences, his devastating ridicule, his capacity for identifying himself with ‘left-out’ millions” was only a clever façade for his true design—“the preaching of class wars.” The King read Lloyd George’s speeches with horror, instructing Sir Francis Knollys in one case to protest “in the most vigourous terms ... a speech ... full of false statements, of socialism in its worst and most insidious form of virulent abuse against one particular class, which can only have the effect of setting class against class and of stirring up the worst passions of his audience.”

  The King’s fury did not arise because he opposed social reform. To the contrary, King Edward shared with his people an awakening conscience, and he did not hesitate to condemn the “perfectly disgraceful conditions” in which so many of the poor were forced to live. Nonetheless, Lloyd George’s suspiciously socialistic “implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness” appeared to the King to be “primarily a campaign against property and capital,” perhaps even to discredit “the political impartiality of the Crown to the ultimate ruin of its reputation.”

  The idea that the Monarchy was being threatened with dissolution and that his son might not reign after him preyed heavily upon his mind. He confessed his fears to Princess May, and he spoke gloomily of abdication to Alice Keppel. During the early months of 1910, the King was in a severe state of mental depression, as well as suffering serious breathing problems and violent fits of coughing. Mrs. Keppel consulted Dr. Laking, who informed her that he had begged King Edward to winter abroad for the good of his health, but that the King had refused. Enlisting Prime Minister Asquith’s help, Alice Keppel finally was able to convince the King to leave the bitter cold of London; and on March 6, she and King Edward set out for the warmer climate of Biarritz. En route, he insisted on stopping in Paris for three days. No sooner had they arrived than winds in that city reached blizzard velocity, and he caught a chill while driving to and from his engagements. Alarmed at his feverish condition, Alice Keppel suggested they return immediately to London, but King Edward would not hear of it. He grew weaker during the short journey, and upon his arrival in Biarritz, he collapsed.

  The Queen, who was in Denmark with her daughter Toria and her sister, the Dowager Empress Maria, received a telegram that the King had been taken ill. Knowing Mrs. Keppel was with him, she decided that it would be “both embarrassing and inopportune” for her to make an appearance. She did telegraph Dr. Laking with a request that the physician be ready to meet her in Biarritz if the King should take a further turn for the worse. However, King Edward slowly improved and within a few weeks was able to take walks and play croquet with Mrs. Keppel. The Queen wrote and begged him to “leave that horrid Biarritz” to join her on a Mediterranean cruise, but he refused, much irritated that she did not understand that a cruise—which would keep him abroad at a time of political crisis in England—would be impossible. Queen Alexandra went on to Corfu with her entourage, and the King and Mrs. Keppel returned to England, arriving on April 27 at Victoria Station, where Prince George met them, much relieved to find his father looking quite well. That evening, the two men and David and Bertie (who were home on school holiday) went to Covent Garden to hear Madame Tetrazzini sing Gilda in Rigoletto, one of the King’s favourite operas. The King took his usual place in the Royal Box and, according to one observer, “sat sad-eyed throughout the performance.” When it was ended, he was seen to sigh deeply, stand, and take a long look around the house. His attitude struck one member of the audience as being “so unlike [the King].”

  That Friday, David and Bertie joined their father for lunch with the King at Buckingham Palace. Prince George was alarmed at his father’s deep-chested cough, which the King blamed on his smoking. He was, anyway, too pleased to have his grandsons with him to pay much mind to his indisposition. The boys were dressed in Navy cadet uniforms and told their grandfather about all their school experiences. For once, the King was more concerned with David than with Bertie, having on his mind that David would never be King.

  The next day, a Saturday, the King and Mrs. Keppel departed London for Sandringham with Caesar, the King’s long-haired, white-coated fox terrier. Caesar—on whose jewelled Fabergé collar was engraved the legend, “I am Caesar, the King’s dog” —had been deeply attached to his master during King Edward’s reign, and they had seldom been parted for even a few days. At night, Caesar slept curled up in an armchair beside the King’s bed, and every morning, Wellard, the second footman, washed and combed him. Caesar might be seen wherever the King went, trotting behind him down the Rue de la Paix, or strolling along the beach at Biarritz. Stamper, King Edward’s motor mechanic, notes that “Caesar was neither aristocratic nor strictly speaking, handsome, but had what the French call La beauté du Diable, and made up for lack of looks by engaging ways.” The dog was mischievous and always a bit too curious. Once, when King Edward was taking coffee in the garden of the Café Glatzen,* Stamper heard terrible screams and rushed to see what was happening. He found the King shouting, “Caesar! Come here! Come here, you bad dog!” The terrier was too intent upon chasing a white peacock to answer. In the end, Stamper managed to catch the errant terrier and lock him in the car, while the dog’s master stood shaking his stick and repeating over and over, “You naughty, naughty dog.” Caesar just barked and wagged his stubby tail.

  Despite a high wind the Sunday after his arrival at Sandringham, King Edward walked the grounds with Caesar bounding ahead, stopping from time to time to see if his master was following. The King’s pace was always brisk, but this day Alice Keppel could hardly keep up with him. Speed was “the very essence of his nature ... he spoke rapidly, ate fast, thought apace. He even smoked hard,” Stamper says. Something this day drove him faster than usual. Mrs. Keppel fell back and waved him on. When they met again a short time later in the library of Sandringham, the King was coughing badly and looked feverish, and upon their return to London the next day, he was confined to bed. A decision was made by the King’s Ministers to send for the Queen. The communiqué merely said that the King was not well; no hint was given of the seriousness of his illness. In fact, the telegram, signed by the King’s Private Secretary, Sir Francis Knollys, was so unalarming that the Queen and Toria considered staying for twenty-four hours in Venice on their way home from Corfu, then changed their minds.

  Knollys was in no way trying to deceive the Queen about the severity of the King’s illness. Whenever any member of the Royal Family was ill, no matter how slight the indisposition, a “curious air of mystery” prevailed. Osbert Sitwell,* who became a particular friend of the Royal Family some years later, speculated that this arose “because kings and queens must not appear to be in any sense fallible. Though unlike Roman Emperors they now make no pretension to downright divinity. Yet, a faint odour of ex-officio immortality still surrounds them, and the possibility of an illness attacking them always brings a sense of shock, reminds them—and still more those in waiting upon them—of the transitoriness o
f their human splendour.”

  Sir Francis Knollys was, therefore, acting according to tradition in playing down the gravity of the King’s condition to the Queen. The Queen did not press for more definitive information, despite her knowledge that the King had not been well.

  Princess May, Prince George, and David and Bertie met Queen Alexandra and Toria at Victoria Station the evening of May 5. The Queen took the grave news Prince George told her stoically. Toria, however, fell into a state of near-collapse, and Queen Alexandra and Princess May had to calm her. The grief-stricken family then went directly to Buckingham Palace, where King Edward had personally given all directions for the Queen’s reception upon her arrival. He was dressed and, though “hunched ... grey in the face and fighting for breath,” told her, in the slow-clipped Germanic voice he always used in speaking to her—an effort made so that she might be able to read his lips,* that he was doing better and that he had a box reserved for her for the evening performance at Covent Garden, a plan that he thought would diminish public speculation on his health. Shocked at his feeble appearance, which suddenly made reality of what her son had told her, the Queen refused to leave the ill man. Perhaps because Queen Alexandra’s presence meant Alice Keppel’s absence, King Edward was not too pleased.

  The next morning, May 6, he claimed he felt better and insisted that his valet dress him in a frock coat before he received Sir Francis Knollys. Sir Francis begged him to rest. King Edward would not hear of it. “I shall work to the end,” he said, “or what use is it to be alive?” A short time later, he demanded help to put on formal attire to greet Sir Ernest Cassel,† then rose from his chair and shook hands with Sir Ernest, and even managed to smoke half a cigar before he was seized by a coughing spasm. Moments later, he suffered a “fainting fit” and was put to bed. The Queen, Prince George, Princess May, and David and Bertie rushed to his side and remained in his room throughout the day. The final vigil had begun, and Dr. Laking could not withhold the truth when Queen Alexandra asked him if death was near. She then did a remarkable and magnanimous thing. She sent for Alice Keppel and, when the King’s mistress arrived a few moments later, left the room with the rest of the King’s intimate family so that her husband could have a few last, lucid moments with the woman he had loved faithfully during his entire reign. Mrs. Keppel remained with him for about an hour and then left. Caesar, who had been curled at the foot of his master’s bed, followed after her and did not return to the room while his master fought with death.