by Anne Edwards
“At 11:45 beloved Papa passed peacefully away,” Prince George wrote in his diary for Friday, May 6, “& I have lost my best friend & the best of fathers. I never had a [cross] word with him in his life. I am heartbroken & overwhelmed with grief, but God will help me in my great responsibilities & darling May will be my comfort as she always has been. May God give me strength & guidance in the heavy task which has fallen on me. I sent telegrams to the Lord Mayor & the Prime Minister. Left Motherdear & Toria & drove back to M[arlborough] H[ouse] with darling May. I am quite stunned by this awful blow. Bed at 1.0.”
The old King was dead, and the new King—after a fitful night’s sleep—was ready to carry on with “darling May” by his side.
No one awakened the two elder boys at Marlborough House to tell them their grandfather had died the night of May 6. About seven the next morning, Bertie chanced to rise first and from the window of the bedroom he shared with David saw the Royal standard flying at half-mast. When he cried out to his brother, David jumped out of bed and ran to Bertie’s side. “Across the Mall, Buckingham Palace stood grey and silent, and on the roof in the bright morning sunlight the Standard hung limply on the mast,” he recalled.
Finch then appeared and, after tearfully confirming the truth, conveyed the message that their father wished to see them both downstairs. Bertie was unable to control his shaking, but neither of them cried. Marlborough House was grey and sullen as they made their way down the mansion’s magnificent black marble staircase, behind them the grim mural of the Battle of Ramillies.* They could hear the sound of some servant’s muffled tears, but neither boy cast a glance back over his shoulder to see who might be crying.
Their father sat at his desk, his face “grey with fatigue,” and he cried as he told them that their grandfather was dead. David answered sadly that they had already seen the Royal standard at half-mast. Their father went on to describe in exact detail the scene around the deathbed. Then he asked sharply, “What did you say about the standard?”
“It is flying at half-mast over the palace,” David answered.
His father frowned and muttered distractedly, “But that’s all wrong. The King is dead. Long live the King!” He then sent for his equerry and in “a preemptory naval manner” ordered that a mast be rigged at once on the roof of Marlborough House. Within an hour the Royal standard was flying “close-up” over the house, the order to raise it—the new King’s first.
At nine o’clock on Monday morning, May 9, 1910, the Prince of Wales was proclaimed King George V from the balcony of Friary Court, St. James’s Palace, a ceremony that “May and I watched from the window of the boys’ room.” The two boys, dressed in their cadet blues and standing at salute, their small brother George solemn between them,* watched it from a separated part of the courtyard below. Prime Minister Asquith was on a yacht in Gibraltar Harbour when he heard of the King’s death.† Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, the hereditary Earl Marshal (the Duke of Norfolk), and the remaining Ministers and Privy Councillors in uniform stood at the back of the balcony as the proclamation was read to a massive, hushed crowd below by Sir Alfred Scott-Gatty, Garter King-of-Arms, supported by seven of the King’s Heralds and Pursuivants dressed in their tabards of scarlet, blue, and gold. In a booming voice that echoed through the courtyard, Sir Alfred declared “that the High and Mighty Prince George Frederick Ernest Albert is now, by the death of our late Sovereign of happy memory, become our only lawful right Liege Lord, George the Fifth, by the Grace of God, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, to whom we acknowledge all faith and constant obedience, with all hearty and humble affection, beseeching God, by whom Kings and Queens do reign, to bless the Royal Prince George the Fifth with long and happy years to reign over us.”
The heralding trumpets sounded. Guns in the adjoining park thundered their salute. Then one man in the reverent crowd sang the opening bars of “God Save the King.” The hymn was taken up by another voice and then by a third. In a moment, the surge of Britain’s national anthem rose majestically from the crowds at St. James’s Palace, its rhythm punctuated by the crash of guns.
Princess May had always been known as May, although she still signed all official papers with her two christened names, Victoria Mary. Now she would have to choose a new name as Queen Consort. “George dislikes double names and I could not be Victoria,” she explained to Aunt Augusta on May 15, 1910. “But it strikes me as curious to be rechristened at the age of 43.” To the world from that time she was Queen Mary, but to her husband she remained “Darling May” or “Angel May.”
While Queen Mary was suddenly deluged with the many problems and decisions that came with her new position, the old Queen was desperately trying to make peace with her sudden widowhood. Four days after King Edward’s death, Lord Esher wrote poignantly, “The Queen sent for me, and there she was, in a simple black dress with nothing to mark specially her widowhood, and moving gently about his room as if he were a child asleep. And I honestly believe that this is what has been in her mind all these days [that he was asleep—not dead].
“The King was lying on the bed in which he always slept—the curtainless simple bed. His head was inclined gently to one side as if in comfortable sleep and his hands laid on the counterpane, with the pink sleeve of his pink nightdress showing. No appearance of pain or death. There was even a glow on his face, and the usual happy smile of the dead who die peacefully.
“The Queen moved about ... quietly but perfectly naturally and talked for half an hour ... with only a slight diminution of her natural gaiety, but with a tenderness which betrayed the ... feeling that she had got him there altogether to herself.
“In a way she seemed, and is, I am convinced, happy. It is the womanly happiness of complete possession of the man who was the love of her youth, and—as I fervently believe—of all her life.
“Once she said, ‘What is to become of me?’ ... Once or twice she gripped my arm, as she has so often done before—a favourite gesture—and I kissed both her hands when I left her, and came back to kiss them again ... I left her—moved just at the end to tears—and she sat down in the little chair which had been placed at the King’s bedside. Round the room were all the things just as he had last used them, with his hats hanging on the pegs as he loved them to do.”
Alexandra sent for all the King’s close friends to say “goodbye” privately to him in his bedroom. Sir Frederick Ponsonby found “the blinds were down and there was a screen round the bed, so that at first I could see nothing, but when we came round it I saw the poor King lying apparently asleep. I was very awed and hardly liked to speak except in a whisper, but the Queen spoke naturally and said how peaceful he looked and that it was a comfort to think he had suffered no pain. She added that it was not Sandringham but ‘horrid Biarritz’ that had killed him, although no doubt, the political crisis had something to do with it.”
After about ten minutes, Ponsonby left the King’s bedroom. In the corridor directly outside were the new King and Queen. “I debated in my mind,” he recalled, “what I should do and although kissing their hands seemed a tiresome formality, so out of keeping with the simplicity of Queen Alexandra’s grief, and although I knew that both King George and Queen Mary disliked anything at all theatrical in private, I came to the conclusion that as everyone else had probably gone through this formality I had better go through it, too. I sank down on one knee and kissed their hands in turn.”
Ponsonby and Porn McDonnell were to be in charge of arrangements for the King’s Lying-in-State at Westminster Hall and his funeral at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor.* Before they could set the plans, they had to persuade Queen Alexandra to allow the King’s body to be moved. On the twelfth she received McDonnell in the King’s bedroom, where he now lay in a military greatcoat. “They want to take him away,” she said piteously, “but I can’t bear to part with him. Once they hide his face from me, everything is
gone forever.” McDonnell was “very much broken up by the interview.”
Not until Saturday, May 14, were the King’s remains placed in an oak coffin and moved to the throne room of Buckingham Palace. The Royal standard was draped over the coffin, Saint Edward’s crown at the head, and the sceptre and orb at the roof. Four tall grenadier guardsmen of the King’s Company “stood rigidly at each corner, resting on their arms reversed, their bear-skin-capped heads inclined in respect.” Queen Alexandra could not stay out of the throne room; she returned there constantly to rearrange the flowers or “to show a foreign relative or old friend the scene.”
By the sixteenth, the two men, Ponsonby and McDonnell, were able to convince Queen Alexandra that the funeral had to take place as soon as possible. McDonnell met with a hundred journalists at Westminster Hall and told them all was ready. A date, May 20, had been set for the funeral. The procession with the coffin left Buckingham Palace for the hall at 11:30 on the morning of May 17. “A glorious service followed, marred only by the loudness of the band that accompanied the choir, the famous hammer-beam roof being responsible. Then the procession left to the strains of Chopin’s Funeral March, while McDonnell prepared the Hall for the public.” That same day Queen Alexandra’s sister, the Empress Maria Fyodorovna (Aunt Minnie), arrived, and after the service the two women left for Sandringham, where they welcomed the next day ex-President Theodore Roosevelt, who had been sent to England as the special envoy of the United States by President William Taft. Roosevelt found Queen Alexandra in a terrible state. “They took him away from me, they took him away from me,” she cried, unable to control her emotions. “You see, he was so wonderfully preserved. It must have been the oxygen they gave him before he died. It was most extraordinary—but they took him away from me.”
In the midst of all the problems of the funeral arrangements caused by his mother’s mental condition, King George had difficulty with Winston Churchill, who took this inappropriate time to challenge the new King on the Constitution, calling for violent changes. Then, to the King and Queen’s great distress and shock, Alexandra demanded she have precedence over Queen Mary—an honour that by British Royal covenants was not hers. After a great deal of unpleasantness, Queen Mary gave in to the King’s request that she do so, registering her irritation to Aunt Augusta.
“I am now very tired after the strain of the past weeks & now as you know come all the disagreeables, so much to arrange, so much that must be changed, most awkward & unpleasant for both sides, if only things can be managed without having rows, but it is difficult to get a certain person to see things in their right light.”
Not only did the old Queen demand precedence at the funeral, she also refused to give up her “lovely little crown,”* and though she had complained about moving into Buckingham Palace in 1902, she could not be persuaded to move out. “The odd part,” Queen Mary wrote to her Aunt Augusta, “is that the person causing the delay and trouble remains supremely unconscious to the inconvenience it is causing, such a funny state of things & everyone seems afraid to speak.”
Kaiser Wilhelm had travelled to England on his private yacht, the Hohenzollern, escorted by four British destroyers. The vessel was anchored in the Thames Estuary and Wilhelm then boarded the Royal train for London, arriving on the stroke of noon at Victoria Station to be met by his cousin, King George, whom he kissed on both cheeks. The uncle he had never been able to win over was dead. Perhaps now he could rely on the British Empire when a need came for Germany to stand against France and Russia.
The two cousins lunched at Marlborough House and then rode together to Westminster, where the Kaiser laid a wreath of purple and white flowers on King Edward’s coffin and then knelt beside Britain’s new King in silent prayer, waiting sympathetically until the dead man’s son rose before rising himself. Then he grasped King George’s hand in a warm handshake, a gesture newsmen reported favourably and the King believed was an honest show of emotion.
The Kaiser was not the least bit reticent about exposing some of his hostilities. At King Edward’s funeral, he told the King of Italy, “All the long years of my reign my colleagues, the Monarchs of Europe, have paid no attention to what I have to say. Soon, with my great Navy to endorse my words, they will be more respectful.” He was envious of the older European nations and bitterly reported to Theodore Roosevelt that King Edward had never visited Berlin, but had always gone to Paris. He considered this an unpardonable snub. He added that King George was “a very nice boy. He is a thorough Englishman and hates all foreigners but I do not mind that as long as he does not hate Germans more than other foreigners.” Still, no matter what Wilhelm might personally have felt, Germany’s officers of the Army and Navy were ordered to wear mourning for eight days, and the German fleet in home waters flew its flags at half-mast.
The black-clad crowds that lined the path of the funeral procession on the hot, sultry morning of May 20 were hushed and orderly until that moment when the glorious spectacle passed them by. No one could blame them for pushing and shoving to get a front-line view, or their gasps of admiration. Flanking King George were Kaiser Wilhelm and Arthur, Duke of Connaught, King Edward’s sole surviving brother. Behind them rode seven sovereigns, making nine kings in all, and each one related to the dead monarch.* Their jewelled orders and gold-and-silver scabbards and helmets glittered in the harsh sun, and their brilliantly hued uniforms trimmed in gold braid and their crimson sashes were a shocking contrast to the mourning attire of the spectators. After the monarchs came five heir-apparents,* seven queens,† another forty-five Royalties, and several special Ambassadors (Theodore Roosevelt among them) of countries that were not monarchies. Seventy nations were represented in this last and greatest gathering of royalty and rank.
David and Mary, scarcely ever turning their glances toward the crowds, rode stiffly in one of the state coaches with their mother. The children appeared to be concentrating on the mournful sound of the funeral marches of the massed military bands, the musical selections having been chosen by their grandmother,‡ who rode before them in a glass coach with her sister, the Empress Maria.
When the procession arrived at Westminster Hall, from where the coffin was to be removed, Queen Alexandra’s carriage was given precedence and was the first to arrive at the entrance. Kaiser Wilhelm reached the door of her coach even before her footman. However, he was on the street side of the coach and had to dash round the rear of the vehicle to help her down. To her irritation, he kissed her affectionately. Alexandra loathed Wilhelm for his arrogance, and, though she had been only eight years old when Germany had seized the duchies from her native Denmark, she had never forgiven him or Germany for this act. In 1890, when her son was made honorary Colonel of a Prussian regiment, she wrote him scathingly: “And so my Georgie boy has become a real live filthy blue-coated Piekelhaube German soldier!!! Well, I never thought I’d live to see that!” Determined not to be escorted into Westminster by Wilhelm, Alexandra walked away and took hold of her sister’s arm and propelled her forward.
The coffin, wrapped in the Royal standard, was borne by blue-jackets in straw hats from Westminster to the sound of muffled drums and wailing bagpipes. Much of the funeral procession was now on foot and included King Edward’s sixty-three aides-de-camp, and many officers and peers. Then came Lord Kitchener, Lord Roberts, and Sir Evelyn Wood—England’s three field marshals—and detachments from the most famous regiments from England and the Continent.
The procession ended at Paddington Station, where the coffin was lifted onto the Royal train for a half-hour journey to Windsor Station, accompanied by the Royal Family and all the visiting dignitaries. At Windsor, it was placed on a waiting gun carriage. Blue-jackets dragged it slowly uphill to St. George’s Chapel, all of the long funeral procession following on foot except for one coach carrying Queen Alexandra and the Empress Maria. Caesar, his lead held securely by a Highlander, trotted behind the coffin; and the King’s favourite charger, Kildare, with empty saddle and boots reversed in t
he stirrups, was led by two grooms. Then came King George, again flanked by Kaiser Wilhelm and the Duke of Connaught, and marching behind them, David and Bertie in their trim Naval cadet uniforms.
Alice Keppel arrived inconspicuously at Windsor for the funeral, almost unrecognisable behind her thick black veil, and was led by McDonnell into the cloister entrance. McDonnell then had to move quickly to restrain the Empress Maria from throwing her wreath onto the coffin where it might have caught and stopped the machinery that was to lower it into the ground. A member of the Royal Household “cast earth upon the coffin, as it slowly sank out of sight.”*
The funeral was an overpowering—even a somewhat eerie—experience for the dead King’s grandchildren. Not until it was over did the full meaning of King Edward’s death register itself on their young minds. That their parents had become King and Queen of England they took for granted. But their own position, especially in David’s case, was harder to accept. For now, as Heir-Apparent, nothing save death itself was at all likely to prevent David from one day becoming “by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland, and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India.”
