Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  In their imprisonment at Tsarskoe Selo, Nicholas and his family were in danger of being murdered. The Empress Alexandra—after all, German by birth—had been separated from her family, and an investigation was made by her jailors into her “treasonable, pro-German” sympathies.* What had kept the Russian Royal Family going was the belief that King George would come to their rescue and they would be transferred to England. Had Asquith still been Prime Minister, a good chance exists that Nicky and his family—Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Alix of Hesse, and her great-grandchildren, the four grand duchesses and their small haemophiliac brother—would have been brought to England without delay. But the preceding winter, Asquith’s Government had been brought down. Lloyd George was now the Liberal Prime Minister, and the feisty Welshman had little sympathy for the Russian autocracy. Reluctantly and under pressure from his Ministers and the King, Lloyd George had offered the Tsar and his family asylum in England the day of Nicholas’s abdication, and Kerenski, head of the Provisional Russian Government, had agreed to personally escort the Imperial family to a British ship. By this time the Soviet and the Provisional Government were at an impasse, and the latter was not sufficiently master of the country or of the railroads to engineer the Tsar’s departure.

  Word had got through to Nicholas and Alexandra at Tsarskoe Selo that King George and Queen Mary were deeply concerned about their plight. Hope stirred in both their hearts. Then, on April 10, a semiofficial British Foreign Office statement was received by the Provisional Government stating that “His Majesty’s Government does not insist on its former offer of hospitality to the Imperial family.” The plan to transfer the deposed Tsar and his family to England was therefore suspended until early summer, when in June the Russian Government actually approached England on the matter of asylum.

  “[We] inquired of Sir George Buchanan [English Ambassador to Russia] as to when a cruiser could be sent to take on board the deposed ruler and his family,” Kerenski reported. “Simultaneously, a promise was obtained from the German Government through the medium of the Danish minister, Skavenius, that German submarines would not attack the particular warship which carried the Royal exiles. Sir George Buchanan and ourselves were impatiently awaiting a reply from London. I do not remember exactly whether it was late in June or early in July when the British Ambassador called, greatly distressed ... With tears in his eyes, scarcely able to control his emotions, Sir George informed ... [us] of the British Government’s final refusal to give refuge to the former Emperor of Russia ... I can say definitely that this refusal was due exclusively to considerations of internal British Politics.”

  In England, anti-German hysteria had never abated, and the Empress Alexandra was believed to be German by birth, and, erroneously, pro-German in sentiment. Lloyd George was adamant that England could not offer hospitality to people whose “pro-German sympathies were well-known.”

  The Royal Family had lived in distress throughout this long debate over their Russian cousins. On the one hand were their fears for the lives of Nicky and his family, and on the other the condemnation of their subjects and the possible charge that they themselves—because of their family ties—might also be pro-German. The King had Lloyd George to contend with as well as Queen Alexandra, whose sister, the Dowager Empress Maria (“Aunt Minnie”), Nicky’s mother, was in Russia. Because of the widespread indignation felt in England against the Tsar, the King in the end sanctioned the withdrawal of Britain’s offer of asylum.

  The strain of all these political and family problems told on Queen Mary. Her hair was now streaked with grey, and hard lines were etched into her face. She was suffering from neuritis in her right arm and shoulder. Still, she fought to keep her posture rigid despite the pain it caused. In a brilliant stroke of public relations the same week England had withdrawn its offer to the Tsar, it had been decided that King George and Queen Mary would travel to France so that the King could visit troops and the Queen see for herself the conditions of the hospitals there. News of the Royal Couple’s courageous and patriotic trip instantly replaced the crisis in Russia on the front pages of the press.

  They boarded the Pembroke at Dover on the third of July and were escorted across the Channel by destroyers and seaplanes. David and Queen Mary’s brother, Prince Alge, met them in Calais. Shortly after, the King and Queen separated, he to tour the battlefields, she the hospitals.

  “One of the most important visits of the tour was to the Headquarters of the W.A.A.C.’s,” Lady Airlie, who accompanied the Queen on this trip, recalls. “As our cars drew up there we were confronted with the sight of 1,500 men just detrained for a rest from the fighting at Sens. Covered with mud, bleary-eyed and haggard from fatigue, they stared blankly at us. The Queen said softly to Colonel Fletcher ‘... I want to speak to those men.’

  “There were tremendous cheers as she crossed over to them. The W.A.A.C. Commanders, unwilling to have their thunder stolen, pressed to her side. Seeing cameras being directed towards her she whispered to me, ‘I suppose I shall go down to posterity reviewing my troops with two of my women aides-de-camp!’

  “... Everywhere on our tour the Queen had enthusiastic reception from the troops and from the French civilians, especially when she was accompanied by the Prince of Wales who joined us for part of the time. He told me several times how much he liked being with his mother instead of with the King, but he was worried over her health. He did not think she looked well ...”

  During the entire trip to France, Queen Mary could not help but think about the fate of Nicky and Alix, harbouring guilt along with her anxiety. If any tragic fate befell them, she knew she would always feel a measure of the responsibility. At the same time, her dedication to the Monarch disallowed her attempting to apply further pressure on the King. She also knew she must abide by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet’s decisions in this matter.

  Queen Mary and Lady Airlie were inexhaustible in their visits to hospitals, some of which “were old and grimy Hôtels Dieu with layers of dust on the floors and the indescribable stench of death and sickness hanging in the air because there were no disinfectants to dispell it.”

  The most harrowing sight of their tour was the battlefield, “... a vast stretch of land that had once been fertile and smiling, covered with crops, but was now only a tumbled mass of blackened earth fringed by sparse and splintered trees. The ground was strewn with rocks and stones and mounds of soil flung up by mines, and pitted with deep craters that had swallowed up farms and villages.” Lady Airlie recalls: “We climbed over a mound composed of German dead, buried by their comrades—all that was left of a whole regiment who had died in wresting this strip of land from our troops, only to lose it again. Over this devil’s charnel house nature had thrown a merciful veil of gently creeping plants.

  “Scattered everywhere in the ineffable desolation were the pathetic reminders of human life—rifles fallen from dead hands, old water bottles, iron helmets, and in the distance, the guns boomed relentlessly, making new sites of destruction like this one.

  “We stood there speechless. It was impossible to find words. The Queen’s face was ashen and her lips were tightly compressed. I felt that like me she was afraid of breaking down.”

  President Wilson had been elected for a second term in November 1916, largely on the slogan, “He kept us out of the war.” Earlier that year the President’s emissary, Colonel House, had met with King George at Buckingham Palace. His aim had been to “elicit from the Allies a statement of their peace terms such as would appeal to American and neutral opinion as reasonable and just.” If the Germans rejected these terms, then “America would enter the war against Germany.” Before coming to London, House had met with the Kaiser in Berlin and had been led to believe that the German government was determined to secure what he called “a victory peace.”

  A series of threats and disputes involving German actions were to pass before America was to enter the war. Finally, when Germany, on the first of February, 1917, announced that it
would impose an unrestricted blockade by submarine on Great Britain—an act that the Germans knew would result in the United States entering the war against them—America revved up its war machine. The Kaiser and his generals believed that Germany could win the war by starving Great Britain into submission before “a sufficient number of American troops could be trained, equipped, or transported to Europe.”

  President Wilson broke off diplomatic relations with Germany on February 3. Not until he had evidence of an “overt act” did he begin the mechanics of joining the Allied cause. A raison d’état in the form of a telegram presented itself on February 26. The telegram from Berlin to the German Minister in Mexico City—instructing him to offer the Mexican Government, in return for an alliance against the United States, “the sundered provinces of New Mexico, Texas and Arizona”—had been intercepted and instantly communicated to Washington by British Intelligence. The authenticity of this document, known as the Zimmermann telegram, has never been solidly proven. If Wilson had any doubts about his next move, the German torpedoing of the steamer Laconia, with a heavy loss of American lives, negated them.

  President Wilson released the contents of the Zimmermann telegram to the press on March 1. A tremendous wave of anti-German feeling spread across America, and on the morning of April 6, the United States declared war against Germany. That afternoon, Lloyd George received the American correspondents in London in the Cabinet Chamber in Downing Street. With the correspondents seated about the Cabinet table, he read to them, in his melodramatic, strident Welsh voice, a message to the American people, which he said he had been asked to deliver on behalf of the Imperial War Cabinet.

  “The American people,” he declared passionately, “held back until they were fully convinced that the fight was not a sordid scrimmage for power and possessions, but an unselfish struggle to overthrow a sinister conspiracy against human liberty and human rights.

  “Once that conviction was reached, the great republic of the West has leaped into the arena, and she stands now side by side with the European democracies who, bruised and bleeding after three years of grim conflict, are still fighting the most savage foe that ever menaced the freedom of the world.”

  At Buckingham Palace, no great rejoicing greeted the news that the United States had entered the war. King George and Queen Mary were still shaken by the collapse of the Tsarist regime in Russia. Only a fortnight earlier, Nicky had abdicated and been placed under arrest with his family. The previous week, a mass meeting to celebrate the fall of Tsarism had been held in Albert Hall. With great miscalculation, the speeches delivered at the latter had been refused newspaper coverage by the Censor. False rumours and suspicions therefore abounded that there had been threats against the Monarchy. H. G. Wells, in a letter to the Times, asserted that “the time has come to rid ourselves of the ancient trappings of throne and sceptre” and urged that Republican societies should immediately be formed. Harold Nicolson claims, “There were some who exploited the occasion [the fall of the Tsar] to deride the monarchial tradition and to advocate an English Revolution upon Russian lines.” In another verbal assault, Mr. Wells referred to the Court as “alien and uninspiring.”

  Incensed by this imputation, King George told Lord Carnock, “I may be uninspiring but I’ll be damned if I’m alien!”

  Yet despite this protestation, the dark shadow of fear had slithered its way into the private Royal apartments of Buckingham Palace.

  Footnotes

  *Victoria, Princess Royal: Frederick III, German Emperor and King of Prussia; Alice: Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by the Rhine; Helena: Christian, Prince of Schleswig-Holstein; Arthur, Duke of Connaught: Louise Margaret, Princess of Prussia; Leopold, Duke of Albany: Helen, Princess of Waldeck and Pyrmont; and Beatrice: Prince Henry of Battenberg.

  *Since Princess Alice was also the mother of Empress Alexandra (Princess Alix of Hesse), Prince Louis was a brother-in-law to the Tsar and Tsarina.

  †Prince Louis relinquished his princely titles in 1917. After his death, his son George (1892–1938) became 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven; Dickie became First Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900–1979).

  *The Lusitania was under British registration. It was sunk May 7, 1915, off the Irish Coast by a German submarine; 1,195 persons were lost, of whom 128 were Americans.

  †Alfred Duff Cooper (1890–1954), 1st Viscount Norwich; Secretary of State for War 1935–37; 1st Lord of the Admiralty 1938; Minister of Information 1940–41; Ambassador to France 1944–47.

  ‡In 1916, Lord Kitchener embarked on a mission to encourage Russians to continue their resistance to the Germans. He was drowned when his ship, the H.M.S. Hampshire, hit a German mine and sank off the Orkneys.

  *King George had paid an earlier visit to the Western Front in November 1914, with good results.

  *Field Marshal Sir John French (1852–1925), later 1st Earl of Ypres. Commander-in-Chief of Expeditionary Force in France, 1914–15.

  *The Grand Duchess Augusta’s son later wrote to Queen Mary that his mother had died with the name “May” on her lips.

  *The Empress Alexandra was, however, allowed to eat with her family, but she could speak only Russian at the table.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At a small dinner party at Buckingham Palace toward the end of May, Lady Maud Warrender confided to Queen Mary rumours abounding that the Royal Family must be pro-German since their surnames were German. King George overheard this remark, “started and grew pale.” Moments later, he left the gathering, quite disturbed; and, shortly after, the Queen made a polite but early departure. Lady Maud had inadvertently propelled the King into an historic decision.

  A barrage of ugly letters had been received at 10 Downing Street, alluding to the possibility that a king, whose ancestors came from Hanover, and a queen, whose ancestors came from Teck, could well have pro-German feelings and be responsible in some treasonable manner for the length of the war. Much alarmed, the Prime Minister had come to King George with, what seemed at that moment, an outlandish suggestion that the King and his Family and all their naturalized cousins who bore German names and titles renounce them and be rechristened with names that had an English heritage. In the beginning, the King and Queen had been extremely negative to Lloyd George’s scheme and remained so, even in the face of H. G. Wells’s public attack on the Monarchy. But the morning after Lady Maud’s remark, the King conferred with Lord Stamfordham and decided to agree to the Prime Minister’s proposal.

  Mr. Farnham Burke of the College of Arms was consulted as to exactly what was the King’s name. Mr. Burke’s opinion was that it might not be Coburg. Since the Saxe-Coburg family belonged to the House of Wettin in the District of Wipper, Wettin or Wipper might be more appropriate. Either one could have passed for an English name, but both were considered “unsuitably comic.” Prince Louis of Battenberg was called in as the representative for all the Royal relations with German names and titles. The King, Queen Mary, Prince Louis, and Lord Stamfordham, along with the Duke of Connaught (“Uncle Arthur”), Lord Rosebery, and Mr. Asquith spent the next week trying out possible names. The historic names of York, Lancaster, and Plantagenet were rejected by one and all, along with those of Tudor-Stewart, England, D’Este, and Fitzroy (a curious choice, which meant “King’s son” and was a name that Charles II had chosen to indicate illegitimate royal descent).

  In the end, Lord Stamfordham had the final distinction of christening a dynasty. Edward III, he recalled, had been known as Edward of Windsor.* The name “Windsor” greatly appealed to both the King and Queen, who associated it with their distant royal predecessor and the castle that figured so strongly in the youth of both. And certainly, the name Windsor was “as English as the earth upon which the castle stood, its smooth solid walls encircling its wards, mound, towers, and chapel.” Also, Windsor was unique in that it had never been the title of a royal dukedom, such as Cornwall, Edinburgh, Kent, Lancaster, or York.

  Once the King and Queen had settled upon a name, the rest of t
he Royal Family residing in England and bearing German titles and surnames began to search frantically for names for their own families, not all with good humour. Queen Mary’s brother Dolly, the Duke of Teck, was extremely ruffled at the idea of forfeiting his German title, which would cause him to lose his rank since he had no English title. The same situation also existed for Alge, Prince of Teck, and for Queen Victoria’s Battenberg grandsons, as well as for Prince Louis and his family. Peerages were thus worked out for those close Royal Family members. Dolly and Alge became, respectively, Marquess of Cambridge and Earl of Athlone with the family name of Cambridge. And Queen Victoria’s two Battenberg grandsons, Prince Alexander and Prince Leopold, became, respectively, 1st Marquess of Carisbrooke and Lord Leopold Mountbatten.*

  On July 17, 1917, a proclamation by the King was printed declaring that the name of Windsor was to be borne by his Royal House and Family, and that he and his family, as well as all his descendants and the descendants of Queen Victoria who were subjects of Great Britain, relinquished and enjoined the discontinuance of all Germanic titles.

  Kaiser Wilhelm was said to have snidely remarked on hearing of his cousin’s new family name that he was “going to the theatre to see a performance of The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.” But for Queen Mary there was a sense of great pride at her new name and in the fact that she was to be the matriarch of a new dynasty—the Royal House of Windsor.

  The war ground on and the casualty lists grew “ever longer” as yet more men were poured into the trenches of France and Flanders. Throughout the summer of 1917, London suffered constant raids by squadrons of German aeroplanes and zeppelin airships. Considerable damage was done and many lives lost; still, the people of London seemed only to become more determined to show their grit. When a raid was imminent, they found safety where they could in an orderly fashion and with few visible signs of panic. Lord Hardinge,† who was then Permanent Under-Secretary of State, recalls that: