by Anne Edwards
The Prince, with Finch as his majordomo, had recently moved into York House, St. James’s Palace, where he had once lived with his family as a child. With Mrs. Dudley Ward to help him, he redecorated the rambling old rooms that Queen Mary had so loathed, and the place took on a look of masculine domesticity. Reds and browns were the most frequent colours, and the sitting room was hung not with the usual family portraits, but with magnificently framed survey maps, specially rendered so that London appeared in vivid scarlet against a Great Britain or Europe in tones of sand to dark brown. When the work was completed, he and Mrs. Dudley Ward (ignoring the lovely formal dining room) dined intimately at a table in front of the fire in this room.
Within a short time, and upon the Queen’s prodding, young Lord Louis Mountbatten occupied a suite in the numerous rooms of York House, a move that was obviously meant to confuse people as to whose mistress Mrs. Dudley Ward might truly be, but which fooled no one.
The Prince of Wales’s favourite song was Noël Coward’s “A Room with a View,” especially the second verse, and he would request it to be sung at clubs and parties.
A room with a view and you
and no one to give advice
that sounds like paradise
few could fail to choose.
With fingers entwined
we’ll find
relief from the preachers
who always beseech us
to mind our P’s and Q’s.
We’ll watch
the whole world pass before us
while we are sitting still
leaning on our windersill.
We’ll bill and we’ll coo
and maybe a stork will bring
this that and t’ other thing to
our room with a view.
The lyrics of the song suggest quiet domesticity. David was still highly visible in the role of Prince of Wales, being present at the laying of cornerstones and ceremonial tree plantings, opening new highways and appearing before civic groups, “and assuming the honourary chairmanships of worthy charities and other institutions”; still, domesticity was much prized by him.
Freda Dudley Ward was fun-loving, but she did not like to share her lover’s attention with every eligible young woman or her mother or her aunt, who always besieged him at a party. She also had to contend with a great many married ladies who would have willingly and swiftly traded places with her. A large part of his attraction to Mrs. Dudley Ward had been the maturity that marriage and motherhood had brought to her young years. She knew how to decorate a house for a man’s comfort, be a hostess, and tend to his needs. Not beautiful in the accepted sense, she had a charming piquant quality. Small and petite and somewhat gamine, she possessed a unique voice with a high tremor to it.
Not at all the “pretty little fluff” Lady Cynthia Asquith described her to be, Freda was witty, intelligent, and had original opinions that she was not afraid to express. She treated the Prince of Wales as though his title and wealth and notoriety had no effect on her, that it was David whom she adored. When a small, intimate group gathered in his sitting room, she sat before the fire at his feet leaning against his leg. He trusted her as he had never trusted another person. She did not laugh at his jokes if she thought them dull, nor accepted his pronouncements if she found them wrong in her opinion. And she never treated him with that aloof awe with which his own mother, despite her frequent censure, gave to the Heir-Apparent to the Throne. The plain truth was that with Mrs. Dudley Ward the Prince of Wales felt he was experiencing the same kind of man-woman relationship that other young men, not Royal, could look forward to.
From the autumn of 1920 until the autumn of 1921, with his constant attendance on Mrs. Dudley Ward, the Prince of Wales and Queen Mary were estranged. In his mother’s view, a long separation of vast distance would be the only thing that might break up his slavish devotion to his mistress. She put forth her theory to the King, who without hesitation suggested it might be just the right time for a Prince of Wales again to visit India.
At a party given by Lady Wimborne, at Wimborne House, for his cousin Queen Ena’s husband, King Alfonso of Spain, David, in an ill-tempered mood and having imbibed considerable Champagne, approached Frances Stevenson,* secretary and mistress of Prime Minister Lloyd George (who was married at the time), and petulantly brought up the planned trip to India.
“Don’t you want to go?” Miss Stevenson asked.
“Of course I don’t want to go,” he replied.
“But I thought you had become more or less reconciled to the idea.”
“Oh, I suppose I can become reconciled to anything. Does the P.M. think I ought to go?”
“I don’t know why he brought the subject up again,” Miss Stevenson wrote in her diary the next day, “but I suppose he must have been feeling particularly depressed about it. Apparently he had been having an argument with his father about it for I heard that the Prince said to the King he would ask the P.M. whether he really wanted him to go. Whereupon the King said, ‘I don’t care whether the P.M. wants you to go or not. I want you to go & you are going.’ ”
And, indeed, on October 26, 1921, David departed on the Renown for India after a tearful goodbye to Mrs. Dudley Ward. His year at home had been the gayest in his memory. Full-dress uniforms had been restored to the Household Troops. All society was en fête and the Court in a gala mood. True, Britain was in a serious recession and there was a major coal strike. Thousands upon thousands of soldiers who had returned with hopes of beginning their lives anew were unemployed, with no prospects for the future. Yet in London society, a mood of gaiety prevailed. The great houses which had been hospitals during the war had been refurbished and once again thrown their doors open with a flourish of hospitality. For the Prince of Wales the year was joyous. He had found a stimulating mistress who could double as a loving mother. With Freda Dudley Ward he received his first real taste of what the life of the common man—that is, the lucky ones with fortunes—could be. The knowledge ratified his own conviction and reinforced his loathing to be King.
However, Queen Mary need not have been alarmed at Mrs. Dudley Ward’s presence in the life of the future King of England. Freda Dudley Ward was a woman who knew just how far she could and should go. She has said that the Prince of Wales suggested several times they run off and that she always discouraged such ideas. Later historians might leap to the conclusion that the Prince of Wales remained a bachelor for the sixteen years that Mrs. Dudley Ward was to be his mistress because he feared losing her if he married. The truth is far more fundamental. A wife would not have diminished Freda Dudley Ward’s devotion any more than Queen Alexandra had turned aside Alice Keppel’s.
Princess Mary’s wedding to Lord Lascelles took place on February 28, 1922, at Westminster Abbey, while David was still on his Indian tour. His sister’s wedding—the first big state pageant since the war—was curiously scheduled for a time when the Prince of Wales could not attend. His absence did, however, keep the press from publicly wondering when and whom the Heir-Apparent might wed.
Bertie wrote his older brother in India, “Mary’s wedding is causing a great deal of work to many people, & as far as I can make out the 28th is going to be a day of national rejoicing in every conceivable & unconceivable manner ... In fact it is now no longer Mary’s wedding, but (this from the paper) it is the ‘Abbey Wedding’ or the ‘Royal Wedding’ or the ‘National Wedding,’ or even the ‘People’s Wedding’ (I have heard it called) ‘of our beloved Princess.’ ”
Among Princess Mary’s bridesmaids was Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,* the youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Strathmore. Bertie was quite obviously and hopelessly in love with the lovely young woman, who did not share his feelings. Queen Mary was completely convinced that Elizabeth was “the one girl who could make Bertie happy. But I shall say nothing to either of them.”
Both Princess Mary and Bertie had met Elizabeth in late 1920 through the auspices of Lady Airlie, who had a family estate in Scotland n
ear the Strathmore home, Glamis Castle. In the spring of 1921, Bertie, after asking his father’s permission, proposed and was refused. He was so disconsolate that everyone close felt sorry for him. After his sister’s wedding, Elizabeth, feeling responsible, left London almost immediately with another of Princess Mary’s bridesmaids, Diamond Hardinge. The two young women went to Paris, where Diamond’s father, Lord Hardinge, was now Ambassador.
During the winter of 1921–22, discontent grew among the people, agitators seized their opportunities. Marches were organised, and fear spread that the troops would have to be called out to stop riots. Haunting memories of the Russian Revolution seeped under the draughty thresholds of the Royal Palaces, and even a Conservative like Lord Stamfordham wrote Lloyd George (whose power was slipping) that the King was “daily growing more anxious” and that organised resistance “... begets riot and possibly revolution.” Even the solving of the Irish Question with an agreement on December 6, 1921, creating “the Irish Free State” as a Dominion within the Commonwealth, did not put an end to the civil war that continued to ravage the Free State and led to daily reports of wounded and dead.
“The wonderful day has come & gone,” Queen Mary wrote David on March 2, “& Mary is married & has flown her home leaving a terrible blank behind her as you can well imagine. Papa & I are feeling very low & sad without her especially as Georgie had to return to Malta yesterday while Harry has at last joined the 10th Hussars at Canterbury & Bertie has gone hunting for a few days.” She adds, “Nothing could have gone off better than the wedding did, a fine day, a beautiful pageant from start to finish, a fine service in the Abbey, Mary doing her part to perfection (a very great ordeal before so many people)—& everyone happy & pleased ... Grannie was wonderful & looked very nice in violet velvet wearing the Garter & many fine jewels. Enormous crowds everywhere & a great reception when we stepped on to the Balcony—We gave a large family luncheon (both families) in the state dining room & Mary & Harry L. drove off at 3.45 —Papa & all of us throwing rice & little paper horse shoes & rose leaves after them. Papa & I felt miserable at parting, poor Papa broke down, but I mercifully managed to keep up as I so much feared Mary wld break down. However she was very brave & smiled away as they drove off in triumph to the station.”
King George adds in his own diary for the same night, “I went up to Mary’s room & took leave of her & quite broke down ... Felt very down & depressed now that darling Mary has gone.”
Queen Mary and King George’s daily lives took on a reclusive quality. Their round of Royal duties was always scheduled after they had lunched by themselves. They accepted very few social engagements and “night after night” dined “alone together.”
Not that the King and Queen led a simple life. Both enjoyed the best of everything, great comfort perhaps more than anything else. Still, they dressed extravagantly, and, of course, no previous Queen of England had ever worn—or owned, for that matter—more priceless jewels. The King enjoyed shooting more than any other relaxation and, on his part, used only fine hammer guns by Purdey. His cigarette cases were made by Fabergé. Gala dinners at Windsor Castle might have lacked the high spirits of such dinners during King Edward’s reign, but they were perhaps even more elegant.
King Edward would never have approved the solemn atmosphere. Later, David was to write that “over the port wine, coffee, and liqueurs the day’s racing and current politics would be discussed” by the King and his male guests—the Queen and the women guests having withdrawn. The King “never sat more than twenty minutes,” his son continues. “There was barely time to smoke even the shortest cigar. Abruptly, as if controlled by a hidden time clock, he would rise and lead his guests back to the Green Drawing Room to join my mother. At 11 o’clock as if by magic the company would resume the same circle in which he had found them, the ladies on one side, the men on the other. Bidding their guests good night, my parents would withdraw with the members of the Royal Family. The door would close silently behind us. The evening was over.”
Queen Mary was never known to behave in the purely spoiled fashion of Queen Alexandra. She was never rude or abrupt, nor did she keep people waiting. Her worst flaw might have been her aloofness, for it tended to add to the image of correctness that surrounded her. Then fifty-six years old, the King was disappointed that the way of life that he had known before the war had not returned. He was as out of step with the twenties as was Queen Mary, although for a while she did try to bridge the gulf between her generation and her children’s. They were grown now, and, as Lady Airlie says, “[the Queen] loved them and was proud of them but with the exception of Princess Mary they were strangers to her emotionally—a nest of wild birds already spreading their wings and soaring beyond her horizon.”
Lady Airlie remembers the Queen laughing over the jokes in Punch, and even in La Vie Parisienne. She sent comic postcards (in envelopes) to her ladies-in-waiting; and even learned “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” which she would later sing to David’s accompaniment on the banjo. Women’s hemlines had risen, and she tentatively suggested to Lady Airlie that they both might shorten their skirts by a modest two or three inches. She was concerned that King George might find even this unseemly. Lady Airlie volunteered to test his reactions and appeared at Windsor one day in a dress shorter than usual. Later, the King commented to the Queen that he had not liked Lady Airlie’s dress, it was too short. Lady Airlie had her hem let down “with all speed,” and Queen Mary remained faithful to her long, full skirts.
While Queen Mary was occupied with the romantic alliances of her Royal brood, Britain’s economic condition became perilous. The glory of Empire was being threatened. As an epilogue to the war, a wave of antinationalist protest had swept India. It had picked up winds in 1919 with the tragedy of Amritsar, where riots and demonstrations had ended with five Englishmen killed and an Englishwoman missionary, innocently peddling her bicycle through the narrow, mud-paved, foetid streets of the city, brutally assaulted. British retaliation had followed less than a week later, when many hundreds of people jammed into a public enclosure called the Jalianwala Bagh in the centre of Amritsar for a political meeting. Surrounded by high walls and sunk below the level of the streets on which it bordered, the Bagh had only three entrances—and they were hardly wide enough for more than one man to pass.
As soon as the political speaker began his address, the approach of heavy vehicles was announced by a sudden loud rumble. In moments, armed men led by English officers pushed their way into the square and onto the higher ground behind the speaker. They turned and kneeled, facing the crowd with loaded rifles. The speaker, in an effort to calm the rising panic around him, continued his speech. To his horror and shock, a shouted command from one of the officers was followed instantly by the rapid report of many guns. Armed soldiers shot at point-blank range into the crowd. Terrified people trampled one another as they frantically tried to climb the high walls and crush through the narrow exits which soon became impassable with wounded and dead. The shooting lasted for 6 minutes; 379 people had been killed, another 1,500 wounded. The Indians now had their Bastille, as well as the saviour who would free India from Imperialist England.
A little emaciated man, barely 5 foot 4 inches, clothed in saintly white robes of common hopsacking, with vivid black eyes that peered through round spectacles above a broad nose and a toothless smile, Mahatma Gandhi had risen to form “a radical movement of incalculable power.” To the people, he was semidivine, and after Amritsar he became the unrivalled leader in the Indian struggle for independence. It could be said that the horror of Amritsar was a seminal moment; the beginning of the end of the British Empire.
The British had been shaken and remorseful after Amritsar, and fearful as well that world condemnation of the massacre would severely affect their foreign relations. Blame was placed on General Dyer, who had given the order (called by the press a “tragic miscalculation”) to fire. Obviously, a form of distraction, something that would place England in a more sympathetic ligh
t, had to be found. With the great enthusiasm given to the Prince of Wales on his travels, a quasi-solution was achieved.
A short lull in hostilities took place just before the advent of his tour of India. Nevertheless, for Queen Mary and King George not to realise the risks was naive. Fortunately, the Prince of Wales departed India just before Gandhi was arrested and charged with sedition because of articles he had written in his political journal Young India. Gandhi, appearing more humble and saintly than ever to his followers, immediately admitted his guilt and was sentenced to prison in Poona for six years. (He was released less than two years later, giving Indians not a saint but a martyr.)
At home, the political situation had been changing rapidly. By October 1922, the Liberals under Lloyd George had been defeated, and Bonar Law,* leader of the Conservative Party, became Prime Minister. Churchill still stood “as a Liberal and a Free Trader,” but he also asked the electors to authorise him “to cooperate freely with sober-minded and progressive Conservatives.” Six months later, Bonar Law was forced to resign as Prime Minister. He had cancer of the throat and died soon afterwards. After consulting with leading members of the Conservative Party, the King chose Stanley Baldwin as Law’s successor.† Baldwin had entered the Cabinet only two years earlier, an inexperienced and curious choice. However, aside from Lord Curzon, who had the disadvantage of being a member of the House of Lords, there was no other serious contender.
In the same year, a book was published purporting to be a biography of Queen Mary. On the margin of a page that asserted she was easily bored, she had written in her distinctive flowing script: “As a matter of fact, the Queen is never bored.” Though not social-minded, Queen Mary was deeply and emotionally involved in so many areas that boredom was not possible. Books still formed a major part of her life, and she was as politically knowledgeable as she had been when King Edward had suggested she be allowed to read the contents of the King’s boxes. The problems abroad and the political anxieties at home greatly distressed her. During one crisis in late 1922, one of her Ladies-in-Waiting wrote: “The Queen stayed in bed all day & could not come to dinner, as she had lost her voice & she worried over the troublous times.”‡
