Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  King George was given and read these security reports on his Heir-Apparent’s pro-German sentiments, freely expressed, often in public and generally with disregard for his own position and his father’s demand that he “must never speak on controversial matters without consulting the government.” As Christmas at Sandringham approached, the King’s condition grew worse and his anxiety about his successor grew stronger. By this time, King George no longer considered David simply as a defiant son, but as a future King who could place the Monarchy and the country in grave danger.

  Queen Mary gathered together the entire family for Christmas. A shared sense of foreboding that this might be the King’s last Christmas overshadowed the festivities. A concerted effort was made to make it an especially happy holiday. A twenty-foot tree dominated the spacious white ballroom, scene of so many gay Christmases during the reign of Edward VII. The King, who had seldom played with his own children, instigated games and sat lovingly watching as Bertie’s two daughters and Mary’s two sons romped around the tree. The Duke and Duchess of Kent now had an infant son, Edward (a name that had been chosen to please the King), and the cries and sounds of children’s voices filled the room. The Prince of Wales was the last to arrive. He was unable to enter into the spirit of the holiday, even for his father’s sake. “My brothers were secure in their private lives,” he remarked, “whereas I was caught up in an inner conflict and would have no peace of mind until I had resolved it.” One wonders in retrospect if he meant a decision to ask Wallis Simpson to divorce her husband and marry him, or whether he had begun to think about the possibility of abdicating all his rights to the Throne.

  His parents’ wish was to avoid marring the holidays by any unpleasant discussion. The Queen had heard through a Lady-in-Waiting that for Christmas he had given Mrs. Simpson jewels valued at over £50,000, including several pieces that had been in the Royal Family for generations. Her son’s mistress now had a magnificent collection of rubies, as well as emeralds and diamonds.* The Queen was not pleased with the Prince of Wales’s extravagant gift-giving, and she was distant and cool to him; he left on Boxing Day, having spent only a day and a half with his family.

  On Thursday afternoon, January 16, Lord Dawson, the King’s physician, warned the Queen that the end was in sight. She took the news calmly and went back to her sitting room to do what she must. “I think you ought to know that Papa is not very well,” she wrote her eldest son. “And although I do not consider the danger immediate, Lord Dawson is not too pleased with Papa’s state at the present moment. I therefore suggest that you propose yourself for the coming weekend at Sandringham, but do so in a manner that will not lead Papa to suspect that I have warned you of his condition.”

  The Prince of Wales, who was at the Fort at the time, flew to Sandringham the next morning. His sister Mary was already there, and the two of them went into their father’s bedroom together. King George sat slumped half-asleep in his favourite chair in front of a fire. He was dressed in an old Tibetan dressing gown, a faded relic of one of his Indian tours, and had a lap blanket about the lower half of his body. His bed, placed in one corner, was the same simple brass one in which Edward VII had slept. From the bay window across the sunken garden could be seen the square church tower from which the Royal standard flew.

  The King roused himself when his children entered. For a moment a flicker of recognition came into his eyes, but he said nothing. A few minutes later, his mind trailing back in time, he asked Mary if she had been skating. He dozed off again, and Mary and David left the room.

  Bertie arrived shortly after, and George was on his way. Harry, unfortunately, was ill with a bad throat and could not travel in such cold weather. The freezing temperature did not disturb the Queen. “It will do us good to get out of doors for a little while,” she told the three children who were with her. Then, as they walked briskly around the grounds four abreast, their mother, surefooted on the icy paths, deftly put into words the grave thoughts none of them had previously verbalised. The King would soon be dead. David would be King, and as soon as possible she would vacate Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, and Sandringham and move back once more to Marlborough House. They returned to the house. David could have asked for a few private moments with her. He let the opportunity pass.

  The Queen now stood almost constant vigil at the King’s bedside, Bertie and David relieving her at night so that she could get some sleep. On Sunday, David motored to London to meet with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. He left Sandringham in a state of desolation, dark circles under his eyes, his face white and drawn. He had not slept much during the time there, always expecting a summons to his father’s deathbed. He had a great deal on his mind. For one thing, the King had not acknowledged his presence. For another, now that the moment had arrived when a decision had to be made to accept the oath or not, he was unable to do so. Bertie was with him on the trip to London and in a terrible emotional state, the old tics and stammering having returned.

  News of the King’s imminent death brought press and reporters and photographers to keep watch outside the fading red-brick walls of Sandringham estate. Many members of the Royal Family beyond the intimate circle had arrived, along with the Privy Councillors.* The latter required the King’s consent to appoint the Councillors of State. The red dispatch boxes had piled up during the previous fortnight, and the King’s business had to be transacted.

  “G. about the same,” the Queen wrote in her diary on Sunday, “sat with him from time to time—Did not go to Church as the place was surrounded by reporters & photographers, too heartless—Walked with Mary morning & afternoon ... Georgie arrived at 7—also Archbishop of Canterbury—David & Bertie left but will return tomorrow—”

  The next morning, the King was propped up in a chair before the open door of his room, just visible to the Privy Councillors. The scene was macabre. Nurse Catherine Black stood nearby, and beside her, the Queen. The King’s doctor, Lord Dawson, leaned over his cadaverous figure and with great effort got him to understand the necessity for him to try to form the word “approved,” so that the appointment of the Councillors of State —who were to be the Queen; the Prince of Wales; and the Dukes of York, Gloucester, and Kent—could be made. After about ten minutes, a faint whisper was heard and accepted as Royal consent. Then the King was handed a paper, and Lord Dawson, visibly exhausted, managed to get the King, by holding his hand with the pen in it, to make two little crosses. Tears filled King George’s eyes. He understood that his effort would be his last act as King.

  At 2:30 in the afternoon, David and Bertie returned by aeroplane to Sandringham. They were both silent during the journey, quite unable to communicate. While outside the Big House the crowds stood their death watch, inside, “a sad quiet” came over the family circle. At this point, an incident occurred that Dr. Dawson and others present interpreted as bizarre and insensitive on the part of the Prince of Wales.

  As the end approached, the Queen and four of her children stood by the King’s bedside. Lord Dawson slipped in and out of the room to examine his patient and to compose the latest bulletin, each time inquiring as to the correct hour—for the clocks inside Sandringham were set, as always, a half-hour ahead, while the waiting journalists had their watches set at Greenwich time. Dawson’s constant interruption so unnerved the Prince of Wales that he left his father’s bedside in a state of near-hysteria and peremptorily ordered Sandringham’s chief clockmaker, Mr. David Burlingham, to immediately correct the time on all of the estate’s clocks. Unlike Dr. Dawson, Queen Mary had not seen any evil intent on the heir’s part to take over the King’s command prematurely. Of King George’s last few hours, she wrote in her diary: “My children were all angels.”

  An explanation for the Prince of Wales’s behaviour can be found in his lifelong fear of becoming King. The clocks at Sandringham, set a half-hour forward, were accelerating the eventuality. He was emotionally spent and so nervous that he burned his finger on a cigarette he was smoking. He was anxious
ly waiting for the father from whom he had always felt estranged to acknowledge him with some personal last bequest of love or understanding. In a matter of minutes he would be King, and the confusion of Sandringham time and real time only magnified the terror he felt. His uncontrollable impulse, therefore, was to keep the clocks from ticking away too fast, to forestall the time of his father’s death.

  The King’s life was extinguished at five minutes before midnight with no signs of pain or suffering. His breathing had simply ceased. Queen Mary glanced over his still form to Lord Dawson to confirm her fears. The doctor nodded. The King’s death had been so peaceful that no one else gathered round the bed had yet comprehended what had just taken place. Instantly, the Queen turned to her eldest son and, bowing, took his hand in hers and kissed it.

  “God save the King,” she said in a strong, unwavering voice, and looked him squarely in the eye. She then stepped back with a slight curtsy, and Georgie, who was standing next to her, stepped forward, bowed, and followed her example. The new King appeared startled, then noticeably embarrassed. “I could not bring myself to believe that the members of my own family or indeed anyone else, should be expected to humble themselves before me in this way,” he was to write later.

  A half-hour after King George’s death, a bareheaded youth carrying the message to the waiting journalists rode his bicycle, a dim oil lamp flickering in front of him, down Sandringham’s darkened drive. In one hand he carried an old brown leather case containing the announcement of the death of the Sovereign, while with the other he gripped a handlebar. He reached the lodge gate just as the chimes of the Sandringham Church clock struck half-past twelve and, without dismounting, delivered the case to the gatekeeper, who removed the bulletin and slowly walked across the drive and posted the notice between the lights of two great lanterns. A small crowd of villagers and journalists read the announcement. When the reporters left to telephone the news, a small, silent, bareheaded crowd remained.

  By five o’clock the following day, the new King had flown back to London with Bertie. Black-bordered placards announcing their father’s death lined their route. But at Buckingham Palace, the sentry still marched up and down as sentries had done for hundreds of years. One King had died, but another was on the Throne and Great Britain had not changed. Still, the new King spent the first night of his reign in London at York House, St. James’s.

  Shortly after he had left Sandringham, the lid of the late King’s coffin was screwed down and the coffin placed upon a small bier and carried by towering grenadiers from the King’s Company through the dark and rainy late afternoon to the little church at Sandringham. Queen Mary, heavily veiled in black, followed directly behind the grenadiers. She was flanked by her family and some members of the Household (in all, twelve persons). She appeared to be the tallest mourner, setting a pace that her daughter, who was much shaken, and the elderly members of the Household found difficult to match.

  “Such a sad day,” Queen Mary wrote that night. “It is curious my having been present in this house at the death beds of 2 brothers Eddy & George.”

  What was perhaps more curious was the fact that she had been so composed during her husband’s death and the immediate attendant ceremony that no one had seen her shed a tear. And the next day, when the new King returned to discuss the funeral arrangements with her, she seemed relieved. David, King Edward VIII, as he had been styled, was safely on the Throne.

  The most memorable impression of the funeral week was the Queen’s awesome dignity and incredible stoicism. The Royal women, darkly veiled and all in black, were constantly being photographed in a group with Queen Mary the pivotal figure, erect, a shrouded statue of majesty. Around her huddled her despondent daughter, unable to control her emotions, to her mother’s frequent irritation; her three daughters-in-law—Elizabeth, visibly weak after a recent bout of flu; Marina, infinitely more elegant than the others, fresh violets tucked under her veil and wearing sheer black stockings that called attention to her shapely legs; and Alice, so unsure of what she must do that she was always just one too-close step behind the others—the aged Princess Beatrice shivering with the cold that was unrelenting throughout the protocol; and the old King’s only surviving sister, Queen Maud, so thickly veiled she was unrecognisable.*

  The King had died on January 20. The next day, the Privy Council announced the accession of King Edward VIII. A few moments later, the new King was sent for. He entered the Council Chamber “... solemn, grave, sad and dignified in Admiral’s uniform. Everyone was most impressed by his seeming youth, and his dignity. Much bowing and he in turn swore his Oath.” The next day, King Edward’s accession was proclaimed in “a fleeting, brilliant ceremony.” He had arranged for a few personal friends, including Mrs. Simpson, to watch the ceremony from his boyhood room at St. James’s overlooking Friary Court. During the ceremony, he was “swept by conflicting emotions,” he admitted. “There was a flash of pride in becoming King Emperor ... At the same time these words seemed to tell me that my relations with Wallis had suddenly entered a more significant stage.”

  Chips Channon reports seeing “a large black car (the King’s) drive away [from St. James’s] with the blinds pulled half down. The crowd bowed thinking it contained the Duchess of Kent, but I saw Mrs. Simpson ...”

  When Queen Mary arrived in London on the Royal train on January 23 with King George’s coffin, a sharp wind blew off the North Sea and the temperature was biting cold. Upon her request to King Edward, the Lying-in-State and the funeral would be over in a week’s time. She had never much approved of the panoply of Royal deaths and intensely disliked the wearing of mourning for long periods. The new King had agreed to issue a decree that mourning be restrained to a period of only six months. Her four sons walked behind the gun carriage carrying the coffin to Westminster Hall. Harry had not yet recuperated from his bad throat and was swathed in wool beneath his uniform to ward off the cold.

  During the procession, the cross on top of the Imperial Crown fell to the pavement. Immediately, a company sergeant major of the grenadier escort retrieved it. King Edward had seen the incident and deemed it “a most terrible omen.”

  Of that day, Anne Morrow Lindbergh,* who watched the procession from a window of her suite at the Ritz Hotel, recalls, “The sound of pipers—unmistakable and rather eerie—in the distance and then, with a startling suddenness below us around the corner those even lines of sailors, white collars all in line and the white ropes, taut like a woven pattern ... They pulled evenly that little gun carriage—the coffin, terribly small, covered in the rich gold of the flag. On top, those familiar unbelievable signs of the Throne: the orb, the crown, the sceptre, and a crown of roses. The tiny and yet terrifically powerful sight of the coffin, wrapped in the Standard, fastened your attention, your emotions in a strange way ... The Standard flapping down, the King in Naval uniform walking jerkily (... alone, small, pathetic.) ...”

  Behind the four Royal brothers, Lord Harewood led the heads of state, the Kings of Norway, Denmark, Belgium, and Bulgaria among them. The pathetic Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,* in a German helmet, hunched and arthritic, had trouble keeping up.†

  As Big Ben began to strike four, the gun carriage drew up before Westminster Hall. The coffin was carried by six huge guardsmen with bared heads, who placed it upon a catafalque draped in purple velvet and occupying the centre of the Great Hall. A moment of panic arose as the Royal standard caught beneath the catafalque. The officer in command managed to free it without too much difficulty.

  King Edward had followed the coffin, “boyish, sad and tired,” Chips Channon noted, “and the Queen, erect and more magnificent than ever.”

  Shortly after midnight, in an act without precedent, the King and his three brothers, dressed in full uniform, descended into the Hall and stationed themselves around the catafalque between the officers already on vigil. For twenty minutes in the dim candlelight, the King’s four sons stood motionless and unrecognised by the parade of people shuffling
past with bowed heads.

  King George’s coffin remained in Westminster Hall for four days. On January 28, a damp miserable day, the Queen prepared herself for the funeral. “First we fetched him from Westminster Hall, he was drawn by blue-jackets on the gun carriage, then a long drive, the men walking, to Paddington through wonderful crowds of sorrowing people mourning their dead King,” the Queen wrote in her diary. She sat at the window of the Royal funeral coach with its red trappings and black chassis, Chips Channon noted, looking “incredibly magnificent and composed.” The footmen wore gold-and-red cloaks, and her attendants wore plumed hats. Ahead was the distant sound of the band, the echoing sound of the minute gun punctuating the music. Rain fell and umbrellas “popped up like hundreds of mushrooms.”

  Then suddenly the procession had passed and the “silence” in the streets was impressive. “Men jumped out of taxis and stood with bared heads at attention ... and the gun going off and then no noise or movement at all. Only natural things, like birds wheeling in the sky and papers blowing in the street.”

  The procession stopped at Paddington Station, and the coffin was transferred once again into the Royal train, this time for Windsor. The day was a tremendous ordeal but one of great meaning for the Royal Family, Britain’s statesmen, and for all the visiting royalties. Feeling for the dead King was strong and “much, much more ... the continuity of all kinds of traditional beliefs, ideals, standards, characteristics—a strong pride and sense of them and their permanence.”

  The Queen sat in majestic forebearance by the window of the Royal coach as the train rumbled sonorously through the western outskirts of London to Windsor. Sombre dark figures sharing the nation’s grief were waiting to pay homage at each station that the train passed, and the Queen would acknowledge them with a slight bow of her head, the graceful flutter of a white cambric handkerchief; then there was “another drive, the men walking thro’ Windsor & the gates into the grounds, to St. George’s Chapel.” The Dean of Windsor, in his robes as Register of the Order of the Garter, stood on the steps of St. George’s Chapel, awaiting the dead Sovereign. As the choir began to sing, “I am the Resurrection and the Life,” their voices blended with the sad lament of the bagpipes outside the chapel. The Queen, King Edward beside her, walked evenly behind the coffin. Fully two feet separated mother and son as they mounted the long, steep stairs. Never once did the Queen’s step falter or her hand reach out for support.