by John Matson
October 14, 1917. I had such an interesting afternoon on Saturday. Queen Alexandra asked me to come over to Sandringham and said she would show me over the House. She is very fascinating, I think – and I really enjoyed seeing all the things – some of which were quite beautiful – She kept saying, ‘The King used to sit there’ or ‘The King used to do this’ and one pictured all the revels that used to take place. Finally she took me into her own private sitting-room – a truly marvellous room so crowded that one cannot turn round – a bewildering mass of photographs – and every sort of treasure. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I tell you that there were over 200 things on her writing table; the only space left being taken up by her blotter… She loves all her little possessions, and kept showing them off. Finally I took my leave, and she embraced me so warmly, murmuring ‘My dearrr, do drrrop into teee any afternoon I shall be so pleeesed!’ Dear kind little Queen. Princess Victoria then led me into Sir Dighton and Miss Knollys’ room – dear old things – they loved showing me their treasures. Sir D. led me by the hand round his room and Charlotte was glorious. ‘I must show you my bathroom, Sir Dighton gave it to me and it cost him £100 – and there are seven glasses in it so I am never lonely in my bath as there are 7 other Charlotte Knollys looking on’!! (Charlotte Knollys was remarkably ugly.) It was too nice of Princess Victoria; she sent me 6 vy nice bits of Danish china – as a souvenir of my afternoon.
The King has been in great form lately, and so easy to sit next to at dinner – full of interesting stories about matters grave and gay. (He) is so nice to me and said that Princess Victoria had so enjoyed having me down here, and it had made all the difference to her… They are so dear and kind to me. My riding has been such a source of delight… went for a long ride with Princess Mary and Clive on Saturday.215
Even as the struggle for the ridge at Passchendaele in 1917 was creating appalling casualties in the sea of mud, a certain tranquillity was maintained at York Cottage – which was illusory, for the King and Queen suffered the personal worries about their sons which they shared with every family in the country. The Prince of Wales badgered the authorities to be allowed nearer to the front line, though he confessed to a friend that he felt terrified each time he moved forward. He was told that, if it were certain that he would be killed, the risk might be acceptable, but in no circumstances could the possibility that he might be taken prisoner be entertained. For the King and Queen, work never ceased. Quite apart from the constant tours, there were also the red despatch boxes which arrived incessantly on the King’s desk, wherever he might be. The abdication of the Czar, the King’s cousin, in 1917 came as a shock to them, which turned to horror in the following year as the news of the assassination of the Czar and Czarina and all their children filtered through. On 25 July 1918, the King wrote in his diary: ‘May and I attended a service at the Russian Church… in memory of dear Nicky who I fear was shot last month by the Bolsheviks, we can get no details, it was a foul murder, I was devoted to Nicky who was the kindest of men, a thorough gentleman, loved his country and his people.’216 On the anniversary of his accession he wrote: ‘I don’t think any Sovereign of these realms has had a more difficult or more troublous 8 years than I have had.’217
Early in January 1919, Mrs Wigram wrote to her mother from York Cottage:
Princess Victoria telephoned asking me to go for a walk with her, and we walked up to ‘Appleton’ which is Queen Maud’s little house. There we found Queen Mary and Queen Maud, the latter most cordial and nice to me – but such a funny, exotic, merry little thing – very minute – rather ‘chic’ in her way – with very pretty feet, well shod – a neat tweed skirt and rather a rakish black velvet ‘Tam’. She looked so tiny beside our Queen. A furious family wrangle then ensued as to how they should all sit in church tomorrow at Prince George’s confirmation; Queen Maud’s voice rising more and more shrilly: ‘Dear Papa used to like it done like this or that’ – Queen Mary made some eminently pacific and practical suggestions and the tumult subsided. I was then requested to take a photograph of the two Queens with Princess Victoria in the middle. Then I was conducted over the house – architecturally very nice but some of the things in it too deplorable – the dining room pictures consisting of a series of sort of Christmas number pictures, framed – you know the sort of thing – ‘The Gamekeeper’s Wife’, ‘Grandmamma and Baby’… dreadful. Princess Victoria so friendly and nice as usual – she asked after you both – and said she always remembers your seat on a horse. She then said, ‘George often tells me how much he likes Nora Wigram’… We met Princess Mary on our way back, she was on her way out to a shooting lunch…218
Though the war had drawn to its agonised conclusion on 11 November 1918, the following year was to bring much unrest and a spreading sense of disillusion – and a personal sorrow for King George and Queen Mary. Only a few days after Mrs Wigram’s letter, the Queen was informed, by telephone, that her sixth and youngest child, Prince John, had died. Born in 1904 a fine, strong boy, he had from early childhood suffered from epilepsy and other complications, and in 1917 it was judged that he should be brought up separately from the other children. He had his own establishment on the Royal estate, and was seen from time to time in the woods with Mrs Bill, who superintended his household. Though his brothers were deeply attached to him, they were of course separated by age and occupation. ‘At 5.30,’ wrote Queen Mary in her diary for 18 January:
Lalla Bill telephoned me from Wood Farm, Wolferton, that our poor darling little Johnnie had passed away suddenly after one of his attacks. The news gave me a great shock, tho’ for the poor little boy’s restless soul, death came as a great release. I broke the news to George & we motored down to Sandringham. Found poor Lalla very resigned but heartbroken. Little Johnnie looked very peaceful lying there.219
‘For him it is a great release,’ the Queen continued, a few days later:
as his malady was becoming worse as he grew older, & he has thus been spared much suffering… he just slept quietly into his heavenly home, no pain, no struggle, just peace for the poor little troubled spirit which had been a great anxiety to us… ever since he was four years old – The first break in the family circle is hard to bear but people have been so kind and sympathetic…220
There was, too, a sad irony in the event. Like so many mothers all over the Empire the Queen had endured four years of anxiety for her two eldest sons at the front; and now, just as she was beginning to relax, she was shaken by this personal sorrow. It was not her first, nor was it to be her last; and while she would not have wished it otherwise, the death of her youngest son was to cast its shadow. The King, too, was no less saddened: ‘…dear little Johnnie was laid in the churchyard next to (my) brother (Alexander) John,’221 he wrote in his diary on 21 January. So the youngest children of King Edward VII and King George V lie side by side at the east end of Sandringham churchyard.
Mrs Wigram had been invited by the King to attend a shoot and described the occasion in a letter to her parents:
The car comes to fetch me at 1 o’clock and I go down to York Cottage to pick up the Queen, Princess Mary and Lady Mary Trefusis. The dear Queen in a vy long dress with a very unsuitable crimson feather toque! – and wearing an absurd little tiered cloak wrap. Pcess M. and Lady M. quite suitably dressed. We arrive at a field where a tent is pitched and the Royal Standard flying proudly above it – several Royal footmen 6ft high help us to remove our wraps. In due time the King arrives – and greets me warmly, says he is so glad I came, and I find myself sitting between him and the Duke of York, the rest of the party being Lord Farquhar, Major Dick Molyneux, Charles Cust and Sir Fritz Ponsonby. We sit at a narrow trestle table and the menu consists of mulligatawny soup – a savoury stew of some sort – cold meats and salad – and a rice pudding, followed… by cheese and a delicious selection of fruit. The King tells various shooting stories and old ‘Battues’ of the Edwardian reign are discussed. The King attacks me at one period and tells me Clive is tiresomely
pessimistic about the general situation, and don’t I think so – a voice at my elbow from the Duke of York consoles me by saying, ‘Wiggy knows what he’s talking about, that’s why.’ Lunch at last comes to an end and the company rises, and we watch the beaters going off, vy picturesque figures in blue smocks with black soft felt hats with a red and blue band. Bland, the Head Keeper, mounted on a vy fine animal tells the guns their numbers. We move on, followed by a sort of escort of cavalry being 3 of the shaggiest old ponies, that anyone who wants may climb on to. The King invites me to stand beside him, and the Queen and I sit on our shooting sticks. Howlett, the King’s valet loads for H.M. A little boy slips in the cartridges. A man with two beautiful Labradors and Spencer, the detective, completes the party – Bland’s horn blows in the distance and the drive begins. Driven partridges flying like bullets. The King gets a brilliant right and left; ‘Well done, George,’ from the Queen. At the end of the drive everyone looks for the birds, including the Queen. I sit next to H.M. for the next two drives when the same process repeats itself, and then have a turn with the Duke of York and Prince Henry – the latter a fine shot already…. We have a great deal of walking through turnips – ploughed fields – the Queen stumping along with the best of them, being pushed through a hedge by 2 of the keepers, while Charles Cust rolls about on one of the fat ponies and the King rides too. The afternoon wears on, the light begins to go. We see the motors waiting for us in the hollow of the road while the last beat goes on – and the King brings down 6 birds with 6 cartridges at the last moment. I travel back in the Royal car with the King and Queen and Princess Mary and so ends a vy pleasant and interesting day.222
As time passed, Mrs Wigram found herself increasingly involved in Royal affairs at York Cottage. As the king’s confidence in Major Wigram increased, so the Queen called on his wife as her lady-in-waiting.
They are being so awfully nice to me… You will be amused to hear that today I am Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen officially. (She) said to me yesterday, ‘Will you come and be my Lady tomorrow, please, for I have to go to a lecture in the Women’s Institute in the afternoon and would like to be accompanied by you.’223
In her next letter Mrs Wigram continued:
My waiting on the Queen went off very well. We went out and had a charming lunch with the shooters… Then after lunch we motored to the Women’s Institute where all the good dames of the parish were collected, listened to a particularly naive lecture. This was followed by tea, the Queen sitting at a little table, pouring out tea. The Queen sitting down to a game of ‘Happy Family’ with 3 old ladies: ‘Please, Your Majesty, is Mr Bun the Baker at home?’ This was varied by a prolonged game of musical chairs…The lecturer narrowly escaped sitting on H.M.’s lap, but delicately extricated himself. Then Sir Roger de Coverly was danced. Meanwhile Queen Alexandra, Queen Maud and Princess Victoria had joined the party. We got home at 6 o’clock.
The Queen telephoned to ask me to go shopping with her in Dersingham. She chose £10 worth of goods for her guilds… After that we went for a long walk together for almost an hour and a half, and she was vy delightful.’224
October 17, 1920. I had a nice quiet day yesterday and in the evening we went down to dine at York Cottage with the Bishop of Norwich. I sat next to the King and Fritz Ponsonby. The King was very easy and chatty… he evidently was depressed about this coming coal strike – poor little man, he has had so many strifes during his short reign…
We have just come from church where the Bishop had to dedicate a memorial to King Edward… It was pathetic to see poor old Sir Dighton come into church. He looked so bent, his poor old head more down than ever.225
October 19, 1921.– So lovely down here and I am feeling so well, and playing lots of golf which is still improving… Old Miss Charlotte (Knollys) came to call on me yesterday and gratified me by saying that Queen Alexandra thinks I am very nice!… Princess Victoria is in very good form; she has just been away to Harrogate and paying visits for the last two months.226
Mrs Wigram, in the course of this letter, mentioned that she was writing a full description of a dinner party she had recently attended:
My selection of dress for the occasion was a pale yellow satin with which I wore a wreath of green leaves in my hair with my pearls and green earrings. We arrived rather early as the motor had to go on to fetch the Queen of Norway (formerly Princess Maud of Wales), so we waited in the drawing room chatting to Lady Bertha Dawkins and Sir Charles Cust; the latter full of speculation as to how a success could be made of the coming evening. The Royal party came into the room simultaneously… Queen Mary was in white satin with her wonderful emeralds… Queen Alexandra, wonderfully striking still was in a black velvet tea-gown, of rather an old-fashioned cut, which showed off her slight figure to perfection. Dinner was announced – no sign of the Prince of Wales, and the King began to get very restive when in rushed H.R.H like a whirlwind, clinging to his left ear, which was bleeding profusely from a fore-dinner shave. This proved a useful diversion and we all went harmoniously in to dinner. I found myself sitting between the Prince of Wales and Sir Charles Cust, which was really not as agreeable as it sounds, for the Prince had Queen Alexandra on his right and our conversation was continually being broken into, for the poor Queen, being very deaf, was always trying to understand what was being said on either side of her, and I saw the Heir Apparent with a fork belonging to the entree course vigorously hitting the salt-cellar, thereby illustrating to his grandmother that he had been playing golf – ‘So glad, my dear’. The King would occasionally address remarks to me down the table and the whole of the Royal family sitting between us – would listen to the airy badinage – so embarrassing! The little Prince seemed very low at the idea of going off for such a long time and said he hated leaving his own country, that the endless ceremonials did weary him so, and that the only thing he really liked were children’s functions. He loves children but had to draw the line at kissing them – otherwise his embraces would have run to thousands.
Dinner finished with my curtsey to the King… Coffee, cigarettes and chat and much standing in the drawing-room until the King returned… We at last wandered back to the billiard room where the King and Prince of Wales were having a match. They both look delightful types of English gentlemen, each wearing white carnation buttonholes and were on such good terms with one another. Queen Alexandra did not leave until 11.15. The first time she has dined out for a year; she wanted to make the most of the Prince of Wales, to whom she is quite devoted.227
Mrs Wigram was by this time well aware of the King’s strict adherence to routine and his extreme punctuality. At Sandringham he rose early to get through some business and saw his keepers before breakfasting at 9 a.m. with the Queen and other Royal guests:
Immediately after breakfast he would walk out of the front door, with a cigarette (in holder) in his mouth and Charlotte, his grey-pink parrot, on his left wrist, his dog following him, to examine the sky and judge of the weather. Wet or fine, winter or summer, he never varied this procedure at Balmoral, Sandringham or Windsor, and indeed, he usually followed it at Buckingham Palace. At Balmoral and Sandringham the guests and Households, as well as the Royal visitors, had luncheon, tea and dinner with the King and Queen. A guest, strange to the ways of the house and to Court life, was very soon put at his ease when he found that essential formalities were few and easy, and that life at Sandringham was but country-house life all over England. Teatime was a friendly, informal meal even for an arriving guest introduced straight from the car into the Royal circle, and when the Royal family greeted the guests, assembled in the drawing-room before dinner, it was a prelude to another, quite informal occasion. The fare was never elaborate, and swift service shortened the meal still more. When the Queen rose and the ladies followed her out, each curtseying to the King as she retired and receiving a bow in return, he would beckon the latest guest and, summing up his potentialities, put him instantly at his ease with a suitable gambit in his kindly way. And after di
nner he would turn on his gramophone, in his last years perhaps his favourite relaxation after conversation and philately.228
The seemingly tranquil life at York Cottage, where the King was certainly happiest, was seriously marred at this time by the social and industrial unrest during the demobilisation of the armed forces, which had not been organised on a fair basis. Though the Victory Parade of 1919 and the news of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which effectively ended the First World War, had drawn cheering crowds to Buckingham Palace, the post-war boom was all too short-lived: unemployment increased rapidly and a sense of disillusion spread among the men who had been living dangerously for the past four years. The King’s prerogative ‘to advise and to warn’ was often exercised during these difficult times; David Lloyd George, the Prime Minister, was asked to exercise restraint after he had promised to prosecute the Kaiser, the king’s cousin. In the end, Wilhelm was permitted to remain in Holland, which had offered him asylum after Germany’s defeat. The King was greatly concerned by the effects of unemployment and recession and was worried by the emergence in Ireland of the Irish Republican Party, writing to Lord Stamfordham, his Private Secretary, that ‘each year my responsibilities increase’.
Family problems, too, disturbed the illusion of tranquillity at York Cottage. Happy though he was in those familiar surroundings, his children were beginning to cause him anxiety – in fact, they were growing up and developing minds of their own. The King wrote confidently in 1911, ‘my sons have begun well, especially the eldest…’ But he spoke too soon. The Prince of Wales, released from the Army, was now a well-to-do young man about town, with modern ideas and interests and with no intention of allowing old-fashioned protocol to interfere with his enjoyment. The Prince, in common with many of his contemporaries, was making the most of the freedom which he had gained during the war, dancing the night away in nightclubs and enjoying the latest jazz and ragtime. The King observed this with increasing irritation and bewilderment, feeling that his own standards of duty were threatened and did not hesitate to criticise him loudly and in front of others. He was loud in his denunciation of the Prince’s dress: for wearing turned-down collars (New Zealand); for wearing blue overalls with white tunics – ‘a most extraordinary ugly uniform’ – (India), combined with relentless exhortation to improve his riding. The Prince must have felt confused and defeated by the barrage of criticism which lacked any tempering of warmth or approval, and which could only widen the gap between father and son. He was naturally shy and under-confident, and disliked the tours of the empire which had been arranged with the King’s approval to express the gratitude of the nation for their support and sacrifice. His visit to India was controversial: the British were not generally popular; there was strong indignation at the massacre at Amritsar, and Mahatma Gandhi was leading the movement for independence. He scored some personal successes: his enjoyment of riding made him popular and his win at a difficult and dangerous race at the Meerut Tent Club brought him recognition. He was a reckless rider, though, and known for the ease with which he and his horse parted company. Later, he resented official duties and engagements which intruded on his freedom. There were other signs. But at York Cottage, surrounded by all that had been familiar and cherished for twenty-five year, the King found a measure of peace and relaxation.
