Sandringham Days

by John Matson

  After this, York Cottage remained empty until the Second World War. It might have passed to the Prince of Wales but, though he recorded many happy memories of his childhood there, divergences of outlook with his father, and his own inclination to be nearer good hunting country and the diverse attractions of the capital left his childhood home untenanted. But this is not quite the end of the story: during the war a detachment of the Guards occupied the Cottage under a Major Coates. ‘Coates’ Mission’, as it was called, was given an important directive: if the safety of the Royal Family were threatened as a result of invasion by Germany, they were to be taken to Scotland, and thence to Canada. A fleet of armoured trucks stood ready in the yard but, as the threat of invasion receded, ‘Coates’ Mission was disbanded and the Cottage was again deserted until, after the war, it became the Estate Office. Reminders of its historic past are still very much in evidence: the red cloth which adorned the walls of King George V’s study is still in place, as is the mirror from which the King, reading in his armchair, could observe callers as they arrived at the door – ‘Forewarned is forearmed’. Queen Mary’s safe, which contained in its time some fabulous jewellery, remains in her dressing-room, discreetly concealed by a very ordinary door, doubtless the work of ‘the man from Maples’. The wing which was added for the then Duke and Duchess of York has been converted into staff flats, but the plaque on the wall remains, dated 1893, the year of their marriage. The timber boathouse on the edge of the lake has now gone, but the forlorn pelican fountain which, when the water was turned on, caused the Duchess so much amusement is still there. York Cottage, with all its architectural surprises, its narrow winding passages, small rooms and a staircase that would not have excited remark in any Victorian villa, remains a memorial to the simplicity of the King who was also Emperor of India and, dynastically, the most powerful Monarch in the world in the years after the First World War.

  This was the first year that King George and Queen Mary were able to celebrate Christmas in the Big House in their own way. The year before, Queen Alexandra had been dead little more than a month and major alterations were in progress. In the event, this Christmas at Sandringham differed little from those enjoyed by King Edward VII. ‘Life still pursued its cosy informal pattern…’ wrote Lady Airlie; ‘…country walks, going out with the guns, enormous teas by the fire; very much the routine of any country house, except for the orders and decorations which were worn at dinner. The guests were usually personal friends of the King and Queen who contributed to the homely intimacy of the atmosphere.’248

  For this, his first Christmas in the refurbished House, the King invited Mrs Wigram and her children to stay. As Assistant Private Secretary, Major Wigram took turn and turn about with Private Secretary Lord Stamfordham, and had always been on duty in December. Perhaps someone had reminded the King that Major Wigram was a family man, and must have missed his own Christmas at home.

  Mrs Wigram wrote to her father on 26 December 1926:

  I wrote on Christmas Eve. Well, we had tea, and then the children were summoned, the King and Queen saying, ‘The children must come first’ and they went off into the Ballroom with the King and Queen and we followed. They were led up to their respective tables which were simply smothered in gifts! Francis’ eyes jumping out of his head when he saw the most marvellous fort, from all the Princes. A huge thing, and a marvellous battleship, and endless small things. Neville with a gold watch from the King and a hunting crop from the Princes and again many other things. Anne with every sort of thing – books – ornaments. Each child was given an ashtray!! (Most pernicious.) Their three dear faces were one huge glow of joy, but they were very sedate. Then Clive and I were smothered in gifts. Clive got a set of silver cruets and various books while I was given an Indian ‘shawl’ (like a Persian rug)… a lovely old tortoise-shell tea caddy box, a mirror, a flower bowl, an evening bag etc. Just too generous and kind. We all went about examining each other’s presents, and then all the Princes showed us their presents and finally the Queen. The King gave her a diamond brooch about the size of a cake of soap, combining all the badges of the Guards Brigade… We finally dispersed but our gifts are all left there for days! The children hurry off and gaze at their treasures occasionally… Christmas Day dawned early for me, and the creatures all trooped into my room where I had their presents; they were very happy… Good little souls, they galloped off to start writing their letters and had already accomplished 2 before church. The children and I all sat in one pew. Clive took them out playing golf after lunch and then they spent the rest of the day playing with their things till the great moment came for dinner… Neville of course came out with the ladies. Had to walk all by himself and bow to the King. He did it perfectly naturally. After dinner the Queen said to the children, ‘Come and talk to me.’ She was so nice to them. The evenings here are killing. The last two nights I’ve never sat down between 9.30 and 11 o’clock…249

  December 30, 1926.– Well, we are alive and still very happy. The King has asked us to stay on till Monday… The children are enchanted. We had such a jolly day on Monday. Squeaks and Anne acted as Beaters. You can imagine how they loved it. Tumbling through the bracken – and then the Shooting lunch. They astound me with their ‘savoir faire’, no gaucheries of any description. They always talk when talked to and dissolve away when not wanted… Anne had to come in to tea one day to make up 13. She was rather alarmed at the prospect and confided this to Tids who replied, ‘Pouf! You oughtn’t to be frightened by the King of your country’… There was the big Christmas tree last night for all the people on the estate and Tids was splendid, tearing round distributing things and throwing crackers at them, and not dreaming of wanting anything for himself. Anne and I went out to the shooting lunch yesterday, but left directly afterwards as the Queen wanted to go to King’s Lynn, so Anne and I drove behind her in the 2nd car, with everybody taking their hats off, to my young friend’s great joy. Lady Airlie and the Prince departed this morning. I have found him easier than I thought. He certainly is attractive… The Queen showed us all round her Sitting-Room, Bedroom etc. She has some lovely things, but I much prefer my own rooms!249

  It was sad that the King was not destined to enjoy the property without the increasing effects of ill-health and age. In November 1928 he returned to London from Sandringham, and two days later became seriously unwell. His condition deteriorated and on 12 December, his doctors operated in order to drain an abscess on his lung. In those days before antibiotics, the King had few resources to fight a widespread septicaemia and after his operation his reserves of strength were very seriously depleted. From February to May 1929, the King and Queen stayed at Bognor. In July he attended a Thanksgiving Service in Westminster Abbey for his recovery, although there were still complications from the abscess. It was not until 24 August that he returned to Sandringham after an absence of some ten months. He did not go out shooting for a further two months, and even then it was with a twenty-bore gun made specially by Purdey in place of his usual, heavier twelve-bore.

  In fact, the King spent less than ten years of his reign in the Big House and they were tinged with anxiety for the future: in the early thirties there was massive unemployment at home; abroad, the threat implicit in the rise of the dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and Germany’s rearmament became ever more evident. The King was a pacifist at heart but he was also a realist and urged that the country should not be taken unawares. His views on modern weapons were based more perhaps upon his conservatism than reason; he especially doubted the potential of the Air Force and disliked the concept of flight. Throughout all this he continued to drive himself hard, devoting himself conscientiously to the contents of the despatch boxes which arrived daily on his desk.

  On Christmas Day 1932 at Sandringham, the King made his first broadcast to the Empire. He had first spoken on the radio in 1924 when he opened the Empire Exhibition at Wembley; since then, the size of the potential audience and the range of the transmission had increased
greatly. The King initially expressed reluctance to participate in this venture but, after he had been given a radio and understood its value as a means of communication with his people, he prepared for the broadcast with the greatest care and considerable nervousness, which subsequent broadcasts did nothing to diminish. In his diary he wrote: ‘At 3.35 I broadcasted a short message of 251 words to the whole Empire from Francis’ room.’ This was a small room on the ground floor, overlooking the drive, and had once been used by Lord Knollys. His message was simple: he was the father to a family but, in a wider context, also to a family of nations – and it held an enormous appeal for those who heard him. Speaking of past difficulties and future trials and the efforts made towards a lasting peace, he concluded:

  My life’s aim has been to serve as I might towards those ends. Your loyalty, your confidence in me, has been my abundant reward. I speak now from my home and my heart to you all; to men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea that only voices out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness or infirmity, and to those who are celebrating this day with their children and their grandchildren – to all, to each, I wish a happy Christmas. God bless you.

  It was a message which could not fail to move and he was immensely gratified by the knowledge that it had been so favourably received. Nevertheless, he dreaded these Christmas broadcasts and said that they spoiled his day. It is a measure of his sense of duty that he nevertheless continued with them to the end of his reign.

  The King enjoyed these family gatherings at Sandringham with his children and the young grandchildren who delighted him. The eldest was Princess Elizabeth who, aged twenty-one months, ‘perched on a little chair between the King and me, and the King gave her biscuits to eat and to feed his little dog with, the King chortling with little jokes with her…’250 The last years of his reign these reunions brought the wives of Prince George and Prince Henry; Princess Mary had married Viscount Lascelles in 1922; only the Prince of Wales remained single.

  * After leaving Sandringham, Charlotte lived at South Audley Street, London, until her death in 1930, aged 95. She never married.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THREE KINGS IN ONE YEAR

  In December 1934, the King caught a bad cough and cold whilst at Sandringham and, rather than face the February fogs in London, he went with the Queen to Eastbourne to stay at Compton Place, a property belonging to the Duke of Devonshire. He took some time to recover and was easily tired. In terms of his health the turning point in the King’s life was the fall from his horse at Hesdigneul in 1915: certainly after his illness in 1928, when an abscess formed at the base of his lung, he was never again the same and had the air of a man much older. Now, at the age of seventy and far from robust, there loomed ahead all the strain and fatigue of his Silver Jubilee celebrations.

  On 6 May, the King and Queen drove to St Paul’s Cathedral for a service of thanksgiving, and they were evidently moved by the enormous crowds that turned out to greet them. For over a month the celebrations continued, and on the 3 June they went to Sandringham to rest for a week, but a few days later the weary King caught a cold and was advised to remain in Norfolk for the time being. In August he was able to enjoy Cowes week and, although his yacht Britannia won no races, the King regained some of his former vitality. Perhaps he realised that the end was not very far off, for he decided to lay the yacht up permanently at the end of the season.

  In the autumn the King was not well enough to attend the annual Armistice service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, and immediately afterwards left for Sandringham. His last pheasant shoot was held on 14 November. It was at about this time, too, that he went out shooting for the last time with his old friend George Brereton. They had been shooting in Parson’s Clump when the King turned to him and said: ‘Well, Mr Brereton, I think I must go home.’ ‘Yes, go, Sir, we’ve had a nice morning’s sport.’251

  After their return they visited Princess Victoria, who had been unwell for some time. Her condition continued to deteriorate and she died at her Buckinghamshire home on 3 December. The King himself was far from well and the death of his favourite sister came as a terrible blow to him: ‘How I shall miss her and our daily talks on the telephone,’ he wrote in his diary, ‘No one ever had a sister like her.’252 A story which the King much enjoyed telling reveals something of their relationship: ‘Every morning I ring up my sister at half past nine, just to have a chat. Of course, we’re not always too polite. One morning her telephone rang at the usual time and she took up the receiver and said, “Hullo, you old fool.” And the voice of the operator broke in and said, “Beg pardon, Your Royal Highness, His Majesty is not yet on the line”’

  Never before had he felt unable to undertake a public duty, but he cancelled the State Opening of Parliament due on the day of his sister’s death: it would have been his last. On 21 December the King and Queen returned to Sandringham for Christmas, when all the usual traditions were observed, with the giving of presents to family and Household, and to all the staff. The weather was bitterly cold and there was no shooting. For the last time he made his usual Christmas broadcast to his people, an occasion which always worried him, and he continued to deal with State affairs.

  In the New Year, the King still went out in favourable weather to drive with the Queen, or on his favourite white pony, Jock, and he planted a cedar tree in the garden at Sandringham. He tended to fall asleep during the day, and even at meals, which distressed him. He enjoyed watching films but they began to seem unnecessarily long. Walking tired him quickly; he had to stop for breath frequently. On 15 January he remained in his room and retired early to bed. ‘Poor George,’ Queen Mary wrote, ‘who had not been feeling well for some days, felt worse, & had to go to bed before dinner.’253 Only the day before he had been busy with the Queen arranging the Fabergé collection which had passed from Queen Alexandra to Princess Victoria, and now, to him: they had come back, in the end, to Sandringham. He had not been out recently; the weather was bleak, and snow lay thinly on the ground. On the 17th, Queen Mary realised that the King was seriously ill and sent for the Prince of Wales: ‘I think you ought to know,’ she wrote, ‘that Papa is not very well.’254 Lord Dawson of Penn, his personal physician, whom she had summoned, was ‘not too pleased with Papa’s state at the present moment.’

  The Prince of Wales arrived by aeroplane and from then on, the family began to gather at the Big House. Sadly, the King was unable to continue with his diary: the last entry, on 17 January, reads: ‘A little snow and wind. Dawson arrived this evening, I saw him & feel rotten.’255 The next word is but half-formed; he could write no more. On the 19th, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Duke of Kent arrived. By now the public had been informed of the King’s condition and reporters began to congregate around the estate. The Prince travelled to London to inform the Prime Minister of the King’s condition and then returned to Sandringham. ‘G. about the same,’ Queen Mary wrote, ‘sat with him from time to time – Did not go to church as the place was surrounded by reporters and photographers, too heartless – Walked with Mary morning & afternoon…’256

  On the next day, 20 January, at about eleven 11 a.m. on an intensely cold morning, Lord Wigram was summoned to the King and found him with a copy of The Times. ‘He whispered something about the Empire, and I replied that “all is well, Sir, with the Empire.”… The King said, “I feel very tired. Go and carry on with your work. I will see you later.”’257

  Ramsay MacDonald, Lord Hailsham and Sir John Simon, members of the Privy Council, with Sir Maurice Hankey as Clerk, arrived half an hour later, and went upstairs to join three other members, the Archbishop, Lord Dawson and Lord Wigram, in a sitting-room adjacent to the King’s bedroom. They found the King in a dressing-gown, sitting in a chair. He was suffering from increasing breathlessness and had lost the use of his right arm. He greeted them with his friendly smile and in a firm voice approved the setting up of the Council of State, but was unable to make
more than two shaky marks on the paper saying, ‘I am sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen, but I find it difficult to concentrate.’ The Archbishop had seen him before the Council and had recalled the long years of their friendship: ‘More than forty years, Sir,’ he said, and the King replied, ‘Yes, yes, a long time; more than forty years.’ The Archbishop asked if he might give the King his blessing, and he had answered, ‘Yes, do give me your blessing,’ and thereafter had tried to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, but sleep closed down on his mind again.

  By evening the Prince of Wales had returned to the Big House with the Duke of York, and the Duchess of Kent had also arrived. That night Queen Mary was looking drawn and tired and the Royal Family dined alone. While the Household were at dinner Lord Dawson was asked for the wording of the 9 p.m. bulletin. Lord Dawson consulted Lord Wigram, who sat next to him, and said to the company: ‘I think the time is past for details.’ Then he wrote on the back of a menu card, which Lord Wigram handed him, the doctors’ last and beautifully worded message: ‘The King’s life is drawing peacefully towards its close.’258

  Outside, the weather had broken and given way to rain which fell softly on the crowd of reporters at the gates. Indoors, in the King’s room, the Queen and the family were gathered round the bed while the Archbishop said the commendatory prayers. Afterwards, because there was ‘a little evidence of struggle’, an injection of morphine was administered at which the King roused, said, ‘God damn you’, and settled down to sleep.

  Earlier, the Queen and the Prince of Wales had told Dawson that ‘they had no wish for the King’s life to be prolonged if the illness were judged to be mortal but that, having made their view known, they left the decision in the doctors’ hands.’ Dawson agreed to direct the treatment accordingly. The physician’s own view on euthanasia was clear. Later in the year, he was to vote against a Bill to introduce voluntary euthanasia on the grounds that it was something ‘which belongs to the wisdom and conscience of the medical profession and not to the realm of law.’259 He recorded his own decision in his private Sandringham notebook: