This Sceptred Isle

by Christopher Lee

  Victoria had kept a daily journal since the age of fourteen. The last entry is dated 13 January 1901. She refers to two of her children, Princess Beatrice and Princess Helena, whom the family called Lenchen:

  Had a fair night, but was a little wakeful. Got up earlier and had some milk. Lenchen came in and read some papers. Out before one, in the garden chair, Lenchen and Beatrice going with me. Rested a little, had some food, and took a short drive with Lenchen and Beatrice. Rested when I came in, and at five-thirty went down to the drawing room, where a short service was held by Mr Clement Smith, who performed it so well, and it was a great comfort to me. Rested again afterwards, then did some signing and dictated to Lenchen.

  She died at Osborne, the country home on the Isle of Wight which had remained just as it was when Albert died in 1861. Victoria had given specific instructions: hers would be a military funeral. Also, the Queen who wore widows’ weeds for forty years wanted a white funeral. This was probably an idea she took from Tennyson, who once told her that all funerals should be white. And there were instructions that certain precious articles should be placed in her coffin: Prince Albert’s dressing gown, a plaster moulded from his hand and family photographs. But there was one item that few ever knew existed. She had told Sir James Reid, her private physician – and no one else – that he was to place a particular photograph in her hand. Not Albert’s, but that of her Scottish retainer John Brown. Reid did so, and then, being a man of great discretion and mindful that some believed Brown and Victoria had been secretly married, placed flowers on top of the photograph.

  Her coffin was taken by ship, the Alberta, to the mainland and, close by Nelson’s Victory, was borne ashore and thence by train to London and finally to Windsor for the funeral ceremony. The following afternoon she was buried in the mausoleum at Frogmore alongside Albert, for whom she had been in mourning for forty years. And so the Victorian age closed. The population of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland was forty-one million. There were six-and-a-half million people living in London and more than 160,000 living in Cardiff. The population of Bolton was 168,000 and Glasgow’s 900,000. When Victoria died there were more than six million registered voters and more than 1,300 unions with over two million members.

  Victoria died a Queen and an Empress, the last Hanoverian, and monarch of the most prosperous nation on earth. But before the new decade was out, Edward VII would be dead and the road to the First World War would be opened.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  A Question of Identity

  Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Great Britain was at its colonial and imperial peak. The Empire of India Exhibition had opened in London in 1895. It symbolized much that Victorian England believed it had brought to India. The British saw themselves as beneficent masters who had delivered to the Indians prosperity, happiness, the virtues of mercy and even wisdom – almost as if none had existed before the British in India. Thus, the 1895 exhibition was an extravagant tribute to the British themselves. The sub-continent was Britain’s proudest possession. Everything that was good in India was, they believed, because the British had made it so. The eighteenth-century Protestant self importance that urged Britannia to rule the waves had not dimmed a hundred years on. Lord Curzon (1859–1925), the Viceroy from 1898 to 1905, believed that his monarch ruled by God’s command and as he, Curzon, was the monarch’s monarch in India, then he too ruled by divine order.

  George Curzon was one of eleven children of Lord Scarsdale, sometime rector of Kedleston. His family dated itself from the Normans and had lived in Derbyshire since the 1100s. The family home, Kedleston Hall, was an eighteenth-century masterpiece by Robert Adam. Curzon went through the normal education of his breed, being sent to Eton in 1872, where he came under the artistic influence of Oscar Browning, which was just as well for he showed no distinction in pastimes such as sport. Curzon was a natural academic prize winner. He carried this distinction to Oxford where he read classics at Balliol, under the college’s master, the formidable Benjamin Jowett (1817–93). He picked up prizes, but confessed bewilderment at his failure to be awarded a first in Greats. His time at Oxford is perhaps an indication of his true interests that he exhibited throughout his political career, which he rather expected to culminate in 10 Downing Street. It may be that Curzon had a particular weakness as a politician in that he was not much interested in politics. Instead, he was inclined to the oratory and classical display of power. This would have made him the ideal colonial governor.

  Curzon was in office, with Salisbury’s government, in the summer of 1895. He went to the Foreign Office as a junior minister. It was a time when the British were yet again convinced that the Russians were trying to gain influence in India. It will be remembered that the only reason logically to defend British interests in Afghanistan was the belief that the Russians would use that country as a highway into the sub-continent. In 1895, there was quite serious discussion by the British of retreating from the north-west frontier. It was Curzon who eloquently convinced Salisbury’s Cabinet that if they put into practice the withdrawal, then the Russians would come in behind. The British stayed. Curzon, in 1898, largely through self promotion and particularly towards Salisbury, was appointed Viceroy of India and created Baron Curzon. It must have seemed appropriate that Government House, Curzon’s residence in Calcutta, was based on the family’s Derbyshire seat, Kedleston Hall.

  India under Curzon (in theory, of course, it was under the Secretary of State for India in the Cabinet) is a good example of proper governorship, rather than the social and largely ineffectual image often painted. Curzon believed he had a mission to redraw the plans and templates of British rule in that place. For much of his adult life (he was then only forty) Curzon had studied India, its history, commerce and strategic value in the whole of Asia from the Bosphorus to the Chinese borders. He fully understood that India was feudal and had to be fairly and efficiently governed, otherwise its peoples would rise against maladministration. Here was a recipe for division among the rulers, but not so much among the ruled. Not surprisingly, there was much political effort to get rid of Curzon. He disturbed administrators in India, who had a charmed way of life. He disrupted their schemes to better that life. If precedent was anything to go by, then this scheming against Curzon might have been enough for him to be conveniently recalled. He could have been given a job in Salisbury’s government again, because his Irish peerage would have allowed him a seat. But Salisbury, or maybe his Secretary of State, Lord George Hamilton (1845–1927), understood clearly what was happening and that in spite of the whispering campaign against him, Curzon was right in what he was doing and there was greater silent support for him than there was dissent. Moreover, Curzon, had not gone to India for a rest before claiming higher office at home. If there was an acceptable way to rule colonial peoples, then Curzon, albeit with a reputation for arrogance, managed it. Curzon’s time in India was probably the height of the whole British Empire. India was the focal point of that Empire. By 1903, Victoria had been dead two years, court mourning was over and Edward VII once more travelled to India, but this time as Emperor. The grandest of all festivities, the durbar, was held to honour the new King in January 1903. This should really have been the time for Curzon to leave India. It would have been the high note and his reputation would have protected him from most criticism.

  Salisbury had retired in 1902 (he died the following year). His nephew, Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) became Prime Minister and, probably unwisely, renewed Curzon’s credentials as Viceroy. If Curzon had not stayed, he might have stood more chance of becoming Prime Minister, perhaps following Balfour. Curzon did not see matters going that way. He believed he still had work to do in India and rather hoped that he would be supported from London by the new Secretary of State for India, St John Brodrick (1856–1942). At first he was supported, but the period between the spring of 1904 and 1905 would be a miserable time for Curzon and for British rule in India.

  It began with both London an
d Curzon being faced with the need to reform the governing of Bengal. Curzon’s view was that Bengal was too big and too heavily populated to be governed as one province. He wanted to divide it. At first, this might seem simple administrative logic, particularly in the hands of one who had made sure and steady decisions during his time as Viceroy. It left one part of the division with a Muslim majority. The Hindus in Bengal disliked Curzon’s decision. It would, in theory, weaken their political strength. This was not a local difficulty. Curzon’s reputation as a man who had been sensitive to religious balances, was damaged for all time.55 There was more to come. This time, there were two areas of contention between the Viceroy, London and the Commander-in-Chief of the army in India, the recently appointed Kitchener.

  If this period was the apogee of the British Empire, it was certainly one of the last times that the British felt they had the authority, both politically and morally, to teach savages that they should not mess with imperial masters. Brodrick was an old friend of Curzon’s, but he saw the need to retain the ultimate authority for the governance of India in London, not in Curzon’s residency. The Viceroy was losing his authority and it was yet again tested, this time by a British general. The British army in India had a commander plus a senior administrator, a sort of adjutant general. As we have seen, the Commander-in-Chief in 1904 was Kitchener (appointed 1902). Kitchener did not like the idea of having a major general as a joint administrator of the Indian army; he wanted to be commander-in-chief of everything military. The general’s further objection was that the other administrator was also a member of the Viceroy’s Council. This had always worked and the double authority had been strengthened by Curzon, who believed that the Commander-in-Chief should be responsible for war-fighting capabilities and that the major general on his council (the one Kitchener objected to) should be the much needed logistician. Moreover, if the Commander-in-Chief was campaigning, then the Viceroy would have at his side an immediate military adviser. Kitchener was not the sort of man to delegate the authority of his command, especially as, the way he saw it, a junior general would be in a position to influence the Viceroy while he was not there. Curzon said that the system had worked perfectly well before Kitchener’s arrival in 1902 and so he rejected the famous general’s demand.

  Generals rarely become famous without having a grasp of tactics, both military and political. Kitchener thus lobbied the political hierarchy in London. St John Brodrick was won over. At the time that Curzon discovered what was happening, he was in England, where his American wife, Mary, was seriously ill. Kitchener had got his way, but then said he was going to resign. He was out to ruin Curzon. He knew that a threat of his resignation would be close to devastating for Balfour’s unpopular administration. Curzon returned to India just before Christmas. In the following spring, 1905, he led his Viceroy’s Council in rejecting any plans to scrap the military department and thus Curzon’s major general. Kitchener had anticipated this and, determined to see the end of Curzon, had already primed his London supporters who forced the government, in spite of civilian and military advice, to support Kitchener. Brodrick wrote to Curzon, by now no longer his close friend, that the Viceroy’s Council could no longer have anything but a very weakened military department. There now came about a curious ploy from London. It was clear that the government wanted to get Curzon out of India, but to do so without being seen to dismiss him. That would have caused ructions in India and in the British press, which the government did not believe it was popular enough to disregard.

  Kitchener, still in India, appeared to be backing down from his original demands. Then, within a few weeks, he went the other way. The test came when Curzon nominated a new major general as his military member of the committee. Brodrick vetoed the nomination. Curzon had no option but to resign. He stayed long enough for a visit by the Prince of Wales, then left. Earlier, we noted that Curzon was a better orator than he was a politician. He had been politically outwitted, although it was partly his own fault. Curzon should have gone in 1903. If he had, he might have become Prime Minister. The business of publicity and Kitchener’s politicking did not save Balfour’s government. It went in 1905, largely due to an argument over tariffs, to be replaced by the Liberals led by Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman (1836–1908).

  That is very much a small part of the British in India. It is meant to show that even at its height, the Raj was vulnerable to personal bickerings and ambitions. Moreover, Curzon’s leaving was not going to excite the sub-continent. Lord Minto (1845–1914), who replaced him, was not a remarkable man but he did make an important contribution to the government of India. Just as Hamilton, as Secretary of State, and Curzon had worked well together, and Brodrick and Curzon should have done, so Minto was supported by his Secretary for India, Viscount Morley (1838–1923). Minto had been Governor General of Canada for six years until 1904 and so he was used to colonial administration. With Morley’s complete support, he put in place the Morley–Minto Reform, which set the way Indians were brought into the various ruling bodies of their own country. So, for example, elected members, both Hindu and Muslim, joined the Viceroy’s Council, all the provincial councils and the Legco, the legislative council. This reform was in place by 1909 and once more reflected the political awareness of a middle class in India which had, especially following the development of the Indian National Council of the late 1880s, become an obvious part of the future governments of India. There are times when it is wrongly seen that there was no independent political movement until the arrival of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948). The politics of India, as we would see them today, took on a recognizable role far long before Gandhi left Africa.

  The 1909 reforms were surely clear indication that the time was not far off when the Viceroy should go for all time. It may be that two world wars delayed that moment. Equally, it would be interesting to speculate if there had been no wars, would Britain’s role in the world have much changed and would the inevitable agreement for India’s independence have arrived sooner? The British described India as a miracle of the world, meaning that they had created this wonder. In the early twenty-first century, we might say that the parade of elephants, silks, jewels and princely images at Earls Court in the 1896 exhibition did not include the social distinction that kept the Queen’s hopefully loyal subjects at arm’s length from the by then 100,000 British administrators and military. If we thought that way, then we should remember the times; that same social and bureaucratic apartheid was practised in Britain.

  Officialdom and the ruling classes – whether administering the nation or industry – maintained a barrier between the ruler and commoner. Edwardian Britain was a society in which the common man would call his doctor, his parson, his schoolmaster and certainly his master, Sir. That was simply the way of the British world. There was absolutely no reason why matters might be any different in India. This was a British society, for example, which would during the Second World War stop the pay of a British merchant seaman once he took to the lifeboat having been torpedoed during the Battle of the Atlantic. The Raj reflected the character of the British, most of whom were no different in their master–servant relations than any other nationalities.

  To some extent Britain was the servant. It was committed to its Empire and most certainly needed the sub-continent because it was a captive market for British industry. The nineteenth century had seen the grand expansion of British industry, particularly manufacturing. Britain was the first to take advantage of its home-developed Industrial Revolution. Technology had made almost every process of manufacturing simpler, more efficient and, therefore, capable of greater production. Greater production capability was only viable if there were increased sales. The expansion of a modernized cotton industry needed huge markets. The history of colonization contained a continuing effort to provide tariffs and incentives for British goods to be sold into the colonies. The seventeenth-century adventures in North America had been seen as opportunities for English goods. The eighteenth century had
seen enforced purchasing regulations by the colonies. The juggling of protection values had directly caused the animosities in North America that led to the symbolism of the Boston Tea Party. In the nineteenth century, British manufacturers wanted India as a market place for its goods. By the second half of the century, the British economy relied, not exclusively but urgently, on India. By the Edwardian period, almost two-thirds of imports to India came from Britain. Some 60 per cent of shipping in Indian ports were flying the Red Ensign. Perhaps as much as a half of the hidden services, such as insurance from India were going through the London markets.

  Equally, India was not alone in supporting the British economy. Colonial holdings in the Far East, south-east Asia, Australasia and Africa were proving that without an empire, Britain would have been much poorer, perhaps even poor. Curzon may not have got it right when he claimed that God’s hand was on Britain’s colonial existence. He might, however, have made a reasonable case that there was some providential economic guidance. This then was the position at the start of the twentieth century when Britain ruled a quarter of the global population, carried as much as half of the world cargoes in her ships and one-third of global exchanges, finances and insurances facilities went through offices in just one square mile of the capital of the British Empire, London. It would take decades for the British to get used to the idea that striding in mastership of much of the world required an economic, political and constitutional gait that was a spectacle of an earlier, not a present age.

  The British were evolving a new ruling class, which emerged as a second generation from the relatively new public schools system born from the nineteenth-century industrialists who wanted their sons to have classical and not technical educations. At the other end of the social scale, in 1904, in an effort to encourage socialist and trades union adult students the Workers’ Educational Association was found by Albert Manbridge (1876–1952) to bring together existing voluntary adult education forms. Workers’ education was not a new idea. Eighty years earlier, George Birkbeck (1776–1841) had established the London Mechanics’ Institution (later, Birkbeck, University of London). These progressions were for a predominantly masculine-run society long questioned by women activists. For example, when Emmeline Pankhurst (1858–1928) founded the Women’s Social and Political Union in 1803, she was following a calling of one of the first women’s rights movers, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) in 1792 with her publication, Vindications of the Rights of Women. The nineteenth-century movement for women’s suffrage was unsuccessful in spite of the 1882 Married Women’s Property Act and the championing of the cause by leading politicians and radicals of the second half of the century. What was emerging in the early twentieth century was something similar to that which came about in the early years of the nineteenth century – an instinct for reform. Trades unions were increasingly powerful, so much so that in 1906 the Trade Disputes Act appeared on the statute book to bring some order and anticipate disorder in the relatively new area of industrial relations, with management facing politically attuned and affiliated organized labour. The streets of Britain’s towns and cities were changing shape with more pillar boxes, lamp-posts, kerbs, drain covers and, most of all, the common appearance of motor vehicles with the first motor buses in London in 1905.