by Edna Healey
Parliament was told that Blore’s Caen stonework had perished so badly that it needed replacing. Therefore it was decided to bring the façade more into keeping with the surroundings created by the memorial, and with the rest of the building. It was also resolved to use Portland stone, the material which had come once more to be recognised as ideal for London, as it had been during the era of Wren.
Webb was at this time a successful architect, much esteemed for his public buildings. The son of an engineer, he had worked himself up from humble beginnings. He had trained as an architect in the firm of Banks & Barry, where he won an RIB A travelling studentship. By 1891 he was undertaking a number of commissions in Kensington, including the completion of the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Webb’s aim to simplify the outline of the building was achieved by raising the parapet to hide ugly roofs and chimneys; the centre and wings were emphasized with pediments and the whole front was designed on simple, severe lines.
There was little disturbance at the Palace during the work, since the stone was prepared a year in advance at the yards of the contractors, Leslie & Co.* The actual refacing took only three months, but there were difficulties and tragedies. On 12 September 1913 The Times reported that the workmen, 250 on day shift, and 150 on night shift, were threatening to go on strike. That was resolved, but twelve days later ‘a number of men lifting a roll of roofing lead weighing 30 cwt … when one Charles Clark slipped, the lead fell on his head and killed him. On 14 October a painter, Morris Woodhouse, fell 20–30 ft to his death from the scaffolding in front of the Palace.’20
By the end of October, in under thirteen weeks the work was finished, to the delight of the King, whose insistence on punctuality was legendary – and not a pane of glass was broken. It had been efficiently planned, and competently and quickly executed, at no cost to him or Parliament. He made little attempt to interfere, except that he insisted that there should be no unnecessary ornament, and that the balcony should be kept. Undemonstrative though he was, King George V realized the importance of royal appearances on the balcony as a focus for the demonstration of national unity.
On Friday 31 October 500 workmen in their Sunday best filled the King’s HallHolborn restaurant for a dinner given by the King. According to The Times a letter from him was read out, congratulating them ‘on an achievement remarkable both in handicraft and in rapidity of execution and he had words of sympathy for the families of workmen killed during the work’. Apparently the menu was ‘Scotch Broth, Boiled Turbot with Hollandaise Sauce, Roast Saddle of Mutton, Roast Beef, baked potatoes, Brussels sprouts and Cauliflower; followed by Saxon pudding and dessert’. There was ‘an abundant supply of good ale’ but, The Times noted with surprise, ‘quite a considerable number of men drank water or mineral water’,21 after which the men sang lustily ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’. A year later many of those men were in khaki, singing ‘Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square’, as they marched to the mud and blood of the trenches of the First World War.
In 1913 and 1914 there was much cause for worry: the perennial problem of Ireland; the constitutional argument over the power of the Lords; the reports of growing German aggression; and the domestic disturbances caused by the suffragettes and their campaign for votes for women. Frustrated by the refusal of their opponents to listen to their reasonable arguments, and maddened by the deafening silence of some of their male supporters in Parliament, the suffragettes had become increasingly violent. Their last hope was to take their campaign to Buckingham Palace.
In March 1913 Queen Mary reported that ‘tiresome suffragettes rushed out in the Mall and tried to present petitions, of course the police caught them, but it caused a scene and looked undignified’.22 The Queen was at the sensational Derby in 1913, when Miss Emily Wilding had thrown herself in front of the King’s horse and was killed. Sympathetic though Queen Mary was to many women’s causes, she had little patience with uncontrolled behaviour. She found it difficult to understand the women who threw bricks through windows and set fire to houses, especially since they were well-dressed, well-bred ladies, not revolutionary mobs.
In the spring of 1914 police patrolled the Palace grounds day and night; even so two ladies evaded them and chained themselves to the railings. On 22 May 1914 the suffragettes marched up the Mall, attempting to storm the Palace to deliver their ‘Votes for Women’ petition. The police were ready for them. That day fifty-seven were arrested including their leader, Mrs Pankhurst, newly released from gaol. In prison they went on hunger strike and were subjected to the pain and humiliation of force-feeding.
On 4 June 1914 one young woman managed to take her protest to the steps of the throne itself. Miss Mary Blomfield, the 26-year-old daughter of a distinguished architect who had worked at Sandringham, managed to get an invitation to an evening court. Elegantly dressed, she demurely proceeded in her turn in the prescribed manner to the King and Queen on their dais. As the newspapers reported, she curtsied, but did not rise, lifting her arms and crying, ‘Your majesty, won’t you stop torturing women!’ With her customary restraint the Queen reported in her diary,
George and I received three Maori Chiefs at 11. Sat out in the garden most of the day. We held our 3rd court in the evening and a tiresome suffragette came and fell on her knees before G and held out her arms in a supplicating way, saying ‘Oh! your majesty stop’. Then she was gently escorted out by Douglas Dawson and John Hamilton. Very unpleasant.23
The Queen was not completely unsympathetic; she and the King disapproved of force-feeding, but she disliked disorderly conduct and was embarrassed by passionate appeals to the emotions.
Now that the exterior was completed, Queen Mary persuaded the King that there were repairs and redecoration needed within the Palace. He recognized that there could be no better supervisor for such work than Queen Mary herself. So, for the rest of his reign, the care and reorganization of the Palace was her major concern.
*
It was fortunate that, during their reign, Queen Mary had her own work and her own inner resources; for King George V was preoccupied by affairs of state: the interminable flow of red boxes, the long meetings with ministers. He was more than happy to leave Queen Mary to sort out the confusion within the Palace. She welcomed a task for which she was uniquely qualified; besides, she was lonely now that the King was so busy. They rarely entertained, and hardly ever dined out – much to the surprise of the Prince of Wales, who could not imagine them enjoying a life that seemed to him to be of such stupefying boredom. In fact, the regular rhythm at Buckingham Palace suited them both.
As Kenneth Rose has described: the King followed ‘the clockwork routine of a ship’s captain. First thing in the morning and last thing at night he consulted the barometer.’24 He did two hours work before breakfast, tackled his red boxes and business all morning, and took a brisk walk round the Palace garden; then came lunchcon and afterwards exactly fifteen minutes sleep, before tackling the red boxes again. Dinner was almost always quietly en farnille, but even so the King always dressed formally.
Their sons, the Prince of Wales and Prince Albert, froze in this rigid pattern of life, and in their father’s insistence on punctuality and on exact correctness in dress and behaviour. They were terrified of the fusillade of questions he would rap at them during dinner. It was not surprising that, given the opportunity, the Prince of Wales would break out into loud check suits and a rackety lifestyle; or that Bertie would find it difficult to control his stammer.
Queen Mary might have been intimidated too were it not that she knew how much the King loved her and how important she was to him. Nonetheless, she was glad to escape into the congenial work of researching, cataloguing and rearranging.
In these years, visiting museums, art galleries and antique shops became a major interest for the Queen, although she would never allow it to interfere with the King’s routine. She would always hurry back from such expeditions to be in time to join him for tea; and she would never neglect
any royal duties for the sake of her own interests. King George V was on the whole complaisant – after all, he had his own obsession with stamp collecting – although occasionally he became impatient. ‘There you go again, May,’ he once said. Turniture, furniture!’
It must be remembered that not only had Queen Mary studied history from books and observed with a keen eye life in the countries she had visited as Duchess of York, she had learned a great deal from her mother’s sister, her beloved Aunt Augusta, Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The Grand Duchess had a prodigious memory going back to the Coronation of William IV, and had known every prime minister and almost every European and Russian monarch. She never forgot that as the daughter of the Duke of Cambridge she was the granddaughter of George III. And as Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz she was especially conscious that Queen Mary reigned in the home of Queen Charlotte, also from Mecklenburg-Strelitz; consequently she strengthened Queen Mary’s own deep awareness of the continuity of the monarchy. Her aunt’s sympathies were high Tory and she was terrified of change, but her sharp mind always stimulated Queen Mary, and right up to her death in 1916 she was a living source of historical information. She kept a home in London and on her frequent visits could bring to life the portraits on the Palace walls, encouraging Queen Mary’s own passionate interest in history.
Now visits to Windsor were a joy: Queen Mary could browse in the archives and search the storerooms for old furnishings, neglected furniture and forgotten precious objects. She took advice from Sir Lionel Cust on the hanging of the paintings in the Picture Gallery. A perfectionist, she was remembered, as an old lady, insisting on the correct hang of pictures. When, in later years, she sent one as a present to Miss Crawford, the present Queen’s governess when she was Princess Elizabeth, she sent first the picture, then a workman to hang it, and then she came herself to see that it was properly done.
In her reorganization of the Palace Queen Mary worked as no one in the royal family, not even the Prince Consort, had done before. All her love of history, her passion for collecting, her eye for quality and her meticulous care in labelling and cataloguing were brought into action.
There is a record in the Royal Archives of the work done from 1911 to 1935, year by year, ‘under the personal supervision of Queen Mary’and signed by an Inspector from the Ministry of Works. All the King’s and Queen’s own possessions were firmly marked as ‘their Majesties’ own property’ – even the wall hangings.25
As she toured the palaces, her keen eye spotted details. She found an eighteenth-century cabinet and its matching cupboards, which were being used as wardrobes in different parts of the palaces. Antique chairs were rescued from upper rooms, repaired, re-covered and rearranged in rooms of their right period. She found one magnificent council chair, carved and gilded and solid as a Roman chariot, in Kensington Palace, and brought it to join its partner in Buckingham Palace. In the Household corridor she found a handsome piece of furniture, which was later identified as ‘a neat mahogany press of linen with four wooden doors made in 1770 … the whole inside grooved like a bookcase and mahogany sliding shelves’.26
She furnished rooms in different styles and periods. In what she called her Chippendale Room she placed Queen Charlotte’s mahogany table with chairs of the same period. There were two satinwood tables made originally for George IV’s rooms in Buckingham Palace when he was Prince of Wales, which she placed with other satinwood furniture in one of the smaller, more restrained rooms.
Her work at the Palace continued until the King’s death, but her interest lasted until the end of her life. She and her friends searched the sale-rooms for the Royal Collection but she also had her own personal treasures. Much prized was the jewel cabinet that had been made for Queen Charlotte in her first year as Queen. Delicately inlaid with ivory, it had held George Ill’s first gift of jewels to his new bride, and had been passed to Queen Mary by her brother, Prince Adolphus, also a passionate collector. Prince ‘Dolly’, after 1917 Marquess of Cambridge, had married a wealthy wife, so could indulge his love of fine things. In February 1925 she was to write to him,
what do you want to see, The Wallace Collection, or Victoria & Albert or National Portrait Gallery … should any of these smile on you and wd you like me to let the Director know as it is nice … to have a knowledgeable person with you … There are 2 or 3 things in the Palace I should like to show you, small alterations which I think you will approve of …27
As her biographer, James Pope-Hennessy, described,
She was forever matching up, cataloguing, reorganising and adding to the historical parts of the royal collection. … In conversation at this time she would always attribute her love of fine objects to her father, the Duke of Teck: ‘only he was poor’, she would add, ‘and could not afford to buy.’28
It was perhaps the memory of her own youth when funds were so often low that encouraged a certain acquisitive obsession. There are many stories of her skill in persuading friends and acquaintances to part with precious objets d’art. Some of them are undoubtedly apocryphal, but there is no doubt that she considered it her mission to release beautiful things from their obscure homes and give them their proper place in her Palace.
She consulted experts in every field and was particularly flattered when the Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum wanted to see her Chinese Chippendale Room because he was arranging little rooms of various styles at the V. & A. and he said seeing my rooms would help him very much indeed’.29
In 1913 she was to encourage Clifford Smith to edit the first major history of the Royal Collection: his Buckingham Palace has been ever since the definitive work. The account books and records of the Commission set up to monitor the Prince Regent’s debts and expenditure at the turn of the century were found by a descendant among the papers of the Secretary to the Commission and were sent to the Queen, to her joy. Clifford Smith was thus able to identify and catalogue the makers of many items in the Royal Collection.
But in July 1914 all domestic and political concerns were overshadowed as Britain was drawn irrevocably into the First World War. In the summer of 1914 few people had foreseen that the bloodiest of wars was about to begin. That it should have started in far away Sarajevo, in the words of Queen Mary, ‘beggared belief ’.
In June the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his morganatic wife were assassinated in Sarajevo. On 23 July 1914 Austria, affronted by this, the latest and greatest attack on them by their hostile Slav neighbours, sent an ultimatum with terms that Serbia refused to accept completely. On 28 July Austria declared war on Serbia, which brought in Germany; Russia now mobilized in support of its traditional ally, Serbia. Desperately the British government tried a last-minute appeal to the Russian Tsar: a telegram to him was brought to the King in the early hours of 1 August. This the King signed with slight alterations: he addressed it to his cousin, ‘Dear Nicky’, and signed it ‘Georgy’. It had no effect: before the day was out Russia was at war with Germany. France now came to Russia’s support, Germany declared war on France, and by 2 August Europe was in flames. Britain still tried to remain outside the battle, but the old Treaty of London 1839, which had guaranteed British support for Belgium, now had to be confirmed. France begged Britain to come to its defence and, as the King reluctantly conceded, ‘we cannot allow France to be smashed’. The King’s diary for 4 August 1914 began as always with the sailor’s look at the weather.
Warm, showers and windy … I held a Council at 10.45 to declare war on Germany, it is a terrible catastrophe but it is not our fault. An enormous crowd collected outside the Palace: we went on the balcony before and after dinner. When they declared that war had been declared, the excitement increased and May and I with David went on to the balcony: the cheering was terrific.30
The dogs of war had been unleashed with a vengeance.
For the King and Queen it was not only a national disaster but also a personal tragedy. In the international royal family it was civil war–
cousin against cousin. The Emperor William II was the son of Edward VII’s sister and the grandson of Queen Victoria. It is true that there was not much love lost between them, but they had stood together at the funeral of Edward VII and there had once been a rumour that the Prince of Wales might marry the German Emperor’s daughter. But King George V had been much influenced by his Danish mother Queen Alexandra, whose hatred of Germany, roused by the Prussian attack on Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, was incandescent, burning throughout her life. Then the German Emperor’s treatment of his mother, Queen Victoria’s daughter, Vicky, in her last years had enraged King George V. The mistrust of the cousins was mutual: the Emperor was convinced that the King had his spies throughout Germany. Although he came to England in 1911 for the unveiling of Queen Victoria’s Memorial outside Buckingham Palace, he startled Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg with a sudden outburst of violent threats against England.
The Austrian Ambassador in London, Count Mensdorff, was also the King’s cousin – and a close friend. The Ambassador was, like King George V, descended from the remarkable Coburg Duke who had sired Prince Albert’s father, Queen Victoria’s mother and Leopold, King of the Belgians. When Britain and France declared war on Austria, King George V wrote immediately to Mensdorff, who recorded in his journal that the King spoke kindly of their old friendship and hoped later to welcome him back to London.
King George V was also closely connected with the Russian imperial family. The Tsar, Nicholas II, was the son of the King’s aunt, Marie. The Tsarina, born Princess Alix of Hesse, was another first cousin. Both were to meet a tragic end in 1918 at the hands of the Bolsheviks. His uncle Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, had married the daughter of the Tsar Alexander II. His first cousin Marie was Queen of Romania, and Queen Alexandra’s brother was King of Greece.
