by Jane Ridley
Alix’s charitable duties were considerable. She concentrated on her own particular interest, nursing. Some found this irritating. “She is the stupidest woman in England,” said Lord Haldane, when the Queen was suggested for the Territorial Army nurses. “Can’t we do without a royal President?”
“He could not,” was the comment of one historian.58
Six nursing bodies carried her name, but, partly perhaps because she lacked advisers, Alix made no attempt to channel her charitable impulses into a larger role, in the way that Queen Mary was later to reach out to the poor.59 Nor (to her credit) did she attempt to interfere in domestic politics. What political views she did have were personal. She was still haunted by the nightmare of Germany, the “robbers’ den,” overrunning poor little Denmark, and her distrust of Kaiser William was as strong as her loyalty for her siblings in Russia and Greece was deep.
On the first anniversary of Queen Victoria’s death, a sparrow flew into the service in the mausoleum at Windsor. “Do you think that little bird could be Mama’s spirit?” asked one of the princesses. No, shot back Alix, “or it would not have made a mess on Beatrice’s bonnet.”60 Lord Esher, who was one of her favorites, partly because he spoke in a way that she could hear, thought that “it is this mixture of ragging and real feeling which is so attractive about the Queen.” He perceived that “her cleverness has always been underestimated—partly because of her deafness. In point of fact, she says more original things, and has more unexpected ideas than any of the family.”61
Handicapped by tinnitus as well as deafness, Alix began to withdraw. There were complaints about her refusal to leave Sandringham; her daughter-in-law wrote that “it does not look well … for her constantly to leave him alone as she does.”62
Alix was tiresomely vague about her plans, and persistently late, exasperating the obsessively punctual Bertie. “Keep him waiting,” she would say, “it will do him good.”63 On a day appointed for the King and Queen to receive addresses, she was due to appear at twelve, but as room after room filled with waiting deputations, there was no sign of her. Bertie sat in full uniform, drumming the table in the equerries’ room. At last, at ten to one, Alix appeared, looking lovely. “Am I late?” was all she said. Bertie swallowed hard and walked out of the room.64
Alix shrieked like a mandrake when she was uprooted from Marlborough House, obstructing the move to Buckingham Palace. She complained that there was no room for her possessions or to lodge Charlotte Knollys, but her real objection to leaving Marlborough House was emotional.65 As she told Georgie, “All my happiness & sorrows were here very nearly all you children born here all my reminiscences of my whole life are here—& I feel as if by taking me away from it a chord will be torn in my heart which can never be mended again!!”66
Alix, who was neither ambitious nor remotely feminist, used her position to project her personality: decorative, generous, and light-hearted.67 The verdict of one historian that she was best known for her beauty, and “perhaps more than any other royal consort she embodied the importance of the image over the substance of royalty” is harsh but contains a truth.68 The story of her life as queen dissolves into anecdotes.
Full mourning for Queen Victoria ended on 24 July 1901. The ladies of the court needed to know whether black was still to be worn on that day, but Alix was vague and offhand. After much discussion, the household decided to play it safe and remain in black. The Queen appeared, late for dinner as usual, radiant in white and sparkling with diamonds, all the more striking against the black dresses of her household.b
In order to set off her own slender figure, she ordered her tall ladies to attend when the court was in London. Short ladies had to make do with dull mausoleum days at Windsor.69 She could be imperious. When the courtiers tried to advise her about what to wear at the Coronation, she replied: “I know better than all the milliners and antiquaries. I shall wear exactly what I like, and so shall all my ladies—Basta!”70 As queen, thought Lord Esher, Alix’s attitude was “Now I do as I like.”71
She provided the background of dogs, Kodak photographs, and family jokes for Bertie’s public life. A secret smoker, she once dropped an illicit cigarette into a teacup when caught smoking by Bishop Randall Davidson, then persuaded him to smoke one with her and to conduct an impromptu service at Osborne around the bed where Victoria had died.72 The day before the Coronation, when Davidson helped Bertie try on his robes in his dressing room at Buckingham Palace, Alix burst in: “Oh, I must look at you, I must see what it looks like.” Davidson thought they were “so friendly and jolly together—so unlike what is usually supposed—not at all stately.”73
Vicky was too ill to attend Queen Victoria’s funeral, and one of the first things Bertie did after he became king was to visit her at Friedrichshof. “My great anxiety is to see you again,” he told her.74 “Dearest darling Vicky,” he wrote, “we shall have so much to talk about.”75 He brought with him one equerry, Fritz Ponsonby, and Laking, who masqueraded as physician in attendance (in fact Laking was there for a purpose: to give Vicky doses of morphine larger than the German doctors allowed).
Vicky was terribly swollen, in constant pain, and made wretched by nausea and vomiting. The kaiser hovered officiously, pressing Bertie to stay with him, but Bertie was adamant that “my visit is only to you, dearest Vicky.”76 Laking had a particularly uncomfortable time, as he was shunned not only by the German doctors but also by the kaiser and his suite. The superstitious Bertie worried that thirteen guests were sitting down to dinner, until he realized with relief that all was well, as Vicky’s daughter Margaret of Hesse was pregnant.
After three days, Vicky sent for Ponsonby. He found her propped up on cushions and looking “as if she had just been taken off the rack after undergoing torture.”77 She asked him to take charge of her letters and transport them back to England. Shortly after one a.m., there was a knock on his door and four stablemen entered bearing two large black boxes. These contained all the letters that Vicky had written to Queen Victoria since her marriage, which she had asked to be sent out to her from England to reread as she lay ill; she was anxious that the kaiser, who did not appear in a good light in his mother’s correspondence, would destroy them if they remained in Germany after her death. To baffle the secret police who stalked the palace, Ponsonby labeled one box “China with care” and the other “Books,” and succeeded in smuggling these conspicuously large items out in his luggage.
On his return, Ponsonby did not, as might have been expected, deposit the boxes in the archives at Windsor, but kept them in his own custody for an astonishing twenty-seven years. In 1927, he published an edition of the letters. This caused consternation among the royal family, most of whom agreed with Princess Victoria that Letters of the Empress Frederick was “one of the most dreadful books ever published.”78 Ponsonby believed, however, that Vicky gave him the letters because she meant him to publish. If she had merely wished to ensure that the letters reached England for safekeeping, she would have taken the simpler course and given them to Bertie.c79
Since succeeding as king, Bertie had become very close to Vicky, consulting her on such matters as the decoration of the palaces and relying on her encyclopedic memory of the paintings in the royal collection. Her hands too swollen to write, Vicky dictated letters to her daughters. Her screams of agony were so loud that the sentries asked to be moved farther away from her room, but the doctors still refused to give her more narcotics, and Bertie despaired at his inability to help.80
Vicky died at Friedrichshof on 4 August 1901. Bertie wrote sadly against the last “Vy” symbol in his diary: “My last letter to my beloved sister ER.”81 Helena, who was at the deathbed, wrote Bertie an account of Vicky’s last hours. The cancer had spread to her liver and lungs. “She was altered beyond recognition it was terrible. The weakness was very great and she could only speak with difficulty and a few words at a time. Her breathing was very laboured.… She spoke much of Mama repeating over and over again, ‘Oh how I miss he
r, she understood my sufferings.’ ”
Helena realized something of the bond between Vicky and Bertie. “Let me say how I feel for you to whom she was so dear, and who loved you with a devotion not to be expressed,” she wrote.82 “I could hardly have borne seeing her again,” Bertie told Georgie, “as she was I hear so dreadfully altered.”83 Alice, Victoria, and now Vicky—all the closest members of his family were dead: the three women who had dominated his childhood. Vicky’s death was especially painful because in the last years of her life they had become real friends, forgetting their childhood quarrels and the strain caused by Germany’s treatment of Denmark.
Kaiser William threatened to exclude Bertie from Vicky’s funeral. “I was so worried because William wanted you not to go to Potsdam,” wrote Helena, “but that is all right now.”84 So Bertie returned to bury Vicky, sweltering beneath a hot sun as he walked in the funeral procession to the mausoleum at Potsdam dressed in full uniform swathed in crêpe. Bertie, said his brother Arthur, “is too stout and suffered tremendously from the heat.”85
Bertie’s style of monarchy cost money. Advised by Ernest Cassel, he knew exactly how much he needed: a parliamentary grant of £500,000, in addition to the Duchy of Lancaster income of £60,000. This was more than Queen Victoria’s Civil List of £385,000, but Victoria had also enjoyed a private fortune, which she left to her younger children, and Bertie had little capital remaining. His outgoings included Balmoral (£20,000) and Osborne (£17,000) as well as Sandringham, which cost £40,000 a year to run. Gossip credited the King with sensational liabilities, but Bertie realized that his bargaining power with the government depended on not asking the nation to pay his debts. “Gentlemen,” announced Knollys to the commission inquiring into the King’s finances, “it is my happy duty to inform you that for the first time in English history, the heir-apparent comes forward … unencumbered by a single penny of debt.”86 It was not strictly true; Bertie’s debts still lurked, and Knollys omitted to mention that he had no capital; but his assurances convinced the politicians that the King was solvent.
Bertie summoned Edward Hamilton, the assistant financial secretary to the Treasury, and told him that he must have enough to “do it with,” and he must “do it” handsomely, and for that he needed £500,000.d87 He agreed to pay income tax, as his mother had done, and instantly regretted it. He later told Lord Salisbury that the decision was made “when he had only just succeeded and was quite new to everything,” and though it was too late to go back on it, he paid tax “under protest and he wishes this protest to be recorded.”88 Meanwhile, his debts were gradually paid off by a scheme of life insurance devised by the cunning Cassel, so that by 1907 the King was genuinely free of all encumbrances.89
Even £500,000 was barely enough. On the recommendation of a parliamentary select committee, economies in the household were introduced. Household officials such as the treasurer, the comptroller, and the vice chamberlain had to take a salary cut. The Royal Buck-hounds were abolished.90 In addition to Windsor and Buckingham Palace, Bertie inherited Balmoral, which was Victoria’s private residence, and a share in Osborne, which Victoria left to all her children. If he was to keep Sandringham, he must give up one of these, and he chose to drop Osborne, which he disliked. “Were it not for Sandringham,” he wrote, “I could maintain Osborne but I cannot live in and maintain five places!”91 Setting aside his mother’s will, and overcoming shrill protests from his sisters, especially Beatrice, whose life was based there, Bertie gave Osborne to the nation.e92 The house was converted into a school for naval officers. The room where Victoria had died became a shrine, closed off by an iron grille.
Bertie made the right choice. Keeping a royal residence in Scotland was politically important. Victoria’s regime of so-called Balmorality—indoors: gloom, cold rooms, and low living; on the hill: lavish whisky rations and drunken gillies—played into the ethos of Scots Presbyterianism, but Bertie found it intolerable. He cut the stalkers’ whisky and banned drunkenness.93
On Alix’s insistence, however, as little as possible of Victoria’s decoration was changed. “I will not have any of her things and treasures touched here,” she wrote. “All shall remain as she placed them herself.”94 Soon there could be felt “that curious electric element which pervaded the surroundings of King Edward.”95 This king, ethnically German, was more Scottish than the Scots, wearing a kilt day and night (Balmoral or Hunting Stuart tartan in the daytime, Royal Stuart for evening).96 At dinner, Highlanders pumping ear-piercing bagpipes marched three times round the table when game was served.97 The King and Queen spent almost a month there each autumn. Alix, who had disliked “dear old melancholy Abergeldie,” took a childlike pleasure in Balmoral, which, with its picnics and horseplay, became for her another Fredensborg.98
For relaxation, there was Sandringham. “It is altogether different here from Windsor,” wrote Esher. “No ceremonial at all. Just a country home.”99 It was hardly a normal country house, however. Luncheon at two thirty (the clocks were half an hour fast) was followed by tea, when the King scoffed poached eggs, petits fours, cakes, and shortbread. A twelve-course dinner followed at nine, and the King would cheerfully swallow several dozen oysters in minutes, and then devour at high speed course after course of pheasant stuffed with truffles, chicken in aspic, sole poached in Chablis, or quails and boned snipe packed with foie gras, the richer and creamier the sauce the better.100 After the ladies had gone to bed, Bertie led the men to the billiard room, where his small black bulldog bit anyone who moved.101 On Sundays, he invariably attended church, but the sermon was strictly limited to fifteen minutes. If the preacher ran over, Bertie would ostentatiously check his watch.102 Afternoons were spent trudging around the estate. Ladies changed into walking skirts and strong boots for a three-hour walk. Some guests were charmed by the sight of the Queen in overalls in her kennel, feeding her menagerie of fierce dogs, but Lady Antrim was less amused. “We went round the gardens, stud etc till I felt quite cold.”103
At Buckingham Palace, every detail of the redecoration was supervised by Bertie. Albert’s Italianate marbling in the grand entrance hall had become so dark and dirty that Bertie called it the sepulchre. Lionel Cust, newly appointed Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, found the paintings coated in a thin, dark film of dirt. Bertie determined to bring light into Victoria’s fusty “funeral parlours.”104 Side tables crowded with wax figures, Highlanders in kilts, favorite dogs and hands made of marble—all were thrown out.105 Never an admirer of literature, Bertie gave instructions to the Windsor librarian to “pack up” Albert’s fine books, and “get rid of those which were not required.”106 He hired the theater designer Frank Verity, who transformed the palace into a sea of scarlet, white, and gold.107 Critics carped that it was vulgar and reminiscent of an opera house or the Ritz Hotel, but it formed a fitting backdrop for the ceremonial of monarchy.
Bertie abolished Queen Victoria’s joyless afternoon drawing rooms, when ladies wearing full evening dress and décolletage were presented to the Queen in the unforgiving light of day, and introduced evening courts instead. The King and Queen sat side by side on a dais in the ballroom, receiving curtseys from the ladies with their elaborate trains supported by pages. This new ritual was choreographed by Bertie, with Esher and Sir Arthur Ellis, comptroller in the Lord Chamberlain’s department. The King, wrote Cust, was like a “highly trained actor” who understood mien and deportment, entrance and exit.108 The theatrical formality of the new courts gave legitimacy to social change. The small aristocratic London society that Bertie had first presided over forty years before had swelled since the 1880s into a new elite, embracing celebrities and the nouveau riche. The number of presentations exploded. The new ceremonial confirmed the role of the monarch as leader of national society rather than the old exclusive aristocracy.109
The first new court was held on 14 March 1902, and Bertie and Alix moved into Buckingham Palace a month later.
* * *
* This last-minute change was en
shrined in tradition: Nine years later, Bertie’s coffin, too, was pulled from the station at Windsor by the naval guard of honor.
† Max Beerbohm, who spent a lifetime caricaturing and mimicking Bertie, told a story about the dinner at the Carlton Hotel that Bertie attended in 1900 to launch the Dictionary of National Biography. Finding the company of Sidney Lee, Leslie Stephen, and forty writers heavy going, he looked around morosely. “Who is that little parson?” he asked Lee in his guttural English, pointing at a certain Canon Ainger. “Vy is he here? He is not a wr-ri-ter!” (Max always gave Bertie a German accent.) “He is a very great authority,” said Lee, apologetically, “on Lamb.” This was too much for Bertie. “He put down his knife and fork in stupefaction; a pained outcry of protest heaved from him: ‘On lamb!’ ” (S. N. Behrman, Conversation with Max [Hamish Hamilton, 1960], p. 85.)
‡ As Colonel of Probyn’s Horse, Probyn was an honorary Sikh, and he never cut his beard, which hid the Victoria Cross he had won in the Indian Mutiny.
§ Reginald Brett succeeded his father as Viscount Esher in 1899. As permanent secretary of the Office of Works from 1895, he was responsible for the royal palaces.
‖ Queen Victoria’s tiny crown, set with one thousand diamonds, was constructed in 1870. Being colorless, it was thought appropriate for widowhood.
a A 1970 survey of dreams about Queen Elizabeth II found that people continued to dream about Queen Victoria seventy years after her death, so deeply was her narrative encrypted in the subconscious of the British people. (Brian Masters, Dreams About the Queen, Blond and Briggs, 1972, pp. 83–84.)
b The ladies-in-waiting were ruled with a rod of iron by the Duchess of Buccleuch, Mistress of the Robes and a formidable grande dame: “They are to be present at breakfast in the morning—to consider themselves chaperones of the Maids of Honour, who are not to go out walking with the gentlemen of the household or to go into Windsor alone!” The court grumbled that the edict was “more like the instructions of a lodging house keeper to maids of all work.” The duchess was trying to control two especially independent maids of honor—the Vivian twins, one of whom married the future Field Marshal Haig. (Bodleian, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1121, Carrington Diary, 29 September 1903.)
