by Jane Ridley
It is sometimes claimed that Bertie loathed paperwork and neglected it, but this was not the case.40 The new King worked through the documents in his red boxes punctually and efficiently. According to Esher, “He never leaves over anything until next day. All papers and letters of the day are dealt with within 24 hours.”41 Bertie would pencil a brief scrawl on a government document that Francis Knollys then drafted into a letter. His penciled “Approved ER” or “Seen ER” reveal him as working like a modern minister, rather than a Victorian statesman laboriously covering reams of paper in black-inked screeds. His businesslike methods earned him the gratitude of the Foreign Office, who commented that “the rapidity and regularity with which the King’s boxes are returned is really remarkable”—and a marked contrast with Queen Victoria.42 He corresponded less with ministers than Victoria had done, but living in London he was more accessible than she had been. In foreign policy, he exercised influence and powers that none of his predecessors had dreamed of. At home, he clung tenaciously to his prerogatives and the Crown’s traditional powers.
Salisbury, who was Bertie’s first prime minister, had been a devoted servant of Queen Victoria. Her death stood second only to the death of his wife as one of the great blows that broke his health, “so strong was his personal love and devotion to her.”43 Balfour’s remark, that the King “had nothing in common with Lord Salisbury, and Salisbury had little sympathy with the King,” was an understatement.44 Bertie found Salisbury’s buffoonish absentmindedness intolerable. When Salisbury appeared late for a Buckingham Palace drawing room in 1897 wearing the “tunic of an Elder Brother of Trinity House, the hose of a Privy Councillor, the Garter on the wrong shoulder and a sword,” Bertie was “furious: literally in a passion. ‘Here is our foreign minister dressed like a guy—Europe in a turmoil—twenty ministers and ambassadors looking on—what will they think,’ he wheezed, ‘what can they think of a premier who can’t put on his clothes?’ ”a45
Once Bertie acceded, relations improved. Salisbury reported a grudging respect for the new King, whom he found easy to work with. “I think we shall have to call him Edward the Confessor Number Two,” he wrote.46
Bertie objected to the wording of the declaration he was forced to read at the opening of his first Parliament, repudiating Roman Catholicism as “superstitious and idolatrous.” He read the words in a low voice that was barely audible, and afterward he wrote to Salisbury asking for the “crude language” to be changed as it was “not in accordance with public policy of the present day.”47 Salisbury agreed privately that the oath was “scurrilous” and a stain on the statute book, but he feared a Protestant backlash if the wording was tampered with.48
The most serious disagreement was over honors. Declaring that “the initiative in the matter should rest with himself rather than the Prime Minister!” Bertie proposed to give peerages at the Coronation to Sir Thomas Lipton and Sir Ernest Cassel. “You may laugh if you like,” he told the PM’s secretary, “but no more suitable men could be found.”49 Salisbury was dismayed, especially by the Lipton nomination: “The man has no services, and his name and vocation are moreover ridiculous.”50 Cassel was ruled out as a German and a Jew. Salisbury got his way. Cassel had to be content with a privy councillorship (and even that was contentious), while Lipton became a baronet. Little did Salisbury know how much the two men had given to charity, nor could he have imagined the debt the monarchy owed to Cassel. Once again it is Bertie who seems modern.
One loyal servant who received an uncontentious peerage was Francis Knollys. Bertie showered honors like confetti at the Coronation. The number of peerages, baronetcies, privy councillorships, knighthoods, and decorations totaled 1,540. (In 1911, George V handed out a mere 515.)51 The new King resisted giving peerages to party hacks, and there were two orders that he insisted on controlling: the Royal Victorian Order, founded in 1896, and the Royal Victorian Chain, which he inaugurated in 1902. By far the most distinguished royal order was the Order of Merit. This was Bertie’s idea, acting on a suggestion made by Esher in 1900 and inspired by the Prussian Order Pour le Mérite.52 Bertie’s aim was to honor both “officers of the Army and Navy and Civilians distinguished in the Arts, Sciences and Literature.” Numbers were strictly limited to twenty-four. Partly because the order was nonpolitical, it was to be “a decoration entirely vested in the Sovereign’s hand.”53 Salisbury opposed the creation of yet another bauble, but history has proved the old cynic wrong. The OM was, and remains, the most distinguished order in British public life.b54
Following in the procession at the Coronation behind the Knights of the Garter with their gorgeous purple cloaks and wearing a plain diplomatic uniform was the new Conservative prime minister, Arthur Balfour. The most powerful man in the country seemed “strangely un-dressed.”55 He had written asking for permission for privy councillors and MPs to wear trousers, but the King insisted on court dress, and the prime minister’s legs seemed sadly spindly in breeches and stockings.56 Because the office of prime minister was unknown to the constitution, Balfour walked in the procession in his capacity as Lord Privy Seal.
Balfour had seamlessly succeeded his uncle Lord Salisbury in July 1902. Salisbury was too unwell to attend the Coronation.57 But the truth was he disliked “flummery,” and so did his nephew Balfour.
Arthur Balfour had been one of Queen Victoria’s favorites. He was the leader of the Souls, the clique of cultured aristocrats who defined themselves in antithesis to the Marlborough House set, despising Bertie and his friends as ignorant philistines.c Balfour was quick-witted and charming, but he combined a streak of Scots puritanism with intellectual arrogance and a talent for casuistry. Philosophy was his hobby, and no one was cleverer than he at arguing that black was white—a quality that did not endear him to the blunt-speaking King.
“The King will take up a good deal more of his ministers’ time than did the Queen,” sighed Balfour in 1901.58 Bertie’s first King’s Speech, submitted to him by Balfour as Leader of the House in February 1901, was returned covered in significant alterations. Bertie wanted to include legislation on the housing of the poor and on old age pensions. Balfour replied (as he later related) that if the King “took to writing his own speech, he’d have to take all the blame of the measures and enter into party politics.”59 He was obliged to give Bertie a lecture on the constitution: “If … the legislative programme is supposed to be in any way due to the personal initiative of the Sovereign, I fear that a novel constitutional precedent will have been set up which may have a disastrous effect upon the comfort, and even the popularity of the King.”60 Balfour’s argument was unanswerable, and Bertie at once withdrew. As the clerk to the Privy Council Almeric Fitzroy observed, the clash revealed that “the idea of inaugurating his reign with a list of popular measures” had “taken very firm possession of the royal mind.”61 Bertie learned his lesson. “Never did it again,” was Balfour’s comment.62
As prime minister, Balfour at first treated the King with barely disguised contempt, not bothering to write to him with a Cabinet report. This was a mistake. Shortly after his first Cabinet, Balfour received a sharp rebuke from the King. “As you know the Prime Minister from time immemorial has always communicated to the Sovereign a report of what has taken place at every Cabinet Council immediately after each meeting. Otherwise the King or Queen would be left in the dark as to what was going on in connection with public affairs.”63 Queen Victoria had always insisted on being kept informed by her prime minister of Cabinet discussions. If Balfour assumed that the new King would allow this to lapse, he was badly mistaken.
There were lines that the government crossed at its peril. One of these concerned the Garter.
The first real clash between Bertie and the Balfour government took place only days after the Coronation. To complete his recovery, Bertie embarked on a cruise on board the Victoria and Albert. While the King was going through the Foreign Office box, Fritz Ponsonby heard an explosion of rage. Bertie had opened a letter from the foreign sec
retary Lord Lansdowne, enclosing a design for the Garter Star that omitted the Christian cross in the center. Fritz was astonished (he later claimed) to see the furious monarch hurl the document across the cabin and out of a porthole apparently into the sea, where it happened to land on a passing steam pinnace.64 (The story seems to have grown with the telling: In an earlier account, Fritz merely stated that the King flung the design to the other side of his cabin.)65
The Garter with cross omitted was commissioned by Lansdowne, who proposed to give it to the shah of Persia. Lansdowne claimed that he had mentioned the design to the King a few days before, but Bertie remembered nothing about it. The proposal to give the Garter to the shah enraged him; he objected that it could not be given to a non-Christian. The shah considered that he was entitled to the Garter as his father had had it before; but since then Queen Victoria had ruled that non-Christians were ineligible. The real point was that Bertie considered the Garter to be in the gift of the monarch, and he refused to be bullied by the Foreign Office into giving it away—in spite of the fact that he heartily approved of the aim, which was to win the friendship of the shah against Russia.
Lansdowne’s clumsy attempt to compromise by removing the cross from the Garter could hardly have been better calculated to annoy Bertie, whose passion for correctness in such matters was notorious. Lansdowne refused to back down. He wrote to Balfour threatening to resign if the King blocked the shah’s Garter, and asking him to intervene.
Balfour stayed at Balmoral in September, but nothing was said about the Garter. Soon afterward, however, the prime minister went on the attack, writing letters to Knollys that have been described as masterpieces of Balfour’s “fundamentally dishonest” technique of “rewriting history as a means of conducting policy.”66 Balfour claimed that the issue was not whether Lansdowne had the King’s authority to issue the Garter (though, of course, that was the issue) but whether Lansdowne was to be “thrown over.” If Lansdowne was forced to go back on his word, he would lose all authority, and would be unable to continue in office: “And if he resigned could the matter stop there in these days of Government solidarity?” asked Balfour.d67
This was round one to Balfour. The shah got his Garter, and Balfour concluded that the new King could easily be outmaneuvered or bullied. He was soon to be proved wrong.
* * *
* The medical term is perityphlitis, an inflammation of the area around the appendix. For his successful operation on the King, Treves received a baronetcy, and his practice became overwhelmingly popular. He retired early at age forty-five.
† As a reward for the book, Bertie offered Bodley the Royal Victorian Order. Bodley wrote a pompous letter declining the honor. This infuriated Bertie: “In future I don’t think I could have anything more to do with him. His conceit and snobbishness surpasses his crassness.” (RA VIC/X29/72, Note by B on Bodley’s letter to Francis Knollys of 10 July 1903.)
‡ Only two thousand guests attended the wedding at Westminster Abbey of Prince William to Catherine Middleton in 2011.
§ Not everyone was impressed. Arthur Benson, sitting high up in the abbey, thought it looked “rather absurd and very shoddy.” (Benson, Edwardian Excursions, p. 71.)
‖ Bigge was appointed private secretary to the Prince of Wales.
a On another occasion the prime minister appeared at a drawing room wearing “a levee coat with epaulettes!! (tied on with string and fastened with pins). No sword, the Garter ribbon, no star and the Jubilee medal fastened on to the band of his trousers!!” (Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1121, Carrington Diary, 26 February 1897.)
b In 1903, Balfour proposed that Florence Nightingale should be awarded the OM, but the King objected, as he was “reluctant to begin giving the Order of Merit to Women.” (Bodleian Library, Sandars Papers, MS Eng. Hist. C. 718, ff. 242–43, Lord Knollys to J. S. Sandars, 6 November 1903.) The statutes of the OM referred to “persons,” and this presumably did not exclude women; but the King insisted that women were not eligible for admittance to the order. In 1907, Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman revived the suggestion, and the King agreed, so Florence Nightingale became OM. Not until 1965 was another woman honored: Dorothy Hodgkin.
c In 1896, Balfour dined with Bertie’s friend Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester. “I mentioned … that I had seen H[enry] S[idgwick]. She had never heard of him. I said he was a philosopher. She asked me if I cared for philosophy. This gave me pleasure.” (Arthur Balfour to Lady Elcho, 4 December 1896, in Ridley and Percy, Letters, p. 153.)
d This vain and petty squabble left deep wounds. Lansdowne, wrote Fritz Ponsonby, “felt it all very deeply,” especially as the Cabinet thought he was wrong. Afterward, “he always feared King Edward and disliked him in consequence.” (RA GV/GG9/218, Fritz Ponsonby to Arthur Davidson, 15 January 1913.) Years later, in 1921, Ponsonby had lunch with Lansdowne to discuss Sidney Lee’s biography of the King, and Lansdowne “asked particularly that the incident of the Shah’s Garter should not be referred to” in the book. (British Library, Sidney Lee Papers, Add. MS 56087A, f. 144, Fritz Ponsonby to Sidney Lee, 18 February 1921.)
CHAPTER 23
King Edward the Peacemaker
1903–5
Edward VII’s reputation as king rests largely upon his role in foreign policy. He was Edward the Peacemaker, responsible for making possible the Entente Cordiale with France. His visit to Paris in May 1903 was perhaps the most important political intervention he ever made. It was certainly the most controversial.
Bertie controlled all the arrangements for the Paris trip himself. Fritz Ponsonby, his assistant private secretary, was surprised that his master should insist on organizing his own schedule; but Bertie had learned the advantages of keeping his own diary, and he had very good reasons for doing this now. No one was informed of the whole picture. Neither Alix nor Knollys knew of his intentions. People were told what they needed to know, but information was kept in watertight compartments: “Most of the suite had no idea where they were going.”1 Ignoring usual practice, Bertie informed neither the British ambassador in Paris, Sir Edward Monson, nor Lord Lansdowne, the foreign secretary.2
The King’s itinerary ostensibly consisted of a visit to the King of Portugal in Lisbon, followed by a Mediterranean trip to Rome. Bertie’s real agenda, of visiting President Loubet in Paris, was kept strictly secret. Not until rumors of the royal visit had reached Ambassador Monson did the King reveal his plans to the foreign secretary. He avoided asking Lansdowne to join him as minister in attendance, as might have been expected. Nor did he choose a senior Foreign Office official to accompany him. Instead, he picked Charles Hardinge, the most junior of the four undersecretaries at the Foreign Office.*
The King had good reason for keeping Lansdowne in the dark. The foreign secretary had told him that the British government had no intention of reaching an understanding with France over Morocco, the outstanding colonial dispute that needed to be resolved if relations between the two countries were to improve.3 By visiting Paris, the King was taking the initiative and making foreign policy himself. This was a dangerous thing for the monarch to do: If the mission failed, it could be seriously damaging.
On 30 March 1903, Alix embarked for Copenhagen, “furious” at having to entertain the kaiser, who was paying a state visit to Denmark.4 William was thus safely out of the way, being lionized by the Danish court. “I could not help being much amused at Apapa [King Christian] having created him an Admiral!” Bertie wrote to Georgie, “as Uncle Sacha and I were only Colonels of regiments! I wonder if Mama and Aunt Minny suggested it!!!”5
Meanwhile Bertie sailed for Portugal on the Victoria and Albert, taking with him seventy pieces of luggage. In addition to Charles Hardinge and Fritz Ponsonby, he brought the Marquis de Soveral, the Portuguese minister. These men composed an inner court; but of the three, only Soveral was privy to Bertie’s plans. Bertie made his entry into Lisbon wearing his uniform as colonel of a Portuguese cavalry regiment, an exceptionally
short jacket that “was not becoming to a stout man,” as it revealed a large expanse of breeches.6 Etiquette dictated that only the two kings could sit while all others had to stand, enduring not only a pigeon-shooting competition but also the gala opera that followed. The King was not impressed by the Portuguese nobility, who he thought looked “like waiters at second-rate restaurants.” They all had hopes of receiving the Royal Victorian Order, wrote Ponsonby, “but as the first three are said to be disloyal and it would be difficult to give it to No. 4, none of them were given it.”7
Ponsonby sat on board the Victoria and Albert busily deciphering the telegrams that poured in. Eventually the King told him, “You know we are going to Paris,” and swore him to strict secrecy.8 When they reached Gibraltar, the King heard that President Loubet was at Algiers and sent four cruisers to salute him, and the president replied inviting the King to visit. It was at this point that Bertie finally told the government that he intended to return via Paris. “The government showed great hesitation for various reasons but the King insisted and the visit was arranged.”9
First came the visit to Italy. Bertie insisted on going ashore incognito—though as Ponsonby observed, this was somewhat absurd, as “no other human being in the world could come with eight battleships, four cruisers, four destroyers and a dispatch vessel.”10 (Paying for the royal tour out of taxpayers’ money was apparently not an issue.) Lunch with Rosebery at his villa in Posillipo, where caterers provided a revolting meal of twenty courses, was not a success. How could a man amuse himself alone in such a place for weeks on end? wondered the extrovert King. “He is a strange, weird man, Sir,” replied Hardinge.11
Bertie’s plan to visit the Pope had created alarm lest it enrage English Protestants, and he reluctantly agreed to abandon it.12 But he still intended to stay with the King of Italy at the Quirinal in Rome, and the Duke of Norfolk, a leader among British Catholics, urged that not to visit Leo XIII would be “looked upon as a terrible slight to an old man,” which would have a “deplorable effect” on Britain’s Catholics.13 The Cabinet, on the other hand, opposed the visit, fearful of the effect it would have on Lancashire’s working-class Tories, who were strongly anti-Catholic. Joseph Chamberlain, speaking for the Nonconformists, breathed fire and brimstone, and Balfour was inclined to agree. Bertie had already made plain his views when he objected to the oath castigating Roman Catholics that he had been obliged to swear in 1901. Now he dictated an angry telegram to Balfour that could only have made matters worse and might have forced the PM to resign. Hardinge was shocked when Ponsonby toned down the royal words and rewrote the telegram. It was Ponsonby who suggested that the King should pay a private visit to the Pope entirely on his own responsibility and without consulting the Cabinet.14 This compromise solved the conflict. Bertie got his way and spent fifteen minutes with the ninety-three-year-old Leo XIII, who looked the color of a dead man but talked lucidly of Venezuela and Somaliland.15
