by Jane Ridley
“Where’s Alice?” heckled the crowd when they saw the King.51 Mrs. Keppel’s daughter Sonia (b. 1900) remembered “Kingy” coming to tea at their house on Portman Square and entertaining her by playing a game that consisted of racing pieces of bread and butter (butter side down) down the leg of his finely creased trousers.‖52 According to her sister Violet: “He had a rich German accent and smelt deliciously of eau de Portugal. He wore several rings set with small cabochon rubies and—true emblem of royalty—a Fabergé ribbed gold cigarette case.”53 At Queen Alexandra’s children’s garden party in 1904, the little Keppels caused raised eyebrows by climbing all over Kingy.54
Mrs. Keppel knew better than anyone how to entertain the King. Only she could avert that terrible moment, memorably described by Vita Sackville-West in her novel The Edwardians, when the King would “drum with irritable fingers upon the arm of his chair or upon the dinner-table. What a gulf there was between amusing the King and boring him! and for a woman all depended upon which side of the gulf she occupied. Life and death were in it.”55
Gladys de Grey, Queen Alexandra’s friend, finding herself sitting next to the King at dinner, whispered in desperation to Ponsonby: “For Heaven’s sake suggest a topic for me to discuss with the King as I have sat next to him for three nights.”
Ponsonby replied: “Give away your relations and friends and repeat any secrets about them.”
She laughed. “But I did that the first night.”56
Alice Keppel never bored the King. She always knew the latest scandal, the price of stocks, the last political move.57 She understood that he preferred not to talk himself and liked to listen to general conversation. “King’s Cross,” she once ordered a cabbie.
“Not with you Ma’am,” came the reply.58
Mrs. Keppel regularly stayed at Sandringham without her husband for the King’s November birthday party. Lady Lytton reported in 1904 that the connection was “openly acknowledged at Court. The Queen does not like it but accepts the situation, being sometimes stiff with Mrs. Keppel, sometimes in appearance affectionate.” Lady Lytton thought Mrs. Keppel “a rather coarse type of woman” but “very tactful, never putting herself forward or presuming on her position.” When asked if any of Alice’s children were the King’s, she replied, “Oh no, they are very Jewish.”59
In The Edwardians, Vita Sackville-West characterized Mrs. Keppel as Romola Chain, “a woman who erred and aspired with a certain magnificence”: “She brought to everything the quality of the superlative. When she was worldly, it was on the grand scale. When she was mercenary, she challenged the richest fortunes. When she loved, it was in the highest quarters. When she admitted ambition, it was for the highest power.” Alice Keppel was the sorely tried mother of Violet, the woman with whom Vita had a scandalous lesbian affair, but Vita could not resist a dig at “the one weakness” of Romola Chain: namely, that “she could not allow anyone to be better informed than herself.… The last word, the eventual bombshell of information, must proceed from her and no other.”60 Alice Keppel’s thirst to be best informed was what equipped her to be Bertie’s indispensable confidante, the guardian of his secrets. This was a role that Alix could never share.
After Bertie died, Alice Keppel told Lord Rosebery that for twelve years, “the King showed her every letter he received within minutes of receiving it.” She claimed she had burned all her letters from him.61 Barely a trace of this voluminous correspondence is to be found. The fact is that almost no evidence exists of Bertie’s relationship with La Favorita.
In October 1903, much to the annoyance of clerk of the council Almeric Fitzroy, who was forced to make the journey specially from London, Bertie assembled the Privy Council at Lord Londonderry’s Durham home, Wynyard. This was the first time the council had met in a country house since 1625, and Bertie insisted that it should be styled “At the Court at Wynyard.”62 Theresa Londonderry, once described as “a highwaywoman in a tiara, trampling on her enemies as if they had been a bed of nettles,” was the queen of the Tory hostesses.63 After the council, most of the party played poker except the King, who settled down to bridge with Louise, Duchess of Devonshire, heavily rouged and a fiend at the bridge table (“Ponte Vecchio,” quipped the wags). Also playing bridge with him was Mrs. Keppel, who “behaved with great indiscretion,” wrote Fitzroy, “for there is a self-consciousness about her which emphasises the equivoque of the situation.… She certainly retains great beauty, but her carriage suggests an uneven blend of pride and humiliation.”64 He might have been sketching Jezebel.
The Wynyard Privy Council illustrates the King’s use of house parties for political purposes. To an extent often underestimated, Edwardian England was governed from its great country houses. The bachelor prime minister Balfour—“King Arthur” to the cultured clique of Souls—was, like Bertie, almost a professional house party guest. For the Souls and the Marlborough House set, such parties acted as a way of bonding and defining their identity. The house party was a feminized space; it was the sphere of the hostess, rather than her politically engaged husband. Great political hostesses such as Theresa Londonderry and Louise Devonshire used their social influence to bring opponents together and heal conflict; their role was inclusive and emollient, rather than partisan. The Souls were dedicated to cross-party friendships: at house parties Balfour would meet Liberals such as Asquith or Haldane on equal terms. Because it was neutral territory, the house party tapped into the role of the monarch as Bertie understood it—to act as a personal influence above politics and to smooth political differences. The rule at any social event where the King was a guest was that no one should talk politics, but Bertie’s very presence gave a special political significance to the gathering.65
Bertie and Alix attended Louise Devonshire’s Chatsworth Twelfth Night house party for the first time as King and Queen (they had stayed often as Prince and Princess of Wales) in 1904. Balfour was also present. While the King rode off to the shoot on his cob, the prime minister played golf. For the convenience of the King (but not, apparently, the prime minister), a telegraph wire was temporarily run into the house and a private office fitted up.66 Alix was the party’s life and soul. On the last evening she danced a waltz with Soveral, and then everyone took off their shoes to see what difference it made to their height. Daisy Pless, who excelled in the private theatricals, noted in her diary that “The Queen took, or rather kicked hers off, and then got into everyone else’s, even into Willie Grenfell’s old pumps. I never saw her so free and cheerful—but always graceful in everything she does.” Mrs. Keppel was there, too: “The King has his bridge with Mrs. Keppel who is here—with lovely clothes and diamonds—in a separate room.”67
Mrs. Keppel almost always accompanied the King on his house party visits. The Duchess of Portland made the mistake of leaving her off the list out of loyalty to Alix, and as a result incurred the royal wrath. Carrington recorded that “the King is reported to be more under Mrs. George’s thumb than ever and the Portlands are in very bad odour because she was not asked to attend Welbeck. He looked on this as a slight to himself; and as she is asked by the Queen to Sandringham, her position is assured.”68 In the photographs that were invariably taken to commemorate the King’s visits, Alice Keppel can be seen leaning back in her chair to display her bust-enlarging bodice, her eyes firmly fixed on her royal lover.
Each year in September the King stayed at Rufford, a famously haunted house, with Lord and Lady Savile for the Doncaster St. Leger. He brought a valet, a footman, a brusher, two equerries with valets, two telephonists, two chauffeurs, and an Arab boy to make coffee.69 Mrs. Keppel was always there, and so were Mrs. Ronnie Greville and Lady Howe. “Lady Howe, who trots everywhere after the King like a little dog, is called the Kinki Bow Wow, and the Saviles and the Grevilles are called the Civils and Grovels.”a70
The King was at Marienbad in August 1903, undergoing his cure and trying to escape the crowds who plagued him wherever he went, when he received reports from Prime Minister Balfour
of a split in the Cabinet. Joseph Chamberlain had launched a campaign for imperial protection or tariff reform that shattered the Unionist party, and Balfour’s equivocation and failure to give a lead only deepened the divisions, prompting five ministers to resign from the Cabinet. This was the first major political crisis of the reign. Though the details of the argument did not much concern him, Bertie thought tariff reform was a mistake.71 “I am all in favour of taxing the rich,” he declared, and when the Chancellor of the Exchequer asked whether he approved of taxing the food of the poor, he replied, “No … and I do not care who knows it!”72 Mrs. Keppel was “a violent anti Chamberlainite, and a Free Fooder,” which was probably significant.73 Bertie’s suggestion on 18 August that Balfour should refer the matter to a royal commission was politically naïve, and Balfour rightly dismissed it.74 In September Bertie returned home, a stone lighter, sleek from his Marienbad diet of hock, no soup, and no puddings, to face his ministers.
The King wired Balfour asking him to delay announcing ministerial resignations until he had discussed matters at Balmoral. “This great haste is to be deprecated.… It would not look well in the eyes of the public that a matter of such importance should be settled without my having seen the Prime Minister.”75 Balfour claimed not to have received the telegram in time and released the resignations at once, but the breakup of the Cabinet and the hemorrhage of party support meant that he was a wounded prime minister and in no position to resist the King’s demand to be consulted over the reshuffle. Not that Bertie was hostile to Balfour. If anything, he pitied him, regretting his lack of the “backbone” that “the distinguished uncle [Salisbury] he has lost possessed.”76
The King’s chief concern in the reshuffle was the appointment of the Secretary of State for War. St. John Brodrick, the incumbent, was tactless and self-important; Bertie later remarked that he found him “a most ridiculous personage” about whom he could never think “without bursting out laughing.”77 Since 1901, Brodrick had complained of the King’s constant interference over issues such as uniform and promotions. During the Boer War, Brodrick was summoned so often to the palace that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, the leader of the Liberal opposition, threatened to attack the King for trying to run the army himself. Brodrick in his memoirs charged the King with trying to emulate the kaiser, who decided army policy himself.78 Bertie had no intention of behaving like the kaiser. His aim was to reform and modernize the army, which the Boer War had revealed to be alarmingly old-fashioned, rigid, and incompetent. His lifelong fascination with military matters went far beyond an addiction to uniforms. He was better equipped than many civilian ministers to push through reform, and he knew a great deal about European armies.
As part of the reshuffle, Balfour proposed to move Brodrick from the War Office to the India Office. The King was unexpectedly resistant to this. He had by now managed to tame Brodrick, and he thought he could rely upon him to introduce the much-needed army reform. Following the precedent of Queen Victoria, Bertie claimed a right to intervene over ministerial appointments. In place of Brodrick, he urged the appointment of Lord Esher to the War Office; and Balfour agreed.
Esher was a surprising choice. As permanent secretary at the Office of Works, his chief achievement to date had been the redecoration of the royal palaces. He was not a politician, and he had no military experience. In June 1902, at the end of the Boer War, Salisbury appointed a royal commission under Lord Elgin to investigate the organization of the army during the war, and the King nominated Esher as a member. Each day Esher filed incisive reports in beautiful handwriting to the King. This was just the sort of information that Bertie wanted, and Esher cleverly insinuated himself into the royal confidence. In 1902, Ernest Cassel offered him a job in the City with a salary of £5,000, and he resigned from the Office of Works; he was after bigger things.
Esher was summoned to Balmoral in September 1903, and the King (and later Balfour) offered him the War Office. He turned it down. This annoyed Bertie, but Esher was playing for high stakes. He had a reputation for refusing office, and this was the best refusal he ever made. Instead of taking office, he persuaded both Balfour and the King to appoint him to head a committee of three to carry out the reorganization of the War Office. “I am purely selfish in the matter,” he wrote. Not only would political office mean sacrificing what he called his intime life,79 but as a government minister he would be forced to leave the court, and he would no doubt quarrel with the King. Far better to exercise power without responsibility. As he explained to Balfour: “I know that as Secretary of State I should fail in the double capacity as a servant of the King and as your colleague.”80 Esher envisaged a system of double government, with the King’s court operating in parallel with elected ministers. Rather than take office himself he preferred to operate backstairs at court. “It is the old story,” he wrote. “Power and Place are not often synonymous.”81
Esher was fifty-one, and his influence was at its height. His appointment as lieutenant and deputy governor of Windsor Castle gave him direct access to the King. He owed his entrée at Windsor to his wife, Nellie, who was a daughter of Queen Victoria’s friend Madame Van de Weyer, the widow of the Belgian minister. Esher inherited his title from his father, a self-made lawyer, the son of a curate who became Master of the Rolls. His real emotional bond was to Eton. He was a protégé of the charismatic homosexual master William Johnson Cory, who encouraged him to have affairs with other boys, and even in adult life he never really grew away from his alma mater. At the time of his rise to favor at court, Esher was besotted with his own son, the unprepossessing Etonian Maurice (Molly), to whom he wrote adoring letters, pouring out all the secrets of the War Office. That Bertie knew of this infatuation is unlikely, but Esher was certainly running risks, living “on a knife edge.” At Windsor Castle, he had a room that Maurice and other Eton boys visited, and which he called the Nest, where he kept blazers and photographs of boys.82
Esher understood the working of the King’s mind. As he explained to Admiral Fisher, who complained that the King was unable to grasp details: “HM has two receptive plates in his mind. One retains lasting impressions. I have tested this over and over again. The other, only mostly fleeting ones. On the former are stamped his impressions of people and their relative value. On the latter, of things, and these are apt to fade or be removed by later ones. But, and this is the essential point, if you can stamp your image on number one … you can always rely on carrying your point.”83
Esher’s Committee on the War Office reported with impressive speed in January 1904. Esher proposed to establish an Army Council or General Staff. He was very clear that the army was to be run by politicians, not the King. “In Germany it is the emperor who co-ordinates the action of the German Navy and Army. In Britain it can only be the Prime Minister. That is a constitutional axiom.”84 By scrapping the commander-in-chief, the influence of the Crown was reduced. This was the price that Bertie had to pay to achieve his aim of reforming the army.85 Not that royal influence was eliminated. The new office of inspector general was given to Bertie’s brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught.b
The War Office loathed Esher for his meddling with appointments and for his “disgraceful” treatment of Lord Roberts, whom he had forced to resign as commander in chief.86 The politicians loathed him, too, and with good reason. Esher did his best to undermine the Secretary of State for War, H. O. Arnold-Forster, a tactless but well-intentioned reformer. He interfered with Arnold-Forster’s reforms by going behind his back to the King, and he purported to speak on the King’s behalf. His palace intrigues “left a thread of mischief-making and bitterness woven into the reform movement” that jeopardized its success.87
The new Lord Salisbury told Balfour that Esher’s relations with the King were “in the highest degree unsatisfactory. He ought either to be a responsible minister and defend his views in parliament or (at the very most) he should confine himself to intensely confidential conversations with yourself.” Salisbury considered that E
sher meddled far too much. “A person who is in confidential communication with the military chiefs and with the King and works against the Secretary of State is a dangerous individual.”88 If anyone abused the constitutional power of the Crown, it was Esher.
Esher was a liability, and yet Bertie seemed oblivious, such was Esher’s skill in insinuating himself into the King’s confidence. In December 1905, Carrington was in Francis Knollys’s room when the door opened and in walked Esher. “He certainly is an extraordinary man and has a wonderful footing at Buckingham Palace. He seems to be able to run about as he likes—and must be a considerable nuisance to the household.”89 Early in 1906, the King told Esher (so Esher related), “Although you are not exactly a public servant, yet I always think you are the most valuable servant I have,” and (Esher told his son, Molly) “then I kissed his hand as I sometimes do.”90 The coda, suppressed from the published version of this letter, is: “But in doing it I only thought how little all this meant including the kiss, compared with a kiss upon another hand, and a few words of affection or appreciation from other lips.”91 Bertie cannot be blamed for not knowing of Esher’s secret life—he would surely have been horrified if he had known what was in Esher’s mind at that moment; but his failure to see how dangerous Esher was must count as an error of judgment.
The tariff reform split of 1903 left the Balfour government mortally wounded. Balfour was in the unenviable position of John Major or Anthony Eden, the heir to a charismatic prime minister who inherits a government that is already sinking. Like Major or Eden, the qualities which made him a successful number two—administrative skill and a reputation for cleverness—did not equip him for leadership. Balfour’s weakness made the King stronger. Bertie had grown into his job, while Balfour had failed in his. Balfour had begun the new reign by lecturing the King on the constitution, but the roles were soon reversed, and Bertie came to view his prime minister with a mixture of pity and exasperation. As part of the Entente Cordiale colonial barter with France, Britain relinquished fourteen thousand square miles in West Africa. Balfour invited Parliament to assent, heedless of the fact that the power to cede territory was a royal prerogative. Bertie considered that Balfour had treated him with “scant courtesy”: “He is always so vague that probably he is wrong, but I must insist, if he is, and as a matter of principle, that he admits it.”92 The King was right, but he gave way, and the royal prerogative to cede territory passed to Parliament.
