by Jane Ridley
Asquith complained that the King had acted unconstitutionally in making the czar an honorary admiral without consulting his government beforehand. Bertie instructed Knollys to write a letter of apology, explaining that the King was “totally unaware of the constitutional point,” and “regretted that he had, without knowing it, acted irregularly.” Mindful that the gesture had consolidated the success of the visit, Bertie added a dig: “The King deplores the attitude taken up by Mr. Asquith on the Women’s Suffrage Bill.”43
Bertie seems to have misunderstood the prime minister’s attitude toward women’s suffrage. Like the king, Asquith was implacably opposed to giving women the vote.
Back in England, Bertie refused to bow to criticism. The names of the MPs who spoke out against his visit to Reval—Victor Grayson, Keir Hardie, and Arthur Ponsonby—were removed from the list of guests at the royal garden party that he held at Windsor on 20 June 1908. Arthur Ponsonby, son of Henry and brother of Fritz, should have known better than to vote against the King’s visit, but his exclusion from Windsor provoked a row. Liberal whip Alexander Murray, the Master of Elibank, warned that the story might leak into the press “and he will be held up as a martyr to principle, for these Fleet Street scribblers will gloat over his exclusion.” He feared that “an incorrect impression might thus be given of His Majesty’s character and disposition.”44 Murray managed to stop the Daily News from reporting the incident and prevent an agitation “for socialistic and sensational gutter press purposes.”45 Arthur Ponsonby apologized and the King accepted his explanation.46 The garden party affair was a storm in a royal teacup, but Bertie’s uncharacteristic irritability had needlessly inflamed his critics.47 The incident showed how powerful and intrusive the press had become. As Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail, explained, “The King has become such an immense personality in England that … the space devoted to the movements of royalty has quintupled since His Majesty came to the Throne, and our difficulties have increased in proportion.”‖48
King Edward, meanwhile, played a King Canute–like grumpy old man against the modern world. His efforts to ban from Hyde Park women who had abandoned the side saddle were unsuccessful, but he “let it be known that ladies who ride astride in the Park will not be allowed to go to Court.”49 To the Lord Chamberlain’s request that smoking should be permitted in theaters, the chain-smoking King replied that “he cannot consent to its adoption in London,” as no other country allowed it.50 When Guards officer Colonel Gathorne-Hardy attended a levee wearing the wrong stripes on his trousers, he was mortified to receive a royal reprimand. “I will at once replace the gold stripes on my trousers with red ones,” he hastened to reply.51 Dinner guests at Windsor were expected to wear evening dress with knee breeches. Those who opted for more informality risked being greeted by the King: “I see you have come in the suite of the American Ambassador.”52 Not even the Queen was exempt. When she appeared wearing the Garter star on the wrong side, explaining that it had clashed with her other jewels, Bertie ordered her back.53 The Duke of Marlborough (Sunny), who separated from his wife, Consuelo, in 1906, received a message (through his kinsman Lord Churchill) that “until the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough live together again under the same roof, and are asked out together, neither of them can be invited to ‘Court.’ ”54 Like Randolph Churchill before him, Sunny Marlborough was banished by Bertie for defying the rules.
Margot Asquith had been one of Bertie’s “young ladies” twenty years earlier (as Margot Tennant), and now, as the wife of the prime minister, she watched the King with fascination. She considered that his bark was worse than his bite, which was far less lethal than the Queen’s:
If I had to choose between the King and the Queen I should be more afraid ultimately of the Queen. She is the most unsnobby, refined, fascinating lovely creature in the whole world and gives one a thrill from her distinction and sweetness, but au fond she is stupid, childish, obstinate and incapable of making up her mind. She has never grown up and enjoys the most ridiculous trifles. She takes great likes and dislikes and I should think would be unpleasantly unforgiving. The King is much kinder—a better sort altogether—but he is common and vulgar compared to the Queen.55
To his old mistresses Bertie was unfailingly generous. Emma Bourke appealed to him when the 1907 City panic caused financial ruin to her husband’s firm. “Mon Roi,” she wrote, “my husband’s capital has all been swept away and here we are, he at 72 and a very sick man left without anything.” Would you, she implored, “for the sake of a friend in great distress, use all your influence with Sir Ernest Cassel to help us all he can?”56 Bertie forwarded Emma’s letter to Cassel: “It would be more than kind of you if you could be induced to give them a helping hand.”57 Two months later, Eddie Bourke was dead. Within a year, Emma Bourke had become engaged to her old flame Lord Clarendon, and Bertie wrote: “I am sure you have acted wisely in marrying the man who has been devoted to you for so many years.”58 He was loyal, too, to her sister Mabel Batten, with whom he had dallied forty years before in India; she dedicated a song to him in 1902, and he still wrote occasionally to “Ladye”—though he might have been less than overjoyed to learn that in 1908 she became the lover of Radclyffe Hall.59
With Skittles, now sixty-nine and in poor health, the King was helpful, too. When the Duke of Devonshire died in 1908, Skittles’s payments stopped, and she wrote to the King, who sent Knollys to see her. She showed him her correspondence with the duke, who had once proposed to her. Fortunately, the duke’s letter “contained a distinct promise that the allowance should be continued as long as she lived and when the matter was explained to the present Duke by Knollys no difficulty was made about it.”60 Skittles continued to live cozily on South Street in Mayfair; she claimed that the blue satin decoration of her bedroom was a gift of the King, and she was supplied with regular presents of game from Sandringham.61
Nothing was allowed to interrupt the sacred routine of the King’s social and sporting calendar. In August 1908, after racing at Goodwood and yachting at Cowes, came the cure at Marienbad, with a visit en route to Kaiser William at Friedrichshof, near Cronberg, Vicky’s old home.
The meeting with the kaiser was carefully prepared. Edward Grey drafted two memoranda, warning that if Germany continued her shipbuilding program, Britain was bound to keep pace, whereas a slowdown would be met by a friendly response.62 Bertie was annoyed by Grey’s presumption in telling him what to say—“This is I believe the first occasion on which the Sovereign has received instruction from his government”—but he absorbed the message.63 As he minuted: “If Germany ceases her extensive shipbuilding—we shall do the same and not otherwise. It is the only chance of a real peaceful solution of the present feeling existing between England and Germany.”64
As usual, Grey did not accompany the King, who brought with him Hardinge. Grey abandoned the attempt to dictate the agenda, conceding that “this is a personal matter between the King and the Emperor in which the King’s own knowledge and judgement of the Emperor’s disposition is much superior to any of us.”65 On the journey, the King discussed with Hardinge what to do with Grey’s memoranda, but nothing was decided. When he came face-to-face with the kaiser, on the morning of 11 August, the King found him in “very good humour,” but though “we talked freely on international politics, the subject of our respective navies was not broached.”66 According to Hardinge, “the Emperor showed such reluctance to discuss naval matters that the King refrained from pushing the question.”67 He mentioned Grey’s memorandum, but as William showed no desire to see it, he said no more.68 Bertie had judged William’s mood correctly.
After luncheon, as the kaiser smoked his cigar, Hardinge confronted him on the naval issue, and he became extremely angry. “I regret to say,” wrote Bertie, “that he utterly declined to modify his ship building programme in any way! We must now build more than ever, and as quickly as ever. We have no other alternative.”69
Cronberg brought European war a notch closer
. It caused a hardening of anti-German feeling in London. “We now know the worst and should be prepared for it,” wrote Hardinge; “our only course now open is a big programme.”70 Bertie’s royal diplomacy had failed to bring Germany and England together. But no one had seriously expected that William would agree to call off the navy race; the most that could be hoped for was to keep open communications.
After the stress of Cronberg, Bertie’s meeting the next day in the Alpine town of Bad Ischl with Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria came as a relief. Hardinge thought the seventy-eight-year-old emperor “the dearest and most courteous gentlemen that lives,” and Bertie had a genuine affection for the old man.71 He had visited Francis Joseph the year before in his (relatively) humble wooden shooting box, its walls bristling with the heads of dead animals, and as before, this was an informal occasion.72 Bertie persuaded Francis Joseph to ride for the first time in a motor car, and on a two-hour drive they discussed the European situation. Hardinge, meanwhile, held “quite a satisfactory” conversation with the foreign minister, Count Aehrenthal.73
Such was the fame of King Edward that his visits to the Austrian emperor excited wild speculation. In Hungary, aristocrats pondered whether the King was pursuing a secret political agenda. At shooting parties in their castles, they conjectured that the great peacemaker was intent on detaching Austria from its Dual Alliance with Germany.74 They were wrong. There was no political substance to the visit. But Bertie was duped. Not one hint was given that Aehrenthal at that very moment was planning the coup that was ultimately to trigger the outbreak of war in 1914: the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
At Balmoral that October, the royal routine was shattered by the arrival of Count Albert von Mensdorff, the Austrian ambassador, bearing a letter from Francis Joseph. It contained news of the proposed coup against Bosnia.75
Bertie received Mensdorff at six thirty on 5 October 1908.76 Mensdorff was his second cousin, a Saxe-Coburg relation and a member of the King’s set who was given privileged rank at court.77 But not on this occasion. With a few curt words, Bertie dismissed him. “Never did I see [the King] so moved,” wrote Lord Redesdale. “No one who was there can forget how terribly he was upset.”78 Bertie complained bitterly about the breach of faith at Ischl. Mensdorff tried to persuade him that no decision had been made at the time of the meeting there, but he was unconvinced. Bertie refused to believe ill of Francis Joseph—in spite of mounting evidence that the devious old emperor had known all about it—and instead blamed the even more treacherous Aehrenthal.79 But the annexation of Bosnia was a turning point. It proved that the elaborate system of royal visits was no more than a façade behind which the powers continued to pursue their real agendas.
European war was now a real danger, and the King made every effort to prevent it. He returned to London from Balmoral on 10 October, and the next day saw Hardinge for breakfast, followed by Grey, then Izvolsky, the Russian foreign minister, and finally Asquith.80 The King supported the Cabinet in demanding an international conference, and in his talks with Izvolsky, he backed Russia’s demands for the opening of the Dardanelles to Russian warships in exchange for an agreement not to intervene against Austria.
Grave though the crisis was, there was no suggestion that it should be allowed to interfere with the King’s social program. On 19 October, he left London for a week’s visit to Mrs. Willie James at West Dean, near Goodwood House.
The Times reports suggested that this was a purely social house party. Guests included Consuelo Manchester, Lady Sarah Wilson,a and, of course, Mrs. George Keppel, and the King spent three days shooting rabbits and partridges.81 In fact, Bertie was working, closeted in his room most of the time, dealing with the Bosnian crisis. Hardinge, who had also been invited, felt obliged to cancel, as he explained to the King: “I am sure Your Majesty will understand that, since Sir E. Grey will be away, it will be impossible for me to absent myself from London while this crisis is still going on.”82 From London, Hardinge fired off bulletins to West Dean. Would it be a good idea for the King to write a letter to Czar Nicholas, asking him to keep Izvolsky in office—though “Your Majesty is better able than I am to express an opinion on this point.”83 The King wanted Izvolsky to stay, in spite of his deceit over Bosnia, on the grounds that he might be succeeded by someone worse.84 He wrote to Nicky, and Izvolsky was retained, holding office until Bertie’s death.85 Would the King use his influence with Sir Ernest Cassel, asked Hardinge—“I see from the papers that he will be one of the guests for the weekend at West Dean.” In order to demonstrate England’s support for Turkey, the Cabinet wanted a bank to make a loan of £500,000: “We hope very much that Your Majesty may be able to encourage Sir E. Cassel to consider favourably this proposal.”86
The King’s hostess at West Dean, Evie James, was a socialite. She reminded the architect Edwin Lutyens of a “roundabout barmaid”: She was very nearsighted with thick pince-nez, “nose tipped and very tilted, lovely hands, gay, thoughtless, extravagant.”87 A talented comic actress—her performance as a little girl in short petticoats at the Chatsworth theatricals had the King in stitches—she was rumored to be a royal mistress.b88
On the last day, the King paid his regular visit to the King Edward VII Sanatorium for Consumption at Midhurst, which had been founded with a £2 million donation from Sir Ernest Cassel. When the King’s car began the long descent on the return journey, Stamper realized to his horror that all the brakes had failed. As the heavy vehicle gathered speed, the King remained quite unaware that anything was wrong, but for Stamper, sitting helpless in the front seat beside the driver, it was a terrible moment. He nerved himself to leap out of the car and grab the brake wire, but eventually he and the driver managed to swing the car off the road. Afterward, Stamper worked all through the night to clean the oil that had leaked into the brakes, and by the morning the car was safe.89
The King never knew how close he had been to a fatal accident that afternoon. He was far more concerned with the race to stop European war. But the stress of trying to keep the peace of Europe almost single-handed was quietly killing him.
Two days after the King returned from West Dean, on 28 October 1908, Hardinge wrote enclosing a “pernicious production” from The Daily Telegraph: an interview with the German emperor.90 “You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares,” declared the kaiser, complaining with his characteristic blend of bombast, stilted slang, and paranoia that his good and peaceful intentions toward England had been willfully misunderstood. The article was based on the conversations William had held when he stayed with Colonel Stuart-Wortley at Highcliffe near Christchurch in Dorset in the autumn of 1907 (after his visit to Windsor), and as Hardinge reported to the King, “we have received absolutely reliable information from the office of the Daily Telegraph” that the interview “emanates from the German Emperor himself and that the Editor has a letter from His Majesty forwarding the article and mentioning improvements and alterations which he had made.”91 The article did indeed originate with William, and it represented a crass attempt to improve Anglo-German relations by removing misunderstandings.
In Germany, William found himself engulfed in a political crisis that almost destroyed his credibility. His indiscreet remarks and manifest lack of judgment caused howls of outrage and stoked anti-English hatred. Betrayed by his chancellor, Bülow, who lied about his own role in approving the draft of The Daily Telegraph interview, William was savaged in the Reichstag. By mid-November he was ill, suffering from crying fits, confined to bed, and contemplating abdication. When Alix wrote to inquire about his “cold,” he replied, “I am not suffering from cold but from complete collapse.”92
If Bertie was amazed by William’s foolishness and surprised that the owner of the Telegraph, his friend Lord Burnham, who regularly entertained him shooting at Hall Barn, had agreed to publish the interview, he was horrified by a second interview by the kaiser that surfaced in November. It transpired that William had spoken in July to an American journalist named Will
iam Hale. Mistaking Hale for a clergyman, the kaiser gave vent to a tirade of anti-English hatred; he announced that King Edward was corrupt and his court was rotten and declared that war with England was inevitable and the sooner the better. The German government suppressed publication of the article in the American Century Magazine, but they were too late to stop it appearing in The New York World. The World issued a denial, but proofs of the ten-thousand-word article had already reached the Daily Mirror in London, and The Observer published a summary of the story.93 At the Foreign Office, Hardinge did all he could to suppress the article. “Were it to appear the indignation against the Emperor would be general everywhere. We have no desire to see him so exasperated and a danger to Europe.”94
Hardinge sent the King early intelligence of the Hale interview. Bertie minuted it with one word: “Curious.”95 He was unconvinced by the denials printed in The New York World, or by Count Metternich, the German ambassador, who assured him that the interview was a fabrication. “I know the German Emperor hates me and never loses an opportunity of saying so (behind my back) while I have always been kind and nice to him.”96 Hardinge urged that the Hale interview made a visit by the King to Berlin imperative. “It is the only possible step that I can see by which it might be possible to rehabilitate [William’s] self-esteem and to show that we have not taken his indiscretions too seriously. So long as the German Emperor is in a sore state of mind, as at present, he is a positive danger to the peace of Europe.”97 Reluctantly, the King agreed. Not only did he consent to visit Berlin in the New Year, he personally intervened to stop publication of the Hale interview in The Morning Post and also the National Review, which was edited by the violently anti-German Leo Maxse. “Maxse must really be spoken to most seriously,” minuted the King.98
