by Jane Ridley
The King’s reply was brief and formal. He informed the PM that he expected to receive a telegram with the results of the critical vote in the Commons on the budget on 19 April, “so that he can make his plans accordingly.”30 In private, he was fuming. “It is simply disgusting,” he wrote. “Thank God I am not in London.”31 Asquith had gone back on his word not to ask for guarantees until after a second election, and to keep the Crown out of politics. Now he told the Commons (14 April) that if the Lords rejected the Veto Bill, “we shall find it our duty immediately to tender advice to the Crown as to the steps which will have to be taken if that policy is to receive statutory effect in this Parliament.”32 In plain language, as the King told Knollys, this meant that “he is going to ask me to swamp the H of Lords by a quantity of peers.… I positively decline doing this—besides I have previously been given to understand that I should not be called upon to agree to this preposterous measure. Certainly the P.M. & many of his colleagues assured me so—but now that they are in the hands of [Irish leader] Redmond & Co. they do not seem to be their own master.”33
The Tories accused Asquith of bullying the King, but this was not his intention. On the contrary, Asquith liked and respected the King far more than Balfour did. He was a clever strategist driving through a constitutional revolution, steering a course between the radicals of his own party on the one side and the King on the other. The last thing he wanted was to force the pace and drive the king into the arms of the aristocracy. “Wait and see” was his tactic; he judged that the moment was right to ask for guarantees, and the King knew that if he refused, he risked identifying the Crown with opposition to democracy.34
Asquith’s defection made Lord Knollys hysterical. He ranted that the prime minister intended “to commit the greatest outrage on the King which has ever been committed since England became a Constitutional Monarchy; and, if I were the King, I would, should the elections be in favour of the radicals, rather abdicate than agree to it.”35 Fortunately, Lord Knollys was not the King, nor did the King listen to his wild talk. The word “abdication” did not cross Bertie’s lips, but he was angered “by the way in which my Ministers have treated me in mentioning my Prerogative in such a casual way especially the Prime Minister and I wish them to understand that I look upon them with the greatest displeasure and can no more be on friendly terms with them. They are not only ruining the Country but maltreat me personally, and I can neither forgive nor forget it.”36
One of the drives that Stamper arranged took Bertie to Lourdes. He was received by the Bishop of Lourdes, who escorted him to the Church of the Rosary. He then climbed the steps and entered the basilica, which is perched on the terrace above. A company of pilgrims appeared and knelt on the steps as they sought the bishop’s blessing. Stamper watched the bishop raise his hands above the kneeling crowd in the setting afternoon sun. “There above them all, one figure stood out sharply against the background of white. It was the King, standing bare-headed in the sunlight, watching the scene below.”37
Stamper’s image of the King is almost apocalyptic. Perhaps the visit was a political gesture, designed to appeal to his Catholic subjects. Perhaps, conscious of the approach of death, Bertie sought comfort from the Catholic shrine. He visited the Lourdes grotto, but his contemplation must have been sorely tried by the crowd, which was so great that he had to leave through a side door.38
The King returned home on 26 April. “I shall be sorry to leave Biarritz,” he said, as he looked out from his veranda, adding, after a pause, “perhaps for good.”39
He traveled directly to London, without pausing in Paris. On the journey, Ponsonby had “quite an interesting conversation with him as to how far the Sovereign could rightly go in settling the differences between the two Houses of Parliament.”40 In order to signal his displeasure, the King had previously asked Knollys to prevent Asquith, Lloyd George, and Winston Churchill from meeting him at Victoria station, as was customary, but when his train arrived at five forty-five on 27 April, Asquith and Churchill were waiting on the platform to receive him.41
At three o’clock that afternoon, Knollys and Esher met Balfour with Randall Davidson, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Lambeth Palace. Knollys had summoned the meeting, which Esher pompously called “a Conference at Lambeth,” in order to sound out Balfour. If the government asked the King to dissolve Parliament and give guarantees, and if the King refused this “advice,” would Balfour be prepared to form a government? Balfour replied that he would “come to the King’s assistance” by taking office and immediately asking for a dissolution.42 Quoting the precedent of William IV in 1832, Esher argued that Balfour’s willingness to take office meant that the King was not bound to accept the advice of his ministers to create peers.
Later, Esher’s Lambeth Palace meeting became the subject of furious political controversy. Knollys, who had declared that the King should abdicate rather than give conditional guarantees, abruptly changed his mind, and six months later he counseled King George V to agree to Asquith’s demand. Extraordinarily, he concealed Esher’s memorandum from the new King. Believing that he had no choice in the matter, George agreed to give the conditional guarantees to create peers that Asquith demanded before a second election. Had he known that Balfour was prepared to take office, he might have acted differently, and he afterward considered that he had been bullied into acquiescing by Knollys and Asquith. Knollys “seriously misled” the King, according to one constitutional expert, and gave dangerous advice; by agreeing to hypothetical pledges and committing himself in advance, George potentially compromised the political neutrality of the monarchy.43
The memorandum of 3 May in which Esher advised King Edward to refuse his government’s advice to create peers was probably never seen by him. We can only guess at what Bertie would have done, but he would not have been kept in the dark about Esher’s talks with Balfour. Nor would Knollys—or even Asquith—have dared to bully him. It seems likely, that, had he lived, he would not have given Asquith hypothetical guarantees before a second election.
The King held a thirty-minute audience with Asquith at eleven thirty on 28 April. “I do not look forward to it,” he wrote; but Asquith reported to Margot afterward, “I had a good talk with the King this evening [sic] and found him most reasonable.”44
On the afternoon of Thursday, 28 April 1910, the King attended the private view at the Royal Academy. He looked “tired and a little pale.”45 That evening, he appeared at Covent Garden and sat through one act of Siegfried alone in the royal box, looking “very tired and worn.” Redesdale, who was in a box nearby, saw him give a great sigh as he got up; he opened the door of the box, lingered for a little in the doorway, and “with a very sad expression in his face—so unlike himself—took a last look at the house, as if to bid it farewell, and then went out.”46
Redesdale was writing with hindsight. Esher, who knew the King far better, saw him on the evening of Friday the twenty-ninth and thought him “in excellent spirits—and apparently in excellent health.”47 On Saturday, he traveled to Sandringham, not, as the papers later suggested, to “combat a threatened attack” by a change of air, but because he wanted to oversee the estate as he always did.48
The King and his suite left St. Pancras at nine fifteen on Saturday and ate breakfast on the train. The doctors’ report later said he was “feeling a little unwell,” but he walked about the grounds inspecting new planting, and at dinner Ponsonby thought he was “in his usual form,” telling stories of “amusing incidents of former years” and playing bridge.49 On Sunday, the King drove the short distance to church in a “clarence,” but later he walked in the garden and inspected the farm and stud. The drawing rooms were shut up, as the Queen was away, and the King insisted on working in Knollys’s room, which was chilly, without a fire.
Monday morning was cold and very wet. Bertie traveled back to London in the afternoon. He was “not in a talkative mood,” but it never occurred to Ponsonby or anyone else that he was beginning a serious illnes
s.50 That evening, he went to 17 Grosvenor Crescent to play bridge with Agnes Keyser. She was concerned by his coughing, and sent a messenger with a penciled note to Sir James Reid: “The King is dining here. He would like to see you tonight at Buckingham Palace at 11:15, if you would kindly go there, as he has a cold, and a little cough and Nurse is not there.”51
Reid found HM sitting in his dressing room in an easy chair, panting very fast and coughing, with a temperature of one hundred degrees and complaining of difficulty in breathing. Reid applied linseed and mustard poultices to the King’s chest and back and prescribed a sleeping draught of chlorodyne and morphine. When he returned home at one a.m., he told his wife: “The King may recover, as he did at Biarritz, but if not he will be dead in three days.”52
The next morning, the King dressed but agreed to remain upstairs, doing business as usual. Ponsonby, who saw him during the day with letters, never thought his condition was alarming, and nor did Esher.53 Grey requested an audience to discuss the guarantees, but the King refused to see him. At dinner with Ponsonby and two members of the suite, the King complained that he was unable to eat anything and talking made him cough. After dinner they were joined by Alice Keppel and her friend Venetia James, and they played bridge, which, as Bertie explained, meant that he didn’t need to talk. He smoked a huge cigar, which seemed to soothe him.54
On Wednesday, 4 May, after a wretched night, Bertie struggled into his clothes and forced himself through his program of interviews, but he looked terrible, with large black blotches under his skin.55 At eleven, he saw Newton Moore, the prime minister of Western Australia. His lord-in-waiting wrongly briefed him that Moore was the PM of New Zealand. Sir Francis Hopwood, the civil servant, corrected the error, and the King lost his temper, which set off a frightening fit of violent coughing. When Hopwood suggested that he should go to bed, the King replied, “No, I shall work to the end. Of what use is it to be alive if one cannot work?”56 (Prince Albert would surely have approved.) At one thirty, he saw Georgie. The Prince of Wales was so alarmed that he wrote to warn “darling Motherdear,” who, spurred by a “providential instinct,” was hurrying back from Corfu.57 “Thank God you are coming home to look after him,” wrote Georgie.58
That evening, the King felt so unwell that he noted in his diary: “The King dines alone.”59 It was the last entry he ever wrote. It was also the saddest. The man who had spent his entire life trying to ensure that he did not dine alone was at last forced to confront himself.
Ponsonby had expected to play bridge with the King after dinner that evening. Bertie canceled the game. He looked “wretched.”60 For the first time, Ponsonby was seriously worried.
On Thursday, Reid found the King worse after another bad night. He was a bluish color in the face, and Reid told Ponsonby that he worried lest his heart fail.61 Undaunted, the King refused to cancel his engagements. Lord Islington, newly ennobled governor of New Zealand, commented after his audience: “I think I have been with a dying man today!”62
Alice Keppel stayed with the King throughout the day. The nurse administered oxygen from a huge metal cylinder, but this only relieved his breathing for a short while. Reid gave an injection of strychnine to stimulate his heart. When he returned at noon, he found the King was worse, so he remained there with Laking.63
Alix had failed to grasp how ill Bertie was until she received George’s letter at Calais. The first really ominous sign was that he was not present to meet her at Victoria station. When she and Princess Victoria reached Buckingham Palace at five p.m., they found Bertie gray and sunken and unable to sit upright in his chair. “It was a great shock to them,” wrote the understated Prince of Wales, “to see Papa in this state.”64 Bertie insisted, nonetheless, on signing the documents that Ponsonby gave him from the red boxes.
At six p.m., an announcement was issued that the King was suffering from a severe bronchial attack. This was followed at eight p.m. by a bulletin posted on the palace railings and signed by the doctors that warned that “His Majesty’s condition causes some anxiety.”65 The bulletin, which was approved by the King, effectively gave notice that he was on his deathbed.
Bertie met death with courage. At one moment he said, “I am feeling better and intend to fight this, and I shall be about again in a day.”66 He refused to go to bed that night, but sat up in a chair, fighting for breath and unable to speak.67
In the morning he was worse, but he insisted on dressing. He rejected the informal clothes laid out for him by his valet, and asked for gray trousers.† He was angry when the doctors forbade him from having a bath. He tried to do business with Davidson and Knollys but his voice was faint and indistinct. He smoked half a cigar and had a violent coughing fit.
Davidson telephoned Ernest Cassel to cancel his appointment. Half an hour later, Knollys rang summoning Cassel to come at once. He arrived at twelve. The King was standing up and looked “as if he had suffered great pain” but seemed in good spirits.68 Cassel brought with him an envelope containing £10,000 in banknotes, which he left beside the King.69
Outside Buckingham Palace, a crowd gathered waiting for news. Margot Asquith was one of the first to go to the palace to sign her name. Feeling tearful, she returned home to find Charles Hardinge “looking very sad, he had seen poor Knollys in tears.” She ordered a black dress and wired Asquith to return immediately from his Mediterranean cruise. “It is like a dream and all London is standing still with anxiety,” she wrote.70
At one p.m., Bertie walked to his bedroom window to play with his canaries, and fainted. Now the oxygen was given almost continuously and so were the strychnine injections, but to less and less effect; he gradually lost consciousness during the afternoon, slumping forward in his chair.
At Great Cumberland Street, Jennie Churchill and her sister Leonie Leslie sat waiting for news all afternoon, talking in whispers so the servants would not hear. The telephone rang and Leonie came back into the drawing room with tears in her eyes. “They can’t get him out of his armchair. Alice has been sent for.”71
Mrs. Keppel had been banished from the palace when Alix returned on Thursday, and she spent Friday morning in hysterics. Now, it seems, she presented the Queen with a letter that Bertie had written back in 1901. It read as follows:
My dear Mrs. George,
Should I be taken very seriously ill I hope you will come and cheer me up but should there be no chance of my recovery you will I hope still come and see me—so that I may say farewell and thank you for all your kindness and friendship since it has been my good fortune to know you. I feel convinced that all those who have any affection for me will carry out the wishes which I have expressed in these lines.72
To her great credit, Alix obeyed her husband’s wishes, painful though the instruction was, and summoned the mistress to the palace.
When Mrs. Keppel arrived at five, Bertie was slipping out of consciousness and barely recognized her. The Queen and Princess Victoria were both in the room. According to the story Mrs. Keppel later related to her friends, the King told the Queen to kiss her. The Queen obeyed, and told Mrs. Keppel that the royal family would “look after her.”73
Reconciliation with the Queen was the dream of every mistress, from Lillie Langtry to Daisy Warwick, but Mrs. Keppel’s story is hard to credit. Not only was the King barely conscious, but Mrs. Keppel was in a highly emotional state. She was later to become notorious as a woman who “cannot resist lying and inventing and saying anything that comes into her Roman head.”74
The official version, as recorded by Esher, goes like this. The Queen shook hands with Mrs. Keppel and said, “I am sure you always had a good influence over him,” then walked away to the window. When the King fell forward in his chair, surrounded by nurses, Mrs. Keppel became hysterical once more. She was bundled out of the room, shrieking, and “before the Pages and the Footmen in the passage kept on repeating, ‘I never did any harm, there was nothing wrong between us,’ and then ‘what is to become of me?’ She fell into a wild fit of h
ysterics, and had to be carried into [Ponsonby’s] room, where she remained for some hours.” Mrs. Keppel’s insistence that there was “nothing wrong between us” can perhaps be read as an admission that she had never slept with the King after all.75 “Altogether it was a painful and rather theatrical exhibition, and ought never to have happened,” wrote Esher.76
But Esher was an unreliable witness, too, and he was especially jealous of Alice Keppel.
That Mrs. Keppel was overcome by hysterics seems certain. Laking, who was in the room, recalled the Queen taking him aside and whispering, “Get this woman away.”77 The two versions of the story—Esher’s and Mrs. Keppel’s—clearly reveal the conflict between the mistress, emotionally distraught and desperate for closure and validation, and the members of the household, who closed ranks to exclude her as soon as the King lost consciousness.
