by Jane Ridley
Esher felt justified in extracting from the Rothschild archive four packets of confidential Disraeli letters, including one packet that contained almost all of Bertie’s letters to Disraeli. He showed them to Bertie, who ordered them to be destroyed.27
The same happened when George Profeit, the son of Queen Victoria’s agent at Balmoral, Dr. Profeit, attempted to blackmail Bertie over letters about John Brown. Bertie entrusted Sir James Reid with the job of retrieving the letters. Reid eventually succeeded in persuading Profeit to surrender a tin box containing more than three hundred letters from Queen Victoria concerning Brown, many of which were “most compromising,” which he handed in person to the King.28 These were presumably destroyed.
When the Munshi died in India in 1909, Bertie worried about Victoria’s letters. He wrote to the viceroy: “I am not satisfied in my mind that there may not be still letters in Queen Victoria’s handwriting in their possession—and I should be glad if further discreet investigations could be made, informing the Munshi’s family that … they must at once return them or they will be the sufferers thereby!”29
Bertie had successfully destroyed many of Queen Victoria’s papers, and he made certain that his own documents were similarly censored. In his will, he directed that all letters to him from his mother and from his wife, and all private letters and papers, should be destroyed by his private secretary immediately after his death.30
Knollys was seventy-four in 1910. He had served Bertie as private secretary for forty years. He was eventually asked by George V to retire in 1913, for political reasons—his strong Liberal sympathies clashed with the politics of the King and his advisers.31 Knollys wrote that he had one task yet to complete: “It is necessary that I should first look over, sort and when advisable, destroy the great mass of letters and papers of all descriptions which accumulated at Marlborough House and which have since accumulated at Buckingham Palace—in fact from the year 1863 to the present day.”32
Not only were the letters in what Esher described as a state of “dire confusion,”33 but Knollys himself was becoming confused. Since King Edward’s death his colleagues had complained about his “mental apathy.”34 Ponsonby observed that “his memory has completely gone,” and by 1914 he was referring to him as “gaga.”35 Senile or not, Lord Knollys was undoubtedly disaffected as he set about obeying his dead master’s last orders. Baron Hermann von Eckardstein, the German diplomat, found him “greatly aged” and “almost tired of life,” sifting through the King’s papers, deciding which to keep and which to burn. The papers contained much both of a political and a personal nature: “Owing to their political content they should be handed down to posterity,” but “due to their very delicate private character they should be withheld from future generations and should be burned.” Knollys erred on the side of caution and inclined to “destroy too many rather than too few of such papers.”36 It took him only one month to complete this work. He wrote to George V on 17 March 1913: “Sir I have finished the papers and am vacating my room here today.”37 How much he destroyed can never be known, but posterity has accused him of a bonfire.
Meanwhile, a fuse was lit in the unlikely form of the Dictionary of National Biography. The 1912 supplement carried an extended article on King Edward by the editor, Sidney Lee. Lee was a hollow-eyed Shakespeare scholar who had contributed 820 articles to the DNB by dint of working seven days a week and living as a recluse. His DNB article on Queen Victoria, which he expanded and published as a book, had pleased the royal family, so his article on King Edward came as a thunderbolt.38
Lee claimed that the King possessed neither statesmanship nor “originating political faculty” (in my view, untrue), that he read no books (true), “lacked the intellectual equipment of a thinker and showed unwillingness to exert his mental powers” (untrue), was a poor conversationalist (true), and had no responsibility for the Entente Cordiale (untrue).39
From Marlborough House, where he now worked for Queen Alexandra, Sir Arthur Davidson, Bertie’s former assistant private secretary, began a campaign to clear his master’s reputation. He consulted Knollys and Esher, but both were oddly opposed to taking action. Esher reluctantly agreed to write an article, but he claimed that it would be said that he was “a sycophant and a courtier” and his views would carry little weight. He did all he could to “wriggle out” of it.40 Loftily declining to descend into the gutter of literary quarrels, he suggested that instead he should write an article on some grand theme such as the philosophy of kingship.41
The real reason for Esher’s prevarication soon became apparent: He himself had supplied Lee with material for the DNB piece.42 He was up to his usual tricks, hunting with both the hare and the hounds. “Oh! Esher! Esher!” wailed Davidson. “I am sick of Esher and the way he has behaved over this.”43 “Manly men,” as the royal archivist Owen Morshead recalled, “did not like Lord Esher.” He was like a “medicated tom cat,” and honest men such as George V and Lord Stamfordham “felt their skin prickle when he entered the palace, as some people react to the unseen presence of a cat in the room.”44
Esher’s treachery seemed the more dishonorable because he owed a debt of gratitude to Bertie.45 Meanwhile, Sidney Lee agreed to write a letter of apology to Queen Alexandra. Alix replied (via Esher himself) regretting the damage that Lee had done to her husband’s reputation, but it was never clear how much she understood or how much she wanted to know.46 She read the DNB article and it upset her, but she was oddly disengaged, and so dilatory that Davidson despaired of ever being able to persuade her to give her attention to the matter of Bertie’s biography.47
When Davidson and Probyn, Alix’s comptroller, cabled to warn her that Lee’s DNB article was being published as a stand-alone book, she wired: “I regret extremely that the same wretched and untruthful author should be allowed to repeat himself on that to me sacred subject.”48 The courtiers, thinking she had misunderstood, wrote explaining at length that Lee was not composing a new work, merely issuing a cheap edition. The Queen Mother snapped back: “Very many thanks long letter understand everything perfectly have done so all the time—don’t tire yourself writing so much … your Blessed Lady.”49
Henceforth, it was Davidson, not Alix, who played the part of the wronged widow, while Alix was kept in the dark. As Davidson explained to Probyn, the Queen “would not take it in and would not appreciate it.… The Queen has absolutely no idea of logic, that if you say a thing is wrong, you must prove it so, and also the Queen has no sense of appreciation. I mean it’s a constitutional deficiency, and she will only think—whatever she may say—a great deal of unnecessary fuss—‘much better have told Lee he was mistaken and get him to alter his article.’ All the paraphernalia of the means of getting him to do so will be so much Sanskrit to her.”50
Davidson’s next move was to interview some politicians and ask them to write contradictions of Lee’s article. Most were helpful in conversation, but they all seemed “to get very cautious and disappointing on paper.”51 Asquith wrote a one-page letter which Davidson thought “rather in the style of a master’s character to a servant than that of the Prime Minister to his late Sovereign.”52 As for Balfour, “nothing could be more sympathetic” than his manner, but he declared that he had not read the article.53 His dictated letter was typically evasive, avoiding detail but criticizing the article for its failure to convey the King’s personality.54
Armed with these letters from Balfour and Asquith, Davidson confronted Sidney Lee, who explained that he had interviewed fifty people for his article. He was “amazed” at the letters Davidson showed him. He “could not understand” Balfour’s letter, as Balfour had clearly told him that “the King’s influence was absurdly overrated.”55 He had notes to prove it. Lee’s typed notes of his interview with Balfour still survive in his papers today. Entente Cordiale: “King had nothing to do with it … qualities not great.”56 Balfour’s remarks went straight into the DNB article.
The duplicity of Balfour and Asquith made David
son “feel rather sick.”57 Ponsonby agreed. “What [Lee] said about Asquith does not surprise me but Balfour beats me. I now see his reluctance to read the article or commit himself in any way.”58 Balfour protested that he had been “ill-used”: He had given Lee an off-the-record interview and kept no notes, and now his remarks were quoted against him.59
Davidson’s files give a fascinating glimpse of the way history is composed. Balfour, who had never got on with Bertie, had written him out of the historical narrative. Asquith had done the same. Lee revealed that it was Asquith who had “supplied all the material” for the section of the DNB article on the Parliament Bill crisis.60 Asquith alleged that King Edward had played a passive part in the crisis, being “content to watch the passage of events without looking beyond the need of the moment.”61 No one reading the article would have realized how important the King’s role had been during the crisis, nor how badly Asquith had needed his support.
History, once written, proved unexpectedly difficult to unpick. Lee refused point blank to revise his article. To do so, he claimed, would “discredit the Dictionary, and would ruin its publication and myself.”62 The reality, as Lee knew very well, was that a revision of a single article in a volume of more than seven hundred pages would be ruinously uneconomic.
After consulting King George V, Davidson enlisted the support of Lord Morley, Gladstone’s biographer, a minister and Grand Old Man of Letters. Lee was summoned to a meeting in Morley’s office. Davidson listed the passages the King wanted expunged from the article. Morley asked: “You mean to say that if these were left out, it would satisfy you.” Davidson replied: “Certainly not. We want a new work.” Lee was appalled. The last thing he wanted was to write an official life of Edward VII. He became “very sulky” and tried to back out, protesting that he had just been appointed professor of English literature at the East End College of London University—“very hard work.” Morley was relentless; according to Davidson, he “behaved like a trump, too beautifully.” He told Lee “it was no good him saying that he had not written depreciatory things, because he had.”63 Lee was too frightened of Morley to say no. “His only fear is that if he ignores Lord Morley’s advice (which was the strongest I ever heard given on any subject from a man in his position) that Lord Morley will have done with him for ever.”64
Lee was cornered. He agreed to write the biography, and arranged an advance of £300 from Smith, Elder, the publishers of the DNB.65 It soon became apparent that his ideas about biography were very different from the courtiers’. Brandishing a copy of his 1911 lecture The Principles of Biography, he demanded access to all the available letters and papers.66 King Edward’s papers were in the hands of Esher and Knollys, and they had both initially refused to have anything to do with Lee and his book. Once the biography was agreed to, however, Esher was all smiles. Collared by the King, he agreed to supply Lee with the papers at Windsor.67
Lee spent a day reading documents at Windsor in June 1914. He arrived with a swollen face from toothache and kept looking at himself in the mirror. At teatime, Esher appeared. “He talked vaguely about the difficulties of Biography and then gave Lee a rough account of the part he had played in Army Reform. It was very good. He praised King Edward and made out he was the fons et origo [source and origin] of all army reform. Brodrick, Arnold-Forster, and Haldane were puppets but the person who pulled the strings was himself!” Ponsonby could see that Esher was playing a part, but he had no objection so long as King Edward “got his full share of credit.”68 Once again, history was being written.
Lee was only given access to carefully selected documents. He was allowed to see papers relating to Bertie’s early life, but little thereafter. This was partly because the archive was still in a state of confusion. Ponsonby claimed that “With regard to 1875 to 1900 no papers appear to exist. Knollys burned everything.”69 This was not, in fact, the case, but the story of Knollys’s holocaust proved very useful as a way of fobbing off the biographer. Lee was sent on wild goose chases, to work through the Granville papers, for instance, or the Foreign Office dispatches (uninformative and “deadly dull”).70 Ponsonby allowed Lee to work only once at Windsor. He worried that Lee would “be tempted to write up early incidents in too full detail.” Worse, if Lee got into Esher’s clutches, “there would be no saying what might happen.” Esher selected papers from the archive at Windsor that Ponsonby vetted before giving them to Lee to work on at Buckingham Palace.71
Little wonder that Lee became discouraged and threatened to abandon the project. He was dismayed when Rosebery mischievously told him that he must bring Bertie’s women into the book. A “threatening letter” that he received from Lady Warwick “greatly disturbed him.”72 For a confirmed bachelor such as Lee, sexual scandal was toxic, and gossip was a biographical sin. The outbreak of war in August 1914 came as a relief to all concerned. Lee opined that the publication of the biography was not advisable, as the King’s anti-German feeling would doubtless be twisted into showing that he had always intended to go to war against Germany. As for Davidson, he was more than willing to agree to Lee’s request to suspend work on the book until the war was over.73
Meanwhile, a furious tornado burst upon the royal advisers in the shape of Daisy Warwick, whose finances were once again in crisis, ruined by a company promoter who had swindled her out of £50,000. Her last remaining asset was her affair with the Prince of Wales. In the time-honored fashion of the courtesan, she proposed to cash in and reveal all in her memoirs.
In March 1914, she met the unsavory charlatan Frank Harris in France, and together they concocted a plot. Harris would help Daisy write her kiss-and-tell autobiography and publish it in the United States, where he assured her she stood to make the £100,000 she needed to pay off her debts.‡ But Daisy was playing a double game. Her plan was to use the threat of publishing her memoirs to blackmail King George V. Back in 1908, she had promised Bertie that she had destroyed all his letters. Now it turned out that she still possessed a bundle of thirty, which she claimed had turned up when the bailiffs were ransacking her possessions. This was probably fiction; but by now the distinction between true and false was blurred. Daisy planned to offer the letters to George V for a price of £80,000; in return she would call off publication of her memoirs.74
Daisy’s sister Blanche Gordon-Lennox considered that Daisy’s mind was deranged; there could be no other explanation for her wicked behavior.75 But Daisy did have some justification. She claimed that she had exhausted her inheritance in entertaining the Prince of Wales, and that she had received no reward for her nine years as royal mistress—unlike Alice Keppel, who was known to have made a fortune, largely thanks to Ernest Cassel’s dealings on her behalf. Daisy’s mistake was to imagine that George V could be blackmailed.
As her intermediary, Daisy chose Arthur du Cros, millionaire founder of the Dunlop Rubber company and one of her creditors. Calculating that du Cros was ambitious for recognition at court and a title, she confided her plan to him at a meeting in June 1914. Genuinely shocked, du Cros reported back to the palace. The courtiers were aghast. Ponsonby considered that publication of the letters would not only “blast” King Edward’s reputation, but have a “far graver effect on the monarchy.”76 He urged paying her off, but George V was determined not to give in to blackmail, nor to allow Lady Warwick to humiliate his mother. Sir Charles Russell, the King’s solicitor, was appointed, and he laid an elaborate trap.
On Russell’s request, du Cros agreed to join Daisy on a trip to Paris (13 July 1914), where she met with Frank Harris to discuss the sale of the letters. Russell sent a detective, Mr. Littlechild, to follow Daisy to Paris and shadow her movements. Peeping through the window of her hotel, Littlechild saw Daisy produce several documents, like letters, one of which she gave to Frank Harris. “The lady did most of the talking, and appeared, by her gestures, to be very much in earnest.”77
Instead of the six-figure check from the King that she was expecting, Daisy returned to London to find an inju
nction served upon her, forbidding her from publishing, circulating, or divulging letters received from Edward VII. “She was all smiles and politeness,” wrote Russell, “but of rather an artificial kind.” She declared that she would tell her story in court.78
Daisy was not silenced by the injunction. Quite the contrary. In the autumn of 1914, Frank Harris fled wartime France and sought refuge with her at Easton Lodge. Here he dabbled with her memoirs, composing a chapter or two, and she allowed him to rummage among the letters she kept in her room. In the winter, Harris sailed to America, taking with him some of Bertie’s letters. Daisy claimed that he had stolen them, which may or may not have been true. Daisy was watched by spies and visited by Russell. Sir John Simon, the Attorney General, saw three of the letters and pronounced them to be “very bad,” particularly the references to Queen Alexandra. In February 1915, Prime Minister Asquith wrote, “there is now proof that she has been disobeying the injunction and is again hawking some of [the letters]. So the Impeccable”—Asquith’s name for Simon—“proposes to go to a Judge and ask him to ‘commit’ her—in vulgar language to send her to prison till she amends her ways.”79
