Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

For years the hat which Prince Eddy had been wearing when he went out shooting for the last time, and which he had waved to his mother as, glancing back, he had caught sight of her at a window, was kept hanging on a hook in her bedroom. And for years, too, his own room was kept exactly as it had been when he was alive to use it, his tube of toothpaste being preserved as he had left it, the soap in the washbasin being replaced when it mouldered, a Union Jack draped over the bed, and his uniforms displayed behind the glass door of a wardrobe.

‘Gladly would I have given my life for his,’ the Prince told his mother, ‘as I put no value on mine … Such a tragedy has never before occurred in the annals of our family.’ Yet he knew in his heart that Prince Eddy had been hopelessly ill-qualified for the position for which his birth had destined him. And it was of inestimable comfort to his father that his new heir, Prince George, who was quite content to marry Princess May, seemed, on the contrary, suited in every way to kingship.

When Prince Eddy died, Queen Victoria was seventy-two and had already celebrated her Golden Jubilee. In 1897, on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee, she was driven through six miles of London’s streets and accorded such an ovation, so she recorded in mingled pride, surprise and delight, as no one had ever received before: ‘The crowds were quite indescribable, and their enthusiasm truly marvellous and deeply touching. The cheering was quite deafening, and every face seemed to be filled with real joy.’ Tears of gratitude had fallen from her eyes, and the Princess of Wales had leaned forward in the carriage to touch her hand.

Now her sight was failing, and her limbs were stiffened by rheumatism. But on her eightieth birthday in 1899 her cheeks were still rosy and friends commented on her good spirits. The Boer War broke out, however, a few months later; and her next birthday was her last. She felt ‘tired and upset’ by all the ‘trials and anxieties’ she had had to endure.

On 18 June 1901, the Prince of Wales and her other surviving children were summoned to Osborne. The Prince arrived on 19 June, but his mother had rallied by then and he did not stay the night. Three days later he was back again and as he entered her room she looked up for a moment and held out her arms. She whispered ‘Bertie’, then lapsed into the unconsciousness from which she never emerged. The Prince put his head into his hands and wept.

Later that day his mother died. He was King at last. The Edwardian Age had begun. And, as though to herald its beginning, the Kaiser, the King of the Belgians and the King of Portugal, waiting for the funeral of the Queen to start, stood by a fireplace in a corridor in Windsor Castle, where smoking had always been strictly forbidden, puffing at cigars.

Emerging from the Reform Club on his way to dinner with the tenants of his De Vere Gardens flat, Henry James was shocked to see a newspaper placard proclaiming ‘Death of the Queen’. The streets seemed ‘strange and indescribable’, the people in them dazed and hushed, almost as though they were frightened. It was ‘a very curious and unforgettable impression’; and James, sensing London’s fear that the Queen’s death would ‘let loose incalculable forces for possible ill’, was himself ‘very pessimistic’.

Writing later to friends in Austria on the black-bordered paper of the Reform Club, he had not expected to feel such grief for the ‘simple running down of an old used-up watch’. But he deeply lamented the passing of ‘little mysterious Victoria’ and the succession of that ‘arch vulgarian’, ‘Edward the Caresser’, who had been ‘carrying on with Mrs Keppel in so undignified a manner’. ‘His succession, in short, [was] ugly and [made] all for vulgarity and frivolity’. At dinner he heard John Morley say that the King had made a ‘good impression’ at his first Privy Council meeting, to which James added the doubtful comment, ‘Speriamo.’

The Times shared Henry James’s gloomy outlook. It admitted that King Edward had ‘never failed in his duty to the throne and the nation’. But there must have been many times when he had prayed, ‘lead us not into temptation’ with ‘a feeling akin to hopelessness’. The Times, in fact, could not pretend that there was nothing in the King’s long career which those who respected him ‘would wish otherwise’.

The new King was fifty-nine. His fair beard was turning grey, and although a lotion was vigorously applied to his scalp twice a day, he was nearly bald. Exceedingly portly, he still walked as if he were late for some appointment, his stout legs full of energy. He entered upon his inheritance with appealing enthusiasm and zest. At Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace he strode about with his hat on his head, his dog trotting after him, a walking stick in his hand, a cigar in his mouth, giving orders; opening cupboards; peering into cabinets; ransacking drawers; clearing rooms formerly used by the Prince Consort and not touched since his death; dispatching case-loads of relics and ornaments to a special room in the Round Tower at Windsor; destroying statues and busts of John Brown; burning the papers of his mother’s pretentious and wily Indian attendant, the Munshi, whose letters from the Queen were eventually retrieved from his widow; throwing out hundreds of ‘rubbishy old coloured photographs’ and useless bric-à-brac; setting inventory clerks to work at listing the cluttered accumulations of half a century; rearranging pictures. His Surveyor of Pictures recorded:

He lost no time in decision. I found it useless to ask the King if I should hang this there or another here and so on. His mind could not take it in … ‘Offer it up,’ he would say and when ‘offered up’ he would come to see and perhaps put his head on one side, all with a twinkle in his eye, and say, ‘That is not amiss,’ or perhaps he would at once say that he did not like it. He enjoyed sitting in a room with the men working about him, and liked giving directions himself as to the actual position of pictures.

‘I do not know much about art,’ he would say, rolling his r’s in that characteristic German way of his, ‘but I think I know something about ar-r-rangement.’ He certainly knew a great deal about the family portraits, ‘and was seldom at fault, even with almost unknown members of various Saxon duchies’.

He gave instructions for new bathrooms and lavatories to be installed; for the telephone system to be extended; for various coach houses to be converted into garages for the motor-cars which now came rattling and sputtering through the gates; for rooms to be redecorated, supervising the work himself, as the Queen ‘had little interest in such matters’, having all the varnish stripped off the oak panelling.

He would brook no opposition to his plans, overcoming any resistance with good-natured firmness, determined not to allow inconvenient sentiment to stand in the way of necessary overhaul. ‘Alas!’ Queen Alexandra lamented to her sister-in-law in Berlin. ‘During my absence [in Copenhagen] Bertie has had all your beloved Mother’s rooms dismantled and all her precious things removed.’ He caused even greater offence to his sisters by disregarding his mother’s will, which had provided for Osborne House to be kept in the family, and by presenting the place to the nation for use as a Royal Naval College and a convalescent home for naval officers.

As well as reorganizing the royal palaces, the King also transformed the court, drastically reforming both the Lord Steward’s and the Lord Chamberlain’s offices. He appointed new grooms-in-waiting and gentlemen ushers, making Sir Dighton Probyn Keeper of the Privy Purse; retaining Sir Francis Knollys as his private secretary; and taking more and more into his confidence Lord Rosebery’s clever, subtle, handsome friend, Lord Esher, who eventually, in the words of the Secretary for War, St John Brodrick, ‘constituted himself the unofficial adviser of the crown’. As a supposedly self-seeking eminence grise, Esher was disliked and distrusted by those who suspected his motives for so sedulously acquiring authority and influence to be less disinterested than they were. Lord Carrington recognized him as an ‘extraordinary’ and ‘clever’ man, but added that he might be dangerous and was certainly unscrupulous.