Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

He had a most curious brain, and at one time one would find him a big, strong, far-seeing man, grasping the situation at a glance and taking a broadminded view of it; at another one would be almost surprised at the smallness of his mind. He would be almost childish in his views, and would obstinately refuse to understand the question at issue.

He never troubled to conceal his annoyance at even the most trifling grievances. Ponsonby recalled accompanying him to the Anglican church at Biarritz, where they sat in the front pew. When the time for the collection came, Ponsonby discovered that the only coin he had in his pocket was a gold louis; so he put it in the plate next to the King’s donation, also a gold louis. After the service the King crossly asked Ponsonby if he always gave a louis. ‘I hastily explained that I had nothing else,’ Ponsonby commented, ‘but he seemed to think I had spoilt his donation. He considered it only right to put in a gold piece, but when I did the same people thought nothing of his generosity.’

He was often ‘distinctly peppery in his temper’, speaking so sharply to those who asked him what he considered trivial questions that they dared not approach him a second time, sending the servants ‘flying about in all directions’. Once the very able English Consul at Marseilles came aboard the royal yacht to deliver telegrams and letters from a large portfolio which, on being opened, proved to be empty. The King shouted at the man so loudly that he fled from the yacht terrified and, during the hour that it took the Consul to retrieve the missing correspondence, he marched up and down the deck, abusing him as a halfwit. When some order of his had not been fully understood, the King would repeat it very slowly and precisely, word by carefully enunciated word, while the listener stood before him, dreading the possibility that the bottled-up anger might suddenly burst forth before he was allowed to escape from the room.

If more seriously provoked, the King’s rages were ungovernable. Ponsonby recalled numerous occasions of his master’s ‘boiling with rage’, ‘breaking into a storm of abuse’, ‘shouting and storming’, ‘shaking the roof of Buckingham Palace’, ‘becoming more and more angry and finally exploding with fury’. There was the time when Ponsonby advised him not to give several Victorian Orders on going to Portsmouth as this would lead naval officers to expect decorations whenever he went to any other naval base. Ponsonby said:

He was furious and shouted at me that I knew nothing about such matters, and that, being a soldier, I was, of course, jealous of the navy. I, however, stuck to it, and said that the Victorian Order would be laughed at if it were given on such occasions. He was still more angry and crushed me with the remark that he didn’t know that the Victorian Order was mine to give. After this explosion I at once retired, but I was interested to see that when he did visit Portsmouth he gave no decorations.

A similar explosion erupted on board the royal yacht when the King and Queen were cruising in the Mediterranean in May 1909 and it was decided to pay a visit to Malta. The King was looking through the programme arranged for his reception at Valetta when a telegram arrived from the Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean to the effect that all ships in the area had been ordered off to make a demonstration. King Edward was ‘perfectly furious and in his rage became most unreasonable’. Captain Colin Keppel, commander of the royal yacht, could do nothing with him and suggested that Frederick Ponsonby be sent for. Ponsonby recorded:

When I entered the King’s cabin I at once grasped that there was thunder in the air. ‘What do you think of that?’ the King shouted at me as he tossed me a telegram, and before I had time to answer he stormed away at the disgraceful way he was treated. He ended a very violent peroration by saving he had a good mind to order the Fleet back to Malta.

Ponsonby succeeded in calming the King’s anger by pointing out that the navy, no doubt, had very good reasons for requiring the Mediterranean Fleet to make a demonstration; but when he went on to say that it was extraordinary that neither the Prime Minister nor the First Lord of the Admiralty had had the courtesy to keep him informed of the situation, the King’s fury burst out afresh, and ‘after breaking into a storm of abuse of the government’, he instructed Ponsonby to send messages in cipher to both ministers which, ‘had they been sent as he directed them, would certainly have startled both recipients and would probably have entailed their resignation’.

The King was equally angry when, on arriving in Naples, he found that the Queen had ordered donkeys to transport the royal party up to the summit of Vesuvius from the end of the railway. He refused to risk placing his great weight on the back of a small donkey; and, while the Queen and others of the party set off, he went for a short walk. According to her sister, the Empress Marie of Russia, who had been invited to join the party, the Queen did not trust herself to a donkey either but was carried up in a chair while the Empress walked. But Frederick Ponsonby remembered them all as having been on donkeys which were still a long way from the summit when the King returned from his walk to the train. Eager to begin a picnic luncheon, he had the train’s whistle sounded at regular and increasingly frequent intervals to summon the riders back for the return journey. By the time the last rider had returned on his weary donkey, the King was ‘boiling with rage’ and ‘unable to let off steam’ on Queen Alexandra or on Fehr, the courier, who had wisely disappeared, the King poured ‘the vials of his wrath’ on Ponsonby’s innocent head.

The King was also very demanding. Ponsonby recalled a day at Malta when, summoned to the King’s cabin after breakfast, he was told to prepare a list of names for decorations and given fifteen letters to write as well as two to copy. On being released, Ponsonby rushed off to a review. Then he had to go to a luncheon in an army mess. After that there was a levee to attend, and he did not get back on board the royal yacht until half past five. Ponsonby recorded:

The King sent for copies of letters to show the Queen at tea. Answer, not yet done. Afterwards he sent for me to discuss decorations and asked for a typed list. Answer, not done. Had I written yet to so-and-so; answer, no. Then the King said, ‘My dear man, you must try and get something done.’ So I got a list of decorations typed by a petty officer on board. He spelt two names wrong and left out a third, all of which the King found out …Although I sat up till 1.30 to get straight, the King is left with the impression that nothing is done.

With his work the King neither received nor asked for any help from the Queen. Occasionally the Queen’s hatred of Germany or concern for her Danish relations would induce her to make some suggestion or protest. In 1890, for instance, during the government’s negotiations to secure a protectorate over Zanzibar in exchange for Heligoland, she strongly protested about this ‘knuckle-down to Germany’ and prepared a memorandum in which she stressed that, before Britain came into possession of Heligoland during the Napoleonic Wars, the island had ‘belonged from time immemorial’ to Denmark and that ‘in the hands of Germany it would be made the basis of operations against England’. The Queen also offered her services in translating letters from her brother, the King of Greece, and in making his difficulties well known to her husband and the government. But these were rare interpositions. As Charles Dilke said, the Queen never talked politics; and the King would not have had it otherwise.

He was even unwilling to let the Queen play an important part in the ceremonial duties of the monarchy or to attend official functions without him, insisting that such work was his responsibility and that she ought not to carry it out without his being there as well. Sometimes she complained, but she did not press the point. And while her husband spent more and more time away from her, she was quite content to retreat to Sandringham. She seemed perfectly happy on her own there; and when her husband did join her, she made it clear that whatever freedom or authority he might enjoy outside the home she was the mistress inside it. Lord Esher remembered how when he and the King, then Prince of Wales, had been discussing some important topic, a message had come from his wife asking him to go to her. He had not gone immediately; but a second summons had sent him scurrying from the room, leaving the business unfinished. And the Countess of Airlie recorded the Princess’s cheerfully irreverent comment to Sir Sidney Greville, who, anxious not to keep his Royal Highness waiting any longer for an important engagement, pressed her to join him: ‘Keep him waiting. It will do him good!’