Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

The contents of official boxes which were never shown to the Queen were, however, readily made available to his son and his daughter-in-law. This was, the King explained, a ‘very different matter’.

Prince George and his father were — and were always to remain — on excellent terms. ‘We are more like brothers than father and son,’ the King once wrote, a sentiment which his son later echoed in a letter to Lord Dalkeith; and although Prince George held his father in too much awe for this to be really so, there was between them an intimacy which in royal relationships was so rare as to be almost unique. Recognizing his son’s diffidence, his need of reassurance and sympathy, the King gave him the confidence that he would otherwise have lacked by a constant affirmation of love and trust, by an obvious pride in his reliability. He made it clear that he trusted him in a way that he himself had never been trusted and that he regarded him with an unreserved affection with which his own parents had never been able to look upon him.

He hated to be parted from him. Within a week of Queen Victoria’s death he abruptly cancelled a long-standing arrangement for his son to make an official visit to Australia on the grounds that neither he nor Queen Alexandra could spare him so soon for so long. The King was persuaded to change his mind by the Prime Minister, but he parted from his son with sorrow, confessing to Lord Carrington that he ‘quite broke down as he said good-bye’, and he welcomed him home with unconcealed joy. Lord Esher recalled how the father, on the many occasions on which he spoke of his son, ‘always’ did so ‘with that peculiar look which he had — half smile, and half pathos — and that softening of the voice, when he spoke of those he loved. He used to say the words “my son” in quite a different tone from any which were familiar to me in the many tones of his voice.’ For his part the Duke of York, as Prince George became in 1892, was utterly devoted to his father, consulting him about every aspect of his life, ‘even as to whether his footmen ought to wear black or red liveries at dinner’, and ‘complaining terribly’ when his father was not available for consultation that he had ‘no one to go to or advise him’. After the King’s death he could scarcely bring himself to speak of him without tears starting to his eyes. Though he recognized his faults, he admired him intensely and would never allow a word of criticism of him ever to be spoken. The only criticism he himself ever made of him in his voluminous correspondence with his mother was of a decision he had made to convert the bowling alley at Sandringham into a library.

It was the greatest comfort to the King in the last years of his life that his son and his son’s family lived in a small house in the grounds of Sandringham — York Cottage, formerly known as the Bachelor’s Cottage, which had been built as an annexe for male guests at Sandringham and which he had given to Prince George as a wedding present. Although this was not altogether pleasing to the Duchess of York — who was much more aware than her husband of the house’s inconvenience and lack of character and who had to submit to perpetual visits from her mother-in-law — the King delighted in the intimate propinquity, and seemed never more content than when his grandchildren with their parents came up to the big house for tea.

The grandchildren loved to do so, and in later life they remembered their grandfather with unclouded pleasure and affection. They retained memories of being taken to see him in his robes before he left for Westminster Abbey on the day of his coronation. ‘Good morning, children,’ he had said to them. ‘Am I not a funny-looking old man?’ They were too overwhelmed by the sight of him in his strange costume to offer any opinion in reply on that occasion, but they were not usually in the least in awe of him. His eldest grandson, Prince David — later King Edward VIII — recalling the contrast between life at York Cottage and that other world, redolent of cigar smoke and scent, which his grandfather inhabited, described him as being ‘bathed in perpetual sunlight’. Prince David was so little afraid of him, in fact, that he was even capable, on one occasion at least, of interrupting his conversation at table. He was reprimanded, of course, and sat in silence until given permission to speak. ‘It’s too late now, grandpapa,’ Prince David said unconcernedly. ‘It was a caterpillar on your lettuce but you’ve eaten it.’

Both the King and Queen delighted in looking after their grandchildren when their parents were away. They encouraged them to romp about the house, even in the dining-room, and to show off to the guests, who were required to pretend they were elephants and to give the children rides on their backs. And, so as to enjoy them all the more, the King once contrived to leave their governess in London for a fortnight while he spoiled them to his heart’s content at Sandringham.

With the small children of close friends he was equally indulgent, allowing Mrs Keppel’s to call him ‘Kingy’. The younger of the Keppel daughters, Sonia, was rather frightened of him at first. Instructed to curtsy to him whenever she saw him but never daring to ‘look higher than beard-level’, she ‘played safe and curtsied to the cigar and rings’. But Sir Ernest Cassel, too, had a beard, wore rings and smoked cigars;

‘so, more often than not, he came in for the curtsy’.

In time, though, Sonia overcame her nervousness, and when the King came to tea with her mother she was delighted to be allowed down into the drawing-room at six o’clock to see him. Together they devised a ‘fascinating game’ with bits of bread and butter which were sent, butter side downwards, racing along the stripes of his trousers. Bets of a penny each were placed on the contestants, Sonia’s penny being provided by her mother. ‘The excitement was intense while the contest was on … and Kingy’s enthusiasm seemed delightfully unaffected by the quality of his bets.’

On Princess Victoria’s birthday a children’s party was given each year by the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace where balloons were shot up into the sky and, on bursting, discharged presents all over the lawn while excited children raced about to pick them up. They were not in the least intimidated by the presence of their host, as most of their parents were; and when he asked one boy what he would like, he received the brusque command, ‘More jam, King.’

Perpetually alarmed by the prospect of boredom, the King was as anxious as ever to ensure that each day held for him the promise of some interesting activity. To make this easier to achieve, his yearly programme followed an almost unchangeable plan, largely regulated by the need to be in London in January or February for the State Opening of Parliament; by the social obligations of the London season, which began after Easter and ended with the races at Ascot in late June; and by those other race-meetings at which his Majesty’s presence was expected as a matter of course. After the yachting at Cowes in early August he liked to be at Bolton Abbey, the Duke of Devonshire’s Yorkshire house, for the opening of the grouse-shooting season on the twelfth. October would normally find him shooting at Balmoral. On 9 November he would invariably be at Sandringham for his birthday.

Although guests at Sandringham were pleased to find that life there was fairly informal, the King’s taste for regularity and punctuality imposed upon it an almost immutable routine. Breakfast began at nine and ended promptly at ten. The Royal Family did not appear, having breakfast in their own rooms; but those who chose to come down for it would find small round tables laid in the dining-room and a menu as ample and varied as that demanded by the King’s own voracious appetite. Indeed, the quantities of food consumed by the King, at breakfast as at every other meal, astonished those who, unapprised of his capacity, observed for the first time his zestful gourmandism.