Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

After drinking a glass of milk in bed, he would often content himself with coffee and toast when he was to spend the morning indoors; but to fortify himself for a morning’s shooting he could devour platefuls of bacon and eggs, haddock and chicken, and toast and butter, in as short a time as it would take a less hungry man to drink two cups of coffee. Soon afterwards, an hour or so in the cold fresh air would sharpen his appetite for hot turtle soup. Yet this would in no way impair his appetite for luncheon at half past two, just as a hearty luncheon would not prevent his appearing for tea in a short black jacket and black tie in the hall where, as his band played appropriate melodies, he helped himself to poached eggs, petits fours and preserved ginger as well as rolls and scones, hot cakes, cold cakes, sweet cakes and that particular species of Scotch shortcake of which he was especially fond.

The dinner which followed at half past eight consisted usually of at least twelve courses; and it was not unknown for the King to take a liberal sample of every one, to the horror of the Queen, who confessed to his doctors that it was just ‘terrible’ the amount of food he got through, that she had ‘never seen anything like it’. He would enjoy several dozen oysters in a matter of minutes, setting the fashion for swallowing them between mouthfuls of brown bread and butter; and would then go on to more solid fare. He had an exceptional relish for caviare, plovers’ eggs and ortolans, for soles poached in Chablis and garnished with oysters and prawns, for chicken and turkey in aspic, quails and pigeon pie, grouse, snipe, partridge, pheasant and woodcock; and the thicker the dressing, the richer the stuffing, the creamier the sauce, the more deeply did he appear to enjoy each mouthful. No dish was too rich for him. He liked his pheasant stuffed with trufles and smothered in oleaginous sauce; he delighted in quails packed with foie gras and garnished with oysters, trufles, mushrooms, prawns, tomatoes and croquettes; he never grew tired of boned snipe, filled with forcemeat as well as foie gras, grilled in a pig’s caul and served with trufles and Madeira sauce. He declared ‘delectable’ a dish of frogs’ thighs served cold in a jelly containing cream and Moselle wine, and flavoured with paprika, which was especially prepared for him at the Savoy by Ritz and Escoffier, who named it Cuisses des Nymphes ? l’Aurore. Yet he appeared to derive almost equal enjoyment from more simple dishes: roast beef and Yorkshire pudding invariably appeared on the menu for Sunday luncheon at Sandringham, though he himself far preferred lamb. At Balmoral a stag-shooting party would be offered Scotch broth, Irish stew and plum pudding. And when once the King was noticed to frown upon a bowl of boiled ham and beans, it was not, he hastened to explain, because he despised such homely fare but because ‘it should have been bacon’. Almost the only dish he did not like was macaroni.

His appetite was not in the least affected by the huge cigars and the Egyptian cigarettes he smoked in such quantities. By the time he sat down to breakfast he had already had two cigarettes and one cigar; and often by dinner time he had smoked twenty more cigarettes — exhaling the smoke slowly and contemplatively through his nose — as well as twelve vast and pungent Coronay Corona, Henry Clay’s ‘Tsar’, or Uppmanns’ cigars. He never learned to smoke a pipe, which he said was something he had always wished to do as it was by far the most convenient form of smoking when out shooting, especially in a high wind. Frederick Ponsonby gave him one as a present, having taken

an enormous amount of trouble to get one with a top fitted … but he was so long putting the metal top on when he had lit the pipe that it always went out. He had three tries and the more he hurried the more clumsy he became. After the third try proved a failure he produced a cigar and said, ‘This is, after all, far simpler’, and explained that it was the fault of the tobacco.

If tobacco did not blunt his appetite, neither did alcohol. In earlier years he had drunk a good deal of champagne, preferably Duminy extra sec, 1883, which he had had decanted into a glass jug from which he helped himself; and he had been fond of making a powerful cocktail to a recipe sent to him from Louisiana and comprising champagne, whisky, maraschino, angostura bitters and crushed ice. But, as King, he rarely had more than two or three glasses of champagne at a time and he drank little other wine. He might enjoy a small cognac by way of a chasse Café but spirits held little appeal for him and he rarely drank port. Once the ladies had retired he was anxious to rejoin them as soon as possible, preferring their company to that of men; and for a short time he instituted the practice of taking the men away as soon as their hostess had ‘collected the eyes’ of the ladies. Indeed, any prolongation of the meal was tiresome for him. He grew impatient with guests who dawdled over their food and did not like the menu to be interrupted by sorbet or iced punch, though when his favourite rum-flavored sorbet was on the menu he could not resist it. Nor did he like his concentration on his food to be distracted by intellectual conversation, which always made him fiddle with the cutlery. Such talk, he considered, should be limited to the intervals between the courses, if tolerated at all. He preferred to listen to a good anecdote retailed by one of his amusing friends or a whisper of gossip from a pretty woman.

He was not a gifted conversationalist himself, rarely speaking more than a dozen words at a time and usually framing these in the form of questions. He was extremely tactful, though, in asking the sort of questions which the guest to whom they were directed would have pleasure in answering. For he made a point of remembering people’s tastes and interests; and it was frequently noticed how, during those Sunday afternoon inspections of his estate at Sandringham, he would find in a cup or plate, or some other trophy he had won at a race meeting or regatta, a reason to talk about horses or yachts to a sportsman who had felt unable to comment sensibly on the fuchsias and tomato plants in the greenhouse. He was also exceedingly adept at bringing a difficult conversation to an end with a murmured, ‘Quite so, quite so’; and then immediately, and in as natural a way as possible, diverting it on to easier lines.

Although everyone agreed with Lord Sandwich that he had ‘a marvellous memory’ and could — as he often did — recite the entire list of guests at house-parties he had attended years before, the King was an indifferent raconteur. He told his stories with too ponderous an emphasis on their introductory scene-setting, choosing to relate those which required a lightness of touch not at his command, and sometimes grasping a button on the coat of the man to whom they were principally addressed as though he sensed a wandering attention. He was also inclined to repeat his favourite stories until they became all too familiar. Whenever the name of the Shah of Persia was mentioned, for instance, he was as likely as not to remind his companions of the time he and the Shah had been fellow-guests of the Duke of Sutherland at Trentham and how the Shah had observed disapprovingly of their rich host, ‘Too grand for a subject. You’ll have to have his head off when you come to the throne!’

Another of his favourite stories concerned an English officer who had been shot through the head during the Boer War and had been sent home to be operated on by Sir Frederick Treves. Finding the damage extensive, Treves had been forced to remove a large part of the brain; and, although the operation had been successfully performed, he felt obliged to reveal to his patient his apprehension as to the young man’s prospects in his career. ‘It’s very kind of you to take so much interest in my welfare, Sir Frederick,’ the officer replied, ‘but thank God my brain is no longer wanted. I have just been transferred to the War Office.’