Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

No one, however, was allowed to go to bed before the Queen retired at about midnight. One evening, finding the number of people downstairs to be one short, and imagining that the absentee must be one of the younger guests, he rang for a page and told him to go and fetch back the culprit, who turned out to be General Sir Dighton Probyn, the seventy-five-year-old Keeper of the Privy Purse, who had gone to bed because he was not feeling well. Ponsonby thought that the King was ‘very much amused by this episode; but Sir Dighton was not’.

On leaving Sandringham the King frequently went to stay for a week or so with the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, or with Lord Iveagh at Elveden, the first of those several country house visits which he liked to make each year. In 1872 the then Duke had written a rather breathless letter from Chatsworth to his son Lord Hartington, who was staying at Sandringham: ‘Glad you are staying at Sandringham, for you will be able to get answers to several things I want to know. How long do they stay? How many servants do they bring? How many maids for the Princess? Do you think they could bring any horses? Am so afraid that our own may not stand the cheering …’

A generation later the answers to these and other similar questions were well known at Chatsworth as they were in many other large country houses in England, the owners of which were put to a good deal of trouble and expense in providing the King with the comfort he had grown accustomed to expect.

In the first place, his hosts were often required to accommodate an entourage of almost Elizabethan proportions. It was not unknown for the King to travel with two valets, a footman and a brusher; with a lordin-waiting, a groom-in-waiting, a private secretary and two equerries, all of whom had their own servants; with two chauffeurs, two loaders for the King’s guns and a loader each for the guns of the gentlemen attendants; with a gentleman-in-waiting and two ladies-in-waiting for the Queen, who also brought a hairdresser and two maids; with two detectives, two police sergeants and three constables; and with an Arab boy whose sole duty it was to prepare the royal coffee, which he served to his master on bended knee. The number of pieces of attendant luggage was likely to be equally prodigious. In the King’s trunks alone there would be as many as forty suits and uniforms and twenty pairs of boots and shoes even for a visit which was to last for no more than a week.

Despite the cost and trouble of entertaining the King and his entourage there were, however, few places where they were not welcome. And hostesses whose houses were never included in the royal progresses were deeply jealous of those his Majesty favoured: the Saviles of Rufford Abbey with whom he often stayed for Doncaster Races and the Grevilles of Reigate Priory became known to the disappointed as the Civils and the Grovels.

The King’s intimation of a proposed visit would be followed by a notification from a member of his Household as to the length of the stay. A list of guests would then be submitted for his approval; and occasionally he would add a name or, more rarely, cross one out. Except in the case of houses which were visited regularly, there would then ensue a lengthy correspondence about the arrangements for the reception of the royal party, the number of attendants and servants to be expected, the sort of accommodation to be provided for the detectives, the provision of a guard of honour, the speeches of welcome to be made at the railway station and the addresses to be handed to the King by various local dignitaries. When, for instance, the King proposed to visit Alnwick Castle to stay with the Duke of Northumberland in 1906, a cascade of letters, orders, questionnaires, invitations and prohibitions issued from the castle to ensure that all the arrangements were conducted in an efficient and seemly manner. Instructions were given for the railway station to be closed to ordinary traffic and to be decorated. The entrance gate to the castle was also to be decorated, while the front of the barbican was to be illuminated at night by gas flood-lighting. Triumphal arches were to be erected in the town, and tickets to be printed so that the Duke’s tenants would have the best view of his Majesty’s progress. Medals were to be issued so that the local schoolchildren would have a suitable memento of the auspicious event. Orders were given that the loyal addresses from the county council and urban authority should be inscribed and handed to the King, not spoken; and that no more than four members of the council were to be presented to him. Arrangements were made for a guard of honour from the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and for a sovereign’s escort. ‘There is one very important point to bear in mind,’ the Duke warned the councillor in charge of the civic welcome. ‘The Alnwick mob is all right till a procession has passed, but they have no idea of not breaking up and rushing after the carriage … [So] a considerable part of the escort must be placed behind the King’s carriage.’

Arrangements also had to be made for a band to play before dinner; for a singer to perform after dinner; for rooms to be prepared not only for the King and Queen and their servants but for the minister in attendance as well. Accommodation was also required in the castle for an inspector, a sergeant and three constables of the Household Police, as well as an inspector and a sergeant from Scotland Yard. These policemen would wear ordinary clothes and mingle with the indoor servants when the King and Queen were in the castle and with the gardeners, gamekeepers and beaters when they were in the grounds or out shooting.

Alnwick Castle, which had been extensively restored in the previous century, was in good order and no alterations or redecorations had to be carried out in the suite of rooms allocated to the King and Queen. But the owners of other houses which they visited were put to great expense in painting, papering and refurnishing rooms which were considered insufficiently imposing for royal habitation.

‘We came to Mount Stewart at Whitsuntide,’ wrote Lady Londonderry after arrangements had been made for a royal visit there in 1903. ‘And looking over the house … the place looked extraordinarily shabby; and we felt that it must be tidied up for the great occasion.’ So the billiardroom was transformed into an additional drawing-room; twelve other rooms were repapered; the main drawing-room was provided with specially embroidered upholstery and cushions; the suites of upstairs rooms to be given to the King and Queen were redecorated in green and yellow silk and equipped with new furniture, including some ‘nice little bits of Sheraton’ and with ‘masses of flowers both in baskets and on the tables’. Once he had spent a week-end in a country house the King liked to be given the same bedroom, sitting-room, dressing-room and bathroom on each succeeding visit; and he liked to follow the same sort of daily routine. If he were not going out shooting, he would have breakfast in his room and then attend to any correspondence there might be, his letters being opened for him by a servant who stood behind his chair and slit the envelopes with a long paper-knife. Towards midday he would go down to join the other guests and perhaps go for a stroll in the garden, making comments on any alterations his sharp eye noticed as having taken place since his last visit, or play a game of croquet which he and his partner usually won as everyone knew how cross he got if he was beaten. When staying with Sir Ernest Cassel he was often pitted against the Duchess of Sermoneta, who was not only extremely pretty but also a very bad player so that a game with her always put him in a good mood. One day, however, a lucky hit sent her ball flying ‘right across the ground,’ she recorded in her memoirs, ‘and straight through the right hoop (I didn’t even know it was the right one) and, continuing its glorious career, hit the King’s ball straight into the rose bushes … By the icy stillness that prevailed I realized that never, never was such a thing to happen again.’