Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

During his walks in the garden the King was usually accompanied by his dog, a brown and white long-haired fox terrier who bore on his collar the legend, ‘I belong to the King.’ Despite the ministrations of the footman whose duty it was to wash and comb him, Caesar was a peculiarly scruffy animal and was often to be seen with his mouth covered with prickles after an unsuccessful tussle with a hedgehog. The King loved him dearly, took him abroad, and allowed him to sleep in an easy chair by his bed. Once in Bohemia, when the dog fell ill, he was only dissuaded from spending £200 on a visit by his English vet on learning that there was a first-class man in Vienna. Taken to rejoin his master after a brief parting, Caesar would always jump up in excitement at seeing him, and the King would say with gruff affection, ‘Do you like your old master, then?’ He could never bring himself to smack the dog, however reprehensible his behaviour; and ‘it was a picture’, so Stamper, the motor engineer, said, ‘to see the King standing shaking his stick at the dog when he had done wrong. “You naughty dog,” he would say very slowly. “You naughty, naughty dog.” And Caesar would wag his tail and “smile” cheerfully into his master’s eyes, until his Majesty smiled back in spite of himself.’ Devoted as he was to the King, though, Caesar showed not the least interest in the advances of other human beings who bent down to fondle him, disdaining to notice the staff when he accompanied the King on an inspection of the kitchens from which, on less important occasions, he was nevertheless eager to accept any bones.

‘Whenever I went into the King’s cabin,’ recalled Charles Hardinge, who accompanied the King on the royal yacht during his continental excursions in 1903, ‘this dog always went for my trousers and worried them, much to the King’s delight. I used not to take the slightest notice and went on talking all the time to the King which I think amused His Majesty still more.’

As the hour chosen by the King for serving dinner approached, a gentleman-in-waiting informed the host that his Majesty would be ready in fifteen minutes. The guests were then asked to assemble in the drawingroom to await the arrival of the King. They presented themselves in full evening dress, the men in white ties with carnations or gardenias in their button-holes, the ladies in dresses with trains, wearing, perhaps, a spray of orchids on their well-corseted bosoms, and carrying ostrich feather fans.

The King appeared with exact promptitude at the time he had stipulated. Having taken stock of the company to make sure there were no absentees, he walked across the room to his hostess, offered her his arm, and escorted her immediately into the dining-room, where his footman in scarlet livery stood behind his chair. If the Queen were present the men wore frock dress and knee-breeches, and it was she who led the way to the diningroom on the arm of her host.

The King was usually an easy and agreeable guest. Even when he arrived in an exceptionally grumpy mood, he could normally be won over by a dish that pleased him or a remark that amused him. Sir Osbert Sitwell recorded an occasion when the King went to stay with Lord and Lady Brougham ‘in a mood that rendered him difficult to please. Plainly something had gone wrong; and at dinner he was silent’. But Lady Brougham, ‘an old lady of rare beauty and of infinite charm’ renowned for her ‘unfailing shrewdness of judgement and her use of the appropriate but unexpected adjective’, was quite equal to the challenge.

‘“Did you notice, Sir, the soap in your Majesty’s bathroom?”

‘“No!”

‘“I thought you might, Sir … It has such an amorous lather!”

‘After that, the King’s geniality returned.’

On the day of his departure, having sat for the inevitable group photograph and planted the almost equally inevitable tree, the King would sign his name in the visitors’ book, and perhaps bestow a minor decoration, such as the Coronation Medal, on a senior servant. And while a member of his Household presented a suitable sum to be distributed amongst the other servants, he would give a present to his hostess. Often it was a present at least as valuable as that ‘most lovely bracelet’, with the King and Queen’s miniatures ‘set in diamonds with the royal crown and ciphers and green enamel shamrocks at the sides’, which was given to Lady Londonderry after the King’s visit to Mount Stewart. If he had no suitable jewellery with him he would send to London for a selection from Hunt and Roskill. And once, having stayed at a house in the north where his own servant had been taken ill, he called for his host’s servant who had looked after him instead.

‘Which do you think is the handsomest of these rings?’ he asked him as they examined the case which had arrived from Piccadilly.

‘I am sure you are a good judge of these things.’

The servant indicated the one that he preferred. The King picked it up and handed it to him with the words, ‘Keep it.’

When he went abroad the King’s entourage was not usually as large as it was when he travelled in England. Nor did he make his journeys in so grand a style as his mother, who would book an entire hotel which she filled with a hundred of her own servants as well as numerous pieces of her own furniture and favourite pictures. Yet, although he usually contented himself with a doctor, two equerries, two valets and two footmen — one of the footmen, a tall Austrian named Hoepfner, to wait at table and open the door, the other an Englishman, Wellard, whose duties included cleaning the boots and brushing the dog — he had been known to travel abroad with no less than thirty personal servants in addition to his suite and his doctor. He had taken thirty-three with him when he went to Paris in 1868 to visit the Emperor Napoleon III. And in 1901, on going to stay with his sister at Friedrichshof, the royal yacht had thirty-one servants aboard as well as a crew of three hundred. Journeys by rail were undertaken in a special train, the King’s private carriages being equipped with well-upholstered furniture, commodious cupboards, thick carpets and heavily tasselled curtains. There were fully equipped bathrooms and a smoking-room where the King could enjoy a game of cards or read a newspaper in one of the Spanish leather arm-chairs. In later years short journeys on the Continent were made in one or other of the three claret-coloured motor-cars which were driven out in advance by the royal chauffeurs.

The prospect of a trip abroad almost always put the King in a good mood. He would first send for his Swiss-born courier, the well-informed and loud-voiced M. Fehr, who had formerly worked for Thomas Cook, and with him he would discuss all the details of the journey. He would ensure that Chandler, the Superintendent of the Wardrobe, knew what suits and uniforms would be required; that his Austrian first valet, Meidinger, had all the correct accessories; that his favourite crocodile dressing-case contained his diary, jewellery, a miniature of the Queen, photographs of his children and of his mother (seated at a table, signing a document); that his ragged silk dressing-gown, to which he had become so devoted that he refused to have a new one, was not forgotten; that Stamper, the motor engineer, had received proper instructions with regard to the motor-cars; that the luggage contained an ample supply of presents and decorations, particularly of the ribbons and insignia of the Victorian Order, to be bestowed upon attentive officials and obliging friends.

The last item was most important, since the King liked to be able to reward those who had helped him or pleased him wherever he went. Indeed, few acts gave him greater pleasure than making presentations of medals and decorations and of expensive miniatures, snuff-boxes, photographs in silver frames and gold cigarette-cases without regard to their value which, in any case, he never really appreciated. Frederick Ponsonby had scarcely ever known the King so angry as when all that could be found to present to an important member of the French Jockey Club, who had made arrangements for him to be conducted over some model racing stables near Paris, was a relatively inferior plain silver cigarette-case. Ponsonby deemed this inadequate as so many much more expensive presents had been handed out during the visit, and he had the temerity to send a message to the King pointing this out. Soon afterwards the King appeared before Ponsonby in a state of suppressed fury. Having put his hat, glove and stick slowly and deliberately on the table, he asked in a menacingly quiet voice, ‘Did you send a message that the cigarette-case I had chosen was not good enough?’ On Ponsonby’s admission that this was so, the King burst forth in a deafening ‘flood of oratory’ that shook the whole hotel and reduced Ponsonby ‘to a state of speechless terror’. Regaining the use of his tongue, Ponsonby pleaded that as such beautiful presents were usually given to his Majesty’s friends, it seemed ‘a pity that he should give such a cheap thing to du Bois, who would no doubt show it to everyone in Paris’. This raised a fresh storm, and Ponsonby began to think that the King might have a fit. Eventually, however, he picked up his hat, stick and gloves and left the room, slamming the door. Ponsonby commented: