Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

On Sundays the King attended morning service at the Anglican church in the Jägerstrasse; and on the Emperor’s birthday, 18 August, wearing a splendid Austrian military uniform, he went to the thanksgiving service in the Roman Catholic church, after which, standing on the Weimar’s wide balcony in his green plumed hat with the ribbon of the Order of St Stephen on his chest, he took the salute of a parade of veterans. On the evening of that day he always gave a dinner, either in the banqueting hall of the Weimar or in the hall of the Kurhaus, for important local dignitaries, distinguished visitors to Marienbad and British residents in Vienna such as Henry Wickham Steed, The Times’s correspondent.

Almost every other evening there was some sort of party in the King’s hotel suite. This was sometimes a gay, relaxed gathering, at others, so one disgruntled guest complained, ‘a trying mixture of court restraint and jollity’, with the ‘dismal mysteries of bridge’ for those who played the game and ‘difficult conversation’ for those who did not. Occasionally the King went to the theatre to attend some light-hearted piece such as Oscar Strauss’s Walzertraum or Lehar’s The Merry Widow, or to listen to Yvette Guilbert, the diseuse whose performances he had much admired since an American friend, Mrs Ogden Goelet, had paid her £600 to break a contract in Paris in order to sing for him at Cannes. And once he went to what was billed as Die Hölle (‘The Underworld’) thinking it was a melodrama. It turned out to be a rather tiresome series of rude songs and recitations performed by a company from a Viennese musichall. When the second act threatened to be no better than the first the King got up and left, as he had left a much coarser performance by a Viennese cabaret singer — who sang a song about a monk who says to a lascivious countess, ‘Were it not for my holy robes’ and receives the reply, ‘Then take off your holy robes’ — which the King had thought disrespectful to the Abbot and monks of Tepl.

The day after he had walked out in boredom from Die Hölle the papers congratulated his Majesty on having made a stand against immorality by having refused to see an improper performance; and soon afterwards a letter arrived from England from William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon, expressing the satisfaction of the whole Church at the protest the King had made against obscene musical comedy. The King’s secretary wanted to know how to reply to this letter. ‘Tell the Bishop the exact truth,’ the King replied. ‘I have no wish to pose as a protector of morals, especially abroad.’

The King was certainly more used to being criticized for depraving morals at Marienbad than praised for protecting them. He was only too liable to pick up curious people and ask them to luncheon, Frederick Ponsonby admitted.

Monsieur and Madame de Varrue came one day. She had been a noted beauty in Paris, and had late in life married a young man who suddenly called himself Baron de Varrue … Mrs Dale Lace, with an eye glass, short skirts and a murky past, also came to luncheon and some of the were shocked, although she amused the King … Life at Marienbad was very hard work, as I spent so much time seeing people who were difficult to get rid of. For instance … a beautiful lady from the half-world in Vienna who wanted to have the honour of sleeping with the King. On being told this was out of the question, she said if it came to the worst she would sleep with me, so that she should not waste the money spent on her ticket.

‘A cloud of bluebottle flie constantly buzzed round the King,’ one British visitor complained in 1904. He was ‘recklessly abandoned to the society of a few semi-déclassé ladies and men to match’, though he was ‘civil enough to decent people’ and ‘followed the cure loyally’. In 1905 he was deemed to be ‘less evilly surrounded than in other years’ and the ‘doubtful ladies’ were ‘rather out of it’. But it was still well enough known that doubtful ladies continued to seek his company, that he was rarely averse to theirs, and that he found Marienbad a very convenient place in which to meet them. Sophie Hall Walker, whose husband, breeder of the King’s Derby winner, Minoru, became the first Lord Wavertree, was one of his favourite companions. And the daughter of Sir Charles Gill, another Marienbad habitué, remembered how in the afternoons she used to watch fascinated as Mrs Hall Walker’s hotel room was prepared for a teatime visit by the King, how flowers were placed in big vases, the air sprayed with scent and the curtains drawn.

The American actress, Maxine Elliott, who was not invited to dinner parties in London by those hostesses generally known to entertain the King, confessed that she went to Marienbad, ‘where matters could be more easily arranged’, with the sole purpose of getting to know him. Sailing out to Bohemia with a socially impeccable American woman friend, she took rooms in a hotel near the Weimar and soon learned the King’s routine. Thus it was that one fine morning, the delightful, beautifully dressed figure of Maxine Elliott was to be seen sitting on a bench near the Kurhaus, apparently absorbed in a book. The King approached, attended by Frederick Ponsonby, Sidney Greville and Seymour Fortescue; Miss Elliott raised her eyes from her book; the King glanced into them; the royal party walked past. Then one of the King’s attendants returned to the bench with a message: ‘His Majesty believes you are the Miss Elliott he admired so much in your play. His Majesty would be delighted with your presence tonight for dinner. Mrs Arthur James is giving a dinner in His Majesty’s honour. 7.45 at the Weimar Hotel. Your invitation will, of course, be delivered to your hotel.’ After a further visit to Marienbad in a subsequent year, during which she was seen frequently in the King’s company, Miss Elliott was sufficiently assured of his interest in her to buy a house in England, Hartsbourne Manor at Bushey Heath, where she spent a great deal of money on a suite of rooms above her own which she referred to as ‘the King’s suite’.

Every second day a bag of royal mail arrived from England together with a generous selection of English newspapers which the King read carefully, looking also through various French newspapers and the Vienna Neue Freie Presse so that when one of his ministers joined him at Marienbad he was found to be well informed of what was happening elsewhere.

Frequently in his company was Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who, mainly for the sake of his wife, Charlotte, had been a regular visitor to the spa for many years. Campbell-Bannerman had disapproved of the King before he got to know him well, just as the King had supposed that he would have little in common with Sir Henry, whom he had expected to find ‘prosy and heavy’. At first the King had taken little notice of him; but one day he asked him to luncheon and found him, contrary to all his expectations, very good company with a fund of amusing stories, ‘repartees, jokes and gastronomic appreciations’. Thereafter the King sought him out and spent many pleasant hours with him — too many hours, in fact, for the taste of Campbell-Bannerman, who, having been asked to lunch or dinner almost every day in September 1905, complained, ‘I got so mixed up with the King’s incessant gaieties, for which his energy and appetite are alike insatiable, that it was no rest or holiday for me. Thus when at last he was gone … my Dr ordered me to bed and absolute rest for forty-eight hours.’

Sometimes the King talked politics to him, but more often the conversation was on less weighty subjects. A picture of them both talking earnestly in the gardens of the Kurhaus appeared in an illustrated paper. The King was shown striking his palm with a clenched fist in emphasis of some point to which Campbell-Bannerman was paying close attention. Underneath the picture was the caption, ‘Is it peace or war?’ When Campbell-Bannerman’s private secretary showed him the paper, his master examined it for a few moments before asking the secretary if he would like to know what was being discussed. The secretary said that he would. ‘The King wanted to have my opinion,’ Campbell-Bannerman informed him, ‘whether halibut is better baked or boiled!’