Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

Lord Edmund Talbot was bitterly disappointed when shown a copy of this telegram which, in his opinion, did not give the King ‘any lead’ at all. ‘The whole thing has been deplorably bungled,’ he told Sandars. ‘I have still faith in the King’s good taste to extricate himself from this extremely painful position … [But] I wish the Prime Minister had found it possible to give His Majesty a helping hand.’

Entirely convinced by the arguments put forward by the Duke of Norfolk and Lord Edmund Talbot, and annoyed by the government’s equivocation, the King gave orders for another telegram to be sent requesting less ambiguous advice. Both Balfour and Lansdowne were accordingly informed that the King felt ‘very strongly on the subject’, that he attached ‘great importance to the question’, that on his three previous visits to Rome as Prince of Wales he had invariably visited the Pope, and that not to do so ‘on this occasion would not only be a slight to a venerable Pontiff but would alienate all the King’s Catholic subjects throughout the world. The King deeply [regretted this divergence of his opinion with the Cabinet], but would like to hear from [the Prime Minister] again on the subject.’

This elicited a reply from Balfour again expressing fears that ‘Protestant prejudice might fasten on the visit’ and make trouble in England; and a complementary message from Barrington to Hardinge confirming that Lansdowne nevertheless wanted the visit to be made. ‘The Cabinet dare not recommend the King to go,’ Barrington explained.

‘But evidently A.J.B[alfour] wished the King in such a matter to passer outre of his advisers.’

The King now lost his temper. Demanding straightforward advice he dictated an enraged telegram to Hardinge, who passed it on to Frederick Ponsonby for coding and dispatch. Ponsonby read it with consternation, feeling ‘instinctively that if this message was sent there would be no alternative for Arthur Balfour but to send in his resignation’. Ponsonby, therefore, rewrote the message ‘in conciliatory language’; and at last the King received the sort of reply from the Prime Minister for which he had been hoping:

If the proposed visit could really be made private and unofficial, Mr Balfour would think it an impertinence to offer any observations on it … The whole stress could be laid on the fact that … the Pope was very aged and in course of nature could live but a short time, that he had expressed a personal desire to see your Majesty and that as a matter of courtesy (so to speak) between gentlemen, you could not pass his door without acceding to his wishes.

The King readily accepted this advice, but great difficulty was experienced in persuading the Vatican to intimate that the Pope would like to see him. Cardinal Rampolla, the Papal Secretary of State, intent upon making it appear that the King had requested an audience, assured Monsignor Edmund Stonor, titular Archbishop of Trebizond and a resident English prelate in Rome, that ‘the Holy Father, in consequence of his well-known present position in Rome, could not take the initiative in inviting a sovereign to pay him a visit, but should the King of England wish to do him the courteous attention of calling upon him, this would be acceptable and duly appreciated.’

But the King felt that he could not go to the Vatican unless he was actually invited to go; and any such invitation, Cardinal Rampolla continued to insist to Monsignor Stonor, could not possibly be issued. Faced with this impasse, the Duke of Norfolk decided to intervene personally. He did not trust Monsignor Stonor, considering him ‘stupid and a bungler’, so Francis Bertie told Sandars, and suspecting that he was playing along with Rampolla in the hope of ‘getting his reward’. Under pressure from Norfolk the more reliable Monsignor Merry del Val, the President of the Accademia, who had been to school in England, went to see the Pope personally and, to Cardinal Rampolla’s anger, returned from the Vatican with an acceptable message: ‘His Holiness has personally expressed his concurrence with what the Duke of Norfolk conveyed to His Majesty as to the pleasure which His Holiness would derive from a visit from His Majesty.’

No sooner had the seemingly intractable problem of the invitation been settled, however, than other problems arose. First of all, the Vatican wanted to know, where would the visit be made from? The Pope could not possibly receive the King if he left from the Quirinale, since relations between the Papacy and the Monarchy had been severely strained by the Pope’s loss of his patrimony as a consequence of the unification of Italy. Sir Francis Bertie went to consult King Victor Emmanuel on this point. The Italian King was agreeable and accommodating. He told Bertie that he thought that a visit to the Pope was ‘quite natural and that though it could not be made direct from the Quirinale, there were ways of satisfying the Pope’s susceptibilities’. He cheerfully suggested that King Edward might start his journey from the house of the Minister whom his nephew, the Kaiser, had accredited to the Pope. Bertie, so he reported, ‘treated this suggestion as intended as a joke’.

Meanwhile it seemed to Mr Balfour, so yet another message from London informed the King, ‘that if the Pope lays down from what palaces he will, and from what palaces he will not receive a direct visit from your Majesty, he has not much real ground of complaint if he is not visited at all’. Ignoring this comment, the King decided to make his visit from the British Embassy, and Hardinge was sent to discuss the final arrangements with Cardinal Rampolla. It was not a comfortable interview.

Cardinal Rampolla received me in a most gushing manner [Hardinge reported to Balfour]. His appearance did not impress me. He has a deceitful eye and does not look one straight in the face. He speaks Italian French. He asked if the King would come and call on him and whether he might return the visit to the King at the English College. I told him quite plainly that much as the King would like to make his personal acquaintance there could be no question of his Majesty paying him a visit since the King only paid visits to sovereigns. He at once quoted the precedent of the German Emperor to which I replied that the King of England could not possibly admit that his actions could in any way be bound by precedents set by the German Emperor. I also added that there was no question of the King going to the English College as if he did so he would have to go to the Scotch and Irish Colleges … He then asked if the King would visit St Peter’s as he would like to receive him there … to which I replied that if H.M. went to St Peter’s it would be ‘en touriste’. He also asked if Monsignor Stonor would accompany the King from the Embassy to which I answered that the King proposed to take me in his carriage and that Stonor had better await the King at the Vatican … I impressed upon him that although the King would come in uniform as an act of courtesy to the Pope the visit was to be considered quite private and informal.

Sailing from Malta on 21 April 1903, the Victoria and Albert set course for Naples whence a telegram was dispatched to say that the King would arrive incognito, which seemed ‘rather absurd’ to Frederick Ponsonby since ‘no other human being in the world would come with eight battleships, four cruisers, four destroyers, and a dispatch vessel’.

On stepping ashore at Naples, the first English monarch to set foot there since Richard Coeur de Lion, the King immediately alarmed the Italian police, who had planned to close to the public the museums which he was to visit and to fill the galleries with detectives. He refused to have any police protection, and when two of his suite were asked to walk closely behind him at all times to guard him from the knives and bullets of assassins, he turned round in irritation and sent them off in different directions. He even insisted on exploring the slums of Naples with Queen Amélie of Portugal and Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, afterwards listening complacently to a lecture from Charles Hardinge ‘about exposing himself needlessly’.