Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

Since then, however, the former happy relationship between the King and the French Republic — clouded first by the Fashoda crisis and then by the vociferous pro-Boer sympathies of the French people and press — had been further overcast by his decision not to make his annual visit to France in 1900 as a protest against the savage ridicule of the royal family by Anglophobic journalists and caricaturists. He had also declined to attend the opening of the International Exhibition in Paris that year; and when Lord Salisbury pressed him to do so in the interests of Anglo– French relations, he had produced an exceptionally scurrilous article in La Patrie and had reiterated his determination to make his displeasure known by his absence. The following year he had been even more exasperated by caricatures in Le Rire.

But by 1903 the King had decided that the time had come to make the quarrel up. Feeling against England was still quite strong, as he knew only too well. A special number of the weekly paper L’Assiette au Beurre — devoted to British concentration camps in South Africa and concluding with a rude drawing of Britannia, ‘L’Impudique Albion’, lifting her skirts to reveal buttocks imprinted with the unmistakable features of King Edward VII — sold more than a quarter of a million copies. And several nationalist journals, notably Libre Parole, La Patrie and L’Autorité, maintained an uncompromisingly anti-British tone in every issue. Yet he believed that he must now make an official visit in an effort to bring about the détente which both governments desired, hoping that his personal popularity amongst most people in Paris would help them to regard his country in a more friendly way.

His reception, as he drove from the Porte Dauphine railway station in the Bois de Boulogne down the Champs Elysées, was not altogether encouraging. Most of the crowd watched in silence. A few hats were raised. There was a little scattered cheering — more, however, for the President than the King. But the loudest shouts — fortunately directed at the King’s suite, particularly at Frederick Ponsonby, who was wearing a red military coat, rather than at the King himself — were ‘Vive Fashoda!’

‘Vivent les Boers!’ and ‘Vive Jeanne d’Arc!’ Once or twice a voice shouted quite a long sentence which the English visitors could not catch but which was greeted by loud laughter from the crowd.

‘The French don’t like us,’ one of the King’s suite remarked; and the King curtly observed, ‘Why should they?’ He seemed in excellent spirits, though, glancing to right and left, acknowledging the infrequent acclamations with a smile and polite nod of the head, sitting straight-backed as the carriage rolled by.

After paying a state visit to the President at the Elysée, he drove to the British Embassy where, in reply to an address presented to him by the British Chamber of Commerce, he made a highly effective speech which had been prepared for him by Hardinge. Dinner at the Embassy was followed by a performance of Maurice Donnay’s L’Autre Danger at the Théâtre Français where the audience seemed rather nervous and reserved. Displaying not the least affront at his unenthusiastic reception, he left the loge during the entr’acte, to the evident consternation of the police, and walked about with the rest of the audience as though he felt as much at home as he would have done at Drury Lane, proudly wearing the Grand Cordon of the Légion d’Honneur on his starched shirt front. Noticing the actress Jeanne Granier, he walked up to greet her, kissing her hand and carefully enunciating in French, in a voice loud enough for others to hear, the so often quoted words, ‘Ah, Mademoiselle, I remember how I applauded you in London where you represented all the grace, all the esprit of France.’

The next morning that remark was repeated everywhere in Paris as the people read reports in the newspapers of the King’s speech at the British Embassy in which he had referred to his great pleasure at being once more ‘in this beautiful city’ and to the friendship and admiration which he and his countrymen felt ‘for the French nation and their glorious traditions’.

Willing to respond to these sincere overtures, the Parisians greeted him more warmly as he drove out that morning to a military review held in his honour at Vincennes, where, to the crowd’s obvious delight, he simulated the greatest relief and surprise when six cavalry regiments, charging headlong towards his stand with sabres and lances flashing in the air, came to a sudden halt beneath him. He turned round to the President to give him a hearty handshake.

The more extreme nationalists still shouted patriotic slogans and rude remarks; but, as the British Ambassador said, it was easy to perceive that there was in general ‘a marked increase in cordiality’. Although there was little obvious enthusiasm on the road to Vincennes, which took the King through the poorer quarters of Paris, there were far fewer catcalls than there had been the day before. And it gave the people evident satisfaction to see how gravely and conscientiously the King raised his hand in salute to the flags that lined the route of the procession. At the Hôtel de Ville — where the crowds cheered as the royal standard was unfurled on the flag-staff — the King once more assured his hosts in his clear and confident French that it was always with the greatest pleasure that he returned to Paris — ‘o? je me trouve toujours comme si j’étais chez moi’.

As he sat down he received ‘a tremendous ovation’, according to Frederick Ponsonby, who had described the atmosphere the day before as having been ‘distinctly antagonistic’. ‘He now seemed to have captured Paris by storm. From that moment everything was changed wherever he went. Not only the King but all of the suite were received with loud and repeated cheering. It was a most marvellous transformation.’ As the British Ambassador confirmed a few days later, the visit had proved a success ‘more complete than the most sanguine optimist could have foreseen’. ‘Seldom has such a complete change of attitude been seen,’ the Belgian Minister in Paris thought, ‘as that which has taken place in this country … towards England and her Sovereign.’

That evening, on his way from a state banquet at the Elysée to the Opéra, the King was made to feel that all restraint had been abandoned and all reservations overcome. He seemed now to have entirely won the people over. Cheering crowds blocked the path of his carriage, shouting ‘Vive Edouard!’ ‘Notre bon Edouard!’ ‘Vive notre roi!’ These shouts were repeated whenever he thereafter appeared; and on 4 May as the King left the Embassy for the Gare des Invalides where the royal train was waiting to take him to Cherbourg, the crowds’ parting ovation was described in Paris newspapers as being ‘délirant’, ‘fer vent’, ‘passionnant’, ‘excitant’.

He had spoken of strengthening the bonds of friendship between the two countries, and of their mutual desire to ‘march together in the path of civilization and peace’. And certainly most Frenchmen — supposing the King’s powers to be far greater than they were — believed that whither he wished to march, Englishmen would follow and that he himself was wholeheartedly committed to bringing about a lasting friendship with their country.

In England, however, public opinion still regarded the entente with France suspiciously; and it was to be many years yet before that suspicion, which was never completely to disappear, began at last to dissolve. There could be no doubt, though, that King Edward’s charm and personality helped to hasten its dissolution and to make the entente cordiale a reality.

His reputation as the sole originator of the entente is undeserved. It ignores the patient work of Lord Lansdowne (who had a French grandmother), Paul Cambon, French Ambassador in London, and Théophile Delcassé, who told a friend on taking office in 1898, ‘I do not wish to leave this desk without having restored the good understanding with England.’ It also ignores England’s need to end her isolation from the continental powers and to overcome her colonial difficulties, particularly in Africa. But as Sir Sidney Lee said, ‘the credit for influencing public opinion not only in France but also in England in favour of the entente, the credit for lulling the French suspicions of perfidy Albion and English suspicions of France, the credit for creating an atmosphere in which agreement could be reached, must go to Edward VII.’