Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

The night before this attack he had gone to sleep at the opera where, at the Kaiser’s command, a spectacularly realistic performance of the last act of Sardanapalus had filled the stage with fire and smoke. The King had woken up with a start. Thinking the whole theatre was in flames, he had demanded to know where the firemen were; and, much to his nephew’s amusement, had with difficulty been reassured by the Empress Augusta.

For months now he had been looking tired and worn. Some days he coughed almost incessantly; he often complained of a sore throat; and he suffered from increasingly severe attacks of bronchitis which left him weak, lethargic and depressed. Yet he could not be persuaded to stop smoking those cigars which, when not in his mouth, were gripped between fat fingers resting on an ample thigh, and seemed almost as essential a part of his physical presence as his hooded eyes and whitening beard. His doctors warned him of their effect on his lungs; but, while he listened grumpily to their advice when he was ill, he did not always take it and refused to obey their orders when he felt well again. ‘I really never can please you!’ he once protested to Sir Felix Semon, who had advised him not to climb up hills at such a speed when deer-stalking in Scotland. ‘First you torment me with your eternal warnings that I ought to take exercise, and now, when I do it, you scold me because I am overdoing it.’

As a younger man neither his excessive smoking nor his gargantuan appetite seemed to have affected his health unduly. His energy and zest for life had always been legendary. Rarely had he seemed tired. Once, after a particularly demanding week, he had been noticed by Charles Dilke at a requiem Mass for the Tsar Alexander II falling asleep standing up, his taper gradually tipping over and guttering on the floor. But normally he could stand a succession of late nights without showing the least exhaustion or abandoning his lifelong habit of early rising.

He had only once been seriously ill since contracting typhoid fever in 1871. A painful attack of phlebitis in 1889 had subsided without complications; a fall downstairs at Waddesdon Manor in 1898 had resulted in nothing worse than a fractured knee-cap and a few weeks spent impatiently in bed. He had never been much troubled by his teeth: his dentist, called to Sandringham, had pulled one out after luncheon one afternoon in 1909, but the King had come down to dinner as usual and, on being asked if he had had gas, had replied, ‘Oh dear no! I can bear pain.’

In the summer of 1902 however, shortly before the day fixed for his coronation, his doctors had been gravely concerned by a sudden deterioration in his condition. A severe chill had been followed by loss of appetite, then by eating even more food than usual and, for the first time in his life, drinking rather too much. He had become excessively irritable and edgy; and despite the extra work and activity which had been imposed upon him on succeeding to the throne and by the imminence of his coronation, he had put on so much weight that his waist measurement was found to be no less than forty-eight inches. He began to fall asleep in the evenings and even during meals. A violent pain developed in his lower abdomen.

Sir Francis Laking diagnosed appendicitis; but, rather than risk the major operation that this then entailed, he advised the King to stay in bed on a milk diet. In any case, the King, unaware of the gravity of his illness, was determined that the coronation must in no circumstances be postponed. He declared that he would be in Westminster Abbey with the Queen on 26 June even if he were to drop dead during the service: the hotels were already full of guests; crown princes and grand dukes had arrived from all over the world. It was given out that his Majesty was suffering from lumbago.

Even after the development of peritonitis, the King would not give way, continuing to work as hard as ever, insisting on attending to the most trivial details, worrying and fretting about every difficulty, even consulting a gypsy woman who much alarmed him by telling him that he would never be crowned and that her own imminent death — which, indeed, took place within a week — would very soon be followed by his own. Sir Francis Laking and Sir Thomas Barlow both warned him that an operation was essential; otherwise he might well die. The surgeon, Sir Frederick Treves, was ready to operate, they told him, and a room had been prepared at Buckingham Palace. Disregarding their urgent warnings, the King continued to insist that he could not disappoint everyone at the last moment like this: the coronation must proceed as planned. ‘Laking, I will stand no more of this,’ he burst out finally. ‘I am suffering the most awful mental agony that any man can endure. Leave the room at once.’

Laking signalled to Barlow to leave; but he himself remained, begging the King to understand that obedience to his commands was out of the question. An operation must be performed immediately. The coronation could not possibly take place. Laking would not leave the room until the King agreed to see Treves. So the King at last gave way. At noon the next day he walked in his ancient dressing-gown to the operating table where he was given an anaesthetic. Queen Alexandra helped to hold him down as he struggled and threw his arms about, growing black in the face. When he was unconscious Treves waited for the Queen to leave the room, not liking, as he subsequently admitted, to take off his coat, tuck up his sleeves ‘and put on an apron while the Queen was present’. Finally she had to be asked to leave, and the operation for perityphlitis began.

It was completed forty minutes later. As the effects of the chloroform wore off, the King opened his eyes and asked, ‘Where’s George?’

The Prince of Wales saw his father the following morning when the doctors and nurses announced that they had never seen ‘such a wonderful man’. He was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar. And he greeted his son cheerfully and with great affection. The frequent visits of the Queen were not so agreeable to him, as he had to talk so loudly to make her hear. Eventually he took to pretending to be asleep when he heard her coming. He made a rapid recovery, though, for which he warmly thanked Laking and Treves, both of whom he created baronets. In July, on boarding the Victoria and Albert at Portsmouth, Prince George found him eager to embark on a convalescent cruise, ‘lying on deck and looking so well and delighted with the change’.

The King had returned invigorated from that cruise. But now that he was in his late sixties, he was increasingly prone to listlessness and to periods of the utmost depression when his problems and worries seemed insupportable. He talked even of abdication. He began to dread old age and loneliness; his bronchial trouble was chronic; his voice more gruff than ever; his digestion no longer so reliable; his bouts of lassitude alternated with spells of agitated restlessness; while his sudden violent rages were more frequent and alarming and less quickly overcome. When, for example, his visit to Russia was criticized in the House of Commons, and James Keir Hardie, the leader of the Labour Party, said that the visit was tantamount to condoning Tsarist atrocities, the King was furious. He refused to allow Keir Hardie, and another socialist who had attacked the Russian visit, to be invited to attend a garden party given at Windsor Castle for all Members of Parliament. And although he let it be known that they would be invited to future garden parties, he refused to have on any list of guests the name of Frederick Ponsonby’s brother, Arthur — Liberal Member for Stirling and one of fifty-nine Members who had voted against the government’s authorization of the visit — on the grounds that a son of a man who had been secretary to Queen Victoria ought to have known better.