Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

So, excessively agitated by fear of being compelled to preside over the destruction of the House of Lords, by talk of a referendum, and by the possibility of the government’s resignation, the King announced that he would remain at Biarritz until the end of the month.

On the evening before his departure, the town’s authorities arranged a noisy and affectionate farewell, with sailors and soldiers, as well as the fire brigade, marching about below his balcony while fireworks exploded in the sky and bands played appropriate tunes in the courtyard. ‘I shall be sorry to leave Biarritz,’ he said the next morning, sadly gazing out to sea; ‘perhaps it will be for ever.’

He returned to Buckingham Palace in the early evening of 27 April 1910, looking almost as exhausted as he had done before leaving for France. Yet he went to the opera that evening; received Asquith the next day; gave several other audiences on Friday before going to Covent Garden; and early on Saturday morning he left for Sandringham, having breakfast on the train. He arrived at Sandringham in time to walk round the garden with the agent and the head gardener before luncheon, looking at the alterations and the plantings which had been carried out in his absence. He was quieter than usual but seemed content; and in the evening, so Frederick Ponsonby said, ‘he told stories of amusing incidents of former years’. The next morning he went to church as usual, though he did not walk across the park with the others but drove in a cab. And in the afternoon, despite rain and a biting wind, he again walked round the garden before settling down to some routine work with Ponsonby in the room that Francis Knollys used as an office.

On Monday afternoon he returned to London. It had been pouring with rain in the morning and the fields were sodden. The King looked out of the window, talking little. That evening he went to have a quiet dinner with Agnes Keyser, and on his return to Buckingham Palace it was obvious that he was about to have another serious attack of bronchitis. Yet when Ponsonby saw him the next morning, ‘he seemed quite himself’, apart from the cough and lack of appetite. After failing to eat any dinner, ‘he smoked a huge cigar’, Ponsonby recorded. ‘Anything worse for a man with a cough I could not imagine, but curiously enough it seemed to soothe him … [Then] the King and I went into the Japanese Room where we remained silent. Presently in came Alice Keppel and Venetia James. We talked for a short time and then we played bridge, as he explained this prevented his talking.’

He had had ‘a wretched night’, he confessed the following morning, and could not eat any breakfast. Yet he insisted that he must carry on with all the audiences that had been arranged for him; and so he did, receiving his numerous visitors in his frock coat, which was de rigueur for such occasions, occasionally being seized, as he was when the American Ambassador called, with spasms of uncontrollable coughing.

On Thursday Ponsonby found him in his bedroom sitting at a writing table with a rug round his legs.

His face was grey and he appeared to be unable to sit upright and to be sunken. At first … he was like a man out of breath, but this gradually got better. He said he would sign what there was in the boxes, and I proceeded to open them and handed him documents for his signature … He seemed to like the work. Even the Foreign Office telegrams he read, but I kept back some documents that would have necessitated a discussion.

Ponsonby tried to leave more than once, but the King did not want to part with him:

I tried again to go, but he said in a gasping voice, ‘You managed so well at Biarritz. I hope everyone was thanked.’ I told him I had thanked them all. I said in as cheerful a voice as I could command that I hoped he would soon be better. He replied, ‘I feel wretchedly ill. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. They really must do something for me.’ I was to be relieved next day by Arthur Davidson, and the extraordinary thing was that, ill as he was, he remembered this. He turned to me and said, ‘In case I don’t see you again, goodbye.’ I shook him by the hand, but I do not think he meant anything more than what he usually said when I went out of waiting.

The King insisted on giving audiences as usual that day; and, as the well-informed Edward Marsh told Lady Gladstone, ‘he was to receive Jack P [John Dickson-Poynder] as Governor of New Zealand, and somebody else [Major T.B. Robinson] as Agent General for West Australia [actually Queensland]. Lord Sheffield’s mind set to work on these names and produced, “the Agent General for Newfoundland”.’ So when the Australian arrived the King made some comment about having been to his ‘interesting colony’.

The Agent General, who knew he had never been anywhere near Australia, looked bewildered. Hopwood [Permanent Under Secretary of State for the Colonies] saw what had happened and told the King who he really was. The poor King was so terribly upset at having made such a gaffe that he had a violent fit of coughing and turned quite black in the face — and this was really the beginning of the end. Jack P. said that when he got home he was sure he was a dying man.

The Queen had been sent for and, having left Corfu by way of Venice, she had arrived home that day. At Calais she had been handed a note from the Prince of Wales: ‘His cough troubles him very much and he has slept badly the last nights. I cannot disguise the fact that I am anxious about him … I know Laking is writing to you and I will say no more but thank God you are coming home tomorrow to look after him. God bless you, darling Motherdear.’

The Prince and Princess and their two eldest sons were waiting to meet her at Victoria Station. Concerned that he could not meet her himself, as he had always done in the past, the King made all the arrangements for her reception at Buckingham Palace, ordering that all the Household should be ready to meet the Queen in the Grand Entrance Hall. The Prince of Wales, however, had decided that it would be better if his mother arrived without any fuss and gave instructions for her to be driven round to the garden entrance. She was profoundly shocked to see the King looking so ill. Up till then she had comforted herself with the belief that this was just another bronchial attack from which he would soon recover. He tried to reassure her, telling her that he had reserved a box for her that evening at Covent Garden.

At eleven o’clock the next morning Sir Ernest Cassel came to see him, but he was told that the King was too ill to be disturbed. Half an hour later, however, at the King’s insistence, Cassel was summoned back to the Palace. He told his daughter:

I found the King dressed as usual, in his sitting room, rising from his chair to shake hands with me. He looked as if he had suffered great pain, and spoke indistinctly. His kindly smile came out as he congratulated me on having you brought home so much improved in health. He said, ‘I am very seedy, but I wanted to see you. Tell your daughter how glad I am that she has safely got home’ … He then talked about other matters.

He tried to smoke a cigar but could not enjoy it. A light luncheon was brought to his bedroom; and having tried to eat it, he got up and walked towards the window to look at his canaries, whose cage stood by the curtains. While playing with them he collapsed and fell to the floor. Nurses ran towards him and helped him to a chair while Princess Victoria sent for the Queen.

It was clear now that he was dying, suffering from a series of heart attacks. The doctors examined him and could do nothing for him but allay his pain with morphia. Without much success, they had already given him oxygen to inhale and hypodermic injections of strychnine, tyramine and ether. He still sat in his chair, refusing to be helped into bed, protesting weakly, ‘No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end.’