Edward VII: The Last Victorian King Read online

  Christopher Hibbert

  Edward VII: The Last Victorian King

  For Henry and Angela

  Foreword

  Christopher Hibbert is one of the last of that generation of war heroes of the 1940s. He gained a Military Cross (MC) in Italy and then, after a false start as an estate agent, has devoted his life to the reconstruction of the past by a series of splendid works. The Destruction of Lord Raglan in 1961 marked the beginning of my own appreciation of his works. He has written principally of English history but not exclusively so. I have never met Mr. Hibbert but I know that he lies in Henley-on-Thames, and I imagine his enviable riverine but book-lined house in that elegant country town, within easy reach of great libraries in Oxford and London.

  Mr. Hibbert’s life of Edward VII is a triumph of biography. The main lines of Edward’s life are elegantly chronicled and, though Mr. Hibbert has a wonderful eye for stories, he never intrudes these irrelevantly on us, but makes them illustrate some characteristic of his subject’s life.

  Edward — ‘Bertie’ to his family — had his weaknesses. He was excessively concerned with the niceties of correct dress. He was obsessed by punctuality. He had a bad temper. He read few books and so was disliked by the great writers of his age: James, Kipling, Beerbohm thought him gross. He was superstitious, usually a bad substitute for religion.

  But he loved dogs: always a good sign. He had a great sense of humour provided it was not he who was being laughed at. He loved Indians, Jews, and children. He was loyal to his friends. He was not snobbish. His memory for people was remarkable. He travelled a great deal, in three continents, and was as great a public success in the United States as he was in India though his great love was France where he was completely at home. Mr Hibbert’s description of Edward in Marienbad is a brilliant little essay. So is what he writes of the construction of the Entente Cordiale, one of the most important friendships in European history.

  Edward spoke well without notes: another sign of quality. His French and German were excellent. He loved racing and the mixed society which he met on ‘the glorious uncertainty of the turf.’ His instincts were usually to be tolerant of mistakes. He was tactful. He often complained about the policies of his governments but, as a constitutional monarch, put up with them. Though never on good terms with his mother Queen Victoria, and treated strictly by his German father the Prince Consort, Edward was a friendly parent to King George V. Indeed the latter said a fascinating monarch but of an age just before the suicide of European civilisation in 1914.

  Hugh Thomas

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgements

  A new study of King Edward VII seems to demand some apology, not to say warning. When I first began to write it the King was not such a wellknown figure as he has since become. But a popular television series and several recent biographies have combined to ensure that the outlines of the story contained in the following pages will already be familiar to many of their readers. I have, however, not been detected from my original purpose, which was to present a fresh study of Edward VII based on as much new material as I was able to assemble, and to add as many unknown or little-known details to the portrait of the man whose career has been so conscientiously chronicled by Sir Sidney Lee and so ably described by Sir Philip Magnus. I have covered again some welltrodden fields; but even those readers who know them well will, I hope, be rewarded by discovering some clumps of hitherto disregarded clover amidst the familiar grass.

  I wish to thank her Majesty the Queen for gracious permission to reproduce material from the photograph collections in the Royal Archives.

  For allowing me to consult their family papers and other unpublished material I am most grateful to the Duke of Devonshire and the Trustees of the Chatsworth Settlement, the Duke of Richmond and Gordon, the Duke of Northumberland, the Duke of Wellington, the Duke of Westminster, the Marquess of Salisbury, the Earl of Clarendon, the Earl of Rosebery, Viscount Downe, Lord Carrington, Lord Armstrong, Sir William Gordon Cumming and Brigadier Llewellen Palmer.

  For helping me with the relevant papers I want to thank Mr T.S. Wragg, the Duke of Devonshire’s librarian; Mr D. Legg-Willis, House Manager at Goodwood, and Mrs Patricia Gill, West Sussex County Archivist; Mr D.P. Graham and the staff of the Northumberland Estates Office; Miss Joan Wilson, the Duke of Wellington’s librarian; Mr G. Acloque of the Grosvenor Estate Office; Dr J.F.A. Mason, Librarian of Christ Church, Oxford, who had charge of the Salisbury Papers; the Keeper of Western Manuscripts and his staff at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in whose care are the Clarendon Papers and photocopies of the Lincolnshire Papers; Mr Patrick Cadell of the Department of Manuscripts, National Library of Scotland, where the Rosebery and Gordon Cumming Papers have been deposited, and Mr M.Y. Ashcroft of the County Record Office, Northallerton, in whose care are the Downe Papers.

  Papers at Aylesbury; the Gibbs Papers at Oxford; and the Wharncliffe Correspondence at Sheffield.

  I would, accordingly, like to express my thanks for their help to Mr J. Keith-Bishop and the staff of the Durham County Record Office; Mr J.E. Fagg and Dr J.M. Fewster of the Department of Palaeography and Diplomatic, University of Durham; Dr F. Hull, the Kent County Archivist; Mr A.E.B. Owen, Under-librarian at Cambridge University Library; Miss L.E. Thomas, Assistant Archivist at the County Record Office, Huntingdon; Mr J.M. Farrar, the Cambridgeshire County Archivist; Mr W.R. Serjeant, of the Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office; Mr E.J. Davis, Buckingham County Archivist; Miss S.J. Barnes of the Oxfordshire Record Office; and Mr John Bibbington of the Sheffield City Libraries.

  I have also to acknowledge the generous help of Messrs Holden, Scott & Co. and Messrs Rollit, Farrel & Bladen, solicitors of Hull; Mr E.A. Bellamy, Librarian at the National Motor Museum, Beaulieu; Miss Màiri Macdonald of the Harrowby Manuscripts Trust; Mr Hugh H. Cundey of Messrs Henry Poole & Co. (Savile Row) Ltd; Mrs Mollie Travis, Archivist at Broadlands; Dr Frank Taylor of the John Rylands Library, Manchester; Mrs J. Percival, Archivist at University College, London; Mr J.M. Collinson of the Leeds City Libraries; and the County Archivists and their staffs at Newcastle upon Tyne, Carlisle, Beverley, Barnsley, Winchester, Chester, Warwick, Taunton, Norwich, Lincoln, Guildford, Gloucester, Reading, Hertford and Northampton. I am further grateful to Mr E.J. Priestley, Assistant Keeper of the Merseyside County Museums, Liverpool.

  I would also like to thank the Hon. Georgina Stonor; Earl of Crawford and Balcarres; Lord Barnard; Lord Montagu; Lord Hastings; Lady Hamilton; Sir Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce; Captain Gordon Fergusson; Lord Hardinge of Penshurst; Mr E.H. Cornelius, Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons of England; Sir Robin Mackworth-Young, the Queen’s Librarian; the Librarian of New Scotland Yard; Mr C.H. Graves of Messrs Davies & Son; Mr Philip Howard; Mr David Higham; Dr A.J. Salmon; Miss Elaine Mallett of the Lord Chamberlain’s Office; Mr F.G. Lintott of Messrs H. Huntsman & Sons Ltd; Mrs Lucy Pinney; and Miss Frances Dimond, Assistant Registrar, the Royal Archives.

  I am most grateful also to Mrs Stewart Ryan for reading newspapers for me in the Newspaper Library at Colindale, and to Mrs Joan St George Saunders for working for me in the British Museum, the Public Record Office and the House of Lords Record Office.

  The Chef du Cabinet du Prefet de Police in Paris kindly made arrangements for me to see the police dossiers on the King’s movements and activities when he was in France; and I am much indebted to Mme Jeanne Harburger of the Bureau des Archives at the Prefecture de Police for her help when I was in Paris.

  For their help in a variety of ways I am also deeply indebted to Mr Godfrey Whitelock, Mr R.H. Owen, Mrs John Rae and Mrs Maurice Hill.

  Finally I want to say how gratef
ul I am to Mr George Walker and Mr Hamish Francis for having read the proofs and to my wife for having compiled the detailed index.

  The text is not documented in the usual way; but the reader curious to discover the source of any previously unpublished material will be able to find it in the notes at the back of the book.

  C.H.

  PART ONE

  PRINCE OF WALES 1841–1901

  1

  ‘Poor Bertie’

  In many things savages are much better educated than we are.

  Within a few months of the birth of her first child, Queen Victoria discovered herself to be pregnant again. And by the early autumn of 1841 she was feeling thoroughly out of sorts. It was not only that she was often sick and nearly always depressed, that she viewed the prospect of another delivery with both trepidation and distaste; she had had to say good-bye to her beloved Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, a parting that had distressed her deeply, and there now seemed a danger that she might lose the Princess Royal, too. For ‘Pussy’, so fat and healthy a baby at first, was becoming thin and pale, fretful and peevish. The Queen shut her mind to the fear that there was any real danger; but the weakness of the child fussed and worried her much. She felt ‘very wretched … low and depressed’.

  On more than one occasion in October there had been a sudden fear that the birth of her second baby might be premature, so that when the pains returned on 8 November, the Queen thought at first that this was another ‘false alarm’. The new Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, was coming to dinner the following evening and she decided not to put him off. The next day, however, there could be no further doubt. ‘My sufferings were really very severe,’ the Queen later recorded. ‘And I don’t know what I should have done, but for the great comfort and support my beloved Albert was to me during the whole time. At last at twelve m[inutes] to eleven, I gave birth to a fine large Boy … It was taken to the Ministers for them to see.’

  The ministers were delighted to see so obviously robust a baby, and so was the country at large. No heir had been born to a reigning monarch since the appearance of George III’s first child, almost eighty years before; and this new birth led royalists to hope that the monarchy, which the young Queen was once more making respectable and popular, was secure from a decline into its recent disrepute. Salutes were fired, crowds gathered in the streets to cheer and sing ‘God Save the Queen’, and the Prime Minister made reference to the nation’s enthusiasm in a speech at the Guildhall, which was decorated for the occasion with illuminated letters spelling ‘God save the Prince of Wales’. The Times described the ‘one universal feeling of joy which ran throughout the kingdom’. ‘What a joy!’ wrote the boy’s grandmother, the Duchess of Kent, expressing a common opinion. ‘Oh God, what a happiness, what a blessing!’

  Nowhere was his arrival more welcome than in the palace nursery, for he was not the least trouble. Healthy, fair and fat, ‘a wonderfully large and strong child’, he smiled readily, digested his food without trouble, and made those gurgling, crowing noises so pleasing to the ears of nursemaids. His mother was very pleased with the look of him, with his ‘very large dark blue eyes’, his ‘finely formed but somewhat large nose’

  and his ‘pretty little mouth’.

  ‘What a pretty boy!’ the people called out when they saw him being taken to be inspected by the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle.

  ‘Bless his little face! … Show him! Turn him this way! … How like his father!’

  To his mother, indeed, the resemblance to his father was his principal virtue. And when, on 25 January, he was baptized in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, honoured with a christening cake eight feet wide, and given the names Albert Edward, the Queen decided that the best thing about ‘the Boy’ was that he now had his dear father’s name. She had refused to heed Lord Melbourne’s advice that Edward, ‘a good English appellation’, might precede Albert, ‘which had not been so common nor so much in use since the Conquest’. The child was ‘to be called Albert and Edward [was] to be his second name’ — and that was that. But the name was far from enough: he must be made to resemble his father in every way; any tendency to infantile vice must be rigorously suppressed; any hints that he might, if left unchecked, grow up like his mother’s wicked uncles must be carefully watched so that the necessary steps could be taken to counter so appalling, so calamitous a development. ‘You will understand how fervent are my prayers, and I am sure everybody’s must be, to see him resemble his father in every, every respect, both in body and mind,’ the Queen wrote to her Uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians; ‘I hope and pray he may be like his dearest papa.’ The nursery in which ‘the Boy’s’ growth was so anxiously observed was under the supervision of Mrs Southey, a worthy, old-fashioned fogey who declined to make any concessions to modern ideas and still wore a wig. But while Mrs Southey, who had been recommended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, had been considered adequate enough when there was but one child to look after, she was not a suitable person to deal with the added responsibility of two. She went out too often, leaving her charges in the care of underlings inclined to squabble. She was not sufficiently firm or vigilant enough to ensure that the strict rules of the nursery were observed: that the two children must never be left alone for an instant; that no unauthorized person must ever be admitted to see them; that there must not be the slightest variation in the daily routine without prior consultation with the parents. It was felt that a lady of high birth would be better suited to superintend the nursery, to control the tantrums of the Princess Royal and to report intelligently upon the development of the Prince of Wales. And so, after consultation with various advisers, this most important post was offered to Lady Lyttelton, eldest daughter of the second Earl Spencer and widow of the third Baron Lyttelton.

  The choice was a fortunate one. Lady Lyttelton was a gifted woman, understanding, good-natured and sensible. ‘Princessy’, as she called her elder charge, did not take to her at first, screaming with ‘unconquerable horror’ when she arrived; and thereafter, though bawling less, treating her new governess with a kind of irritable reserve which was finally overcome by Lady Lyttelton’s patience and tact. With the Prince of Wales, who appeared to like her from the beginning, Lady Lyttelton had no such problems. He continued to flourish, remaining constantly in ‘crowing spirits’ and in the best and calmest of tempers. He looked people full in the face through his ‘large clear blue eyes’.

  This early stage of placid equanimity did not, however, last long. As his sister grew stronger in health and less fractious in temper, she was also recognized to be extremely sharp and quick-witted. Precociously forward, active, animated, ‘running about and talking a great deal’, she was, at the same time, ‘all gracefulness and prettiness’, in the opinion of Lady Lyttelton; and in that of her mother’s half-sister, Princess Feodora, an ‘irresistible … treasure … a darling child’. The Prince of Wales, on the contrary, was becoming increasingly difficult. At the age of two he was considered to be ‘as forward as the majority of children of his age’, if ‘no more’; but the next year — although ‘very handsome’ and ‘most exemplary in politeness and manner’, ‘bowing and offering his hand beautifully, besides saluting ? la militaire — all unbidden’ — he was considered ‘very small in every way … not articulate like his sister, but rather boyish in accent [and] altogether backward in language’. Two years later Lady Lyttelton had cause to complain of his being ‘uncommonly averse to learning’ and requiring ‘much patience from wilful inattention and constant interruptions, getting under the table, upsetting the books and sundry other anti-studious practices’. By the age of five he was causing the ‘greatest distress’ to his French governess, Mlle Hollande.

  His father neither now nor later troubled to conceal the fact that Victoria, the Princess Royal, was his favourite child. When he came into the nursery his eye alighted upon her with pleasure. He loved to play bricks with her and to put her on his knee while he played the org
an; but in the contemplation of his son his countenance became troubled and apprehensive. The Queen also seemed to prefer her daughter to her son and spent far more time with her, always helping her with her Sunday lesson which the little boy was left to do on his own. One day he asked her ‘to do his little Sunday lesson with him sometimes’; and the Queen admitted to having been ‘much touched’ by this, as though she had previously been quite unaware of his need of her attention.

  He began to stammer; and his sister teased him for it, imitating him, driving him to fury. One afternoon they had ‘a tremendous fight’ when brought down to their parents’ room; so the next day they were brought down separately but, the one being taken into the room before the other had been led away, they fell to quarrelling again.

  It was worse when other children were born; and when they, too, proved to be brighter than the Prince of Wales, who was now known as ‘Bertie’ rather than ‘the Boy’. Princess Alice was born in 1843, Prince Alfred the following year, Princess Helena in 1846. And Bertie — still a pretty boy ‘but delicate looking’ in Lord Macaulay’s opinion — found it quite impossible to maintain the intellectual lead he ought to have had over them. By the time he was six he had already been overtaken by Princess Alice, who was not only more than eighteen months younger than himself but who was ‘neither studious nor so clever as the Princess Royal’.

  The Queen could but hope that in time the child would improve; and, for the moment, she comforted herself with the discovery that once they were out of the distasteful ‘frog stage’, as she called it, children could be good company. She enjoyed playing games with them, rowdy games like blind-man’s-buff and fox-and-geese, and quieter ones like beggar-my-neighbour. She danced quadrilles with the Prince of Wales as her partner, and on summer evenings she went for little walks with him and helped him to catch moths. She watched him rehearse plays with his brothers and sisters under the direction of their conscientious father, who made them ‘say their parts over and over again’. ‘Children,’ she decided, ‘though often a source of anxiety and difficulty are a great blessing and cheer and brighten up life.’