Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  “Every Englishman is born with [that] miraculous power,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, “that made him master of the world. When he wants a thing he never tells himself he wants it. He waits patiently until there comes into his mind, no one knows how, a burning conviction that it is his moral and religious duty to conquer those who possess the thing he wants.”

  The British and the Boers (the people of Dutch descent in the South African Republic known as Transvaal) had been enemies since the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The acquisition by Britain of the Cape of Good Hope had brought about periodic skirmishes. Through the years Great Britain had increased its territorial possessions in South Africa. Natal, Basutoland, Swaziland, Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, and other Bantu lands were theirs. The Transvaal, with great resentment, was finally annexed to Great Britain in 1877. Further anti-British feelings were inflamed when in 1886 gold was discovered in Witwatersrand and British prospectors began to flood the Transvaal. Great Britain soon controlled almost all the newly established mines. To protect itself, the Boer government heavily taxed the British and refused them citizenship. On December 29, 1895, Starr Jameson,* a British colonial administrator in the Transvaal, led a band of volunteers on the famous, supposedly unauthorized Jameson Raid to put down the resisters to a United (British) South Africa. Jameson was captured within a few days, returned to London for trial, and imprisoned. The Transvaalers considered Jameson’s Raid an officially sponsored plot to seize their country and built up their military might by forming an alliance with the Orange Free State, a province bordering the Transvaal. To defend its position, Britain dispatched troops.

  Germany, however, had supplied the Boers with arms, and to the dismay of the British, the Boer forces were not only larger than their own, but better equipped. After a succession of defeats in October 1899, known as Black Week, the British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Redvers Henry Buller,† was replaced by the well-loved but aged Lord Roberts of Kandahar, who brought with him as Chief-of-Staff Lord Kitchener of Khartoum,‡ former Governor General of the Sudan and “the most imperial of all the imperial soldiers.”

  At home in Britain, officers prepared to leave for the Transvaal in a patriotic fury. “Imperial troops must curb the insolence of the Boers ... For the sake of our Empire, for the sake of our honour, for the sake of the race, we must fight the Boers,” the young Winston Churchill declared.* Officers arrived on the bloody, rugged front carrying packs of their favourite foods from Fortnum and Mason, vintage liquors, and “ ... dressing cases, with silver or gold fittings; they brought their splendid shotguns by Purdy or Westley-Richards; their magnificent hunters saddled by such masters as Gordon of Curzon Street, they brought their valets, coachmen, grooms and hunt-servants.” They expected a gentlemanly war, and they walked into a massacre. Ten weeks after the war’s outbreak, the British knew it would take more than gentleman officers and patriotic duty to win.

  The second phase of the war began with the start of the twentieth century. “Of the new century,” wrote poet and critic Wilfred Blunt, “I prophecy nothing except that it will be the decline of the British Empire.” But for those to whom the Empire was the family business, no such fears existed. The war cast a shadow over the brilliance of their fashionable world. Because of the strong criticism in Germany, France, and Belgium concerning the morality of Britain’s aggression, travelling abroad was dangerous for members of the Royal Family. Yet for the Duke and Duchess of York, the first year of the war was a period of great satisfaction, despite the fact that her father died on January 21, 1900, and all three of her brothers were dispatched to the front. Prince George had finally been given a greater share of responsibility and had begun to make contacts with some of the leading figures in public life. Both husband and wife were kept busy inspecting hospitals and hospital ships filled with returned casualties, presiding over meetings of the War Fund, reviewing troops and decorating heroes.

  On April 4, 1900, the Prince and Princess of Wales were en route to Copenhagen (to visit Princess Alexandra’s family) when they were the near-victims of an assassination attempt. They were seated in their private railway carriage at the Gare du Nord in Brussels, where the train had stopped to pick up passengers, when a sixteen-year-old youth ran toward the open carriage window and fired his revolver. “Thank God for his mercy, who saved us both,” the Princess telegraphed her mother the following morning. “The ball was found in the carriage today having passed between our two heads. I felt it whizzing across my eyes and saw him coming straight at us.” Charlotte Knollys, who was also in the carriage, wrote her brother, Sir Francis Knollys, “There was no time for anyone to be frightened, except the Princess’s little Chinese dog, who was terrified by the explosion.”

  This assassination attempt was an example of anti-British hysteria that had infected young revolutionaries throughout Europe. By May 30, Lord Roberts had won a small, stunning victory and had taken the city of Johannesburg.* In a serious strategic error, he gave the Boers twenty-four hours to withdraw their army intact. Roberts thought he was bringing the war to a speedy and humane conclusion. But the Boer War was a guerrilla war. And because of Roberts’s peaceful armistice, the Boers were able to extricate their best men and all their heavy artillery from Johannesburg. The same thing happened six days later when Roberts triumphantly entered the town of Pretoria, certain that he had once again brought about the end of hostilities.

  The British had won the battle but lost the victory. The Morning Post’s war correspondent, Prevost Battersby, wrote that his fellow correspondents had been “cheated of their Armageddon.” Instead of seeing “the last great flight of a free people brought to bay, Pretoria had merely exchanged one mayor for another, and Roberts’s men had had to tramp on through choking dust and in unfamiliar harsh, rocky mountainous terrain.”

  The anxiety over the war was hardest on the Queen, who would often sob audibly when her weak eyes scanned the long lists of casualties. Roberts had never been one of her favourites. He did not help his cause by cabling her after capturing Pretoria to ask if she would like to have a statue of herself placed in the centre of town, where a huge bronze likeness of Transvaal’s President Kruger stood.* Her Majesty was not in the least amused at the suggestion that she step into Kruger’s shoes.

  She was very much pleased, however, when a fourth child and third son, Prince Henry of York, was born to Princess May on March 31, 1900. No longer could the succession be feared. The second heir to the Throne had three sons who could, if required, become King (David, Bertie, and now Henry—known almost immediately as “Harry”).

  By the year 1900, Alice Keppel and the Prince of Wales had formed a liaison of sincere depth and durability. Everyone in Edward’s Court adored Mrs. Keppel and felt she had brought dignity and stability into his life. Even his relations with his wife were more harmonious once Alice Keppel had become his mistress, and he was to remain true to her until the end of his life.

  When the Prince of Wales first met Alice at the Portman Place home of his friends Lord and Lady Arlington, she was gracefully slender with masses of lovely chestnut hair, creamy white skin, and the most startling turquoise-coloured eyes. She was married to George Keppel, a tall man—six foot four inches tall, and with his Gordon Highlander bearskin (hat) which he often wore, nearly eight feet. The Keppels had one daughter, much charm and good looks, respectable family connections, and almost no money or prospects. The Prince of Wales and Mrs. Keppel fell immediately in love. George Keppel had no objections to his wife becoming the Prince of Wales’s mistress and was to be unswervingly loyal to both of them.

  In 1900, a fortnight after she had rather daringly sat astride a lion in Trafalgar Square to celebrate the Relief of Mafeking,† Alice gave birth to a second daughter, Sonia.* On the day of Sonia’s birth, the road outside the Keppel house was smothered in straw to deaden the sound of the traffic. After the child’s birth, orchids, malmaisons, and lilies—great beribboned baskets of them—were delivered by a coachman and attendant in the Prince of Wales�
��s livery. With Alice Keppel’s devotion to her Royal lover, rumours that the child was Prince Edward’s illegitimate daughter spread. No one was ever certain of the truth, but after Sonia’s birth, the Prince of Wales and Alice Keppel were more devoted than ever.

  Princess Alexandra was not blind to the strong bond between her husband and his lover. Nor was she untouched by it. She successfully involved the Prince of Wales in trips and ceremonies that would place them both on public display and show the world a united, happy family.

  Throughout the autumn of 1900, all those close to Queen Victoria were aware of her failing health. She continued to attend to all the affairs of State. Councils were held at Balmoral and Windsor, ministers were received, diplomats appointed to fresh offices, representatives from foreign courts were presented, and visitors to the castle came and went as always. But her anxieties over the war; her concern over the grave illness of her daughter, the Empress Frederick; the malarial death of a grandson, Prince Christian Victor (oldest son of her daughter Helena); had taken their toll. On Christmas Day, her good friend, the Dowager Lady Churchill, collapsed and died at Osborne House. For the next week, she omitted her usual practise of coming down to dinner and rarely availed herself of the services of the Court officials whose duty it was to act as readers and to assist in her correspondence. Her doctors, fearing for her life, strongly urged total bed rest and complete cessation from her duties as head of State. The Queen refused. Lord Roberts returned to England from South Africa on January 15, and, at the Queen’s request, he came to Osborne to speak to her about the progress of the war. After a lengthy visit of an hour, he left. The Queen was confused in her conversation when the audience ended, but she insisted on going out for a drive as usual. The following day, this confusion became more marked. By Friday she was confined to bed. On Sunday, the Duke and Duchess of York arrived from London, where they had gone for a grand reception for Lord Roberts. On Monday, an official announcement was given to the press. The Queen was ill —but not gravely so.

  Queen Victoria, however, was dying, and with the exception of the Empress Frederick—whose ill health forbade her leaving her German home—all her surviving sons and daughters gathered at Osborne. She lay in her great canopied bed, a small, wasted figure in white. The sound of an angry winter sea could be heard outside her window. The Queen turned weakly to Dr. Reid. “The Prince of Wales will be sorry to hear how ill I am,” she whispered. “Do you think he should be told?” He was, in fact, already at Osborne and had not made his presence known for fear of alarming her. Accompanied by Kaiser Wilhelm (who came unasked and whose attendance was greatly resented by the Royal Family), he now entered the sick room. The Queen “gained consciousness for a moment and recognized him [her son],” wrote Sir Frederick Ponsonby, who was standing at the foot of her bed. “She put out her arms and said ‘Berty,’ whereupon he embraced her and broke down completely.” A short time later, she sent for her favourite small white dog, Turi, and called it by name.

  Then she sank into unconsciousness. The following evening (January 22, 1901), the end was near. Kaiser Wilhelm stood silently at the head of her bed, the Prince of Wales knelt at the side, and Dr. Reid “passed his arm round her and supported her.” The Queen opened her eyes and acknowledged the Prince of Wales and the Kaiser by inclining her head in their direction. Then her eyes closed. She had died peacefully, having reigned nearly sixty-four years—longer than any of her predecessors on the British Throne.

  Not only her family but the whole of the Empire had come to regard the Queen as permanent and indestructible. Britain’s ministers now worried about the effect on the nation of the scandal that had always surrounded Edward—the women, the gambling, the wild extravagances.

  Princess Alexandra’s ability to make her marriage appear solid to the people was of equal concern. Edward, the un-crowned King, was asked to return immediately to his wife’s side in London. Kaiser Wilhelm, to his uncle’s annoyance, took charge of the first burial preparations. “His tenderness and firmness were extraordinary, so unlike what was expected of him,” Ponsonby reports. He refused to allow the undertaker’s assistants to measure the Queen for her coffin, angrily turning them out of the room. He ordered Dr. Reid to take all the measurements himself, but when the time came, Edward and his younger brother—Arthur, the Duke of Connaught—not the Kaiser, lifted the Queen into her coffin.

  “Now she lies in her coffin in the dining room,” Princess May wrote her Aunt Augusta, “which is beautifully arranged as a chapel, the coffin is covered with the coronation robes & her little diamond crown and the garter lie on a cushion above her head—4 large Grenadiers watch there day and night, it is so impressive & fine & yet so simple ...”* Beneath the coronation robes lay a drape of white satin, for the Queen had forbidden black, believing her death reunited her with Albert.

  “I don’t want to die yet. There are several things I want to arrange,” the Queen had said to her daughter Princess Louise the day before her death. She had indeed given certain instructions for her funeral. No black—no hearse—only a gun carriage. A military funeral was fixed for February 2. On this bitter-cold day she was conveyed across the channel to Gosport “to the doleful sound of minute guns and the sullen roar of saluting cannon of the fleet ...” wrote Princess Alice,† one of the Queen’s granddaughters and seventeen at the time. “The cortege went in solemn procession across London ... through streets lined with silent mourning crowds ... Uncle Bertie rode behind the gun carriage on a bay charger wearing the uniform of a Field Marshal ... On arrival at Windsor Station the coffin was transferred to another gun carriage drawn by the Royal Horse Artillery ... they reared and plunged in such a dangerous manner that the whole team had to be unharnessed. It was as though they resented having any part in the separation of the Great Queen from her realm.”

  And writer Shane Leslie remembered,* “... a very small coffin, surmounted by sceptre and crown, and slowly hauled by blue jackets in their straw hats at the slope. A bunch of Kings and Emperors followed ... Lord Roberts passed in tears, looking tiny in his big boots and cocked hat. And the Kaiser was obviously suffering from nerves, for compared to the solemnity of the others, he was chafing and twisting round ... .”

  The Duke of York was noticeably absent from the cortege. All four of the York children had been quarantined with German measles at York Cottage at the time of their great-grandmother’s death, and their father had contracted the disease from them. The three older children had recuperated well enough by the following Sunday to be taken to see the Queen, who still lay in state in Saint George’s Chapel before interment at Frogmore, and they were there for the memorial service. “The procession from the Sovereign’s entrance, the Princess of Wales leading Prince Edward of York [David], the other children walking [behind] was very touching and beautiful,” Lord Esher observed. “The sweet and sickly air [from the masses of flowers] smelt like laughing gas, and the soldiers toppled over, from time to time under the fumes.” Lord Esher had arranged the memorial and the funeral according to the Queen’s personal instructions to him. A marble likeness of her, made in 1861, was placed upon her bier, and she was entombed by the side of her beloved Albert in the mausoleum she had had built in 1862 beneath the largest single block of flawless granite ever quarried.

  “London,” Shane Leslie recalls of the next few days, “was plunged in fog and crepe. Every shop window was streaked by a mourning shutter. The women, old and young, were draped with veils, and most touching was the mourning worn by the prostitutes, in whose existence the old Queen had always refused to believe ... It seemed as though the keystone had fallen out of the arch of heaven.”

  But no matter how bitter, the truth had to be faced. Queen Victoria was dead. The Prince of Wales, as he approached his sixtieth year, was, at last, King Edward VII. And Princess May had moved up a notch to become the second most important woman in the Realm, for she was now the wife of the Heir-Apparent to the Throne.

  Footnotes

  *Queen Victori
a came to the Throne in 1837; the Diamond Jubilee was to celebrate the sixtieth year of her reign.

  *Prince Dolly and Prince Frank. Prince Alge was not in England at the time.

  *Upon the death of Sir Henry Ponsonby, his son, Sir Frederick Ponsonby, became Assistant Private Secretary to Queen Victoria.

  *Sir Leander Starr Jameson (1853–1917). Colonial administrator and statesman in South Africa.

  †Sir Redvers Buller (1839–1908).

  ‡Horatio Herbert Kitchener (1850–1916). 1st Earl, 1914. Secretary of State at outbreak of World War I.

  *Sir Winston Spencer Churchill (1874–1965).

  *Frederick Sleigh Roberts (1832–1914). 1st Earl Roberts of Kandahar (1900), Commander-in-Chief of the Indian Forces in 1885, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in the Boer War.

  *Paul Kruger (1825–1904), President of the Transvaal, 1883–1899. He died in exile in Switzerland.

  † At the town of Mafeking in South Africa a British garrison under (later Lord) Baden-Powell (1857–1941) withstood a Boer siege for 217 days. The fort is now a national monument, and Mafeking, in 1965, became independent as Botswana.

  *Sonia Keppel Cubitt (b. 1900), married 1920 the Honourable Roland Cubitt, divorced 1947 shortly before he succeeded to the Barony of Ashcombe. Mrs. Cubitt refuses either to affirm or deny that her father was the Prince of Wales.

  *Actually, there were Parliamentary robes, and the “little diamond crown” was the same crown that many years later, at the end of her husband’s reign, Queen Alexandra refused to return.

  †Princess Alice (1883–1981) was the daughter of Queen Victoria’s youngest son, Leopold. She was later to marry Princess May’s brother Prince Alexander (Alge) of Teck, later Earl of Athlone.

  *Sir Shane Leslie Bt. (1885–1971), Irish writer and cousin of Sir Winston Churchill. Father of Anita Leslie, the social historian.