Matriarch

by Anne Edwards

  “Just as well,” Queen Mary wrote her Aunt Augusta when she learned that her mother-in-law was not to attend the coronation. She was disappointed that her dear-Mother-Aunt, “the Grand Duchess Augusta,” would not be at the historical event. Eighty-nine and beginning to fail badly, Aunt Augusta wrote in answer to her niece’s pleas that she change her mind, “Oh! that wd have been my fourth [coronation] but this I dare not think of, unless some Aerobike takes me to fly across!”*

  The week before the event was filled with preparations, rehearsals, deputations to receive, foreign royalties to be met, and family luncheons and huge banquets to attend. On the eve of the coronation, the King and Queen dined privately with David and Bertie. Queen Mary had received a huge bouquet of flowers from her brother Dolly just before dinner, and it had moved her to tears. Dolly, after all, had taken that first journey with her to Balmoral to be interviewed by Queen Victoria. Shortly after dinner, a letter arrived for the King from his mother. “May God bless you both,” she wrote in a rather shaky hand, “& give a little thought to your poor, sad broken-hearted Motherdear.” Although her son and daughter-in-law did not know it, at the time they received the letter she was pacing her rooms at Marlborough House, crying, “Eddy should be King, not Georgie!”

  Footnotes

  *Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany (1853–1884), King Edward’s youngest brother. But the King’s final resting place is his tomb on the right of the sanctuary.

  *The Royal Household was greatly increased in number from the Household of the Prince of Wales. Lady Cynthia Colville has given an extremely good explanation of the heirarchical traditions of the Royal Household in Crowded Life, London, 1963. “As far as women were concerned, the principal and unique ‘officer’ was the Mistress of the Robes, always a Duchess and the head of her department so to speak, the male opposite number on ceremonial occasions being the Lord Chamberlain, by whose side she would walk at State functions such as Courts, and Court Balls. Next in importance came the Ladies of the Bedchamber, four in number, all peeresses who attended the Queen for her bigger and more impressive engagements; their male counterparts were the Lords-in-Waiting, whose service with the King was on similar lines. The third group consisted of the Women of the Bedchamber, also a quartette, they were daughters of peers, mostly Lady Somebody Something (that is children of dukes, marquesses or earls), but they were of a much humbler variety than these ‘Lady’ Colleagues. Equerries were their opposite number in the King’s Household. There was a fourth group, Maids-of-Honour ... their male opposites were grooms-in-waiting.” They also lived in and were the daughters or sons of viscounts and barons, and were granted the title of “the Honourable.” None of the holders of these titles did any domestic job, as their titles might falsely suggest. They did accompany the King and Queen and handle a certain amount of correspondence.

  *Esher says January 1911, but that would have been before the coronation; and, in fact, the Durbar was held on December 12, 1911.

  *Italicised words were underscored by Queen Alexandra in the original.

  *On this occasion, Queen Alexandra had written her daughter-in-law, “My darling May, My thoughts have never left you today & have followed you step by step to Westminster & the House of Lords & on yr way back from yr first opening of Parliament—Were you both very alarmed & shy & emotionne as we were the first time particularly! I wished all the time I cld have had a peep at you! What did you wear? & did the cloak of Gd Mama’s do? Did you wear the big or small crown? Please [write] me [as] it interests me to hear also what Jewels you wore etc.—I always heard & felt my heart beating loud all the time we were seated on that very conspicuous place.”

  *The Grand Duchess Augusta had attended the coronations of William IV and Queen Adelaide, as well as those of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII.

  SIXTEEN

  There is a magic to hereditary succession; a sense of continuity, of everlastingness. Apart from the brief seven-year interval of Cromwell’s Commonwealth,* King George’s direct ancestors had ruled England for 1,100 years, since Egbert had ascended the throne in Wessex in 809 and was recognised as Bretwalda in 829. By 1911, Parliament had secured control of taxation and therefore of government; dynastic conflicts were no longer a menace; Kingship “had ceased to be transcendental and had become one of many alternative institutional forms”; and the doctrine of Divine Right, “profoundly shaken” by the Reformation,† had not survived the execution of Charles I.‡ Since that time, a system of limited or constitutional monarchy had been developed through the growing power of Parliament and historical accident. The executive powers of the present King George were strictly limited. Still, he retained an indefinable—yet very great—influence.

  Despite King Edward’s fears to the contrary, the Monarch received full information on all matters of state and was able to express, if not enforce, an opinion, which, in the course of a long reign, could have great value. Ministers come and go, and their policies may not be those of the next, and the sovereign must listen to all of them. An intelligent sovereign cannot help but acquire expertise, even wisdom, which can be used to influence subsequent Ministers.

  In mid-November, the uncrowned King was faced with the necessity of reaching an immediate decision about his constitutional duty in the crisis left unsolved at the time of King Edward’s death. The “Constitutional Crisis” of 1910-1911 was a most complicated matter. The rejection of the 1909 budget by the House of Lords had been its original cause. A general election was held the following January, resulting in an equal number of Conservatives and Liberals, and placing the balance of power in the hands of forty Socialists and eighty-one Irish Nationalists. Prime Minister Asquith, in the hope of winning over these last two groups, introduced a Parliament Bill limiting the power of the House of Lords. Commons duly passed this. The Parliament Bill raised the question: Would the King, to ensure its passage through the House of Lords, guarantee to create a sufficient number of peers?

  On Wednesday, November 16, Prime Minister Asquith in audience at Buckingham Palace sought the King’s secret pledge to be ready to use the one unquestionable prerogative the King still retained—that of creating new peers. “After a long talk,” King George wrote in his diary that evening, “I agreed most reluctantly to give the Cabinet a secret understanding that in the event of the Government being returned with a majority at the General Election, I should use my Prerogative to make Peers if asked for. I disliked having to do this very much, but agreed that this was the only alternative to the Cabinet resigning, which at this moment would be disastrous.”

  King George was also to regret the fact that he gave secret guarantees to the Government before that next August, when required. He did so believing he had no alternatives. Still, the pledge he made placed a heavy burden on his heart and took away much of the joy he might have had from the approaching coronation. By June 1911, he had more problems to weigh upon him. A massive transport strike took place that was to open “a new period of deep industrial warfare.” Workers now struck not against a particular employer but against a whole industry. The strike involved 77,000 men, spread from London to most of England’s major cities and ports, and lasted 72 days.

  On July 1, an international crisis threatened for several weeks when the German gunboat Panther docked at Agadir in Morocco, in an attempt to force France to remove troops it had sent to the Moorish capital. The crisis coincided with Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit to London for the unveiling of the Queen Victoria Memorial.

  The German Emperor had always been a thorn in the side of his British relatives. Queen Victoria had been indulgent of his willfulness and arrogance because of his withered arm. King Edward, however, had disliked Willy (his nephew) since childhood, and the Kaiser’s quick appearance at any time of celebration or grief in the British branch of the family created only more hostility. King Edward greatly resented his nephew’s presence at Queen Victoria’s deathbed and was quite outspoken about Willy’s “takeover” of the funeral ceremonies. He would have been
furious but not surprised that Willy had been a pallbearer at his funeral and had received more press coverage than any other visiting royalty.

  King George had also never felt kindly toward his cousin’s “bossy” nature. Because of Queen Mary, who quite admired the Kaiser and had always been somewhat in awe of him, the King tried to keep relations civil between them. The Kaiser harboured deep and bitter resentments, though he gave no outward indication of his feelings.

  At the unveiling of the memorial, another of Wilhelm’s first cousins, Princess Marie Louise, daughter of Queen Victoria’s third daughter Helena, remarked to him, “It is so funny to think of George as King when one has always regarded him as a very close relation.”

  The German Emperor replied, “Yes, of course, he is your cousin and nearest relative but, above all, never forget he is your Sovereign and King as well.” After the unveiling, the Kaiser and King George met privately. Of that meeting, the Kaiser was later to say that he had warned King George of his intention to send a warship to southern Morocco and the latter had raised no objection. King George, on the other hand—outraged and surprised at Germany’s action—claimed he did not recall Kaiser Wilhelm mentioning Agadir and vowed that he “absolutely did not express to him my own, or my Government’s consent to any such action.” Years later, in his memoirs, the German Emperor changed his version of this meeting with his cousin.

  I asked him if he considered that the French methods were still in accordance with the Algeciras Agreement. The King remarked that the Agreement, to tell the truth, was no longer in force, that the best thing to do was to forget it; that the French fundamentally were doing nothing different in Morocco from what the English had previously done in Egypt; that therefore, England would place no obstacles in the path of the French, and would follow their own course; that the only thing to do was to recognize the fait accompli of the occupation of Morocco and make arrangements for commercial protection with France.

  The Agadir crisis lasted several months before it was settled in an agreement between France and Germany, by which the former obtained a free hand to establish a Protectorate in Morocco and at a price (a fair area of the Congo to be handed over to Germany) that was not high. The crisis had proved “a fiasco for Germany,” Winston Churchill wrote, and that no doubt “deep and violent passions of humiliation and resentment were coursing beneath the glittering uniforms which thronged the palaces through which the Kaiser moved.”

  The entire incident had made Britain aware of Germany’s warlike nature and impelled the British Government to review their defences and the nature of their commitments and general relations with all foreign powers.

  King George’s uncrowned year had not been easy.

  As Prince of Wales, David had precedence over the peers of the realm and would normally have worn the regulation peer’s robes at the coronation. But he was under twenty-one, too young to take his seat in the House of Lords. To compensate for this situation, on June 10, 1911, White Rose Day, just twelve days before the coronation, David was invested by King George’s order with the Order of the Garter, so that he could wear the robes of a knight for the coronation. The service, revived for the first time since the eighteenth century, took place in the Garter Throne Room at Windsor Castle, its panelled walls hung with innumerable portraits of British Monarchs in their vivid costumes. He wore a cloth-of-silver suit, white stockings, and white satin slippers with red heels; a sword in a red velvet scabbard hung at his side. None of the pageantry of the occasion awed David, who that day recorded in his diary, “After Papa & Mama had gone into the Garter Room, I waited outside the Rubens Room until Uncle Arthur [Duke of Connaught] & Cousin Arthur [the Duke of Connaught’s son] had come for me. Then I fell in between the two & we walked in & up the room, bowing three times. Then Papa put the garter, riband & george, & star on me, & then I went round the table shaking hands with each knight in turn. I kissed both Papa & Mama’s hands.”

  Harry arrived home on June 17, just barely recovered from a case of mumps. That same day 40,000 suffragettes marched (to Queen Mary’s disapproval) in a great column four miles long from Westminster to Albert Hall, where £103,000 was raised for “the cause.” Bertie was not granted a leave from Dartmouth until June 20. The two days before the ceremony were crowded with more excitement than any of the Royal children had ever seen before: dress parades, illuminations, and foreign visitors from exotic lands. Large groups of people came and went in the palace almost round the clock. None of the boys got any sleep. David was terrified that he would not remember all the words of the oath he had to speak or follow the instructions on his participation in the proceedings.

  The morning of June 22 was grey and windy. The coronation was to be far grander than any living Englishman might have witnessed. There were to be more troops, a greater gathering of representatives from the Dominions and dependencies abroad, and a longer procession through the streets than there had been at either Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee or King Edward’s coronation. The decision to go “all out” was deliberate on the part of the coronation committee. Their hope was to dispel any private fear that, with King Edward gone, the country might slip back into the depths of Victorianism. Every house, store, and club along the route of the procession was now barricaded with stands jammed with people, some of whom had been waiting since the previous night for the procession to begin.

  The trains were splashed with the brilliance of uniformed admirals, generals, and privy councillors incongruously paired with hordes of sightseers with luncheon bags and baskets. By 8:00 A.M., the whole of Victoria Street was one solid mass of motors, peers’ coaches, taxicabs, and broughams, “each with its vision of nodding plumes and gleaming jewels and resplendent masculinity within.” The stands and tiers before the grey Abbey had been “multitudinously crowded” since dawn. The windows and roofs of nearby buildings were alive with faces, and the usually quiet Dean’s Yard that abutted the Abbey was “bustling and brilliant with troops and guests and officials, women in Court dresses with gorgeous trains carried over the arms, [and with] naval and military men, and judges and officers of the Court.”

  The members of the Royal Family had risen with the dawn as well. John had remained at Wood Farm. He was told and understood that his Papa and Mama were to be crowned King and Queen that day. The other brothers and Mary ate breakfast early and then at 9:00 A.M. briefly saw their parents, who were too distracted to do much more than acknowledge their children’s presence. Everyone then dispersed to dress for the awesome occasion, the King and Queen in their coronation splendour, David in his Garter robes, Bertie in his cadet’s uniform, Harry and Georgie in Highland costume, and Mary in a coronet and a purple velvet robe of state lined with ermine over a white satin dress with overlayers of lace.

  As Prince of Wales, David had his own procession. He left Buckingham Palace at 10:00 A.M. and drove with his brothers and sister in a gold state carriage drawn by eight cream horses. Everywhere he looked he saw the gleam of exotic raiment—turbans and uniforms from India, Africa, and the Orient dispersing the greyness of the day. London was a feast of colour and a panorama of marvellous diversity among the races of mankind. David was as mesmerised by the spectacle as anyone of the crowds of people who gaped and pointed and cheered as he drove past their post.

  At half-past ten, the young Prince of Wales reached the Abbey, where, to the blare of silver trumpets and preceded by pursuivants in dazzling colours, he was conducted to his chair—a wholesome, unaffected boyish figure carrying a vast, plumed hat and looking almost ludicrously costumed in the mantle of the elaborate Garter that overwhelmed his small frame.* After he was seated in the south transept, just in front of the peers’ benches, Bertie, Harry, and Georgie saluted him solemnly in turn as they passed to their appointed places. Then Mary approached and curtsied deeply. David rose and gravely bowed to her. Someone touched him gently on the shoulder and whispered that he was not to rise. From that moment he sat rigidly, jerking his head and shoulders in acknowledge
ment as princes and princesses of the blood royal, each with an attendant page or officer or Lady-in-Waiting, made his or her obeisance to him on their way to the Royal boxes.

  The north transept was occupied by the peeresses of the realm, the galleries that led up the triforium by members of Parliament and their wives. The Royal box, reserved for the King and Queen’s personal and untitled friends (Mr. Hansell and Nellie Melba among them), was above and slightly to the side of the glittering cream-and-gold altar laden with its gold-and-jewelled sacred vessels. In the space between the north and south transepts was the “theatre,” where the two thrones in crimson damask sat on a dais facing the altar—the King’s to the right, the Queen’s farther down and to the left.

  Every seat in the Abbey was taken, seven thousand in all, each occupant awaiting the entrance of the King and Queen. At eleven o’clock, the booming of the guns and the faint echo of cheering could be heard without. All eyes turned to the West Door. Slowly, the Queen’s procession entered: first the Abbey beadle in robes of silken blue, then the ten chaplains-in-ordinary scarlet-hooded, after them the domestic chaplains, the sacrist bearing the Cross of Westminster, followed by more ecclesiastics. Then the pursuivants all gold and mulberry; and the officers of the orders of knighthood in mantles of glimmering hues; heralds in blazoned tabards; household officials; great nobles bearing the standards of the British Dominions, India, Ireland, Scotland, England, and the United Kingdom; Lord Lansdowne holding aloft the Royal standard; the four Knights of the Garter appointed to hold the canopy for the King’s anointing; great political dignitaries; chancellors; the Lord Chamberlain; the Archbishop of Canterbury; more pursuivants; the bearers of the Queen’s Regalia; and then Queen Mary herself, pale and tense but splendidly dignified—her stupendous train borne by eight ladies in snowy white and followed by “double dazzling lines of attendant retinue.”