by Anne Edwards
“Looking into some magic mirror, a modern Cagliostro might easily be dumbfounded at the highly civilised European nations slaughtering their first-born and trampling on the Ark of their historic Covenant,” Esher wrote in his journal on August 11. “Millions of splendid youths, the heirs of European ages, will go childless to their graves. Monuments of chivalry, of learning, of religious enthusiasm will be burnt, broken and destroyed. And the yellow races will gather strength ...”
The news reached Britain on the evening of August 5 that the Germans had begun their assault on Liège, “the portcullis guarding the gateway into Belgium from Germany.” The first brutal battle of the war had begun. With this reality greeting them on the front pages of England’s newspapers, the grey morning of August 6, Britain’s young patriots exchanged their indignation and belligerence over the Irish crisis for their respect for the small country of Belgium—for she had put up a valiant resistance. A Belgian officer had reported that the German infantry had come on “line after line, almost shoulder to shoulder, until as we shot them down, the fallen were heaped on top of each other in an awful barricade of dead and wounded that threatened to mask our guns and cause us trouble. So high did the barricade become that we did not know whether to fire through it or to go out and clear openings with our hands ... But would you believe it? the veritable wall of dead and dying enabled those wonderful Germans to creep closer, and actually to charge up the glacis. They got no farther than halfway because our machine guns and rifles swept them back. Of course, we had our losses but they were slight compared to the carnage we inflicted on our enemies.”
Pons on by had said on hearing of England’s declaration of war that he found it “thrilling.” Recruiting stations were mobbed, and twenty-four hours later not enough uniforms remained in the British Army stores to clothe the new enlistees. Since he was in the reserves, Ponsonby reported for duty. He had to wear the same khaki he had worn in the South Africa War, which was much lighter in colour than current order. He was given a company of “200 splendid men and many, too many, officers, and was told to begin training them. It was,” he said, “the blind leading the blind ...”
David’s Army commission was signed by his father. He was gazetted to the Grenadier Guards and detailed to the King’s Company, a special honour. Since he was seven inches short of the minimum height of six feet that was required for men of this company, he thought of himself as “a pygmy among giants.” By mid-September his battalion was sent overseas, and he was left behind to be transferred to the Third Battalion, which was stationed at the same barracks. His pride hurt, he went to see his father, who could tell him only that Lord Kitchener, the new Secretary for War, did not want him to go to France just then. Mustering all his courage, David secured an interview with Lord Kitchener. “What does it matter if I am killed?” David pleaded. “I have four brothers.”
The immense, fierce-looking Kitchener looked down his patrician nose at the young man who by birth and law would one day be King. His steely-blue eyes met David’s upturned earnest stare and he replied, “If I were sure you would be killed, I do not know if I should be right to restrain you. But I cannot take the chance, which always exists until we have a settled line, of the enemy taking you prisoner.”
David was assigned to West End duties and put on King’s Guard (the men who take part in the guard-mounting ceremony in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace when the King is in London and in Friary Court, St. James’s Palace, when he is away). David’s job was to carry the colour, “a good weight!” David noted. Ten years before, he and Bertie had thrilled to this ceremony when they had watched it from the garden wall of Marlborough House. But by this time, “the British Expeditionary Force had been fighting for its life in France and Belgium, the German rush on Paris had been halted at the Battle of the Marne and retreating divisions had turned about and advanced northward across the Aisne and the Somme to Ypres.” With such awesome events taking place, the fulfillment of a childhood dream to one day be part of the handsome, glamourous King’s Guard had lost its meaning.
Casualty lists began to appear within four weeks of the war’s start, and on them were the names of many of David and Bertie’s school friends and brother officers. David’s equerry, Major William Cadogan, was killed with the 10th Hussars; and their cousin, Queen Ena’s youngest brother, Prince Maurice of Battenberg, as well as two of King George’s equerries, lost their lives in the first few months of the war. “I shan’t have a friend left soon,” David wrote in his diary at the end of October.
Yet David, along with millions of Englishmen and -women, felt a certain nobility about the war and a pride in the manner of death of so many idealistic young men who rushed off to battle, believing (as H. G. Wells announced in the press on August 4) that the defeat of Germany might “open the way to disarmament and peace throughout the world.”
When the Battle of the Marne ended in a German retreat on the ninth of September, most of England believed the war would end by Christmas, but the tragedy of the Marne was that the Allies had not gained a decisive victory. The war and its death toll ground on. The upper classes still tended to look upon the war “as a sort of picnic, chequered by untoward incident,” Lord Esher noted, adding that he thought there would be a “rude awakening” if, as Lord Kitchener believed, the war should go on for at least three years. The general view, especially following the Battle of the Marne, was that it would be short and never fought on home ground.
Queen Mary was now a wartime Queen, and she quickly took on the role expected of her with more than her usual drive and energy. Less than one month after the war’s start, the effects upon those at home were evident. Her country’s needs were great, and Queen Mary filled her days with visits to hospitals—often as many as three or four in one afternoon—munitions factories, and soup kitchens. Lady Airlie was Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen during much of 1914. “Very few people suspected how great an ordeal her hospital visits were to her,” she later wrote. “She had always been so affected at the sight of suffering that even as a child she once fainted when a footman at White Lodge cut his finger badly. But ... she trained herself to talk calmly to frightfully mutilated and disfigured men. Her habit of self-discipline gave her complete physical control.”
During her youth, Queen Mary had learned how to veil fear, grief, or anxiety behind the smile that is always exacted of Royalty. She was terrified of guns, and any loud noise—even a peal of thunder—had an abnormal effect on her. A “Royal salute of 101 guns was sheer misery to her,” yet she endured it with a smiling face.
* * *
By Christmas on the Western Front alone, 95,654 British soldiers had been killed, and the injured list was treble this. The war would not be a short one. In January 1915, the zeppelin raids began and soon became a reality of London life, their victims now added to the injured whom Queen Mary visited at hospitals. A protective wire-mesh net was stretched across the top of Buckingham Palace, and air-raid precaution rules were put into effect. Despite such restrictions and her terror at the crash of falling bombs, the Queen would go out with the King on the balcony at Buckingham Palace during these raids.
With the advent of the war, Alice Keppel had returned to London from her travels with her daughters, while George Keppel, now a captain, was serving with his battalion in France. During the summer of 1915, Alice, still much admired by England’s great men, opened her house twice a week at luncheon time to her country’s most famous politicians, service chiefs, diplomats, war heroes home on leave, war correspondents, and such of her women friends as were available to amuse them. Prime Minister Asquith, Winston Churchill, and even his mother Jenny found their way to Alice’s salon. Queen Mary never approved of Mrs. Keppel’s lavish luncheons and grand afternoons at a time when the palace was advocating great austerity. The intellectuals whom Alice gathered at the two tables in her dining room (she always hosted the larger one where the most honoured guests would also be seated) found these luncheons a reassuring continuum of the ol
d order of things.
At Buckingham Palace, however, the King’s order, issued in the first weeks of the war, was that there should be strict rationing of all food. Menus were cut to three courses, and nothing was to be cooked with wine or sherry, and no wine was to be served with Royal meals. Alcohol, King George had decided, was not consistent with emergency measures for winning a war. The then-current Royal chef, M. Cerard (M. Menager having returned to France) sent the Queen a note asking what was to be served at mealtimes. Her reply, in her own hand, came back promptly: “Serve water boiled with a little sugar in dining-room.” Queen Mary also issued an order that meat—which was not scarce in the early stages of the war—was to be served no more than three times a week, both to the Royal Family and to the Household staff of several hundred.
Queen Mary—who had never liked a large breakfast herself and had always been critical of the eight-course breakfasts served in Edward’s reign—exercised her greatest economies on that meal. Shortly after the Battle of the Marne, she sent down a message to M. Cerard that under no circumstances was anyone in the Household, guest or servant, to have more than two courses at breakfast. A variety of dishes—eggs, bacon, sausages, kippers, and other fish—was served, but the Queen made sure her two-course rule was observed. Only enough of each to equal two portions a person was to be prepared. Her breakfast order for the seven members of the Royal Family,* Monday, September 4, 1914, was as follows: “Bacon for five, sausage for four, fish for two, eggs for three,” making fourteen portions, two each. This arbitrary selection caused much confusion, since it meant someone was bound to be left with a dish he or she did not like. One look from Queen Mary, however, was enough to silence any complaints.
Gabriel Tschumi, M. Cerard’s assistant at that time, wrote in his memoir, “Queen Mary was always first down in the mornings, and she knew at a glance whether her orders had been followed. To disregard them, even for the most pitiful plea of hunger, was likely to result in dismissal, so we were pledged to carry them out. Prince Henry, the Duke of Gloucester [Harry], was the only one who ever put up a successful revolt against the two-course rule for breakfast. He claimed that for health reasons it was essential he had two fried eggs and bacon for breakfast even if he was allowed nothing else, and his arguments were so convincing that Queen Mary relented. An extra fried egg was included on the breakfast order from then onwards, but though other members of the family tried to gain the same privilege they did not succeed.”
None of Queen Mary’s economy measures worked with her mother-in-law, however. Early in the war, Queen Alexandra retired almost entirely to Sandringham. She did not allow this to curb her extravagance. King Edward’s widow had been given a Parliamentary Annuity, which was in no way commensurate with her spending habits. Both her son and daughter-in-law were alarmed at the “hundreds and thousands of pounds” she was spending on various war charities. By the summer of 1915, her gifts were vastly in excess of her annual income.
Queen Mary suggested to her that she might save money and labour by ordering fewer cut flowers, to which Queen Alexandra curtly replied, “I like a lot of lovely flowers about the house and in my rooms.”
And, “If I get into debt they can pay,” she told an old friend of King Edward’s, Arthur Davidson.
“Who will pay, Ma’am?” he countered. “Certainly not the nation for they won’t pay a penny.” Queen Alexandra sweetly answered that her deafness had kept her from hearing a word he had said.
In her seventies now, in physical and mental decline, “Motherdear” was more difficult than ever, and Queen Mary—her main efforts directed toward the war—greatly resented having to cope with her mother-in-law’s ineptitude.
Footnotes
*Emperor Franz Joseph (1830–1916); Empress Elisabeth (1837–1898) assassinated in Geneva by an Italian anarchist; Crown Prince Rudolf (1858–1889) committed suicide with his mistress, Maria Vetsera, at Mayerling, near Vienna; Emperor Maximilian (1832–1867).
*The shots were fired by a nineteen-year-old assassin, Gavrilo Princip.
†When Emperor Franz Joseph died in 1916, he was succeeded by a grandnephew, Karl I (1870–1922). Two years later, Austria became a republic.
* Hamburger Nachricten.
* An ulcer was suspected but never diagnosed.
* At that time, the King and Queen, David, Bertie, Mary, Harry, and Georgie were in residence at Buckingham Palace.
TWENTY
Among the members of the Royal Family, Queen Alexandra’s anti-German feeling was the strongest, and with every new report of German atrocities her hatred grew. Her letters, with abusive epithets toward both Germany and the Kaiser, arrived with alarming frequency at Buckingham Palace and were answered with extraordinary filial patience by her son. Queen Alexandra had relations fighting on both sides. Her sister Thyra had married the Crown Prince of Hanover, Prince Ernst August, and their son was with the German Army. The majority of her close blood relatives were British, Russian, or aligned with the Allied cause. On the other hand, Queen Mary and King George each had many blood relatives on both sides, and their own backgrounds were Germanic. Queen Mary was, after all, Mary of Teck; her grandmother had been Augusta, Princess of Hesse, before she became Duchess of Cambridge; and her great-grandmother (and King George’s great-great-grandmother) had been King George III’s Consort, Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. And, of course, both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who were cousins, were of the Saxe-Coburg line, and six of their nine children had married Germans.*
Anti-German hysteria, which gripped Britain immediately following the Kaiser’s ruthless burning and sacking of Belgium towns in August and September, reached a head in October; Every day the newspapers bannered stories about the burning of Ardennes; the brutal reprisal at Seilles, where 50 civilians were shot and the houses given over to looting and burning; the senseless herding together of 400 citizens in the main square of Tamenas to be shot and bayoneted to death; and the tragic burning and destruction of the beautiful medieval city of Louvain. In England, sentiment was so strong that German churches were stoned, German shops looted, and German parishioners and shopkeepers attacked. German music was no longer performed. The English are well known for their enduring devotion to dogs, yet dachshunds were abused and kicked in the street, and many owners of German breeds shot their dogs lest they meet a more painful, lingering death at the hands of zealots. Buckingham Palace was not exempt from the fear that such hysteria generates.
Princess Mary, now seventeen, had her own maid, Else, who had been with the Royal Family for over a decade and whom all of them loved for her “devotion and warm-hearted personality.” Else was German, and Queen Mary and King George came to the wrenching decision early in August that “the Royal Family could not harbour a German maid” and that Else must return to Germany. David later recalled how his mother, Mary, and all of the brothers wept as they said goodbye to “this fine woman whom war, with its relentless disregard for humanities, was taking” from their midst.
Fear that the public would be outraged at Else’s position in the Royal Household was not unfounded. People were certain that spies lurked everywhere. All public officials with German backgrounds were suddenly considered suspect, and the greatest clamour arose over England’s First Sea Lord, Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg.
At the age of fourteen, Prince Louis had become a British subject and entered the Royal Navy. In 1884, he married Princess Alice’s daughter, Victoria, and so became the Queen’s grandson.* A further bond was established with the English Royal Family when his younger brother Henry married Queen Victoria’s daughter Beatrice, most especially since Prince Henry and his wife lived the majority of their married life with the Queen. By his early twenties, Prince Louis was known as one of Britain’s “finest and most able Naval officers.” When Churchill was made First Lord of the Admiralty, he had brought in Prince Louis (an admiral at this time) as Second Sea Lord under Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, whom he quickly replaced.
Attack
s upon Prince Louis and his German birth, insinuating that he could be a spy, started first in the Globe and other London newspapers, a smear campaign that finally reached the floor of Parliament. Such a furor was raised that by October 29 Prince Louis had no alternative but to resign, and King George was obliged to condone the dismissal of a man whom he not only much admired, but whom he thought the most able man for the job. He felt great mortification, as well as sadness, at having to give in to public clamour. Now sixty, Prince Louis had been a British subject for forty-six years, all of them loyally dedicated to the Royal Navy. Prince Louis’s health and mental state after this ignominious end to his brilliant Naval career was a matter of great concern to the Royal Family. His young cousin, the Prince of Wales, visited him at the Admiralty and was shocked to see the pain that showed “in his tired, lined face.” The Royal Family was worried about how Prince Louis’s ordeal would affect his older son Georgie, who was in the Grand Fleet, and his younger son Dickie, who had just passed out of Osborne and was to go on to Royal Naval College, Dartmouth.† Both of these Battenberg boys were close friends—as well as cousins—to Bertie and David.
Queen Mary worked hard to overcome her “dull despair” at the terrible succession of events and at the news from the front. Day after day, week after week, found her encouraging those who had returned from the front blinded, gassed, wounded, or missing limbs. She visited some of the families of the tens of thousands who would never return. She toured munitions plants and appeared at food centres. With zeppelin raids and a guard of 120 Grenadiers as well as two manned Naval guns, York Cottage was no longer a peaceful retreat. Several times while Queen Mary was in residence at the cottage and Queen Alexandra at the Big House, zeppelin raiders dropped bombs in the neighbourhood. Demanding a unique (and nonexistent) instrument of warfare, Queen Alexandra wrote to her son after one of these raids, “Please let me have a lot of rockets with spikes or hooks to defend our Norfolk Coast. I am sure you could invent something of the sort which would bring down a few of these rascals.”