by Theo Aronson
However, the days of such complete freedom from responsibility were about to come to an end. A somewhat gentlemanly revolution in Denmark's near neighbour, Norway, was to bring about a change in the life of the hoydenish Princess Maud.
Ever since the end of the Napoleonic wars, in 1815, Norway had been tied to Sweden by an Act of Union. It was an unsatisfactory arrangement. Although Norway enjoyed a certain degree of autonomy (it had its own parliament, the Storting) Sweden was the dominant partner. The King of Sweden reigned over both countries. Throughout the nineteenth century, relations between the two countries had become increasingly bitter. The independent-minded Norwegians were anxious for more say in the running of their own affairs and the Swedes were just as anxious to keep control of both countries in their own hands. Early in 1905, things came to a head.
The particular point at issue was whether or not Norway should have its own consular representation. Having agitated, for years, for such representation, the Norwegians finally lost patience. In March 1905 the Storting defiantly passed a bill by which Norway would in future have its own consuls. The bill was sent to King Oscar II of Sweden for his sanction. This the King refused to give. Thereupon the Norwegian government resigned. The King, finding himself unable to form a new government, refused to accept their resignation. This meant, argued the Norwegians, that as their country had no government and as the King was incapable of forming one, the King of Sweden had ceased to function as King of Norway. In other words, the Act of Union between the two countries had been dissolved. The Storting then instructed the Norwegian Council of State to take over the government of the country. In June 1905, the President of the Storting formally announced the dissolution of the Union and the independence of Norway.
As revolutions went, it had not been much of one, but a revolution, nevertheless, it had been. However, to soften the blow, Norway offered its now vacant throne to a member of the Swedish King's family. To this conciliatory offer, the unresigned King Oscar gave no immediate reply. As far as he was concerned, the Union had not yet been dissolved and the throne – whatever Norway might claim – was not yet vacant.
The fact that Norway intended to remain a monarchy came as a great relief to Europe's family of kings. There was a strongly republican element in the country that saw no reason why, having rid itself of one king, Norway should saddle itself with another. On the other hand, even among republicans, it was appreciated that the monarchies of Europe would look more kindly on the newly independent country if it were headed by a monarch. A king would give the revolution an air of respectability. This was how revolutionary Italy had managed things a generation before; 'like Garibaldi,' wrote one prominent Norwegian republican in an open letter to another, 'we two old republicans have no choice but to serve a king'.
But who was this king to be? Although, unofficially, King Oscar of Sweden had indicated that no member of his house would accept the throne, the Norwegian offer had not been formally rejected. Nor would it be, until Norway had fulfilled one Swedish condition: Sweden would recognize Norwegian independence only after the parliaments of the two countries had formally negotiated the dissolution of the Act of Union. Until such time, Sweden maintained that Norway had no right to offer the throne to anyone.
Norway, on the other hand, was determined that the throne be filled before negotiations began. A king, setting the seal on Norwegian independence, would gain the country international recognition and thus strengthen its hand in the negotiations with Sweden.
While this vexed question of priorities remained unsolved, Norway started looking round for a monarch. A prince from the ruling house of one of the Great Powers was out of the question: it would make things far too complicated. There was some talk of a Greek or even a Spanish prince but, in the end, it was agreed that the candidate would have to come from either Sweden or Denmark. With the King of Sweden unlikely to accept the offer for a member of his family, the field was narrowed to the Danish House of Glucksburg.
Here there were two likely candidates: Prince Waldemar, the youngest son of old King Christian IX of Denmark, and Prince Charles, second son of the Danish Crown Prince and the husband of Princess Maud.
As Prince Waldemar was already forty-seven years old, with a Roman Catholic wife and grown-up children; he was not considered very suitable. Prince Charles, on the other hand, was still in his early thirties, with a son not yet three years old and a wife who was the daughter of King Edward VII of England. An added advantage was that Prince Charles's mother, the Danish Crown Princess, was a member of the Swedish royal family. In every way, Prince Charles seemed eminently suitable.
The candidate himself was not quite so sure. When approached, in confidence, by the Norwegian emissary, Baron Wedel, the unassuming Prince Charles was hesitant. He protested that he did not want to be a king, that he was quite happy with his position as an officer in the Danish Navy and that he hated the idea of leaving Denmark. His reluctance was shared by his wife, Princess Maud. If Charles had no desire to become a king, she had even less to become a queen. She had no taste for ceremonial and no talent for public life. Amongst strangers, she was painfully shy. And would it not spell the end of her comfortable life: those months at Appleton, that bicycling through the streets of Copenhagen, those cruises in the Mediterranean, in short, the whole informal, unpretentious, countrified atmosphere of her days? If Maud did not actually discourage her husband from thinking of accepting the throne, she would certainly have done nothing to encourage him.
However, they were both royalties and, as such, conscious of what they considered to be their duty. However distasteful the idea might seem, it would not have occurred to them to reject a formal offer of a crown. Princes had obligations which could not be shirked; royal blood entailed royal duties. Both Prince Charles and Princess Maud came from houses with an unshakable sense of royal dedication.
Thus, stifling his own inclinations, Prince Charles assured Baron Wedel that he would accept an offer of the crown but only, he protested, if he could be of real service to Norway. And then it must be with the approval of Sweden, Denmark and Great Britain and, of course, with the whole-hearted consent of the Norwegian people. He had no wish to behave like an ambitious adventurer or what his wife would no doubt have called a 'bounder'. In any case, until the crown had been definitely refused by the Swedish royal house, Prince Charles was prepared to make no move whatsoever.
Not everyone shared the couple's somewhat lukewarm approach. By now the various sovereigns of Europe were becoming distinctly agitated. As summer turned to autumn and the King of Sweden still refused to give an answer until the formal dissolution of the Union had been negotiated, the situation became increasingly tense. There was talk of war between the two countries; there was evidence of a growing republicanism in Norway.
Maud's cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II, who must needs have a finger in every pie, was becoming more and more alarmed. At first, on the Norwegian declaration of independence, he had been all in favour of the King of Sweden taking firm measures. A fellow sovereign, he maintained, had been grossly insulted; he could not condone what he somewhat wittily described as 'kings being dismissed by registered letter'. Broken rights, thundered the Kaiser, must be restored by force. The Crown was 'sacred above all else'. But now, with Norwegian republicanism becoming more voluble by the day, he climbed down somewhat. He urged King Oscar to recognize Norwegian independence and to accept the throne for a member of his house. In his yacht, Hohenzollern, Wilhelm sailed to Finland to confer with Tsar Nicholas II. Both agreed that King Oscar should accept the Norwegian offer. It would be one sure way of preventing what they disliked almost as much as the idea of a Norwegian republic: that is, a Norwegian king whose father-in-law would be King Edward VII of England.
Yet when the Kaiser, who was as false and fickle as the wind, visited Copenhagen on his way back, he pretended that he was all in favour of Prince Charles accepting the throne. Nothing, he assured his cousin Maud, would delight him more. He even lifted the
little Prince Alexander onto his knee and addressed him as 'Der Kronprinz Norwegens'.
For this particular piece of duplicity, Prince Charles was prepared. His father-in-law, King Edward, had warned him what to expect. 'Am quite aware of double game going on to prevent your going to Norway,' he had wired the day before the Kaiser's arrival. 'Pray warn your Grandfather and Father when the German Emperor comes to be firm. I strongly urge that you should go to Norway as soon as possible to prevent someone else taking your place.'
Indeed, of all the royalties involved, none was more determined that Prince Charles should become King of Norway than King Edward VII. He was in a state of high excitement about the affair. Prince Charles, he urged, was not to wait for a decision by the King of Sweden: he was to set off immediately for Norway to claim the throne. Hardly a day went by without yet another frantic telegram from King Edward, begging his son-in-law to go to Norway before it was too late.
To this barrage of telegrams, the circumspect Prince Charles replied that he could not go until his grandfather, old King Christian IX of Denmark, had given him formal permission to do so. This the old monarch refused to do until the King of Sweden had officially renounced the throne. And this, in turn, the King of Sweden stubbornly refused to do until negotiations on the dissolution of the Union had been concluded.
But King Edward would not be put off. He tried another approach. He wrote to the Swedish Crown Prince, asking for Prince Charles to be given some sort of provisional recognition so that he could go to Norway and take part in the negotiations. To this suggestion, the Swedes refused to listen. Until agreement had been reached on the dissolution of the Union, answered the Swedish Crown Prince, the question of the throne could not be discussed.
It was as well, perhaps, that the notoriously short-tempered King Edward was at Marienbad, taking his cure, when this answer arrived.
Eventually, Norway was obliged to give in. She agreed to negotiate. The talks opened in September. With these successfully concluded, Sweden recognized Norwegian independence and refused the offer of the throne for a Swedish prince. The crown could at last be offered to Prince Charles of Denmark.
Yet once again Prince Charles proved hesitant. Worried by the apparent strength of republican sentiment in Norway (he was being inundated with republican literature) he insisted on a plebiscite. Only if the great majority of the Norwegian people wanted him would be become their king. He did not want to force himself on Norway; he had no wish to become a party king. In the face of considerable opposition, including that of his exasperated father-in-law ('King Edward furious at idea of referendum,' wired Baron Wedel from London) Prince Charles held firm.
The plebiscite was held on 12 and 13 November 1905. Some 260,000 voted in favour of a monarchy and some 70,000 against: a majority of more than five to one. Five days later the Storting met to elect Prince Charles of Denmark as King of Norway. Henceforth Prince Charles was to be known as King Haakon VII (the last King Haakon had died in 1380) and his little son Alexander as Crown Prince Olav.
Baron Wedel, rushing to Prince Charles's palace in Copenhagen to congratulate him on his election, was ushered into a charmingly domestic scene. Princess Maud was at her desk, sorting through a pile of papers; how on earth, she exclaimed, was she going to be ready to leave in a week's time? Across the room, at another desk, sat her husband, diligently practising his new signature – Haakon.
On 20 November 1905, in the Throne Room of the Amelienborg Palace in Copenhagen, Prince Charles of Denmark formally accepted the Norwegian throne. By his side, small, stiff and dressed all in white, stood Princess Maud. The ceremony concluded, the new King and Queen drove through cheering crowds to their own palace where they held a reception for the members of the Norwegian delegation. Four days later, aboard the Dannebrog, they sailed into the Norwegian capital of Christiania – later Oslo. In swirling snow, they stepped ashore.
King Edward was highly gratified. Both Charles and Maud, he assured his son George, the Prince of Wales, 'have won golden opinions and Charles's speeches are very good'.
Not everyone shared the King's gratification. 'So Maud is sitting upon her unsafe throne . . .' wrote the outraged old Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz to her niece, Princess May, 'he making speeches, poor fellow, thanking the revolutionary Norwegians for having elected him! No really, it is all too odd!' Besides, added the old lady sourly, 'they have but that one peaky Boy.'
It was all 'too horrible,' she thought, 'for an English Princess to sit upon a Revolutionary Throne!'
2
That her throne was a 'revolutionary' one, would not have bothered Queen Maud unduly; much more unnerving for her was the fact that she was sitting on a throne at all. She was not cut out to be a queen. Like so many of Queen Victoria's descendants – and, indeed, like Queen Victoria herself – Maud was inordinately shy. Whereas her husband, King Haakon, soon developed an easy public manner, she did not. Amongst strangers, she appeared stiff, reserved, even cold. She seemed incapable of making a relaxed or spontaneous gesture. Dressed with all the rich elegance, but none of the flair, of her mother, Queen Alexandra, she had the look, in these early days, of a marionette. The Swedish Minister (not, admittedly, an impartial observer) was delighted to report that on the occasion of his first audience with her, she simply stood before him, as mute and immobile as a statue.
Her domestic life, too, had its problems. Transported, almost overnight, from a twelve-roomed apartment in Copenhagen to the immense Kongens Slot – Royal Palace – in Christiania, she was obliged to make considerable adjustments. Not only did her days become busier, more complicated and more formal, but she had to organize her new home. The vast, pillared, butter-coloured palace had never been designed as a permanent residence. The Swedish royal family, whose home was in Stockholm, had had it built for ceremonial purposes only. Comfort and convenience had been sacrificed to prestige. The rooms were magnificent but utterly uninhabitable. The entire building boasted only one bath and that had been installed a mere half a dozen years before. Not even in the royal apartments was there a lavatory. The household was expected to manage with wash-hand stands, basins and buckets. All the meals and all the water had to be lugged up from the kitchens in the basement and all the slops carried down. Most of the furniture, which had been the personal property of the King of Sweden, had been taken back to Stockholm. Queen Maud's furniture, brought over from those twelve rooms in Copenhagen, made very little impression on these gigantic apartments.
Luckily, in the attics and servants' quarters, the Queen discovered a wealth of long-discarded, Empire-style pieces which were, at that time, coming back into favour. As she shared the contemporary interest in Napoleon, this furniture suited her collection of Napoleonic portraits and objets very well. But as even those pieces did not fully equip the vast palace, the government solved the problem by buying up all the furniture when the contents of the mansion of a wealthy banker were sold.
If Queen Maud had little taste for her public duties, she had a real talent for creating a cheerful domestic atmosphere. The Norwegian royal menage was one of the happiest and most harmonious in Europe. Life within the palace was run, inevitably, on English lines. Husband and wife spoke to each other in English and little Olav was in the care of two English nannies, Miss Butler and Miss Jones. The private apartments, a-clutter with family photographs, family gifts and conventionally pretty paintings, were extremely comfortable. The Queen busied herself with her rose garden, her English horses and her dogs. She took Norwegian lessons and she learnt to ski. She delighted in their house in Kongseteren, a mountain chalet, built in traditional Norwegian style, which their subjects had given them as a welcoming gift.
As a condition of acceptance of the throne, King Haakon had stipulated that his wife must be allowed to spend a certain period of each year in England. In that way, Maud was not deprived of those autumn months at Appleton.
Away from the intimidating eyes of strangers, Queen Maud was at her best: cheerful, warm-hearted, ea
sily amused. She retained her keen sense of the ridiculous. She was never stuffy, never disapproving. Fridtjof Nansen, the celebrated explorer and great friend of the royal family, gives an account of a reception in the little town of Vadsø, in Norway's arctic north, which illustrates the Queen's well-known appreciation of a comic situation. Indeed, it is all reminiscent of one of her own practical jokes.
After a luncheon, at which the Queen's table companion, a self-important local dignitary, had been so engrossed in his food that he had not bothered to address one word to her, the royal party was solemnly conducted to a stairway which was to lead them to the reception on the floor above. To the consternation of the hosts, the stairs were found to be chock-a-block with half-empty beer bottles. They had been left there by the members of the band, in their hurry to get away at the approach of the official party. A frantic scramble to get the bottles cleared away resulted in the beer coursing down the stairs like a river. By now the Queen was battling to keep a straight face. The way finally cleared, the royalties were ushered up the wet and pungent staircase, to be met, on the landing, by a singular sight. There, presumably open for use during the coming reception, and taking up most of the space, stood an old-fashioned commode. Solemnly, in single file, the party was obliged to skirt it and make their way into the room in which the local ladies stood waiting to be presented. It was the sort of situation in which the irrepressible Maud delighted; only by exercising the utmost control could she prevent herself from exploding with laughter.
One imagines that the reaction of her grandmother, Queen Victoria, to such a situation would have been very different.
On 22 June 1906, seven months after their arrival in the country, King Haakon and Queen Maud were crowned. The Coronation took place in the old Gothic Cathedral at Trondheim, a straggling little city half-way up Norway's rugged western coastline. It was here that the old kings of Norway had been crowned. The royal party travelled to Trondheim through the heart of the country: by rail as far as they could and then by carriage to Andalsnes on the coast. From here they sailed to Trondheim. The coronation journey – this act, as it were, of 'taking possession' of their kingdom, introduced the King and Queen to some of Norway's most spectacular scenery. For the first time they saw the towering, snow-capped mountains, the wild, desolate countryside, the plummeting white waterfalls, the glaciers, the lakes, the fjords. For both Haakon and Maud, with their strong feeling for the outdoors, it was all enchantment. 'I have never seen a landscape with dimensions like this,' enthused the King. After each overnight stop, he would be up at six to take in his fill of this natural grandeur.