Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

  Chamberlain’s new overture was received in Berlin with a mixture of satisfaction and caution. “You and I16 are entirely in agreement that the idea of an alliance is premature,” Hatzfeldt had begun his message to Holstein, knowing how Chamberlain’s ideas were viewed in the Wilhelmstrasse. The German view continued to be that Germany could afford to wait; as time passed and Britain’s difficulties increased, she would pay more for the security of a German alliance. “Better wait17 and leave the initiative to the English,” Bülow telegraphed to Hatzfeldt on January 20. “There is no hurry. I don’t believe in an agreement between England and the Dual Alliance [France and Russia] until England has lost all hope... of Germany’s eventual support.”

  It was here that matters stood when, for a while, diplomacy came to a halt. On the afternoon of January 18, after he had helped Hatzfeldt draft the telegram to Berlin about Chamberlain’s Chatsworth proposal, Eckardstein stopped off at his London club. There he happened to meet a Court official who told him confidentially that the Queen was dying at Osborne House.

  Queen Victoria began the year 1900, the last full year of her life, reading about British defeats in South Africa and poring over long casualty lists, dreading to read familiar names. She sent letters and telegrams to ministers and to officers in the field, exhorting them to suppress gloom, to organize victory—and meanwhile to ensure that everything was being done to provide for the safety and comfort of the cavalry horses making the long sea voyage to South Africa. In her wheelchair, she reviewed departing regiments and visited wounded soldiers in hospitals. “I was wheeled up to the bed18 of each man, speaking to them, and giving them flowers. They seemed so touched and many had tears in their eyes. There were a great number of Irish soldiers, chiefly from the Dublin Fusiliers, Inniskillens and Connaught Rangers....”

  A few days later the Queen made a dramatic change in plans for her usual spring holiday: instead of going to the Riviera, which she had visited annually for many years, she decided to visit Ireland, where she had not set foot for forty years. Her ministers were worried about the virulence of attacks in the Continental press against the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and England. Kiosks in Paris flaunted posters with vulgar, almost obscene caricatures of the Queen. Prominent Englishmen traveling in Europe attracted the cry of “Vive les Boers!” On April 4, as the Prince and Princess of Wales were aboard a train leaving the Gare du Nord in Brussels, a fifteen-year-old Belgian youth named Sipido jumped on the footboard outside their compartment and fired four shots at them from six feet away. Neither Prince nor Princess was hit. Captured, Sipido and four adult companions proved to be members of an anarchist group espousing anti-British, pro-Boer sentiments. Sipido declared that the Prince was his target because he was “an accomplice of Chamberlain19 in killing the Boers.” No one in Britain wished to risk the Queen’s life in such a climate.

  Besides, Victoria herself had already decided to go to Ireland. “It was entirely my own idea20 as was also my giving up going abroad—and it will give great pleasure and do much good,” she wrote to the Empress Frederick. She was grateful for the large number of Irish recruits who had signed up to go to South Africa and for their gallantry once in action. She decreed the wearing of the shamrock by Irish soldiers on St. Patrick’s Day and authorized the creation of a new regiment, the Irish Guards, in the Brigade of Guards. Her visit to Dublin, which lasted almost the whole month of April, became a personal triumph. Overriding the views of her advisors, she drove through the streets without an armed escort, and the city which, sixteen years later, rose in the Easter Rebellion, cheered whenever she appeared.

  During the spring of 1900, the tide turned in South Africa. On February 28, Ladysmith was relieved after a siege of 118 days. On May 19, five days before the Queen’s birthday, the siege of Mafeking was lifted. On May 24, the Queen noted her birthday in her journal: “Again my old birthday21 returns, my 81st! God has been very merciful and supported me, but my trials and anxieties have been manifold and I feel tired and upset by all I have gone through this winter and spring.”

  The Queen’s health was deteriorating. Rheumatic stiffness in her joints had required first a walking stick, then a wheelchair. In 1898, she developed cataracts. She had used reading glasses in private since 1877; now she was forced to wear them in public. She demanded larger and larger lettering and blacker and blacker ink in the confidential letters sent to her by Lord Salisbury. Everything else was read aloud to her by Princess Beatrice. In the summer of 1900, the strength and precision of her famous memory began to erode and she had trouble finding the words she wanted to use in conversation. By July, she was losing weight and complained of back pains and insomnia. The doctors recommended naps. “I now rest daily22 for a short while after luncheon which is thought good for me but loses time,” she complained to her journal.

  At the end of July, Queen Victoria suffered a personal blow. Cancer had already taken her son-in-law, the Emperor Frederick. Her daughter Vicky, the Dowager Empress of Germany, lay ill at Homburg, stricken by the same disease. Now came news that her second son, Alfred (“Affie” in the family), the former Duke of Edinburgh and a career naval officer who had been Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet before succeeding in 1893 to the hereditary Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg, was battling the relentless disease. Suffering from a painful tongue and throat, he had gone to Vienna for diagnosis. On July 25, the Queen recorded the terrible news: “The malady appears incurable,23 and, alas, one can only too well guess its nature. Affie himself is quite ignorant of the danger in which he is, and his doctors wish him on no account to be informed.” Only six days later, the Duke’s wife informed the Queen that he had died peacefully in his sleep, “having been with us24 in the garden in the afternoon.” The Queen could not contain her private grief: “Oh God!25 My poor, darling Affie gone too! My third grownup child,fn1 besides three sons-in-law. It is hard at eighty-one.... I pray God to help me to be and have trust in Him who has never failed me.”

  The Queen’s grief was kept mostly private, confided only to her family and her journal. A rare instance of semipublic complaint occurred during an exchange of letters with her old friend George Goschen, a member of the Unionist Cabinet, who wrote that he would not be standing for reelection in the autumn campaign. “He has now been26 more than thirty-seven years in the House of Commons and being in his seventieth year, he felt that he may fairly claim relief from its engrossing duties,” Goschen wrote to the Queen. “The last five years, during which he has been First Lord of the Admiralty, have been a period of great and continuous strain, and the overwhelming responsibilities of the post... have contributed to make him desire some rest.” The Queen read the letter with mixed feelings: certainly, Goschen had earned his retirement; yet she always hated having to deal with new people; and if the Admiralty was an “overwhelming responsibility,” what about the Crown? “The Queen feels27 that he is fully justified in wishing for a rest,” she finally wrote. “She wishes she could have the same, even for the shortest period; for she does need it and feels the constant want of it, at eighty-one—very trying and fatiguing.” Goschen’s heart went out to the elderly monarch: “Your Majesty speaks pathetically28 of the desire for rest often felt by your Majesty,” he wrote to her. “The nation knows the self-sacrifice and courage with which your Majesty in your eighty-second year, discharges unremittingly the most arduous duties, and endeavors to repay them with the greatest devotion and affection ever paid to a sovereign.”

  In September, the Queen went to Balmoral. An attending gentleman, Lord James of Hereford, described her decline. “In May the Queen29 was quite as of old—very cheerful and enjoying any anecdote or smart conversation.... When I returned in October I found that the greatest change had taken place. The Queen had shrunk so as to appear about one half the person she had been.” Queen Victoria described what was happening to her. Balmoral was “gloomy and dark”;30 she felt “very poorly and wretched....31 My appetite is completely gone and I have difficulty eating anything.” By N
ovember 7, she was back at Windsor but felt no better:

  November 9: “Still have disgust for all food.”

  November 11: “Shocking night and no draught could make me sleep as pain kept me awake. Very tired and unwell.”

  November 28: “Bad, restless night, good deal of pain.”

  December 2: “Could not leave room. My repulsion for food was great.”

  December 3: “Very sleepy and slept before luncheon.”

  December 16: “Had a very bad night and only got up late. Slept most of the afternoon.”

  On the eighteenth, at eleven-forty A.M., she left Windsor for the last time. She slept for an hour on the train to Portsmouth, embarked on the Alberta at two P.M., and was at Osborne House by three-thirty. Even “magic Osborne” could not reverse what was happening:

  December 22: “Slept until quarter to twelve at which I was very annoyed.”

  December 27: “Disturbed by the wind. Took some milk, fell asleep towards morning so did not get up till nearly one.”

  She continued faithful to duty. On January 2, 1901, Lord Roberts arrived, having sailed direct from Cape Town to Cowes to report to the sovereign on the progress of the war. The Queen received his report and gave him the Garter and an earldom. On January 10, Joseph Chamberlain, the last Cabinet Minister to see her alive, arrived with the latest news from South Africa. He stayed twenty minutes and later recalled: “She was thinner33 and there was a certain look of delicacy about her,” but “she showed not the slightest sign of failing intelligence.... [She] spoke about the war, regretting its prolongation and the loss of life, but said earnestly, ‘I am not anxious34 about the result.’” On January 13, she made a last entry in her journal: “Had a fair night,35 but was a little wakeful.” Her last words were testimony to duty: “Rested again afterwards, then did some signing and dictated to Lenchen.” The following day, January 14, there was no entry; it was the first time in nearly seventy years that Victoria had failed to write. On the seventeenth, her mind seemed clouded and she had difficulty speaking. Her children were summoned.

  The Queen’s eldest grandchild was not summoned, but appeared nonetheless. On January 18, the day after his return from Chatsworth, Eckardstein, hearing about the Queen’s condition, rushed back to his embassy to telegraph Berlin. The Kaiser was in the middle of celebrating the bicentenary of the proclamation of the Kingdom of Prussia and had just declared his resolve to make the German Navy “as mighty an instrument”36 as the army. He broke off the celebration, cancelled all appointments, and announced that he was leaving immediately for England. Bülow, knowing that the visit would be bitterly unpopular in Germany, suggested that his master wait to see how the illness developed. Impatiently, William retorted that, where the life of his dear grandmother was concerned, no other considerations could be taken into account; in fact, he had already reserved cabins on the Flushing–Dover mail boat for that night. “I have duly informed37 the Prince of Wales, begging him at the same time that no notice whatever is to be taken of me in my capacity as Emperor and that I come as a grandson.... I suppose the petticoats [the Queen’s three daughters, Princess Helena (Lenchen), Louise, and Beatrice] who are fencing off poor Grandmama from the world—and I often fear from me—will kick up a row when they hear of my coming. But I don’t care, for what I do is my duty, the more so as it is this unparalleled Grandmama, as none ever existed before.”

  Although he came as a grandson, the German Emperor could not be ignored, and the Prince of Wales hurried back from Osborne to put on the uniform of the Prussian First Dragoon Guards and greet William at Victoria Station. On the morning of the twentieth, the nephew accompanied his uncle back to Osborne. The Queen barely recognized William, mistaking him for his father, the Emperor Frederick. William was extravagantly discreet. He waited tactfully in another room, declaring that while he wanted to see Grandmama as much as possible before she died, if that was impossible, he would quite understand. His attitude won the admiration of the family and he was invited to join the little party by the deathbed.

  All through Sunday the twenty-second, while the Queen was dying, messages poured in. One came from President Kruger, wishing for her “prompt recovery.”38 As the winter darkness fell about four P.M., the family group moved closer around the bed. The Prince of Wales kneeled beside his mother, while Prince Arthur, the Queen’s other surviving son, and the German Emperor supported her in their arms with pillows. “The last moments39 were like a great three-decker ship sinking,” reported the Bishop of Winchester, an old friend who was present. She rallied and gasped for breath, recognizing people, calling their names, then closing her eyes and slipping back into unconsciousness. Her last word was “Bertie.” “Then came a great change of look and complete calmness,” noted the Bishop. She died at half past six.

  William’s dignity and genuine sorrow had won his relatives’ affection. Together, he and his uncle, the new King, lifted the body into the coffin. “She was so little—and40 so light,” the Kaiser noted afterward. When the new King, who announced that he would call himself King Edward VII, departed for London for an Accession Council, he asked his nephew to take charge at Osborne. Moved by this new warmth, William decided to stay on in England through the funeral, almost a fortnight away. During the ten days the Queen lay in state at Osborne, William remained, living with the family despite the arrival of the Hohenzollern. King Edward invested William’s son, the nineteen-year-old Crown Prince William, with the Order of the Garter and made the Kaiser a Field Marshal in the British Army. Impulsively, William responded by conferring the German Order of the Black Eagle on Lord Roberts, who was detested by pro-Boer Germans. The Kaiser’s behavior was so new and remarkable that his uncle could find only good things to say. “William was kindness itself41 and touching in his devotion without a shade of brusquerie or selfishness,” he wrote to his sister, who had been too ill to travel from Germany. A week later, he wrote to her again: “William’s touching and simple demeanor,42 up to the last, will never be forgotten by me or anyone.” The Kaiser also felt the closeness. In February 1906, when Britain and Germany sternly confronted each other at the Algeciras Conference, William wrote to his uncle, “Let us rather remember43 the silent hour when we watched and prayed at her bedside, then the spirit of that great Sovereign Lady passed away as she drew her last breath in my arms.”

  Queen Victoria32 had reigned for almost sixty-four years;fn2 only subjects nearing seventy could remember another monarch. More than a sovereign, she was an institution, and most of her people thought of her as permanent, like the Houses of Parliament or the Bank of England. “She was the greatest44 of Englishwomen—I almost said of Englishmen—for she added the highest of manly qualities to the personal delicacy of a woman,” said Joseph Chamberlain. The sense of loss was many-sided: loss of permanence, loss of authority, loss of security. On no one—not even on her Heir—did this loss have greater impact than on the Kaiser. In spite of all, the emotional link between them had never been broken. He was her eldest grandchild, she was his august, but also warmhearted Grandmama. The happiest days of his youth had been spent in the relatively informal atmosphere of Osborne and Windsor, an atmosphere dominated by the personality of the Queen. As the years went by, he never gave up his feeling of tenderness for his aging grandmother and respect for the Queen-Empress. She scolded him, but she also showed him affection and understanding. She criticized him to her ministers, but she also stood up for him, advising Lord Salisbury and others on how to deal with him. In many ways, she was like him: both were sentimental, subject to strong likes and dislikes, capable of gushiness and sharp anger in writing to subordinates. Because Victoria had had Albert and a series of independent prime ministers, she had learned to discipline her feelings and language as William never had. As long as she lived, she posed for William a model of how an Imperial sovereign should behave. When she died, that model vanished. His uncle, King Edward, could not replace her; for too long, Bertie, in William’s eyes, had been the frivolous Prince of Wal
es. And so, at forty-two, the Kaiser was left alone to follow his own path, bereft of the presence, the counsel, and the affection of the one human he admired as well as loved.

  On February 1, the Queen’s body was carried to Portsmouth on board the Alberta, with King Edward following on the large Victoria and Albert. As the two yachts passed between the lines of saluting warships, the King noticed that the royal standard over his head was at half-mast. He asked the captain why. “The Queen is dead, Sir,”45 was the reply. “The King of England lives!” declared the King, and the standard soared. A special train transported the coffin to London, past crowds of people kneeling in the stations, at crossroads, and in fields along the way. At times, the train seemed to be going recklessly fast; again, the new King was asserting himself. The train had left Portsmouth nine minutes late and the driver was told to “see what you can do46 to make it up as the King cannot stand people being late.” In London, dense crowds lined the route between Victoria Station and Paddington as the gun carriage carrying the coffin rolled past, followed by three red-cloaked horsemen; the King; the Kaiser on the King’s right; Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, on the King’s left. At Windsor, the gun-carriage horses bucked in their harness and had to be unhitched and replaced by a party of navy bluejackets who pulled their royal mistress up the hill from the station. The funeral was in St. George’s Chapel. Then Victoria was taken to the Frogmore Mausoleum, where after forty-two years she lay down at Albert’s side.

  William’s private visit to England alarmed many in Germany. The Kaiserin had opposed the trip from the beginning and she wanted him to come home quickly. “I hope47 that you will be able to dissuade the Kaiser from staying for the funeral,” she wrote to Bülow after the Queen’s death. “And that you will persuade him to be satisfied with sending the Crown Prince or perhaps Prince Henry who is burning to go.” William himself telegraphed his wife on January 23 his reasons for staying at Osborne: “My aunts48 here are quite alone [the new King had gone to London] and I must help them with many things. I must give then my advice whenever advice is necessary. They are so kind to me, they treat me like a brother and a friend instead of like a nephew.... It has been a terribly difficult and exciting time.” When she got this message, the Empress worried even more: “The Kaiser is very tired49 and exhausted. But that occurs easily as you know... for he is so entirely absorbed by anything he does. But I think it is particularly dangerous the way everyone—especially the ladies—is trying to besiege his warm, friendly nature and turn his head (they all, of course, want to win him over for their own ends).” On the twenty-sixth, she had fresh news of English scheming: “To crown everything else,50 the new English King has made the German Emperor an English Field Marshal,” she wrote to Bülow. “If this is not an irony in present circumstances [i.e., the Boer War], I do not know what is. It is supposed to be a gracious act, but I consider it tactless. The Kaiser, of course, has got to look pleased.” For once, Eulenburg agreed with the Emperor’s wife. “I am anxious51 when I think of the beloved Master in Osborne,” he wrote to his colleague Bülow from Vienna. “He will be like a child amidst these people who are crude despite their mourning. Amongst them, he forgets all his shrewdness. A sort of trustful embarrassment takes possession of him and any one of them could easily get at the secrets of his soul (and our state secrets). And at the same time, he is really in the way. The family scold him behind his back and his own adjutants wring their hands and wish they could go home.”