Praise for Dennis Friedman
Acclaim for Inheritance
An widely fascinating delve into the Windsors … compelling’
– Anne Edwards, author of Matriarch
Acclaim for Ladies of the Bedchamber
‘It has been a great year for books about naughty ladies … I loved Dennis Friedman’s
Ladies of the Bedchamber’.
– Edwina Currie, New Statesman Books of the Year, 2003
A very good read, full of odd nuggets of fascinating information’
– What’s On In London
Acclaim for An Unsolicited Gift
‘Utterly fascinating’ – Peter James, author of Dead Man’s Grip
‘Has kicked up a ruckus in Britain’– Time magazine
‘Fascinating … maybe you are thinking: “Prince Charles – this explains everything!”’ – The Australian
Acclaim for The Lonely Hearts Club
‘Multilayered and complex … entertaining and provocative’ – Independent
Darling Georgie
DENNIS FRIEDMAN, psychiatrist and author of Inheritance: A Psychological History of the Royal Family, turns his acute gaze on our present Queen’s grandfather, King George V (1865–1936), to take a closer look at the man behind the monarch. Taking as his starting point the widely held belief that the personality and behaviour of parents and grandparents have a powerful influence on the children and grandchildren – and even great-grandchildren – Dr Friedman’s insightful biography pursuasively argues that the psychologically damaging upbringing to which George was subjected profoundly affected his later life and that the effects of this are still evident in today’s Royal Family.
A suffocating relationship with his mother, Princess Alexandra, compounded by the absence and neglect of his father, caused him to suffer extreme separation anxiety as a child, which was reinforced by his being sent away to boarding school at the age of eleven and then into the Navy. The author examines the effects of this rigid and traditional royal upbringing on his sexual development, on his marriage to Princess May of Teck (later Queen Mary) and on his subsequent years on the throne.
History depicts George V as a model husband, a near-perfect father and a self-confident monarch. Dr Friedman’s study of his personal life reveals a very different picture.
DENNIS FRIEDMAN is a psychiatrist and author of innovative studies on phobias, sexual problems and other psychological disorders. He is also the author of acclaimed books such as Inheritance: A Psychological History of the Royal Family; Ladies of the Bedchamber: The Role of the Royal Mistress; and An Unsolicited Gift: Why We Do What We Do. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Psychiatrists, has worked at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and was Medical Director of the Charter Clinic, London.
Author’s Note and Acknowledgements
MUCH HAS BEEN written about the political and social background to the reign of King George V It was not my intention when researching this book to reproduce biographical material already well known to social historians and their readers but to concentrate as far as possible on coming to some understanding of King George the man. Some of those to whom I mentioned the project objected to it on the grounds that what little was known (to them) of the King suggested that he was dull and uninteresting – and why had I not chosen to write about some more charismatic monarch?To my surprise, the more I read about King George V the more familiar he seemed to me to be. I felt that I knew him. I recognized his mannerisms, his style, his hopes and aspirations for himself and his family, his morality and his view of the world, in the adults with whom I had grown up. He ceased to be a stranger to me and metamorphosed into my old headmaster – whose views on discipline and good behaviour (respect for elders) were firmly expressed every morning in assembly – and reminded me of my father. His was a world with which I was familiar. From then on I had only to think of my childhood to understand and empathize with the views of the Sailor King. That he was a ‘product of his time’ confirms rather than belittles all that he stood for.
I am grateful to my publisher Peter Owen who suggested the work to me and to the librarians at the London Library and the British Library who were unstinting in their professional help. Among the many books consulted for the historical background I am particularly indebted to, among others, Sir Harold Nicolson for his official biography of King George V, Kenneth Rose for King George V, Dennis Judd for George V, John Gore for the official biography of King George V which was commissioned by Queen Mary soon after her husband’s death, James Pope-Hennessy’s Queen Mary and Georgina Battiscombe’s Queen Alexandra. The official biographers provided access to letters and diary entries that would otherwise be unavailable to an ‘unofficial’ biographer. I am grateful to my wife Rosemary for her overall supervision of the project and for her final editing.
Thanks are also due to Shirley Conran, Margaret Kaltinnick, Countess Ledochowska, Bruce Robinson, Cecily Engel, Lady Verity Ravensdale, Roy Shuttleworth, Pauline Neville, Lady Odette Dowding, John Spencer, Mette de Hamel, Lady Christine Cholmondeley, Graham Cornish, Father Thomas Bruun, pastor of the Danish Church in London, Ilse Yardley and Professor Hugh Freeman, all of whom contributed either anecdotes, personal reminiscences or constructive help in other ways. I am also grateful for the diligence and attention to detail of my researchers Dr Athena Syriatou of University College London and Maggie Millman.
Every effort has been made to ensure that there has been no infringement of copyright. I am grateful to John Murray for permission to quote from John Gore’s memoirs, to A.P. Watt (on behalf of the National Trust) for permission to quote extracts from three poems by Rudyard Kipling in The Sayings of Rudyard Kipling published by Duckworth, to Oliver Everett, Keeper of the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, for permission to quote from letters between members of the Royal Family which are in the public domain and to the Al Fayed Archive for permission to reproduce photographs from the Duke of Windsor’s private collection and also to The Times Picture Library.
Contents
Introduction: The Man Behind the Monarch
1 They are such ill bred, ill trained children, I don’t fancy them at all
2 Darling Georgie
3 Inclined to be lazy and silly this week
4 None of us could speak, we were all crying so much
5 Rum, buggery and the lash
6 The Gay Hussar
7 One feels capable of greater things
8 Killing animals and sticking in stamps
9 The Queen has gladly given her consent
10 I am very glad I am married and I don’t feel at all strange
11 What a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often
12 George says he isn’t ready yet to reign
13 Wake up, England
14 I know what’s best for my children
15 An overgrown schoolboy
16 I have lost my best friend and the best of fathers
17 We shall try all we can to keep out of this
18 If any question why we died, tell them that our fathers lied
19 The King is dead and has taken his trumpeter with him
20 And it all goes into the laundry, but it never comes out in the wash
Select Bibliography
Royal Family trees
Index
Plates
Illustrations
The infant Prince George photographed in 1867
Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra with their baby son Prince George and his older brother Prince Eddy, the Duke of Clarence, 1867
Prince George aged fourteen with his mother Princess Alexandra
Prince George with his brother Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, learning to tie knots on the training ship HMS Brita
nnia
Prince George aged nineteen in naval uniform, 1884
The Princes Eddy (left) and George while in the Navy
Prince George and Princess May of Teck, taken on their wedding day, 6 July 1893
Framed portrait of King George V’s wife, Queen Mary, 1911
Prince George in naval uniform, signed ‘Papa, 1896’
King George V’s children, clockwise from top left: Prince Bertie (the future George VI), Edward, Prince of Wales, Prince Henry, Prince George, Princess May and Prince John, 1916
King George with Major-General H. Hudson cheered by men of the 25th Infantry Brigade, Fouquereuil, France, 11 August 1916
King George visiting war graves in Belgium with Rudyard Kipling, c. 1925
King George and Queen Mary during a shooting party at Sandringham, c. 1934
King George making the first ever Christmas broadcast in 1934
King George’s last journey; his subjects pay their respects at Littleport, near Ely, as the royal train bearing the late King’s body passes by on its way from Sandringham to London, January 1936
• INTRODUCTION •
The Man Behind the Monarch
PRINCE GEORGE FREDERICK Ernest Albert, born 3 June 1865, was the second son of Princess Alexandra and Prince Edward and the grandson of Queen Victoria. Had greatness not been thrust upon him by the tragic death of his older brother, Prince Albert (Eddy), at the age of twenty-eight, King George V, a much loved monarch believed by many of his subjects to have been appointed by God, would not have acceded to the throne.
Prince George’s mother, the society beauty and fashionplate Alexandra, Princess of Wales, held a place in the public affection similar to that of Princess Diana who, more than a century later, was to be granted the same title. Unlike Princess Diana, however, Princess Alexandra was not pursued by the press in order to satisfy the insatiable demands of the public, and her private life remained her own. While Princess Diana turned to those victimized by society to fulfil her needs, Princess Alexandra looked to her two sons to compensate her for the love that her husband, the philandering Prince Edward, was unable to give her. Her younger son, Prince George, was her blue-eyed ‘Georgie dearest’ and she was his ‘Motherdear’. She remained so until her death in 1925, when King George was fifty-eight.
The stifling demands of his smothering mother, and the lacuna left by the frequent absences of his father, were profoundly to influence the life of King George V of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (later Windsor). Despite the fact that his Empire ‘on which the sun never set’ encompassed a quarter of the world’s surface – an area greater than that ruled over by any other British monarch before or since – he remained a remote figure and the very model of a national patriarch, known intimately only to a privileged few.
Five foot seven inches tall, spare, kindly-eyed, rosy-cheeked, neatly bearded and inadequately educated, King George V was a man of few social graces, mediocre intellect (his artistic aspirations rose no higher than his favourite musical Rose Marie) and few words. His image is captured in formal portraits, dressed in naval uniform, in the field with a cocked gun in his hands or by the side of the only other woman in his life, the firmly corseted, statuesque, bejewelled, coifed and toqued Queen Mary (Princess May of Teck), the intended bride of his deceased brother Eddy. Always immaculately dressed (when not in uniform) with a white gardenia in his buttonhole, and having used the same collar-stud and hairbrushes for half a century, his creed, according to Edward VIII, the oldest of his six children, was a belief ‘in God, in the invincibility of the Royal Navy, and the essential rightness of whatever was British’. While revered by many, and the epitome of ‘British’ virtues such as courage, dignity, honesty, common sense and devotion to duty, the pious King is usually remembered as an uninspiring monarch, a pale footnote to history, or for his acid comments such as on going abroad, ‘I’ve been there and I don’t like it,’ and his apocryphal last words ‘Bugger Bognor’.
Brought up by surrogates, the King was separated from his mother at the age of twelve, neglected by his unfaithful father and bullied as a cadet in the Royal Navy, an institution rife, according to Winston Churchill, with ‘rum, buggery and the lash’. It is hardly surprising that he withdrew into himself, was unable to relate to women, loathed socializing, was terrified of public speaking (he declared the State Opening of Parliament ‘the most terrible ordeal I have ever gone through’), communicated both with his beloved mother and his adored wife mainly by letter and communed silently with his unique collection of postage stamps, the majority of which bore his own head. Neat, precise and orderly, he was obsessed with time (he kept the clocks in Buckingham Palace half an hour fast) and when at home followed a ritual that never varied.
The King was passionate about horses and field sports and was a countryman at heart. He was never more relaxed than when killing birds and animals in the woods and meadows of the Sandringham estate or deer-stalking on the Scottish moors with a flask of whisky for warmth. Having spent most of his life in ships’ cabins, he preferred the tiny, cramped overcrowded rooms of York Cottage, his first marital home, to the splendour of Buckingham Palace.
At the beginning of King George V’s reign, peace and prosperity were taken for granted, although the democratically elected government represented the interests of the landowners and the wealthy industrialists, rather than those of the lumpenproletariat whose voice was yet to be heard. Twenty-six years later, by the end of his reign, the King had witnessed the bungled handling and futile losses of the Great War in which a generation of young men had been exhorted – both by himself and his cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II (now his enemy) – to lay down their lives for ‘King and Country’, had interfered impotently in the debate over Irish Home Rule, seen the gradual move towards Independence in India and watched, appalled, as women struggled for emancipation at home. In the face of these reversals of the established order with which he was unable to cope, the King, heavily dependent on his mother, his beloved brother Eddy, his tutors, his valet and his dominant wife, clung to his unhappy past. He became immobilized in a time warp, and was, anachronistically, perhaps the last of the eminent Victorians.
So traumatized was he by his unhappy childhood that the basically kind, faithful, good-natured King George unwittingly passed on to his older son David (Duke of Windsor) and his younger son Bertie (King George VI) the crippling axiom of ‘duty before love’ which had been so rigorously instilled into him. He was inclined to suppress his sons’ emotions and was unable to express his own warm feelings until, old and sick, he played nursery games with his granddaughter, Princess Elizabeth, whom he used to allow to ride upon his back. David was so terrified of his father that he had been known to faint when summoned to the King’s study, and Bertie was not only a lifelong sufferer from chronic indigestion but, as a result of his rigid upbringing, was afflicted with a stammer.
Naïve yet grandiose, timid yet aggressive, weighed down by his oppressive sense of duty, King George V was a pivotal figure between the hypocrisy and repression of the Victorian era and the damaging ‘kiss and tell’ of today’s liberated royals. Is the real King George V the tormented man – who concealed his true self first behind his mother’s skirts and later beneath the robes of state and the braids and epaulettes of his naval uniform – or the right-minded monarch whose misguided attempts to make ‘men’of his sons David (King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor) and Bertie (King George VI) sowed the seeds not only of their unhappiness but of the catastrophic misalliance of Prince Charles and Princess Diana?
• 1 •
They are such ill bred, ill trained children, I don’t fancy them at all
ON 3 JUNE 1865 the birth of Prince George, the second son of Princess Alexandra and Prince Edward the heir apparent, was welcomed unreservedly by the people of Great Britain. He was christened George Frederick Ernest Albert at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on 7 July 1865 and was henceforward known as ‘Georgie’ within the family. In the year of the Prince’s
birth, the Prime Minister Lord Palmerston died – to be eventually succeeded by William Ewart Gladstone – and Karl Marx published Das Kapital, which was destined to alter the fundamental perceptions of the individual and the state. A few years earlier (1859) Darwin had sown the seeds of radical change with The Origin of Species which laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory. During the course of King George V’s life, industrialization and new technology, the decline of the British Empire and an unprecedented war contributed to the transformation not only of the material world but also to the transformation of the old moral order.
There seemed no more stable symbol of the old world than the British Crown. Queen Victoria, Prince George’s grandmother, was both the world’s mightiest sovereign and the incarnation of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant values to which she believed she owed her enormous prosperity. For Queen Victoria, however, the year 1865 and the birth of Prince George did little to relieve her deep mourning for her husband Prince Albert, who had died four years earlier. For the young Princess Alexandra and Prince Edward, however, Prince George’s arrival enhanced what was thought to be a felicitous marriage. Their influence on the personality of a monarch who was to see Britain through radical social changes and world upheavals cannot be in any doubt. They passed on the well-intentioned, if not always well-thought-out, parenting they had themselves experienced.
In the early nineteenth century Britain’s Royal Family (the precursor of the present House of Windsor) was, in common with other upper-class families, concerned more with instilling the virtues of correctness and discipline into their children and with suppressing their spontaneous feelings than with allowing them to develop at their own pace in a secure and loving environment. The system of child-rearing to which King George V and his parents were exposed was less impressed with the psychological welfare of children, about which little was then known, than with preserving the image of the Royal Family, that inflexible monolith currently known as the ‘Firm’. The ‘Firm’s’ members are expected to carry out functions such as attendance at ceremonial and social occasions and to behave in such a way as not to bring other (particularly more senior) members of it into disrepute.
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