The Dowager Queen also seemed to be reluctant to hand over some of the Crown jewels to which she had become attached and which were now due to the Queen Consort. The fact that she eventually both handed them back and moved out of the Palace did little to reduce Queen Mary’s frustration. She was anxious to get on with redecorating Buckingham Palace in a style more suited to her own tastes than those of her mother-in-law. In a letter to her Aunt Augusta, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Mary wrote of her irritations at the delay: ‘the odd part is that the person causing the delay & trouble remains supremely unconscious as to the inconvenience it is causing, such a funny state of things & everyone seems afraid to speak’. The ‘everyone’ who was afraid to speak was presumably King George, who, torn between his loyalty to his wife and his loyalty to his mother, shut his eyes to the problem in the hope that it would go away. There is certainly no evidence that he discussed his wife’s feelings with his mother, deciding, probably wisely, to stay out of a conflict in which there could be no winners. Queen Mary had an ally in Mademoiselle Bricka. In a letter to her old governess some months before the Coronation, she wrote: ‘Life is too fatiguing for me, I have too much to do, to think of, I am getting worn out and people bother one so, I am sick of the everlasting begging for favours of all kinds!’
When the time came for Queen Mary to redecorate Buckingham Palace there were more problems. She did not care for Queen Alexandra’s furniture and began to replace it with heirlooms – which had been stored away and not seen since the days of King George IV and King William IV – as well as rehanging pictures and changing rugs and brocades. Bearing in mind that the palace was a not particularly well-designed home of six hundred rooms, many of which were uninhabitable and hardly suited for any purpose, this was no mean task. For the first time in her married life Queen Mary was given the opportunity to put her house in order. She could not wait to do so. When she was a child her parents had had no home of their own, and when she married Prince George York Cottage was furnished by Princess Alexandra, aided and abetted by Prince George.
King George was looking forward to the Coronation which would confirm him and Queen Mary officially in a role that had been ceremonially proclaimed but not yet publicly acclaimed by his peers and his eagerly awaiting subjects. The Dowager Queen was dreading the royal rite of passage, a reminder that less than ten years earlier her own regal status at the side of her husband had been confirmed. Queen Mary, more than anyone, sensed the anguish her mother-in-law was suffering and feared that some incident would trigger a breakdown and ruin the day for them all. Aware that the Dowager Queen and her daughter, Princess Victoria, had never liked her, she feared that they might well conspire out of jealousy to undermine the role she was creating for herself and behind which she was to shelter for the remainder of her life. Queen Alexandra was becoming seriously depressed. Her inability to give up her past – revealed by her reluctance to prepare herself for the move to her ‘new’ home – was due as much to depression as it was to a more or less unconscious wish to sabotage her daughter-in-law’s Coronation. She was tearful, dwelt on the past and felt ‘hopeless’ and ‘helpless’. She became preoccupied again with the death of her beloved son Eddy nineteen years earlier and reminded her family that following the death of his father Eddy should rightfully have been King. She had conveniently ‘forgotten’ that her eldest son was ill-educated and virtually illiterate, vague and unintelligent and the subject of a homosexual scandal of which his younger brother seemed to be ignorant. Prince George’s abhorrence of same-sex relationships had caused him once to comment that he thought people like that shot themselves. The country had been spared a homosexual King and seemed not displeased that a brother whose homophobic views seemed unnecessarily vehement was to take his place. The family breathed a sigh of relief when the Dowager Queen declared she was too ill to attend the Coronation service.
Queen Mary was relieved that she would not have to cope with her mother-in-law on a day she saw as ‘hers’. She had still to contend with interference from another source. King George’s conservatism, which had developed into a controlling urge to preserve the status quo, made clear his views about contemporary dress. The fashions of the late Victorian era, which were good enough for his parents, were not only good enough for him but also for his wife. His insistence that Queen Mary dress in the same passé style as Queen Alexandra set a new vogue. Following a state visit to France just before the outbreak of war in 1914 a newspaper reported that the Queen had a wonderful success, the Paris mob went mad about her, and it was rumoured that her out-of-date hats and early Victorian gowns would become next year’s fashions’. This prediction may have been made tongue in cheek but, had it not been for the war, what was intended as satire might well have come about.
The socially anxious and self-conscious hide beneath uniforms and uniformity. George V convinced himself that it was his knock-knees which no tailor was able to disguise that had made him emotionally vulnerable since childhood rather than his pathological attachment to his mother. To his chagrin his son Bertie also suffered from knock-knees. The effort which he had made to cure his son’s defect – notwithstanding the pain caused by keeping a child in leg braces day and night and the tears which resulted – was as much a reflection of his anxiety about his own appearance as it was for the well-being of his son.
The Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary, which took place on 22 June 1911, was on a grand scale. Eight thousand people attended the ceremony in Westminster Abbey and many thousands more lined the streets of London to cheer first the Queen’s procession and then the King’s procession as they entered the Abbey. Thousands more well-wishers stood outside Buckingham Palace as, after the ceremony, the newly crowned King and Queen appeared repeatedly on the balcony before their subjects. The seventeen-year-old David, shortly to be invested as Prince of Wales in Caernarvon Castle and now heir to the throne, summed up in his diary, in terms all the more revealing for what was omitted, the events of the day.
Buckingham Palace, London June 22 1911. Papa and Mama’s Coronation day. Papa rated me a midshipman – I breakfasted early & saw Mama & Papa at 9.00 & then dressed in my Garter clothes and robe, & left in a state carriage at 10.00 with Mary & the brothers. We arrived in the Abbey at 10.30 & then walked up the Nave & Choir to my seat in front of the peers. All the relatives & people were most civil & bowed to me as they passed. Then Mama & Papa came in & the ceremony commenced. There was the recognition, the anointing and then the crowning of Papa, and then I put on my coronet with the peers. Then I had to go & do homage to Papa at his throne, & I was very nervous …
This is an account of the most eventful day in the lives of two people, one who had not wanted to be King and the other who wanted nothing more than to be Queen.
The entry in the King’s diary was even less emotional than his son’s:
We left Westminster Abbey at 2.15 (having arrived there before 11.0) with our Crowns on and our sceptres in our hands. This time we drove by the Mall, St James’ Street & Piccadilly, crowds enormous & decorations very pretty. On reaching B.P. [Buckingham Palace] just before 3.0 May & I went out on the balcony to show ourselves to the people. Downey photographed us in our robes with Crowns on. Had some lunch with guests here. Worked all afternoon with Bigge & others answering telegrams & letters of which I have had hundreds. Such a large crowd collected in front of the Palace that I went out on the balcony again. Our guests dined with us at 8.30. May and I showed ourselves again to the people. Wrote & read. Rather tired. Bed at 11.45. Beautiful illuminations everywhere.
And so with comments reminiscent of an entry in a ship’s log, the couple’s longest day came to an end.
Barely had the Coronation been concluded than preparations began for the ceremony to be repeated in India. This was not so much for the benefit of the people of India as for King George, who, now no stranger to pageantry, was looking forward to a Durbar at which he could crown himself Emperor of India. His fascination with In
dia had begun during his first visit in the winter of 1905–6. With his overwhelming self-consciousness temporarily assuaged by the success of the events of 22 June, he was encouraged to seek further reassurance from the people of India that he was their Emperor in fact as well as in name. He convinced himself that his visit to a country in the midst of nationalist fervour would somehow ‘allay unrest’, as he put it to Lord Morley, the Secretary of State for India, in a letter dated 8 September 1910. ‘I am sorry to say [the] seditious spirit unfortunately exists in some parts of India.’ Perhaps he recalled a similar optimism on his part when, following his visit to Ireland in 1897, he had convinced himself that the friendly accord between its people and the Crown which he had fostered would somehow resolve the political issues of the day.
Lord Morley was understandably reluctant to give consent to such a financially, and perhaps politically, costly venture. Four days later, in a letter to the King, the Secretary of State tactfully pointed out that the cost of the visit would have to be borne by the Indian tax-payer and that the absence of the Sovereign might cause some embarrassment to business at home. He went on to congratulate the King on his strong sense of ‘Imperial duty’ and the ‘sympathetic, almost passionate, interest taken in the people of India that inspire[s] the present proposal in Your Majesty’s mind’. Two months later the Cabinet reluctantly agreed to the visit but only after it had closely considered the cost of its many implications. Since it was forbidden for the crown worn at the Coronation to be taken out of the country, this necessitated the making of a special Imperial Crown, which was undertaken by Garrard, the Crown Jeweller. The second Coronation, however, to which the King had been looking forward, was not possible. The Archbishop of Canterbury pointed out that because many of the guests at the ceremony would be Muslims and Hindus the Christian service of consecration, deemed essential by the Archbishop, would be inappropriate. It was therefore decided that the King should appear at the Durbar already wearing the new crown. The so-called ‘boons’ expected – which usually took the form of remissions of prison sentences or reductions in taxes, together with a proposed cash gift to further academic research – were considered too costly by the Cabinet. It was decided, again reluctantly, that it would be less expensive for the King’s visit to mark the remove of the capital of British India from Calcutta to Delhi, thus reversing the controversial partition of Bengal introduced by Lord Curzon in 1905 which provoked the enmity of the Bengalis and was described as Lord Curzon’s ‘unintentional but grievous mistake’.
On 11 November 1911 the King and Queen left for India on the recently launched 13,000-ton P&O ship Medina. They were accompanied by a large suite including, among others, Lord Crewe, the Secretary of State for India, the Duke of Teck, the King’s personal ADC, the King’s Private Secretary, Sir Arthur Bigge (Lord Stamfordham), the Chief of the Metropolitan Police, the ADC General, as well as five equerries all personally known to the King. The ship carried 210 marines, 360 petty officers and ratings and thirty-two officers. The Medina was escorted throughout the journey by four cruisers under the command of Admiral Sir Colin Keppel. Queen Alexandra and the King’s and Queen’s two older boys, Prince Edward (David) and Prince Albert (Bertie), came to Portsmouth to see them off. David expressed disappointment at once again being separated from his parents. His father, being reminded of earlier sad farewells (‘as horrible as ever’), probably felt the same. David wrote immediately to his mother: ‘I shall never forget that moment when I saw you waving from the window of the railway carriage as we slowly steamed away from you in the wind & rain.’
On 2 December 1911, after the month-long voyage, the last part of which was in the sweltering heat of the Indian Ocean, the Medina dropped anchor at Bombay, the ‘gateway’ to India, The royal party disembarked on 5 December, a week before the Durbar ceremony, and were met by the Viceroy Lord Hardinge. Passing through streets lined by cheering crowds, they made for Government House. A triumphal Muslim-style arch on the Apollo Bundar was officially opened in 1924 in honour of King George’s visit and today is a popular meeting place.
The magnificent Delhi Durbar was described at the time as the most splendid spectacle in the history of India. Forty thousand tents to house 250,000 people had been erected over an area covering forty-five square miles on the plains alongside the Jumna River. The King, who was enthroned beneath a golden dome, towered over his subjects who came to pay homage to him. The Times summed up the day’s events in a style appropriate to the occasion. ‘The ceremony at its culminating point exactly typified the Oriental conception of the ultimate responsibilities of Imperial power. The Monarchs sat alone, remote but beneficent, raised far above the multitude but visible to all, clad in rich vestments, flanked by radiant emblems of authority, guarded by a glittering array of troops, the cynosure of the proudest Princes of India, the central figures in what was surely the most majestic assemblage ever seen in the East.’
At 12 noon on 12 December 1911, beneath the heat of the Indian sun, King George and Queen Mary felt that a moment had occurred in their lives that elevated them from the sphere of ordinary mortals. If they believed that the Coronation at Westminster Abbey was the climax of their lives, the Indian Durbar not only reinforced but enhanced this climax. No one at the Durbar could have failed to be moved by the pageantry of colour, the symbols of Empire and the fervour of a people who waited for a divine messenger to rescue them from a life they accepted because of the promise of happiness in the world to come. Had they imagined that they had been transported from squalor and poverty to the gates of Paradise by the spectacle before them it would have been understandable. King George himself was so moved by the ceremony that in a letter to his mother he wrote that ‘the Durbar yesterday was the most wonderful & beautiful sight I have ever seen & one I shall remember all my life. We wore our robes & I the new crown made for the occasion. May had her best tiara on … I can only say it was most magnificent, the clothes & colours were marvellous … I had six pages & May had four to carry our robes, they were either young Maharajahs or sons of Maharajahs & all wore beautiful clothes of white & gold with gold turbans & they did look nice.’
King George was not only reliving a childhood fairy-tale but was acting it out. When the Durbar ended he removed his ‘dressing-up clothes’ to play another game. While Queen Mary travelled to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal he went shooting in Nepal. The Maharajah of Nepal provided 14,000 beaters and 600 elephants to facilitate the King’s favourite pastime in which thirty-nine tigers, eighteen rhino and one bear were shot, a record the King considered would be ‘hard to beat’. Although he and Queen Mary were apart for Christmas, they rejoined one another in Bombay to board the Medina for the voyage back to England. Overwhelmed by the events of the past few weeks, the King delivered his farewell speech and wept. When the Medina put into Malta he wrote to his mother: ‘What joy there are only 9 days before we meet. I shall then feel proud that our historical visit to India had been accomplished successfully I hope and that I have done my duty before God & this great Empire, & last but not least that I have gained the approval of my beloved Motherdear.’
• 17 •
We shall try all we can to keep out of this
THE YEARS THAT led up to ‘the war to end all wars’ brought King George into conflict with a number of issues since the turn-of-the-century struggle had been developing between women demanding equal rights with men and a society intent on denying them these rights. The King’s views differed little from those of other Englishmen of the time, namely that women fell into two categories, those whom one married and who bore one’s children and those who inhabited the demi-monde. He soon became aware that a third category, representing all women, was vociferously demanding recognition.
The move towards women’s suffrage had begun in the second half of the nineteenth century. By 1913 it had gained considerable momentum when it was announced that a Reform Bill, launched by the Liberal Prime Minister H.H. Asquith, would be open to amendments relating to women’s
suffrage. The speaker of the House of Commons vetoed the amendments on the grounds that they would alter the character of the original Bill too profoundly for it to proceed. This setback infuriated the militants in the suffrage movement. The suffragettes, under the leadership of Emmeline Pankhurst, had already invited Queen Mary’s disapproval by smashing plate-glass windows with hammers carried in their muffs, as well as by other acts of violence. King George’s attention was dramatically drawn to the cause when, on Derby Day 1913, a young militant, Emily Wilding Davidson, threw herself under the hooves of the King’s horse at Tattenham Corner and was killed. Queen Mary’s immediate reaction was that the jockey, ‘poor Jones’, had been ‘much knocked about’. The King, an opponent of every form of organized violence, must also have disapproved.
Five days before the Coronation about 40,000 supporters of the suffragette movement, mostly women, held a four-mile-long procession extending from Westminster to the Albert Hall. The purpose of the demonstration was to draw attention to their cause and to raise money to support it. Having already targeted the Royal Family on Derby Day, the militants in the movement had hoped that Queen Mary at least would understand the justice of their demands. They were disappointed. While the Queen had always been well aware of her own rights as a woman, she was now satisfied with her status and as the First Lady of the British Empire could feel only embarrassment at the importunity of her sisters. She had left far behind her the time when, as Princess May, she had considered herself less equal than other members of her family and clearly did not wish to be reminded of a struggle she had fought and won. Having overcome what she had experienced as ‘social discrimination’ in her upbringing, Queen Mary managed to delude herself that she was ‘to the manner born’. Uncertain of her past she resented the struggle of those less secure than herself, and she did not support the efforts of the suffragettes to right social wrongs. Her comments on the miners who were striking for an improvement in underground working conditions, and on the disruptive transport strike, applied equally to the suffragette movement. ‘Now we have a transport strike which may become very serious – really we have no luck, one tiresome thing after another.’ This echoed a similarly deprecatory comment, this time in a letter to her Aunt Augusta, following the burning down of the ‘little tea house’ in Kew Gardens by militants. Other protests by ‘unruly’ women to draw attention to their rights included shouting at the King at a performance at His Majesty’s Theatre and creating an explosion in Westminster Abbey, which slightly damaged the Coronation Chair and the Stone of Destiny. ‘There seems no end to their iniquities,’ wrote the Queen.
Darling Georgie Page 19