Edward VII_The Last Victorian King

by Christopher Hibbert

  Arrangements also had to be made for a band to play before dinner; for a singer to perform after dinner; for rooms to be prepared not only for the King and Queen and their servants but for the minister in attendance as well. Accommodation was also required in the castle for an inspector, a sergeant and three constables of the Household Police, as well as an inspector and a sergeant from Scotland Yard. These policemen would wear ordinary clothes and mingle with the indoor servants when the King and Queen were in the castle and with the gardeners, gamekeepers and beaters when they were in the grounds or out shooting.

  Alnwick Castle, which had been extensively restored in the previous century, was in good order and no alterations or redecorations had to be carried out in the suite of rooms allocated to the King and Queen. But the owners of other houses which they visited were put to great expense in painting, papering and refurnishing rooms which were considered insufficiently imposing for royal habitation.

  ‘We came to Mount Stewart at Whitsuntide,’ wrote Lady Londonderry after arrangements had been made for a royal visit there in 1903. ‘And looking over the house … the place looked extraordinarily shabby; and we felt that it must be tidied up for the great occasion.’ So the billiardroom was transformed into an additional drawing-room; twelve other rooms were repapered; the main drawing-room was provided with specially embroidered upholstery and cushions; the suites of upstairs rooms to be given to the King and Queen were redecorated in green and yellow silk and equipped with new furniture, including some ‘nice little bits of Sheraton’ and with ‘masses of flowers both in baskets and on the tables’. Once he had spent a week-end in a country house the King liked to be given the same bedroom, sitting-room, dressing-room and bathroom on each succeeding visit; and he liked to follow the same sort of daily routine. If he were not going out shooting, he would have breakfast in his room and then attend to any correspondence there might be, his letters being opened for him by a servant who stood behind his chair and slit the envelopes with a long paper-knife. Towards midday he would go down to join the other guests and perhaps go for a stroll in the garden, making comments on any alterations his sharp eye noticed as having taken place since his last visit, or play a game of croquet which he and his partner usually won as everyone knew how cross he got if he was beaten. When staying with Sir Ernest Cassel he was often pitted against the Duchess of Sermoneta, who was not only extremely pretty but also a very bad player so that a game with her always put him in a good mood. One day, however, a lucky hit sent her ball flying ‘right across the ground,’ she recorded in her memoirs, ‘and straight through the right hoop (I didn’t even know it was the right one) and, continuing its glorious career, hit the King’s ball straight into the rose bushes … By the icy stillness that prevailed I realized that never, never was such a thing to happen again.’

  During his walks in the garden the King was usually accompanied by his dog, a brown and white long-haired fox terrier who bore on his collar the legend, ‘I belong to the King.’ Despite the ministrations of the footman whose duty it was to wash and comb him, Caesar was a peculiarly scruffy animal and was often to be seen with his mouth covered with prickles after an unsuccessful tussle with a hedgehog. The King loved him dearly, took him abroad, and allowed him to sleep in an easy chair by his bed. Once in Bohemia, when the dog fell ill, he was only dissuaded from spending £200 on a visit by his English vet on learning that there was a first-class man in Vienna. Taken to rejoin his master after a brief parting, Caesar would always jump up in excitement at seeing him, and the King would say with gruff affection, ‘Do you like your old master, then?’ He could never bring himself to smack the dog, however reprehensible his behaviour; and ‘it was a picture’, so Stamper, the motor engineer, said, ‘to see the King standing shaking his stick at the dog when he had done wrong. “You naughty dog,” he would say very slowly. “You naughty, naughty dog.” And Caesar would wag his tail and “smile” cheerfully into his master’s eyes, until his Majesty smiled back in spite of himself.’ Devoted as he was to the King, though, Caesar showed not the least interest in the advances of other human beings who bent down to fondle him, disdaining to notice the staff when he accompanied the King on an inspection of the kitchens from which, on less important occasions, he was nevertheless eager to accept any bones.

  ‘Whenever I went into the King’s cabin,’ recalled Charles Hardinge, who accompanied the King on the royal yacht during his continental excursions in 1903, ‘this dog always went for my trousers and worried them, much to the King’s delight. I used not to take the slightest notice and went on talking all the time to the King which I think amused His Majesty still more.’

  As the hour chosen by the King for serving dinner approached, a gentleman-in-waiting informed the host that his Majesty would be ready in fifteen minutes. The guests were then asked to assemble in the drawingroom to await the arrival of the King. They presented themselves in full evening dress, the men in white ties with carnations or gardenias in their button-holes, the ladies in dresses with trains, wearing, perhaps, a spray of orchids on their well-corseted bosoms, and carrying ostrich feather fans.

  The King appeared with exact promptitude at the time he had stipulated. Having taken stock of the company to make sure there were no absentees, he walked across the room to his hostess, offered her his arm, and escorted her immediately into the dining-room, where his footman in scarlet livery stood behind his chair. If the Queen were present the men wore frock dress and knee-breeches, and it was she who led the way to the diningroom on the arm of her host.

  The King was usually an easy and agreeable guest. Even when he arrived in an exceptionally grumpy mood, he could normally be won over by a dish that pleased him or a remark that amused him. Sir Osbert Sitwell recorded an occasion when the King went to stay with Lord and Lady Brougham ‘in a mood that rendered him difficult to please. Plainly something had gone wrong; and at dinner he was silent’. But Lady Brougham, ‘an old lady of rare beauty and of infinite charm’ renowned for her ‘unfailing shrewdness of judgement and her use of the appropriate but unexpected adjective’, was quite equal to the challenge.

  ‘“Did you notice, Sir, the soap in your Majesty’s bathroom?”

  ‘“No!”

  ‘“I thought you might, Sir … It has such an amorous lather!”

  ‘After that, the King’s geniality returned.’

  On the day of his departure, having sat for the inevitable group photograph and planted the almost equally inevitable tree, the King would sign his name in the visitors’ book, and perhaps bestow a minor decoration, such as the Coronation Medal, on a senior servant. And while a member of his Household presented a suitable sum to be distributed amongst the other servants, he would give a present to his hostess. Often it was a present at least as valuable as that ‘most lovely bracelet’, with the King and Queen’s miniatures ‘set in diamonds with the royal crown and ciphers and green enamel shamrocks at the sides’, which was given to Lady Londonderry after the King’s visit to Mount Stewart. If he had no suitable jewellery with him he would send to London for a selection from Hunt and Roskill. And once, having stayed at a house in the north where his own servant had been taken ill, he called for his host’s servant who had looked after him instead.

  ‘Which do you think is the handsomest of these rings?’ he asked him as they examined the case which had arrived from Piccadilly.

  ‘I am sure you are a good judge of these things.’

  The servant indicated the one that he preferred. The King picked it up and handed it to him with the words, ‘Keep it.’

  16

  The King Abroad

  I have crossed the Channel six times this year.

  When he went abroad the King’s entourage was not usually as large as it was when he travelled in England. Nor did he make his journeys in so grand a style as his mother, who would book an entire hotel which she filled with a hundred of her own servants as well as numerous pieces of her own furniture and favourite pictures. Yet, alth
ough he usually contented himself with a doctor, two equerries, two valets and two footmen — one of the footmen, a tall Austrian named Hoepfner, to wait at table and open the door, the other an Englishman, Wellard, whose duties included cleaning the boots and brushing the dog — he had been known to travel abroad with no less than thirty personal servants in addition to his suite and his doctor. He had taken thirty-three with him when he went to Paris in 1868 to visit the Emperor Napoleon III. And in 1901, on going to stay with his sister at Friedrichshof, the royal yacht had thirty-one servants aboard as well as a crew of three hundred. Journeys by rail were undertaken in a special train, the King’s private carriages being equipped with well-upholstered furniture, commodious cupboards, thick carpets and heavily tasselled curtains. There were fully equipped bathrooms and a smoking-room where the King could enjoy a game of cards or read a newspaper in one of the Spanish leather arm-chairs. In later years short journeys on the Continent were made in one or other of the three claret-coloured motor-cars which were driven out in advance by the royal chauffeurs.

  The prospect of a trip abroad almost always put the King in a good mood. He would first send for his Swiss-born courier, the well-informed and loud-voiced M. Fehr, who had formerly worked for Thomas Cook, and with him he would discuss all the details of the journey. He would ensure that Chandler, the Superintendent of the Wardrobe, knew what suits and uniforms would be required; that his Austrian first valet, Meidinger, had all the correct accessories; that his favourite crocodile dressing-case contained his diary, jewellery, a miniature of the Queen, photographs of his children and of his mother (seated at a table, signing a document); that his ragged silk dressing-gown, to which he had become so devoted that he refused to have a new one, was not forgotten; that Stamper, the motor engineer, had received proper instructions with regard to the motor-cars; that the luggage contained an ample supply of presents and decorations, particularly of the ribbons and insignia of the Victorian Order, to be bestowed upon attentive officials and obliging friends.

  The last item was most important, since the King liked to be able to reward those who had helped him or pleased him wherever he went. Indeed, few acts gave him greater pleasure than making presentations of medals and decorations and of expensive miniatures, snuff-boxes, photographs in silver frames and gold cigarette-cases without regard to their value which, in any case, he never really appreciated. Frederick Ponsonby had scarcely ever known the King so angry as when all that could be found to present to an important member of the French Jockey Club, who had made arrangements for him to be conducted over some model racing stables near Paris, was a relatively inferior plain silver cigarette-case. Ponsonby deemed this inadequate as so many much more expensive presents had been handed out during the visit, and he had the temerity to send a message to the King pointing this out. Soon afterwards the King appeared before Ponsonby in a state of suppressed fury. Having put his hat, glove and stick slowly and deliberately on the table, he asked in a menacingly quiet voice, ‘Did you send a message that the cigarette-case I had chosen was not good enough?’ On Ponsonby’s admission that this was so, the King burst forth in a deafening ‘flood of oratory’ that shook the whole hotel and reduced Ponsonby ‘to a state of speechless terror’. Regaining the use of his tongue, Ponsonby pleaded that as such beautiful presents were usually given to his Majesty’s friends, it seemed ‘a pity that he should give such a cheap thing to du Bois, who would no doubt show it to everyone in Paris’. This raised a fresh storm, and Ponsonby began to think that the King might have a fit. Eventually, however, he picked up his hat, stick and gloves and left the room, slamming the door. Ponsonby commented:

  It was usual with the King after he had let himself go and cursed someone to soothe matters by being nice to them afterwards. But in this case he resented my being so outspoken and made no attempt to forgive me. It was not till years later that I understood that he had really agreed with me but had been much annoyed at not being able to give something good. During the visit to Berlin [in 1909] when the King was ill with a chill and quite unable to attend to anything, he said, ‘I must leave the presents entirely to you to do, and I know you will do everything perfectly and not give anything shoddy like I did in Paris.’

  As Ponsonby observed, the King’s rages soon cooled, particularly when he was abroad and enjoying himself as — while on the Continent — he usually was. Indeed, he was never at home for long before he began to look forward eagerly to his next foreign visit. In the year before he died he told his son with the deepest satisfaction, ‘I have crossed the Channel six times this year!’

  He was particularly fond of France. He paid regular visits to the Riviera where he engaged with relish in the annual battle of the flowers, once dressed as Satan complete with scarlet robes and horns, and where he played roulette ‘comme d’habitude’. He was even more frequently to be seen in Paris, where he sometimes stayed at the Ritz or the Hôtel de l’Ambassade, but usually at the Bristol, being known there as the Earl of Chester or the Duke of Lancaster, a title which Lord James of Hereford, for one, considered him unjustified in using as it properly belonged to the descendants of John of Gaunt and did not go with the Duchy.

  As Prince of Wales he had loved to go for walks in the Bois de Boulogne and down the Champs Elysées, to sail up and down the Seine, to stroll along the boulevards, looking into the shop windows in the rue de la Paix, buying shirts at Charvet’s, jewellery at Cartier’s, handkerchiefs at Chaperon’s and hats at Genot’s. He had enjoyed meals at his favourite restaurants — Magny’s, Léon’s and Durand’s, the Voisin, the Bignon, the Café Américain, the Café des Ambassadeurs and the Café de la Paix. He had wandered into one or other of the clubs of which he was a member — the Jockey Club, the Yacht Club de France, the Cercle des Champs Elysées, the Union Club, the Nouveau and the Rue Royale. Almost every evening he had been to the theatre — the Théâtre Français, the Théâtre des Variétés, the Gymnase, the Vaudeville, the Odéon, the Palais Royal, the Nouveautés, the Renaissance or the Porte St Martin. Afterwards he had paid calls backstage with friends from the Jockey Club, or he had gone to the Epatant for a game of baccarat, or to 16 rue de la Pépinière for ‘une soirée intime’, or to the cabaret at the Lion d’Or, the Bouffes-Parisiens or the Moulin Rouge. Once he had played the part of the murdered prince in Sardou’s Fedora while Sarah Bernhardt wept over him. And he had entertained Bernhardt and other actresses in the Café Anglais in the ‘Grand Seize’, an exotic private room hung with red wall paper and gold hieroglyphics, furnished with gilt chairs and a crimson sofa, and softly lit by gasoliers.

  He had made elaborate efforts to give the slip to the indefatigable French detectives who, to his extreme annoyance, followed him everywhere, suitably disguised, even to the extent of wearing clothes appropriate to the different parts of the theatres to which they were assigned and taking their wives with them to restaurants. Occasionally the Prince’s carriage had suddenly rattled off at such a pace from the Hôtel Bristol that the police had lost track of him. But generally they managed to keep up with him and were able to submit reports of meetings with celebrated beauties in the Jardin des Plantes, of long afternoons spent with his intimate friends, the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès in the rue Tronchet, the Baronne Alphonse de Rothschild in the Faubourg St Honoré, and the Princesse de Sagan on the corner of the Esplanade des Invalides.

  The police had watched him on his visits to Mme Kauchine, a Russian beauty who rented a room in the Hôtel du Rhin; to ‘the widow Signoret’, mistress of the Duc de Rohan; to a certain ‘Dame Verneuil’ who had an apartment on the second floor at 39 rue Lafayette; to the Baronne de Pilar at the Hôtel Choiseul; to Miss Chamberlayne (described in 1884 as his ‘maîtresse en titre’) at the Hôtel Balmoral; to unidentified ladies in the Hôtel Scribe and the Hôtel Liverpool in the rue de Castiglione. The police had been particularly concerned by his visits to the Hôtel de Calais, where he often spent most of the night with a mysterious woman known to the chambermaid as Mme Hudrie, ‘a
very beautiful woman, aged about thirty, tall, slim, blonde, remarkable for her magnificent colouring and her perfect elegance … usually dressed in white satin, but always in black when she meets ‘the Prince’. This turned out to be the Comtesse de Boutourline, wife of the Prefect of Moscow, sister-in-law of General Boutourline, formerly military attach? at the British Embassy in London, and granddaughter of Princess Bobinska, with whom she claimed to be staying in the rue de Chateaubriand, though the police discovered that she was actually living in a house belonging to the Comte de Guinsonnas.

  The Prince had spent other evenings with the delightful English courtesan, Catherine Walters; and had visited his favourite brothel, Le Chabanais, where the chair upon which he sat with his chosen young women was still displayed over a generation later to the brothel’s customers. He had gone to the Maison Dorée with the Duc de Gramont to meet the generous, passionate and consumptive Giulia Beneni, known as La Barucci, who arrived very late and, on being reprimanded by the Duke, turned her back on the royal visitor, lifted her skirts to her waist and said, ‘You told me to show him my best side.’ He had asked also to meet La Barucci’s rival, Cora Pearl, who had appeared before him naked except for a string of pearls and a sprig of parsley.

  On one occasion, when Queen Alexandra was feeling depressed and out of sorts, the King asked her if she would like to go with him to Paris. Immediately she accepted the invitation with the excited eagerness of a little girl. They stayed at the British Embassy; and, for the first time in her life, the Queen was able to dine in public in a restaurant. She had been ‘delighted’ with Paris on a previous visit many years before, and she was equally entranced by it now.

  Although they were very rarely in Paris together, the King often went with the Queen on her annual visit to her family in Denmark. He did so out of kindness, for he was overcome by boredom and restlessness while he was there, having to dine with his ancient father-in-law at six o’clock or half past six at the latest and then to play boring games of whist for very low stakes. He pretended to enjoy it all for the Queen’s sake. But the enclosed, provincial atmosphere, sometimes enlivened by a huge family party at the castle of Fredensborg where seven different languages were spoken, he found desperately tedious. Once, after visiting every museum, art gallery and house of historical interest which Copenhagen had to offer, he was driven to going over a farm which sold butter to England. He always longed to be back in Paris again and to take on once more the persona of the Duke of Lancaster.