Edward VII_The Last Victorian King

by Christopher Hibbert

  Throughout the ball, the King, in the uncomfortable uniform of the Stolp Hussars, looked tired and ill. Hearing his fearful cough and looking at his lined, drawn face, more than one of his fellow-guests feared that he might not have long to live.

  19

  The Final Months

  We shall have some very bad luck this year.

  ‘The King of England is so stout that he completely loses his breath when he has to climb upstairs,’ the Controller of the Kaiser’s Household noted during this visit to Germany in 1909. ‘The Emperor told us that at the first family dinner he fell asleep … He has an amiable, pleasant manner and looks very shrewd … but he eats … and smokes enormously.’

  After luncheon at the British Embassy on 10 February, the day of his visit to the Rathaus, he had been smoking one of his huge cigars and talking to the Princess of Pless when he had suddenly been seized with one of those choking fits which made Lady Cust think he was going to ‘break in two’. As he fought for breath his face turned that alarming puce colour which his bouts of violent, bronchitic coughing had so often lately induced; the cigar fell out of his hand; and he fainted. ‘My God he is dying,’ the Princess of Pless thought. ‘Oh, why not in his own country!’ She tried to unfasten the stiff collar of his tight Prussian uniform, and as she struggled with it Queen Alexandra and Charles Hardinge hurried to help her. His doctor, Sir James Reid, was sent for, and the room was cleared. When the other luncheon guests returned, both the King and the doctor assured them that it was an attack of no consequence, Sir James Reid treating the incident ‘in a very casual manner’, according to Hardinge, ‘and stating that it was simply a form of bronchial attack and in no sense dangerous’. But those who knew the King well could not disguise their concern.

  The night before this attack he had gone to sleep at the opera where, at the Kaiser’s command, a spectacularly realistic performance of the last act of Sardanapalus had filled the stage with fire and smoke. The King had woken up with a start. Thinking the whole theatre was in flames, he had demanded to know where the firemen were; and, much to his nephew’s amusement, had with difficulty been reassured by the Empress Augusta.

  For months now he had been looking tired and worn. Some days he coughed almost incessantly; he often complained of a sore throat; and he suffered from increasingly severe attacks of bronchitis which left him weak, lethargic and depressed. Yet he could not be persuaded to stop smoking those cigars which, when not in his mouth, were gripped between fat fingers resting on an ample thigh, and seemed almost as essential a part of his physical presence as his hooded eyes and whitening beard. His doctors warned him of their effect on his lungs; but, while he listened grumpily to their advice when he was ill, he did not always take it and refused to obey their orders when he felt well again. ‘I really never can please you!’ he once protested to Sir Felix Semon, who had advised him not to climb up hills at such a speed when deer-stalking in Scotland. ‘First you torment me with your eternal warnings that I ought to take exercise, and now, when I do it, you scold me because I am overdoing it.’

  As a younger man neither his excessive smoking nor his gargantuan appetite seemed to have affected his health unduly. His energy and zest for life had always been legendary. Rarely had he seemed tired. Once, after a particularly demanding week, he had been noticed by Charles Dilke at a requiem Mass for the Tsar Alexander II falling asleep standing up, his taper gradually tipping over and guttering on the floor. But normally he could stand a succession of late nights without showing the least exhaustion or abandoning his lifelong habit of early rising.

  He had only once been seriously ill since contracting typhoid fever in 1871. A painful attack of phlebitis in 1889 had subsided without complications; a fall downstairs at Waddesdon Manor in 1898 had resulted in nothing worse than a fractured knee-cap and a few weeks spent impatiently in bed. He had never been much troubled by his teeth: his dentist, called to Sandringham, had pulled one out after luncheon one afternoon in 1909, but the King had come down to dinner as usual and, on being asked if he had had gas, had replied, ‘Oh dear no! I can bear pain.’

  In the summer of 1902 however, shortly before the day fixed for his coronation, his doctors had been gravely concerned by a sudden deterioration in his condition. A severe chill had been followed by loss of appetite, then by eating even more food than usual and, for the first time in his life, drinking rather too much. He had become excessively irritable and edgy; and despite the extra work and activity which had been imposed upon him on succeeding to the throne and by the imminence of his coronation, he had put on so much weight that his waist measurement was found to be no less than forty-eight inches. He began to fall asleep in the evenings and even during meals. A violent pain developed in his lower abdomen.

  Sir Francis Laking diagnosed appendicitis; but, rather than risk the major operation that this then entailed, he advised the King to stay in bed on a milk diet. In any case, the King, unaware of the gravity of his illness, was determined that the coronation must in no circumstances be postponed. He declared that he would be in Westminster Abbey with the Queen on 26 June even if he were to drop dead during the service: the hotels were already full of guests; crown princes and grand dukes had arrived from all over the world. It was given out that his Majesty was suffering from lumbago.

  Even after the development of peritonitis, the King would not give way, continuing to work as hard as ever, insisting on attending to the most trivial details, worrying and fretting about every difficulty, even consulting a gypsy woman who much alarmed him by telling him that he would never be crowned and that her own imminent death — which, indeed, took place within a week — would very soon be followed by his own. Sir Francis Laking and Sir Thomas Barlow both warned him that an operation was essential; otherwise he might well die. The surgeon, Sir Frederick Treves, was ready to operate, they told him, and a room had been prepared at Buckingham Palace. Disregarding their urgent warnings, the King continued to insist that he could not disappoint everyone at the last moment like this: the coronation must proceed as planned. ‘Laking, I will stand no more of this,’ he burst out finally. ‘I am suffering the most awful mental agony that any man can endure. Leave the room at once.’

  Laking signalled to Barlow to leave; but he himself remained, begging the King to understand that obedience to his commands was out of the question. An operation must be performed immediately. The coronation could not possibly take place. Laking would not leave the room until the King agreed to see Treves. So the King at last gave way. At noon the next day he walked in his ancient dressing-gown to the operating table where he was given an anaesthetic. Queen Alexandra helped to hold him down as he struggled and threw his arms about, growing black in the face. When he was unconscious Treves waited for the Queen to leave the room, not liking, as he subsequently admitted, to take off his coat, tuck up his sleeves ‘and put on an apron while the Queen was present’. Finally she had to be asked to leave, and the operation for perityphlitis began.

  It was completed forty minutes later. As the effects of the chloroform wore off, the King opened his eyes and asked, ‘Where’s George?’

  The Prince of Wales saw his father the following morning when the doctors and nurses announced that they had never seen ‘such a wonderful man’. He was sitting up in bed, smoking a cigar. And he greeted his son cheerfully and with great affection. The frequent visits of the Queen were not so agreeable to him, as he had to talk so loudly to make her hear. Eventually he took to pretending to be asleep when he heard her coming. He made a rapid recovery, though, for which he warmly thanked Laking and Treves, both of whom he created baronets. In July, on boarding the Victoria and Albert at Portsmouth, Prince George found him eager to embark on a convalescent cruise, ‘lying on deck and looking so well and delighted with the change’.

  The King had returned invigorated from that cruise. But now that he was in his late sixties, he was increasingly prone to listlessness and to periods of the utmost depression when his problems and
worries seemed insupportable. He talked even of abdication. He began to dread old age and loneliness; his bronchial trouble was chronic; his voice more gruff than ever; his digestion no longer so reliable; his bouts of lassitude alternated with spells of agitated restlessness; while his sudden violent rages were more frequent and alarming and less quickly overcome. When, for example, his visit to Russia was criticized in the House of Commons, and James Keir Hardie, the leader of the Labour Party, said that the visit was tantamount to condoning Tsarist atrocities, the King was furious. He refused to allow Keir Hardie, and another socialist who had attacked the Russian visit, to be invited to attend a garden party given at Windsor Castle for all Members of Parliament. And although he let it be known that they would be invited to future garden parties, he refused to have on any list of guests the name of Frederick Ponsonby’s brother, Arthur — Liberal Member for Stirling and one of fifty-nine Members who had voted against the government’s authorization of the visit — on the grounds that a son of a man who had been secretary to Queen Victoria ought to have known better.

  The political discussions which appeared to cloud the horizon on every side made the King deeply despondent about the future. He was worried by the prospect of war; by the fear that Germany was getting ahead of England in the race for naval armaments; by the policies of social reform to which the Liberal government were committed and which he felt endangered the whole basis of society; by the quarrel between the two Houses of Parliament and the insistent demands for reform of the House of Lords.

  He was, and had always been, as Charles Dilke said, ‘a strong Conservative, and a still stronger Jingo’. Criticisms of the imperialistic policies of his mother’s governments had never failed to infuriate him. At the time of the Afghan War in 1878–9 he had fiercely resented the attacks of the Liberal opposition on the conduct of the campaign and he told Sir Bartle Frere, ‘If I had my way I should not be content until we had taken the whole of Afghanistan, and kept it.’ He was equally insistent that England ‘must for ever keep a strong hold over Egypt’. And after the death of General Gordon and the fall of Khartoum he had urged the annihilation of the Mahdi and the conquest of the whole of the Sudan. His open support of Dr Jameson’s raiders was followed by his declared support of Cecil Rhodes, whom he invited to dinner, chiding the Prime Minister for refusing to receive him; by his sustained rejection of any suggestion that the Boer War was dishonourable, and his contention that it would be ‘terrible indeed’ if South Africa were ‘handed over to the Boers’. He associated criticism of the British army with treason, and, while accepting that conscription would have to come and generally supporting Haldane, he viewed many suggestions for reform with scepticism: the proposal that the traditional uniforms of the army should be replaced by ‘the hideous khaki’ had at first dismayed him.

  His firm objection to admitting natives to a share in the government of India was matched by his opposition to allowing women to have a say in the government of England. Having ‘no sympathy at all’ with female suffrage, he condemned the conduct of those ‘dreadful women’, the ‘so-called “suffragettes”’, as ‘outrageous’. He sternly admonished Campbell-Bannerman for having spoken in their favour, and told Campbell-Bannerman’s successor that he deplored ‘the attitude taken up by Mr Asquith on the Woman’s Suffrage question’. Although he had agreed with Charles Dilke that Octavia Hill should have been appointed to the Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes, he ‘hung fire’, so Knollys told Sandars, when it was proposed that the aged Florence Nightingale should be awarded the O.M., being ‘reluctant to give it to women’. And he was very cross indeed when the Home Secretary put forward the names of two women to serve on the Royal Commission for Divorce — on which, despite the King’s protests, they did serve — since divorce was a subject which could not be discussed ‘openly and in all its aspects with any delicacy or even decency before ladies’. ‘He is quite unconvinced by the arguments brought forward in support of their retention,’ his assistant private secretary, Arthur Davidson, told Asquith. ‘The King considers it the thin edge of suffragettism and feels sure that its supporters will get stronger and more persistent in their demands when they see the principle, on which they base their claims, as partially recognised.’

  He disapproved quite as strongly of ladies shooting. And as for the young: ‘Refinement of feeling in the younger generation does not exist in the nineteenth century … the age of chivalry has passed.’

  He had not been blindly opposed to all change. He had been persuaded, for instance, by Lord Rosebery of the justice of the Third Reform Bill of 1884 which proposed to increase the size of the electorate by extending household suffrage to the country constituencies. And when the Bill had been rejected by the House of Lords and a demonstration organized by its supporters, he had gone to watch the procession from the Whitehall house of Charles Carrington, one of its principal advocates. Carrington had arranged for the demonstrators to turn their eyes to the right and take off their caps when they reached the Horse Guards, for the Prince and Princess of Wales would be standing on the balcony of the middle window opposite. As the huge procession approached, the Prince had begun to think that he had made a bad mistake in allowing himself to become involved with it. After all, as he had suggested to Rosebery at luncheon, attacks on a hereditary House of Lords were bound to harm a hereditary monarchy; and he had not appeared to be altogether reassured by Rosebery’s contention that the Crown was above controversy and did not presume to resist the people’s will as the Lords resisted the will of the Commons. The Prince’s apprehensions had been immeasurably increased when the procession appeared at the bottom of Whitehall with red flags waving and bands playing the Marseillaise. ‘Hey, Charlie!’ he had said to Carrington. ‘This don’t look much like being a pleasant afternoon.’

  Carrington had been right. As the procession had reached his house, all but three of the bands had changed their tune to ‘God Save the Queen’; loud cheers had greeted the appearance of the Prince and Princess on the balcony; caps had been waved; and voices had been raised in singing ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’. After standing in the hot sun for an hour and a half the Princess had felt faint and had gone indoors to lie down on a sofa; but the vociferous protests from the crowd had brought her back and, propped up by a pile of cushions, she and the Prince had continued to receive an ovation which, as Carrington had commented, ‘did one’s heart good … The reception was something tremendous … In fact the day was a regular triumph for the royal family.’

  Although the Prince had brushed off Conservative protests at his having been made use of by irresponsible radicals, any suggestion that he had ambitions to become a citizen-king in the style of Louis-Philippe would have horrified him. He had made friends with some republicans, but he had hoped by so doing to take the sting out of republicanism. He had shown himself in Birmingham, but he had intended by appearing there to do something to counteract the influence of Joseph Chamberlain and had been deeply gratified to hear the mayor declare that in England the Throne was ‘recognized and respected as the symbol of all constitutional authority and settled government’. He had always done his best to show his sympathy with social reform by identifying the monarchy with the conscience of his people. He had always shown a sincere concern for their welfare, particularly for their housing; and he had not hesitated to condemn the ‘perfectly disgraceful’ conditions in which so many of the poor were forced to live. But he had no time for Socialists, never attempted to understand their ideals, and looked upon them in his last years as a dangerous threat to all that he held most dear.

  It seemed to him in the summer of 1909 that some of Asquith’s ministers, notably Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Winston Churchill, President of the Board of Trade, were behaving in the most irresponsibly inflammatory manner. On 19 July Knollys told Asquith that it was really painful for the King ‘to be continually obliged to complain of certain of [his] colleagues’. And when, later on that month, Lloyd Ge
orge, in one of his attacks on the House of Lords, made a speech in which he complained that a fully equipped duke was as costly to maintain as two dreadnoughts and less easy to scrap, the King, so Knollys said, felt constrained ‘to protest in the most vigorous terms against one of his ministers making such a speech … full of false statements, of socialism in its most insidious form and full of virulent abuses of one particular class’. The King could not understand how the Prime Minister could allow his colleagues to make speeches which ‘would not have been tolerated by any Prime Minister until within the last few years’, which his Majesty regarded as being ‘in the highest degree improper’, and which he looked upon ‘as being an insult to the Sovereign’.

  Asquith made excuses which the King condemned as ‘pitiful’. He acknowledged that Lloyd George had been greatly provoked by some ‘foolish and mean speeches’ by his opponents and was somewhat placated by a letter of explanation from him, yet he viewed the intensifying political crisis with the deepest despondency, telling Asquith that he thought party politics had never been more bitter. Distressed by attempts to ‘inflame the passions of the working and lower orders against people who happen to be owners of property’, he was equally upset by the intransigence of the House of Lords. He brought all the influence he could to bear upon them not to reject Lloyd George’s budget as they were threatening to do in defiance of a rule that had not been broken for two hundred years; and he confided to Knollys that he thought the ‘Peers were mad’.

  Taking advice on the propriety of the Lords’ intended action, he was told by some of his counsellors that rejection would be unconstitutional and by others that a budget which provided for revolutionary land taxes, as well as new income taxes and death duties, was a social measure that required the sanction of the electorate. Dreading an election fought on such an issue, the King renewed his efforts to reach a compromise, going so far as to ask Asquith to offer the Lords a dissolution of Parliament and a general election in three months’ time if only they could be persuaded to pass the budget, unpalatable as it was. But despite the King’s appeals, on 30 November 1909, playing into Lloyd George’s hands, the House of Lords rejected the ‘People’s Budget’; and faced with the knowledge that he would now be required to dissolve Parliament so that there could be a general election, he confessed at Sandringham on 2 December that he had never spent a more miserable day in his life.