On New Year’s Eve the customary ceremonies of ‘first footing’ were observed. The house was cleared of guests and servants just before midnight as usual, so that the King and Queen could be the first to open the front door in the New Year. On this occasion, however, they were forestalled by one of their grandchildren who, unaware of the importance that the King attached to such traditions, ran into the house by the back and flung the door open triumphantly as his grandparents approached it. The King looked at the child gravely and observed, ‘We shall have some very bad luck this year.’
While the King was at Sandringham discussions were held in London about the possibility of either allowing the Prime Minister to assume the Sovereign’s prerogative of creating peers or of curbing the power of the Lords by framing a Parliamentary Bill whose passage through the House would be guaranteed by the King’s giving a pledge to create enough new peers favourable towards it. The King, for his part, believed that if he were to create several hundred Liberal peers in order to limit the power of the House of Lords, as the government wanted him to do, he would not only fatally debilitate the Upper House but also abandon the political impartiality of the Crown to the ultimate ruin of its reputation. And as he again spoke gloomily of abdication, Asquith opened the Liberal Party’s election campaign with the pledge that he would not assume office unless he could secure the ‘necessary safeguards’ for ensuring ‘the effective limitation of the legislative powers of the Lords’ as well as the Commons’ ‘absolute control over finance’.
After Christmas the King went down to Brighton with Frederick Ponsonby and Seymour Fortescue to stay with Arthur Sassoon during the forthcoming General Election. People who saw him there were shocked to discover how tired and old and ill he looked. At dinner time he sat silent and morose, while Mrs Sassoon tirelessly kept up the conversation with Fortescue and Ponsonby. Appalled by such electioneering slogans as ‘Peers against People’ and by the condemnation of the House of Lords as wreckers of the Constitution, and as an obsolete assembly of rich backwoodsmen trying to avoid paying taxes, he grew increasingly melancholy, grievously worried that the Crown, by being dragged into controversy, would be diminished in prestige. One day he was driven to Worthing where he fell asleep in his car on the seafront while a huge crowd gathered round, staring through the windows in sympathetic silence.
At Eaton Hall, where he went to shoot with the Duke of Westminster after leaving Brighton, his gloom was temporarily dispelled. He thought he saw a way out of his difficulties, and he asked Knollys to tell Asquith that if the Liberals won the election he would not feel justified in creating the number of peers that would be necessary to get the party’s policies through the House of Lords until the country had been consulted at a second general election. Asquith, who was asked to treat this stipulation as strictly confidential, chivalrously agreed to do so and to undertake the delicate task of managing his party accordingly.
Nothing was said about the King’s intervention in favour of the House of Lords during the election campaign which resulted in the government’s retention of just enough seats to remain in office. According to Lord Esher this result ‘caused great relief’ at Windsor where it was felt that Asquith’s slender majority would make it easier for the King to resist unwelcome demands.
In fact, the Prime Minister was preparing the way for an announcement that, distasteful as it would be to his more reformist supporters, would take a great weight off the King’s mind. He could not accept a proposal, put forward by the King on his own initiative to the Lord Privy Seal, that the right to vote should be limited to a hundred peers of whom half would be nominated by the leaders of each of the two main parties; for this might well lead to the nomination of hacks selected because of their loyalty rather than their worth. But, on 21 February, Asquith made an announcement in the House of Commons virtually repudiating the pledge which he had made to his party before the election. He had neither requested nor received any guarantee about the creation of peers, he said. And he added that it was ‘the duty of responsible politicians to keep the name of the Sovereign and the prerogatives of the Crown outside the domain of party politics’.
Gratified by these remarks, the King left for Biarritz by way of Paris for the holiday which his doctors had been vainly pressing him to take earlier than usual but upon which he had been reluctant to embark until assured that he was no longer needed in England. But although his mind was less ill at ease, he was still depressed and on edge. In Paris, at the Théâtre de la Porte St Martin, he attended a performance of the new play, Chantecler, an allegorical verse drama by Edmond Rostand, author of Cyrano de Bergerac. But he was ‘dreadfully disappointed’: he had never seen anything ‘so stupid and childish’; while the theatre was so hot that he ‘contrived to get a chill with a threatening of bronchitis’. He also suffered from an attack of acute indigestion followed by a shortness of breath and a sharp pain near the heart. Two days later he became so ill at Biarritz that Sir James Reid advised him to stay in bed. This he declined to do, though he agreed to remain in his room at the Hôtel du Palais where the Marquis de Soveral and Mrs Keppel were amongst his few visitors.
At the end of March he felt a little better; but he was still fretting about the political situation at home where Asquith’s difficulties in getting his government’s measures passed by Parliament were once again bringing into discussion the unpleasant topic of the King’s creation of a complaisant majority in the House of Lords. The Queen begged him to join her on a Mediterranean cruise. The weather in Biarritz, as she had no need to tell him, was miserable that spring. There was thick snow in the hotel grounds on 1 April. And four days later, when the King sent home to Hardinge details of the arrangements he wanted made for the entertainment of ex-President Roosevelt in June, he still complained of ‘snow, rain and constant wind’. But he did not want to leave for the Mediterranean while Mrs Keppel was in Biarritz. Besides, he felt he could not go so far away while it might be necessary at any moment for him to return to London.
So, excessively agitated by fear of being compelled to preside over the destruction of the House of Lords, by talk of a referendum, and by the possibility of the government’s resignation, the King announced that he would remain at Biarritz until the end of the month.
On the evening before his departure, the town’s authorities arranged a noisy and affectionate farewell, with sailors and soldiers, as well as the fire brigade, marching about below his balcony while fireworks exploded in the sky and bands played appropriate tunes in the courtyard. ‘I shall be sorry to leave Biarritz,’ he said the next morning, sadly gazing out to sea; ‘perhaps it will be for ever.’
He returned to Buckingham Palace in the early evening of 27 April 1910, looking almost as exhausted as he had done before leaving for France. Yet he went to the opera that evening; received Asquith the next day; gave several other audiences on Friday before going to Covent Garden; and early on Saturday morning he left for Sandringham, having breakfast on the train. He arrived at Sandringham in time to walk round the garden with the agent and the head gardener before luncheon, looking at the alterations and the plantings which had been carried out in his absence. He was quieter than usual but seemed content; and in the evening, so Frederick Ponsonby said, ‘he told stories of amusing incidents of former years’. The next morning he went to church as usual, though he did not walk across the park with the others but drove in a cab. And in the afternoon, despite rain and a biting wind, he again walked round the garden before settling down to some routine work with Ponsonby in the room that Francis Knollys used as an office.
On Monday afternoon he returned to London. It had been pouring with rain in the morning and the fields were sodden. The King looked out of the window, talking little. That evening he went to have a quiet dinner with Agnes Keyser, and on his return to Buckingham Palace it was obvious that he was about to have another serious attack of bronchitis. Yet when Ponsonby saw him the next morning, ‘he seemed quite himself’, apart from the cough and l
ack of appetite. After failing to eat any dinner, ‘he smoked a huge cigar’, Ponsonby recorded. ‘Anything worse for a man with a cough I could not imagine, but curiously enough it seemed to soothe him … [Then] the King and I went into the Japanese Room where we remained silent. Presently in came Alice Keppel and Venetia James. We talked for a short time and then we played bridge, as he explained this prevented his talking.’
He had had ‘a wretched night’, he confessed the following morning, and could not eat any breakfast. Yet he insisted that he must carry on with all the audiences that had been arranged for him; and so he did, receiving his numerous visitors in his frock coat, which was de rigueur for such occasions, occasionally being seized, as he was when the American Ambassador called, with spasms of uncontrollable coughing.
On Thursday Ponsonby found him in his bedroom sitting at a writing table with a rug round his legs.
His face was grey and he appeared to be unable to sit upright and to be sunken. At first … he was like a man out of breath, but this gradually got better. He said he would sign what there was in the boxes, and I proceeded to open them and handed him documents for his signature … He seemed to like the work. Even the Foreign Office telegrams he read, but I kept back some documents that would have necessitated a discussion.
Ponsonby tried to leave more than once, but the King did not want to part with him:
I tried again to go, but he said in a gasping voice, ‘You managed so well at Biarritz. I hope everyone was thanked.’ I told him I had thanked them all. I said in as cheerful a voice as I could command that I hoped he would soon be better. He replied, ‘I feel wretchedly ill. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. They really must do something for me.’ I was to be relieved next day by Arthur Davidson, and the extraordinary thing was that, ill as he was, he remembered this. He turned to me and said, ‘In case I don’t see you again, goodbye.’ I shook him by the hand, but I do not think he meant anything more than what he usually said when I went out of waiting.
The King insisted on giving audiences as usual that day; and, as the well-informed Edward Marsh told Lady Gladstone, ‘he was to receive Jack P [John Dickson-Poynder] as Governor of New Zealand, and somebody else [Major T.B. Robinson] as Agent General for West Australia [actually Queensland]. Lord Sheffield’s mind set to work on these names and produced, “the Agent General for Newfoundland”.’ So when the Australian arrived the King made some comment about having been to his ‘interesting colony’.
The Agent General, who knew he had never been anywhere near Australia, looked bewildered. Hopwood [Permanent Under Secretary of State for the Colonies] saw what had happened and told the King who he really was. The poor King was so terribly upset at having made such a gaffe that he had a violent fit of coughing and turned quite black in the face — and this was really the beginning of the end. Jack P. said that when he got home he was sure he was a dying man.
The Queen had been sent for and, having left Corfu by way of Venice, she had arrived home that day. At Calais she had been handed a note from the Prince of Wales: ‘His cough troubles him very much and he has slept badly the last nights. I cannot disguise the fact that I am anxious about him … I know Laking is writing to you and I will say no more but thank God you are coming home tomorrow to look after him. God bless you, darling Motherdear.’
The Prince and Princess and their two eldest sons were waiting to meet her at Victoria Station. Concerned that he could not meet her himself, as he had always done in the past, the King made all the arrangements for her reception at Buckingham Palace, ordering that all the Household should be ready to meet the Queen in the Grand Entrance Hall. The Prince of Wales, however, had decided that it would be better if his mother arrived without any fuss and gave instructions for her to be driven round to the garden entrance. She was profoundly shocked to see the King looking so ill. Up till then she had comforted herself with the belief that this was just another bronchial attack from which he would soon recover. He tried to reassure her, telling her that he had reserved a box for her that evening at Covent Garden.
At eleven o’clock the next morning Sir Ernest Cassel came to see him, but he was told that the King was too ill to be disturbed. Half an hour later, however, at the King’s insistence, Cassel was summoned back to the Palace. He told his daughter:
I found the King dressed as usual, in his sitting room, rising from his chair to shake hands with me. He looked as if he had suffered great pain, and spoke indistinctly. His kindly smile came out as he congratulated me on having you brought home so much improved in health. He said, ‘I am very seedy, but I wanted to see you. Tell your daughter how glad I am that she has safely got home’ … He then talked about other matters.
He tried to smoke a cigar but could not enjoy it. A light luncheon was brought to his bedroom; and having tried to eat it, he got up and walked towards the window to look at his canaries, whose cage stood by the curtains. While playing with them he collapsed and fell to the floor. Nurses ran towards him and helped him to a chair while Princess Victoria sent for the Queen.
It was clear now that he was dying, suffering from a series of heart attacks. The doctors examined him and could do nothing for him but allay his pain with morphia. Without much success, they had already given him oxygen to inhale and hypodermic injections of strychnine, tyramine and ether. He still sat in his chair, refusing to be helped into bed, protesting weakly, ‘No, I shall not give in; I shall go on; I shall work to the end.’
Charles Hardinge went to 10 Downing Street and told Mrs Asquith that he had left Lord Knollys in tears. He suggested that a telegram should be sent summoning the Prime Minister home from the Mediterranean. Various friends called at the Palace to enquire after him, and some of the closest were allowed into his room to see him. The Archbishop of Canterbury was summoned; and the Queen herself, told that Mrs Keppel had seen the King the day before and was due to call again at five o’clock, said, ‘It will be too late’, and sent for her to return immediately. The Prince of Wales told his father that his horse, Witch of the Air, had won the 4.15 race at Kempton Park. ‘Yes,’ said the King, to whom the news had already been telegraphed. ‘I have heard of it. I am very glad.’
These were the last coherent words he spoke. Twice he fainted, and soon lapsed into a coma. He was undressed and put to bed. The Archbishop was called in from the next room, and at a quarter to midnight on 6 May 1910 the King died without a struggle.
20
Drawn Blinds
How human he was! … What a splendour he was in the world!
‘I have lost my best friend and the best of fathers,’ the new King wrote in his diary, in an untidy hand bearing testimony of his distress, on the evening of the first day of his reign. ‘I never had a [cross] word with him in my life. I am heartbroken and overwhelmed with grief.’
Queen Alexandra also confessed herself grief-stricken. She felt as if she had been turned into stone, she told Frederick Ponsonby, ‘unable to cry, unable to grasp the meaning of it all, and incapable of doing anything’. It was not the biting cold of that wet afternoon at Sandringham that had killed him, she added as she took Ponsonby into the room where the King’s body lay, but ‘that horrid Biarritz’.
‘She was most brave and touching, calm but breaking down now and again,’ said Lord Halifax, who had accompanied the King on that walking tour in the Lake District over fifty years before and had asked if, as an old servant and friend, he might see him in death.
I was much touched by her taking up a prayer-book on a table by the side of the bed and saying, ‘That is the prayer-book you gave him; he always had it with him.’ … She took me again into the room and looked for a time, uncovering his face and said, ‘Does he not look beautiful?’ … He was lying on a little bed screened off from the rest of the room, just under a picture of Prince Eddie and his mother. He was not in the least altered and had that look on his face that death so often brings.
Lord Carrington was also shown into the darkened room; and as he looked down at
the King’s ‘beloved’ face which appeared ‘quite happy and composed’ above the collar of a pink shirt, he felt that he had lost the ‘truest friend’ that he had ever had. Charles Hardinge was taken in to see the King, too, and the Queen gave him the jade bell which he had so often seen on the King’s writing-table and which Hardinge thereafter regarded as one of his ‘greatest treasures’. ‘I was deeply moved at seeing there, lying on a simple bed, the dead man who had been so good to me and whom I really loved,’ Hardinge wrote. ‘To me he was always the kindest of masters … I have always missed him since.’
Ponsonby felt the same. He remembered what a ‘lovable, wayward and human’ master the King had been. He recalled numerous acts of kindness: how, for instance — unlike Queen Victoria, ‘who rarely considered the feelings of her Household’ — he would often, without being asked, suggest to ‘some married man that he should go away and spend the week with his family’. Ponsonby called to mind one particular example of ‘that kindness of heart which characterized all his actions’. It was a small incident but it remained in his memory. It occurred during the King’s continental tour in 1903. Aboard the royal yacht was Eduardo de Martino, a Neapolitan artist who had been Marine Painter-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria and had settled in England in 1875. Ponsonby could not imagine ‘anybody more inappropriate in the suite of an English King’ than this Martino, who had taken the place of Christopher Sykes as an ideal butt for the King’s bantering jokes. Yet Martino appeared so disappointed when he was given to understand that he ought to remain on the yacht when the royal party went ashore, that the King not only gave him permission to form part of the suite but took pains to discuss with other less sensitive members of the party a rearrangement of the order of precedence which would spare Martino’s feelings by ensuring that he did not rank last.
Edward VII_The Last Victorian King Page 42