by Kitty Kelley
Despite his total loyalty to the Crown, he was forced to resign his naval position and relinquish his princely title. The final humiliation occurred when the King told him to change his name. Shattered, Prince Louis dutifully anglicized Battenberg (berg is “mountain” in German) to Mountbatten to make it acceptable to the English.
The King tried to mollify his cousin by making him a British noble. Louis accepted the title of Marquess of Milford Haven because he wanted his children to be noblemen, but he never recovered from the shame of renouncing his ancestry. Somehow, though, he kept his sense of humor. He wrote in his son’s guest book: “June 9th arrived Prince Hyde; June 19th departed Lord Jekyll.”
His younger son and namesake, Louis, was shocked by the news of his father’s resignation. “It was all so stupid,” he recalled years later. “My father had been in the Royal Navy for forty-six years. He was completely identified with England, and we always regarded ourselves as an English family. Of course, we were well aware of our German connections; how could we not be? It certainly never occurred to any of us to be ashamed of them—rather the contrary. We are a very old family, and proud of it…. My father had worked his way to the top of the Royal Navy by sheer ability and industry. And now his career was finished—all because of the ridiculous suspicion that he might be in secret sympathy with the very people he had come to England to avoid!”
Next, the King moved to cleanse the rest of his German family. Like the monarchs of mythology who bring magic clouds with them wherever they go, King George V waved his royal wand. Overnight, one brother-in-law—the Duke of Teck—became the Marquess of Cambridge, and the other—Prince Alexander of Teck—became the Earl of Athlone. One stroke of the royal quill eradicated all traces of Mecklenberg-Strelitz, Hesse, and Wettins from the King’s lineage: the ugly German ducklings were transformed into beautiful British swans. The royal family’s Teutonic dukes, archdukes, and princelings instantly became English marquises.
But the King felt he still needed to make the monarchy appear less imperial to survive. He decreed that members of the royal family could marry into the nobility. This paved the way for his second son, Albert, known to the family as “Bertie,” to propose to a sweet-faced Scottish girl, reared as an Earl’s daughter, although her mother has been rumored to have been one of the Earl’s Welsh servant girls (these rumors, never officially acknowledged, have yet to be borne out by any evidence). Ironically, Bertie’s marriage in 1923 to the commoner, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, brought stability to the British throne and propped up the dynasty for several generations.
During the First World War, concern was voiced over the bloody role of the King’s German cousin Prince Albert of Schleswig-Holstein, who was in charge of British prisoners of war in a camp outside Berlin.
“He’s not really fighting on the side of the Germans,” said the King defensively. “He was only put in charge of a camp of English prisoners.”
“A nice distinction,” Prime Minister Asquith later observed to a friend. His successor, Lloyd George, was even more blunt. When he received a royal summons to the Palace, he turned to his secretary and said: “I wonder what my little German friend has got to say to me.” The Prime Minister’s antipathy spread to his staff, who kept the King’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, waiting on a wooden chair in the hall and refused to rise when he entered their office. The private secretary ignored the discourtesy. “We are all servants,” he told shocked courtiers, “although some are more important than others.”
As the devoted secretary to Queen Victoria, Lord Stamfordham was by far the most important of the King’s men. He had served Victoria’s heir, King Edward VII, who had put him in charge of his own son, George, at an early age. “He taught me how to be a king,” said the master of his servant.
It was Lord Stamfordham who received the unenviable job of telling King George V about D. H. Lawrence, who had been hounded into hiding because he married a German woman. The once revered writer had married the sister of German military aviator Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the legendary Red Baron, credited with shooting down eighty Allied planes during World War I. After their wedding, Lawrence and his bride, Frieda, were forced by public hostility to seek refuge in the English countryside, where they hid in barns like animals.
This news was unsettling to the King, who also had a German wife. But the clever Queen—Mary of Teck—speaking English with a slight guttural accent, began referring to herself as “English from top to toe.” The King immediately stopped addressing Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, the commander of the German forces sweeping across Europe, as “sweet cousin Willy.” His German-hating subjects, who avoided references to sex, began referring to the male sexual organ as a “Willy.”
Still, the hatred of Germans became so intense in England that the King’s mother begged him to remove the Kaiser’s honorary flags from the chapel. “Although as a rule I never interfere, I think the time has come when I must speak out,” wrote Queen Alexandra. “It is but right and proper for you to have down those hateful German banners in our sacred Church, St. George’s, at Windsor.”
She sent her letter to “my darling little Georgie” after the Daily Mail had excoriated him for allowing the eight flags of “enemy Emperors, Kings and Princes” a place of honor at Windsor. “As long as the offending banners remain, their owners will be prayed for,” thundered the newspaper. “What are the King’s advisors doing?”
The King ignored the criticism until it came from his “darling Mother dear.” Then he yielded and had the banners removed. “Otherwise,” he told a friend, “the people would have stormed the chapel.”
The King then threw himself and his family into the war effort. He dispatched his sons to the western front, sending the Prince of Wales (Edward, but known to the family as David) to France, while Prince Albert (Bertie) served on the battleship HMS Collingwood. The King banned alcohol and began strict rationing at the Palace to set a national example.
In March 1917 his cousin the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia (“dear Nicky”) was forced to abdicate, in part because he, too, had a German wife whom the King blamed “for the present state of chaos that exists in Russia.”
The King’s equerry was more brutal on the subject: “The Empress is not only a Boche by birth, but in sentiment. She did all she could to bring about an understanding with Germany. She is regarded as a criminal or a criminal lunatic and the ex-Emperor as a criminal for his weakness and submission to her promptings.”
That was all the King needed to hear. Concerned about the survival of his throne, he withdrew the warm friendship he had once extended to his “beloved cousin.” When the Czar appealed for asylum for himself and his family, the King refused, prohibiting them entry into England. The King felt he needed to separate himself from Russian imperialism, especially when wrapped with a German ribbon. So he wrote his cousin that he did not think it “advisable that the Imperial Family should take up their residence in this country.” He suggested instead Spain or the South of France. At that point the revolutionaries in Russia realized that the King would not use military force to save his relatives. Thus abandoned, the Czar and his family were seized and sent to Siberia.
The King was more determined than ever to hang on to his threatened throne. He resented references to his German ancestry and raged over the caricatures of Max Beerbohm, who drew him as a comical and lugubrious figure. He lost his temper when a Labor Member of Parliament called him “a German pork butcher,” and he erupted again when H. G. Wells branded him a foreigner. In a letter to the Times, the British journalist and novelist called for an end to “the ancient trappings of the throne and sceptre.” He damned the royal house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha by calling it “an alien and uninspiring Court.”
“I may be uninspiring,” boomed the King, “but I’ll be damned if I’m an alien.”
He resolved then and there to rid himself and his royal house of what he saw as its dreadful German taint. With the greatest sleight of hand since the sorc
ery of Prospero, he asserted his divine right and rechristened himself with the most euphonious, melodious British name conceivable. His courtiers had spent weeks searching for just such a name that would reestablish the monarchy as thoroughly English.
Finally, Lord Stamfordham found it and secured his place in history by proposing the name of Windsor. That one word summoned up what the King was looking for—a glorious image that resonated with history, stretching back to William the Conqueror. For Windsor Castle, the most thoroughly British symbol extant, had been the site of English monarchs for eight hundred years. Although few kings had ever lived there, several had died in Windsor Castle, and nine were buried in its royal crypt. The name was enough to redeem a tarnished crown.
The proclamation of the House of Windsor was announced on July 17, 1917, and appeared the next day on the front pages of England’s newspapers. The British press dutifully reported that the King had renounced his German name and all German titles for himself and all other descendants of Queen Victoria and that henceforth he and his issue were to be referred to as the House of Windsor.
In the United States, news of the British royal family’s reinvention was reported on page nine of The New York Times. In an editorial, the Times noted “the unnaming and renaming” was approved in a meeting of the largest Privy Council ever assembled and suggested that the name of Windsor, an Anglo-Saxon fortress where the legendary King Arthur sat among the Knights of the Table Round, might have been selected for its “sense of continuity, of ancientness.” America’s newspaper of record praised England’s King for choosing “a venerable name for his house.”
In Germany, the news was reported with less reverence. The Kaiser laughed at his quixotic cousin and said that he was looking forward to attending a performance of that well-known play The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. But the Kaiser appreciated the political necessity of accommodation. As he pointed out, “Monarchy is like virginity—once lost, you can’t get it back.”
Still, he exacted revenge nineteen years later when the King died by sending the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to his cousin’s funeral in Windsor Castle. The Duke wore his Nazi uniform.
George V never expressed any qualms about his actions. He pragmatically buried his German roots to save his throne and then systematically ostracized his foreign relatives. He did this without compunction, even after receiving news from Russia that the Czar and Czarina and their four daughters and young son, who were moved from Siberia to Ekaterinburg, had been massacred by the Bolsheviks.
“It was a foul murder,” he wrote piously in the diary he kept for posterity. “I was devoted to Nicky, who was the kindest of men and a thorough gentleman.”
By keeping his distance, the King of England had held his crown in place. He then proceeded to rule the House of Windsor for the next two decades with probity. There was no scandal attached to his reign, and like his grandmother Queen Victoria, he excelled at the virtues the English prize most: duty and punctuality. His subjects saw him as a simple, decent man whose plain tastes reflected their own.
The King had started his adult life as the Duke of York and spent seventeen years shooting grouse on the moors. He became the heir apparent when his older brother, the Duke of Clarence, died. Even as King, he kept the clocks set forward an hour to provide more time for shooting. A proper country squire, he enjoyed tramping across his twenty-thousand-acre estate in Norfolk. He adored his wife, indulged his daughter, and terrorized his five sons. “I was frightened of my father, and I am damn well going to see to it that my children are frightened of me,” he said.
Poorly educated, he rarely read, shunned the theater, and did not listen to classical music. He ignored the arts, letters, and sciences. For recreation he licked postage stamps and placed them with childlike precision in blue leather stamp books. By the end of his life he had compiled an enormous collection of stamps from places he never wanted to visit. Known as “the Sailor King,” he did not travel for education or pleasure. “Abroad is awful,” he said. “I know because I’ve been there.” Except for touring military installations, he took few trips. He made an exception in 1911 to go to India for his coronation and in 1913 to visit relatives in Germany.
“My father, George V, took quiet pride in never having set foot in the United States,” said his eldest son.
“Too far to go,” said the King.
What he was, his children would become. In later years his eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who became the Duke of Windsor, was so humiliated by his father’s ignorance that he reneged on an agreement to write a book of royal family reminiscences. He confided the reason to his publisher: “I’d hate for the world to know how illiterate we all were.” The Prince of Wales had once embarrassed himself at a dinner party by not knowing the name of the Brontë sisters, who in their short lifetimes wrote Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, both considered classics of the English novel. The Prince of Wales, who rarely read, did not know who they were or how to pronounce their name. “Who are the Bronts?” he asked.
Unenlightened about mental illness, the Prince of Wales considered the condition of his youngest brother, Prince John, a source of shame. The last of the monarch’s six children, John was mentally retarded and an epileptic. He was secretly removed from the family at an early age and lived on a farm on the Sandringham estate, where he died in 1919 at the age of thirteen.
As uneducated as the King was, George V won wide respect from his subjects for his conscientious performance of royal duties and for his numerous military uniforms and the obvious pleasure he took in wearing them in royal parades. His subjects looked up to him as the father of their country and the personification of their values. England had gained enough land by conquest to give her dominion over a quarter of the globe and a fourth of the world’s inhabitants, thus making George V the last great Emperor King. During his reign, the sun truly never set on the British empire.
By the time King George V died in 1936, his beleaguered country was on the brink of another world war with Germany, which would end Britain’s imperial power. And the House of Windsor, which he had built on the quicksand of illusion, started sinking under the weight of scandal.
For the last two years of his life, the King agonized over his heir. He dreaded leaving the monarchy in the hands of his feckless son, who at the age of forty-one was still unmarried. Following a fourteen-year affair with another man’s wife, the Prince of Wales was now besotted with a married American woman, once divorced, named Wallis Warfield Simpson. Already Mrs. Simpson envisioned herself as the next Queen of England. The concept of a divorced person in royal circles was considered such sacrilege in those days that the King refused to receive his son’s “unholy lover.” He forbade his son to bring a woman defiled by divorce into his royal presence. When the King realized he was dying, he made his wife swear that she would never receive the despised Mrs. Simpson. The Queen, who regarded the King as more than her husband—”He’s my almighty Lord and sovereign”—obeyed his command for the rest of her days.
At the end of his life, King George V cursed the laws of primogeniture that barred his solidly married second son from succeeding him. Although Bertie’s stutter and stammer irritated him beyond bearing, he would have done anything to save the Crown from the Prince of Wales and his wenching ways.
“After I am dead,” he said, “the boy will ruin himself in twelve months.” In that the King proved prescient.
He wanted the throne to pass to his second son and then to his beloved granddaughter Elizabeth, who called him “Grandpapa England” because he referred to the National Anthem (“God Save the King”) as his song. She sat on his lap, tousled his hair, pulled his beard, and plucked food from his plate for her Welsh corgi dogs. She also made him get down on his hands and knees to play “horsey” with her. The old King doted on his first granddaughter and held her in his arms on the balcony of Buckingham Palace so she could hear the crowd roar. “They’re cheering for you, you know,” he told her. Later he confided to an
equerry: “I pray to God that my eldest son [Edward] will never marry and have children, and that nothing will come between Bertie and Lilibet and the throne.”
Critically ill for days, George V died on Monday, January 20, 1936, at 11:55 P.M. His end was hastened by Lord Dawson, who gave him a lethal injection of cocaine and morphine. The courtier wanted the King to die before midnight so that his death could be announced in the morning Times rather than in the less prestigious evening newspapers. The King, who had renamed the royal family, now lost his life to meet a newspaper deadline. Such was the legacy of the House of Windsor, which would eventually rise and fall as a puppet show for the media.
THREE
Winston Churchill puffed on his cigar and pondered the problem that was threatening a constitutional crisis: The new king, Edward VIII, wanted to announce his engagement to the American Wallis Warfield Simpson.
“Why shouldn’t the King be allowed to marry his cutie?” Churchill asked.
“Because,” retorted playwright Noel Coward, “England doesn’t wish for a Queen Cutie.”
The new King, who was forty-one years old and had never been married, intended to make his mistress his wife as soon as she got her second divorce. Upon his coronation he wanted her crowned as his consort. But he was up against the British establishment, which would not accept Wallis as Regina. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin said it was outrageous to think that an American woman with two failed marriages could marry the King and become Queen of the British empire. The King insisted he would be supported by public opinion. The Prime Minister polled the prime ministers of the Commonwealth and reported back the results: Either abandon Mrs. Simpson or abdicate.
“The throne,” said the King, “means nothing to me without Wallis beside me.”
Within ten months of his accession, the new monarch renounced the crown. He made public his abdication over the radio on December 11, 1936, in a speech that Churchill had helped him write. The evening broadcast from Windsor Castle was relayed around the world wherever the English language was spoken. In New York City cabdrivers pulled over to the curb to listen to the King say he could not continue to reign without the help and support of the woman he loved. The British public, which had learned of the crisis only weeks before, had sent telegrams and cables to Fort Belvedere, pleading with the King: “Stay with us!” and “Please don’t desert us!” Now they wept as they listened to him give up his throne. “He Wuz Robbed!” said the Beaverbrook press. Journalist H. L. Mencken wrote, “It was the greatest news story since the Resurrection.”