Edward VII: The Last Victorian King

by Christopher Hibbert

  The incognito was scarcely necessary for almost everyone in Paris knew who the Duke was; and he seemed quite content that this should be so. ‘Ullo Wales!’ La Gouloue, the famous dancer, would shout at him on his appearance at the Moulin Rouge, and he would smile indulgently and order champagne for the dancers and the members of the orchestra. Those who did not recognize him were soon made aware of his identity, as was ‘a prosperous-looking American with a large cigar in his mouth’ who stood waiting for the lift in the lobby of the Grand Hotel. The King also stood waiting to be taken up to the floor on which the ex-Empress Eugènie had taken a room. When the doors opened the American moved forward to enter first as he had been waiting the longer. The King, so accustomed to having everyone else wait for him that he took no notice of his neighbour, strode forward at the same time, collided with him, knocked him off his balance with the superior weight of his great bulk and sent the cigar shooting out of the American’s mouth.

  Occasionally on his foreign visits the King would be upset by some display of anti-British feeling. At the time of the Boer War he was deeply offended by being forced to listen to renditions of the Boers’ national anthem on his way to Friedrichshof; and he cancelled his usual spring holiday on the Riviera and refused to open an International Exhibition in Paris because of hostilc articles about his country and rude caricatures of himself which had appeared in French newspapers. But normally he was greeted respectfully wherever he went. Sometimes, indeed, he was forced to complain of the all too enthusiastic welcome accorded to him by cheering crowds or inquisitive tourists who pressed about him with clicking cameras, anxious to obtain a snapshot of a man so famous and revered that people collected cigar stubs that had touched his lips, bones that had been left on his plate, and bowed towards the chair upon which he was accustomed to sit in a favoured shop.

  In his later years his continental visits began to assume a set pattern. He would leave England at the beginning of March for France, spending a week or so in Paris before going on to Biarritz for three weeks. He then would embark on a month’s cruise, in the royal yacht, usually with the Queen and preferably in the Mediterranean. Although he once told Lord Morley, while they were driving together through the forests near Balmoral, that ‘if he could have chosen his life he would have liked to be a landscape gardener’, he did not usually seem to take much notice of his surroundings and certainly rarely made a comment on the scenery. At Biarritz, however, he was struck by the beauty of the Basque coast-line and wrote to his friend, Lady Londonderry, of the ‘splendid views’ and of the pleasure he derived from listening to the ‘continual roll of the Atlantic’. He wrote one day in the early spring of 1906:

  Though this place is quieter than the Riviera it is more bracing and I am sure healthier. I have charming rooms in a very big hotel close to the sea [the Hôtel du Palais] … Golf is the principal pastime, but the roads are excellent and I take continually long motor drives into the country and to Spain. I shall meet the Queen at Marseilles in the yacht. … There are a great many English here.

  One of the principal advantages of Biarritz was that the air suited him far better than the more sultry air of the Riviera. Towards the end of his life he was troubled by coughing fits so severe that he found it difficult to get his breath and seemed to be choking. But once installed at the Hôtel du Palais he found his breathing much more easy, and only regretted that Biarritz was so smelly. It was bad enough in 1907, but so much worse in 1908 that he instructed the British Ambassador in Paris to make representations to Clemenceau himself about ‘the effects of defective draining’, otherwise some other resort would ‘have to be thought of’. Assurances were given that something would be done, and so the next year the King returned as usual.

  At Biarritz he was called at seven, and after his glass of warm milk and his bath, he would have breakfast at ten, usually in a small tent on the terrace outside his apartments. The Corsican detective, Xavier Paoli, who was assigned to guard him, reported that he had grilled bacon, boiled eggs and fried fish for breakfast with a large cup of coffee, and that, having finished this meal, he would sit at his writing-table till a quarter past twelve when he went out for a walk. Lunch was served in his large private dining-room overlooking the sea at one o’clock and invariably included hard-boiled plovers’ eggs with a touch of paprika, followed by trout, salmon or grilled sole, a meat dish (preferably chicken or lamb with asparagus), and strawberries or stewed fruit. As in England he drank very little either at luncheon or dinner, contenting himself with a glass or two of Chablis or dry champagne or, possibly, claret and Perrier water. Occasionally between meals he would have a whisky and soda.

  Paoli complained of the difficulties of maintaining the King’s privacy. He managed to reduce the swarm of beggars that habitually descended upon Biarritz in the season to two blind and ragged mendicants who took up the same position every day and, at the sound of Caesar’s bark, held out their bowls into which the King dropped his daily contribution with the words, ‘A demain!’ But newspapermen were a more serious problem. Paoli found a retired detective who bore such a marked resemblance to the King that he was known as ‘Edouard’. He tried dressing this man up in clothes like the King’s; but although the resemblance was more striking than ever, ‘Edouard’ could not manage a remotely convincing imitation of the King’s smile or his highly characteristic way of walking or bowing, and the experiment had to be abandoned.

  Despite his occasional failures, Paoli believed that he earned the King’s respect, even his friendship; and he proudly recorded in his memoirs how one day he had ventured to admire the tiny gold matchbox with the royal crown which the King wore on his watch-chain. ‘Accept it, my dear Paoli, as a souvenir,’ the King immediately replied with his usual impulsive generosity. ‘I should like you to have it.’

  Although Paoli complained of the newspapermen, they discreetly omitted to mention in their reports the presence in Biarritz of Mrs Keppel, who was usually there staying, with her two daughters and their governess, at the Villa Eugènie as a guest of Sir Ernest Cassel and his sister. Mrs Keppel’s daughter Sonia has described how exciting these annual journeys to Biarritz were, and how respectfully her mother was always treated: ‘At Victoria a special carriage was reserved for us; and a special cabin on the boat. And at Calais, Mamma was treated like royalty. The chef de gare met her and escorted us all through the customs, and the car attendant on the train hovered over her like a love-sick troubadour.’ Once at Biarritz, Sonia and her sister saw ‘Kingy’ frequently, accompanying him on picnics which, ‘for some unfathomed reason’, he chose to have by the side of the road, where other cars were sure to park nearby and where footmen unpacked chairs and tables, linen tablecloths, plates, glasses and silver, and ‘every variety of cold food’. ‘Much of “Kingy’s” enjoyment of these picnics was based on his supposed anonymity and, delightedly, he would respond to an assumed name in his deep, unmistakable voice, unaware that most of the crowd was playing up to him.’

  Every year, after the Regatta at Cowes, the King also went to Germany or Austria to take the waters at a spa. Formerly he had favoured Homburg which, in the season, had been full of foreign visitors ‘most of whom [he knew] more or less’. These included Reuben Sassoon, a ‘curious old gentleman’, in George Cornwallis-West’s opinion, who ‘never opened his mouth except to put food in it’; but who gave the most entertaining picnic parties for as many as seventy guests; Mrs Arthur James, whose humour and high spirits always put the King in a good temper; and the dear old Duke of Cambridge with his son, Colonel FitzGeorge, and the Duke’s friend, Mrs Robert Vyner. The King had stayed at the Ritters Park Hotel and had drunk the waters conscientiously between half past seven and nine o’clock in the morning before breakfast of a cup of coffee and a boiled egg.

  In 1899 the King had transferred his favour to Marienbad, a small town in a pleasant valley in Bohemia, two thousand feet above the sea. The springs of healing waters at Marienbad belonged to the nearby abbey of Tepl, whose monks s
pent alternating periods of two years in seclusion followed by two years in the outside world and — as though in doubt as to which side of the abbey wall their life’s work lay — wore black top hats with white cassocks. The monks had been profiting by the sale of their waters for more than twenty years when the King, as Prince of Wales, had gone there for the first time. And by 1899 it had become extremely fashionable, the chosen spa of numerous members of Europe’s oldest families: of Grand Admiral Tirpitz and Lord Fisher; of Sir Ernest Cassel and the faded Lillie Langtry; of the Gaekwar of Baroda, the Turkish Grand Vizier and the King of Greece; of the dissolute Duke of Orléans and the celebrated French cavalry officer, General Galliffet, whose wounded stomach was covered by a silver plate; of Princess Dolgorouki, who had morganatically married the Tsar of Russia; of Madame Waddington, the attractive American widow of a French Ambassador in London; and of numerous ladies who, as one English visitor disapprovingly noted, ‘either have already been, or are qualifying themselves for being, divorced’. Most of them were extremely fat when they arrived; and many not much less so when they left.

  There were several excellent hotels in the town, the most fashionable being the Weimar where from 1903 to 1909 the King took a suite of rooms which were specially furnished for him in a different style for each succeeding visit, all the pieces being sold for much more than their intrinsic value after he left.

  Every morning at the Weimar, the King’s valet, Meidinger, himself awakened by a band which began to play under his window at half past six, entered his master’s bedroom to draw the curtains. And, without fail, he would be asked the same question phrased in the same six words: ‘What’s the weather doing to-day, Meidinger?’

  Having heard the subsequent report, the King got up and dressed himself. Soon after half past seven, with his secretary on one side and an equerry on the other, he could be seen strolling briskly up and down on the promenade by the spring known as the Kreuzbrunnen, smartly dressed in a hard, curly-brimmed pale grey felt hat worn at a slight angle to the left, a stiff white collar, neat grey pin-striped suit with all three buttons done up, and yellow suede gloves sewn with black stitching. In warmer weather he would wear a lightweight, dark blue coat and white trousers which were always immaculately creased, sometimes in front and at others down the sides. He was invariably closely shadowed by six Austrian detectives and two detectives from London, Patrick Quinn and Quinn’s assistant, Hester. Even at that hour of the morning crowds of sightseers gathered to watch him stride by, his left arm bent as though he were about to put his hand into his pocket, his right hand grasping a goldknobbed malacca cane or an ebony walking stick adorned with an E in brilliants, surmounted by a crown. As in Paris he liked to be known as the Duke of Lancaster, and was infuriated when the courier, Fehr, had his luggage labels printed, ‘Lord Lancaster’, a mistake that led him to expostulate angrily that people would think he was an ennobled gunmaker. Also, as in Paris, the incognito was scarcely worth while since everyone knew who the Duke of Lancaster was, the Burgomaster advertising his arrival by putting up notices asking people to respect his privacy, and photographs of him being on display in every shop window.

  Although Frederick Ponsonby asserted that the King’s ‘one idea of happiness was to be in the middle of a crowd with no one taking any notice of him’, others, more discerningly, supposed that he had no objection to being looked at and admired — he was rather annoyed, in fact, if he was not recognized. When dining incognito in restaurants, he became excessively impatient with waiters who failed to accord him the special treatment to which he was accustomed and treated him as an ordinary person who had to take his turn. And, once, paying an unexpected call on friends in Paris, he was exasperated to be asked at the door who he was. ‘You do not know me? Well, you ought to know me,’ the King expostulated, adding as proof of his own remarkable memory for faces, ‘I know you. Last year you were third footman with the Duchess of Manchester.’

  What the King did object to was being hampered or inconvenienced by inquisitive people who lacked the good manners to remain at a respectful distance. The crowds at Marienbad became so obtrusive that the King felt obliged to complain to the Emperor, whose officials saw to it that in future he was allowed to stroll about the town in peace, raising his hat in those varying degrees of respect which he had adopted to convey the exactly appropriate measure of esteem to those whom he encountered. The gestures of civility due to the Grand Duchesses of Saxe-Weimar and Mecklenburg-Schwerin were rather more elaborate than those due to Mme Waddington, and considerably more so than those used to indicate recognition of the English actors who visited Marienbad as regularly as he did himself. Servants off duty were also recognized; and staid Austrian aristocrats were astonished to see him raise his hat to them, a condescension strongly criticized as unbecoming in a monarch. Similarly shocking was the friendliness with which he greeted Fräulein Pistl, an exceptionally good-looking young woman who had a shop under the colonnades by the Kreuzbrunnen where she sold those Styrian hats which members of the King’s entourage were urged to buy and which he bought himself, requiring Fräulein Pistl to deliver them to his hotel personally.

  The King usually had his first tumbler of mineral water at his hotel, and two others sitting on a bench which was reserved for his use near the Kreuzbrunnen, both glasses being brought to him by the head waiter of the Weimar. After his second glass he went to have a mud bath in the Neubad. Then he would settle down to lunch, conscious of the fact that he was at Marienbad for a cure which ought to involve the loss of a good deal of weight, yet, as an Austrian journalist noticed, evidently without intending ‘to subject himself to any severe regime’. Certainly, he did not eat as much as he did at home, and dispensed with the cold chicken which in England normally stood on his bedside table in case he woke up hungry in the night. He professed himself to be extremely dismayed by other people’s lapses, particularly those of his friend Harry Chaplin, who, having dieted for several days, would suddenly find fattening food and drink irresistible; and he became very cross when something which was strictly forbidden, such as champagne, was handed round in his presence. Nevertheless, he enjoyed the local trout; he did not decline grouse with fried aubergines; and he ate a large number of peaches, his favourite fruit, which the suave and elegant Marienbad doctor, Ernst Ott, advised were better for him than oranges. He never seems to have claimed to have lost more than eight pounds in a fortnight and considered even this highly satisfactory.

  Occasionally he would have luncheon at the Rübezahl restaurant on a hillside overlooking the town, and after the meal would go for a walk in the surrounding pine forests or for a drive in a motor-car. He once went for a drive with the English War Minister, Haldane.

  He proposed that we should go in plain clothes as though we were Austrians [Haldane recalled]. And the first thing he did was to make me buy an Austrian hat [from Fräulein Pistl, of course] so as to look like a native … As we were passing a little roadside inn, with a wooden table in front of it, the King stopped and said, ‘Here I will stand treat.’ He ordered coffee for two … He said Austrian coffee was always admirable, and you could tell when you had crossed the frontier into Germany, because of the badness of the coffee… ‘Now I am going to pay,’ he said. ‘I shall take care to give only a small tip to the woman … in case she suspects who I am.’ We then drove to a place the King was very fond of — a monastery inhabited by the Abbot of Teppel — where we had a large tea and where the King enjoyed himself with the monks very much, gossiping and making himself agreeable.

  Knowing how fond the King was of shooting, the Abbot once invited him to shoot on the monastery lands. Normally while at Marienbad the King went shooting at Bischofteinitz with Prince Trauttmansdorff, who arranged his guns and four hundred beaters to perfection. But the Abbot, inexperienced in such matters, thought that all he had to do was buy a few partridges, put them down in a field and drive them over the guns. So as to prevent their flying away before the guns were ready, two kites, which the par
tridges were rightly expected to mistake for big, predatory birds, were set up over the field. But the kites were left in position when the beaters began the drive, which meant that the birds would only fly for short distances in front of the beaters before alighting again. This made the shooting both difficult and dangerous; and one old monk, who appeared with an antiquated gun, thought he would be better off behind the beaters. ‘It will all be quite safe,’ he assured the nervous English guests. ‘But of course if anyone shoots at me, I shall shoot back.’ The King, who was used to being given the best position, was for some reason placed right at the end of the line and was scarcely able to get a single shot all day.

  On Sundays the King attended morning service at the Anglican church in the Jägerstrasse; and on the Emperor’s birthday, 18 August, wearing a splendid Austrian military uniform, he went to the thanksgiving service in the Roman Catholic church, after which, standing on the Weimar’s wide balcony in his green plumed hat with the ribbon of the Order of St Stephen on his chest, he took the salute of a parade of veterans. On the evening of that day he always gave a dinner, either in the banqueting hall of the Weimar or in the hall of the Kurhaus, for important local dignitaries, distinguished visitors to Marienbad and British residents in Vienna such as Henry Wickham Steed, The Times’s correspondent.