The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

by Martin Williams

Since her accession sixty-three years earlier, she had been a reassuringly constant presence in an ever-changing world. A dignified but unglamorous figure barely five feet tall, she was a creature of habit with an aversion to show. More comfortable wearing a bonnet than a crown, she personified the values – solidity, sobriety, propriety – of the era to which she gave her name. The majority of her subjects could remember no other monarch.

feel as if her death will have consequences in and for this country that no man can foresee,’ he wrote from the Reform Club. ‘The Queen’s magnificent duration had held things magnificently – beneficently – together and prevented all sorts of accidents. Her death, in short, will let loose incalculable forces for possible ill. I am very pessimistic.’2 He was not reassured by the reputation of the man he derided as ‘Fat Edward – E. the Caresser’.3 The King’s infidelities were, he considered, a bad omen. For James, Victoria had been ‘a sustaining symbol – and the wild waters are upon us now’.4

Now, with the nineteenth century well under way, and the demand for democracy growing ever more clamorous, the survival of the dynasty was felt to be vested in the virtue of the sovereign – and of her heir.

Given the strenuousness of his education, it was remarkable just how little, when he finally came of age, Edward was given to do.

Mired in funereal seclusion at Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, Victoria was virtually invisible to her subjects, but she was not about to cede her rightful place in their affections. For almost forty years, Edward was without any particular responsibilities. He had to wait until April 1898, when he was fifty-six, to be granted permission to deputise for his mother at a meeting of the Privy Council.

His exclusion from affairs of state compelled him to seek other means of occupation. Averse to books, Edward excelled in an area that was to prove indispensable to the modern conception of royalty. He was marvellous with people. With time hanging heavy, he immersed himself in two activities, travel and social life, that stood him in excellent stead when at last he ascended the throne.

One of Albert’s final projects had been to earmark Alexandra as a prospective bride. Now he was dead, his every word was law. In carrying out his father’s wishes, Edward was merely fulfilling what Victoria held to be his ‘sacred duty’.12

Sandringham’s charms were debatable, but it was greatly loved by its master and mistress. In any case, nobody ever refused an invitation. For four decades, membership of the so-called Marlborough House Set denoted the ultimate in elegance and exclusivity.

By the mid-1870s, their relationship had settled into a comfortable groove. They were undoubtedly fond of each other. Alexandra’s loyalty to Edward was absolute. Grateful for her devotion, he was careful to ensure she would never be slighted or disrespected. Still, he remained a man of prodigious appetites with too much leisure and a tendency towards boredom. With his wife indisposed, he embarked upon a wandering quest that would see him linked to any number of women. Some of his dalliances were transitory. Others were more serious.

Although there was a great deal of gossip about his liaisons, Edward was never flagrant. There were no exposés or kiss-and-tells. In any case, as long as appearances were maintained, adultery in the upper class was taken for granted. Worldly hostesses took pains to keep abreast of the extra-marital activities of their guests and allocated bedrooms accordingly. It was one of the ironies of the era that single girls were considered untouchable. No self-respecting gentleman would have dared seduce a debutante. Once wed, however, and provided she had furnished her husband with a couple of children indisputably his own, a lady was permitted to take a lover. All of Edward’s ‘official’ mistresses were safely married.

For, despite his mother’s misgivings, real advantages had accrued from Edward’s relentless pleasure-seeking. It was an age in which the levers of power were, for the most part, in the hands of the aristocracy. Statesmanship and high-level diplomacy were transacted not just in Westminster and Whitehall but in the embassies and country houses he frequented so assiduously. Conversations over billiards and brandy could reverberate across Europe. The Prince of Wales was able to hone his skills and knowledge of world affairs in the company of ministers and ambassadors as well as Guards officers and racehorse owners.

Politically conservative but socially ecumenical, he forged a new elite defined as much by pragmatism as by his insatiable appetite for amusement. Edward’s commitment to the status quo was instinctive and unswerving – he was adamantly opposed to the suffragette movement and regarded with distaste the Labour Party, which emerged at the turn of the twentieth century – but so was his belief that enjoyment could be found in company that was neither male nor patrician.

Between 1870 and 1914, dozens of American women married into the British aristocracy: a cohort so numerous that, in time, 17 per cent of the peerage and 12 per cent of the baronetage could claim transatlantic connections. ‘At the present day, so close has the union between ourselves and the United States become that Americans are hardly looked upon as foreigners at all, so many people having American relatives,’ marvelled the octogenarian Lady Dorothy Nevill in 1907.19

‘cash for coronets’ phenomenon was real enough. Yet the so-called ‘Dollar Princesses’ were appreciated for their own sakes too. Sophisticated, self-confident and, above all, fun, the Americans introduced fresh air and vitality into an aristocracy sorely in need of ventilation.

It was an influence that worked in both directions. Many of the Americans came to feel a passionate devotion to their adopted land.

Even more noteworthy than Edward’s enjoyment of the Dollar Princesses was his sponsorship of wealthy Jews. The stratospheric ascent of the banking Rothschilds was due in no small measure to his conspicuous favour.

Unusual in his era and milieu, Edward’s enlightened attitude was not shared by many of his cronies. No matter how lavish their hospitality, his Jewish friends could expect to encounter appalling, if thinly veiled, prejudice.

By no stretch of the imagination an intellectual, Edward was not easily led. He seldom trusted to gossip or hearsay, preferring to draw upon his own considerable experience before arriving at a conclusion. From 1901, his dedication to the duties of kingship was both impressive and startlingly modern. Transacting the business of state in face-to-face meetings, he insisted his desk be kept as free as possible from papers. New inventions – the telephone, the typewriter – were embraced. Having provided a general overview of content and tone, he frequently left secretaries to write letters in his name. It was less a symptom of laziness than of remarkable efficiency. Correspondence was never left hanging but was dealt with within twenty-four hours.

As comfortable in Vienna and Lisbon as he was in Paris and St Petersburg, Edward was almost uniquely versed in Continental as well as domestic affairs. He actively encouraged his ambassadors to supplement their official reports with off-the-record accounts of their private impressions and opinions.

Slow to be appreciated by his mother, Edward’s gifts were given free rein after her death. His accession coincided with a shift in government thinking that saw him, over the next nine years, burnish a reputation as an extra-mural diplomat, whose travels were seen as indivisible from the maintenance of peace in an increasingly fractious Europe. It was a heavy burden, but one he experienced, at least at first, as a source of pleasure and satisfaction – and never more so than during his epoch-defining visit to France in the spring of 1903.

Brilliant but cautious, Salisbury had done double duty as Foreign Secretary until late 1900, when he ceded the office to the more flexible 5th Marquess of Lansdowne. By then, most of the major European nations had forged alliances: the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy and the Dual Alliance between France and Russia. Britain, on the other hand, stood friendless and was therefore dangerously exposed in the event of conflict.

From the earliest weeks of Edward’s reign, Lord Lansdowne had been scouting the possibility of an alliance with Germany. When that scheme foundered, influential minds turned to France.

Edward’s stake in the actual negotiations was nil. That responsibility fell to Lansdowne and Cambon. What Edward did do was decisively alter the climate in which those negotiations could unfold.

Then again, Edward would have been content in any establishment in which the cuisine was so certain to be superb. Few monarchs have enjoyed food more, or eaten quite so much of it. As early as 1860, the abstemious Prince Albert had counselled his son, then just eighteen, against over-indulgence in rich dishes, which ‘an experienced and prudent liver will carefully avoid’.22 As he did to so many of his parents’ strictures, Edward turned a deaf ear.

excessively and competitively,’ recalled Harold Nicolson of the members of the Marlborough House Set. ‘No age since that of Nero can show such unlimited addiction to food.’25 Even so, Edward’s appetite was remarkable. So insatiable was his hunger that he frequently forgot to chew, bolting whole platefuls in a matter of minutes. Alexandra confessed that she found her husband’s greed to be ‘appalling’, but she could do nothing to check it. By the time of his accession, Edward was so large his waist, at forty-eight inches, was the same size as his chest, and his clothes no longer met in the middle. Given the richness and frequency of the meals he consumed, that was not surprising. His tastes veered indiscriminately between the relatively simple – roast beef and Yorkshire pudding were served every Sunday without fail – and the extremely opulent. He adored caviar, oysters and quails stuffed with truffles. Game of all varieties was relished, and he derived enormous pleasure from foods he associated with his favourite social occasions.

Escoffier, who considered it an aberration that blunted the appetite ahead of the climactic evening meal, thoroughly disapproved of this English custom. Laid out by the butler and footmen, who then discreetly retired, the spread comprised an infinite number of sandwiches, scones, jams, cakes and pastries, as well as such improbable but mouth-watering additions as lobster salad, which was known to be one of the King’s favourites.

If, in Edward’s eyes, France represented ‘Fun’, Russia represented ‘Family’. Queen Victoria may have disparaged Tsar Alexander III as a ‘sovereign whom she does not look upon as a gentleman’,2 but she had been unable to prevent two of her granddaughters from marrying into the bosom of the Romanovs. In 1884, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse, the daughter of Edward’s favourite sister, Alice, wed Alexander’s brother, Grand Duke Serge Alexandrovich. Ten years later, her younger sister, Alix, married Alexander’s son and successor, Tsar Nicholas II. To further complicate matters, Nicholas was the nephew of Edward’s wife, Alexandra, by her own favourite sister, the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna. Edward was therefore an uncle twice over.

Handsome, charming and modest, Nicholas was easy to like. He was also, Edward judged, ‘weak as water’3 – and weakness in the autocratic monarch of a vast empire did not bode well. Worse, the premature death of his father had left him ill-equipped to shoulder responsibilities of such overwhelming magnitude. ‘I know nothing of the business of ruling,’ he wailed upon his accession at the age of twenty-six. ‘I have no idea of even how to talk to the ministers.’4 In dealing with one so diffident, Edward realised that charm would yield greater dividends than pugnacity.

Since Britain and France had declared victory over Russia in the Crimean War of 1853‒6, Anglo-Russian relations had been characterised by simmering mistrust. In Westminster and Whitehall, successive governments worried about the threat Russia posed to India, as well as its creeping influence in China. Culturally, the exchange between the nations was distinctly lopsided. In St Petersburg, a sizeable community of expatriate Britons had taken root. Mills and manufactories were run by English and Scottish owners and managers. There was the Anglican Church, the New English Club, and an English Shop (confusingly known as the ‘Magasin Anglais’) in which British-made goods could be purchased in an atmosphere redolent of ‘the High Street in Chester, or Leicester, or Truro, or Canterbury’.7 Sophisticated members of the Russian aristocracy had what Vladimir Nabokov described as ‘a traditional leaning towards the comfortable products of Anglo-Saxon civilisation . . . fruitcakes, smelling-salts, playing cards, picture puzzles, striped blazers, talcum-white tennis balls’.8 English governesses were highly sought-after, and English came to rival French as the language of choice among the elite.

In a letter to Charles Hardinge, Edward’s protégé in the Foreign Office, Sir Arthur Nicolson, the British ambassador in St Petersburg, warned that, sooner or later, a successful revolution would ‘sweep away dynasty, Government, and much else’.12 Until then, Russian dissidents hunkered down in the safe haven of London. Free speech, freedom of the press and minimal police interference attracted Leon Trotsky, Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin to the British capital. Disapproval of the conditions under which so many Russians suffered even seeped into polite Edwardian nurseries.

Instinctively conservative, he nevertheless looked askance at the repressive Russian regime. In the autumn of 1905, he had instructed Hardinge to convey personally to his nephew ‘my hope that he may find himself able to grant a more liberal form of Government to his Country’.16 Even so, nothing could excuse such an insult to a foreign sovereign who was also a close relation. Three of the MPs who had caused him particular offence were duly scratched from the guest list of a garden party to be held at Windsor Castle.

Habitually stiff and reserved, the Tsarina was visibly pleased to see her uncle. Contrary to hostile rumours at home, she had always identified more closely with her English than her German ancestry. A member of the Russian suite was surprised to see her treated by the British ‘as if she were ONE OF THEM’.18

Over the next two decades, the Kaiser’s volatility dismayed countless statesmen, diplomats and journalists. He was not a figure the British – least of all the King – contemplated with equanimity.

From boyhood, Wilhelm had defined himself against his parents.

The peaceable Frederick was a liberal and an Anglophile. Taking after her progressive father, Prince Albert, Victoria had been steeped in similar ideals of democracy and religious toleration – ideals her son, as well as an influential faction within the Prussian ruling class, rejected entirely. Wilhelm conflated his complicated emotions about his brilliant but domineering mother with an inferiority complex about the country of her birth. Nationalist sentiment, combined with rapid industrial growth and a surge in militarisation after German Unification in 1871, saw his hostility play out in a series of collisions with his English family. These took on greater significance in 1888, when Frederick died of throat cancer after a reign of just ninety-nine days. His untimely death robbed Edward of a brother-in-law he had respected and left him to contend with a nephew he did not.

The mutual antipathy of the King and the Kaiser was reflected in a deterioration of relations between their peoples. Culturally, Britain and Germany were tightly knit. London was home to tens of thousands of expatriate Germans. German financiers were prominent in the City – Sir Ernest Cassel, for example, had been born in Cologne – and German governesses could be found in many aristocratic households. There was a German hospital, a brace of German-language newspapers and as many as a dozen German churches. Lined with German-owned cafés, restaurants and clubs, Charlotte Street, parallel to Tottenham Court Road, was dubbed ‘Charlottenstrasse’ by locals. Conversely, Germany was irresistible to the high-minded British. Violet Asquith was one of innumerable girls despatched to be ‘finished’ in Dresden prior to her debut. The annual festival at Bayreuth was unmissable for fans of Wagner, while Richard Haldane, the Secretary of State for War between 1905 and 1912, had earlier in his career won acclaim for his translation of Arthur Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation.

Despite these affinities, Germany was increasingly perceived by the British as a rival and, worse, a threat. In 1909, Robert Graves entered Charterhouse, the prestigious public school in Surrey. There, he was struck by his classmates’ hatred of all things German. The very word, used interchangeably with ‘dirty German’, denoted ‘cheap, shoddy goods competing with our sterling industries’.

In military circles, belligerence ran rife.

In each nation, the rate at which cutting-edge battleships were commissioned and built accelerated alarmingly, with neither side prepared to slacken the pace lest they found themselves outmanned and outgunned in the conflict many were convinced was inevitable.

Wilhelm’s indiscretions appeared to confirm the widespread belief that he was a dangerous loose cannon. Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow, who had carelessly passed the text before publication, and who was to resign the following summer, described the ‘dark foreboding [that] ran through many Germans that such clumsy, incautious, over-hasty – such stupid, even puerile – speech and action on the part of the Supreme Head of State could lead to only one thing – catastrophe’.

Outwardly cordial, the visit did little to ameliorate the growing tensions. Edward was demoralised and depressed. ‘It is strange,’ he wrote to Charles Hardinge, ‘that ever since my visit to Berlin the German Government has done nothing but thwart and annoy us in every way . . . If we can only ensure peace, it is worth giving way, as long as we do so with honour and dignity.’ He admitted that ‘We may safely look upon Germany as our greatest foe, as she hardly attempts to conceal it.’

Dominion over the high seas had enabled a diminutive nation on the outskirts of Europe to attain unrivalled – indeed, unprecedented – influence. Since the days of Raleigh and Drake, the British had plumed themselves on a supremacy that could not, under any circumstances, be ceded to another power. A combination of patriotic pride and gnawing anxiety propelled the naval arms race that became a hot topic in Westminster in 1908.

Powered by revolutionary steam turbines, the Dreadnought could outstrip any of her contemporaries. Bristling with state-of-the-art weaponry, her twin-funnelled silhouette projected majesty and menace in roughly equal measure. She was so synonymous with British naval might that her name was used as shorthand for the entire generation of ships commissioned after her. Her well-scrubbed decks were not an obvious staging ground for one of the twentieth century’s most imaginatively conceived, carefully planned and flawlessly executed practical jokes. Yet on one notorious afternoon in February 1910, that is precisely what they became.

Her misgivings were justified. In want of occupation in the early weeks of 1910, Cole and Adrian hatched an audacious, if to our way of thinking racially insensitive, plot. In it, they would reprise an exploit from their student days when they had blackened their faces and masqueraded as the Sultan of Zanzibar’s uncle and his suite.

That February, the much-vaunted and fiercely protected Dreadnought lay at anchor off the coast of Dorset. Adrian and Cole planned to deceive their way aboard for a tour of inspection. In order to do so, they would have to adopt suitably convincing disguises. Building upon the ‘Sultan of Zanzibar’, they would, on this occasion, pretend to be Abyssinian royalty: not, as was subsequently claimed, the real-life Emperor, but his fictitious cousin, ‘Prince Makalen’, and a party of his attendants. Given that Abyssinia (present-day Ethiopia) was a bulwark against the expansion of the German Empire in East Africa, its representatives were likely to receive a warm – and, it was hoped, credulous – welcome. For Adrian, the risk, and therefore the flavour, would have a personal dimension. Since childhood, the Stephen siblings had regarded with distaste and derision the self-satisfied offspring of their maternal aunt Mary. One in particular was singled out for scorn: the priggish William Fisher, who was, at that very moment, serving as one of the Dreadnought’s senior officers. Just as Bloomsbury would enjoy pulling the wool over the eyes of the Royal Navy, so Adrian would delight in tricking his irritatingly conventional cousin.

On that occasion, Edward had not been required to venture beyond West Sussex. In every other respect, he was a monarch on the move. During his reign, the number of motorised vehicles in Great Britain quadrupled, from 23,000 in 1904 to 100,000 in 1910. Every day, fewer and fewer carriages were to be seen on the streets, and those that remained appeared increasingly anachronistic. The demise of the hansom cab, one of the most potent symbols of Victorian London, elicited a pang in the hearts of traditionalists.

Given the spirit of the times, it was almost inevitable that European rivalries would play out in

the fields of transportation and technology as surely as they did in politics and diplomacy. The battle between Britain and Germany for maritime supremacy was waged as fiercely in the commercial sector as it was in the military.

Dented but not chastened, the pride of the British reasserted itself in 1907 with the advent of two stupendous sisters, the Lusitania and the Mauretania. The Cunard Line received government subsidies to build and operate the pair on the condition they could, in the event of war, be requisitioned by the Admiralty and converted into armed merchant cruisers.

Whereas Cunard had set out to woo prospective passengers by photographing motor-cars passing through the Mauretania’s yet-to-be-fitted funnels, White Star depicted their new giants dwarfing a selection of the world’s greatest buildings. With their electrically operated watertight doors, they would be so safe that in due course a leading industry publication would blithely proclaim them to be ‘practically unsinkable’.25