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

by Martin Williams

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.