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

by Martin Williams

After the high-minded but censorious Victorian era, Edward’s scintillating reign had sluiced away the last dregs of Puritanism. The King had hardly been a model of virtue, but neither was he a bigot or hypocrite. Lord Granville had summarised it best when he drew a comparison between father and son. Whereas the worthy Prince Albert had been unloved ‘because he possessed all the virtues which are sometimes lacking in the Englishman’, Edward was loved ‘because he has all the faults of which the Englishman is accused’.8

To those who had reached adulthood since the turn of the century, Edward had embodied the hedonistic spirit of the age. Violet Asquith, who was staying with the Viceroy in Dublin, was brought the news of his death in the middle of the night. ‘The King dead – dead,’ she wrote in her diary. ‘I can’t realise it.’ He had been ‘a splendidly characteristic figurehead – full of personality’.12 The brilliant young scholar Patrick Shaw-Stewart mourned Edward as ‘my favourite institution. There will be no more fun now of any sort.’13 From Balliol College in Oxford, the Honourable Billy Grenfell reflected on the tragic turn of events. ‘I am sad about King Edward, aren’t you?’ he asked his parents, Lord and Lady Desborough. ‘It seems as if the glory has departed; and there will be lots of war and mother will have to worry considerably.’14

The iconoclastic playwright George Bernard Shaw judged the whole business to be gratuitous, if not downright reprehensible. Making a plea on behalf of lower-middle-class parents who found themselves obliged to kit out their offspring with new outfits they could ill afford, he demanded to know ‘why our schools should be deliberately made hideous with black because an honourable public career has come to its natural close’. He suggested that little boys and girls should sport violet ribbons as a gesture ‘correct, inexpensive and pretty’.19

For the most part, his words fell upon deaf ears. Even the poorest were determined to do what they could to project an appropriate sense of loss.

During the nineteenth century, death had come to be marked by the observance of elaborate obsequies that fused new technology with age-old traditions. Prevalent in many generations and cultures, the practice of making a visual record of the deceased had derived fresh impetus from the invention of photography.

Private grief notwithstanding, the widowed Queen displayed a remarkable flair for public relations. Sensing the nation craved catharsis, she granted the press privileged access to her private thoughts and feelings, collapsing the barriers that divided her from the people. The result was an effusion of emotion that flowed in both directions.

May had enough to contend with. Her full name, Victoria Mary, had long been regarded as cumbersome by her husband. With his accession, he asked her to choose between the two. ‘Victoria’ was so closely associated with his illustrious grandmother that ‘Mary’ was the only alternative. ‘It strikes me as curious to be rechristened at the age of 43,’ she wrote to her beloved aunt and confidante, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. ‘Mary’ at least had a regal ring. ‘I hope the beautiful old name will come into vogue again,’ noted the diarist Lady Knightley of Fawsley with approval on 9 May.36

To a gathering of several thousand crammed into the Great Assembly Hall in Mile End, Rabbi Schewzik delivered an oration in which he described a three-fold sense of grief. First, there was loyalty to the country in which the Jews had ‘found a place of rest’ in a hostile world. Second, as a commercial people, Jews required peace for ‘enterprise and prosperity’, and no man had worked more assiduously to preserve it than Edward. Last, and most significant, the Jews had, with the death of the King, lost ‘their best friend, their protector and their father. He had set an example which might well be followed by other European monarchs in associating with Jews and staying at their houses. He had done his best to protect them from persecution, expulsion, torture and torment.’

In spite of the heartfelt tributes of Jews, Roman Catholics, Nonconformists and members of the Orthodox Church, Britain was still, in 1910, predominantly Anglican. As many as thirty million in a population of around forty-five million were born and raised in the Church of England.

A soul-stirring meditation on loss, one part of it in particular has endured. Imagining what the deceased might say to those he or she had left behind, Scott Holland speculated that it might be ‘Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room.’

The most significant difference between the funerals of Victoria and Edward was that the latter was to be preceded by a three-day lying-in-state in Westminster Hall. It was something of an innovation, and one that added an additional layer of complexity to an already intricate exercise. The last monarch to receive such treatment had been George III, whose body had lain-in-state at Windsor for twenty-four hours in 1820. The tradition of lying-in-state at Westminster had been inaugurated with the death of the venerable Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone in 1898.

Esher, who had preceded McDonnell at the Office of Works, was opposed to the very idea of a lying-in-state for Edward, and at Westminster in particular. He pointed out that the Hall had been the site of the trial of Charles I in 1649, and that the resonance would be unfortunate. His qualms were dismissed by McDonnell as ‘foolish’. In any case, he was swiftly overruled by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the new King, both of whom were in favour of the scheme. Perhaps fearing Esher’s continued interference, McDonnell welcomed George’s decisiveness at such an early stage in his reign. It was, he considered, ‘a fortunate omen’.2

As Big Ben tolled monotonously overhead, the gun-carriage clattered into New Palace Yard to be greeted by guards of honour from the Coldstream Guards and the Royal Marines Light Infantry. Simultaneously, the Union Flag on the Victoria Tower was lowered, and the Royal Standard raised to half-mast.

The crowds that had gathered outside Buckingham Palace during Edward’s final illness and in the immediate aftermath of his death had been drawn by a sense of personal connection they had never enjoyed with his mother. His extreme visibility, combined with his appetite for pleasures the majority of his subjects could understand, even if they couldn’t share them, had made him seem both accessible and modern: a suitable monarch for a new century that promised much in the way of change. Edward’s lying-in-state was conceived as a thoroughly democratic affair that would transcend religion, social status and political affiliations to invite the active participation of a grieving nation.

On the streets of Westminster and all along the Embankment, the lines snaked for miles. Variable weather had little impact on the numbers. In the rain, thousands of black umbrellas were unfurled. In the interludes of oppressive heat, hawkers sold oranges and local householders sent out their maids to circulate with baskets of cups and buckets of water. Clergymen, shop assistants, domestic servants and military veterans took their places alongside dapper clubmen and fashionable ladies. Teachers brought entire schools of children. From grandparents to babes-in-arms, whole families waited their turn. The pace was brisk; uncomfortably so for the elderly and infirm, who struggled to keep up. Members of St John Ambulance attended to those who fainted. Vigilant policemen dealt firmly with would-be queue-jumpers.

During peak periods, as many as ten thousand people an hour streamed through the Hall, pausing for a few seconds to bow or curtsy when they reached the coffin. For observers who attempted to look upon the scene for any length of time, the effect was almost hypnotic. ‘The monotonous movement of the crowd . . . worked its way into the brain,’ wrote an awe-inspired correspondent from The Times.21 Exiting via the North Door into New Palace Yard, many mourners craned back, as if to impress the scene upon their memories.

If the ceremonies in Westminster elicited an extraordinary response from the general public, it would not be true to claim they affected everybody equally. Inevitably, there were dissenting voices. Beatrice Webb was an activist and social reformer closely involved with the left-wing Fabian Society. Stoked as it was by the popular press, she regarded the wave of emotion that had crashed over Britain with unalloyed contempt. ‘London and the country generally is enjoying itself hugely at the royal wake, slobbering over the lying-in-state and the formal procession,’ she fumed. ‘The ludicrous false sentiment which is being lavished over the somewhat commonplace virtues of our late King would turn the stomachs of the most loyal of Fabians.’28 Bloomsbury, too, remained largely unmoved. The restlessness that had propelled Virginia Stephen towards the suffrage movement in January, then into the Dreadnought hoax the following month, had been the prelude to a bout of mental illness that worried the Bells greatly. They had spirited her away to Dorset in the hope that a change of scene, accompanied by a complete cessation of activity, would do her good. Poised on the brink of temporary insanity, Virginia let Edward’s death pass without mention.

Even in Italy, where E. M. Forster had retreated earlier in the year to finish Howards End, the knock-on effects of Edward’s death were pronounced. In a letter to his friend Syed Ross Masood, he took aim at the English ladies who flocked to the shops of Florence in search of mourning apparel. ‘Masood, I am sick of these formalities,’ he wailed. ‘They are stifling all the heart out of life. Nothing but gossip & millinery, and all real feeling crushed into the background.’29 It was unsurprising that socialists and the intelligentsia should hold themselves aloof. What was surprising was the questionable conduct of certain figures – aristocrats, ministers – thoroughly embedded in the circles of power. The

The King had been so closely identified with London, and so popular in the country at large, that the Archbishop of Canterbury had initially proposed burial in Westminster Abbey. A less daring suggestion was the royal mausoleum at Frogmore, where Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were interred. Neither venue appealed to George V, who expressed a preference for St George’s Chapel at Windsor. There, his father would be laid to rest among his Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart and Hanoverian forebears.

The unexpectedness of the King’s death had meant there had been insufficient time to prepare a co-ordinated scheme of mourning for the streets and public buildings. The Graphic saw it as a missed opportunity. ‘The lack of a master-hand was painfully conspicuous,’ it lamented. ‘The mourning decoration of London as a whole was unworthy of the greatness of the occasion.’7 In the West End, banks, hotels, department stores and clubs had draped their portals and balconies in black and purple cloth, and even the smallest shops displayed portraits of Edward in their windows. For the rest, the only consistent decorative motifs were the tall masts hung with white and purple banners and topped with gilded crowns that lined the processional route at intervals. These turned out to be convenient repositories for the mourning wreaths of laurel and evergreen that had been sent to the capital from organisations and private individuals across Britain. Combined, the result was, as even the Graphic conceded, ‘surprisingly effective’.

From Whitehall, the cortège crossed Horse Guards until it reached The Mall. There, it passed Marlborough House, Edward’s home of forty years, before cutting through to St James’s Street, where the crowds were estimated to be twenty deep. At Piccadilly, it headed west, entering Hyde Park by Apsley Gate, then proceeded northward along the Drive. As many as three hundred thousand mourners were gathered there alone. Barbed wire had been wound around the trunks of the trees to prevent climbing but, far from acting as a deterrent, it had facilitated the ascent of scores of young men who claimed points of vantage high up in the branches. Their antics had been watched with interest by those on the ground, some of whom had shouted advice and encouragement.

If the procession as a whole was defined by its dignity and sombre magnificence, individual elements within it were unable to suppress their private grievances. Amid the cavalcade of emperors, kings, princes and grand dukes, only two republics were represented. Edward’s affinity with France was so well-known, and his role in the brokering of the Entente Cordiale so legendary, that the French Foreign Minister, Stephen Pichon, had been deputised to represent President Fallières. It was an honour that he rode in the procession at all. Almost all of the other non-royal envoys had proceeded straight to Paddington.

was assigned to the eighth carriage, which he shared with the representative of the United States. Former President Theodore Roosevelt had never met Edward in person, but the pair had conducted a mutually appreciative correspondence over several years.

To Pichon, it was an outrage that France and the United States were placed so far back. Even before they set out, he complained to Roosevelt that they were stuck behind ‘ces Chinois’, who were of far less consequence globally. The American attempted to laugh him out of his pique by pointing out that the Chinese, in their richly embroidered robes, were so gorgeously attired they deserved to take precedence. The Foreign Minister was not mollified. When he discovered that the third occupant of their carriage was to be the representative of Persia – in Roosevelt’s estimation, ‘a deprecatory, inoffensive-looking Levantine of Parisian education’ – Pichon’s indignation boiled over. Jumping into the forward-facing seat on the left, he blocked the adjacent seat with his arm so that Roosevelt could claim it first. Torn between amusement and disgust at this flagrant display of bad manners, the former president took his place, to be followed by the discomfited Persian, who looked ‘about as unaggressive as a rabbit in a cage with two boa constrictors’.

Along the way, Pichon moaned without cessation about the fact that they were compelled to trail behind ‘toutes ces petites royautés’. Finally, Roosevelt’s patience snapped. Nobody could doubt the prestige of either France or America, he exclaimed, and it was terribly gauche to make such a fuss.

Begun in 1475 and completed by 1528, St George’s Chapel is, in effect, a miniature cathedral of golden stone nestled snugly within the Lower Ward of Windsor Castle. A fairy-tale edifice of pinnacles, buttresses and traceried windows, it looms large in the history of the monarchy. Edward IV is buried there, and so are Henry VIII and Charles I. In 1820, the remains of Edward’s great-grandfather, George III, were interred beside those of his wife, Queen Charlotte, who had died two years earlier. In due course, they were joined by their sons, George IV and William IV. Elaborately carved wooden stalls line each side of the Quire, while hoisted high above are serried ranks of heraldic banners that ripple beneath the fan-vaulted roof. St George’s is the Chapel of the Order of the Garter, the most venerable order of chivalry in Great Britain, and each Garter Knight is entitled to display his crest and colours there during his lifetime. ‘None of our Kings, perhaps,’ The Times observed, ‘was more alive to the dignity and values, even under the changed conditions of modern life, of such associations and their external signs, than King Edward VII; and none set more store than he did by the grandeur and antiquity of this most august brotherhood.’18

Minutes later, its doleful sound was taken up by a second bell in the Round Tower. Removed from the Church of the Twelve Apostles at Sebastopol after the Crimean War, it was only ever rung upon the death of the sovereign. In the Great Park, guns thundered as the final spectators hurried into place along the Long Walk. Those who clustered around the base of the equestrian statue of George III were compelled to use binoculars if they wished to see anything at all.

As the representative of the ascendant superpower over the Atlantic, Theodore Roosevelt was button-holed by first one and then another of the kings and princes during his sojourn in London. A proud American who had little patience with questions of rank and protocol, he was underwhelmed by his exposure to the insular but backbiting royal fraternity.

In a way, although the comparison sounds odd, these sovereigns, in their relations among themselves and with others, reminded me of the officers and wives in one of our western army posts in the old days, when they were all shut up together and away from the rest of the world, were sundered by an impassable gulf from the enlisted men and the few scouts, hunters and settlers round about, and were knit together into one social whole, and nevertheless were riven asunder by bitter jealousies, rivalries and dislikes.25

In truth, even the most heedless sybarites were struggling to adapt to the changed conditions of the new reign. The ‘curious electric element’ that had made the Edwardian Court the most dazzling in Europe had been supplanted by an atmosphere Esher described as ‘very charming and wholesome and sweet’.2 Gruff and undemonstrative, George V nevertheless derived comfort from the proximity of his immediate family. Devoted to his wife, he couldn’t bear to spend time away from her.

The late-night bridge parties enlivened by the bright chatter of Mrs Arthur James were clearly a thing of the past. So were the days of ‘unknown Americans, of the nouveaux riches, and of the Hebrew persuasion’, observed the Tatler, snobbishly.3 Under the open-minded Edward, the perimeters of Society had been rolled back to accommodate his insatiable appetite for amusement.

From hence, preference was to be given to representatives of the ‘old families’ of the British aristocracy, who prized lineage, dignity and discretion over wealth, wit and glamour. The shift was not lost on Max Beerbohm, who drew a group of Jewish financiers – among them Alfred and Leopold de Rothschild, Arthur Sassoon and Sir Ernest Cassel – creeping nervously along a corridor at Buckingham Palace. The caption read, ‘Are we as welcome as ever?’ Unwritten but tacitly acknowledged, the answer was ‘No’.

From the outset, the connection between Ascot and the Crown was symbiotic. The inaugural meeting had taken place in 1711, when it was attended by Queen Anne and a party of courtiers from nearby Windsor Castle. After a slow start, the fortunes of the new course improved in the second half of the eighteenth century as English racing entered a golden age. Revived between 1750 and 1753, the Jockey Club gradually developed into the sport’s presiding authority. Racing calendars were published, racing colours were introduced, and the Derby was first run in 1780. By the Regency, Ascot had assumed the character of a country holiday for the urban elite at the height of the summer Season.

First as Prince of Wales, and then as King, Edward was the most celebrated royal race-goer of all. Making his first appearance at Ascot in 1863, his patronage boosted its fortunes to unprecedented heights. Indeed, his much-vaunted love of racing was to be an important factor in the phenomenal popularity he would eventually enjoy.

The crucial proviso pertained to the dress code. After Edward’s death, two separate but overlapping periods of mourning had been decreed. The first, to be observed for a calendar year, was Court mourning, which applied to the Royal Family and those in attendance upon it. The second, lasting for eight weeks, was general mourning, which was due to expire on 30 June. At Court, full mourning of unrelieved black would abate to half mourning on 7 November, after which white, grey and various shades of purple would be acceptable. Those frequenting the Royal Enclosure were bound by the dictates of general mourning, with a similar transition occurring on Friday, 17 June. It would therefore be a ‘Black Ascot’.

Yet Churchill was no dolt. Unlike many of his peers, he had an impressive head for business, serving as Chairman of the Great Western Railway, President of the Overseas Bank and a director of the Peninsular & Orient steamship company. Outwardly self-assured, he ruthlessly divested himself of his ancestral estates, ‘breaking away from Victorian stuffiness to lead an up-to-date fox-hunting life in Leicestershire with plenty of loose cash available’.15 Forty-five years old, he was the product, his son believed, of an era in which ‘the Englishman’s tweeds had become a sort of contemporary version of the toga of ancient Rome, and a five-pound note was the best passport in any country’.16

Churchill prided himself on his ability to know the name and face of every man and woman in the Enclosure, and he would demand proof of identity from anybody he failed to recognise. The rigour he brought to the vetting process meant there was little danger of embarrassing encounters. Titled, landed and influential, the aristocracy was out in force.

Inevitably, the shadow of the conflict between the Houses hung heavy over an event where so many members of the ruling class were gathered. Those on opposing sides who wished to remain civil avoided the subject, concentrating instead on their immediate surroundings.

On Monday, 13 June, Lord Churchill had issued a stern reminder that clothing of unrelieved black would be mandatory in the Royal Enclosure. For men, that entailed only minor modifications. During the nineteenth century, colour had drained away from the male wardrobe. Quality of materials and perfection of cut, the latter ensured by the expertise of the world-renowned tailors of Savile Row, conspired to create an appearance of immaculate but unobtrusive sobriety. In spite of his best efforts, Edward had been unable to arrest the decline of the traditional frock coat.

If gentlemen aspired to tasteful uniformity, ladies were encouraged, and indeed required, to display elegant individuality. At Ascot, Lady Duff Gordon explained, ‘The most perfect types of the modes are worn, and here fashions are made positive instead of merely tentative; they are set, as it were, and of course it is a momentous time for fashionable women.’21

Edward’s death having temporarily effaced every trace of colour, modistes had to resort to other means to introduce variety into their creations. With a branch of Lucile Ltd newly established in New York, Lady Duff Gordon had been promoting Ascot gowns made of textiles woven in American mills to the readers of the papers to which she contributed columns. It had been her intention that her designs should be executed in a floral palette of pinks, blues and mauves. Now that that was out of the question, she reassured clients that ‘the present styles lend themselves most gracefully to mourning costumes’ owing to the pliancy of their fabrics.23 The supple laces and chiffons she advocated imbued countless ensembles with what was approvingly described as ‘a lightness and indescribably cool finish’.24 Considerable mileage was derived from filmy silk voile, but there was an abundance of ninon de soie, mousseline de soie, charmeuse and foulard too.

For both sexes, gloves were essential.

No such regret accompanied the pretext afforded by Ascot for the wearing of an astounding quantity of jewels. Wealthy Edwardians were passionate about pearls, which, as luck would have it, were considered appropriate ornaments for periods of bereavement.

More than anything, it was the display of spectacular headgear that fascinated observers. No garment signified status more thoroughly than the top hat. To H. G. Wells, the acquisition of his first topper had signalled a definite step on his upward climb through the ranks of society. It was, he believed, ‘the symbol of complete practical submission to a whole world of social conventions’.27 At Ascot, a burnished black silk hat with a mourning band was an indispensable attribute of every gentleman in the Royal Enclosure, setting him apart from the straw-boatered hoi polloi beyond.

Before 1910, black had rarely been associated with high style. Thanks to that year’s Ascot, its potential began to be realised. Far from submerging its wearers in a faceless mass, the obligatory black – chic, svelte, dramatic – had, paradoxically, a liberating effect. The correspondent of the Bystander was ecstatic. Black Ascot was, he believed, ‘the Englishwoman’s charter of emancipation from the belief that her beauty owes aught to clothes. The eye, having little sartorial to occupy it, fell upon faces, to discover, to its delighted astonishment, that we can put together decidedly more pretty women to one rood than most other countries can to a square mile.’32 The patriotic note was sounded by many onlookers. National mourning had kept away foreign visitors and the members of the diplomatic corps. Black Ascot was therefore a peculiarly British affair.

was not a world King George and Queen Mary had time to contemplate as they grappled with the difficulties incumbent upon their new positions. Eclipsed for most of his adult life by his venerable grandmother and gregarious father, George was, to most of his subjects, an unknown quantity. What was known – or rather supposed – was as embarrassing as it was untrue.

The King’s determination to contribute to the smooth running of his father’s lying-in-state and funeral was typical of his conscientious approach. That summer, he articulated his long-term objective. ‘He means to do for the Empire what King Edward did for the peace of Europe,’ Lord Esher noted, after a conversation at Balmoral in August. ‘He proposes to attend himself the Indian Durbar in January 1911 and crown himself at Delhi. He means to visit every Dominion. These are bold projects.’27 From the outset, George staked a claim to a sphere of influence quite distinct from that of his predecessor. ‘In his political calculations,’ wrote Ella Hepworth Dixon, ‘King Edward was essentially a European; in his tastes, he was almost a Parisian.’28 In spite of his mingled German and Danish blood, nobody could make a similar claim of his son. Unsophisticated, well-meaning and resolutely British, George was resolved to look far beyond the Continental courts in which his father had been so revered.*

Consensus was certainly in short supply during the weeks that marked the run of an art exhibition that opened at the Grafton Galleries in Mayfair the day after the Court transitioned to half-mourning on 7 November. It was the realisation of Roger Fry’s scheme to display works by ‘the newest French painters’ he had mooted to Clive and Vanessa Bell in January. Throughout the summer and autumn, he had been braced for an outcry. He can’t have anticipated the seismic shock of what was to prove one of the most seminal shows in the history of modern art in Britain.

Not all the painters they had in their sights were French. Some weren’t even particularly new. Henri Matisse, André Derain and the Spaniard Pablo Picasso were very much alive, but Paul Cézanne had been dead since 1906, and Paul Gauguin since 1903. The Dutchman Vincent van Gogh had committed suicide in 1890. In addition to works by artists who have since become legends, there were scores of others by the likes of Rouault, Vallotton and Vlaminck. Édouard Manet was represented by eight paintings, chief among them A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, which he had completed the year before his death in 1883. He was the only Impressionist in the exhibition, but it was his name that featured in its official title, ‘Manet and the Post-Impressionists’, which was hastily decided upon by Fry as a logical catch-all.

For its members, it entailed no responsibility, or even the obligation to endorse the works. Their sole purpose was to supply gravitas to a ground-breaking venture nobody was certain would succeed.