The King is Dead, Long Live the King! Quotes

“Dressed in deepest mourning to honour the memory of a departed king, the race-goers of 1910 would likely be astonished that their sombre apparel has made such an enduring contribution to the notion of Edwardian England as an almost mythically elegant place. Black Ascot certainly was elegant, but it was enacted in a climate of unprecedented political, social and cultural ferment. With the benefit of hindsight, the obsequies that accompanied the passing of Edward VII can be viewed as an elegy for an entire way of life.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“With the death of Edward VII, Beaton, who was six at the time, felt that the cover of ‘the book of opulence’ had been closed. It was the ‘first suggestion of the profound organic break-up which many of the component parts of Western European society and culture were to undergo in the next three or four decades’. He homed in on Black Ascot as a sad but ineffably chic manifestation of the national mourning ‘for a glory that was gone forever’. His accompanying illustrations, of female race-goers ‘like strange giant crows or morbid birds of paradise strutting at some Gothic entertainment’, were derived from the photographs that abounded in the press during the summer of 1910.8”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Upon the passing of Queen Alexandra, her remains, and those of Edward, were interred beside each other in the tomb, which was finally revealed in a low-key ceremony in the autumn of 1927. Of white Carrara marble, the recumbent figures of the King and Queen appear timeless in their inscrutable dignity. Alexandra wears a diadem, while Edward nurses his sceptre. Both are clad in flowing robes. Only upon closer inspection does a personal touch reveal itself. Nestled at Edward’s feet is a representation of his terrier, Caesar, who had moved the nation to tears during the funeral procession through the streets of London in May 1910. Inseparable from his master in life, he is now bonded to him in death: forlorn but tranquil, and faithful to the end.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“When George died in January 1936, grief was widespread and sincere, but there was no repetition of the mass mourning of 1910. Court mourning was reduced to nine months, and general mourning was laid aside immediately after the funeral. When George VI died in February 1952, Court mourning was further reduced to ten weeks, and there was no general mourning at all.31 By that stage, Queen Mary had lived to witness the passing of four successive monarchs. At her son’s lying-in-state in Westminster Hall, she was photographed in all the trappings of Edwardian bereavement: black cap, black veil, black gloves and a floor-length black dress. To her left was her daughter-in-law, the widowed Queen Elizabeth. To her right, sorrow etched clearly on her face, was Queen Elizabeth II.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Against a backdrop of wars and revolutions, jazz and talking pictures, the General Strike and the rise of Hitler, George V and Queen Mary reigned for a quarter of a century. In 1913, Buckingham Palace was at last remodelled using funds left over from the Victoria Memorial. The new façade – architecturally uninspired but dignified – was a symbol of a particular vision of the monarchy. Mary, for whom the word ‘majestic’ might have been coined, wore a barely modified version of Edwardian dress well into the 1940s. Even when there were no guests, she invariably donned a tiara for dinner. The King wore his orders and decorations.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Old age, which Alexandra had defied for so long, caught up with her at last. Her deafness became almost total. Unable to reconcile herself to the loss of her fabled good looks, she secluded herself at Sandringham, where she repined her own decrepitude. ‘Ugly old woman,’ she said. ‘Nobody likes me any more.’26 King George and Queen Mary were unfailingly kind and attentive, but they were greatly saddened by her deterioration. ‘It is so hard to see that beautiful woman come to this,’ Mary said.27 On 19 November 1925, Alexandra had a heart attack. Her son and daughter-in-law were with her when she died the following day.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“The Bloomsbury Group continued to weave its complicated web of literary, artistic and sexual relations. In 1911, Roger Fry began an affair with Vanessa Bell. Vanessa eventually transferred her affections to one of the Dreadnought hoaxers, Duncan Grant, who was predominantly gay, but who fathered a daughter by her in 1918. The child, Angelica, was raised by Vanessa’s husband, Clive, as his own. In 1916, Vanessa and Grant acquired a Sussex farmhouse, Charleston, which they shared with Grant’s lover, David Garnett, whom Angelica married in 1942. By then, Vanessa’s younger sister, Virginia, was dead. Plagued with bouts of mental illness throughout her life – 1910 was a particularly bad year – she had drowned herself in the River Ouse in 1941.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“In 1920, Mrs Keppel’s younger daughter, Sonia, made a suitable marriage to Lord Ashcombe’s son, the Honourable Roland Cubitt. In 1947, Sonia’s granddaughter, Camilla Shand, was born two months before Alice’s death. Married to Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973, Camilla was divorced in 1995. Today, she is Queen Consort to Edward’s great-great-grandson, King Charles III.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Alice Keppel’s withdrawal in the wake of the King’s death was a smart move. When at last she reappeared, Society welcomed her with open arms. Establishing herself in a new house on Grosvenor Street, where she could indulge what Osbert Sitwell described as her ‘instinct for splendour’,21 the former favourite was admired and respected by almost all. She never forsook her policy of discretion and, unlike many of her contemporaries, she never published her memoirs. Her view of the Abdication Crisis, when Edward’s grandson Edward VIII gave up his throne for the love of Wallis Simpson, was revealing. ‘Things were done much better in my day,’ she sighed.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“In spite of the reduction in her circumstances, Lady Duff Gordon continued to create almost until her death in 1935. For a time, her legacy was overshadowed by those of her French competitors. She is now acknowledged to have been one of the most innovative and influential couturières of her era.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“In the event, it was the contribution women made to the war effort that saw the franchise awarded to female property owners over the age of thirty in 1918. Another ten years were to elapse before women would enjoy electoral equality with men. In 1930, a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst was unveiled in Westminster, not far from the spot where, two decades earlier, she and Edith had watched the violent assault of the delegations from Caxton Hall.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Before she foundered, the Titanic was able to summon help by wireless. Among the pitifully few survivors rescued by the Carpathia were Edith Chibnall and Elsie Bowerman, who had been on their way to visit suffragette sympathisers in the Midwest. Remarkably unperturbed by their ordeal, they saw no reason to change their plans. Landing in America, they proceeded to Indianapolis, Chicago and Niagara. Heading northward into Canada, they were persuaded by some cousins to embark on a cruise to Alaska. Even the doughty Elsie confessed that that late addition to their schedule was, hard on the heels of the Titanic, ‘somewhat nerve-wracking’.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Swept from his throne just before the Armistice in November 1918, the Kaiser was fortunate to escape with his life. He passed the remainder of his days in comfortable but ignominious exile in the Netherlands, never ceasing to rage against the legacy of his hated uncle, whose machinations had, he insisted, contributed to his downfall. ‘It is he who is the corpse and I who live on, but it is he who is the victor,’ Wilhelm snarled shortly before his death in 1941.14”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Hailed in his lifetime as ‘the Peacemaker’, Edward VII was spared the destruction of the European order of courts and crowned cousins in which he had been the dominant figure. Both of his imperial nephews, Tsar Nicholas of Russia and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany, were brought low. Along with his wife and all of their children, Nicholas was butchered by the Bolsheviks in the summer of 1918. The year before, George V, worried about his own position, had resisted the suggestion that they should be given refuge in Britain. Once the news of their murders had been confirmed, he despatched a battleship to the Crimea to rescue his aunt, the Dowager Empress Marie, as well as a large party of her relations and retainers. Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, who had represented Nicholas at Edward’s funeral, was not among them. The first of the Romanovs to die, he had been taken into a forest in the Urals and shot a month before his elder brother. In the chaos that enveloped Russia during that terrible period, another, more improbable, victim met his end. Minoru, the royal racehorse which had swept to victory in the Epsom Derby of 1909, had subsequently been sold to a stud near Kharkiv for £20,000. He was last seen struggling to draw a cart on the 900-mile evacuation from Moscow to the Black Sea.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“In an essay on literature published in 1924, Virginia Stephen – since her marriage in 1912, Virginia Woolf – looked back over the preceding quarter-century to pinpoint December 1910 as its point of departure. It was then, she maintained, that ‘human character’ had changed, and with it very much else.13”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“By then, the suffragettes’ militant campaign was at fever-pitch. The previous year, Emily Davison had been fatally injured at the Epsom Derby when she threw herself beneath the hoofs of the King’s horse in full view of thousands of stunned spectators. Now, the police took no chances. Even in the Royal Enclosure, female race-goers were subjected to body-searches, lest their swirling capes should conceal hammers or bombs. It was a far cry from the subdued decorum of Black Ascot. Edward VII would have wondered what the world was coming to.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“If Black Ascot – dignified, decorous, well-ordered – had been the elegant epilogue to an era that had drawn to its close with the death of Edward VII, Black Friday presaged the discord and division of the one that was opening. The values, assumptions and hierarchies of the Edwardian age would not vanish overnight, but they found themselves increasingly at odds with the forces that were to define the century now hitting its stride. When, on 25 November, Christabel Pankhurst announced in Votes for Women that ‘Negotiations are over. War is declared’, she was more prescient than she knew.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Mrs Pankhurst led a delegation to Downing Street, where they attempted to storm Number 10. Although they were not able to gain access to the residence, they did manage to subject Asquith, who arrived unannounced, to some rough handling of their own. Bundled into a taxi, he was whisked away, but not before the cab window was smashed. Edith, who had so far evaded injury, was on that occasion left badly shaken and took to her bed for a period of recuperation. Glass was shattered at the homes of Churchill and Sir Edward Grey, as well as that of ‘Loulou’ Harcourt, who had recently left the Office of Works to become Secretary of State for the Colonies. The militant campaign was once again in full swing.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“The young, in particular, were transfixed. Vanessa Bell found it difficult to overstate the impact of the show on her peers. ‘It is impossible, I think, that any other single exhibition can ever have had so much effect as did that on the rising generation,’ she recalled. Post-Impressionism may have been ‘primitive’ but it was also profoundly liberating, releasing British artists from the straitjacket of stale convention. Taking a sledgehammer to the shibboleths of the academies, it opened up a world of possibility for self-expression. ‘Freedom was given to be oneself,’ she said. The encouragement to see and feel without inhibition was ‘absolutely overwhelming’.18”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“That same day, Howards End was published by the firm of Edward Arnold. Its critical and popular success elevated E. M. Forster to the uppermost literary circles. Hailed by R. A. Scott-James of the Daily News as the finest novel of the year, it was set in a thoroughly up-to-date London of motor-cars, discussion groups and class distinctions. The eponymous house was, Scott-James felt, ‘a sort of symbol of everything in England, old and new, changeless, yet amid flux’.5 Forster’s epigraph, ‘Only Connect’, was a plea to readers who found themselves entangled in the conflicts – between men and women, rich and poor, conservative and progressive – that had defined Edward’s reign, and escalated dramatically in the wake of his death.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“The sentimental public interpreted Caesar’s behaviour in a different light. His starring role in the funeral procession had transformed him into the most famous dog in the world. All that summer, and well into the autumn, he was big business. The Illustrated London News commissioned the artist Maud Earl to paint Caesar with his head resting forlornly upon Edward’s empty armchair. Entitled Silent Sorrow, copies were advertised for sale: five shillings for a photogravure plate, or ten shillings and sixpence for a limited-edition India proof. Itself a relatively recent addition to the Edwardian nursery, the teddy-bear temporarily took a back seat to the toy Caesars manufactured by the German firm of Steiff. Fashioned out of shaggy mohair with glass eyes, jointed legs and leather collars replete with embossed brass tags, the endearing animals were soon flying off the shelves. Most popular of all was the anonymously authored Where’s Master?, which narrated the events surrounding Edward’s death from Caesar’s perspective. Dedicated to Alexandra (who was called ‘She’ throughout) and published by Hodder & Stoughton, it was guaranteed to raise a lump in the most stoic throat: She says I can go if I am very good and follow close behind Master, and walk very slowly, and never move from the middle of the road. Oh, how glad and thankful I am. I wonder if Master knows, and is pleased that, after all, his little dog is going with him on his last journey.35”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“The passing of time made no difference to Edward’s fox terrier, Caesar. Wandering restlessly from room to room at Buckingham Palace, he slept each night on the late King’s bed.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“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.*”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“The Actresses’ Franchise League wore pink, white and green, and university graduates sported their academic robes and hoods of every hue. Almost everybody else was dressed in white trimmed with flowers, ribbons and rosettes of purple and green. When Mrs Pankhurst cried, ‘Victory!’ in the Royal Albert Hall, she was greeted with thunderous applause. The word was still ringing in the ears of Henry W. Nevinson when he filed a report for Votes on 24 June. ‘From end to end of that glorious scene,’ he wrote, ‘we were conscious of Victory’s presence. To imitate the famous phrase, we seemed to hear the fluttering of her wings.’ Lest his readers be in any doubt of the stakes, he concluded on a warning note. ‘If the Government should thwart or postpone that victory now, God help them in the times that are coming!”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“Less than a month earlier, Edward’s coffin, followed by monarchs and princes, and watched by innumerable spectators clad in deepest black, had passed through the streets of the hushed capital. Now those same streets were filled again, only this time with tens of thousands of women moving to the sound of rousing music as colourful banners fluttered overhead. Indeed, after so many weeks of unremitting mourning, it was to be the procession’s colours that produced the strongest impression. Snaking all the way from Kensington to St James’s Palace, it was a walking rainbow of teachers and secretaries, nurses and shop assistants, factory workers and civil servants. In the front ranks more than six hundred women carried silver wands, which symbolised the time they had spent in prison in the service of the cause. Behind them were the so-called ‘pioneers’: elderly campaigners – one riding in a wheelchair – who had been active in the movement from its earliest days. At the other end of the spectrum, Votes for Women observed a group of girls aged between thirteen and twenty who ‘typified the devotion and thanks of the younger generation’.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“In the meantime, the advantages of uniformity were sheepishly conceded. ‘I like black,’ one race-goer confessed, ‘because in it I can always say to anybody I don’t want to be bothered with, “I was looking for you everywhere, but, of course, it was quite impossible to find you.” ’34”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“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.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“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.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“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.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain

“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. ‘One realised how exceedingly pretty and tasteful black can be made to look if used properly, and not too, too conscientiously,’ marvelled the Bystander. ‘So long as the outer material is black, it matters not how gossamer-like its transparency – and that is the whole point about it.”
― Martin Williams, The King is Dead, Long Live the King!: Majesty, Mourning and Modernity in Edwardian Britain