Darling Georgie (18 page)

Years later in
A King’s Story,
the memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor, David recalls his earliest memories of life at Sandringham. ‘My parents first materialise on the threshold of memory as Olympian figures who would enter the nursery briefly to note, with gravely hopeful interest, the progress of their first born. For better or for worse, Royalty is excluded from the more settled forms of domesticity.’ The Prince goes on to reassure his readers (or more probably himself) that ‘affection was not lacking in my upbringing’ and excuses his parents for their detached behaviour by adding: ‘the mere circumstances of my father’s position interposed an impalpable barrier that inhibited the closer continuing intimacy of conventional family life’. It was probably less the circumstances of ‘my father’s position’ that had interposed that impalpable barrier than the belated realization by his parents that it had perhaps not been children they wanted but each other. Affection, of a sort, was certainly not lacking in the Duke of Windsor’s childhood. He had been loved by a nanny and as an adult he was to find that love again with Mrs Wallis Simpson. His need for this love was so compulsive that he found it easier to give up his throne rather than his ‘nanny’.

Prince George and Princess May were barely beginning to know one another again when, in November 1894, the Prince was summoned to the funeral of his uncle, Tsar Alexander III, in St Petersburg. The sad and early death at the age of forty-nine of Princess Alexandra’s brother-in-law shocked the royals of Europe, sixty-one of whom travelled to Russia for the funeral. The Tsar’s body lay in state for seventeen days in the spectacular red-and-white fortress church of St Peter and St Paul on the banks of the Neva. On 19 November 1894 Prince George was one of the pallbearers as the coffin was lowered into the Romanov vault. The marriage of the Tsar’s son Nicholas to Prince George’s cousin Princess Alix had been planned to take place one week later in St Petersburg. It was decided that, despite the death of the Tsar, the wedding should not be postponed. Once again it was Prince George’s duty to be present. When the Russian Provisional Government asked King George to grant the Imperial Family political asylum in Britain in 1917 he again saw it as his duty to agree immediately to do so. But under pressure from the British public, whose anti-German feelings extended to Tsar Nicholas’s wife, the German Princess Alix of Hesse, he withdrew the invitation. When it became known that his entire Russian family had been murdered by the Bolsheviks, on the night of 16–17 July 1918, the King never forgave himself.

While St Moritz, after the birth of David, was Prince George’s and Princess May’s first separation, the Tsar’s funeral in St Petersburg was their second. Both of them found parting increasingly difficult. The Princess wrote to Prince George from Sandringham and told him ‘what agony it was to take leave [from him]’ and Prince George wrote from St Petersburg and told her that ‘I should get ill if I had to be away from you for a long time’. It was clear that they had eyes only for each other and apparently for no one else, including their new baby.

It was another three years before it was discovered that Mary Peters – the nanny who had been so highly regarded by her previous employer – had been physically abusing David. Peters, an unmarried and obsessional woman with a cruel streak, had become so possessive of her charge that
she resented sharing him with his mother. Princess May expected her son to be brought down from the nursery every day at teatime so that she might play with him for a few minutes. These few minutes were too long for Mary Peters. As she handed David over to his mother she would twist or pinch his arm so that he would cry and be handed straight back to her. The bruising on his arm was only discovered when a new under-nanny, Charlotte (Lala) Bill, was taken on to help Mary Peters in preparation for the birth of Princess May’s third child. Lala Bill was horrified at the damage done to David’s arm and, plucking up her courage, reported it to Lady Dugdale. The nursery staff were terrified of Mary Peters whose behaviour was always unpredictable and frequently violent. They had all kept quiet for fear of reprisals against the baby or themselves. Throughout this time neither Princess May nor Prince George had noticed there was anything wrong. While the abuse was going on Princess May had given birth to a second boy, Albert Frederick Arthur George (known as Bertie), later to become King George VI, and she was now pregnant for the third time. Apart from the constant bruising of Prince Edward’s (David’s) arm, Mary Peters had also resented the arrival of Bertie, whose needs separated her from David. In retaliation she often neglected to feed him. Neither Princess May nor Prince George showed any interest in their babies until they were old enough to understand their parents’ instructions. By the time, belatedly, they did take notice of them, permanent psychological damage had been done.

Princess May’s third child was a girl and once again Queen Victoria was influential in the choice of name. The baby was christened Victoria followed by Alexandra Alice Mary. Princess Mary, as she was known, was born on 26 April 1897, two months before Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. She grew up, shy and timid, to become the Countess of Harewood and the Princess Royal. Prince George and Princess May now had three children under the age of three. Mary Peters had been dismissed, although not without some difficulty as she had to be forcibly removed, and spent the remainder of her days suffering from ‘a nervous breakdown’. Subsequently this was attributed to the fact that while she had been in the
royal employ she had not had a holiday for three years. After her departure the full extent of her abusive behaviour was revealed. Both David and Bertie had been abused in one way or another by a so-called care-giver and both grew up to be terrified of everything.

Having become accustomed to the abusive vehicle in which ‘love’ was delivered to them, they suffered from the sudden loss of their nanny. It was a loss that neither of them ever got over. As an adult David was not only prone to bouts of depression but required repeated assurances from women that he was lovable. Since his many affairs were reported only in the American press, the people of Britain knew little or nothing about them. It seemed that David was doing his best to get even with a monarchical system that had not only deprived him of his first nanny but, years later, when he was prevented from making Wallis Simpson his Queen, his second one. Affected by the cruelty of Mary Peters and the bigotry of his father and overwhelmed by the oppressive regime which had dominated his early years, as an adult, David was mentally to join forces with yet another repressive regime. The autocracy of his royal childhood easily became replaced in his mind with the autocracy of Nazi Germany, a political system with which he found he had considerable empathy. His family, all of whom were either directly or indirectly to blame for his future behaviour, closed ranks and were to use the excuse of his relationship with Mrs Simpson to rid themselves of him. The final blow came when his brother Bertie refused David’s request that his new wife (now the Duchess of Windsor) be referred to as Her Royal Highness, and only Adolf Hitler was to promise David that, in the course of time, he would be restored to the British throne. David’s brother Bertie fared rather better as an adult. Although he had not aspired to the throne he accepted his new role with dignity. Mary Peters’s cruelty, however, and his parents’ neglect when he was a baby may have contributed to his persistent digestive problems, his tendency to outbursts of uncontrollable rage and his stammer.

Neither Prince George nor Princess May seemed to have considered that it was their indifference to the welfare of their two older children that was responsible for abuse which would today have attracted the attention
of the social services. In the event little changed, and as York Cottage became steadily more cramped Prince George was often heard shouting to Lala Bill: ‘Can’t you stop that child from crying?’ Far from uniting them, Prince George’s and Princess May’s children irritated both their parents.

Like other royals, Prince George and Princess May produced their offspring not so much for one another but for England and the Crown. If they thought about it at all, they believed that they were fulfilling their obligations simply by giving birth to them. While pregnancy for Princess May was a disagreeable duty which could not be delegated, servants were hired to do the rest. It would not have occurred to either Prince George or Princess May, nor indeed to any other upper-class parents whose means allowed them to employ nannies, that there were further responsibilities. They thought they knew their duties as parents, but these duties definitely did not include hands-on involvement with their children. Providing the ‘best’ carers ensured that the physical welfare of the babies was taken care of in the nursery, and thus any future monarch would have a good start. Once the nursery was left behind, the children would be trained in social behaviour appropriate to their status by yet another team of carers, and by the age of six their formal education would be taken over by tutors.

Prince George and Princess May passed the time as well as they could. Prince George found his life somewhat boring. He was aware that it might be some time before he would accede to the throne and would have liked to have been more involved in political issues, but, in much the same way that Queen Victoria had failed to prepare Prince Edward for the throne, his father had given him little or no preparation for that office. He spent his time like any other country gentleman. At Sandringham he would either shoot, visit the farms on the estate or attend to his stamps. When in London the Prince and Princess gave occasional dinner parties to which family members would be invited. Both Prince George and Princess May felt themselves to be in a backwater. From time to time, as the children became older, they played cricket with them in the garden and, amusing themselves with their own interests, waited for the days to pass.

On 17 August 1897 life suddenly changed. To mark the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee they travelled to Ireland as representatives of Queen Victoria and Prince Edward. Despite the misgivings of some members of the Royal Family – notably Princess Mary Adelaide – the visit, as reported by Prince George, went off well. The Irish question, then as now, was an important political issue. With a touching
naïveté
that endeared him to those who knew him, Prince George hoped that his visit might remind the people of Ireland (whom he loved dearly) of their good fortune in being part of the British Isles. Others had different ideas. In 1859, almost forty years earlier and only thirteen years after the great famine of 1846, an anti-English society, the Fenians, had been created with the sole purpose of working towards the establishment of an independent Irish republic. Religious differences and jealousies had come to a head in 1869 when Gladstone passed an Act for the Disestablishment of the Irish Protestant Church to accord with the largely Roman Catholic population of Ireland. Resentment had been caused when it was realized that the Protestant Church would still keep the greater part of state endowments, secular as well as religious. Prince George intended to demonstrate his religious tolerance – and presumably hoped others would follow his example – by planning a visit both to the Catholic Cathedral in Londonderry and the Presbyterian Church on the same day.

It was against this political division that the royal visit took place. From the moment the Prince and Princess left Euston for Holyhead the tour was a social success. For the journey Princess May wore a gown of blue Irish poplin and an Empress bonnet in which a sprig of green foliage had been placed. On their arrival at Kingstown Harbour they were welcomed by cheering crowds which lined the road to the Viceregal Lodge. The highlight of the tour was the Prince’s investiture, at the request of Queen Victoria, with the order of St Patrick, at St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin. A local newspaper report said it was ‘like an historic picture in a gorgeous frame, so much did the mere onlookers seem to be entirely separate from the figures within the enclosure, moving in a world of their own and speaking a language of their own; clad in the garb of chivalry with mantles, stars,
collars, maces, batons, and tabards; reading strange formulae from rolls of parchment’.

The Prince was so impressed, both with the welcome that the royal party received throughout the country and the ceremonial that accompanied the visit, that on his return to England he asked Queen Victoria to establish a royal residence near Dublin. Lord Cadogan, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Lord Salisbury’s Cabinet approved his request but the Queen – possibly with more foresight than her government – refused it.

The Prince and Princess had both been brought up to value appearances. The Prince’s naval training insisted on the importance not only of performing every duty thoroughly but of being seen to do so. The ships on which he had served were built to fight wars both aggressive and defensive, and their armaments and their structure were of magnificent design. In the absence of war, the only indications of a battleship’s intended purpose were ceremonial and flags, uniforms and decorations. A Royal Prince’s peacetime ‘invasion’ of Ireland, dressed in the uniform of a British naval captain, and his ‘triumphal’ progress through the country satisfied a young man’s dream of power and glory. The tour successfully over, the Prince and Princess returned to England to great acclaim. The unusually prescient press, however, insisted that ‘this unanimity, this superabundant hospitality, [must be] attributed to the removal from the popular mind of any suspicion that the visit of Queen Victoria’s grandson was to be regarded in any other than its personal aspect’. The three royal children, who had not seen their parents for four weeks, also welcomed their return.

A
PART FROM HIS
marriage to Princess May in 1893, the Irish tour was so far the high spot of Prince George’s adult life. He had naïvely hoped that showing the Union flag would be sufficient to compensate the Irish people for what they perceived as the mother country’s neglect. This endeared the Prince momentarily if not to politicians, who suspected that the Irish problem was not so easily resolved, then to the man in the street whose life was touched, if only superficially, by the pomp and pageantry of the royal visit. On 9 September 1897, the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury wrote to Prince George congratulating him on the ‘remarkable success’ of his visit, but he went on to strike a more realistic note. ‘The devotion to your person you have inspired is not only a result gratifying to yourself … but it will have a most valuable effect upon public feeling in Ireland, and may do much to restore the loyalty which during the last half century has been so much shaken in many districts.’