The Heir Apparent (67 page)

By projecting monarchy as tradition, Bertie was, in fact, modernizing and reforming it. He considered Victoria’s withdrawal and retreat into invisibility to be almost a dereliction of duty. The sovereign, in his view, must not just do the work, but
be seen
to do it. Bertie embraced state ceremonial with the expertise of a man whose experience of foreign courts, especially those of Germany and Russia, was unequalled. Not for nothing had he whiled away so many evenings on theatergoing. Historians have looked at the revival and invention of tradition and the pomp of the Jubilees of 1887 and 1897 and linked them to the resurgence of popularity for the Victorian monarchy.
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The brief but significant reign of Edward VII, however, has been underestimated. It was he who made sure that ceremonial was intentionally shifted to the top of the Crown’s agenda.

Victoria had lived as a reclusive widow, retreating into the private, domestic sphere. As queen, she was both “powerful and powerless.”
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Her retirement from the public sphere dramatized her powerlessness, facilitating a transition to a monarchy with a merely symbolic role. Behind the scenes, however, the apparently powerless Victoria clung tenaciously to her political authority: She demanded to be kept informed, she debated policy, and she approved ministerial appointments. With regard to her private, family life, she pursued a policy of transparency. She issued
Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands,
she authorized revealing biographies of Albert and her daughter Alice, she published photographs, and she chronicled her daily routine in the Court and Social column of
The Times.
This created an illusion of intimacy that played into the narrative of the widow Queen.
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Bertie’s program with respect to the private sphere was the opposite of his mother’s. This most visible of monarchs was extraordinarily secretive about his private life. Less is known about his family than that of any other recent sovereign.
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Victoria and Albert’s invention of the “royal family” as being constantly on show—an idea that was revived later in the twentieth century—was quietly dropped.

The difference in style can be seen from the diaries kept by mother and son. Queen Victoria’s journal is among the great documents of the nineteenth century—confessional, self-examining, and often devastating in its candor, sweeping judgments, and violent emotions. Bertie’s diary, which he wrote each night before dinner, consists mainly of appointments and lists: names of guests and racehorses, times of trains, numbers of birds shot.
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Often he refers to himself formally in the third person, as The King. There are no feelings, no reflections, no opinions. It is dry, even repellent, to read, but the diary is a remarkable document of kingship, mapping a life spent largely in the public eye.

“Will he sell his horses and scatter his Jews or will Reuben Sassoon be enshrined among the crown jewels and other regalia? Will he become desperately serious?” Winston Churchill asked his mother, Jennie. “Will he continue to be friendly to you? Will the Keppel be appointed 1st Lady of the Bedchamber?”
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The new King made it plain from the start that he had no intention of dropping his lady friends. When Emma Bourke wrote a letter of condolence on the Queen’s death, Bertie cabled in reply: “Much touched by your kind and sympathetic letter; shall never forget any of my old friends.”
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He continued to shower Emma with notes, and still addressed her as
ma chère amie
or “My dearest little friend,” but “My Dear Mrs. Bourke” appears more often, and he signs himself ER instead of the old AE.

For the first year of the reign of Edward VII, mourning for Queen Victoria imposed a ban on society. “Racing has no interest for me this year,” Bertie told Emma Bourke, and his horses were leased to the Duke of Devonshire.
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But within two months of his mother’s death, he had resumed his habit of dining out in London. Dining out was something that Queen Victoria had never done; but the King “has been making a good many small ‘Mrs. George’ [Keppel] dinners lately,” wrote Carrington.
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Every effort was made to keep the King’s relationship with Mrs. Keppel out of the newspapers. In May, he was on board Sir Thomas Lipton’s yacht
Shamrock
with her when the masts snapped and all the canvas fell over the side. For a moment it looked as though no one would escape alive. The accident was reported in the press; but instead of Mrs. Keppel, the name of Lady Londonderry was printed, and she allowed it to stand uncontradicted.
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Not all of Prince Hal’s old companions were allowed to come to court, however. The person who played Falstaff to Bertie’s Henry V was Daisy Warwick.

Daisy’s relationship with Joe Laycock was spinning into melodrama.
When Laycock became involved with a younger woman, Kitty, the Marchioness of Downshire, Daisy lost all sense of proportion, stealing Kitty’s love letters to Joe and sending them to Kitty’s husband, Lord Downshire, who sued for divorce and was granted a decree nisi. Now that Kitty was free, Laycock felt that he was honor bound to marry her. Daisy, made frantic by the unintended consequences of her action, became pregnant once more. When Laycock responded with indifference, she had the pregnancy aborted. The operation was botched, and she nearly died of septicemia.
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Alix wrote Daisy a “very kind” letter asking her to avoid the King.
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There was a real risk that she would drag Bertie once again into the divorce courts. Daisy also received a visit from Lord Esher. “He told me, with charming courtesy and frankness, that he thought it would be well for all concerned if my close association with great affairs were to cease, as it was giving rise to hostile comment which distressed Queen Alexandra.”
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Daisy blamed her dismissal on her socialist ideas. In fact, she was dropped because her scandalous behavior had become a liability.

Alix flatly refused to be known as Queen Consort, and insisted on being styled Queen.
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Bertie demanded that she be treated with full dignity. Within a month of his accession, he made her a Lady of the Order of the Garter, and when the herald raised objections about placing her banner in St. George’s Chapel, alleging that women were not admitted to the order, the King curtly ordered him to do it.
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Though he was generous with honors and titles, it’s hard to escape the conclusion that Bertie marginalized Alix. She complained that he did not permit her to assume her position as Queen, as “he takes everything to himself, lets her do nothing in the way of carrying out her duties.”
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Even such things as giving Red Cross prizes, which Alix had done for years—the Red Cross was her particular charity—Bertie insisted on performing himself. He even took charge of the redecoration of the palaces.

It had been sixty-four years since England had had a king, and no
one could remember what the queen should do. “Aunt Alix,” wrote Princess Mary, “is quite ready to do what is right if only she is told, but just at present everyone is quite at sea.”
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The seventy-nine-year-old Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a granddaughter of George III who could recall the court of William IV and Queen Adelaide, was summoned from Germany to give advice. How “extraordinary” it was, she wrote, “that nobody knows anything more about the last Reign but one!”
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She observed that Bertie, who was every bit as jealous of his prerogatives as Victoria had been, blithely assumed court duties that belonged properly to the Queen. Alix had been told “to stand bye, mute & still, no presentations at the Drawing-room but to
him
; I told her Queen Adelaide had them presented all, she having to kiss Duchesses, Marchionesses (Countss [Countesses] I don’t know) with two kisses, then one kiss down to Earls daughters, after which giving her hand to be kissed, and the man kneeling on one knee.”
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When Bertie was informed that the Queen and not the King should kiss the young ladies, he objected strongly.
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Alix’s charitable duties were considerable. She concentrated on her own particular interest, nursing. Some found this irritating. “She is the stupidest woman in England,” said Lord Haldane, when the Queen was suggested for the Territorial Army nurses. “Can’t we do without a royal President?”

“He could not,” was the comment of one historian.
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Six nursing bodies carried her name, but, partly perhaps because she lacked advisers, Alix made no attempt to channel her charitable impulses into a larger role, in the way that Queen Mary was later to reach out to the poor.
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Nor (to her credit) did she attempt to interfere in domestic politics. What political views she did have were personal. She was still haunted by the nightmare of Germany, the “robbers’ den,” overrunning poor little Denmark, and her distrust of Kaiser William was as strong as her loyalty for her siblings in Russia and Greece was deep.

On the first anniversary of Queen Victoria’s death, a sparrow flew into the service in the mausoleum at Windsor. “Do you think that little bird could be Mama’s spirit?” asked one of the princesses. No, shot
back Alix, “or it would not have made a mess on Beatrice’s bonnet.”
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Lord Esher, who was one of her favorites, partly because he spoke in a way that she could hear, thought that “it is this mixture of ragging and real feeling which is so attractive about the Queen.” He perceived that “her cleverness has always been underestimated—partly because of her deafness. In point of fact, she says more original things, and has more unexpected ideas than any of the family.”
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Handicapped by tinnitus as well as deafness, Alix began to withdraw. There were complaints about her refusal to leave Sandringham; her daughter-in-law wrote that “it does not look well … for her constantly to leave
him
alone as she does.”
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Alix was tiresomely vague about her plans, and persistently late, exasperating the obsessively punctual Bertie. “Keep him waiting,” she would say, “it will do him good.”
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On a day appointed for the King and Queen to receive addresses, she was due to appear at twelve, but as room after room filled with waiting deputations, there was no sign of her. Bertie sat in full uniform, drumming the table in the equerries’ room. At last, at ten to one, Alix appeared, looking lovely. “Am I late?” was all she said. Bertie swallowed hard and walked out of the room.
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Alix shrieked like a mandrake when she was uprooted from Marlborough House, obstructing the move to Buckingham Palace. She complained that there was no room for her possessions or to lodge Charlotte Knollys, but her real objection to leaving Marlborough House was emotional.
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As she told Georgie, “All my happiness & sorrows were here very nearly all you children born here all my reminiscences of my whole life are here—& I feel as if by taking me away from it a chord will be torn in my heart which
can
never be mended again!!”
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Alix, who was neither ambitious nor remotely feminist, used her position to project her personality: decorative, generous, and light-hearted.
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The verdict of one historian that she was best known for her beauty, and “perhaps more than any other royal consort she embodied the importance of the image over the substance of royalty” is harsh but contains a truth.
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The story of her life as queen dissolves into anecdotes.

Full mourning for Queen Victoria ended on 24 July 1901. The ladies of the court needed to know whether black was still to be worn on that day, but Alix was vague and offhand. After much discussion, the household decided to play it safe and remain in black. The Queen appeared, late for dinner as usual, radiant in white and sparkling with diamonds, all the more striking against the black dresses of her household.
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In order to set off her own slender figure, she ordered her tall ladies to attend when the court was in London. Short ladies had to make do with dull mausoleum days at Windsor.
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She could be imperious. When the courtiers tried to advise her about what to wear at the Coronation, she replied: “I know better than all the milliners and antiquaries. I shall wear exactly what I like, and so shall all my ladies—
Basta
!”
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As queen, thought Lord Esher, Alix’s attitude was “Now I do as I like.”
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She provided the background of dogs, Kodak photographs, and family jokes for Bertie’s public life. A secret smoker, she once dropped an illicit cigarette into a teacup when caught smoking by Bishop Randall Davidson, then persuaded him to smoke one with her and to conduct an impromptu service at Osborne around the bed where Victoria had died.
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The day before the Coronation, when Davidson helped Bertie try on his robes in his dressing room at Buckingham Palace, Alix burst in: “Oh, I must look at you, I must see what it looks like.” Davidson thought they were “so friendly and jolly together—so unlike what is usually supposed—not at all stately.”
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