A Brief History of the House of Windsor (11 page)

The Empire Exhibition at Wembley Stadium in April 1924
was a massive public spectacle – remembered all their lives by those who attended it – and a celebration of the continuing vigour of ‘Greater Britain’, the association of lands ruled by the King Emperor. There were funfair rides and ice-cream stands, but more importantly there were glimpses of life in places considered to be far-flung: mock-ups of Burmese temples and New Zealand sheep farms, of Canadian ranches and Indian palaces. It naturally instilled a sense of patriotism (Sir Edward Elgar conducted his composition ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ at the opening ceremony, though by that time he was sick of hearing it and did so on this occasion only at the direct request of the king) and of permanence. For while it was possible that, sometime in the future, the colonies might gain their independence, it was self-evident that the large, white-populated settlements – Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and Newfoundland – were equal partners in the community. Surely they would have – could have – no reason to leave an alliance to which they belonged as a matter of free choice? The recent war, in which these countries had all taken part even if their own safety and interests were not directly under threat, had proved the soundness of the imperial idea.

It is important to remember that in thus asserting their individuality and their right to go their own way, the Dominions nevertheless chose to retain close links with the Crown, and that King George therefore became sovereign, by invitation, of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The relationship between these countries and the British throne was thus strengthened rather than weakened. When in due course non-white colonies gained independence from Britain, many of them followed the precedent of remaining in the Commonwealth. The king seemed, throughout his reign, to do nothing but concede to the demands of others, yet by being flexible enough to accommodate the forces of change he was able to preserve most of the appearance, and some of the substance, of what had been. The Commonwealth is
George V’s monument – this new chapter in the history of the English-speaking world began under his patronage. It was by accepting with good grace what he could not alter that he made possible the successful community of nations it is today.

George did not enjoy sound health. He continued to be affected by the fall from his horse in France, an event that apparently aged him prematurely. In 1928 he suffered a chest abcess that was acutely painful, and afflicted him for almost a year. A heavy smoker, with all that this implies, he suffered from pleurisy, pulmonary disease and septicaemia. His later life was spent in alternating periods of pain and boredom, and he was obliged to take long rests, including recuperation at the seaside town of Bognor (which was then renamed Bognor Regis). His most famous saying, apparently in response to the cheerful suggestion that he would soon be returning there for further rest – ‘Bugger Bognor!’ – is probably a fabrication, or may have been his reaction when the town asked to restyle itself ‘Bognor Regis’. It was an utterance entirely in keeping with his temper and his vocabulary.

He became ill in the winter of 1935, courteously saying to the members of the Privy Council during a meeting: ‘Gentlemen, I am so sorry for keeping you all waiting like that. I am unable to concentrate.’ In January 1936, at Sandringham, he took to his bed with a cold, and rapidly weakened. There was time to summon his family, the prime minister, and other important people, to his bedside, and to issue one of the most well-known health bulletins in history: ‘The king’s life is moving peacefully to its close.’ Drifting in and out of consciousness, he produced suitably dignified official last words: ‘How is the empire?’ To which his secretary replied, with equal dignity: ‘All is well, sir, with the empire.’ It has been confirmed, however, that his actual last words were a good deal more ungracious: ‘God damn you,’ he muttered at a nurse who was giving him a sedative.

His personal physician, Lord Dawson, admitted in his
diaries – which were not seen until decades afterward – that he had deliberately shortened the life of the monarch, by administering an injection of morphine and cocaine that was strong enough to kill him. The reasons he gave for this action were that the king would have lost coherence and dignity had he lingered. It was also likely that a lengthy death-watch by the bed of a comatose, unconscious man would have been more distressing for his family, who had apparently agreed to the shortening of his life because it would offer him relief from further pain. Most surprising of all, Dawson claimed that with a quicker death the news could be conveyed to Fleet Street in time to be announced in the morning edition of
The Times
rather than the early editions of the evening papers. His wife had already telephoned the offices of the newspaper and asked them to ‘hold the front page’.

George had been weary of life. A reign that had begun in political turmoil had become no easier with the passing years. He had presided over the most devastating war in the nation’s history, the worst industrial unrest, the upheaval of the suffragette movement and the granting of votes to women, as well as the restructuring of the empire. Yet his greatest worry was the unsuitability of his eldest son to take over his position. ‘When I am gone,’ he had said, ‘the boy will ruin himself within twelve months’ – a prediction that was to come true in even less time than that. He died knowing that he had succeeded in doing his duty. He had been a very good king – conscientious, impartial, and highly popular. He had set an edifying moral example and was leaving the monarchy stronger than he had found it. And yet his successor was likely to throw away everything he had achieved. Small wonder that he said: ‘I pray to God that my eldest son will never marry and have children and that nothing will stand between Bertie and Lillibet and the throne.’ His wife would have the satisfaction of knowing, if he would not, that that was precisely how fate would arrange matters.

Historians, put off by his outward manner, have often
considered him unworthy of serious study. As a result of his early training and inclination he was always to seem like a naval officer, ruling the country as if it were a battleship. Harold Nicolson wrote that the king had the intellectual capacities of a railway porter, yet admitted that this was a strength, for he was the common man writ large. His prejudices reflected those of many of his ordinary subjects.

Yet he was far more than the caricatured dullard of popular myth. He had a sensitivity that was not seen by everyone. He also possessed a sense of humour that was often delightful, as when he spoke to Sir Leslie Hoare, the Foreign Secretary, who had just returned from Paris after negotiating the Hoare–Laval Pact. George quipped: ‘You know what they’re all saying? No more coals to Newcastle, no more Hoares to Paris.’ The king later grumbled that: ‘The fellow didn’t even laugh.’

He was brusque with his sons, but tender with his granddaughter Elizabeth. Though to describe him as conservative would be the mildest of understatements, he was sympathetic toward the poor, and to those who were living on strike pay during the events of May 1926. His concern, expressed in private, was sincere. Morally, he was beyond reproach. His wife had expected to be his sister-in-law, a somewhat awkward start for any romance, yet he and Queen Mary remained happily married for forty-three years. He was ideally suited by temperament to be the Father of the Nation. His old-fashioned outlook – expressed in the fact that he wore a Victorian beard throughout an emphatically clean-shaven era – increased his air of gravitas in a time of rapid change. To his own surprise as well as that of many of his subjects, he enjoyed a genuine rapport with Ramsay MacDonald, his Labour premier, as well as with other socialists. He was self-evidently decent and well-meaning, to an extent that was unexpected by some of them. He was to write in his diary, in January 1924: ‘Today 23 years ago dear Grandmama died. I wonder what she would have thought of a Labour government.’ Much the same as he did himself, was the answer. Yet he accommodated this
significant shift in the attitudes of the British electorate, and by doing so he succeeded in becoming a credible modern sovereign, rather than a reactionary stuck in the pre-war world. This tribute – entirely sincere and undoubtedly accurate – was paid him by the Labour leader (and later prime minister) Clement Attlee: ‘He knew and understood his people and the age in which they lived, and progressed with them.’

While he could approach political and international issues with tolerance and good judgement and even vision, his views on the details of social behaviour were more narrow and often more pungent. There is something endearing about his determination not to let standards slip and to hold back the tide of modernity that was lapping at the Palace walls. Like his father, who even held views on the appropriate costume in which to visit an art gallery, George believed that clothes summed up a man – or woman. He forbade the queen to shorten her skirts in the twenties, despite the fact that this was by then universal practice even for middle-aged women. He was once so irritated at seeing ladies in short skirts strolling past the walls of Windsor Castle that he yelled at them through a window. He insisted that all women among his family or their staff must have gloves with them at all times, and that ladies must not appear twice in the same dress either at Ascot or at house parties he attended. He despised his eldest son’s habit of wearing trousers with turn-ups. ‘Are you expecting a flood?’ he would enquire sarcastically whenever the young man entered the room. His own trousers looked even more outlandish, for he wore them with the creases at the sides and not at front and back. He once spotted his Private Secretary, Lord Stamfordham, coming up the Mall in plain tweeds rather than in a suit, and berated him for appearing in London in ‘ratcatcher’ clothes.

It was not only in sartorial matters that his views were inflexible. He had opinions on all aspects of behaviour. (He was to send a telegram to his second son, Bertie, that read: ‘Do not embrace me in public, and when you kiss your
mother, take your hat off.’) When David went to Glasgow to open a trade exhibition, George wrote in surprise: ‘I’ve never heard of a gentleman going to Scotland in January.’ He had set views too on the proper dignity necessary for public ceremonial – on one occasion the Bandmaster of a Guards regiment included, in the repertoire that was offered during Changing of the Guard outside Buckingham Palace, a tune from a current musical comedy. Minutes later, a footman appeared from inside and approached him with a salver. The note upon it simply said: ‘His Majesty does not know what tune you have been playing but it is never, never to be played again.’

Interestingly, in his emphatic, dogmatic views, George resembled no one so much as his German cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm II who was equally given to making pronouncements on any and every subject. Once he had dismissed the French Impressionists with the statement: ‘Unless a painting meets a set of criteria set by me, it cannot be considered art.’ George might have said something similar, if he had had sufficient interest in art in the first place. His view of literature was equally forthright: ‘People who write books ought to be shut up.’ He was equally unimpressed with music, recording in his diary after a visit to Covent Garden: ‘We saw
Fidelio
, and damned dull it was.’ Nor did he enjoy a game to which his son David was addicted, writing that: ‘Golf always makes me so damned angry!’ His expressed opinions, though reflecting genuine convictions, often sound utterly comical today. His view of homosexuals, for instance: ‘But I thought men like that shot themselves!’ sounds as quaint as his comment on the General Strike: ‘It was a rotten way to run a revolution. I could have done it better myself.’ And the notion of the king in league with those seeking to overthrow the established order was not as far-fetched as it might seem, for he told one Labour politician: ‘I tell you, Mr Wheatley, that if I had to live in conditions like that, I would be a revolutionary myself.’ He argued that working men could not be expected to keep a family on the wages they were paid.

His pronouncements on many subjects suggest those of some roguish, favourite uncle: sometimes flippant, often reactionary, frequently predictable, but surprisingly sensitive and sensible, and carrying an unmistakable decency. One observer, George Lansbury, called him ‘a short-tempered, narrow-minded, out-of-date Tory’. So he was. The surprise was not that he held reactionary views but that he was capable besides of such empathy and ability to see other viewpoints. He was also more self-aware than others perhaps realized. He knew that he was not an exciting personality, and preferred it that way. When H. G. Wells famously criticized Britain’s ‘alien and uninspiring Court’, George retorted: ‘I may be uninspiring, but I’m damned if I’m an alien.’

His thoughts on serious issues, however, command respect. Visiting after the Great War a military cemetery in France, he said, with an eloquence that was almost Churchillian: ‘I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace on earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.’ And in 1935 he told Lloyd George: ‘I will not have another war. If there is another and we are threatened with being brought into it, I will go to Trafalgar Square and wave a red flag myself sooner than allow this country to be brought in.’ Despite a penchant for colourful language, George read the Bible every day and was more than a purely nominal Christian. The side of his nature, and his behaviour, that gave rise to his noblest acts and utterances was a reflection of that.

He lived to celebrate his Silver Jubilee, in May 1935, though he was to die eight months later. He was genuinely surprised – and not a little moved – by the reception he received as he drove through the streets of London. A modest and reserved man who was well aware that he was perceived as dull, he had not previously realized the extent to which his subjects derived reassurance from this. His personification of the old-fashioned virtues had won him immense public respect, as had his genuine sympathy with the less fortunate of his
people. His oft-quoted statement at the jubilee that: ‘I had no idea they felt like that about me. I am beginning to think they must really like me for myself’, suggests an endearing diffidence on both sides.