A Brief History of the House of Windsor (6 page)

It was during this period that George grew the beard that was to become his trademark (Eddy, though senior in years,
was not yet able to manage one), and it was at this time too that he began the stamp collection that was to provide him with stimulus and solace, and which would grow into one of the finest in the world. He also became the first of his family to develop a passion for polo, a game taken up by British officers in India and which had spread throughout the British Empire. Enthusiasm for it was all but compulsory among the officer class, and to play it well was a certain route to popularity.

His brother, who lacked any noticeable passion for anything, had meanwhile moved on to another phase of preparation for his eventual life. He went, still accompanied by John Dalton, to Cambridge to study, though he was to be exempted from having to take any exams. He followed this by going into the Army. Serving in the 10th Hussars, a fashionable cavalry regiment, he settled into a routine of training and garrison duties at Aldershot and Hounslow, though he rebuffed attempts by his fellow officers to ‘make a man of the world of him’. A certain innocence was noticeable in his nature. In spite of this, he became mired in scandal when, in 1889, the police raided a homosexual brothel in London’s Cleveland Street. He was not among those apprehended, but it was alleged that he had been a visitor. Modern biographers have dismissed this as implausible, but there were persistent rumours at the time. To these have since been added the theory that he was Jack the Ripper, the serial killer whose murder of a number of prostitutes brought a reign of terror to the streets of Whitechapel during the autumn of 1888. Why would he have wanted to do such a thing? Allegedly because he was being blackmailed over involvement in a vice-ring, and sought to silence witnesses. In fact, crimes of this nature must have taken considerable planning. They would have been well beyond Prince Eddy’s abilities, even had it not been definitively proved that he was at Balmoral when most of them took place.

Though both his charges might have been a disappointment to Mr Dalton in that neither of them showed intellectual
promise, they were good, agreeable young men, dutiful and dignified, whom one observer described as having ‘a total absence of haughtiness’.

Eddy began to carry out royal duties. He visited India, and at home opened the Hammersmith suspension bridge. He was created Duke of Clarence and Avondale, and began gradually taking his place as a public figure. While his military career was mere marking of time, he did of course have another significant role to perform. He must marry and continue the succession. He made three attempts to do so. Limited in his choice of spouse to a member of another ruling house, he chose one who was entirely suitable: the curiously named Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine. She simply did not like him, however, and refused his offer. She would go on to make a love match with the Russian tsarevich, Nicholas, marrying him in 1894. They would be immensely happy together, though their lives would become increasingly tragic, ending in front of a Bolshevik firing squad in 1918.

Eddy’s second attempt at finding a match seemed more promising. His attachment to Princess Hélène of Orléans was a matter of genuine, and mutual, affection. She belonged to the ousted Bourbon family. (There was no reason why a member of a ruling family could not marry someone from a deposed one. It was the blood that counted, not their current status. Queen Victoria, in fact, had something of a weakness for exiled sovereigns, and her country gave sanctuary to several of them.) The Bourbons were former rulers of France, and Princess Hélène was a Roman Catholic. This was a serious obstacle, but both parties attempted to compromise. Eddy offered to renounce his place in the succession. She offered to convert. In the event his family was willing, but hers was not. Her father refused to let the marriage take place, his religious convictions overruling even the prospect of his daughter one day occupying a throne.

In the third instance Eddy was successful. His choice was inspired, for the young woman was eminently suited to be
a queen. Victoria Mary, Princess of Teck, was nicknamed ‘May’ after the month in which she had been born. She was his second cousin once removed and related to the Dukes of Württemberg, an archetypal German dynasty. She had, however, grown up with her mother at the British Court. By the peculiar standards of royalty she was impoverished and obscure, overlooked by members of more illustrious families. Nevertheless she was extremely personable – lively, clever, charming and pretty – and observers could see that she would provide a useful counterweight to the prince’s natural inertia. In December 1891 Eddy proposed to her at a house party, to her considerable surprise, and she accepted. Queen Victoria was delighted. Eddy, it seemed, had made a very wise decision.

But his time was running out. Less than two months later, in January 1892, he caught influenza at Sandringham from his sister, Princess Victoria. He rapidly developed pneumonia and within six weeks was dead. It was a tragic loss for the entire royal family. It has been suggested by some writers and conspiracy theorists that Eddy was an imbecile rather than merely slow-witted, and that he was either murdered or his death faked so that he could be removed from the succession to make way for his brother. This is not the way royal families tend to behave, however, or at least not in modern times. His death was witnessed by his parents, his brother, his fiancée and a number of others, so we must assume it really happened; he was known to be suffering from the symptoms of pneumonia. The grief of those he left behind was genuine and lasting – his mother, Queen Alexandra, had his bedroom preserved as he had left it, an echo of Queen Victoria’s homage to Albert. George was now the heir. Created Duke of York, he had to quit active service and begin the study of constitutional history that would be important to him in the future.

And he inherited not only his brother’s place in the succession but Eddy’s betrothed. Princess May was taller than George, by half an inch, but with the piled-up hairstyle of a
lady of that era she was to overshadow her husband physically all his life. George and May genuinely liked each other, and a period of mourning for someone whom both of them had loved gave them a significant amount in common. Queen Victoria approved of the princess and felt she would still make a useful consort. Suitable girls of the right background and religious beliefs were not so plentiful that they could be allowed to go to waste. It was with pleasure and approval rather than any sense of impropriety that George’s family watched him grow closer to his dead brother’s fiancée. Such a match was considered perfectly respectable, and indeed there was a recent precedent. In 1865 the Russian tsarevich, Nicholas, had died. The next-eldest brother had taken his place in the succession and had become Tsar Alexander III in 1881. He had married his dead brother’s fiancée, the beautiful Princess Dagmar of Denmark, who was the younger sister of Queen Alexandra. Family affection for a young woman, not to mention dynastic interests, were what mattered most.

It was a year after Eddy’s death that George proposed, and the couple were married in the Chapel Royal in the summer of 1893. They remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives. Their history demonstrates two things. First, that even within royal circles, governed by duty and expectations and with so much arranged by others, there could still be rejected advances and unsuccessful marriage proposals. Secondly, that in such a world there could be genuine romance, mutual passion or close companionship, and lifelong attachment. Though these young people had met within the narrow confines of the Court, their marriage was as successful as that of any couple who had encountered each other by chance and had had no obstacles to contend with. George was, by his own frank admission, inarticulate in expressing tenderness verbally. His letters to his wife, however, give adequate proof of a sensitive and appreciative nature that is surprisingly at odds with the bluff and bad-tempered naval officer that others perceived. This was entirely understandable, however. Among
royalty affection was considered to be a private matter, and no hint of it should be displayed in public. That view is still held by many members of the royal family today.

In temperament, George was the opposite of his father, who had in 1901 became King Edward VII. From early manhood Edward was given to keeping raffish company, and indulging freely in games of chance and sexual licentiousness. Respectable people had dreaded the moment he became head of state, though once he was on the throne he managed – without altering his habits in the slightest – to gain a somewhat wider popularity. Though his morals, and mistresses, were to earn him the nickname ‘Edward the Caresser’, the new century was less censorious than the old, and he fitted surprisingly comfortably into the position of father – or grandfather, for he was almost sixty when he succeeded – of the nation. He clearly enjoyed being king. He had a benevolent charm, and was perceived by his subjects as kindly. His son George, who of course became Prince of Wales, promised however a different and far more widely acceptable style of rule once he succeeded. Both George and May were by nature shy and private. The son had little of the father’s outgoing charm. Though George was fond of horses and attended races, he was nothing like as enthusiastic about the Turf as Edward was, and was never linked with the sort of ‘fast set’ that had surrounded his father. The Yorks in fact derived little pleasure from going out in Society.

They lived a modest country existence on the Sandringham Estate. York Cottage, their home from their marriage until 1926, had been George’s dwelling when he was a bachelor, and he seemed happy to remain there as father of a family. The rooms were small and poky, though this endeared the house to him. They reminded him of shipboard cabins, and all his life he was to prefer accommodation of such limited dimensions. The house looked like any large suburban villa, and was remarkable only for its ugliness. A structure of mock-Tudor beams, tacked-on gables and crazy angles, it
displayed the worst excesses of contemporary suburban historicist pastiche (it now houses the Sandringham estate offices). The house was to become increasingly cramped as George and May added more and more children to their family (there would be six in total, plus all the servants necessary to look after them). Despite having the treasures of the Royal Collections to choose from, they had their home furnished from Maple’s store in London’s Tottenham Court Road, a place synonymous with middle-class taste, and hung the walls with reproductions of pictures from the Royal Academy. They resembled, in every way, a family of the upper bourgeoisie. While Victoria and Albert had adopted the values of the middle class, their lifestyle had been that of the senior aristocracy. George and May not only
thought
like the middle class, but
lived
like them too.

George was interested in farming the estate and, in an age that had invented so many new forms of leisure, he excelled at sports and games. He played golf and tennis well enough, but his real passions were sailing and shooting. He was both a fanatical and a highly accurate slaughterer of game birds – one of the half-dozen best shots in Britain. His record bag would be achieved in 1913: over a thousand birds in six hours. He also continued with – surely the most suburban of hobbies – his stamp collecting. Harold Nicolson lamented that, as Duke of York, ‘he did nothing at all but kill animals and stick in stamps’. Perhaps so, but the collection he built, of stamps from all over the world but specializing, understandably, in his own various realms, became by far the most complete and valuable of its kind, and is still kept in its own room at Buckingham Palace. This proved to have been time wisely invested.

As for his wife, she provided him with a settled and tranquil domestic life that was to be the foundation of much happiness. Like her mother-in-law, Queen Alexandra, she was quiet, dutiful and supportive. Upright in bearing, she appeared wonderfully regal – everyone’s idea of what a queen should look like – and when in the course of time she became
one, would set standards of dignity that would influence the family for generations to come. For example, she never, never laughed – at least not in public – because she said it made her look like a horse. She shared to a large extent the unworldliness of royalty, as demonstrated when she visited East End slums and asked the inhabitants: ‘
Why
do you live here?’ She was to prove a highly useful confidant and counsellor to George, however, throughout his life. She did not share his rigid conservatism, believing that ‘one must move with the times’, but she would never have defied her dogmatic husband who was, after all, also her sovereign. One unusual aspect of the Duchess of York was that she smoked (in private), but then so did her mother-in-law, Princess Alexandra. May’s parsimonious upbringing, as well as her preference for a modest, unostentatious life, would cause her as queen to do without ladies-in-waiting. Though this was an economy measure as well as a matter of personal preference, it might also have been a gesture of revenge against those aristocratic families that had snubbed or sneered at her during her impoverished upbringing. It was the senior aristocracy whose families traditionally provided the candidates for such posts and she was thus denying them the chance to enjoy the associated prestige. Nevertheless the simple domesticity of the royal couple would win widespread approval, expressed by one peer, Lord Esher, who said: ‘We have reverted to the ways of Queen Victoria.’ After the extravagances of Edward VII, this was indeed welcome.

One vice that May possessed, however, which was to become more pronounced as she became older, was her insatiable desire to acquire antiques, bibelots, and items of furniture. She bought these – she was a well-established customer of London dealers in such things – but she was also ‘given’ them. On visits to her friends, or even to strangers, if she took a liking to something she would make it increasingly clear that she wished to have it. If hints were not enough, she might ask outright or use some honeyed phrase such as: ‘It’s so kind
of you to give me this!’ Hostesses made a point of hiding their best pieces before she arrived, and some found themselves engaged in unseemly verbal tussles as they tried to save family heirlooms. May’s single-minded determination usually won, and she would return to the Palace, in some instances, with her Daimler car filled with treasures. The present queen has, in cases where the original owner of an object can be traced, made a point of having these prizes returned.