The Heir Apparent (82 page)
Authors: Jane Ridley
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Nonfiction, #Retail, #Royalty
The Berlin visit did little good. It failed to slow the German navy race. The fact that the visit took place at all, and that the two rulers were civil to each other, was perhaps important, but their hatred soon reasserted itself. The Bosnian crisis, which had rumbled on since the autumn, was resolved in Austria’s favor in March 1909, humiliating
Russia at a time of military weakness and leaving Serbia hungry for a war of revenge. For this unstable and unfair settlement Bertie blamed Germany, whose backing gave Austria the confidence to threaten a war against Serbia. As he told Hardinge, “Ever since my visit to Berlin the German Government have done
nothing
but thwart and annoy us in every way.… We may safely look upon Germany as our bitterest foe, as she hardly attempts to conceal it.”
119
People noticed that the King, by nature cheerful and ebullient, was increasingly prone to depression, sitting brooding in silence. After eight years of striving for peace, the world could hardly be said to be a safer place. Closing the ring around Germany only made William more paranoid. Even if he could be contained in the west, eastern Europe was increasingly unstable. The Balkan crisis had proved that Francis Joseph, seemingly the greatest gentleman of all, could not be trusted. Britain’s reaction was to draw closer to Russia, but Bertie knew only too well that the weak Nicky was hardly a reliable ally. Bertie’s superb contacts had enabled him to lead and support the process of bringing Britain into closer relations with the continental powers, but tightening the links seemed only to ratchet up the pressure for war.
*
“He thought I was facing the greatest difficulties because he talked of your wonderful features, and described your charming face as if he was correcting the bust that wasn’t there, and I feel that had I the clay model, I would have shown it to him.”
†
Bertie considered offering CB a peerage, but decided against; not only was CB likely to refuse, but Bertie judged the measures he had introduced not “worthy of my reward.” (RA VIC/Add C07/2/G, B to Francis Knollys, 3 April 1908.)
‡
After the King died, Alice Keppel told Rosebery that “for the last two years the King did not confide in Knollys for he was afraid that everything he told Knollys went straight to Esher, who was a good man in his way but not the repository of confidences.” (McKinstry,
Rosebery,
p. 496.)
§
The bumptious Fisher, who enjoyed showing off his dancing, once pushed his luck by asking Queen Alexandra to dance: “She put him in his place, and said, ‘Certainly not.’ ” (Bodleian Library, Lincolnshire Papers, MS Film 1121, Carrington Diary, 31 May 1905.)
‖
What no one could have guessed in 1908 was that within a decade the world would have become such a different place that in 1917, King George V, in order to secure the survival of his own dynasty, would judge it necessary to refuse asylum to his Romanov cousins, who were murdered at Ekaterinburg in July 1918.
a
Sometimes known as Mrs. Keppel’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Sarah Wilson was a sister of Randolph Churchill. Her “prominent eyes, harsh voice and sarcastic laugh” made some people shudder. (Balsan,
Glitter and Gold,
p. 55.)
b
Once when the King arrived at West Dean, the butler came down with a very large cardboard box. “Mrs. James is indisposed,” he said, “but she sent you this.” The King was handed a large pair of scissors, and when he cut the ribbon and opened the box, there was Mrs. James disguised as a doll with a wind-up key. (Edward James,
Swans Reflecting Elephants,
p. 12.) Evie James was the daughter of Helen Forbes, one of Harriett Mordaunt’s sisters. Her son, Edward James, claimed—probably wrongly—that she was Bertie’s illegitimate daughter. Edward James himself was also rumored to be Bertie’s son. Nine months before Edward’s birth (16 August 1907), the King had stayed at West Dean for a house party (19–24 November 1906), and the gossips did their arithmetic. Edward James was probably not his father’s biological son, and he did show a physical likeness to Bertie. However, another of the guests in November 1906 was John Brinton, the man who later became Evie’s second husband, and he seems a more likely candidate for paternity.
c
Henry Labouchere described Brighton as “a sea-coast town, three miles long and three yards broad, with a Sassoon at each end and one in the middle.” While Arthur Sassoon lived in King’s Gardens, Albert was in Kemptown, and Reuben in Queen’s Gardens. (Allfrey,
Jewish Court,
p. 54.)
d
Within little more than a decade, David, by now Prince of Wales, would write that York Cottage, Sandringham, was “too dull and boring for words! Christ how any human beings can ever have got into this pompous secluded and monotonous groove I can’t imagine.” (Edward, Prince of Wales, to Mrs. Frida Dudley Ward, 26 December 1919, in
Letters from a Prince,
ed. Rupert Godfrey [Warner Books, 1999], pp. 286–87.)
King of Trumps
1909–10
The Cabinet was bitterly divided over the Admiralty’s program of dreadnought building to rival Germany. For Bertie, who took his naval policy from Fisher, the position was simple: “As long as Germany persists in her present programme of ship building we have no alternative but to build double.”
1
The chief opponents of this two-to-one naval race were Churchill and Lloyd George, who claimed (rightly as it turned out) that Fisher and the Admiralty exaggerated Germany’s shipbuilding. As far as the King was concerned, these two ministers could do no right. As prime minister, Asquith seemed unwilling or unable to check them, and Knollys wrote to complain at “the uncompromising attitude Mr. Asquith generally takes when Your Majesty finds fault with any of his colleagues.”
2
Asquith was a self-made, raw-boned lawyer; an immensely able man whose mind “opened and shut smoothly and exactly, like the
breech of a gun.”
3
Bertie found him “deficient in manners but in nothing else.”
4
He was certainly preferable to Arthur Balfour, the leader of the Unionist opposition, whom Bertie disliked as “an effeminate creature mixed up with the Souls.” As he confided in Margot Asquith: “It is a great drawback to a man not to be able to love a woman”—to which Margot felt inclined to respond, “How many, Sir?”
5
No one could accuse Asquith of being effeminate. But the King now began to suspect that the prime minister’s unshakable imperturbability masked a worrying lack of principle.
Asquith’s was the last Cabinet to use neither agenda nor minutes, and the letter that he penned in his elegant handwriting to the King after each meeting formed the sole official record. To interest the King, he emphasized foreign and military policy rather than domestic politics; and to prevent royal interference, he played down Cabinet divisions and disagreements.
6
In the winter of 1908–9, Bertie suspected that he was being “kept in the dark” by Asquith, who was less than frank about the split in the Cabinet over the naval estimates.
7
Asquith adroitly steered Winston Churchill and Lloyd George to agree to the principle of eight dreadnoughts at a key Cabinet meeting (24 February), but even so, the King was critical. When the naval estimates were introduced in Parliament, and the attacks from the Tories sparked a naval scare in the press, the King blamed Asquith.
In April 1909, Bertie joined Alix on a three-week Mediterranean cruise. He was in a furious mood. He had expected to be received by the Mediterranean fleet on arriving at Malta, but the ships were ordered elsewhere. Ponsonby was summoned to the King’s cabin. “I at once grasped that there was thunder in the air. ‘What do you think of that?’ the King shouted at me as he tossed me a telegram, and before I had time to answer he stormed away at the disgraceful way he had been treated.”
8
It took all Ponsonby’s skill to dissuade the irate monarch from ordering the entire fleet back to Malta at once.
At Naples, the King’s temper was no better. Ponsonby (who was inclined to exaggerate) told a story of Alix and her sister the empress Minnie, who mounted donkeys and disappeared toward the top of
Mount Vesuvius.
*
The King stayed behind in the hired train, fuming at the wait and furiously ordering the whistle to be blown to summon them to turn back. When at length they appeared, the King was “boiling with rage” but unable to let off steam at the empress or the Queen, so the unfortunate Ponsonby once again incurred the full blast of his wrath.
9
In spite of these volcanic explosions, the King dictated a letter to Asquith on the same day (1 May), giving the prime minister his comments on the so-called People’s Budget that Lloyd George had introduced, which proposed to pay for increased naval costs and old age pensions by raising income tax and new land taxes: “His Majesty wishes me to ask you whether in framing the Budget the Cabinet took into account the possible (but the King hopes improbable) event of a European war. The income tax, which has always been regarded as a war tax, now stands so high for unearned incomes over a certain amount that any great increase would have a most disastrous effect on land generally more especially if the war lasted for a considerable time.”
10
It was a farsighted comment. Bertie possessed the vision to see domestic politics in a wider European context; what he did not foresee was the political storm that the budget would provoke in Britain.
The King returned on 8 May after two months abroad to face complaints in the press that he spent too much time out of the country. W. E. Grey of the
Daily Mail
wrote an article pointing out that on his cruise the King had been “far from idle.” He assured Ponsonby that “in future nothing will appear in the paper which is not pleasing to His Majesty, and that you can make what use of its columns you will.”
11
Ponsonby agreed in exchange to provide the
Mail
with information. The King’s popularity that summer was such that he had little need of Mr. Grey and the
Daily Mail.
As Daisy Pless told the kaiser, “The whole country adores him; indeed the feeling of loyalty in England is extraordinary.”
12
This made the kaiser feel rather sick.
“Well, Stamper, what about the new car?” were the King’s first words to his mechanic on his return.
13
The motor that had just been delivered was a 65 hp Mercedes in which the monarch sped through his realm. He drove the fifty miles from Newmarket to Sandringham in a record-breaking one hour and twenty minutes, averaging 37½ mph.
14
Though he exceeded the speed limit of 20 mph the King’s car was never stopped. Police alerted in advance of his route cleared the roads of slow horse-drawn traffic. Often when the King drove through a village the local brass band played “God Save the King.” Constant repetition of the national anthem must surely be the bane of a musical monarch’s life, and Bertie had strong views on the matter; he ordered military bands to speed up the timing and play at the rate of eighty beats to the minute. However excruciating the village band, he always raised his hat and bowed in acknowledgment, often bursting out laughing as soon as the village was passed.
15
That summer, the King’s horse Minoru won the Derby by a head, and ecstatic crowds surged on to the course as Bertie walked from the royal box to lead in his horse. It was his third Derby win, and a wag shouted from the crowd, “Now King you have won the Derby, go back home and dissolve this bloody Parliament!”
16
Parliament was bogged down in the budget. The Liberal government battled to get the budget through the Commons, the bill didn’t pass until November, and the Lords threatened to throw it out. As class war smoldered into flame between the Liberals and the peers, Bertie busied himself with house parties and visits to old mistresses. He stayed with Minnie Paget and saw Isadora Duncan dance; he called on Lillie Langtry, now Lady de Bathe and “an old tart of a girl with reddish hair and a flamboyant manner,” and inspected her successful racing stables; he spent a weekend with Emma Bourke and her husband, Lord Clarendon.
†
17
In July, after a royal visit to Manchester, the King
and Queen drove back through pouring rain to Knowsley, where they stayed with Lord Derby, and cheering crowds lined the entire route. For mile after mile the King and Queen acknowledged their welcome, sitting in a closed car perched forward on the edge of the seat so that they could be seen, Alix bowing and Bertie perpetually raising his hat.
18
With the cheers of the Lancashire crowd still ringing in his ears, the King brought his motor to stay at Nuneham Park with the Liberal minister Loulou Harcourt. As usual, he played a lot of bridge. “Mrs. George (the Favorita) was in great good humour and very smart, winning over 1000 points at bridge from the King.”
19
Bertie was an indifferent player. According to Frank Lascelles, who played often with him, when he had a good hand as well as a good dummy, “he knows how to make the best of it, but he has no knowledge of where the cards are.”
20
He was alarmingly short-tempered with his partners, but Alice Keppel could tease him out of it, quipping, “Sir, I am afraid I cannot even tell a King from a Knave.” Once, grumbling that he had no cards, he put her into a high-no-trump contract and laid his own hand down as dummy. “All I can say, Sir, is God save the King and preserve Mrs. Keppel,” observed Alice.
21