CHAPTER VIII

THE WEDDING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES

On the 10th of March, 1863, I had the honour to be present at the wedding of the Prince of Wales in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. A number of extra gentlemen-ushers were appointed for the occasion, and by the kindness of Sir Spencer Ponsonby Fane, always a good friend to me, I was one of them. It was a magnificent sight, something to remember for a life-time. The streets of Windsor and all the approaches to St. George’s inside the glorious old Castle were thronged with people radiating the happiness of the day—the Eton boys of course in full strength, ready to cheer till their loyal throats should burst. All that was greatest and noblest in the land was present in the Chapel; there cannot be many people still alive who were there, for of course the guests were all of them men who had already made their mark in the world; and even of those who were on duty, I was probably the youngest. Happy the bride upon whom the sun shines! It was a bitterly cold day, but bright, and a life-giving sun, blazing through the stained-glass windows, shone upon a gorgeous display of glittering uniforms; the banners hanging from the Garter Knights’ stalls, the tabards of the heralds, the gold coats of the state trumpeters combining with the brilliant gowns and flashing diamonds of the ladies, made such a riotous feast of colour as the world could hardly match.

The procession of the Knights of the Garter ought to have been an imposing spectacle, but the good Knights, arrayed in their blue velvet robes, resplendent with their golden collars and stars, instead of marching decorously two and two with a suitably solemn space between the pairs, had contrived to club themselves into a clumsy knot made up of figures of various sizes and shapes in which they looked anything but dignified, the tall and stately Lord Shaftesbury towering over the puny form of Lord Russell. They badly needed a stage-manager.

The trumpets bray out triumphantly announcing the procession of the Bridegroom, stately, solemn, full of dignity.

Once more the trumpets. Amidst all the glory of that wonderful day nothing could equal the procession of the Bride. The touching tenderness of her girlish, rosebud beauty and graceful figure, as she passed up the nave, her eyes shyly downcast, looked like the vision of the Princess of a Fairy Tale. Her entry into London had been the triumph of a conqueress—her entry into St. George’s Chapel was the assumption of a Queendom over the hearts of England from which nothing can ever dethrone her.

It was a sad sight to see the great Queen, then only entering into middle age, looking down from her gallery to bless her son’s happiness! When the trumpets heralded the Wedding March amid the clatter of arms of the saluting Guards, the pealing of the organ, the roll of the kettledrums, and the roaring salvoes of artillery, it was impossible not to feel that her thoughts must be travelling back to the death-chamber hard by, where, some fifteen months earlier, she entered upon the long, lonely years of her widowhood. Half hidden, her pathetic figure struck the one sad note, the _memento mori_, in all that frenzy of rejoicing, all that radiance of pomp and splendour, the celebration of a nation’s sympathy with a well-beloved Prince.

Perhaps I ought rather to say a Prince whom the people were ready to take to their hearts; for he was still a lad, and had not yet had the chance of showing what he really was worth.

At the risk of forestalling such story as I have to tell I would fain insert here a slight attempt at an appreciation of that young bridegroom as he appeared in later life and during his too short reign as King. A comparison of the power exercised by him and that of the great Mother whom he succeeded almost inevitably comes within the scope of such an endeavour.

It is one of the penalties of a high position that whereas the failings of those who occupy it are apt to be viewed through a magnifying glass, their good qualities are too often examined through the wrong end of a telescope. Even those whose nature and knowledge would prompt them to deal out praise in full measure, speak under the restraint of a reticence the motives of which are not difficult to understand; and the more exalted the subject of this post-mortem examination of character, the more severe is that restraint almost bound to be.

Obituary notices of King Edward the Seventh have been plentiful enough. The two most important appreciations of him have been Sir Sidney Lee’s, in the “Dictionary of National Biography,” and the two essays in Lord Esher’s recently published book, entitled, “The Influence of King Edward.” It is hardly necessary to say that the two views of King Edward’s character differ _toto cœlo_. But then, whereas Sir Sidney Lee had no intimate knowledge of the King, Lord Esher describes a man with whom he lived for many years in that confidential intimacy which Dr. Johnson held to be the necessary condition for writing a good biography. The worst of it is that though Lord Esher’s book will be widely read now, it is bound to share the fate of all books, which like men, have their day and then die. _Habent sua fata libelli._ With the “Dictionary of National Biography” the case is different: that will remain on the shelves of every library, public and private, for many generations, and will be consulted as an authority long after the writers, like their subjects, shall have faded into the misty land of ghosts. That is why articles in such an important book of reference should be subjected before publication to the strictest and most impartial examination. Afterwards it is no use. “The written word stands.” Even should Sir Sidney Lee himself, in the fuller life of King Edward upon which he is said to be engaged, endeavour to modify, soften, or even contradict some of the statements in his article, it will not be possible for him to correct the false impression which those pages will create in the minds of men of a future generation. Historians will turn to them and will say that since this was written immediately after the tragedy of 1910 by so eminent a man of letters, it must represent the contemporary judgment of the King’s personality. Great is the responsibility.

The picture which Lord Esher gives of the childhood and boyhood of the Prince of Wales under the somewhat austere and strict tutelage of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort cannot but fill his readers with sympathy. Here was a child, a boy, a young lad, hedged round by rules and regulations which must have pressed upon him like a strait-waistcoat. Ardent and full of the highest spirits, he was cramped by such a discipline as mercifully none of us have known. What would the boy not have given for a game of football? How he would have loved to drive a cricket ball over the boundary! He, whom I have seen as a man of fifty, booted and skated, keenly playing a game of hockey on the ice? No games were there for him, no free association with playmates of his own age. A boy or two, carefully selected, sent up to Windsor from Eton to stand about in hopeless shyness in the presence of tutors, or even under THE Eye.

He was sent to Oxford, but strict care was taken that he should have no part in the life of the university. He might hear lectures—he might see nothing. It was as if you were to send a lad to the theatre and set him down in a stall with his back to the stage.

The first time that I saw the Prince of Wales was when his father brought him to Eton as a little boy of twelve to hear the “speeches” on the Fourth of June. What a diversion for a child of his age, to listen to us sixth form boys spouting Demosthenes, Æschylus, Cicero! I can see his poor bored little face now. It was pitiful. He is accused of never having been bookish. How could he be when, like Swinburne, he was never allowed to read even Walter Scott’s novels? Swinburne, however, when he came to Eton quickly emancipated himself. The Prince of Wales never had a chance of reading as a boy, and later in life he had no more time than was needed for studying the newspapers, which he did most conscientiously. Not upon him alone was the grip of the iron hand clenched. The instructions to his Governor, to his tutors, to the gentlemen-in-waiting—authentic documents cited by Lord Esher—make one feel the choking atmosphere of boredom through which the Prince struggled into manhood.

How the kindly, genial Prince, who was to develop into what Dr. Johnson called a “clubable” man, must have chafed under this prison treatment! How he must have longed for emancipation! He had a temporary foretaste of it when in 1861 he joined the Grenadier Guards[31] at the Curragh. He always looked back with pleasure upon that short soldierly experience.

When we think of the very strict severity of the Prince Consort, and when we remember the great part which he played as the Queen’s confidential political adviser, notably in the Trent affair, where his wisdom helped to soften the asperities which Lord Russell had aroused in the United States, we are apt to forget how young he was when on the 14th of December, 1861, he died—barely forty-two years of age.

He had not always been popular, and the world had been jealous of his interference in public affairs; but all those jealousies were soon forgotten and the Prince’s worth was realized after his death. That cruel sorrow gave the Queen an opportunity of using the Prince of Wales in his father’s place, making him her confidant and private secretary, and guiding him through the labyrinths of that constitutional lore of which she was such a mistress. Needless to say, the opportunity was not made use of. On the contrary, in spite of the advice of more than one minister—notably of Mr. Gladstone—the Queen politically held her eldest son at arm’s length.

It was not until a few years before her death that he, already a middle-aged man of fifty, was allowed access to State papers. Shut out as he was from any participation in public affairs, his great activities were turned into two channels—social and ceremonial, and most admirably he fulfilled those very wearisome duties of royalty of which he relieved the Queen, who from that time forth worked diligently, devotedly, but unseen. Indeed her life was wrecked. She had accustomed herself to lean upon her husband, who had been her lover, her guide, and her adviser for twenty-one years of a marriage which had been blessed with a happiness rarely found in a station of life where love matches are the exception. To the outside world he might seem stiff and formal. The prescriptions of a small German Court would account for that; but to her he was always gentle, kind, sympathetic. He was an exceptional man; tall and of a commanding figure, strikingly handsome, highly educated, accomplished, judicious; he lacked but one quality—that of geniality—to make him universally popular, and even that was no misfortune, for it may have saved him from stumbling into those pitfalls with which the path of men so gifted, especially when they are in a commanding station, is beset.

One side of his nature was curious. He was essentially a shy man. He would enter a room to meet some visitor whom he had summoned, sidling up, as it were, along two walls of it before stepping forward to hold out his hand. That same shyness accounts for a good deal in his character; for its aloofness and, above all, for an apparent dislike, strange in so able a man, to surround himself with all that was best and most distinguished in science and art. Such men as Darwin, Huxley, Hooker, Tyndall were practically unknown to him. He preferred the second rate. So in Art, as portrait painter, he was satisfied with Landseer and Winterhalter. Landseer no doubt was an excellent delineator of dogs and deer, but it did not seem to occur to the Prince that a man might be a first-rate painter of animal life and yet fail signally with Kings and Queens. As regards Winterhalter, it is the world’s misfortune that the portraits of the principal personages who made the history of the fifties and sixties of the last century should have been practically his monopoly.

With music, especially sacred music and the Opera, there was great sympathy at Court. The Prince was an accomplished and scientific musician and the Queen had a lovely voice which was well-trained by that wonderful old singer Lablache. But for Literature there appeared to be no place. I have a sort of recollection that Dickens was once sent for to Buckingham Palace, but that was not until 1870, the year of his death. The Prince was greatly pleased with Thackeray’s “May-day Ode” on the opening of the Exhibition of 1851, and he loved Tennyson’s “Idylls of the King,”—they aroused in him the ideal of the chivalry which he worshipped. But there the matter ended, there was no literary society, no love of books. The Prince and the Queen were absorbed in politics, and their relaxation was taken in other directions, such as the theatre and the Opera.

I dwell upon all this because I am anxious to show how King Edward’s up-bringing accounted for that indifference to books with which his biographers have taxed him. It is the fashion to talk with contempt of what is called the Early Victorian Era. In Letters, at any rate, the reproach is undeserved. There was no lack of considerable men. Putting on one side the three great names that I have already cited, we had Carlyle, Browning, Froude, George Eliot, the Brontës, Ruskin and others. In the memorandum for the guidance of the gentlemen appointed to attend on the Prince of Wales they are told to encourage the Prince “to devote some of his leisure time to music, to the fine arts, either drawing or looking over drawings, engravings, etc., to hearing poetry, amusing books or good books read aloud!” But of that delightful solitary communing with books which are the living souls of great men—such books as those written by the contemporaries of whom I have spoken, there is not a word.

Fancy an ardent boy of seventeen spending his leisure time in turning over books of drawings and prints! Would it not be mental starvation? How much more human would it be for a boy to read “Pickwick,” “Martin Chuzzlewit,” “Vanity Fair,” “Scenes from Clerical Life,” “The Princess,” “Jane Eyre”!

For my part I would far rather see a son of mine frown over the savagery of Mr. Rochester, or laugh at Mrs. Gamp and Mr. Pecksniff, than waste smiles of young-lady-like admiration upon Retsch’s outlines or the “Keepsake.” But the whole memorandum is one of the strangest of documents, reading as if it had been composed for the use and guidance of a seminary for young ladies.

There can hardly ever have been so self-contained a Court as that of the Queen and Prince Consort in the early days of their married life. Outside of the Ladies- and Gentlemen-in-Waiting there were very few intimates. Of these the chief was Baron Stockmar, the retired physician, who had been Court Doctor to King Leopold and the Princess Charlotte of Wales, and who afterwards became mentor and political tutor to Prince Albert. At Windsor or Buckingham Palace he came and went as he pleased; his room was always ready and he was always welcome. As to that, there was not a little jealousy, and that jealousy was accentuated by his privileges, notably in that whereas the English grandees had to wear knee-breeches and silk stockings, the Baron was allowed to encase his lean and shrivelled limbs in the warmth of trousers! A terrible outrage, intolerable to the said grandees; the intimacy was bad enough, but the trousers were galling!

Another welcome guest was the Prussian Minister, Baron de Bunsen, a really remarkable man. But perhaps the friend who came next to old Baron Stockmar in the estimation, or perhaps I might say affection, of the Prince Consort, was M. Sylvain Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister, who was not only a diplomatist of conspicuous ability, but also a bibliophile and an accomplished man of letters. He was one of the most agreeable men that I ever knew, and the power of his personal charm upon the Court was enhanced by the fact that he was the representative of the dearly-loved and venerated uncle both of the Queen and Prince.

The English statesmen were invited for short visits to Windsor or to dinner at Buckingham Palace, and, as was necessary, there was a Minister in attendance at Balmoral or Osborne, but after Lord Melbourne and until Lord Beaconsfield’s time, long after the death of the Prince Consort, who had no liking for him, there was no familiar intercourse with any Cabinet, Whig or Tory. Both the Queen and the Prince Consort worked indefatigably, but it was chiefly desk work—work in the dark.

The long, silent night of sorrow in which the Queen spent the forty years which remained to her after the death of the husband who had been the dayspring and the bright glory of her life, more than ever estranged her from taking any delight in that personal intercourse which is the chief lure of society.

I remember as a boy seeing a drawing which impressed me greatly. On a mountain-top sat a solitary female figure, draped in black—was she a Sibyl, a Witch, a Norn? I know not. Her face rested on her right hand and her weary, yearning eyes looked out upon the world beneath her, a figure of mystery mounting guard. Queen Victoria in her loneliness, watching from on high over the welfare of her people, reminded me of that tragic figure. She was one of those “Princes” who, as Bacon said, “do keep due sentinel.”

When the Prince of Wales assumed the _toga virilis_, his emancipation heralded a new epoch in the social life of England; but it was not until two or three years after his marriage that its full effect was felt.

Under the new dispensation the hospitalities at Marlborough House and Sandringham were lavishly magnificent, while the small and very intimate society at Abergeldie was delightful. The Prince of Wales and the Princess shone as host and hostess: both delighted in being surrounded by their friends, and naturally in their position it was easy for them to gather together all the most brilliant and most distinguished people, some of whom would even travel from across the Channel to be present at entertainments the splendour of which became famous.

These may seem at first sight to be trivial matters, yet they had their significance. We must remember that when the Prince of Wales married he was very young—only just twenty-one. He was full of high spirits and endowed with a vitality such as I have rarely seen equalled. He was debarred, as I have said above, from helping his mother in her public work, and he could only find an outlet for his marvellous energies in what might have been barren pleasures, had he not used them as means of becoming intimate with some of the older and more prominent of the ministers and statesmen of both parties.

The invitations to Marlborough House and Sandringham were by no means confined to the butterflies of society. As often as not the Prince might be seen standing apart in earnest talk with some such man as Lord Granville, Lord Clarendon, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, Bishop Wilberforce, one of the great diplomatists, Delane, Billy Russell the famous War Correspondent, Generals, Admirals, men of science. But why dwell upon this? It is well known that it was through conversation and the Press that the Prince acquired that marvellous fund of information which enabled him to hold his own in any company.

His memory was phenomenal: he seemed unable to forget. The business of Kingcraft is not one that it is easy to learn. It is impossible for a King to specialize in any one subject; but he must be sufficiently posted in the trades of all sorts and conditions of men to be able to discuss intelligently the subjects upon which they have to address him. This King Edward did to perfection, and we must remember that this power was not acquired all of a sudden, like a miracle conferred upon him by anointment at his coronation; it was the result of long years of patient listening and inquiry—of those same long years which his detractors would have us believe were spent to exhaustion in the pursuit of frivolous occupations, and in the selfish sacrifice of duty to pleasure. No more false charge was ever brought against a man in his exalted position.

That he was the acknowledged leader in the society of which he was the darling is perfectly true. It is also true that he spared no pains to promote the pleasure of others. But however late he might stay at some entertainment or at the Marlborough Club, he was up again at earliest dawn to attend a review at Aldershot or Spithead, or take part in a ceremonial in some distant part of the country, where he would appear as gay and as pleased as if he was fulfilling the one ambition of his life. His strength was wonderful; he knew not fatigue. That was an immense help to him. Later in life he allowed himself more rest; but as a young man he seemed to be almost independent of sleep.

It has been said, cynically enough, that a King has no friends. That might be the case with a Roi Soleil who divided mankind into three categories—Royal personages, white men, and black men. Our King, on the contrary, was so full of human sympathy and loving-kindness for others, that he won for himself an affection such as is given to few men in any position.

I remember in the quite early days of the Marlborough Club, in 1870, I was standing talking with a friend who died not long since, an old admiral. Close by was a knot of men in the heyday of youth, with the Prince in the centre, a happy, joyous band, he the choragus of the fun and merriment. My friend turned to me and said: “See! Is there one of those men who would not lay down his life for him?” That was true of him in those youthful days, and it remained true to the end.

And now I must skip many years, because I am anxious to show how wrong it is to suppose that King Edward shirked work.

One night I was dining at the Club, after King Edward had come to the throne, but before he had moved from Marlborough House into Buckingham Palace. He knew that I was in London for two or three days alone, so he sent over to ask whether I was at the Club, and if so to bid me go across to him. I found him in his private sitting-room, all alone, and we sat smoking and talking over old times for a couple of hours. Towards midnight he got up and said: “Now I must bid you good-night, for I must set to work”—pointing to a huge pile of the familiar red boxes. “Surely.” I said, “your Majesty is not going to tackle all that work to-night!” His answer was: “Yes, I must! Besides, it is all so interesting;” and then he gave me one of his happy smiles and I left him. “So interesting!”—that was the frame of mind in which he faced his work—he, the man who we are expected to believe could not be brought to attend to business!

I have no desire to speak unfairly of the article in the “National Biography.” In many passages it lavishly praises some of the great qualities of the King, and yet the general impression conveyed is unfortunate. The reader of the future—and it is for the future far more than for the present that such an estimate has importance—will rise from the study of this biography with an altogether false appreciation of its subject. He will see in it the portrait of a man with many lovable characteristics, indeed, but with little conception of the high functions to which he was called; he will see a Prince self-indulgent, impatient of duty, with little political acumen even in those matters of foreign policy in which he took the highest interest; giving little concern to home affairs, “unremitting in his devotion to social pleasures”; showing “aloofness from the working of politics and a certain disinclination hastily to adopt his private plans to political emergencies.” I hope to show that it is in his more favourable comments that Sir Sidney Lee is right, though unfortunately in his hands the beam inclines too much on the wrong side.

The King’s tact, his magically conciliatory charm, a power of fascination which can rarely have been equalled, his judgment of men, have been universally acknowledged. He carried into public affairs a sympathy and kindliness which bore rich fruit. He could feel with a Gambetta as he could feel with the proud chieftain of the Hapsburgs. To a Scottish manse, to a Norfolk parsonage, he could carry the sympathy of a friend, the true message of love. He could enter into the troubles of a humble cottager on his estate with as much interest as he could listen to the family difficulties of a Duke. Above all, he could forgive, and that is perhaps the rarest of human powers. Those who know could cite more than one instance of its exercise. Nor was all this confined to mere words. He would spend himself on behalf of a friend, he would labour to see righted some poor wretch who he thought was being treated unjustly. His courage was beyond proof.

Such was the King as I knew him, and I am not alone in my estimate of him: Sir William Harcourt, a good judge and surely no sycophant, said of him that he was the greatest King of England since William the Conqueror. A burning Radical came away from his first interview with him, saying: “That is the greatest man that ever I had speech of.” That man knew him better later, but he never altered his opinion.

To one feature in the King’s character I must reverently allude. He was a convinced Christian, devoutly observing all the ordinances of the Church. In Scotland he regularly attended the Parish Kirk at Crathie. I can call to mind one Sunday at Abergeldie in 1870 when so fierce a storm was blustering outside that it was impossible to leave the Castle. The Prince, then a very young man, read the Church of England’s service at home. Never did I hear that beautiful liturgy more impressively read. The music of his voice, the perfect diction—so conspicuous in his public utterances—gave value to every word of those inspired prayers. They struck home. The devotional sense, obviously genuine and true, would have been contagious in a crowded cathedral. It was no less so in the little room in the old grey castle; he made us feel with him.

There is a charge brought against him in the “National Biography” (after he had mounted the throne, mark you!) that “at times he enjoyed practical joking at the expense of his friends.” Nothing could be more misleading. When he was a very young man—a mere boy—he would laugh at the wild pranks of some of the youngsters by whom he was surrounded. What could be more natural? They might play tricks upon one another, but never either as Prince or King did I, during nearly half a century, see him take active part in any such games himself. He was always mindful of his dignity, and for many years before he came to the throne I can affirm with certainty that no such tricks would have been permitted in his presence.

My recollection of the King which I wish to place on record is that of a character made up of various qualities—a monarch deeply impressed with the duties and obligations of his exalted station; a man intensely human, and, let his critics say what they will, altogether lovable.

The death of Queen Victoria on the 21st of January, 1901, was not unexpected, and yet she had been so long the figure-head of the Constitution that when the blow came it was felt as a shock. It was not only the death of a great monarch, it was the death of an epoch, the Finis and Colophon of a long and very important chapter in our history. The Queen had out-lived the long list of politicians who, during the sixty-four years of her reign, had helped to shape the destinies of Great Britain. Lord Melbourne, who won the confidence and trained the mind of the young girl who was so early summoned to her high office; Lord Grey, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Russell, Lord Derby, Lord Palmerston, Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, were all gone. Of her other two Prime Ministers, the great Lord Salisbury was yet three years short of reaching the dignity of an Eton jacket when she came to the throne; Lord Rosebery’s mother had been one of her bridesmaids.

The early death of the Prince Consort had deprived her of her one intimate adviser, her one trusty friend, and for forty years she remained a lonely figure, widowed, and more than widowed, for her exalted station deprived her of the companionship which humbler people can enjoy. She had few friends, mostly ladies who had been with her in the happier days of her life. Among these, perhaps the chief were the Duchess of Sutherland, Lady Ely, Lady Churchill and Lady Augusta Stanley. These all died before her—her last confidante was Lady Churchill, who predeceased her only by a few days. Her trusty friends, Sir Charles Phipps, Sir Thomas Biddulph and Sir Charles Grey, were long since dead. Sir Henry Ponsonby, her devoted and brilliant private secretary, who for so many years had served her most faithfully, died in 1895. Two excellent servants she had in Lord Stamfordham and Sir Fleetwood Edwardes, but she would not have been human had she not felt her solitude. Outliving is the curse of old age. Nor was it only among her own personal attendants that the Queen paid the tribute of sorrow which is the penalty of a long life. Two of her sons and one of her daughters predeceased her. The gallant Emperor Frederick, her much loved son-in-law, had died in 1888, her grandson, the Duke of Clarence, in 1892. The Ashanti War led to the death of another son-in-law, Prince Henry of Battenberg, in 1896. These are what may be called unnatural sorrows, though, unfortunately, they are common enough. That we should bury our fathers, though the grief be bitter and the loss irreparable, is in the ordinary course of nature; to bury our sons seems a cruel reversal of all fitness.

Through those long, solitary years the Queen performed the duties of her Queenship with unflagging zeal and devotion, though she remained a mystery, felt but invisible. The people, though they would fain have had more opportunities of seeing her, respected her seclusion, knowing the value of their Sovereign, and proud of the successes of her reign. She came to the throne at a moment when the Crown was anything but popular. George the Fourth had greatly estranged his subjects, and William the Fourth was not the man to raise enthusiasm from the dead. That was reserved for a young Princess who was literally called out of her sleep to enter upon her high position when she was only eighteen years of age—a mere child. She made the people feel the value of a monarchy, and so, in the earthquake of 1848, when other thrones were tottering and falling, hers was as firm as a rock. Such slight disturbances as there were hardly excited alarm, and the Chartist rising, though important, was not an actual danger to the throne.

It was memorable as giving occasion for a curious episode in history, when Prince Louis Napoléon enlisted as special constable and was on duty with my father in the churchyard in Mount Street. Queen Victoria was indeed the embodiment of the monarchical principle, an inheritance which she bequeathed to her son and grandson, both of whom have raised a glorious edifice upon the foundation which she laid.

When the Queen died the mourning was honest and sincere.

* * * * *

The crown which Queen Victoria had brightened by long constancy to duty was now firmly rooted in the instincts of the people. In so far as that was concerned, the new King might be said to have an easier part to play at his accession than she had. In spite of that he had to face an arduous task. In the two successions the positions were reversed. In her case there was no trouble or danger abroad. Her difficulties lay at home. In King Edward’s case the difficulties were over the sea. The power of the South African Republic was broken, and that grand, patriotic soldier, Lord Roberts, who laid aside the greatest private sorrow that can break a man’s heart in order to do his public duty, had come home to receive at the hands of the Queen the highest reward which it was in her power to bestow. The earldom and the Garter were never more gloriously earned. But it was not until the 31st of May of the following year that peace was signed.

On the Continent of Europe the jealousy of England was virulent, and the Boer War, purposely misrepresented and misunderstood, was used to aggravate the poison of a disease which needed the most patient and delicate treatment. It was with this that King Edward markedly busied himself. It was no easy task—especially in Germany. The Kaiser had been not only a great admirer of his grandmother, but he, as I verily believe, honestly loved her. He came over to England to attend her death-bed. He lost no opportunity afterwards of bearing witness to his respect for her. Towards his uncle, King Edward, he entertained no such feeling. That is a matter of common knowledge. There had been, no doubt, differences—never amounting to quarrels—between them. They were not in sympathy, and it says much for King Edward’s power of conciliation that by his endeavour “the rough ways were made smooth.” Unfortunately the great rent was only a question of time.

The King’s visits to the Continent are treated in no friendly spirit by the “Dictionary of National Biography,” which even goes out of its way to belittle the part which he played in public work abroad as at home. Speaking of his visits to Paris, the writer says: “Political principles counted for little in his social intercourse ... a modest estimate was set on his political acumen when in informal talk he travelled beyond safe generalities.” But perhaps no word of a serious writer on history, or biography, which is, or should be, history, by whomsoever that word may have been inspired, ever more swiftly received material contradiction than the following: “An irresponsible suggestion at a private party in Paris that the _entente_ ought to be converted into a military alliance met with no response.” The response is loud enough to-day in the dunes of Flanders, on the Vistula, in the Carpathians, and in the Dardanelles.

When King Edward travelled he was carrying out the practice of the great foreign statesmen who were wont to take their holidays, or at any rate part of it, at some foreign watering-place like Gastein, Marienbad, Carlsbad or Homburg, where the Prime Ministers of the various countries met and exchanged views. That was the habit of the mighty Bismarck himself. Our own statesmen neglected this until the late Lord Salisbury undertook his famous journey through Europe in order to become acquainted and confer with the ministers of foreign Powers. This abstinence on the part of the English leaders undoubtedly placed them at a disadvantage when the great international questions were discussed. Men like Bismarck and Andrassy had travelled over one another’s minds, and each knew exactly how best to tackle the other. Our men went to a conference primed with technicalities which are apt to become ineptitudes when the personal factor is excluded.

King Edward relied greatly on that personal factor, and he obtained a more intimate knowledge of the ruling men in France, Germany, Austria and Italy, not to speak of lesser Powers, than was possessed by any other English statesman.

In connection with the charge of want of political acumen and indifference to books upon which so much stress has been laid, a very eminent French statesman, who knew the King well and had many opportunities of judging him, writes to me as follows:

“Pour juger le feu Roi il faut l’avoir vu de près et l’avoir fréquenté dans les moments difficiles. Alors on pouvait se rendre compte de la force de son caractère et de la justesse de son esprit. J’ai été le témoin le plus attentif de tout ce qu’il a fait pour amener le rapprochement de la France et de l’Angleterre, et de la ténacité qu’il a apportée dans la poursuite d’une politique que certaines personnes trouvaient un peu précipitée. Mais il connaissait mieux la France que personne en Angleterre et il savait ce qu’il pouvait oser. Je lui étais très attaché parceque je savais tout ce qu’il valait—c’était un homme d’état—on n’apprend pas dans les livres à être un homme d’état; on l’est naturellement et rien ne donne à ceux qui ne les possèdent pas les qualités de décision et de perspicacité nécessaires pour entreprendre de grandes choses.”

This spontaneous tribute of one great statesman to the merits of another is a sufficient refutation of much that has in ignorance been imputed to King Edward.

That he was immensely popular in France is certain. Frenchmen looked upon him as a true friend, and in society he was said to be “le plus Parisien des Parisiens”; a leading Royalist once said to me, “Tell your King that if ever he is tired of his job in England, we will take him by acclamation.” The fact that he was beloved by the more frivolous sets did not prevent his being respected by the serious politicians. It is idle to suppose that men like Gambetta, Clémenceau, Hanotaux, Pichon, Delcassé and others who were wrapt in affairs, sought his society as that of a mere man of pleasure, a mere Royal _boulevardier_ such as the Prince of Orange. Like Sir William Harcourt and others of our own leaders on both sides in politics, they formed a higher estimate of his worth than that which unfortunately will be handed down in the “Dictionary.”

The German Press, as Sir Sidney Lee himself points out, took a very different view from his of the King’s visits to foreign potentates. They were far from thinking him to be the negligible quantity in politics that Sir Sidney Lee describes. Believing him to be an enemy, they looked upon him as a dangerous one. If he paid a visit to the King of Italy it was a deadly machination to disunite the Triple Alliance. If he met his near relation, the Emperor of Russia, at Reval or Cowes, it was with the view of soldering an _entente_ between England, France and Russia, and converting it into an alliance, offensive and defensive, aimed at Germany. In all that the King did there was a sinister motive, a continuous Machiavellian intrigue with one solid object.

The imputation of malevolence was based on fallacy, as Sir Sidney Lee shows, but the attitude of the German Press ought to have taught a great writer that if highly instructed publicists attached such importance to the King’s participation in affairs, however false might be the motives ascribed, his own appreciation of it might possibly be open to correction, and could not fail to create a wrong impression upon future students of history.

The relations between the King and the Emperor of Austria were in the highest degree cordial—and no wonder. For the old Emperor, the venerable man whose life had been so cruelly pursued by the Fates, the King, like everybody who had a heart, felt the most profound sympathy, which in his case amounted to affection. The betrayal of 1908, when Baron Ærenthal annexed Bosnia and Herzegovina, making the Treaty of Berlin into “a scrap of paper,” and, borrowing a phrase from Kant, justified his action as a “categorical imperative,” was a violent shock to King Edward.

It was on the 8th of October that the King received the news at Balmoral, and no one who was there can forget how terribly he was upset. Never did I see him so moved. He had paid the Emperor of Austria a visit at Ischl less than two months before. The meeting had been friendly and affectionate, ending with a hearty “auf baldiges Wiedersehen.” Baron Ærenthal had been with the Emperor, Sir Charles Hardinge with King Edward. The two Sovereigns and the two statesmen had discussed the Eastern Question—especially the Balkan difficulties—with the utmost apparent intimacy, and the King left Ischl in the full assurance that there was no cloud on the horizon. Now, without a word of warning, all was changed. The King was indignant, for nobody knew better than he did the danger of tampering with the provisions of the Treaty of Berlin, and he saw that to make any change in the Turkish provinces was to light a fuse which, sooner or later, was bound to fire a powder magazine. Personally, the King felt that he had been treacherously deceived. His forecast of the danger, which he communicated at the time to me, showed him to be possessed of that prevision which marks the statesman. Every word that he uttered that day has come true.

At the outset of King Edward’s reign we heard a good deal of our “splendid isolation.” It was a clever catchword of defiance, invented by a supremely brilliant statesman, but it did not help to make matters pleasanter or safer. Germany hated and envied us; France suspected us; Russia looked upon us as the hidden enemy, lurking by night. When the King died all was changed. I am far from saying that the more friendly feelings which prevailed were entirely due to his initiation; but I do say that without the wonderful influence and personal charm which he exerted they would not have existed. He fully recognized his limitations as a Constitutional monarch; it was not for him to start alliances; but he made them possible. There were Ministers before his time; could they have removed obstacles and softened asperities as he did? He knew, moreover, that no Sovereign, no Government, could utter a command like that of the first day of creation: “Let there be peace.” He knew that he must work for it, and he did—incessantly. To the world’s sorrow another monarch in another country has said, “Let there be war!” and there was war.

The signing of the peace in South Africa on the 31st of May, 1902, came as a fitting Coronation present to the King. The ceremony had been fixed for the 26th of June; but a day or two before that date ugly rumours began to be whispered through the town as to the King’s health. He was so anxious that nothing should occur to prevent the Coronation from taking place, which, he felt, must create the greatest disappointment and inconvenience to thousands of people, that he enjoined upon those about him the strictest secrecy as to his condition, and it was not until Sir Francis Laking told him that if he attempted to face the fatigue he might even die in the Abbey, pointing out what a tragedy that would be, that he was at last persuaded to postpone the Coronation. Even so, mindful, as always, of others, he commanded that the honours which were to be conferred should not be delayed by his illness. The secret of the operation was well kept, for the public and even the King’s friends knew nothing of it until the 24th, the day upon which the operation took place.

There was a great flower show of the Horticultural Society at Holland Park that afternoon. The band of the Blues had been engaged. Mr. Godfrey, the bandmaster, came up to me and said that he had not half his men. The troops were confined to barracks—and he had with him only the married men who lived out; and then he told me what had happened. I rushed off and called a hansom (there were no taxis till four or five years later) and drove to Buckingham Palace for news. The account was good so far as it went, but the danger was still acute. It would be difficult to exaggerate the anxiety which was felt all over England, but mercifully the bulletins improved from day to day: the King recovered and the Coronation took place on the 9th of August. It was a great anxiety for all those who loved the King—and who was there in all that vast assembly, or indeed throughout England, that did not love him?—but he bore the strain splendidly and all was well.

The glories of the Coronation have been described by abler pens than mine; with them I dare not compete. Great as Westminster Abbey is, full of immemorial traditions, it can never have looked more splendid than it did on that day when Princes, Peers and Commoners, subjects from lands lying far away across the seas, were all gathered together to acclaim their King. Never before in the history of man had such a world’s gathering been brought under one roof. And when we listened to the salvoes of artillery, and remembered that eight thousand miles beneath our feet the booming of the cannon was thundering out the joy of men in the Antipodes who were fellow-subjects with us, we felt the power of which that royal figure on the throne was the symbol.

One touching episode will never be forgotten. When the venerable Archbishop of Canterbury did homage, he was weak and tired and failed by himself to rise. The King leant forward and, grasping the old man’s hand, which had anointed him, bore it to his lips, and helped him to stand upright. It was a kingly act performed with all the grace and dignity of which our Lord the King had the secret. Not even the kiss when he greeted the Prince of Wales with all the tenderness to which the present King testified when he said: “I have lost not only a Father’s love but the affectionate and intimate relations of a dear friend and adviser,” could create greater emotion than this spontaneous tribute of respect to the brave old prelate, who a few weeks later, a slave to duty, made his last heroic effort in the House of Lords—broke down—and was taken home never to come forth again.

* * * * *

We are wont to talk of the even tenour of life, when no such thing exists. No two days are alike, still less are any two years. The “Ships that pass in the night” are variously freighted. Some—these the rarest—are laden with the bright, precious jewels of happiness; some with a cargo of neutral interest; others are carrying the seeds of sorrow to be sowed broadcast over the world. The death of King Edward was felt far beyond the boundaries of this country or even of this Empire. He had earned for himself an affection and influence such as no British monarch had ever before achieved, and when he died the sorrow was literally the people’s sorrow. For some years before his death his health—though this was not generally known—had caused no little anxiety to his doctors. He was subject to violent fits of spasmodic coughing from which it sometimes seemed as if he could scarcely recover. The exertion was terrifying to those who witnessed it, and occasionally he appeared to be choking.

This was the reason of his annual trips to Biarritz or some other place blessed with an atmosphere purer than that of the London which he loved. These journeys, which have been ungenerously attributed to the love of pleasure, were really a matter of necessity; they furnished in a mild degree that oxygen which in its pure state is administered to the dying in order to relieve the pain of breathing—the pain from which he so often suffered.

In the early days of 1910 the King seemed to outsiders to be much in his usual health; but the doctors were nervous and anxious; they were eager to get him away from London. On the 6th of March he gave a great dinner-party—only men—he was in excellent spirits and after dinner went the round of his guests, as was his wont, and chatted gaily with each of them. As he was leaving the room he stopped for a moment, to talk to me, and spoke with all his natural cheerfulness, like a boy before a holiday, of his journey which was to take place on the morrow.

It was not long before the anxiety felt by his doctors was justified. “Only we,” said one of them to me, “know how serious his condition is. If he had been a private individual we should have had him away long ago.” He caught cold in Paris and was very unwell when he arrived at Biarritz. The world at large was not told how ill he was, and the secret was well kept from all those who were not behind the scenes, but for a week he seemed to be wrestling with death; that time he conquered, but the victory was ephemeral. On the 27th of April he came home. He was well enough, or imprudent enough, to go to the Opera, which he never willingly missed, for he was devoted to music.

One night I happened to be sitting in a stall near his omnibus box. The King came in and sat down in his usual corner place. I noticed that he was looking very tired and worn. He sat through one act, all alone in the box. Then he got up, and I heard him give a great sigh. He opened the door of the box, lingered for a little in the doorway, with a very sad expression in his face—so unlike himself—took a last look at the house, and then went out. I never saw him again. At the end of the week, on the 30th of April, he went down to Sandringham to superintend some work, and I had been bidden to hold myself in readiness to go with him, as I so often did on those occasions. But when the time came he was feeling ill and out of sorts, and so he only took with him Sir Dighton Probyn and the Equerry-in-Waiting. The cold wind gave the _coup de grâce_ and he only came back to London to die.

Ill as he was when he reached Buckingham Palace, he worked with all his accustomed energy, and on the Wednesday, when one of the permanent heads of the Civil Service was with him, he was seized with one of those terrible choking fits of coughing. When he got better his visitor ventured to remonstrate with him, and begged him to rest, and even go to bed, but he ridiculed the idea and said, “No, I shall not give in—I shall work to the end. Of what use is it to be alive if one cannot work.” That was how he fulfilled his declaration to the Privy Council on his accession, that “so long as there was breath in his body he would work for the good and amelioration of his people.”

The King loved England. He was a patriot in the highest, I had almost said the divinest sense of the word. Queen Mary Tudor said that when she died the word CALAIS would be found written upon her heart. When King Edward died the word would have been ENGLAND.

This leads me once more to the King’s untiring power of work. His method differed entirely from that of Queen Victoria, and this last interview of his with a permanent civil servant well shows how his industry took another shape from hers. As I have already said, the Queen worked entirely at her desk; she was an indefatigable writer and would alter and revise the drafts of her ministers freely—often with great effect—as for instance in the case of Lord Russell’s Foreign Office despatches. But I suppose that few sovereigns have been less in personal contact with her ministers, with the single exception of Lord Beaconsfield, than Queen Victoria was after the defeat of Lord Melbourne, who up to that time had been always at her side as a confidential adviser as well as responsible minister. But of the permanent officials she personally made no use. She never sent for them or consulted them, and I much doubt whether she knew the heads even of the Foreign Office or Treasury by sight. The chapter of accidents alone made me an exception to the rule.

King Edward was very different in that respect. His work with his ministers was almost entirely done by discussion in personal interviews; moreover, he knew all the men of mark in the Civil Service as he did those in the Army and Navy, and made good use of their knowledge and experience in affairs. I believe that his was the better way; at any rate, in these days of bewildering rapidity, when telegraphs and telephones are at work all day and all night, the Oriental aloofness of Queen Victoria’s method could not fail to be a hindrance. But apart from that, I am convinced that the King would have been the first to admit that he derived great advantage from the help he received from direct intercourse with the heads of the various departments, while their sovereign’s generous recognition could not fail to be a great stimulus to them. His Civil Service dinners were a great compliment.

It is quite false to suppose that King Edward took no interest in home politics. But let us take a concrete case; it is worth while for more than one reason. In Sir Sidney Lee’s article there is an allusion to the King’s attitude towards Lord Haldane’s scheme for a Territorial Army. Now this is what took place. When Lord Haldane—then War Minister—had formulated his proposals, he took them to the King, who studied them diligently with Lord Haldane’s explanations, and having with his usual quickness seen the point, came to the conclusion that the scheme should have a fair trial and determined to give it his support. With this view he did what no other man—not even the Prime Minister—could have done: he summoned the Lords Lieutenant of Counties to a meeting at Buckingham Palace to confer with him and Lord Haldane—the Duke of Connaught, himself a distinguished general, being present.

The King made a speech impressing upon his Lieutenants the duty of energetically co-operating with the Secretary of State in launching the new county associations. To use an expression of one who was present, “The King played up magnificently.” The Duke of Norfolk replied on behalf of his colleagues, and assured the King in a few admirable words that he might rely upon his Lords Lieutenant to perform their new duties. We see the result to-day. Right nobly have the Territorials justified their existence and the confidence of the King in the great War Minister who was responsible for them. I have been privileged to see a letter from one of the greatest of our Generals at the front. It would be difficult to imagine a finer tribute to Lord Haldane’s administration of the War Office. It is now generally acknowledged that but for him and for the measures which he initiated, our position at the beginning of the war would have been very different from what it was. He enabled us to send out a force, which if still insufficient to break the German legions, was yet worthy of England. The rest will follow. I hold no brief for Lord Haldane, nor should I be guilty of the impertinence of attempting any estimate of his work. He is too great a man and can afford to be judged by results. What I seek to show is the patient industry and vigilant care with which the King mastered a complicated scheme at a moment when there was no stimulus such as the existence, or even the near probability, of a state of war to excite the imagination.

In the same way he supported his trusted friend, Lord Fisher, in regard to the Navy; and here again we see to-day what has come of his wise adoption of a new departure. Would that great Lord of the Sea any more than Lord Haldane accuse the King of lending a languid or half-hearted attention to his proposals?

It is a difficult matter for anyone who knew King Edward to write an appreciation of him. The danger of lapsing into indiscretion is obvious. At the same time it is equally clear that only those who did know him intimately can give a just estimate of his character, and that to leave his portrait to be painted by those who did not know him, however gifted they may be, must inevitably lead to misconceptions and misrepresentations, and that is still more dangerous. The fact is that King Edward had as many sides to his character as a brilliant has facets. The man who knew him not, sees one or more of those facets and rushes off at a tangent, drawing the whole character from such an imperfect view of him. Nothing could be more unfair, nothing more unlucky in the case of a sovereign who must live in history.

It is to be hoped that some day a life of the King may be written in which more stress may be laid upon the noble features of his nature, and not such exaggerated weight given to those transient foibles which mark the first escape of an ardent youth from pedagogic thraldom. He had one characteristic for which we may go back to the simile of the brilliant. No diamond could be more purely clear and honest than King Edward, and it was that pellucid truthfulness which made him so powerful in his relations with foreign sovereigns and statesmen: they knew that when they were dealing with him they had to do with a King as honest as Nathanael, a man in whom was no guile.

There is a sentence in the notice of the King in the “Dictionary of National Biography” which calls for some observation. In connection with Mr. Asquith’s famous visit to Biarritz to kiss hands on becoming Prime Minister, we are told that “the King’s health was held to justify the breach of etiquette. But the episode brought into strong relief the King’s aloofness from the working of politics, and a certain disinclination hastily to adapt his private plans to political emergencies.” That, I affirm, gives a most unfair idea of the King’s attitude to his duties. I have given the reasons, not generally understood, which occasioned his visits to Biarritz. People saw a strongly built, burly man and they were slow to recognize in him an invalid whose days were numbered. As regards the last part of my quotation, I dare assert that it is entirely unjust. For forty years—from 1861 to 1901—as Prince of Wales, he, then a very young man, constantly had to sacrifice his own inclinations for the performance of duties the dullness of which was often of the most wearisome character. Those duties were carried out with a geniality which made men believe that he was really enjoying himself, and for that they loved him.

He was keen on sport, was gay and happy in amusement, delighted in the theatre and the Opera, and in society, but never was this side of his character allowed to hinder duty. “It is all so interesting,” was a speech of his which I have quoted once before, in regard to the political work that became his portion as King, and which we are asked to believe that he neglected.

King Edward’s wonderful courage and coolness were notorious. It never seemed to occur to him that there could be such a thing as danger, or, if it did exist, that it was worthy of his notice. When Blondin offered to carry him across Niagara on his tight-rope the Prince of Wales, as he then was, would have accepted the venture at once, and was keen to go. But happily, though he could not be afraid for himself, there were others who could be afraid for him, and he was prevented. When a great chemist told him that he might safely put his hand into a caldron containing I know not what seething metal, he did so at once without hesitation or flinching. So it was when he was face to face with the murderer and his pistol at Brussels. His nerve was perfect. We all remember the quiet courage with which he cleared decks for action, and made ready for the operation which in 1902 might easily have cost him his life. He was not afraid of the chance of death then, nor did he show any sign of fear when the certainty came eight years later. On the morning of that fatal 6th of May, 1910, he was calm and collected. He knew that he was dying, but he could face death as cheerfully as he always had faced life.

The end was lightning-swift, but so great was his energy that he had arranged to see a private friend that morning. He had desired Sir Ernest Cassel to go and visit him at eleven o’clock. Sir Ernest found the King dressed and sitting in his chair, from which he rose to greet and shake hands with his friend. “I knew that you would not fail me,” he said. They remained talking for a while, but soon it was evident that the sufferer’s strength was waning. Sadly Sir Ernest took his leave, feeling that it was for the last time. I was at Stratford-on-Avon, and received a telegram saying that he could hardly live through the night. The few sacred hours that followed were watched over by the tender care of those nearest and dearest to him—the loving wife and children who never left him till the end. In the afternoon he was undressed and laid in his bed; the light faded and he became unconscious. The Archbishop of Canterbury came and joined in the prayers by the bedside. A little before midnight the brave heart had ceased to beat.

When the black news came a deadly pall fell over the country, and there were many men—some great, some small—who felt that life could never again be quite the same for them. It seemed impossible. To the last his energy was so vivid, the lamp of life’s joy burned so brightly in him, that men could not believe that the grey mystery had extinguished that sunny nature. But it was all too true: the ringing voice was silenced for ever: the King was dead.

* * * * *

Within the space of ten years Great Britain had lost two sovereigns. Both were sincerely mourned by their subjects. But there are in grief qualities which differ. The sorrow which followed Queen Victoria to the grave was a tribute to a great and noble personality; it was the recognition of the value of long years of assiduous labour, of a lonely life consecrated to the good of her country; personally to the vast majority of her people she was unknown. For forty years she had lived, as the saying is in the East, “behind the curtain,” and though her influence was felt, she herself was shrouded in something of awe—she was as invisible as Providence. King Edward, on the contrary, had been for half a century a most familiar figure in every part of the kingdom. Not hundreds, but thousands of men could claim that they had shaken hands with him, and could repeat some kindly word to which his genial manner had given emphasis and value. Every one of those myriads felt as though he had lost a personal friend—as if he in his humble self was the poorer.

For the monarchy the Queen had won respect and admiration, and a feeling that

God’s in his heaven, All’s right with the world.

Then came King Edward, and he, without by one jot lessening the devotion which the great Queen had called up, added to her diadem the priceless pearls of personal love and affection. That was the crown of his work, and since that was won who shall say that his life was lived in vain? King George has not been long upon the Throne; but he too has played a part in which we older folk see an assurance that he will hand down to his successors untarnished and undimmed the lustre of the glory of which he is the heir.