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George V and Queen Mary
Twilight of Peace
the
new sovereign was
not yet forty 'five years old. Middle-aged. But in the
eyes of many people at that time, George V was a youngster of a King, for they had
long been accustomed to much older monarchs. Nor was he very well known. Most
of his early life had been spent unexcitingly, in the country at Sandringbam or closeted with governess or tutor in the
Visits to foreign Courts, public engagements at home, deskwork in his study and, at his father's suggestion, a beginning of acquaintanceship with official papers - all these exercises were punctiliously carried through by the boy who had been 'Georgie : and was now a dutiful adult Prince, himself a father of a family, the Quiet Apprentice on the path to sovereignty. This man who became George V was never a showy or scintillating personality. Sincere and dependable utterly, but probably more shy, more inflexible, more conservative, more Victorian even than his grandmother. The style of his reign, therefore, was in immediate contrast to that of his father. His Court in fact became the antithesis of Edward VII's. It was a Court of reaction, faultless as the quarterdeck of a martinet. And, presiding over it, a monarch who was correct and kindly but inordinately self-effacing.
Yet this was a king who proved to be a loved national patriarch, first of a line of enthroned democrats, a rock of calm sense and firm leadership. He was the pioneer of representative kingship, speaking and acting for the nation. People gradually began to feel that here was an unpretentious Head of State with whom they could be identified. It was perhaps because he had been a working seaman, knowing what it was to be backaching and footsore and palm-blistered, that he had an innate rapport with the great mass of his people who worked with their hands. A Father-figure.
But in May 1910 that stature was still
to come. The crowds who watched the untried son walking in the cortege of King
Edward were yet to know the guiding
goodness of George V. There was a clue, could they have seen it, standing on
the working table of his
Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or
any kindness that I can show any
human being, let me do it now; let me not neglect or defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.
The text had been before
him for a long time ; and he had been doing his own generous, hard-working best
for nearly ten years -keeping count of the labour of
it in his own diary too (he had inherited the habit of journal'writing
from his grandmother). When he and his wife, royal Duke and Duchess
representing the King his father, had gone out to Melbourne to open the first
Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, the voyage had become an eight months' world tour during which,
as he recorded, they travelled
There
were many other journeys after that one. But now, at the start
of his reign, solemn domestic affairs of State anchored George V
in
Marlborough House was still the family home. Not until very much later
did they move along the Mall to take up residence in
The new Sovereign and Consort of that time, King George and Queen Mary, needed plenty of room for their family. They had six children, all born between 1894 and 1905: five boys and one girl. The last child and youngest son died young. So our history follows the remaining four Princes of this generation.
The
children of George V, m order of arrival on the scene, were: Prince Edward, who was
subsequently Prince of Wales, King Edward Vill and Duke of Windsor; Prince Albert, subsequently Duke ofYork and King George VI;
Princess Mary, subsequently the Princess Royal, who married Viscount Lascelles who became the sixth Earl of Harewood;
Prince Henry, subsequently Duke of Gloucester; Prince George, subsequently Duke
of Kent; and Prince John, the youngest, who suffered from attacks of epilepsy and so was brought up apart from his brothers and
sister, and who died in 1919 at the age of thirteen. The little boy's
grave is in
But
Even before he became
King in 1910 he felt like that about
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'York Cottage, on the Sandringham House estate, was George V's |
Two cousins extraordinarily alike:
Nicholas II, Tsar of
TOP: In becoming King and
Queen, the Prince and Princess of bottom: Queen Mary, in
This was fortunate, because George's 'Motherdear', Queen Alexandra, did not move out of the main house in 1910 when Edward the King died
and she became a dowager, the Queen Mother. Indeed she stayed there for the rest of her life, another fifteen years. Members of
the Household of the new Sovereign and Consort, George and Mary,
incredibly crowded as they all were in York Cottage (the Sailor King's grey
parrot and all, a privileged bird addicted to hopping along the royal breakfast
table and crashing its beak into the boiled eggs of his master's guests), felt
that Queen Alexandra could never quite bring
herself to look upon her son and daughter-in-law as King and Queen. At
any rate, so far as Sandringham House was concerned, she had no doubt at all about
her right to be there. Her view, rightly, was that the house had been built and
paid for by her husband and was not
a State palace or a possession of the Crown.
It was quite different from Marlborough House which she used in
And her son, the new King, contentedly let it be so.
He was not pretentious or
possessive, and most restrained when it came
to putting his views. Over and
over again his personal diary demonstrates his character. Perhaps never more so
than on the day of his Coronation, which took place in June,
It was a tremendous, resounding day, an epic of anthems and trumpets, of thundering guns and marching men. The monarch at the centre of it all, a King richly adorned and gravely submissive, was clearly very deeply moved by all that took place. And yet, when that night he wrote his journal before going to bed, the diary was as unemotional a log as ever: ' Overcast and cloudy with some
George V on a tiger shooting expedition in
showers and strongish cool breeze, but better for the people than great heat May and I left B.P. at 10.30 with 8 cream'Coloured horses Service in the Abbey was most beautiful, but it was a
terrible ordeal Worked all the afternoon with Bigge & others answering telegrams. Our guests dined with us at 8:30. May and I showcd ourselves again to the people. Wrote and read. Rather tired. Bed at 11.45.'
George V was not given to any excess of drama in
writing, but no one who had dealings with him
was in any doubt that he was nevertheless a sensitive man who was deeply
involved in and deeply emotional
about all the historical ceremonial which touched himself and his family
- including that revival from ages past which the bravura of David Lloyd George conjured up at Caernarvon
Castle a month after the Coronation, the Investiture of David, the seventeen-year-old Prince of Wales. Nor did the
King's domestic austerity affect die splendour of the Courts, the full-dress levees, over which
he and Queen Mary regularly presided at
Having visited the vast
country as Prince of Wales, he had a special
interest in
Back
in
Another
focus of disorder in the years between 1910 and the outbreak of the Kaiser's War in 1914 was the campaign for Votes for
Women. Dedicated suffragettes were on the march. They advanced inexorably from
shouting down political speakers to horsewhipping Winston Churchill, clawing policemen,
smashing shop windows, dropping bombs into pillar-boxes and chaining themselves
to the railings of
Within the Royal Family's circle, too, at least one member was starting to turn patterns of behaviour upside down. King George's eldest son, the impulsively up-and-coming Prince of Wales, having emerged from a segregated life of tutors, naval colleges, and a few months as a midshipman, went up to Oxford for a time, and at Magdalen - in contrast to the pattern of college life laid for his grandfather at Cambridge fifty years before - lived as much as possible the existence of an ordinary undergraduate. It was not easy, but the coltish Heir to the Throne made a number of friends in social classes other than his own, as well as among young aristocrats, and is reputed to have deflated certain taunting socialist republicans by singing 'The Red Flag' to his own banjo accompaniment. His years of non-compliance were beginning.
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TOP: George V, Sailor' King, was always at home and happy at sea He was rarely out of touch with the Royal Navy. Here he is visiting the Fleet during th First World War. bottom: Thousands of war casualties - and members oj medical staffs-were visited in hospitals by ~Their Majesties. |
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The House of
LEFT: David LloydGeorge,
famous wartime Prim eMinister. When
pictured herebefore 1914, he was Chancellor of
the Excheque, notable for introducing old age
pensions and unemployment insurance. RIGHT: A suffragette trie tosell her paper to police officers outside
The young Princes were being brought up in conventional royal style without university forays. The second son, Albeit - another 'Bertie', in name but not in character - passed through the Royal Navy's Dartmouth training, though with some classroom difficulty; the younger Prince George followed later through the College and towards the Senior Service; and the path of Prince Henry was through Sandhurst to a career in the Army.
At home, the family's life went its orderly way under the strict watch of a King and Queen whose styles and standards had not altered in twenty-five years. Their character was impeccable, but unbending too. When their children were toddlers they were a fond and understanding father and mother. Then, as the years went on and successions of severe governesses and tutors ruled their young, they gradually and without intention became out of touch with offspring growing to young manhood. They never gave children's parties. Kind and loving still, they nevertheless found it hard to bridge the generation gap and were unskilled as communicators even in their own sitting rooms. Whilst to the nation King George was a caring father-figure, to his sons he seemed more like a crusty fag-master. He knew it, and now and then he tried not to be so. Lacking any knack of relaxed fatherhood, and having been himself brought up in obedience to and even fear of a father, he would attempt to alter his ways by occasional bursts of rough jocularity, which made matters even more strained and embarrassing. The deep and enduring shyness in the make-up of both King George and Queen Mary was no doubt at the root of the brittle family situation.
Moreover, the King now had not much time for lowering his domestic fences. Barriers between classes and nations were going up instead of down all over the world, it seemed. There was little contentment in the air. Barbed camps of bigotry were being fostered.
the fast Labour government u
The year 1924 brought the fast Labour government in British history. Here the King, with Queen
Mary and suitably uniformed, was meeting
Mr Stephen Walsh, his new War Minister
All
sons of sadnesses and disasters were making the news.
One of the shocks was the loss of the
'unsinkable' liner Titanic, holed
by a huge Atlantic iceberg off
The gravest of stormclouds
were banking up over the continent of
King George could exercise little influence over
the crescendo of -vents in
a
phrase that became famous: 'The lights are going out all over
All
over
Meanwhile,
at the Admiralty, Winston Churchill had sniffed battle and already deployed the
King's warships. As always, he squared his shoulders gladly to the challenge of
action. And presently a tiny British Expeditionary Force of putteed
soldiers slipped across the Channel singing
'It's a Long Way to
On the night when the Four Dark Years of conflict began, the British King, with one son Prince Alben already away in the Navy at sea, with his Court mobilised, and with his people feverish to defend 'little Belgium* and not yet imbued with Edward Grey's fatalism, wrote in his diary a few words which calamity had not robbed of habitual truth and terse factual reporting: 'War with Germany. Terrible catastrophe, but it is not our fault. Please God it may soon be over and that he will protect dear Bertie's life. Bed at 12.'
The prayer could hardly have been simpler, the entry more sincere. He went to war with faith and no illusions.
above : On
the occasion of their
Silver Wedding in 1918 Their Majesties were photographed at left: In 1922 Princess Mary, the only daughter of
George V, was married to Viscount Lascelles, who
became the sixth Earl oj
Harewood. A wedding-day group on the Palace balcony
War that Changed a Name
Cataclysmic periods of history bring unexpected by-products. A new title for the British Sovereign's family was presently to be among them. The First World War, the war of 1914-18, was the earthquake from which the royal House of Windsor was officially born. The name was begotten out of anguish and quandary.
The trauma of that first
Great War began in the firs! months oi (he fighting; and the cheering crowds of August
1914 were soon to realise, as dire casualty
lists were posted, the cruel weight of the machine which the Germans had long
been preparing. With a series of hammer blows, the enemy swept through
By 1917, too, America was still not quite sure about being in the war, Russia was cracking internally and becoming near/useless as a fighting ally, the failure of our Gallipoli landings against the Turks had left nasty scars and frightful Anzac casualties, submarine attacks were playing havoc with our shipping, German zeppelins
The marriage of Lieutenant Lord
Mountbatten, later the first Earl Mountbatten of
A rare photograph taken
at
is seated in the centre with the. Duke behind her. On his left is the Ear! Lady Elizabeth's father) and on his right the Hon. David Bowes-Lyon.
had been
bombing Britain for two years, Field Marshal Lord Kitchener had been drowned at sea when a battle-cruiser sank, and, in our own islands, there was the Sinn Fein Irish
rising. The nation was deep in gloom and sorrow. Had the public known of
the lingering seriousness of the King's
injuries, suffered when his horse reared
and fell on him during one of his assiduous visits 10 the armies in
Questioning there certainly was - and a search for scapegoats, for someone to blame for the way things were going. The witch-hunts, unreasonable but hardly unnatural, were a symptom of the same fear and frustration which had gripped sections of the population in the first hatc-the-enemy campaigns of 1914, over two years before, and were now one consequence of a people's continuing hurt and desperation at the tragic stalemate of a war which seemed never' ending. Calumny spread, and spared nothing, not even the Head of State.
Looking back on those demonstrations of doubt from the viewpoint of the present day, with two world wars experienced, it is not easy to understand the wild lashing-out. But the fact is that civilian conduct in the first German War lacked the patience and steadiness which characterised Home Front morale in the second war. Malign suggestions were tossed around at all and sundry, including the Monarch, unjustified though it was to snipe at a man who was essentially a dedicated. God-fearing English squire with two sons in the war - for the Prince of Wales, 'David' to the family and now in his twenties, was a staff officer in France, itching to get to the trenches, and Prince Albert, 'Bertie', as a serving sublieutenant in the Royal Navy, had been in action at the Battle of Jutland.
The rumour-mongering and questioning of 1917 had the political and military leadership as general targets, but presently became concentrated on the German origins and names of the King and his relatives. The inquisition which had begun feverishly so soon after the start of the war had already scandalously unseated -solely because of his German birth - the loyal and brilliant sailor and First Sea Lord, Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was a cousin of the King.
The forced resignation of Prince Louis, then the
long-serving and exceptionally skilful chief of the Royal Navy,
had greatly distressed the King by the
sheer injustice of it. It had also pained Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty (who, however, lived to see the equally distinguished son
of the Admiral - Lord Louis, who
became Earl Mountbatten of
The Duke of York and Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon: their official engagement photograph, 14 january
There
was one particularly resented sneer. The writer H. G. Wells, at his most waspish after a Socialist rally celebrating the overthrow
of the monarchy in
He had become determined, nevertheless, to look into the name business. He did so quite firmly, but reluctantly. It was not that he felt guilty or that he was lukewarm in war effort because he was fighting his first cousin. It was simply that fairness to others, even fairness to insidious hate-rousing propagandists in his own country, was part of his nature. It had not occurred to him that the Germans had ceased to be human overnight.
His common sense, however, dictated that advice should be sought, especially when he discovered that some of his subjects -and these were some who were sincere and not rabble-rousers - felt it was improper, when we were struggling for our lives against the Germans, that our own Sovereign, symbolic leader of a Britain opposing a loathed Hohenzollern, should bear the designation Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
The King was not sure that
strictly he had a surname.
He had never used one - understandably,
because no royal surname operated in
But now the King had firmly decided that a new name
must be taken.
And at length there came, as in so many problems through the years there has come, a solution from the Royal
Household. For it was Lord Stamfordham, that soundest
of Private Secretaries, who suggested '
On 17 July
A popular wedding picture taken on the day the Duke of York
married Lady Elisabeth. The parents of the
couple are with them
The substance was His Majesty's decision that 'Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor' and that all British-based descendants in the male line of 'Our Grandmother Queen Victoria of blessed and glorious memory' were immediately to relinquish 'All German Titles and Dignities'.
So
Thus
was the royal style anglicised by George V 'in the
eighth year
of our Reign'; thus a dynasty was christened; and thus the
Across the battle lines, the German
Emperor was predictably not amused. His reaction, spiky as his
moustache, was that he would be looking forward to the
next performance of Shakespeare's Merry Wive* of Saxe-Coburg'Gotha. And in England, the German-born but very English
Prince Louis, on hearing that it had been officially proclaimed that he
was titled Battenberg no longer, wrote in the visitors* book of a house where
he spent several days: 'Arrived Prince Hyde.
Departed Lord Jekyll.' Hostilities never subdued the Mountbatten
family sense of humour - and that grandfather of Prince Philip's possessed it abundantly.
When King George opened
Meanwhile, the war ground on. It seemed grimmer than
ever in 1917, and the outlook gave no promise of brighter news from
the front.
Altering a royal name had not altered either the weary stalemate or the weight of shellfire on the Western Front. But what King
George's pronouncement had done was implacably to blazon the determination of British monarch and British
people to conquer a tyranny. The
King, though no chauvinist and a hater of war, was said to have turned pale with anger many times on
reading gruesome dispatches from the
front and reports of enemy atrocities. He
urged his mother Queen Alexandra to
keep heart and faith that we should win in the end. 'I shall never
submit to those brutal Germans', he told
her. Secretly, he must have wondered at times whether he might be the last as well as the first '
The
moments when
By
October the German Government was putting out feelers for armistice terms. Early
in November a
George V at the helm of his racing yacht Britannia in
Two
days later, at dawn in the coach of a train in the French
The
First World War was at an end. In
None knew better than the Head of State, however, that an exhausted country would soon be expecting a reward of tonic and case after all the sacrifices; and, pray though he did, he was aware that no magic stroke would bring it. The bells of thanksgiving rang out bravely enough aftet the bugles of truce, but they did not peal away the truth that the flower of the nation's young, leaders for rebuilding the future, had been slaughtered on the battlefields. The emaciating sacrifices had not created a new earth, and there was no new heaven just round the corner.
Aftermath
The King was fifty/three when the war ended, and was looking old beyond
his years. Queen Mary was a well-preserved fifty-one. The Prince
of Wales was twenty-four,
Golf was one of several sports enjoyed after the war by the Duke of York, here seen in action against Frank Hodges, leader of the Miners' Union,
on a course in the Valley in 1924.
The family - except the Prince of Wales who was in Canada on the first of his Empire tours - saw His Majesty
lead the nation's tribute to the 900,000 war
dead at the tall Cenotaph in the middle of London's Whitehall in
1919- The ceremony took the form of a memorial service at the foot of the
monument on n November, exactly one year
after the fighting had stopped. The Cenotaph was at first built of wood, co the design of Sir Edwin Lutyem.
It was reconstructed in stone during the following year, and stands in
In 1920, on the second anniversary of the
Armistice, there took place not
only the wreath'laymg and the service of prayer at
the monument in
Engagement photograph, 1935 of
the Duke ofGloucester
and Lady Aim
Montagu-Douglas/Scott, now Princess Alice, the dowager Duchess. Her mother, the Duchess of Buccleuch, is
on the left.
Soon,
the King was grateful to resume at least some of his old peacetime
routines in both protocol and personal pursuit. He held formal receptions at the Palace once more, and the pageantry of the Guards
in the full glory of scarlet tunics and bearskins was seen when he drove out to open Parliament in State. He
was able to see Balmoral again - he had not visited
it for six years - and there was more time for Sandrmgham
and the country life he loved. Queen Mary was busy again in
The Queen accompanied her husband on most of his activities, though not, if she could avoid it, on board ships. She loathed the sea as much as he loved it. The King was never more animated and happy than when at the helm of his racing yacht Britannia, with a great spread of sail above him, his crew of thirty fellow enthusiasts around him, deck aslant and lee gunwale under water as the vessel went tearing through the scudding Solent during the competitions of Cowes Week;
But there was more to the peacetime years than bright ceremonial and sailing. Post-war pleasures were overclouded for everybody. However strong was the anxiety to get back to normal - to forget troubles and cheer Hobbs hitting centuries, Joe Beckett knocking out Bombardier Wells, Bolton Wanderers scoring Cup goals, Charlie Chaplin making the first comedy film classics and Cltu Chin Chow breaking records at His Majesty's Theatre - life was chiefly a thing of work-chasing worry, and the world would never be the same again. Politics and industry were in painful disarray, and Prime Minister Lloyd George's 'Land Fit for Heroes' just a dream. Disappointment was the aftermath of war.
And
not only in
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Balmoral in the evening sun: three
new views of the Castle. More a home than
a fortification, it is to Scotland what Sandringham
is to England: private house end holiday retreat, Balmoral was
the realisation of a dream of Queen Victoria,
audits building, between 1853 and 1856, was supervised
by the Prince Consort. |
Broadlands, the Hampshire home of the late Earl Mountbatten of
The King George IV Gateway front the lattins beside the Long Walk. The battlemented towers of
TOP Sandringham House from across the bottom The Queen's fitting room at
conflict
there was born (on the dining-room table of a villa in
In 1922 Philip's father, Prince Andrew, was pretty unjustly put on trial for his life in Athens by the Greeks, smarting under defeat by the Turks; and King George V, who was related to the Greek royal family, managed to send in a rescue ship to bring the Prince and his family to safety - the infant Philip, future Duke of Edinburgh, included.
All the same, the Sovereign could hardly have had much
time to think about Greek babies just
then. Turmoil in his own kingdom was preoccupation
enough. As so often,
The infant Prince Philip of
The King, deeply disturbed at the break-up of part of the United
Kingdom, had brushed aside warnings of personal risk and crossed to Belfast to open in person and earnestly to address the first
session of new
Ulster Parliament under the Government of Ireland Act. He hoped
that peace and amity on both sides of the border would follow, but it was not to
be. The ardent Republicans were not appeased by the new status, and civil war
ravaged
On the English side of the
His First Minister now was a former clerk and son of a farm labourer, James Ramsay MacDonald from Lossiemouth in Scotland; the new Lord Privy Seal was a trade union organiser who had been a Lancashire mill hand, J. R. Clynes; the Home Secretary was an ex-foundry worker, Arthur Henderson; and the Secretary of State for the Colonies a sometime engine-driver, J. H. Thomas. It was characteristic of the King's sense of duty and his honest efforts to be impartial that, unfamiliar though he was with leaders of such kind, he treated them as though they were blue-blooded to a man. He knew that they had become experienced politicians. He recognised their intelligence and seriousness; he was willing to look for their potential as statesmen and was hopeful that their sense of responsibility would increase.
In short, the King treated the Labour men with kindness, sympathy
and co/operation from the start. He was at pains to know them personally, to be useful to them with
experienced advice when they came in audience, and to give them guidance
on matters of protocol. They, for their part, though a little awkward in his presence at first, warmed to the genial reception
they received and liked the quiet
kindness of the man in whose name they and their administration had been called
upon to act. Somewhat against the grain,
they even took trouble to meet the Sovereign's meticulousness
The Duke and Duchess of
The East Front of 
Parents and grandparents at Princess Elisabeth's christening on 29
May At the time no one imagined that this child, the
present Queen, would occupy :he Throne.
The Music Room at
over what he deemed to be correct clothing by buying or hiring suits of tailed Court dress - though, fearing the laughter of their followers, they jibbed at knee breeches.
The King wrote to his mother: 'They have different ideas Co ours and they are all socialists, but they ought 10 be given a chance and ought to be treated fairly.'
He
readily took to his well-spoken new Prime Minister, and indeed seemed from the very beginning to see more sound qualities in
him than many other people did, including some of his own colleagues. Unfortunately, Mr
MacDonald, seasoned public figure though
he was, after a short time began to worry judicious observers by an inclination, or so it seemed, to spend as
much time in drawing rooms as m debating chambers. His manifest basking
in the Sovereign's friendliness displeased many Labour
followers. He found it hard to resist
giving himself airs. Though he worked hard and with some success for general disarmament and the settlement of a
disturbed
Mr MacDonald had taken the task of leadership this time at the insistent request of the King. Throughout the post-war years George V was as much in day-to-day concern over the state of the nation as his politicians were, and did not hesitate to put forward opinion and appeal over matters on which he felt deeply. One of these problems was the mounting total of the unemployed (even by 1920 the total had passed the two million mark} and the meagre amount of State aid for people out of a job. In 1921 he had sent a typical letter to the Secretary of the Cabinet urging that there should be more concentration on work schemes such as road-building and forestation. Giving subsistence money was not enough, and in his view the amounts of the weekly dole payments were not enough anyhow. 'It is impossible', the royal message said, 'to expect people to subsist upon the unemployment benefit of fifteen shillings for men and twelve shillings for women.' Could not the Government treat the situation 'with the same liberality as they displayed in dealing with the enormous daily cost of the war;*
Just as he had placed his faith and his counsel in
the service of Stanley Baldwin during the earlier troubles
culminating in the National Strike of 1926 - His Majesty had declined personal intervention then but had warned against Churchillian extremes of provocation - so the King in 1931
worked with a mixed assembly of
Ministers as they fought to bring the nation back from the brink of bankruptcy. MacDonald gave up as leader after four
grim years, during which his bland association with the Liberals, the Conservatives and the King brought to him the
final break with the Labour Party which he
had helped to found. In 1935
It was during those post-war
years of worldwide slumps and realignments that the King, though zealous to succour both his politicians at home and his own family
life around him, was anxious also to keep
fast the straining ties of Empire. And for this he dispatched his not unwilling eldest son on a
further series of long tours abroad - during the Eastern journey alone he travelled fifty thousand
miles. On these official missions, the smiling fair-haired Prince of Wales established a popular image all
over the world.
A scene near the Slack Exchange during the General Strike of
The public transport system had come to a standstill;
commuters hitched lifts whenever they could.
The
King himself always preferred to stay at home in
Modesty
was one of the pleasant qualities of George V's second son, Bertie, the
stay-at-home one, quietly content to be 'also-ran' to the
mercurial David. This was the son whose unassuming nature was in accord with
his own. But the royal father was anxious to 'bring
Bertie out' and help him to combat his hesitations of speech in
public and the innate shyness which had not been dispelled by his wartime service in Navy and Air Force and a
subsequent course of study at Trinity College, Cambridge. He had enjoyed
a largely informal visit to
On that formidable exercise in royal duty overseas, the still nervous and highly strung Duke made the first firm steps towards confidence in public - largely because he had acquired delightful support. For already the future King George VI had beside him his wonderful wife. The nervous but determined Prince Bertie had courted Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon for two years. She accepted him in 1923 and they were married the same year. The new Duchess of York, destined to be a shining thread in the fabric of modern royal history, was a charmer from the beginning, as she was to be in the half-century of sterling service as Queen Consort and Queen Mother which - though none knew it then lay awaiting her strength and her smile.
Her husband was the first of George V's sons to
marry. The next to do so was the fourth in age, Prince
George the Duke of Kent, who took as his
bride in 1934 the elegant Princess Marina of
All
the marriages were popular public occasions. But the most shining matrimonial
event of those times, also in 1922, was a wedding
that was not only royal but the social event of a decade, a picture-book
extravaganza at St Margaret's,
King George and Queen Mary were
not frequent travellers overseas but on reaching Continental sunshine
they enjoyed themselves. Here they are with
glamorous
and highly intelligent Edwina Ashley, heiress to the fortune of a millionaire
grandfather, Sir Ernest Cassel, an Anglo' German
financier who had been a great friend of King Edward VII. The Prince of Wales,
looking extraordinarily young and slightly overpowered by his Admiral's
uniform, was best man. It was all very star-studded. King George and Queen Mary
and Queen
Alexandra attended; royalty came from all over
The
old Victorian pattern of'royals marrying royals' had
been broken, all the same. It had been
quite happily demolished, in fact, in
the year after the war when there took place [he wedding of the popular
Princess 'Pat' of Connaught, a granddaughter of Queen
Small though the signs were, barriers of archaic formality surrounding the monarchy were beginning to be breached during the twenties and thirties of the century.
top Three generations infant of the miniature Welsh
cottage at Royal Lodge, Windsor, which was given to Princess Elisabeth (on
the right) by the people of above Armistice Day, 1933.
The Duke and Duchess of
New Blood
To King George and Queen Mary the marriages of the three sons brought more than ordinary parental joy. Ever since their family had emerged from the nursery stage they had found it difficult to have any close companionship with them. No real rapport existed: the generation gap inside the Palace seemed unbridgeable. Formality reigned at family gatherings. No parties were given for the young people. The Queen was shy, as unbending with her own offspring at home as she was when on public duty. She was never bred to romp and frolic - though she was not without a sense of humour. And the King, kind and domestic person though he was, had not moved out of the nineteenth century when it came to confronting teenagers. To be censorious with his growing-up boys was a natural reflex; he never began to understand, never ceased to criticise the altered conventions and standards of behaviour which had come in with the post-war years. He used to try to amend this failing by bursts of rough chaffing, but they only made matters worse. His sons were afraid of him. Even when the Princes attained manhood his often querulous disapproval did not stop - until those marriages came. Then the situation altered rosily.
The arrival in a family circle which had become cold and isolated of three lively daughters-in-law from worlds outside the Court caused a distinct relaxation of manner in the King and Queen in their homes. The geniality and unembarrassed affection which the sons and daughter had known when they were very small, but not since, was shed on them once more because it was released upon their wedded partners. In the King the change was most happily marked. And in return he himself was loved, no longer feared, by his own.
The Duke of York's bride, the uninhibited Lady Elizabeth, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore, at once captivated her father-in-law when she danced like a breath of Highland air and shaft of sunshine into the hitherto hidebound Court and cloistered Palace life. That was no surprise to Queen Mary, who from the moment of meeting the girl from Glamis, before ever she accepted her son's proposal, had taken a great liking to a charming young lady who so naturally combined spontaneity and sense of duty. All through her life, the undemonstrative Queen Mary maintained a relationship of special affection for the younger woman whose standards were often her own and whose endearing ease in public and in facing new situations she admired though could hardly by nature emulate. As to the King, the love he gave to his first daughter-in-law lifted his spirits, mellowed his views, and contained in it something of the same sort of devotion which throughout her life he extended to his 'Darling Motherdear', Queen Alexandra (who died at Sandnngham in 1925, well into her eighty-first year, almost as old as Queen Victoria had been).
Elizabeth Bowes'Lyon had
- as the Queen Mother of today still has - the touch of
gold in human relationships, and it was almost effortlessly that she not only enhanced the life of her husband but by her influence fashioned the new warmth between her
husband and his father, an accord of confidence and encouragement. King
George had always felt more akin to his second son than to his eldest, the personable but iconoclastic David, the
Prince of Wales. And now, towards the married Bertie, the affection was
almost wistful when the father wrote to him:
'You are indeed a lucky man to have
such a charming and delightful wife as
And Elizabeth, the new Royal Duchess, inspirer of this release of sentiment, reciprocated the King's feelings. Unlike his own children, she was from the start never afraid of him, and not once in the twelve years of being his daughter-in-law did she have any experience of the well-known tetchiness which never altogether deserted him. In her own words written later in life, 'He was so dependable and could be deliciously funny when he was in the mood.'
A measure of this fond relationship was the happiness of the King at the birth of the Duchess's first baby on 21 April 1926 - : Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary of Windsor, today's reigning Queen Elizabeth II. She was the first grandchild in the male line.
For the prematurely old monarch, however, domestic felicity was never for long undisturbed. He was plucked from it by the cares and councils of the General Strike which came two weeks after the Princess's birth. He was also denied family life's full enjoyment by his own frail health, the progressive physical weakness which became seriously worrying to his Queen, his children and his doctors. He had suffered from chesty colds since he was a small boy, and soon after the war attacks of bronchitis developed. Through these his constitution had noticeably begun to fail in 1925, the year after he had painstakingly marked a national milestone by opening I and making his first broadcast speech at the great British Empire Exhibition staged in Wembley Stadium.
He was so stricken, weak and bedridden at the beginning of T92 5 that for a whole fortnight he was unable to hold a pen and write the nightly log in his leather-bound diary - which was for him a depressing failure and deprivation, and for those about him an indication of the seriousness of his condition. The death of his loved and lovely mother, late that year, was a weakening sorrow too, though by then he was up and about, on the surface much as usual.
The welcome given to
the Jubilee precession by the
Indeed, with care his health did improve. In the next two years he was able to confront with at any rate an appearance of robustness the continuing political and industrial troubles of his country. He also resolutely fulfilled heavy programmes of public engagements, laying foundation stones, opening county halls and a number of bridges as well as the Mersey Tunnel, inaugurating London's first airport on the grass of Croydon, attending Wimbledon and the Cup Final and as many other varied sporting occasions as his days could possibly stand.
But in November and December of 1928 he became even more gravely ill than before. 'Unable to give due attention to the affairs of Our Realm', as his royal warrant put it, he appointed six Counsellors of State to act in his stead. Propped up in bed, he was barely able to sign the warrant. A pleural abscess had developed, weakening the King's heart. An operation was performed just in time to save his life, but he was in a critical condition for many days. Crowds waited outside the Palace gates to read the doctors' bulletins posted there each day. Churches were kept open day and night for intercessions.
Again he recovered, very slowly this time. Not
until February 1929 had he turned the
corner sufficiently for Queen Mary to take him
to a house named Craigwell on the outskirts of Bognor in
One of the nicest stories of the early childhood of the Princess -the present Queen - reports a remark she made one Christmas at Sandringham when, with the family, she was listening to, and mishearing, carollers singing 'Glad tidings of great joy I bring to you and all mankind'. The small girl's comment was: 'I like that. And I know who Old Man Kind is - it's Grandpapa.'
The
West Terrace of
are gone, the house remains essentially unchanged
In the spring of 1929 'Man Kind' was better enough
to return to
King George's final years, in the first half of the thirties, were plagued by the inherent bronchitis. But he brushed aside medical advice in persistently refusing to go abroad for even a week or two of Mediterranean warmth and sunshine. He worked on, in his own land, taking things more quietly than he had ever done but worrying over the papers on his desk as much as ever he had. There was plenty of cause for concern. The country had barely avoided complete economic collapse. Massive loans from foreign bankers had not eased the chronic unemployment situation or erased the shame of the Hunger Marches and the Great Depression.
Abroad,
However much British appeasers declared,that Adolfthe Fuhrer had really no evil intent and that war would rot come again. King George V had no illusions: he clearly saw the dangers of both Nazi ambitions and
'What will people think of such fuss in these anxious times;' His Majesty had growled when he surveyed the plans - which Queen Mary had willingly encouraged - for a national celebration in 1935 of his twenty-five years on the Throne.
What people did think was that it was well worth while; and on the day of the royal Silver Jubilee, a gloriously
sunny May the Sixth, beflagged
Towns and villages far and wide spent the day in
jollifications to salute the anniversary.
Then at ten in the evening the King pressed a button in
The King was surprised and moved. Why, he asked in his diary, should such a never-to-be-forgotten day take place at such a time of national difficulty and world danger? 'I'd no idea they felt like that about me', he wrote. 'I'm beginning to think they must like me for myself.' It was the right answer. He had become a focus of stability and reliability in a darkening scene; the demonstrations of regard for him must have warmed a weak old heart which was destined to beat for only another eight months. Soon after the period of the Jubilee celebrations the final decline of his health began. He was too frail to attend the 19] 5 service of November remembrance at the Cenotaph, and his grief at the death of his favourite sister Princess Victoria in December seemed to lessen his will to live.
But he did manage to make his Christmas Day broadcast, from a small ground'floor room at Sandrmgham House, and he insisted on doing it 'live' as usual, with his family listening nervously in the next room. It was he who in 1932 had started the now traditional Sovereign's Message via the BBC microphone to nation and Commonwealth. Those little fireside talks 'on the wireless', the measured voice conveying the sincerity of the speaker, were milestones in the early history of public broadcasting which had begun in 1922. He did not know it, did not try to be it, but the King was a perfect radio talker. There was a nice rumbling depth in the phrases, and a bit of bronchial grating too, but no trace of the guttural Germanic of his forebears and a few of his family contemporaries. The tones were warmly resonant and paternal, bringing the caring personality of the man into millions of homes by the very sound of him.
He used to broadcast because he felt it his duty, not because he liked doing it. He was always glad when what was for him an ordeal was over - and was far from impressed when told on one occasion by an obsequious Minister that 'you have been permanently recorded for posterity as you spoke, Sir. How wonderful if we'd had a recording of Queen Elizabeth I.'
His Majesty's reply was a gruff'Damn Queen Elizabeth'.
Broadcasting
- in sound only, for regular
public-service television, in which the British Broadcasting Corporation led
the world, did not come until late in I9J6
- was the outstanding scientific achievement
of George V's era. The reign had also seen tremendous developments in
other fields. Australia was brought within
three days' flying time of the United Kingdom, for example; advances in
electric power banished a gaslit world; motor-car owning started to be popular; and a matchless
railway system had its crack
expresses steaming along, even then, at a hundred miles an hour.
Literature and music and the theatre flowered too in that quarter of a century,
its giants including Chesterton and Belloc, Shaw and Galsworthy, Elgar
and Delius, Frank Benson and Ellen Terry.
Sport had its
A Rip Van Winkle from Edwardian times would have been astonished to find how the appearance of human beings had changed by the end of King George's reign. Hourglass waists had
Been released and muffs rebuffed;
giddy girls called flappers wore their
hair bobbed and lavishly lipsticked their mouths;
they danced the
costumes
swam unsegregated from thr
boyfriends. Men had turned away from silk
hats and high-crowned bowlers to free-and-easy soft caps and trilbies;
Not that the King altered his style, however. It was in his nature to regard sarrorial changes as the eccentricities of a raving world, and he himself kept to the fashions of his youth: bard hats, stiff collars, waistcoats, watch-chains, narrow trousers creased at the sides, spats and cloth-topped boots. It was reputed that he used the same collar stud for fifty years. He had a cautious suspicion even of some of his era's technical advances, including miracles of communication which had entered the nation's life. Though he was glad enough to use it to keep in touch with that loved sister Victoria on any day when he had not seen her, he was inclined to regard the telephone as a diabolical invention for lazy people. Queen Mary never used the instrument at all.
It was well that the King's ways did not alter. His moral strength, and in the end his repute and his value to his country, lay in the quality of unvarying dependability, the rocklike common sense and enduring fairness which he exemplified. And his probity prevented his prejudices from hurting anyone but himself. He left behind his sterling character as well as his stamp collection. In his old-fashioned decencies resided a national asset and anchor.
The anchor
chain was slipping, clearly and quickly, as the New Year
began, and from
Aglimpse of the
whose first
child, the present Duke, was barely three months old.
On 20 January 1936,
members of the Privy Council assembled .n
the King's bedroom where His Majesty lay gravely ill.
The Lord President read aloud a proclamation setting up an emergency
Council of State. At the end, the King said I approve', but even with help his hand was unable to manage a signature
at the foot of :he document. Finally, with a faint smile of apology
to those around :he bed, he made the mark of his
initials. But no further word came. The
voice which less than a month before had been heard sounding a brave note of hope around the nations was
silent now. It was his it broadcast; and now he was in his last hours.
Just before midnight on that cold
When the news of his passing was announced, a sense of loss and
uncertainty
was widespread throughout the country, for
Moreover, within the family it was also .known that in His Majesty's mind there was a small though worrying cloud of a more intimate kind, centred on his popular eldest son and heir, David the Prince of Wales - Prince Charming in the eyes of the public and an admired figure to his relatives, but in fact a charmer who was proving unsure and erratic, a man whose nature, so unlike his father's, betrayed a leashed restlessness and rebellion against the regimen of his parents. David was loved but David was alarming. His personal style, his friends and interests, were already disturbing. His father and mother had for some time known about his 'latest friendship' with an American married woman. The King had always done his best to bring up this vigorous son to be ready to give his whole mind to the responsibilities of sovereignty which were his destiny.
But how would that Prince shape now that the supreme torch of service was coming to his hand? What sort of monarch was about to leap on to the stage!
It was a question hardly yet breathed as the nation mourned the loss of the first of the Royal Windsors.
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