Название: King Edward VIII
Автор: Philip Ziegler
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780007481026
isbn:
A less sensitive or more self-confident boy might have recognized the genuine solicitude which lay behind the King’s captiousness and have responded to the spirit rather than the manner. The Prince did not. His health provided grounds for constant skirmishes. ‘Do smoke less, take less exercise, eat more and rest more,’ wrote the King, in despair at his eighteen-year-old son’s increasingly eccentric train of life. ‘You are just at the critical age from now till you are 21 and it is most necessary that you should develop properly, both in mind and body. It all depends … whether you develop into a strong, healthy man or remain a sort of puny, half grown boy.’67 The Prince paid little attention. He had, for reasons difficult to follow, concluded that he was teetering always on the verge of fatness, and to avoid such a fate submitted his body to much violent physical exercise and ate with ill-judged frugality. He considered his parents’ efforts to modify this regime to be fussy and interfering, and dismissed the injunctions of the royal doctors as the vapourings of the King’s hired lackeys. He found it hard to credit what to the outsider seems the patent sincerity of his father’s heartcry: ‘I am only telling you these things for your own good and because I am so devoted to you and take such an interest in everything.’68 There were interludes of harmony: ‘We now understand each other so well,’ wrote the Prince of Wales in July 1913;69 a conversation with the King at York Cottage a few months later ‘made a difference to my life and made me look on everything in a totally different light’;70 but soon there would be more grumbles and recriminations and all the good would be undone.
Queen Mary’s role in the relationship was curiously remote. In the future mother and son were to develop a close rapport, but though there are occasional references in these years to ‘charming talks’ or ‘wise advice’, she played very much a secondary role. When the Prince’s equerry, William Cadogan, urged her to use her influence with the King to ensure that he sometimes addressed a word of encouragement to his son, she accepted that such advice was badly needed but could not bring herself to proffer it.71 One of the few fields where she seemed ready to take an initiative was in the selection of Christmas or birthday presents. Here she avoided any possible disappointment by acting both as donor and recipient. ‘I must just tell you,’ she wrote in May 1912, ‘that I have got for you to give me as a birthday present 2 charming old Chinese cloisonné cups (price £12) for my Chinese Chippendale room.’ The King adopted the same somewhat curious practice. For Christmas the same year he wanted a gold soup bowl. It was ‘awfully expensive, £150’, the Queen told her son, ‘but Papa is very anxious to have it and has ordered it, and I only hope you won’t mind’.72
Prince Albert remained Edward’s closest ally. At Osborne and Dartmouth Edward’s role had been that of protector or occasional critic, but with the Navy behind him the Prince of Wales was able to develop a close companionship with his younger brother. ‘Bertie is a delightful creature and we have so many interests in common,’ wrote the Prince in his diary in 1913, and then a fortnight later, ‘I am so miserable it is dear old Bertie’s last night; we have been so much together of late and I shall miss him terribly.’73 Prince George too, though eight years younger, was now becoming a friend. At first the relationship was very much de haut en bas; the Prince of Wales rather patronizingly explained to his brother about the Royal Navy or made him exercise – ‘George got stitches all the time … he is too fat for running.’74 By 1914 he had become ‘a capital boy’,75 they spent much time together and chatted freely. Bertie was still the real support, however, with whom the Prince of Wales formed a common front against the assaults of unreasonable parents. At dinner with Queen Alexandra, ‘Bertie and I did our best to be funny and we succeeded’;76 at Christmas in York Cottage, ‘it is hard work keeping 3 wild brothers in order; well I should say two, as my 2nd brother helps me. He is nearly as tall as I am and weighs more.’77
Oxford in the autumn of 1912 was to be the next phase of the Prince’s education, but before he went up it was decided he should spend a few months in France. He was reasonably fluent in French but had picked up ‘a very John Bull intonation’ while at Dartmouth, and this called for improvement.78 The Marquis de Breteuil, an anglophile French aristocrat with an American wife and two sons of the Prince’s age, somewhat reluctantly allowed himself to be selected as host. He was summoned to Buckingham Palace to inspect his future charge and found him ‘very thin, younger in appearance than his years, puny [chétif], timid but most attractive’. He insisted that Hansell, by whom he was much impressed, should accompany the Prince. George V emphasized that the visit must be entirely informal; the Marquis pointed out that his guest could hardly fail to call on the President. ‘You’re right,’ said the King. ‘I can’t get used to the idea that in a few months he will be eighteen, and that he’s already the Prince of Wales.’79
He had some excuse for his failure. Everyone agrees that both physically and mentally the Prince was slow to develop. The image of the slight, shy, wistful figure which was to become imprinted in the public consciousness over the next twenty years was already well established. In 1912 he still seemed conspicuously ill-equipped to grapple with the demands imposed on him by his position. Any boy of his age would have been discomfited by the ‘huge and most alarming’ luncheon given by the prefect of police, Louis-Jean Lépine – ‘it was rather trying and the food was nasty,’ but most would have coped better with the informal dance which the Breteuils held in his honour: ‘They were mostly young folk who went on to a ball. I danced once or twice but it bores me to a degree. I went to bed at 10.15.’80 There is no evidence from his diary that he met any girl in France who engaged his attention for more than a few minutes.
How much French he learnt is another matter. An amiable French scholar, Maurice Escoffier, had been engaged to conduct the Prince around France and supervise his studies; not surprisingly he reported on his protégé’s amazing progress. To judge, however, from the Prince’s dislike of the language and reluctance to speak it, an aversion which persisted even after he had lived in France for many years, the progress must have been limited, or at least not maintained. The most that can be said of his three months in France was that he mildly enjoyed them and learnt quite a lot about the country’s history and political structure. More important still, he made himself well liked. ‘He charmed everyone during his stay,’ read a letter which was the more convincing for not being intended for the eyes of his parents. ‘Old and young, rich and poor, were equally impressed by his frankness. The Breteuils could not say enough about his generous and open [belle et franche] nature.’81
‘French customs are very curious, but I suppose I shall get used to them in time,’ wrote the Prince resignedly.82 He was happiest at the Breteuil château in the valley of the Chevreuse, shooting, bathing in the lake, and generally behaving as if he was at home. ‘We hope you will treat him exactly like your own son,’ the King had written. ‘He is a good boy and I know he will always do at once what you tell him.’83 The Marquis’s real sons may not have been best pleased by the imposition on them of this unexpected extra brother but they played their part gallantly. The Prince liked both of them: ‘Even the eldest who likes music is very nice.’84 Fortunately François made up for this aberrant taste by liking tennis too. In Paris the Prince saw the sights; watched Sarah Bernhardt play L’Aiglon – ‘she is about 70 and takes the part of a boy of 18. I think she ought to stop acting now’;85 visited the Jardin d’Acclimatation – ‘a rotten kind of zoo’;86 was received by President Fallières and presented with the grand cordon of the Légion d’honneur – ‘Nothing could have been better or more self-possessed and tactful than the Prince’s manner,’ wrote the British Ambassador. ‘He did not hesitate at all in his French’; and visited the studio of the painter Monsieur Gillot – ‘The Yacht’s foremast is about half the height it ought to be,’ he told the King. ‘I think M. Gillot is one of these impressionist artists, but I know that you hate that sort of painting.’87
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