King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

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СКАЧАТЬ work, his son should suffer equally; and yet in fact no thought could have been further from his mind.

      The best hope for Edward seemed to be that he would fail to pass the entrance examination. Everyone agreed that he should be subjected to the same ordeal as any other candidate, though he was to be medically inspected by the royal doctors – ‘I may perhaps add that he is a particularly strong, healthy boy,’ wrote Hansell.² He had no Latin, but at a pinch could have offered German as an alternative. No one doubted that he was intelligent enough, but his spelling was appalling and his knowledge of mathematics exiguous. The Prince of Wales was apprehensive, then delighted and relieved to be told his son had passed the viva voce examination with flying colours. ‘Palpably above the average,’ said Sir Arthur Fanshawe,³ while another examiner, Lord Hampton, said that of the three hundred boys he had seen, Edward had been equal to the best.⁴ ‘This has pleased us immensely,’ wrote the Princess of Wales proudly.⁵ But the overall results of the written examination were not so flattering. In fact he ‘failed by a few marks to pass the qualifying examination, an Admiralty official reported in 1936. ‘Prince Edward obtained 291 marks out of 600 … but I notice that 5 candidates with lower marks were entered.’⁶

      At all events, he did well enough to be admitted without imposing too great a strain on the examiners’ consciences. In May 1907 his father took him to the Naval College at Osborne in the Isle of Wight. ‘I felt the parting from you very much,’ the Prince of Wales wrote two days later, ‘and we all at home miss you greatly. But I saw enough … to assure me that you would get on capitally and be very happy with all the other boys. Of course at first it will all seem a bit strange to you but you will soon settle down … and have a very jolly time of it.’⁷ It seems unlikely that Prince Edward saw jolly times ahead when he received this letter. For any small boy the first exile to boarding school must be a scarifying experience; for Edward the ordeal was worse since he had been evicted abruptly from a cloistered family circle in which the existence of other children was hardly known. He shared a dormitory with thirty others, adjusting himself painfully to the fact that the day began at six, discipline was rigid, all work and play were conducted in a hectic bustle. He slept between the sons of Lord Spencer and Admiral Curzon-Howe. They had been chosen because their parents were well known to the Prince of Wales, but to Edward they seemed at first as alien as if they had been visitors from Mars. He had no idea how to relate to his contemporaries and had to learn not only new manners but almost a new language. It was much to his credit that he managed to look cheerful when his father left and to write proudly a few days later: ‘I am getting on very well here now … I think nothing of going up the mast as I am quite used to it.’⁸ His mother gratefully took his protestations at face value. ‘He has fallen into his new life very quickly,’ she told her aunt Augusta, ‘which is such a blessing.’⁹

      The Prince of Wales’s instructions were that his son was to be treated exactly like any other naval cadet. Edward asked for nothing better, his ruling desire was to conform and to be accepted by his peers. But there was no chance that he would be able to escape altogether from his identity. He was subjected to mild bullying by small boys determined to show that he was not anything very special; red ink was poured down his neck, his hands were tied behind his back and he was guillotined in the sash window of his classroom. But his inoffensiveness and obvious determination not to trade on his rank soon led to his acceptance. Within a few weeks he had won through, was given a nickname – ‘Sardines’, presumably because he was the son of the Prince of W[h]ales – and became a tolerated if not leading member of society.

      ‘Perhaps the actual hours of work at Osborne are not excessive,’ the Prince of Wales wrote to Hansell, with greater perception than might have been expected, ‘but the whole life is a very strenuous one and they are never alone and therefore never quiet from the time they get up till the time they go to bed.’¹⁰ Sociable by nature, Edward survived the hurly-burly well, but the gaps left by Hansell’s teaching quickly became apparent. He did well in French but even special coaching in mathematics failed to raise him from the bottom ten places in the Exmouth term of sixty or so cadets. On the whole he settled respectably, if without great distinction, a little above the halfway mark; more important, he worked steadily throughout his two years at Osborne, reaching his peak after eighteen months and then only slipping back because of ill health. His father applauded his achievements and was decently consolatory about his setbacks. ‘I am delighted with the good reports that were sent me about you and that you are now 24th in your term,’ he wrote at the end of 1907, ‘… that is splendid, and I am sure you must be very pleased about it too and it will make you more keen about your mark.’¹¹

      Edward’s letters to his parents were short and uncommunicative even by the standards of schoolboys, consisting mainly of excuses for not having written before or at greater length: ‘I am in a bean-bag team and I had to practise every morning,’ was one explanation; ‘I have had to practise Swedish drill every morning,’ occurred a few weeks later; then, in desperation, ‘I have been doing such a lot of things lately that I have not had much time.’¹² His father tolerated brevity but not a failure to write at all. ‘You must be able to find time to write to me once a week,’ he protested, ‘… I am anxious to hear how you are getting on.’¹³ Edward endured stoically the separation from his family, but felt it a bit hard when his mother announced that she intended to visit Germany during the first two weeks of his first holidays. The Princess of Wales was apologetic but unrelenting; Aunt Augusta was eighty-five and unable to travel. ‘I hope we shall have great fun when we do meet,’ she wrote.¹⁴ In spite of the demands on their time the Waleses generally did manage to make the holidays fun. ‘We miss you most dreadfully,’ the Prince of Wales wrote when his son returned to Osborne. ‘I fear you felt very sad at leaving home. I know I did when I was a boy, it is only natural that you should, and it shows that you are fond of your home.’¹⁵

      By the time Prince Albert followed his brother to Osborne, Edward was in his last term and a figure of some consequence. ‘I hope you have “put him up to the ropes” as we say,’ wrote their father. ‘You must look after him all you can.’¹⁶ Opportunities for such tutelage were limited, boys from different terms were not supposed to mix at Osborne and when the brothers wanted to talk together surreptitious assignations had to be made in the further reaches of the playing fields. Prince Edward was expected to do more than just give comfort to his sibling; the Prince of Wales frequently instructed him to make sure Bertie worked harder or to pass on complaints about his failure to concentrate. Edward seems to have relished the quasi-parental role, especially since his brother did conspicuously worse than him. ‘Bertie was 61st in the order which was not so bad,’ he wrote later from Dartmouth. ‘I really think he is trying to work a bit. This is an excellent thing …’¹⁷

      Though Edward had hardly been an outstanding success at Osborne, let alone a hero, he had profited by his time there. He had gained immeasurably in confidence and found that it was possible to get on well with his contemporaries. ‘He is wonderfully improved,’ noted Esher, ‘Osborne has made him unshy, and given him good manners.’¹⁸ His father, after only one term, found him ‘more manly’ and much more able to look after himself.¹⁹ It had been sink or swim; anyone who could not look after himself in the maelstrom of Osborne life would not have survived for long. But he had swum, and even got some pleasure out of doing so. When he got home to Frogmore at the beginning of his first holidays he had found the entrance beflagged and a large banner reading ‘Vive l’amiral!’ No banners flew on his final departure from Osborne but a sense of achievement possessed him just the same.

      Dartmouth follows Osborne as the day the night, and giving something of the same impression of light following dark. Though the discipline seemed almost as harsh, the bullying as mindless, the tempo of life as relentless as at Osborne, the cadets were that much nearer to maturity and their troubles easier to endure. ‘This is a very nice place, much nicer than Osborne …’ wrote Edward in relief in May 1909. ‘There is a very nice Chapel here and I think I am going to join the Choir.’ But the pressure was still on. ‘There is an СКАЧАТЬ