King Edward VIII. Philip Ziegler

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ last piece of information. How could he do a proper job of cleaning his teeth in so short a time? ‘This is so important and I want to know. Don’t forget to answer this question.’²¹ Edward’s reply was tinged with the exasperation that a boy of fifteen properly feels towards a fussing mother. The three minutes did not include time for brushing teeth. ‘We are allowed plenty of time for that. There is also plenty of time in the morning, and I am taking great care of my teeth.’²²

      He had moved on to Dartmouth with his contemporaries from Osborne, so the process of adjustment was less painful than at the junior college. Stephen King-Hall, who was a cadet in the same year, recorded that he was ‘rather shy but generally liked’. In his first terms he was sometimes seen staggering back from the football fields with a load of boots, victim of the wish of some senior cadet to be able to say in later life: ‘The King once carried my boots.’²³ His academic strengths and weaknesses did not greatly change. In May 1909 he reported proudly that he was top in German, second in history, top in English, third in French, but only thirty-seventh in the overall order, still dragged down by his inability to manage any branch of mathematics.²⁴ In the exams in March 1910 he was forty-eighth in geometry and forty-fifth in trigonometry out of a term of fifty-nine: ‘That is quite good for me,’ he wrote defensively.²⁵ He found exams difficult and regularly produced worse results than he had in class. Lord Knutsford stayed at York Cottage early in 1911 and spoke to Edward about the examination system. The Prince praised it, in spite of his own inadequacy. As to the final exams, he said, ‘I dare say I shall take some time, as I am not at all clever, but I might pass.’ Knutsford found him ‘a really charming boy, very simple and keen’. He taught him card tricks and found that ‘he could do the “French drop” fairly well’.²⁶

      The previous year his Easter holidays had been unexpectedly extended by the sudden illness of the King. During the night of 6 May 1910 Edward VII died. The first Edward knew of it was when Bertie saw from their window in Marlborough House that the Royal Standard over Buckingham Palace was at half mast. He mentioned this to his father who muttered, ‘That’s all wrong,’ and ordered the Standard to be transferred to Marlborough House and flown ‘close up’.²⁷ King Edward VII might be dead but the King lived.

      With his father now King George V, Edward automatically inherited the Dukedom of Cornwall. Life at Dartmouth in theory was unchanged but the cadets would have been less than human if they had not recognized that only one life stood between their fifteen-year-old contemporary and the throne.

      Perhaps in deference to his presence, the authorities at Dartmouth had introduced a course of Civics. He told his father that he was much enjoying it and discovering a great deal about the constitution: ‘It is such a useful subject for me to learn.’²⁸ He began to follow the daily papers, taking the Morning Post and the Westminster Gazette. It was ‘a very good thing, I think’, he told his mother. ‘It is about time I read the papers, as in years to come, when I am obliged to follow politics, I shall know something about it.’²⁹ The King saw this letter and at once wrote to insist that The Times be substituted for the Morning Post – ‘the views and opinions expressed are much sounder in every way’. The Westminster Gazette was excellent and moderate – ‘You should always try and form moderate opinions about things, and never extreme ones, especially in politics.’³⁰ He must have written with special feeling since Britain was involved in a constitutional crisis over the powers of the House of Lords in which moderate opinions were hard to find. ‘It must have been so very hard for Papa to say the right thing, and yet show at the same time that he was not partial to one party or the other,’ wrote Edward sympathetically.³¹

      The succession of his father to the throne with all the attendant ceremonies reduced the usefulness of Edward’s last term at Dartmouth. His parents were sorry that he should find himself thrust into the position of heir to the throne ‘without being older and having more preparation’. Still, the Queen told her aunt Augusta, ‘we have done our best for him and we can only hope and pray we may have succeeded and that he will ever uphold the honour and traditions of our house’.³² The Rev. H. Dixon Wright, who prepared Edward for confirmation, had the same cause at heart. The Prince’s mind, he told Archbishop Davidson, was ‘absolutely innocent and uncontaminated’. With the consent of the King Wright had ‘warned him on the subject of “the sinful lusts of the flesh”, that he may be forearmed’.³³ The Archbishop was somewhat dismayed to find that the King expected him to ‘examine’ the Prince in the presence of his parents and suggested some relaxation of the procedure. ‘I have no wish whatever for the examination which my dear brother and I had to undergo in the presence of the Queen and my parents,’ wrote George V cheerfully. ‘I thought it a terrible ordeal, but was under the impression it was always done with the members of my family. Delighted to hear that it is not necessary.’³⁴ The confirmation passed off none the worse for this breach with precedent. ‘The impression made upon me by the quiet boyish simplicity, the clear and really thoughtful attitude, and the wistful keenness of the young Prince is one which can never be effaced,’ wrote the Archbishop, a tribute that would have been still more impressive if it had been written to anyone but the Queen.³⁵

      The Coronation was fixed for 22 June 1911. Being still only sixteen Edward could not wear a peer’s robes, so his father created him a Knight of the Garter. For one who was soon to show an almost pathological dislike of dressing up, Edward donned the somewhat fanciful costume with striking calm, in his diary noting merely that it would ‘look very well when ready’ and that it was lucky that his father no longer needed his, since the expense would otherwise have been considerable.³⁶ The Queen told her aunt that he had carried off the ceremony with great sang-froid and dignity: ‘David wore the Garter dress white and silver with the cloak and big hat and feathers. He really looked too sweet.’³⁷

      The Coronation followed a few days later. The children paid their usual morning visit to their parents and found the King brusque and conspicuously nervous. He showed Edward the Admiralty Order in The Times gazetting him a midshipman and handed him the dirk that went with the rank.³⁸ The children then processed together to the Abbey in one of the state coaches. Queen Alexandra had thought this a poor idea and was proved right when the younger princes began to giggle and play the fool. George tried to tickle Mary and fell on the floor. On the return journey things got so bad that only Edward’s threats to hit his brothers maintained any sort of order.³⁹ In the Abbey, however, all was decorous. Edward was conducted to his stall, his brothers bowed as they filed in front of him, Princess Mary curtsied deeply ‘and the Prince rose and gravely bowed to her’.⁴⁰ When the moment came for him to do homage he was consumed by nerves; if he blundered or behaved clumsily, he believed his father would feel that he had failed him.⁴¹ He did not blunder. That night George V wrote in his diary: ‘I nearly broke down when dear David came to do homage to me, as it reminded me so much [of] when I did the same thing to beloved Papa. He did it so well.’⁴²

      By then Edward was already Prince of Wales, given the title on his sixteenth birthday. There had been no formal investiture of a Prince of Wales for more than three hundred years, but the Empress Frederick had suggested the ceremony should be revived; the Bishop of St Asaph espoused the idea; and Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Constable of Caernarvon Castle, saw a chance to gratify Welsh national pride and win political support.⁴³ Some time-honoured traditions were hurriedly invented, Caernarvon Castle refurbished, gold quarried from the Merionethshire hills to make the Prince’s regalia, and a quaint costume of white satin breeches and purple velvet surcoat devised for the occasion. At this point Edward struck. What, he asked, ‘would my Navy friends say if they saw me in this preposterous rig?’⁴⁴ The Queen talked him into grudging acquiescence and Lloyd George taught him some Welsh phrases for the occasion. He practised in the garden at Frogmore, bellowing ‘Mor o gan yw Cymru i gyd’ – all Wales is a sea of song – to Hansell fifty yards away. He could hear every word, reported Hansell.⁴⁵

      The ceremony was a СКАЧАТЬ