Darling Georgie (21 page)

Sir Arthur Bigge was a teacher such as the Prince had became accustomed to in Canon Dalton. Like Canon Dalton he was the son of a vicar, but unlike Dalton he did not follow his father into Holy Orders but joined the army, where he was commissioned in the Royal Artillery. As with his former tutor, Prince George was to display the same bouts of rage and impatience that had been a feature of his boyhood. Bigge was undeterred both by this and by his pupil’s royal status. He dealt with whatever problems arose in a straightforward, man-to-man manner. He told the Prince that he felt it no longer appropriate for him and Princess May to continue living in York Cottage because of its unsuitability for entertaining. On another occasion he expressed disapproval to King Edward for deferring the investiture of his son as Prince of Wales until after the
Ophir
cruise.

Sir Arthur Bigge was the prompter should Prince George forget his lines, and it was probably also his talents in promoting the interests of the
Prince that were responsible for putting him on the front pages of the newspapers on 6 December 1901, a few weeks after his return from his world tour. In an emotional speech at the Guildhall, Prince George, summing up his experiences, caught the imagination of the people, probably for the first time. He spoke with emotion of the welcome he had received in the colonies. ‘I appeal to my fellow countrymen at home to prove the strength of the attachment of the Motherland to her children by sending to them of her best.’ He concluded his speech by addressing the businessmen in the audience, reminding them of the ‘commercial needs of the Empire’ and pointing out that the ‘mother country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in the Colonial trade against foreign competitors’. The Prince’s ‘wake up, England’ speech came across as a rallying call to a nation in danger of sliding into a despondency felt all the more after the heady expectations that followed the successful conclusion to the Boer War. The King furthermore made the point that in the future trade and commerce would be the only real connection between the mother country and the colonies.

A few months later Prince George successfully passed another test. In January 1902 he was invited to visit Germany to congratulate the Kaiser on his forty-third birthday. This visit came at a time when Anglo-German relations, hitherto reasonably amicable, were at an all-time low. The British Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, always an advocate of an alliance with Germany, made a plain-spoken reference in a speech at Edinburgh to the behaviour of the German Army during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, to which the German Chancellor, Prince von Bülow, had taken offence. A few days later, during the Budget debate in the
Reichstag,
several deputies retaliated by criticizing the behaviour of the British Army during the South African war. Earlier statements made by the German Chancellor were recalled, notably his ominous and prescient comment in 1899 that ‘in the coming century, the German people will be either the hammer or the anvil’. Against a background of political and diplomatic tensions and increasing Anglo-German hostility King Edward decided that it would be unwise for Prince George to visit Germany. The Prince was disappointed
that his father intended cancelling his visit. Recalling similar anti-British hostility on the part of the Germans two years earlier, when he attended the Crown Prince’s coming of age, he was not put off. He liked his cousin the Kaiser and did not share his father’s resentment of all things German. In the event the visit did take place and the German Chancellor and Prince George found themselves in harmony. The Kaiser was pleased to see his cousin and sent a telegram to King Edward to tell him so. ‘Georgie left this morning for Strelitz all safe and sound and we were very sorry to part so soon from such a merry and genial guest. I think he has amused himself well here.’

In the years that lead up to the Great War Prince George did his best to interest himself in international affairs. Despite every effort, however, he found himself unable to compete with his far more socially extrovert, worldly-wise and cosmopolitan father. He was particularly impressed with his father’s visit to France in 1903, which laid the foundations for a Franco-British
entente
to counter German aggression in Europe. Prince George envied the King’s role in helping to stage a dramatic display of friendship between the two countries and in encouraging the exchange of visits between the two fleets, notwithstanding the fact that following the ratification of the
entente
in 1904 Germany had scared France by threatening war. The arrival of the British Atlantic Fleet at Brest in July 1904, and the return visit of the French Fleet to Portsmouth a month later, was welcomed with such enthusiasm by the people of France and England that the alliance, far from breaking down as the Germans had hoped, was further cemented. Germany’s intention of demonstrating that the Fatherland and not Britain was the master of Europe had failed.

Prince George appreciated the help given him by Sir Arthur Bigge to prepare for the time when he would take over the affairs of state from his father, but his heart was in the country rather than in the field of international affairs. He wrote many letters to Bigge on whom he was becoming not only dependent but almost child-like in his devotion to him. He looked on Bigge as a father, firm and benevolent – as indeed his own father had been and continued to be – but, unlike his father, Bigge, who dedicated
virtually twenty-four hours a day to Prince George’s well-being, was always available for help and advice. With Bigge the Prince avoided the flat and somewhat colourless style that he used in communicating with his father, with whom he was always conscious of a need both to please him and to reassure himself of his love. His letters to Bigge were franker, much warmer and in some respects not unlike the carefree style he adopted in his letters to his mother. In a letter to his mentor from York Cottage, dated 1 January 1902, Prince George writes:

My Dear Bigge, – First let me thank you for your most kind letter receivd. this morning & for all yr good wishes to us for the New Year. The one that is now over has indeed been an eventful one for me and mine; it has been a sad one and a happy one & there is much to be thankful for, as you say. I must again repeat how grateful I am to you for all you have done for me during this past year. I thank you for yr kind help & advice & for yr great loyalty. I feel that I can always rely on you to tell me the truth however disagreeable & that you are entirely in my confidence. To a person in my position it is of enormous help to me. I thank you again for it from the bottom of my heart.

Prince George’s easy relationship with Bigge is also illustrated in a letter written a few days later, again from York Cottage. No formal phraseology and careful editing here.

A Colonial Office Box has just arrived but I had no key to open it with, I sent it up to Sidney Greville to unlock it; it only contained a telegram from Hely-Hutchinson expressing thanks from officers & men of Cape Peninsular regiment to me for becoming their Col.in Chief. You had better get a key for me if they are going to send me boxes, otherwise I cant open them. I am returning you all the letters and papers you sent me & have written on them all. I am sending this pouche by the messenger. I hope you will have some decent weather & get some good hunting. Believe me, Your sincere friend, George.

Throughout 1905 the Prince’s diary was full. In January he visited Ireland to shoot with Lord Ardilaun, in February he attended debates in the House and visited the Motor Show for the first time. While waiting for Princess May to give birth to Prince John, their sixth and last child, at York Cottage the Prince played golf. He also played cricket on the lawn at Sandringham with the two older boys. None of this was particularly stressful, yet he had made a note in his diary in April that he had not seen his younger children for three months. The birth of the Waleses’ youngest son, on 12 July 1905, had as ever brought Prince George and Princess May closer to one another. Although they lived side by side it was in harmonious isolation. Their interests seldom overlapped and, other than on state occasions, when circumstances brought them together, each was content just to know that the other was there. When either of them was ‘unavailable’ through illness, or in Princess May’s case following childbirth, their need for one another drew them close. Illness in the other worried them both. Each felt safe only when the other was well. Prince George was content to sit by his wife’s bedside and read to her for much of the day. His touching vigil was understandable. In the event the Princess made her usual rapid recovery from childbirth. The attending doctor, Sir John Williams, left after eight days, and as ever the baby was handed over to a nurse. Preparations for the royal tour of India began. On 19 October 1905 Prince George and Princess May left London for Bombay via Genoa, where they embarked on HMS
Renown.
Barely four years after their eight-month voyage to Australia they were once again separated from their children, this time for six months.

The visit to India had a profound effect on Prince George and Princess May. Both were moved by the awesome responsibility undertaken by the mother country for the welfare of the sub-continent. They were struck not only by lives far removed from their own but by a religious faith that allowed for hope and salvation for a people who had little other than spiritual assets on which to fall back. If either of them were to consider the importance of feelings rather than possessions in their own lives, India would have been the catalyst. In keeping with the received wisdom of the
time and to maintain colonial rule, the needs of the governed were emphasized by Whitehall at the expense of those of the governors. The Prince and Princess were in accord with this attitude but possibly for different reasons.

As HMS
Renown
docked in Bombay the Prince in particular would have been struck by the ubiquitous poverty, which was emphasized not so much by the contrasting splendours of the royal visit but by the extravagant pageantry of the welcome provided by the Indian Princes. Politely, if somewhat patronizingly, Prince George asked his wealthy hosts how he might help them with whatever problems they might be facing. The Maharajah’s main problems of course were how to maintain their lavish life-styles in the presence of increasing calls for social reform. To his credit the Prince also took an interest in the social and health problems of the impoverished population. In 1905, apart from the usual endemic tropical diseases and famine, India was experiencing an outbreak of bubonic plague. Conscious of the great suffering of the hungry the Prince provided for a great feast to be attended by thousands. Finally, after further lavish entertainments, the tour came to an end in Calcutta, the capital of British India.

In almost his last act as Viceroy Lord Curzon had not only distressed the people of Bengal by partitioning their province but had also succeeded in antagonizing the members of the hitherto low-key Indian Congress Movement. Naïve as ever in political matters, on his departure for England Prince George addressed Gopal Gokhale, the President of the Congress Party. ‘I have been reading your speech at Benares, in which you said it would be better for India if the Indians had a much larger part in the administration. I have now been travelling for some months in India … and I have never seen a happier-looking people, and I understand the look in the eyes of the Indians.’ Prince George asked: ‘Would the peoples of India be happier if you ran the country?’ Gokhale replied: ‘No, Sir, I do not say they would be happier, but they would have more self-respect’ (Gore, 1941).

It was clear that the protagonists had offended each other. Prince
George left India full of admiration for its peoples but distrustful of its leaders. On his return to London, sensitive perhaps to the fact that the day of the Raj might be drawing to a close, he called for ‘a better understanding and a closer union of hearts between the Mother Country and her Indian Empire’. Unusually for the time, the Prince was concerned about the way the Indians were treated by the British. It was not the first occasion on which he was to identify with the downtrodden and the disadvantaged. Possibly with memories of the bullying he had experienced as a naval cadet, he was later to comment: ‘Evidently we are too much inclined to look upon them as a conquered & down-trodden race and the Native, who is becoming more and more educated, realises this.’

Prince George was not averse to exercising his own form of bigotry. A few weeks after the end of the Indian tour the Prince and Princess were invited to Madrid for the marriage of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess Ena of Battenburg, to King Alfonso XIII of Spain. Prince George was furious with his cousin Princess Ena for converting to Catholicism. When a bomb was thrown at the royal carriage, killing twenty and injuring more than fifty (but sparing Princess Ena and the bridegroom), he attributed it to the wrath of God.

He could be equally angry with any change from established custom. In January 1906 he and the Princess were on a visit to Burma when news of the Liberal landslide victory in the General Election reached them. On his return he told his father that ‘I see that a great number of Labour members have [also] been returned which is rather a dangerous sign, but I hope that they are not all socialists.’ The Prince struggled to remain in touch with, and to understand, the political changes of the Edwardian years. He hoped that when his time came to rule, with the help of Sir Arthur Bigge, he would be prepared for every eventuality.

W
ITH THE BIRTH
of their sixth child Prince John on 12 July 1905 the family of Prince George and Princess May was completed. Princess May’s experience of motherhood had been gained not so much from Princess Mary Adelaide as from Mademoiselle Bricka, an unmarried Frenchwoman whose personal experience of mothering was nonexistent. Unaware, as were most upper-class families of the time, of the benefits of hands-on mothering, Princess May left the care of her children to nannies and nurserymaids while Prince George – when he was not shooting or attending to his stamps – was seen by them as a bad-tempered bully. Their opinion of their father, who made only rare appearances in the nursery, confirmed his possibly apocryphal comment that ‘he had been afraid of his father, and by God his children would be afraid of him’. Not one of Prince George’s children was to receive an education likely to bring out whatever talents they possessed, and all grew up to experience themselves victims of injustice. The two older sons had been ill-treated by a sadistic nurse, the result of which was that one was compelled to seek compensation from other women for his mother’s neglect and the other suffered chronic digestive problems. Had Princess May even been aware of her children’s needs she would have been incapable of showing them affection in her formal and remote role of Queen Mary. In common with others of their class the royal parents saw nothing amiss in leaving their young family for months on end.