Imperial Requiem: Four Royal Women and the Fall of the Age of Empires (46 page)

It was a title that did not sit well with Edward VII. “I could never consent to the word ‘Imperial’ being added to my name,” he disapprovingly told Disraeli.”
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But George and Mary, who shared Queen Victoria’s love for India, had little trouble taking up the imperial mantle.

Once she became queen-empress, Mary had to adjust to yet another change of address. Throughout the course of her life, she had lived at Kensington Palace, White Lodge, York Cottage, and Marlborough House. But all of those were eclipsed by her latest home: Buckingham Palace, now one of the most recognizable royal residences in the world. The three-story palace, with its 775 rooms, was originally known as Buckingham House. Built by the Duke of Buckingham in 1703, it came into the royal family’s possession when King George III purchased it in 1761. The palace earned the nickname “the queen’s house,” because for many years it was the home of George III’s wife, Queen Charlotte. King William IV planned to move into the palace, but the necessary renovations to it were not completed before his death. It was not until 1837 that Queen Victoria moved the official royal residence from Saint James’s to Buckingham Palace. Despite being the royal family’s official London residence, Buckingham Palace was described as “a soulless office with residential rooms attached, which has inspired little affection among members of the Royal Family since it was transformed in the nineteenth century from an unassuming house into a grandiose official residence.”
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Thankfully for the queen, her job had largely been done before she moved in. During Edward VII’s brief reign, Queen Alexandra spent a great deal of time furnishing the palace with tasteful antiques and works of art, leaving Mary to only add personal touches here and there. The new queen moved into the palace four days before the rest of her family. She found the building somewhat daunting. “It is rather strange & lonely here without you & the children & I feel rather lost,” she wrote to George. “Here everything is so straggly, such distances to go & so fatiguing. But I ought not to grumble for they have been very anxious to make me as comfortable as possible & these rooms are very nice & I have a good many of my own things round me.”
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After a year on the throne, Mary was beginning to establish her own identity as queen. Unlike Queen Alexandra, who was always in the spotlight with her trendy wardrobe and vivacious personality, Queen Mary was becoming symbolic of a renaissance of Victorian values. Instead of being a social butterfly like her mother-in-law, she was the epitome of quiet dignity and grace. Wherever she went, she was met with enamored spectators who were in awe of her elegance. Even her dresses, noted for their soft pastel colors and simple designs, sparked a nostalgic note in British society.

Politically, George and Mary were set apart from their imperial counterparts. Unlike Nicholas and Alexandra and Wilhelm and Augusta Victoria, the king and queen were not absolute monarchs. In Russia and Germany, the new Reichstag and Duma were designed to curtail the powers of the sovereign through the democratic process. In Great Britain, the real power had rested with Parliament for centuries. This meant that, although George and Mary played hugely significant roles, they were not necessarily much more than figureheads. It was this existential reality that would separate the British monarchy from those of Germany, Austria, and Russia in the years to come. Ironically, the parliamentary nature of the British monarchy would be one of the very factors that contributed to its survival.

When it came to the political arena, Mary made it a point to stay out of it, but she nonetheless exercised a strong influence over her husband, though perhaps not to the extent that Tsarina Alexandra did over Nicholas II. Some accused the queen of trying to boss her husband around. Others claimed that she was browbeaten and intimidated by George, who was known to have a volatile temper. James Pope-Hennessy, one of Mary’s most well-known biographers, interviewed her son David many years later. According to David, his parents did not always experience “a happy marriage.” He told Pope-Hennessy “his father had a filthy temper and would humiliate his wife, attack her verbally in front of the children.”
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“Truth lay somewhere in between,” wrote another of the queen’s biographers. “Her attitude was that the King must reign, and in order to reign he must be sheltered from the importunities of daily life … She was always to draw a firm line between the King’s duties as Head of State and as
paterfamilias
.”
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Regardless of whatever influence Mary may have had over the king, it remains certain that she was uncompromising in her support of him. “First and always she was his wife,” one contemporary wrote. Though sometimes described as docile, George V was not without his dark moods. He often worried himself sick over important decisions or became depressed when things turned out badly for him. During these times, Mary was “by his side in anxiety and despondency, consoling him, greatly ambitious for him; with mind, heart, and soul ready for his service at any moment.” It comes as no surprise, then, that in his first speech after ascending the throne, George declared, “And I am encouraged by the knowledge that I have in my dear wife a constant helpmate in every endeavour for our people’s good.…”
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King George V was unimpeachably faithful to his wife, despite a few, almost farcical, scandals. Shortly after his accession, the radical propagandist Edward Mylius circulated a pamphlet claiming that the king had secretly taken a wife when he was stationed on Malta with the Royal Navy. As early as 1893, salacious rumors were rampant that George had married an English admiral’s daughter. Three weeks before their wedding, George told May, “I say, May, we can’t get married after all! I hear I have got a wife and three children!”
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Mylius’s pamphlet further alleged that the king’s marriage to Queen Mary was bigamous and therefore invalid. Nobody took it seriously, but to avoid further accusations against the new king, Mylius was arrested, tried, found guilty of libel, and sentenced to a year in prison. George’s strict moral character and widely known conjugal fidelity were two of the main factors that contributed to his weathering the Mylius crisis. This was one area in which he was very different from his own father. Edward VII, though very much in love with his wife, was famous for his paramours. Some of his most famous mistresses included Lady Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother; Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick; and the actress Sarah Bernhardt. According to a 2007 report, Edward VII was believed to have had as many as fifty-five mistresses, since “he was the very model of genial but remorseless infidelity.”
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In an example of historical irony, one of the king’s longtime liaisons was with a woman named Alice Keppel, whose great-granddaughter Camilla Parker-Bowles married Edward’s great-great-grandson Charles, Prince of Wales.

Edward’s liaisons were not as harmless as he may have hoped. In 1870, he was called to appear at the divorce trial of Sir Charles Mordaunt. Although Edward was not directly named in an affair with Lady Mordaunt, he was still booed one evening when he and Alexandra arrived at the Olympic Theater. Queen Alexandra often took her husband’s infidelities in stride, even joking about them with some of her ladies-in-waiting. When Edward became involved with the American debutante Miss Chamberlayne, Alexandra nicknamed her “Chamberpots.” This did not make Edward’s unfaithfulness any less painful. He kept so many mistresses that he earned the nickname “Edward the Caresser.” In this respect, the new king was the complete opposite of his father, who even described his affairs to George. In an 1881 letter, Edward boasted about the stage debut of his latest mistress Lillie Langtry. In contrast to Edward VII, George V remained completely loyal to his wedding vows. “We have seen enough of the intrigue and meddling of certain ladies,” he once said, referring to his father’s mistresses, “I’m not interested in any wife but my own.”
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In November 1911, King George and Queen Mary traveled to Delhi for their coronation
durbar
as emperor and empress of India. The decision to go came as something of a shock, since “such a novelty as the King’s visit to India had never occurred to more than ten in half a million” people.
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“I think it a grand idea,” Nicholas II wrote to George. “I do not doubt that it will produce a tremendous impression on the whole world.”
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No British monarch had ever been crowned in India, even though the title had been passed down from Queen Victoria. There was a tremendous sense of solemnity to the occasion. It was only the third time an imperial
durbar
had been ever held, and it was the only one ever to be presided over by a reigning monarch. The decision to hold the coronation was not merely a monarchical one but an imperial one as well. Contrary to the opinions of Britain’s Conservative Party, the sun had begun to set on the British Empire over the last decade. Unrest in Ireland and India had given rise to the idea of home rule—self-sustained autonomy within the empire. Religion remained one of the greatest obstacles. The Irish parliament in Dublin was Catholic, but other counties like Ulster were Protestant. Ireland was an ongoing problem, but India, George V believed, could be ameliorated with a display of empire that brought back memories of Queen Victoria’s reign.

The official party left England on November 11 aboard the HMS
Medina
. A brand-new vessel, it was designed to carry 650 passengers, but for this voyage, it carried only the royal party—some two dozen people. During the monthlong trip, Mary’s seasickness resurfaced. A stormy crossing on the Bay of Biscay left her bedridden for three days. The skies cleared by the time they passed Gibraltar, and the queen spent most of her time from then on writing letters on deck to her children and Aunt Augusta. The
Medina
reached Bombay on December 2. When the queen went ashore, she wore a yellow, flowered chiffon dress, punctuated by the Order of the Garter’s bright blue ribbon. Her flat, straw-sewn hat was covered with artificial roses. “It is marvelous being in India again,” she wrote. “I who never thought I should see it again. I am so glad I came.”
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From Bombay, the king, queen, and their group boarded a train for Delhi. The king entered the city on horseback through the massive Gate of the Elephants dressed in a full field marshal’s uniform. Next came the queen, who rode with her ladies-in-waiting in the first of a long line of state carriages. “It was a wonderful sight,” she wrote to Aunt Augusta. “George rode and I followed in a carriage with the Mistress of the Robes & Lord Durham—Very grand & I felt proud to take part in so interesting & historical an event, just the kind of thing which appeals to my feelings of tradition—
You
will understand.”
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In the words of one of Queen Mary’s biographers, “The preparations at Delhi were on a scale without precedent in the history of British India.”
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A vast canvas covering forty-five square miles was set up to accommodate the quarter of a million people who converged on Delhi for the historic event. A six-tent suite was set up for George and Mary’s personal use. It was an elaborate construct that included a drawing room, anteroom, office, boudoir, bedrooms, and dining room that opened into a formal reception area.

At noon on the day of the
durbar
, December 12, King George, with Queen Mary at his side, entered the amphitheater wearing a crown specially made for the ceremony. It cost more than £60,000 to create—around $6.5 million today.
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The Imperial Crown of India, as it became known, was covered in emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and 6,170 diamonds. George later wrote that he became “tired from wearing the Crown for 3
^1/2
hours, it hurt my head, as it is pretty heavy.”
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The newly crowned emperor and empress of India were seated on silver thrones beneath a gold dome upon a golden dais. On either side of them stood five-foot-tall maces, ornamented with lotus flowers, golden king cobras, and the Tudor crown. The correspondent for the London
Times
vividly described the coronation in their December 13 issue.