Queen's House (35 page)

what do you want to see, The Wallace Collection, or Victoria & Albert or National Portrait Gallery … should any of these smile on you and wd you like me to let the Director know as it is nice … to have a knowledgeable person with you … There are 2 or 3 things in the Palace I should like to show you, small alterations which I think you will approve of …
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As her biographer, James Pope-Hennessy, described,

She was forever matching up, cataloguing, reorganising and adding to the historical parts of the royal collection. … In conversation at this time she would always attribute her love of fine objects to her father, the Duke of Teck: ‘only he was poor', she would add, ‘and could not afford to buy.'
²⁸

It was perhaps the memory of her own youth when funds were so often low that encouraged a certain acquisitive obsession. There are many stories of her skill in persuading friends and acquaintances to part with precious
objets d'art.
Some of them are undoubtedly apocryphal, but there is no doubt that she considered it her mission to release beautiful things from their obscure homes and give them their proper place in her Palace.

She consulted experts in every field and was particularly flattered when the Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum wanted to see her Chinese Chippendale Room because he was arranging little rooms of various styles at the V. & A. and he said seeing my rooms would help him very much indeed'.
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In 1913 she was to encourage Clifford Smith to edit the first major history of the Royal Collection: his
Buckingham Palace
has been ever since the definitive work. The account books and records of the Commission set up to monitor the Prince Regent's debts and expenditure at the turn of the century were found by a descendant among the papers of the Secretary to the Commission and were sent to the Queen, to her joy. Clifford Smith was thus able to identify and catalogue the makers of many items in the Royal Collection.

But in July 1914 all domestic and political concerns were overshadowed as Britain was drawn irrevocably into the First World War. In the summer of 1914 few people had foreseen that the bloodiest of wars was about to begin. That it should have started in far away Sarajevo, in the words of Queen Mary, ‘beggared belief '.

In June the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his morganatic wife were assassinated in Sarajevo. On 23 July 1914 Austria, affronted by this, the latest and greatest attack on them by their
hostile Slav neighbours, sent an ultimatum with terms that Serbia refused to accept completely. On 28 July Austria declared war on Serbia, which brought in Germany; Russia now mobilized in support of its traditional ally, Serbia. Desperately the British government tried a last-minute appeal to the Russian Tsar: a telegram to him was brought to the King in the early hours of 1 August. This the King signed with slight alterations: he addressed it to his cousin, ‘Dear Nicky', and signed it ‘Georgy'. It had no effect: before the day was out Russia was at war with Germany. France now came to Russia's support, Germany declared war on France, and by 2 August Europe was in flames. Britain still tried to remain outside the battle, but the old Treaty of London 1839, which had guaranteed British support for Belgium, now had to be confirmed. France begged Britain to come to its defence and, as the King reluctantly conceded, ‘we cannot allow France to be smashed'. The King's diary for 4 August 1914 began as always with the sailor's look at the weather.

Warm, showers and windy … I held a Council at 10.45 to declare war on Germany, it is a terrible catastrophe but it is not our fault. An enormous crowd collected outside the Palace: we went on the balcony before and after dinner. When they declared that war had been declared, the excitement increased and May and I with David went on to the balcony: the cheering was terrific.
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The dogs of war had been unleashed with a vengeance.

For the King and Queen it was not only a national disaster but also a personal tragedy. In the international royal family it was civil war–cousin against cousin. The Emperor William II was the son of Edward VII's sister and the grandson of Queen Victoria. It is true that there was not much love lost between them, but they had stood together at the funeral of Edward VII and there had once been a rumour that the Prince of Wales might marry the German Emperor's daughter. But King George V had been much influenced by his Danish mother Queen Alexandra, whose hatred of Germany, roused by the Prussian attack on Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, was incandescent, burning throughout her life. Then the German Emperor's treatment of his mother, Queen Victoria's daughter, Vicky, in her last years had enraged King George V. The
mistrust of the cousins was mutual: the Emperor was convinced that the King had his spies throughout Germany. Although he came to England in 1911 for the unveiling of Queen Victoria's Memorial outside Buckingham Palace, he startled Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg with a sudden outburst of violent threats against England.

The Austrian Ambassador in London, Count Mensdorff, was also the King's cousin – and a close friend. The Ambassador was, like King George V, descended from the remarkable Coburg Duke who had sired Prince Albert's father, Queen Victoria's mother and Leopold, King of the Belgians. When Britain and France declared war on Austria, King George V wrote immediately to Mensdorff, who recorded in his journal that the King spoke kindly of their old friendship and hoped later to welcome him back to London.

King George V was also closely connected with the Russian imperial family. The Tsar, Nicholas II, was the son of the King's aunt, Marie. The Tsarina, born Princess Alix of Hesse, was another first cousin. Both were to meet a tragic end in 1918 at the hands of the Bolsheviks. His uncle Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, had married the daughter of the Tsar Alexander II. His first cousin Marie was Queen of Romania, and Queen Alexandra's brother was King of Greece.

So the network of the royal family stretched across countries and the explosion in Sarajevo ricocheted throughout Europe, dislodging many of their relations from their palaces.

The family ties of the King and Queen with Germany caused great difficulties during the war. There arose in Britain a xenophobic anti-German frenzy, threatening the monarchy itself. Such attacks deeply hurt the King, whose patriotism was deeply felt. When the novelist H. G. Wells attacked the royal family as ‘an alien and uninspiring court', the King barked, ‘I may be uninspiring but I'll be damned if I am an alien.'
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The hostility to all things German finished the career of Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg, who was born a German and still retained his thick German accent. It did not matter that he had been a British citizen since he was fourteen, nor that he had served with distinction all his adult life in the British Navy, nor that he had married a
granddaughter of Queen Victoria. The dogs of war snapped at his heels until he felt he had to resign.

So virulent did the attacks on anything German become that in the end the King had to renounce all ‘German degrees, styles, dignities, titles, honours and appellations'. In 1917 a proclamation was issued: henceforward the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was to become the House of Windsor. His Serene Highness, Prince Louis of Battenberg, was created Marquess of Milford Haven and his younger son became Lord Louis Mountbatten. Similarly the Duke of Teck, Queen Mary's brother, took the family name of his grandmother and became Marquess of Cambridge, and his younger brother was made the Earl of Athlone.

It was necessary for the King to stress that if there was any conflict between his loyalty to his country and the members of his foreign family, his country would always win. Fortunately the new name, George of Windsor, had a fine ring. But there was to be an agonizing conflict of loyalties in 1917, when the Tsar of Russia was deposed by the Russian revolutionaries. The Tsar and his family wanted to take refuge in England: after all, Louis Philippe, King of France, and Emperor Napoleon III had retired and died here. But King George V had to make a cruel decision: the Tsar and his family were not welcome in Britain. They remained in Russia and, as is well known, were assassinated.

The King has often been condemned for this rejection of his own cousins. But it must be remembered that when the King made the decision, the Tsar and his family were not in any immediate danger: the Bolsheviks had not yet taken power. It must also be borne in mind that the British throne itself had been much under attack in recent years. Strong and articulate republican voices had been heard in Parliament; virulent articles appeared in the press. The King could not now give support to what was seen as a corrupt, reactionary regime. With a vision of certain demonstrations and turbulence before him, the King felt he had no option. He had to make it clear that the stability of his own country was of paramount importance to him.

*

Throughout the war, and the tumults and stress of the coming years, Queen Mary's work for the preservation of the nation's heritage was not only a labour of love but also an escape to order and beauty in a world that was increasingly dangerous and unstable.

Even during the war some major alterations were made in the Palace. On 8 September 1914
The Times
reported that

the beginning of extensive interior decoration work at the palace has been hastened by the Queen's desire … to give employment to a class of workmen who will be the first to feel the pinch of retrenchment owing to the war. Alterations include a large quantity of parquet flooring specially made by Messrs. Howard of Berners St., a class of work hitherto much in the hands of German makers.
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In 1913 Charles Allom, director of the family firm of White Allom, ‘Decorative artists to the King and Queen', wrote a long memorandum on their work in Buckingham Palace under the personal direction of Queen Mary. He describes in detail the Queen's years of careful work at the Palace.

It may be well at once to record that Her Majesty takes unusual care in requiring her orders to be carried out as far as possible by British workpeople, and this has helped immensely in the development and discovery of quite unexpected ability in many branches of industrial art.

To mention a few such industries, one at once thinks of goldsmiths, metal workers, enamellers, frame-makers, cabinet-makers, decorators, fan-makers, pottery and china makers, painters, carpet and silk weavers, and others.

On small tables or in cabinets about her apartments, may be seen innumerable examples of the Queen's patronage.

Wherever and whenever an industry has been known to need help by reason of slackness of trade or other causes, Her Majesty has spent much of her time and private money to assist the unemployed, and develop the draughtsmen and craftsmen in the studios, not only by placing orders and taking great personal interest in the work of design, but by lending old works from which to copy or obtain inspiration and knowledge.

He praised the Queen's

very exceptional sense of order, and though years may elapse from the time a thing is neatly put away for possible future use, she remembers exactly where to find it when occasion requires its production. This is the result of a wonderful memory and quite exceptional powers of orderliness and accuracy. Once her attention and interest is given to an art or craft, she rapidly acquires a detailed knowledge of it, in consequence of the ease with which she follows and understands its technical side, and the rapidity with which she acquires knowledge, either by inspection during process of making, or through her reference Library.

He admired her reorganization of rooms according to their period and her search for valuable old furniture in the ‘darkness of the Palace stores'.

He described her rooms in detail, including, for example, ‘Her Majesty's Bed and Dressing Rooms':

These rooms are in general colour remarkably similar to Her Majesty's Marlborough House suite, and her choice of colour and power of grouping and arranging her furniture, and the very large numbers of personal miniatures, photographs, objets d'art and flowers, with which one associates her surroundings, gives them an unusually bright and cheerful appearance.

The ceilings and cornices of these apartments, as well as the doors, remain exactly as they were left by Queen Alexandra, though the rooms have now been papered with a moiré paper of grey white bordered by an ornamental design of roses and a gilt moulding, which brings the walls into harmony with the rose coloured curtains and pale green grey carpet. The walls are mainly hung with interesting family portraits in water colour.

He was particularly impressed by her structural alteration of her Bedroom.

The room has been structurally altered by throwing the private service corridor into it, and this has led to the occurrence of an unusual feature. The fireplace is left in the centre of the wall, (the openings in which are supported by columns) which was pierced to open up the corridor now utilised for a long range of wardrobes.

Queen Mary needed space for her great collection of exquisite gowns.

To her Boudoir she had brought her light blue silk wall coverings from Marlborough House and the

soft colour that enables it to blend charmingly with the furniture and many cabinets, which contain hundreds of small objets d'art, interesting souvenirs and mementos of many journeys and visits. Collections and purchases of works, representing all phases of the industrial arts in which Her Majesty takes so great an interest are here assembled, yet the colouring of the room, with its curtains of blue silk like the walls and a carpet of soft brown bordered with camel colour on which is a pale blue rose and green design, brings the floor into harmony with the walls and furniture.

Her Boudoir, like all her rooms, was filled with ‘beautiful flowers – frequently carnations'.

Next to the Boudoir, the Green Room contained her collection of jade, caskets, jewels, miniatures, ‘a very fine collection of biscuit china in an ormolu cabinet … and two copies of an old Louis XVI commode'. She had brought the green silk curtains and carpet from Marlborough House.