III As King — Some Personal and Social Incidents and Impressions
I met at luncheon one of the King’s friends, in some ways one among the most intimate of the innumerable friends he had; a man, however, not readily yielding to emotion nor likely to take what is called the sentimental view. We began to talk of the King. Suddenly he broke off:
“I cannot say much. I loved him.”
I don’t know that I can tell you anything more characteristic or illuminating than that. It is the kind of tribute the King himself would have liked. And there are millions of Englishmen to-day whose hearts are full of the same feeling.
The King—the late King—was a great master of kingly graces. He knew, I suppose, more men and women than any man of his time. He knew the exact degree of consideration to which each one of them was entitled, and exactly how to express it. If you desire to form to yourself a conception of the interval which divides a king, with the inherited traditions of a thousand years, from the elected Chief Magistrate of yesterday, you might do worse than watch the ceremonial customs of personal intercourse. We know what the indiscriminate handshakings by the President are. We know that the custom, aided by the incredible stupidity of the police about him, cost one of them his life. We read the other day that a President, after enduring this exaction for a time, had to stop it. His right hand was all but paralysed. We have all listened to the Presidential, “I am very glad to see you,” repeated to all comers. It may be unavoidable but it all detracts something from the dignity of the office and the man.
This King who is gone gave his hand more often than any other; but at his own choice and discretion. It was thought abroad he went great lengths, and some of the Continental sovereigns and the courtiers about them criticized him. They also after a time imitated him, and sometimes at once. The present German Emperor was one of those who took the hint from his uncle as soon as it was given. I told long ago how the Emperor and the then Prince of Wales in 1889 came on board the White Star steamship Teutonic lying at Spithead, with a great company of naval guests, there to witness the great naval review which never took place. The First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Charles Beresford, Mr. Ismay, Mr. Depew, and many other persons of distinction were grouped on the main deck. The Emperor came up the steps first, and by way of acknowledging their salutations raised his white cap. The Prince of Wales shook hands with all those I have named and with some others, the Emperor looking on astonished. Then came a prolonged inspection of the Teutonic, the finest passenger ship then afloat, the pioneer of all modern comfort and splendour on the Atlantic, Mr. Ismay’s creation. There had been much talk in which Emperor and Prince had both taken part, and by the time they were ready to leave, the great German sovereign had learned his lesson. He shook hands cordially with Mr. Ismay, in whom he had recognized a kindred spirit of greatness, other than his own but not less genuine, and with others. The faces of his staff were the faces of men amazed, perplexed, almost incredulous.
At drawing-rooms and Courts and levees; in private houses where he was a guest, whether in town or country, on the turf, in the theatre, at a public ceremonial, at a Marlborough House or Windsor garden-party, the same habit prevailed. Prince of Wales or King of England, he met his friends as a friend, and for acquaintances with any title to recognition he had a pleasant welcome. It added immensely to his popularity among those who knew him, and among the millions who never saw him, but heard. They thought of him as a man among men, which he was in every sense, and as one who thought manhood an honourable thing. Ask, moreover, any of the equerries or others of his household. They will all tell you he was considerate. He expected each officer to do his duty, and it was done. It is often an irksome duty; but he made it needlessly so.
The human side of him was never long hidden. It is a remark one is tempted to repeat again and again. It came out in the services he was for ever doing; public in their nature, but from a private impulse. He met to the full the expectation of the public, and discharged to the full the obligation of the Crown in respect of all charities and ceremonials; and always with a kindly grace which made his presence and his gifts doubly welcome.
With people whom he knew well and liked he was glad to lay aside etiquette. I could give you, but must not, the names of friends to whom he would often send word in the afternoon that he was coming to dine that evening and to play bridge after. Even a king, and a great king, must sometimes relax. He cannot always appear in armour. His hostess would meet him at the door with a curtsey, and then welcome him as a friend; and the talk all through dinner was intimate and free. Those were delightful hours. So were the days in country houses where the King was a guest. Always, no doubt, a certain hush in the atmosphere, a certain constraint if the party was large, but so far as the King was concerned, if people were not at their ease it was their own fault. Everybody knew where the line was drawn. Nobody in his senses over-passed it. One flagrant instance there was, not in the country, but at a house in London, at supper—a large party. The hour grew late and the Prince still sat at his table. A guest who had found the champagne to his liking staggered across the room, steadied himself by a chair and stuttered out:
“I don’t know whether Your Royal Highness knows how late it is, but it’s past two o’clock, and I am going home. Good-night, sir!”
The Prince sat still and answered not. He saw the man’s condition. Nobody knew better the rule that such a company did not break up till the Prince gave the signal. He was a man with a great social position, and not social only. When he had departed the Prince finished his interrupted sentence and the talk went on as before. Not an allusion to the offence or the offender.
His sense of social responsibility showed itself in an unexpected form during the Boer War. There grew up among the aristocracy a passionate patriotism which sent heads of great families and elder and younger sons into the field. The King thought this feeling threatened to have grave consequences. He approved it, of course, and encouraged it, but he thought limits ought to be set to a fervour which seemed not unlikely to extinguish an important part of the nobility. He sent for a number of men in great position who had resolved to go and advised them to wait, saying, with his usual good sense:
“Enough men of your class have gone already to show your devotion; more than are really needed for the purposes of war. Wait a little. If matters go badly it will be time enough then for you to depart.”
One secret of the extraordinary social power of both Prince and King lay in his knowledge of social matters. Nobody was so well informed. He had about him numbers of men, and of women, who took pains to send him, or bring him, the earliest account of any social incident or gossip. It was known that he had these sources of information, and that whatever was known to any one was known to him. Such knowledge as that was a weapon. It was not one of which he made use, or needed to use. The fact that he had it was enough.
He liked news also, and took pains to get it. If there were a political or Ministerial crisis, you might be sure that Marlborough House knew all about it. He had a certain number of men in his suite or of his acquaintance from whom he expected, and generally got, early intelligence. There was a sort of competition in supplying him. If you were first you were thanked. If you had been anticipated, he remarked dryly and with a good-humoured twinkle in his very expressive eyes: “Oh, yes, very interesting but I heard it an hour ago.”
When I was leaving England in 1895 for America the Prince gave me his cipher address and asked me to cable him as often as there was news I thought might interest him. That may serve to show us Americans how much he cared for American matters, and how completely he returned the good-will we have always borne him since his visit to the United States in 1860. I told the Prince my first duty was to The Times, since I was going home as their correspondent. Subject to that, I should be glad to send him what I could. The difference of time was such that he might well enough get a dispatch before midnight at Marlborough House, which could not appear in print till next morning. “But you know that’s just what I should like,” said the Prince.
From beginning to end the late King has lived his life, ever a full life, possibly not always a wise life. Who can be wise always? Who likes a man who is always wise? His faults in youth were of a kind which were recognized as belonging to men. The blood which flowed in his veins came down to him through centuries of ancestors to whom the restrictions and pudencies, often hypocritical, of modern days were unknown. And if we look at the result, at the crown of all, at the matured character which made him one of the greatest servants of the State, of any State, ever known in history, need there be any criticism or any regret? Not perhaps the white flower of a blameless life, but was there ever one? But a great human life, compact of good and ill, and so flowering into the greatness of a great King. Perhaps the best summary is Pascal’s:
“Qu’une vie est heureuse quand elle commence par l’amour et qu’elle finit par l’ambition.”
For the King’s ambition was never for himself; he had no need to wish to be other than he was. It was an ambition for the good of his people.