But the Prince never learned to read for pleasure or acquired even a superficial knowledge of the English classics. Tommy Lascelles, then his private secretary, speculated many years later about what Hansell could have taught his charge. ‘I recollect the Prince of Wales years ago, coming back from a weekend at Panshanger and saying to me, “Look at this extraordinary little book wh. Lady Desborough says I ought to read. Have you ever heard of it?”’ The extraordinary little book was Jane Eyre. Another time he asked Hardy to settle an argument he had had with his mother about whether the novelist had written a book called Tess of the D’Urbervilles; ‘I said I was sure it was by somebody else.’ Hardy answered politely that it had indeed been one of his earlier books.64 A working knowledge of English literature is perhaps unnecessary to a monarch, but to be totally ignorant of its greatest monuments is surely undesirable.
In the many accounts that survive of Edward at this period, it is his quickness, brightness and anxiety to please which are most often remarked on. ‘A delightful child, so intelligent, nice and friendly,’ said Queen Victoria;65 ‘a sweet little person’ was Esher’s judgment;66 ‘he had a look of both intelligence and kindness, and a limpid clarity of expression,’ observed the Aga Khan.67 His formal courtesy and consideration for others were unusual in one so young, as also ‘the look of Weltschmerz in his eyes’ which Lord Esher detected when he was only eleven years old. He was softhearted, telling Lord Roberts that when he was King he would pass a law against cutting puppy dogs’ tails and forbid the use of bearing reins on horses. ‘Those two things are very cruel.’68 When he caught his first fish he danced for joy, then handed it to the boatman and said: ‘You must not kill him, throw him back into the water again!’69 (Such sensibilities did not endure. Only a year later he was recording in triumph, ‘We caught such a lot of fishes! and had them for breakfast this morning.’70) But his benevolence, though sincere, was sometimes remote from the realities of human existence. The first recorded story that he told his brothers was about an extremely poor couple living on a deserted moor. They were starving. One day the man heard his wife moan, ‘I’m so hungry.’ ‘“Very well,” said her husband. “I’ll see to it.” So he rang the bell and, when the footman came, ordered a plate of bread and butter.’71
In June 1904 Prince Edward’s skull was inspected by Bernard Holländer, an eminent phrenologist. Most of the comments could have been made by anyone of a sycophantic nature without reference to the cranium, but there are some interesting points. The Prince, said Holländer, was eager to acquire knowledge and a keen observer, but ‘he would show his talents to greater advantage were he possessed of power of concentration and greater self-confidence’. He had a good eye for painting and would like music, though mainly of the lighter kind, ‘for example songs and dancing tunes’. He would have little use for organized religion himself but would respect the views of others. ‘Persons with the Prince’s type of head are never guilty of either a mean or dishonest action; they are just-minded, kindly disposed and faithful to their word.’ He had strong ‘feelings of humanity and sympathy for the welfare of others … He will seek to alleviate the sufferings of the poor.’ He would be uneasy in company, dislike public appearances, accept responsibilities with reluctance. He would not, it was clear, find it easy to be King.72 Even at the age of ten he seemed to cherish doubts about his fitness for the role that his birth had thrust on him. More than thirty-two years later, after the abdication, Lalla Bill wrote in high emotion to Queen Mary. ‘Do you remember, Your Majesty, when he was quite young, how he didn’t wish to live, and he never wanted to become King?’73
2
The Youth
THERE WERE GOOD REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE ROYAL Navy as a training ground for future monarchs. Careers open to princes at the beginning of the twentieth century were rare indeed, and the armed services provided one of the few in which they could find employment. The Navy, as the senior, was the obvious choice. It was a cherished national institution, its officers were recruited largely from the gentry or aristocracy, it offered less opportunities for debauchery or any kind of escapade than its land-based counterpart, it inculcated those virtues which it was felt were above all needed in a future king: sobriety, self-reliance, punctuality, a respect for authority and instinct to conform. A few years at sea would do harm to few and most people a lot of good. But to thrust a boy into the Navy at the age of twelve and leave him there until he was nineteen or twenty, if not longer, was unlikely to produce the rounded personality and breadth of mind needed to cope with the plethora of problems which afflict the constitutional monarch. When Edward’s father and uncle went to sea, Queen Victoria complained that the ‘very rough sort of life to which boys are exposed on board ship is the very thing not calculated to make a refined and amiable Prince’.1
The risk seemed more that the Navy would blinker rather than brutalize a prince. The curious thing was that the Prince of Wales himself was aware of the limitations of a naval education. He knew that he had grown up without any understanding of international affairs, any knowledge of society or politics, any facility for languages. He deplored these handicaps. And yet when it came to his own sons, he condemned them to the same sterile routine. At least when he had joined the Navy it had not seemed likely that he would become King. Prince Edward was destined for the throne, yet still the same formula was applied. It was almost as if the Prince of Wales was determined that, as he had himself been deprived of proper training for his life work, his son should suffer equally; and yet in fact no thought could have been further from his mind.
The best hope for Edward seemed to be that he would fail to pass the entrance examination. Everyone agreed that he should be subjected to the same ordeal as any other candidate, though he was to be medically inspected by the royal doctors – ‘I may perhaps add that he is a particularly strong, healthy boy,’ wrote Hansell.2 He had no Latin, but at a pinch could have offered German as an alternative. No one doubted that he was intelligent enough, but his spelling was appalling and his knowledge of mathematics exiguous. The Prince of Wales was apprehensive, then delighted and relieved to be told his son had passed the viva voce examination with flying colours. ‘Palpably above the average,’ said Sir Arthur Fanshawe,3 while another examiner, Lord Hampton, said that of the three hundred boys he had seen, Edward had been equal to the best.4 ‘This has pleased us immensely,’ wrote the Princess of Wales proudly.5 But the overall results of the written examination were not so flattering. In fact he ‘failed by a few marks to pass the qualifying examination, an Admiralty official reported in 1936. ‘Prince Edward obtained 291 marks out of 600 … but I notice that 5 candidates with lower marks were entered.’6
At all events, he did well enough to be admitted without imposing too great a strain on the examiners’ consciences. In May 1907 his father took him to the Naval College at Osborne in the Isle of Wight. ‘I felt the parting from you very much,’ the Prince of Wales wrote two days later, ‘and we all at home miss you greatly. But I saw enough … to assure me that you would get on capitally and be very happy with all the other boys. Of course at first it will all seem a bit strange to you but you will soon settle down … and have a very jolly time of it.’7 It seems unlikely that Prince Edward saw jolly times ahead when he received this letter. For any small boy the first exile to boarding school must be a scarifying experience; for Edward the ordeal was worse since he had been evicted abruptly from a cloistered family circle in which the existence of other children was hardly known. He shared a dormitory with thirty others, adjusting himself painfully to the fact that the day began at six, discipline was rigid, all work and play were conducted in a hectic bustle. He slept between the sons of Lord Spencer and Admiral Curzon-Howe. They had been chosen because their parents were well known to the Prince of Wales, but to Edward they seemed at first as alien as if they had been visitors from Mars. He had no idea how to relate to his contemporaries and had to learn not only new manners but almost a new language. It was much to his credit that he managed to look cheerful when his father left and to write proudly a few days later: ‘I am getting on very well here now … I think nothing of going up the mast as I am quite used to it.’8 His mother gratefully took his protestations at face value. ‘He has fallen into his new life very quickly,’ she told her aunt Augusta, ‘which is such a blessing.’9
The Prince of Wales’s instructions were that his son was to be treated exactly like any other naval cadet. Edward asked for nothing better, his ruling desire was to conform and to be accepted by his peers. But there was no chance that he would be able to escape altogether from his identity. He was subjected to mild bullying by small boys determined to show that he was not anything very special; red ink was poured down his neck, his hands were tied behind his back and he was guillotined in the sash window of his classroom. But his inoffensiveness and obvious determination not to trade on his rank soon led to his acceptance. Within a few weeks he had won through, was given a nickname – ‘Sardines’, presumably because he was the son of the Prince of W[h]ales – and became a tolerated if not leading member of society.
‘Perhaps the actual hours of work at Osborne are not excessive,’ the Prince of Wales wrote to Hansell, with greater perception than might have been expected, ‘but the whole life is a very strenuous one and they are never alone and therefore never quiet from the time they get up till the time they go to bed.’10 Sociable by nature, Edward survived the hurly-burly well, but the gaps left by Hansell’s teaching quickly became apparent. He did well in French but even special coaching in mathematics failed to raise him from the bottom ten places in the Exmouth term of sixty or so cadets. On the whole he settled respectably, if without great distinction, a little above the halfway mark; more important, he worked steadily throughout his two years at Osborne, reaching his peak after eighteen months and then only slipping back because of ill health. His father applauded his achievements and was decently consolatory about his setbacks. ‘I am delighted with the good reports that were sent me about you and that you are now 24th in your term,’ he wrote at the end of 1907, ‘… that is splendid, and I am sure you must be very pleased about it too and it will make you more keen about your mark.’11
Edward’s letters to his parents were short and uncommunicative even by the standards of schoolboys, consisting mainly of excuses for not having written before or at greater length: ‘I am in a bean-bag team and I had to practise every morning,’ was one explanation; ‘I have had to practise Swedish drill every morning,’ occurred a few weeks later; then, in desperation, ‘I have been doing such a lot of things lately that I have not had much time.’12 His father tolerated brevity but not a failure to write at all. ‘You must be able to find time to write to me once a week,’ he protested, ‘… I am anxious to hear how you are getting on.’13 Edward endured stoically the separation from his family, but felt it a bit hard when his mother announced that she intended to visit Germany during the first two weeks of his first holidays. The Princess of Wales was apologetic but unrelenting; Aunt Augusta was eighty-five and unable to travel. ‘I hope we shall have great fun when we do meet,’ she wrote.14 In spite of the demands on their time the Waleses generally did manage to make the holidays fun. ‘We miss you most dreadfully,’ the Prince of Wales wrote when his son returned to Osborne. ‘I fear you felt very sad at leaving home. I know I did when I was a boy, it is only natural that you should, and it shows that you are fond of your home.’15
By the time Prince Albert followed his brother to Osborne, Edward was in his last term and a figure of some consequence. ‘I hope you have “put him up to the ropes” as we say,’ wrote their father. ‘You must look after him all you can.’16 Opportunities for such tutelage were limited, boys from different terms were not supposed to mix at Osborne and when the brothers wanted to talk together surreptitious assignations had to be made in the further reaches of the playing fields. Prince Edward was expected to do more than just give comfort to his sibling; the Prince of Wales frequently instructed him to make sure Bertie worked harder or to pass on complaints about his failure to concentrate. Edward seems to have relished the quasi-parental role, especially since his brother did conspicuously worse than him. ‘Bertie was 61st in the order which was not so bad,’ he wrote later from Dartmouth. ‘I really think he is trying to work a bit. This is an excellent thing …’17
Though Edward had hardly been an outstanding success at Osborne, let alone a hero, he had profited by his time there. He had gained immeasurably in confidence and found that it was possible to get on well with his contemporaries. ‘He is wonderfully improved,’ noted Esher, ‘Osborne has made him unshy, and given him good manners.’18 His father, after only one term, found him ‘more manly’ and much more able to look after himself.19 It had been sink or swim; anyone who could not look after himself in the maelstrom of Osborne life would not have survived for long. But he had swum, and even got some pleasure out of doing so. When he got home to Frogmore at the beginning of his first holidays he had found the entrance beflagged and a large banner reading ‘Vive l’amiral!’ No banners flew on his final departure from Osborne but a sense of achievement possessed him just the same.
Dartmouth follows Osborne as the day the night, and giving something of the same impression of light following dark. Though the discipline seemed almost as harsh, the bullying as mindless, the tempo of life as relentless as at Osborne, the cadets were that much nearer to maturity and their troubles easier to endure. ‘This is a very nice place, much nicer than Osborne …’ wrote Edward in relief in May 1909. ‘There is a very nice Chapel here and I think I am going to join the Choir.’ But the pressure was still on. ‘There is an awful rush here and everything has to be done so quickly. We are allowed 3 minutes to undress in the evening.’20 His mother was alarmed by this 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 great success; the only people who recorded their displeasure were the Mayor and Aldermen of Chester, who felt that since Prince Edward was among other things Earl of Chester, the investiture should have happened there. The leading man earned himself a crop of compliments. Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, congratulated him on possessing a voice ‘which carries well and is capable of being raised without losing expressiveness’.46 Lloyd George assured him that he had forged a lasting bond of affection with the Welsh ‘and won the admiration of all those who witnessed the spectacle’.47 Queen Mary told Aunt Augusta that he had played his part to perfection, ‘It was very émouvant for George and me.’48 To the youthful Harry Luke he seemed ‘the incarnation of all the Fairy Princes who have ever been imagined’.49 The last description encapsulated everything that disquieted Edward about the ceremony. He was not sure he wanted to be a prince at all, certainly he did not wish to be a fairy prince. He hated anything which made him a man apart, which set him on a pedestal for his fellows to goggle at and worship. If to be Prince of Wales meant to put on fancy dress and strike attitudes in remote Welsh castles, then it was not a job for him.
