King Edward VII - Part 2

Bertie's wife princess alexandra had long since learned to turn a blind eye to her husband's stable of mistresses but in the Countess of Warwick she had come up against a real rival Daisy Warwick was unlike the professional beauties and the sort of slightly marginal society ladies Daisy where it was right in the middle of the court a court Insider she was a mistress with him Alex couldn't Kip because she threatened Alex his whole sort of world Alexander becomes increasingly distant and she punishes Bertie by going abroad and by staying abroad she goes and stays with her family and she cables back sort of laconically I'm so sorry you know I've got delayed doesn't show any indication of coming back this was public humiliation for Bertie Bertie had brought his relationship with the princess to breaking point Alexandra needn't have worried the prince's prodigious energies had begun to fail him in one crucial area we know that Betty's health was poor at the time of his relationship with Daisy Warwick and it's also true that in his diary um Bert he does um talk about an electrical treatment now what could this be one of the things that a male patient might have visited a doctor to be cured for was impotence problems because it was thought that electricity a shock of electricity could restore the body sort of vital energy for Daisy I think the physical side of their relationship was hugely important I think that she loved sex she was always worrying about it and wanting to meet people I found a draft of her letters that said that she mated naturally with physical strength or beauty Beauty had never been an attribute Bertie could lay claim to now his strength was in question in 1898 the still highly charged countess fell pregnant by another man to Alexandra's delight Daisy roped the Prince ending the 10-year affair a letter is long since destroyed but Bertie's reply is on record my lovely little Daisy you could not help my loved one writing to me as you did though it gave me a pang I gave your letter to the princess she was moved to tears and said that out of evil good would come the Prince of Wales once again faced an empty existence but all that was about to end the Queen's health was failing in January 1901 Bertie was summoned to Osman house on the Isle of Wight for the first time in his life he entered his mother's bedroom when she saw Bertie her eldest son in whom for a great deal of her life she had not been best pleased I don't think he expected to receive quite the warmth that some of his siblings got but she completely opened her answer by saying Bertie I'm pulling him forward and hugging and he was reduced to tears the reconciliation had come too late minutes later his mother lapsed into unconsciousness and died the moment Bertie had been waiting for all his life had arrived the accession of an overweight 59 year old philanderer hardly thrilled the public imagination few sovereigns have come to the throne with lower expectations but from his first command as King Bertie was determined to send a signal of intent to his doubters he must have recognized that his sense of insecurity was also reflected by the whole nations and empires view that he was simply not quite up to the job as she his mother had been and when he went down to join the yachts that were lined up to take Queen Victoria's body back from the Isle of Wight to Portsmouth he looked up in the rigging and saw that the royal standard was flying at half-mast and he asked the captain why that was the case and captain perplexed said well the queen is dead and he said no the king is alive and I think that that was a sort of florid way where with the spectacular nature of using a symbol he was able to show that no this show goes on on the 21st of January 1901 Bertie followed the late Queen's funeral cortege on its journey towards its final resting place at Windsor but even as the king bad farewell to his mother but he was determined to break with the traditions of her reign and forge his own distinctive brand of monarchy after the death of Prince Albert Queen Victoria had led an increasingly reclusive existence behind the walls of Windsor Castle and her forbidding Highland retreat Balmoral these 20 seconds of film footage showing Victoria taking a carriage ride at Balmoral a one of the rare glimpses into royal life the Queen was prepared to allow there was a great and growing deal of concern about Victoria's withdrawal from public life obviously her mourning was profound and everyone respected that but when it went on and on and on and she didn't open Parliament she didn't appear it fed into a growing Republican move within Britain there were these Royals taking salaries are not doing the job in the 1870s Britain came closer to becoming a republic about any time in the after 1890s or 20th centuries if the Queen had become extremely unpopular and she was viewed as being a kind of selfish extravagant figure just sulking in her castle doing nothing for the country in stark contrast to his mother the Prince of Wales couldn't have been more visible Birdy's responses criticism was basically to say that the monarch needs to be seen in public to go and open hospitals to lay foundation stones to cut tapes to launch ships all of the things that members of the royal family do today by doing these things I think Bertie was conscious that he was fighting back that this was a new role that the monarchy must perform installed in Buckingham Palace and free from his mother's apron strings the new king threw himself into preparations for a dazzling coronation that would put the royal family back at the heart of national life but Bertie's lack of experience in dealing with affairs of state soon began to tell he was completely overwhelmed with all the things all his projects all the things that he wanted to do the work itself was something completely new all these boxes full of documents that he had no training of going through he read everything um he hadn't learnt how to delegate till all the sort of detail about you know even down to what tune the soldiers played outside his window window at Windsor Castle he had to decide everything he's overwhelmed by all this responsibility dangerously overweight and chain smoking cigars the king appeared to be sinking beneath the burden of responsibility doctors began to fear for his health I saw the king every morning in his bedroom at 9:00 I found him surrounded by letters telegrams and papers which covered the whole bed he was evidently greatly perturbed and drew attention to the litter around him with a gesture of despair he begins to do things like eating far too much I mean you always even far too much but to eat sort of in a sort of sort of bulimic ways of stuff Alexandra complained that at meals he just stuffed he never sort of chewed he'd just stuffed himself with food so he does seem at the beginning to be going through a kind of mental crisis the King's mental crisis was about to trigger a national drama a few days before the coronation ceremony the king collapsed with abdominal pains doctors diagnosed acute appendicitis a potentially fatal condition at the turn of the 20th century the top doctors are called in to deal with it it's a guy called Frederick Treves the man who who looked after the Elephant Man the at the hospital in Whitechapel here called in to deal with another sort of 19th century monster Bertie who is lumbering around in pain in this sort of dyspeptic agony you know this organ is swelling inside him and demanding attention and causing him the most exquisite pain the Royal surgeon insisted that the coronation be delayed the king raged the coronation cannot be postponed I cannot and will not disappoint the people I will go to the Abbey at any cost I will go to the Abbey if I die there being crowned having the holy oil poured on him this was an enormous Lee important event for him the thing that he had been waiting for all his life much as Prince Charles has been waiting for his mother to depart this life so that he can become king this was the purpose in life and so when he got ill and the coronation all the plans had been made all the invitations have been sent all the China had been produced the dishcloths everything had been ready and he got ill and so he was determined to try and keep it up the in sumption of power after having waited for so long is incredibly important to him but Treves presents him with an ultimatum he says if you don't postpone the coronation you will be going to Westminster Abbey in a box finally the king gave way at noon on the 24th of June he climbed onto an operating table in Buckingham Palace and submitted to the surgeon's knife the flags are all up it's all been paid for and everybody is made to wait while the King undergoes this very difficult and dangerous operation you know a lot of people died of appendicitis in this period this is a new procedure and it doesn't go well the king stops breathing the King turns blue in the face and you can imagine the whole empire holding its breath at this moment because this man has been waiting for decades to be the king of this country and it looks as if he's not going to get his chance to prove what he's capable of doing the doctors did their job Bertie would go to the Abbey not in a box but the Golden State coach of his ancestor King George the third on the 9th of August 1902 the one-time prodigal Prince was crowned King Edward the seventh in a dazzling display of pomp and pageantry ever the sudden expected ceremony did be delivered absolutely perfectly he watched every detail of it with care and concern he wanted to send a message to the whole empire that they had a new emperor with all apparently he could muster and he looked into the great dressing up box of British history and he opened all the files and papers going back in time to conjure a coronation of fabulous splendor in order to deliver utter impact but he was very much ahead of his time as Manik because he was one of the first to understand that if the monarchy was to survive in the 20th century it must be ornamental it must be something that people could identify with that they could see he is becoming the kind of monarch that England needed in the 20th century almost overnight Edward the seventh transformed the public face of the monarchy now he set about sweeping away the physical evidence of Queen Victoria's reign determined to bring light into his mother's fusty apartments he hired technicians to install electric lights and theater designers to transform Buckingham Palace into a sea of white and gold but he embarked on a full-scale carrot he marches around pictures of Albert pictures of her dogs all of it is swept aside all the old clutter that Victoria had accumulate his his swept aside and the place is made into a palace this was a state about what he thought and the monarchy should be but it must be grandly some people would say slightly vulgar but it must be grand and it must give a sense of theater Edward the seventh realized that on its own the restoration of traditional ceremonial wasn't enough to preserve the monarchy in an era of rapid social change Bertie believed the crown should move with the times Edward the seventh was very much aware that the monarchy needed to reach out beyond a sort of aristocracy to other classes in a way he is the first Democratic King he didn't judge people on the basis of your position in Burke's peerage he was somebody who invited people you know Americans Jews people like that who might not have been welcomed in the most blue-blooded circles with trades unions and the labor movement on the march the people's King even extended the hand of friendship to sworn enemies of the crown he wants to be a symbol of unity for example there's a story about him meeting Keir Hardie the Labour MP who at the time was the absolute bete noire of you know all royalty and all the aristocracy and the Tory Party because he was highly critical of privilege and was very vociferous about saying so and Edward the seventh meets Keir Hardie and he is extraordinarily charming and polite you know to this class enemy one of his friends you know looks at him and says rather sarcastically well you know you were very nice to him and Edward turns to him very quickly and very sharply and says no you don't understand I mean to be you know king of all the people to the surprise of many of his contemporaries and with the seventh was proving himself a more than capable monarch but much as he relished his new public responsibilities the king saw no reason to change the private habits of a lifetime even at the sacred moment of his coronation the king signaled his intent with his unconventional choice of guests pride of place in the Abbey was given to a special box for his lady friends past and present including new mistress Alice Kapil he made sure that all the women who were important to him some of whom he slept with were close at hand at this prime moment of his life he made sure that those women without trying to put out his wife in any way were accorded a position around him whenever he could provide that and no less so than at the coronation Edward the seventh was made like that he loved his queen he adored his children but he just needed a little bit of extra Edward the seventh wrote out for himself a new style of monarchy which basically involved a lot of public appearances doing the public job the ceremonial job perfectly and yet at the same time he drew a very very strict line between that and his private life I think that he had this very realistic idea in a way much more realistic than putting the whole royal family on show of saying look I'm King I would do my job as king but um the deal is that I'm allowed a private life for the rest of his life the King continued to enjoy all the luxuries of his position with mrs. Keppel never far from his side Queen Alexandra had little choice but to put up with her husband's behavior but nobody else seemed to mind much and in 1903 the King's passion for beautiful women would even prove the key to his greatest political triumph in the early years of the 20th century one issue dominated British foreign policy over all others Germany under the Kings troublesome nephew Kaiser Wilhelm was building up its armed forces at terrifying speed as Prince of Wales Bertie had been blocked in his ambition to influence foreign and military affairs now he was determined to put his inside family knowledge to good use the Kaiser is a very difficult man and very paranoid but he understood that in a kind of intuitive way Bertie understood very clearly that it was not going to be possible for him to restrain Germany or anybody to restrain Germany and he also understood that the Kaiser was never going to be a reliable friend so he saw and saw incredibly clearly that um war was a real danger he didn't want war but he felt that if war was going to come Britain must be prepared Britain needed allies finding them wasn't going to be easy the recent war in South Africa against the Boers had made Britain highly unpopular in Europe but the king had a plan in May 1903 he set out on a mission of diplomacy to one of the favorite haunts of his youth Paris Bertie didn't tell them his plans he makes this completely secret um agenda he didn't even tell his some history his secretaries and when the Royal train arrives and Bertie gets out to the station he's met with incredibly hostile French crowds Bertie turns up in Paris a place where the British are incredibly unpopular at the time and when he arrives he is booed there are newspaper editorials saying go back to England and basically listing every English insult since you know the burning of Joan of Arc faced with a French mob the English kings love of Parisian culture and women was about to pay dividends he goes to the theater and the audience in the theater is incredibly sort of um unfriendly and sullen and to the dismay of the French police the King insists during that sort of interval of going into the foyer and he spots an actress and he goes up to her and um kisses her hand and says that man was ill when I last saw you in London you were superb édouard really does have a sort of magic touch immediately the kind of rumour mill in Paris puts this about he'd been incredibly charming to this famous actress you know the next day he walks out into the crowds he shakes hands he says how he loves Paris he looks happy he charms the pants off the French the mood changes like this you know it just flips suddenly this of outbursts of cheering wherever he goes there's a sort of a real sense that he is one of them do you remember that um new English politician spoke French like that none of the new Paris like that and that is critically important in causing a huge change in French opinion the king's weakness for French wine women and song had helped him pave the way for a crucial strategic alliance with the old enemy there's a sort of French love of an English milord I mean milord of course is what they called you know English herbecause aristocrats who came to Paris to have a good time and as Prince of Wales Edward the seventh had come a lot in the 80s and 60s and 70s and was famous for his you know a great enjoyment of the theater and also his use of you know French brothels and I'm sure that milord reputation didn't do him any harm when he came back in 1933 as King next Bertie threw his support behind admirals arguing for a new generation of warships the dreadnaughts to keep pace with the German naval threat the king was if anything ahead of his ministers in real I like how vitally important it was that the British Navy mustered all costs we built up and I think that the King made a very serious contribution in pressing his ministers to build new better ships to look to the future it was a future the 69 year old King would not live to see the 12 course dinners and the trademark cigars were catching up with him already seriously ill with chronic emphysema in 1910 the king suffered a series of heart attacks as he slipped in and out of consciousness at Buckingham Palace he was joined by two women his long-suffering wife Queen Alexandra and his mistress Alice Cabot he died just before midnight on the 10th of May 1910 Alexandra remained devoted to Bertie very close to him throughout his life after Berta's death The Undertaker's were always for making appointments to come and put the body into a coffin and it was always other nights and the times this was going happening day after day Alexandra would say no I can't bear to part with him and um people who came and said that you know she was like this was for the first time she had Bertie to herself for eight days the Queen clung to her husband but even in death Bertie was a people's king in recognition of his unique popularity it was decided that his body would lie in state at Westminster for the public to pay its respects the first British monarch ever to do so I think only when Piedra seventh died did the British people realize how much they liked having him around you've been around for so long and then suddenly gone and so it surged out in their hundreds of thousands to show we mourned his passing queues of people humble people poor people um they snaked around Westminster something like seven mile queues this really does show to a much greater extent to when Queen Victoria died just how successful he had been in making this kind of connection between the monarchy and the people he is this sort of libertine figure he does seem like a fragment of an earlier age you can imagine him kind of careering about 18th century London with a big wig on and a beauty spot and I think in a way although he seems to be the absolute opposite of his father he also seems like the right man for the job in the early part of the 20th century Edward the seventh creation of a modern public monarchy together with his fast living lifestyle and him the affection of his people and raised the royal family to new levels of popularity his vision of monarchy as a showy theater of pageantry continues to this day but the example the King set in his personal life would be rejected Bertie's descendants would attempt with mixed results to return to the family values of his mother Queen Victoria

Channel: MyDigitalRealm

Views: 842,962

Rating: 4.7069478 out of 5

Keywords: king edward VII

Id: 7S-4veChkRA

Length: 27min 12sec (1632 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 01 2011