The Life of King Edward VII
Edward, Prince of Wales, demands a peculiar combination of qualities
which very few men possess in any rank of life. Tact, self-restraint,
self-reliance, knowledge of human nature, energy, dignity, good
intentions earnest patriotism, are more or less necessary.
How seldom these qualities have all been possessed by Heirs to the
British Throne is plain upon the pages of history. There have been
amongst them seventeen Princes of Wales of whom the best, before the
chief of the line, was the Black Prince, and of whom only four have
reached the Throne since the time of Edward VI. They were Charles I,
Charles II, George II, and George IV., and the careers of the last two
consisted in the establishment of rival Courts, continuous disagreements
with their fathers, the headship of political factions, and the
possession of characters about which the least said the better. The
Prince who became Edward VII. may be said to have created the position
of Heir Apparent, as his Royal mother created that of a modern
constitutional Monarch.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS IN THE POSITION
He established himself as a sort of advisory statesman to the nation, an
absolutely impartial leader in questions of high, as distinct from party
politics, the first gentleman in the land in society, sports and
manners, the leader of philanthropic projects and social reforms. He
became the busiest man in England, the most popular personality in the
three kingdoms, the head and front of many important public
undertakings. Such a development was new to British institutions, but it
came about so gradually that only when he ascended the Throne did people
fully realize how large a place the Prince of Wales had held in public
affairs as well as in their affections. Mr. Chauncey M. Depew, the
eloquent American Senator, expressed the personal side of the matter
very well when he said, with some surprise, after first meeting His
Royal Highness: "I met a thoughtful dignitary filling to the brim the
requirements of his exalted position. In fact, a practical as well as a
theoretical student of the mighty forces which control the government of
all great countries and make their best history."
There were many sides to this career, and in some of them the Prince
never received the credit which he deserved. One was the essentially
business-like management of his financial affairs. From the time of
attaining his majority the Heir Apparent received L40,000 a year by
grant of Parliament; at his marriage a special grant of L10,000 was
given the Princess of Wales; when their children grew up the Prince was
given L36,000 to apportion amongst them as he saw fit. During his
minority the wise management of the revenues of the Duchy of
Cornwall--which is an hereditary appurtenance of the Prince of Wales--by
the late Prince Consort, gave the Heir Apparent a total of L600,000, of
which L220,000 were expended upon the purchase of Sandringham, and a
considerable sum upon improvements there. On the Prince's marriage he
was voted L23,455 to defray expenses and his allowance for the Indian
tour of 1875 was L142,000 of which L69,000 was for presents. Marlborough
House was given him by the nation, though he paid taxes upon it like any
other citizen. The Duchy of Cornwall was so well managed after it came
under his control that it yielded in 1897 a total income of nearly
L74,000, or almost double the value of the returns received forty years
before. Birk Hall, an estate inherited from the Prince Consort, was sold
to the Queen for L120,000. The total public income of the Prince of
Wales during many years was about L180,000, or nearly a million dollars,
and the management of his finances was always careful. The stories of
extravagance and indebtedness were absolutely without foundation. Yet
these tales of poverty were always widespread and were probably believed
by many millions of people.
The truth is that he was a first-rate business man in money affairs,
knew how to make his income go to its furthest extent, and had an
established system on his estates and in his palaces which combined
comfort and luxury with judicious economy. A few words upon this point
may be quoted, in passing, from an article in the well-known _Ladies
Home Journal_ of Philadelphia, written in July, 1897, by Mr. George W.
Smalley, an American critic of authority who lived in London for many
years: "It is not a subject which I care to touch upon, but I may refer
to the stories about the Prince of Wales' financial position. It is a
matter with which the American public has absolutely no concern.
Nevertheless all sorts of stories are printed here about his debts to
this person or that. Such stories were circulated when Baron Hirsch
died--so circumstantial that they must have either been based upon
minute knowledge or have been pure fabrications. They were not based
upon knowledge, minute or otherwise, because they were not true." These
stories were rendered more absurd by the fact that a rough calculation
of his receipts during forty years of public life would indicate a sum
of between thirty and forty millions of dollars.
CHARITIES OF THE PRINCE
Of course the expenses of the Heir Apparent were very great even when
those are excepted which the nation paid. His personal gifts to
benevolent institutions, educational concerns, religious interests,
objects of social, moral and physical improvement, hospitals and
infirmaries, asylums, orphanages, commercial and agricultural
organizations, the relief of children and foreigners in distress, deaf
and dumb and blind institutions, memorials and statues, Indian famines,
war funds, calamity funds of various kinds at home, in the Colonies, and
abroad, have been reckoned by an English student of statistics at L3,200
a year, or L128,000 in forty years--$640,000 spent in response to public
appeals alone without reference to the many private charities about
which little was known except that a very large amount of assistance
was given yearly by the Prince and Princess in response to all kinds of
private and authenticated requests. In this general connection Mr.
Gladstone, when Prime Minister, spoke very warmly during the
Parliamentary discussion of 1889 upon the Royal grants of that year. "It
will be admitted," he said in the course of his somewhat famous speech,
"that circumstances have tended to throw upon the Prince of Wales an
amount of public work in connection with institutions as well as with
ceremonials, which was larger than could reasonably have been expected,
and with regard to which every call has been honourably and devotedly
met from a sense of public duty."
Reference has been made in the preceding pages to the infinitely varied
public functions of His Royal Highness and the aid thus given to
charities and benevolent objects. A few instances only were quoted in
which many thousands of pounds were obtained for worthy objects through
his patronage. The fact is that the Heir Apparent gave his position a
rather unique characteristic in this respect by becoming a sort of Grand
Almoner of the nation. Almost any charity which he patronized or which
the Princess supported with his approval, became a success, and it is
probable that every thousand pounds which he gave away became a hundred
thousand pounds through the _prestige_ of his example and his often
vigorous and effective personal exertions. One of the interests to which
he was most devoted was that of the London and other hospitals.
Attendance at the festivals, or annual dinners, was frequent, and the
consequent subscription to their funds from time to time considerable.
During the Diamond Jubilee the Prince thought he saw in this cause a way
to fittingly commemorate that great event--as he had already marked that
of 1887 by the Imperial Institute.
Under date of February 5th, 1897, therefore, an elaborate statement and
earnest appeal appeared in the London _Times_ and other great papers
signed by the Prince of Wales, and asking for organized help in making
up the existing deficits of L100,000 in London hospitals. The Royal
writer pointed out that the efforts of individual institutions,
praiseworthy as they had been, failed to obtain more than a small number
of subscriptions from the great population of the metropolis; that the
reasons for this was partly the difficulty of choosing amongst so many
useful charities, partly the lack of definite opportunity for giving
annual subscriptions to the cause as a whole, partly a feeling that
small sums were not worth contributing; that it was proposed to
establish this "Prince of Wales Hospital Fund" in order to commemorate
the 60th anniversary of the Queen's reign by obtaining permanent annual
subscriptions of from L100,000 to L150,000. He also announced that Lord
Rothschild had accepted the post of Treasurer, that a commencement in
subscriptions had been made, and that the Lord Mayor had promised his
active assistance.
The success of the movement thus inaugurated by the Heir Apparent was
pronounced. The annual Report of the Council of the Fund, which was
issued on May 2nd, 1899, stated that during the past two years L89,000
had been distributed, and that the hospitals had been enabled to re-open
and maintain two hundred and forty-two beds. It had, however, not come
up yet to the requirements and, on March 1st, of this year, the Prince
made another effort to help the hospitals. He called a large and
representative meeting at Marlborough House, and placed before it a plan
for the establishment of an Order to be called the League of Mercy. Its
object would be to reach locally persons who did not subscribe to minor
Funds, or individual institutions, and to do this by offering an honour
in the form of this decoration, "as a reward for gratuitous personal
services rendered in the relief of sickness, suffering, poverty or
distress." These services would be apart, altogether, from gifts of
money, (although the latter would be gladly accepted) and must be
continued during five years. The Queen was to be head of the Order and
the Heir Apparent its Grand President. All names were to be submitted to
Her Majesty and the honour itself was not to confer any rank, dignity or
social precedence. The plan was approved, and its success marked despite
some caustic and unjust criticisms in certain Radical papers. On
December 1st (1899), following, the annual meeting of the Hospital Fund
was held at Marlborough House, with His Royal Highness in the chair, and
attended by Lord Rowton, Lord Iveagh, Cardinal Vaughan, Lord Lister,
Lord Reay, the Chief Rabbi and others. Lord Rothschild submitted a
statement which showed the year's receipts to be L47,000, the first
distribution from the League of Mercy to be L1,000, and the total amount
of the Fund to be L217,000. The meeting of December 18th, in the
following year, showed receipts of L49,468; of which L6,000 came from
the League of Mercy. In his speech upon this occasion Lord Rothschild
heartily congratulated the Royal chairman upon his "wisdom and
foresight" in forming this League. In passing, it may be said that
Grey's Hospital, London, was one of the individual institutions which
the Prince undertook personally to help, and at one special banquet, at
which he presided for this purpose, he was enabled to announce total
subscriptions to the extraordinary amount of L151,000.
THE PRINCE AND THE WORKINGMEN
There was no part of his public career more creditable to the Prince of
Wales than his sincere, unforced friendship and sympathy with the
workingman. Like his philanthropic work, it was the natural product of a
generous disposition, and won the honest liking of men who had always
looked with suspicion upon aristocratic, to say nothing of Royal,
efforts in their behalf. This was another illustration of the difference