The Life of King Edward VII
between Heirs Apparent to the Throne. Imagination fails to grasp the
thought of the Stuarts or the Georges, when holding that position,
trying to help the poor or uplift the labourer! Speaking at a meeting in
London on January 12th, 1887, Lord Mayor, Sir Reginald Hanson, said:
"All those who have been engaged in this scheme (the Imperial Institute)
know that the Prince of Wales is one of the first in this country who
looks to the interests of the working classes." For many years, indeed,
he had been an annual subscriber to the Workingmen's Club and Institute
Union and to the Workingmen's College in Great Ormond Street. In the
Alexandra Trust, founded by Sir Thomas Lipton, at the instance of the
Princess, much interest was taken by the Heir Apparent as well as his
wife, and, on March 15th, 1900, they privately and unexpectedly visited
the Restaurant in City Road and inspected this praiseworthy effort to
supply wholesome food at low prices to the poor. After walking about and
speaking to many of the people, they enjoyed a "three-course dinner"
costing four pence half-penny, and left amid a scene of great
enthusiasm.
More than once the Prince aided workingmen's institutions by visiting
them. On one occasion he heard that an Exhibition in South London,
promoted by workingmen, was languishing for want of patronage and at
once arranged to visit it unofficially. He went through it carefully,
buying a number of articles and expressing much interest in the project.
There was no further neglect of the institution by the general public.
There was, perhaps, no single work in which he more appreciated the
opportunity of doing good than that connected with the Housing of the
Poor Commission to which he was appointed in 1884. He more than once
presided at its meetings and took an active part in the investigations
which were necessary. He attended every sitting and studied quietly and
privately the whole condition of the poor in the poorest quarters of
London and other cities. The Prince never hesitated to criticize those
who neglected their charitable duties, or to praise those who lived up
to the level of their opportunities, and in connection with an
institution which he opened at Deptford, in 1898, his condemnation of
the wealthy people in that neighbourhood was severe.
On March 4th, 1900, the working-class dwellings built in Shoreditch by
the City Council were opened by the Prince of Wales. They were largely
the product of the Royal Commission in which he had taken such interest
and whose proposals were the basis of so much progress in this
direction. His Royal Highness was accompanied on this occasion by the
Princess and Lord Suffield and was surrounded on the platform by Lord
Welby, the Earl of Rosebery, the Bishops of London and Stepney, the Earl
and Countess Carrington and others. In his speech the Prince was
expressive and vigorous upon the necessity of better housing for the
poor. "I am satisfied, not only that the public conscience is awakened
on the subject but that the public demands, and will demand, vigorous
action in cleansing the slums which disgrace our civilization and the
erection of good and wholesome dwellings such as those around us, and in
meeting the difficulties of providing house-room for the
working-classes, at reasonable rates, by easy and cheap carriage to not
distant districts where rents are reasonable." He concluded an elaborate
speech upon the question generally by expressing the hope that the
Legislature would deal with and punish those who were responsible for
insanitary property. Speaking at a banquet of the London County Council
on December 3rd of the same year, the Prince again urged attention to
the improvement of dwellings in various city areas. A part of this
generous desire to aid the poor was the Princess of Wales' dinner to
three hundred thousand persons in London at the Jubilee of 1897.
Contributions poured in unceasingly to the project and amongst others
was the gift of twenty thousand sheep from the pastoralists of New
South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. The organization of the dinner was
in the hands of the Lord Mayor of London and it proved a great success.
The gifts of a statesman were cultivated by the Prince of Wales upon
every proper opportunity. His Empire unity ideas and projects were
abundant evidence of this while a not less distinct proof of statecraft
was the apparent absence of it--the absolute non-partisan position of
the Heir Apparent. No one was ever able to say that he held political
views of any particular type. His delicate tact was particularly shown
in his kindness and courtesy to Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone. When the aged
statesman finally retired from politics the Prince visited him again at
Hawarden Castle and was photographed in a family group. He and the
Princess attended his funeral and showed the greatest respect for his
memory and services. When the time came, in 1900, for Mrs. Gladstone to
be laid beside her husband in Westminster Abbey one of the incidents of
a sad occasion was the wreath sent in by their Royal Highnesses with the
following inscription:
_In Memory of Dear Mrs. Gladstone._
"It is but crossing with abated breath
And with set face, a little strip of sea,
To find the loved ones waiting on the shore
More beautiful, more precious than before."
In preparing a national memorial to the eminent Liberal leader the
Prince of Wales accepted the post of President of the General Committee
with the Duke of Westminster as Chairman of the Executive. With Mr.
Cecil Rhodes, he was long upon terms of intimacy and never concealed his
admiration for the great Imperialist's career and objects. There can be
no doubt that he knew much of South African affairs and was instrumental
in the Duke of Fife taking a place on the Directorate of the South
African Chartered Company. The only occasion upon which the Prince ever
withdrew from a prominent Club was his retirement from the Traveller's
because they had black-balled Mr. Rhodes. Not the smallest evidence of
statecraft which the Prince of Wales showed, in a semi-personal way, was
his warm sympathy with the emancipation of the Jews and his belief in
their absorption into the life and interests of England. His presence at
the marriage of Mr. Leopold de Rothschild caused, long since, a
sensation in Jewish circles but it was only the first of many
compliments which the Heir Apparent bestowed upon the "chosen people" up
to the days when one of them became Prime Minister and a daughter of the
House of Rothschild married a future Premier--the Earl of Rosebery. The
late Baron Hirsch, the present Lord Rothschild. Sir Reuben Sassoon and
Sir Moses Montefiore were amongst his personal friends and he made a
thorough study of the position of the Russian Jews--showing them
practical sympathy in various indirect ways. Of course, this partiality
was open to misconstruction and the rumour of indebtedness to Jewish
financial interests was so prevalent at one time that Sir Francis
Knollys had to write a correspondent, who directly asked the question,
an official statement as Private Secretary to the Prince, that the
latter had no debts worth speaking of and could pay every farthing he
owed at a moment's notice.
There is no question, however, that this friendship with a powerful
financial class, ruling great interests in every nation, gave the Prince
of Wales a much enhanced influence abroad. In the same way his obvious
liking for American men and women of standing and ability was marked and
did undoubted service in promoting good feeling between the two
countries--where it was not grossly and untruthfully misrepresented by
sensational journals. Really distinguished visitors from the United
States, whether rich or poor, always found a welcome at the hands of His
Royal Highness and amongst those whom he appears to have especially
liked were James Russell Lowell, Thomas F. Bayard, Whitelaw Reid and
Chauncey M. Depew. American women who have been absorbed into English
life and society like Lady Harcourt, Mrs. Chamberlain and the Duchess of
Marlborough were always treated with marked courtesy by both the
Princess and himself. His visit to the United States in 1860 had also
taught him something of conditions there which those around him were not
always fully aware of. Hence the value of the message which was sent to
the New York _World_ in the name of the Prince of Wales and the Duke of
York during the Venezuelan crisis. If it be true that a private letter,
a word spoken in season, or a brief drawing-room conversation, is often
more influential than a cloud of newspaper writing, then the Prince of
Wales was for years a potent force in promoting good-will between the
Empire and the Republic.
As a diplomatist there can be no doubt of the Heir Apparent's influence.
He succeeded, in fact, to much of the power held in that respect by the
Prince Consort. It was the post of an unofficial and secret personal
mediator between the Sovereign of Great Britain and those of other
countries. Thoroughly acquainted with the personality of foreign rulers,
related to the majority of those in Europe, knowing their degrees of
national influence and personal power, familiar with the statesmen's
position in Court and Legislature, associated more and more closely as
the years went on with Queen Victoria's personal view of foreign policy,
the Prince's position was one of very great indirect power. Through his
heirship to the British throne he was naturally upon terms of something
like equality with those whom he met as rulers at Berlin or St.
Petersburg, at Paris or Vienna, and more in sympathy with their point of
view than men of less than Royal rank. To quote Mr. George W. Smalley in
_McClure's Magazine_ of March, 1901: "His is a strange nature. He has,
very fully and strongly, the pride of Kings and what the pride of Kings
is, a republican who has lived all his life in a republic can hardly
conceive. He has behind him, moreover, the loyalty of an expectant
nation." Upon the other hand he knew more about the people and was more
of them than any other hereditary ruler or prospective ruler in the
world. Hence the strength of his position when conferring with a German
Emperor, or a Russian Czar, or talking quietly with some Foreign
Minister at a time of crisis.
INCIDENTS OF DIPLOMATIC INFLUENCE
This personal influence of the Heir Apparent was a factor often ignored.
"Again and again," says Mr. Smalley, from the point of view of one who
watched for years at the source of power in London, "the Prince has gone
abroad as--in effect, though of course never in name--an Ambassador from
the Queen to some Sovereign on the Continent. He has laid her views at
some critical moments before the German Emperor and carried home the
Emperor's response." This sort of personal intercourse must, many a
time, have solved vital and serious issues. When William II. visited
Windsor in 1899 and the Queen, with the aid of the Prince of Wales, Lord
Salisbury and Mr. Chamberlain, evolved the terms upon which the
countries were to stand in regard to the coming South African war, can
there be any doubt as to the place in these negotiations which the Heir
Apparent held, or as to the advantage which his many earlier visits to
Berlin in the days of Bismarck and the Kaiser's initiatory years of
rule, must have been to him? The result of this intercourse was, in the
end, the turning of a possible national enemy into a friend; the change
of the Emperor who wrote the famous Transvaal cablegram into the ruler
who took the first train and boat to Windsor and bowed his head at the
death-bed of Queen Victoria.
Another interesting incident in this connection may be found in the
friendship known to have existed between the Prince of Wales and the