Mr Balfour's Poodle(40)

Before the debate a private union  ist colloquy on the subject had been held at Lansdowne House, and Rosebery had stretched his cross-bench conscience to the extent of attending what was virtually a meeting of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet. Austen Chamberlain has left an account of what took place, which is notable chiefly for a statement of Balfour’s putting the opportunist union  ist case with such lucidity that the elegant cynicism of his words was not obscured by Austen’s rendering of them:

‘I agree with what I believe Austen thinks,’ the account characteristically opens. ‘I dislike the whole thing. I would like to leave things as they are if we could. I don’t believe you can make a better House. But that is not the question. The question is: can you make a Second Chamber strong enough to stand and resist assault? Can you make such changes as will enable our men (surely Austen’s phrase and not Balfour’s) to fight with success in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Scotland against single-chamber government? I don’t think you can in our democratic days unless you admit an elective element, and although at first I thought the elective and non-elective elements would at once clash, and the remaining hereditary element be thrust out, I have come to the conclusion on reflection that this danger is not as great as I at first thought, and that such a House as we are discussing might stand at any rate for fifty years.’f

This suggests that Balfour had moved a little ahead of Lansdowne. And Austen Chamberlain, Walter Long, Curzon, and Akers-Douglas1 appear to have been with or in front of the leader of the party, with Salisbury, Midleton, and Lansdowne urging greater caution. In the event, however, these various currents of opinion became of little immediate importance. The spring recess, as we have seen, found the Commons with their veto resolutions complete and with the Parliament Bill given a first reading, but with no further progress made. Equally, it interrupted the Lords at a stage at which the Rosebery resolutions had been passed but when the moment had not arrived to give them more concrete shape. And before Parliament reassembled the whole political atmosphere had been transformed by the death of the King.

It was a comparatively sudden death, and for that reason it was all the more politically cataclysmic in its effects. On April 27, His Majesty had returned to London after spending most of the previous two months at Biarritz. After his return he had attended a performance of Rigoletto at Covent Garden, visited the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and spent a week-end at Sandringham. As late as May 5, he received the new Governor of New Zealand in audience. On that afternoon the first warning bulletin was issued. On the following morning he was up and transacting a little business. At 11.45 pm on that evening—May 6—he was dead.

Asquith received the news at sea. He had gone with McKenna, one of his closest friends in the Cabinet, on an Admiralty yacht cruise to Spain and Portugal. Near Gibraltar the first disturbing bulletin had been received. The yacht had been ordered to turn round and make full steam for Plymouth. Before reaching the Bay of Biscay the final news had been received. Asquith has recorded his thoughts that night:

‘I went up on deck, and I remember well that the first sight that met my eyes in the twilight before dawn was Halley’s comet blazing in the sky.… I felt bewildered and indeed stunned. At a most anxious moment in the fortunes of the State, we had lost, without warning or preparation, the Sovereign whose life experience, trained sagacity, equitable judgment, and unvarying consideration, counted for so much. For two years I had been his Chief Minister, and I am thankful to remember that from first to last I never concealed anything from him. He soon got to know this, and in return he treated me with a gracious frankness which made our relationship in very trying and exacting times, one, not always of complete agreement, but of unbroken confidence. It was this which lightened the load which I should otherwise have found almost intolerably oppressive: the prospect that, in the near future, I might find it my duty to give him advice which I knew would be in a high degree impalatable.

‘Now he had gone. His successor, with all his fine and engaging qualities, was without political experience. We were nearing the verge of a crisis without example in our constitutional history. What was the right thing to do? This was the question which absorbed my thoughts as we made our way, with two fast escorting destroyers, through the Bay of Biscay, until we landed at Plymouth on the evening of Monday, May 9.’g

The shock affected different people in different ways,1 but few in the world of politics were unmoved by it. And many much further away from the Throne were equally affected. The Victorian age had accustomed the British people to long reigns and to the occupation by their Sovereign of a dominant position in the family of European royalty. King Edward’s death destroyed both these conventions. The Edwardian period, which in fact possessed little of that tranquil and assured dignity with which the personality of the monarch has since invested it, had shown itself to be but a brief epilogue to the reign of the old Queen. And King George was very different from his father. He had not been brought up to reign. He had lived, first as a naval officer and then as a country gentleman, a life far removed from high politics. He was bored by foreigners, he disliked smart society, he had no interest in clever conversation. He did not inspire the German Emperor, as his father had done, with feelings which were a mixture of respect and resentful envy. He had not been, and was never to become, a leader of European society.