King Edward Vii. A Biography
by . Vol. I. From Birth to Accession. New York: the Macmillan Company. 1925, Large 8vo. xiv+803 pp. Illustrated. $8.00.
To the old dignities of Poet Laureate and Royal Historiographer the House of Hanover seems to have added, in the person of Sir Sidney Lee, the new, if unofficial, post of Royal Biographer. It is not by chance that the accomplished editor of the Dictionary of National Biography has written the lives of Queen Victoria and her son. It was an excellent choice, and it seems probable that the present biography may come to be regarded as his most excellent work. He had a good subject. Few rulers or none of the Hanoverian line have so lent themselves to picturesque, entertaining, and informing biography as the sovereign who was known irreverently in his earlier years as ‘Edward the Pacemaker,’ and in his later years, reverently, as ‘Edward the Peacemaker.’
It is true that this later appellation would not have been endorsed by his nephew, the late Kaiser William II; and it is equally true that no one in those vivid years of his early manhood when he was nicknamed after an old exemplar, Prince Hal, could have imagined how apt that comparison was. For the contrast between Shakespeare’s Prince Hal and King Henry was not more striking in drama than the earlier and later years of Edward VII were in real life. Of the years before he came to the throne his present biographer has written a fascinating story, a story whose fascination is increased by the fact that it reveals in much detail, not merely the life of a Prince of Wales, but the transformation of English society in his time and in no small measure at his hands, the coming-up of new men and new classes into ‘Society’ and the aristocracy, the loosening of the old ‘Victorian’ bonds, the entry of new elements into English society as well as English affairs — it is the story of the end of one era and the beginning of another, told, in a sense, for the first time in such clear and striking form.
Nothing in the whole book is more extraordinary than the revelation of Edward VII’s insatiable curiosity about life and people, the world and its inhabitants, above and below stairs, in and out of society, English, continental, European and non-European; unless it be — and this is a part of it — his amazing passion for experiencing every phase of human existence, save perhaps literary and spiritual adventures. For he was essentially an adventurous soul. His travels endure comparison even with those of the present Prince; his acquaintance was probably even wider; and if his adventures were less decorous to the eyes of his generation, if, as others beside his mother feared, they even did something to lessen the hold of monarchy on his people, they did not weaken his influence once he achieved the kingship.
Yet there is another aspect of this biography which will interest men of affairs still more. It is the influence he had on international relationships. For it was in his time and largely at his hands that the Crown turned from Germany to France. The Hanoverian fear and hatred of Bismarck which Victoria shared was increased by Edward’s dislike for his nephew, the late Kaiser, and it is to be presumed that the frequent and highly disparaging references to that individual which occur in these pages represent in some form the opinions of the subject of this biography. If that is true, that feeling must have been even deeper than the world thought at the time, and it undoubtedly played its part in the entente which was to bring Hohenzollern ambitions to their downfall.
All in all this is a great subject greatly handled; in many respects one of the most valuable and illuminating of the many admirable biographies which since Morley’s ‘Gladstone’ have enriched English literature and contributed to the knowledge of English history.
WILBUR C. ABBOTT