King Edward the Seventh [antikvár]

AUTHOR'S NOTE The nine troubled years of the reign of Edward the Seventh were no mere pendant to the long Victorian Age. The land's surface glowed with a splendour which suggested serenity, but seismic faults had developed below, and the Edwardian Age is characterized by a rapidly accelerating process of economic, social and political disturbance. The nations of Europe were convulsed by urgent and sometimes insoluble problems which drove King Edward in depressed moods to toy with thoughts of abdication, and which plunged the entire world later into an epoch of revolutionary upheaval. Untrained in affairs of State at his accession. King Edward displayed an iron resolve to do his duty. Interested primarily in foreign policy and the armed services, his influence was exerted most effectively and forcefully in the Royal Navy; but he loved to be consulted about the widest possible range of official, social and other detail. His papers in consequence are remarkably varied as well as voluminous; and by gracious permission of Her Majesty the Queen, I was accorded unrestricted access to all relevant material in the Royal Archives when I undertook this work. So much of that material is illuminating that it may seem invidious to particularize, but nine categories of documents at Windsor have been especially helpful: (1) Papers dealing with the education of King Edward when Prince of Wales. (2) The early correspondence of the Prince of Wales with his parents. (3) Queen Victoria's diary. (4) Typed extracts from the correspondence, owned by Prince Wolfgang of Hesse, between Queen Victoria and her eldest child, the German Empress Frederick. (5) King Edward's diary written entirely in his own hand since boyhood. A few volumes are missing, perhaps as a consequence of the fire at Sandringham on i November, iSgr. Used pardy as an engagement book and partly as a record of such dull regular factual items as game bags and horse-race results, the diary lists other matters also with very rare and brief comment. Those xiii i '