Edward VII - Heir Apparent

Heir Apparent

During Queen Victoria's widowhood, Edward pioneered the idea of royal public appearances as we understand them today—for example, opening Thames Embankment in 1871, Mersey Tunnel in 1886, and Tower Bridge in 1894. However, his mother did not allow Edward an active role in the running of the country until 1898. He was sent summaries of important government documents, but she refused to give him access to the originals. He annoyed his mother by siding with Denmark on the Schleswig-Holstein Question in 1864 (she was pro-German) and in the same year annoyed her again by making a special effort to meet Garibaldi. Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone sent him papers secretly.

In 1870, republican sentiment in Britain was given a boost when the French Emperor, Napoleon III, was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War and the French Third Republic was declared. However, in the winter of 1871, a brush with death led to an improvement both in Edward's popularity with the public as well as in his relationship with his mother. While staying at Londesborough Lodge, near Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Edward contracted typhoid, the disease that was believed to have killed his father. There was great national concern, and one of his fellow guests (Lord Chesterfield) died. Edward's recovery was greeted with almost universal relief. Public celebrations included the composition of Arthur Sullivan's Festival Te Deum. Edward cultivated politicians from all parties, including republicans, as his friends, and thereby largely dissipated any residual feelings against him. From 1886, Foreign Secretary Lord Rosebery sent him Foreign Office despatches, and from 1892 some Cabinet papers were opened to him.

In 1875, Edward set off for India on an extensive eight-month tour of the sub-continent. His advisors remarked on his habit of treating all people the same, regardless of their social station or colour. In letters home, he complained of the treatment of the native Indians by the British officials: "Because a man has a black face and a different religion from our own, there is no reason why he should be treated as a brute." At the end of the tour, his mother was given the title Empress of India by Parliament, in part as a result of the tour's success.

Edward was a patron of the arts and sciences and helped found the Royal College of Music. He opened the college in 1883 with the words, "Class can no longer stand apart from class ... I claim for music that it produces that union of feeling which I much desire to promote." At the same time, he enjoyed gambling and country sports and was an enthusiastic hunter. He ordered all the clocks at Sandringham to run half an hour fast to create more time for shooting. This so-called tradition of Sandringham Time continued until 1936, when it was abolished by Edward VIII. He also laid out a golf course at Windsor. By the 1870s the future king had taken a keen interest in horseracing and steeplechasing. In 1896, his horse Persimmon won both the Derby Stakes and the St. Leger Stakes. In 1900, Persimmon's brother, Diamond Jubilee, won five races (Derby, St. Leger, 2,000 Guineas Stakes, Newmarket Stakes and Eclipse Stakes) and another of Edward's horses, Ambush II, won the Grand National.

He was regarded worldwide as an arbiter of men's fashions. He made wearing tweed, Homburg hats and Norfolk jackets fashionable, and popularised the wearing of black ties with dinner jackets, instead of white tie and tails. He pioneered the pressing of trouser legs from side to side in preference to the now normal front and back creases, and was thought to have introduced the stand-up turn-down shirt collar. A stickler for proper dress, he is said to have admonished the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, for wearing the trousers of an Elder Brother of Trinity House with a Privy Councillor's coat. Deep in an international crisis, the Prime Minister informed the Prince of Wales that it had been a dark morning, and that "my mind must have been occupied by some subject of less importance." The tradition of men not buttoning the bottom button of waistcoats is said to be linked to Edward, who supposedly left his undone due to his large girth. His waist measured 48 inches (122 cm) shortly before his coronation. He introduced the practice of eating roast beef, roast potatoes, horseradish sauce and yorkshire pudding on Sundays, which remains a staple British favourite for Sunday lunch.

In 1891, Edward was embroiled in the Royal Baccarat Scandal, when it was revealed he had played an illegal card game for money the previous year. The Prince was forced to appear as a witness in court for a second time when one of the players unsuccessfully sued his fellow players for slander after being accused of cheating. In the same year Edward was involved in a personal conflict, when Lord Charles Beresford threatened to reveal details of Edward's private life to the press, as a protest against Edward interfering with Beresford's affair with Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick. The friendship between the two men was irreversibly damaged and their bitterness would last for the remainder of their lives. Usually, Edward's outbursts of temper were short-lived, and "after he had let himself go ... smooth matters by being especially nice".

In late 1891, Edward's eldest son, Albert Victor, was engaged to Princess Victoria Mary of Teck. Just a few weeks later, in early 1892, Albert Victor died of pneumonia. Edward was grief-stricken. "To lose our eldest son", he wrote, "is one of those calamities one can never really get over". Edward told Queen Victoria, " have given my life for him, as I put no value on mine". Albert Victor was the second of Edward's children to die. In 1871, his youngest son, John, had died just 24 hours after being born. Edward had insisted on placing John in his coffin personally with "the tears rolling down his cheeks".

On his way to Denmark through Belgium on 4 April 1900 Edward was the victim of an attempted assassination, when Jean-Baptiste Sipido shot at him in protest over the Boer War. Sipido escaped to France; the perceived delay of the Belgian authorities in applying for extradition, combined with British disgust at Belgian atrocities in the Congo, worsened the already poor relationship between the United Kingdom and the Continent. However, in the next ten years, Edward's affability and popularity, as well as his use of family connections, assisted Britain in building European alliances.