The Prince sat still and answered not. He saw the man's condition. Nobody knew better the rule that such a company did not break up till the Prince gave the signal. He was a man with a great social position, and not social only. When he had departed the Prince finished his interrupted sentence and the talk went on as before. Not an allusion to the offence or the offender.
His sense of social responsibility showed itself in an unexpected form during the Boer War. There grew up among the aristocracy a passionate patriotism which sent heads of great families and elder and younger sons into the field. The King thought this feeling threatened to have grave consequences. He approved it, of course, and encouraged it, but he thought limits ought to be set to a fervour which seemed not unlikely to extinguish an important part of the nobility. He sent for a number of men in great position who had resolved to go and advised them to wait, saying, with his usual good sense:
"Enough men of your class have gone already to show your devotion; more than are really needed for the purposes of war. Wait a little. If matters go badly it will be time enough then for you to depart."
One secret of the extraordinary social power of both Prince and King lay in his knowledge of social matters. Nobody was so well informed. He had about him numbers of men, and of women, who took pains to send him, or bring him, the earliest account of any social incident or gossip. It was known that he had these sources of information, and that whatever was known to any one was known to him. Such knowledge as that was a weapon. It was not one of which he made use, or needed to use. The fact that he had it was enough.
He liked news also, and took pains to get it. If there were a political or Ministerial crisis, you might be sure that Marlborough House knew all about it. He had a certain number of men in his suite or of his acquaintance from whom he expected, and generally got, early intelligence. There was a sort of competition in supplying him. If you were first you were thanked. If you had been anticipated, he remarked dryly and with a good-humoured twinkle in his very expressive eyes: "Oh, yes, very interesting but I heard it an hour ago."
When I was leaving England in 1895 for America the Prince gave me his cipher address and asked me to cable him as often as there was news I thought might interest him. That may serve to show us Americans how much he cared for American matters, and how completely he returned the good-will we have always borne him since his visit to the United States in 1860. I told the Prince my first duty was to The Times, since I was going home as their correspondent. Subject to that, I should be glad to send him what I could. The difference of time was such that he might well enough get a dispatch before midnight at Marlborough House, which could not appear in print till next morning. "But you know that's just what I should like," said the Prince.
From beginning to end the late King has lived his life, ever a full life, possibly not always a wise life. Who can be wise always? Who likes a man who is always wise? His faults in youth were of a kind which were recognized as belonging to men. The blood which flowed in his veins came down to him through centuries of ancestors to whom the restrictions and pudencies, often hypocritical, of modern days were unknown. And if we look at the result, at the crown of all, at the matured character which made him one of the greatest servants of the State, of any State, ever known in history, need there be any criticism or any regret? Not perhaps the white flower of a blameless life, but was there ever one? But a great human life, compact of good and ill, and so flowering into the greatness of a great King. Perhaps the best summary is Pascal's:
"Qu'une vie est heureuse quand elle commence par l'amour et qu'elle finit par l'ambition."
For the King's ambition was never for himself; he had no need to wish to be other than he was. It was an ambition for the good of his people.