Marlborough House: the Drawing-Room
Photograph by Ralph, Dersingham
As Heir-Apparent, the King gave each season a certain number of dinners which, though in no sense official functions, took the place of those which would in other circumstances be given at Court. Thus he very often entertained various members of the Opposition as well as of the Government. He also occasionally gave what might be called a diplomatic dinner, to which a number of the Foreign Ambassadors and Ministers were invited. On many occasions dinner-parties in honour of a foreign guest or Royal relation passing through town in semi-incognito have given members of London society an opportunity of making the acquaintance of a great foreign personage. When the Shahzada was in England the Prince and Princess of Wales gave a banquet in his honour, at which covers were laid for forty. On this occasion the principal guest was not able to take any dish in the menu save riz à l’Impératrice. Fortunately, however, he had brought with him his own provisions.
The dining-room in which these important dinners were served at Marlborough House is a very fine room containing a considerable number of their Majesties’ wedding presents. It is a curious fact that in no circumstances were two knives together given to any guest. A great many reasons have been assigned for this rule, but apparently no one ever adopted the simple plan of asking the Royal host or hostess. It has been asserted that the King has the old-fashioned dislike to seeing knives inadvertently crossed.
Here is a lively description of a dinner at Marlborough House on 6th May 1896, recorded by the late Archbishop Benson in his diary:—
“Dined with the Prince of Wales. The most splendid company. All the Ambassadors but Russia, who is gone to the Coronation of the Czar. Duke of Connaught, Lord Wolseley, near whom I sat, with the Lord Chancellor between, two delightful, interesting talkers, and on my other side one still better, de Courcel, French Ambassador. Lucklessly after dinner the Turkish Ambassador asked to be presented, and he held me talking innocently about the Greek Bishops whom I knew, but for his red-handed tyrant’s sake he was the last person I wished for, and Harcourt came up and said, ‘What a picture we have been enjoying—you and the Turk in close alliance!’ Then Harcourt went on about our old Cambridge days, and in heart he is the greatest Conservative. At the Prince of Wales’s instigation I did my best to make Duke of Connaught see it was good for Church and State that Bishop of Peterborough should go for us, and perhaps I succeeded a little; he promised to do his best to make him welcome there. Chamberlain, Morley, Balfour, two Directors of British Museum, Asquith, very pleasant after his dangerous but not damaging assault on the Education Bill, Rosebery, Herschell, Salisbury of course, looking a very great man, among the Ambassadors.”
The journey of the Bishop of Peterborough (Dr. Creighton, afterwards Bishop of London), to which the Archbishop refers, was to Russia to represent the Church of England at the Tsar’s Coronation.
The King has never concealed his dislike of the immensely long, fatiguing banquets which were in his youth the rule rather than the exception; indeed, he may be said to have revolutionised the British dinner-party. At Marlborough House dinner was never allowed to last much over an hour. Occasionally during dinner soft music was played. Every course served was prepared under the direct supervision of the chef (the famous Ménager).
Some years ago the King was rarely seen, even at dinner at a private house, without his favourite valet Macdonald, the son of the Prince Consort’s jager; and later, whenever the King dined out, one of his own servants invariably accompanied him and attended to him through the dinner, whether it was a public banquet or a private dinner-party. Indeed, the King very rarely enjoyed the luxury of being alone; even when walking up St. James’s Street, or turning into the Marlborough Club, he was almost invariably accompanied by one of his equerries; and it need hardly be said that the most trustworthy detectives in the London police force were charged with the task of watching over his personal safety, for the appearance of no public personage was better known to the man in the street than that of the Prince of Wales.