he was much enjoying it and discovering a great deal about the constitution: ‘It is such a useful subject for me to learn.’28 He began to follow the daily papers, taking the Morning Post and the Westminster Gazette. It was ‘a very good thing, I think’, he told his mother. ‘It is about time I read the papers, as in years to come, when I am obliged to follow politics, I shall know something about it.’29 The King saw this letter and at once wrote to insist that The Times be substituted for the Morning Post – ‘the views and opinions expressed are much sounder in every way’. The Westminster Gazette was excellent and moderate – ‘You should always try and form moderate opinions about things, and never extreme ones, especially in politics.’30 He must have written with special feeling since Britain was involved in a constitutional crisis over the powers of the House of Lords in which moderate opinions were hard to find. ‘It must have been so very hard for Papa to say the right thing, and yet show at the same time that he was not partial to one party or the other,’ wrote Edward sympathetically.31
The succession of his father to the throne with all the attendant ceremonies reduced the usefulness of Edward’s last term at Dartmouth. His parents were sorry that he should find himself thrust into the position of heir to the throne ‘without being older and having more preparation’. Still, the Queen told her aunt Augusta, ‘we have done our best for him and we can only hope and pray we may have succeeded and that he will ever uphold the honour and traditions of our house’.32 The Rev. H. Dixon Wright, who prepared Edward for confirmation, had the same cause at heart. The Prince’s mind, he told Archbishop Davidson, was ‘absolutely innocent and uncontaminated’. With the consent of the King Wright had ‘warned him on the subject of “the sinful lusts of the flesh”, that he may be forearmed’.33 The Archbishop was somewhat dismayed to find that the King expected him to ‘examine’ the Prince in the presence of his parents and suggested some relaxation of the procedure. ‘I have no wish whatever for the examination which my dear brother and I had to undergo in the presence of the Queen and my parents,’ wrote George V cheerfully. ‘I thought it a terrible ordeal, but was under the impression it was always done with the members of my family. Delighted to hear that it is not necessary.’34 The confirmation passed off none the worse for this breach with precedent. ‘The impression made upon me by the quiet boyish simplicity, the clear and really thoughtful attitude, and the wistful keenness of the young Prince is one which can never be effaced,’ wrote the Archbishop, a tribute that would have been still more impressive if it had been written to anyone but the Queen.35
The Coronation was fixed for 22 June 1911. Being still only sixteen Edward could not wear a peer’s robes, so his father created him a Knight of the Garter. For one who was soon to show an almost pathological dislike of dressing up, Edward donned the somewhat fanciful costume with striking calm, in his diary noting merely that it would ‘look very well when ready’ and that it was lucky that his father no longer needed his, since the expense would otherwise have been considerable.36 The Queen told her aunt that he had carried off the ceremony with great sang-froid and dignity: ‘David wore the Garter dress white and silver with the cloak and big hat and feathers. He really looked too sweet.’37
The Coronation followed a few days later. The children paid their usual morning visit to their parents and found the King brusque and conspicuously nervous. He showed Edward the Admiralty Order in The Times gazetting him a midshipman and handed him the dirk that went with the rank.38 The children then processed together to the Abbey in one of the state coaches. Queen Alexandra had thought this a poor idea and was proved right when the younger princes began to giggle and play the fool. George tried to tickle Mary and fell on the floor. On the return journey things got so bad that only Edward’s threats to hit his brothers maintained any sort of order.39 In the Abbey, however, all was decorous. Edward was conducted to his stall, his brothers bowed as they filed in front of him, Princess Mary curtsied deeply ‘and the Prince rose and gravely bowed to her’.40 When the moment came for him to do homage he was consumed by nerves; if he blundered or behaved clumsily, he believed his father would feel that he had failed him.41 He did not blunder. That night George V wrote in his diary: ‘I nearly broke down when dear David came to do homage to me, as it reminded me so much [of] when I did the same thing to beloved Papa. He did it so well.’42
By then Edward was already Prince of Wales, given the title on his sixteenth birthday. There had been no formal investiture of a Prince of Wales for more than three hundred years, but the Empress Frederick had suggested the ceremony should be revived; the Bishop of St Asaph espoused the idea; and Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Constable of Caernarvon Castle, saw a chance to gratify Welsh national pride and win political support.43 Some time-honoured traditions were hurriedly invented, Caernarvon Castle refurbished, gold quarried from the Merionethshire hills to make the Prince’s regalia, and a quaint costume of white satin breeches and purple velvet surcoat devised for the occasion. At this point Edward struck. What, he asked, ‘would my Navy friends say if they saw me in this preposterous rig?’44 The Queen talked him into grudging acquiescence and Lloyd George taught him some Welsh phrases for the occasion. He practised in the garden at Frogmore, bellowing ‘Mor o gan yw Cymru i gyd’ – all Wales is a sea of song – to Hansell fifty yards away. He could hear every word, reported Hansell.45
The ceremony was a great success; the only people who recorded their displeasure were the Mayor and Aldermen of Chester, who felt that since Prince Edward was among other things Earl of Chester, the investiture should have happened there. The leading man earned himself a crop of compliments. Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, congratulated him on possessing a voice ‘which carries well and is capable of being raised without losing expressiveness’.46 Lloyd George assured him that he had forged a lasting bond of affection with the Welsh ‘and won the admiration of all those who witnessed the spectacle’.47 Queen Mary told Aunt Augusta that he had played his part to perfection, ‘It was very émouvant for George and me.’48 To the youthful Harry Luke he seemed ‘the incarnation of all the Fairy Princes who have ever been imagined’.49 The last description encapsulated everything that disquieted Edward about the ceremony. He was not sure he wanted to be a prince at all, certainly he did not wish to be a fairy prince. He hated anything which made him a man apart, which set him on a pedestal for his fellows to goggle at and worship. If to be Prince of Wales meant to put on fancy dress and strike attitudes in remote Welsh castles, then it was not a job for him.
There were good points about the position too. As Duke of Cornwall, he now enjoyed the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, derived from much valuable property in London and huge estates in the West Country. These amounted to some £90,000 a year, far more than he could possibly require before he came of age and set up his own establishment. The Treasurer of the Duchy of Cornwall, Walter Peacock, estimated that by the end of his minority savings would probably amount to £400,000; say, very roughly, £10 million at current values.50 With new wealth and consequence came new responsibilities. J. C. Davidson, some time in 1912, was summoned from his work in the Colonial Office to St James’s Palace to be looked over as a prospective private secretary. He quickly decided it was no job for him: ‘I would have made a very poor courtier, nor did I quite like the character of the Prince of Wales, charming in some ways as he was.’51 The Prince possibly reciprocated the mild dislike; certainly no job was offered to Davidson, nor any private secretary appointed.
Meanwhile his naval career was running to its close. His last term at Dartmouth had been truncated by a fierce attack of measles. He retreated to Newquay to convalesce and to pay a few perfunctory visits to his recently acquired estates in the vicinity. On 29 March 1911 he returned briefly to Dartmouth to give presents and signed photographs to the officers, masters and a few particularly close friends. On the same day he presented to the town of Dartmouth the silver oar which symbolized the ancient rights of the Duke of Cornwall over the adjoining waters: ‘This was my first function, and I think it went off very well,’ he noted in his diary.52 Neither he nor his father appeared to have any doubts about the value of the education he had received. ‘I certainly think the College is the best school in England,’ wrote the King.53 The Prince echoed the sentiment when he visited