Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/610

 the new reign chiefly differed from the old. Though Queen Victoria had modified her seclusion in her latest years, her age and her dislike of ceremonial functions had combined to maintain the court in much of the gloom in which the prince consort's death had involved it. The new king had a natural gift for the exercise of brilliant hospitality, and he sought to indulge his taste with liberality. London became the headquarters of the court for the first time for forty years. No effort was spared to make it a prominent feature of the nation's social life. Over the ceremonial and hospitable duties of sovereignty the king exercised a full personal control, and there he suffered no invasion of his authority.

The first year of the new reign was a year of mourning for the old. In its course it dealt the royal family another sorrowful blow. The king's eldest sister, the Empress Frederick, was suffering from cancer. On 23 Feb., within a month of his accession, the king left England for the first time during the reign to pay her a visit at Friedrichshof, her residence near Cronberg. They did not meet again. She died on 5 Aug. following. The king with the queen now crossed the Channel again to attend the funeral at Potsdam. Then the king went, according to his custom of thirty years' standing, to a German watering place, Homburg. No change was apparent there in his old habits which ignored strict rules of royal etiquette. Subsequently he joined the queen at Copenhagen, where he met his wife's nephew, the Tsar Nicholas of Russia, and the tsar's mother, the dowager empress, sister of Queen Alexandra. It was a family gathering of the kind which the king had long since been accustomed to attend periodically. As of old, it was wholly innocent of diplomatic intention. But the increased publicity attaching to the king's movements in his exalted station misled some domestic and many foreign observers into the error of scenting a subtle diplomatic purpose in his established practice of exchanging at intervals visits of courtesy with his royal kindred on the European continent. With his insatiable curiosity about men and things, he always liked frank discussion of European politics with foreign statesmen, and he continued the practice till his death. But such debate was scarcely to any greater degree than in earlier years the primary aim of his foreign tours.

Meanwhile the king accepted without change the arrangements already made for a colonial tour of his son and his daughter-in-law. On 17 March he took leave of duke and duchess of Cornwall and York their setting out for Australia in the Ophir in order to open the new commonwealth parliament at Melbourne. On their return journey they visited Natal and Cape Colony, and thence traversed the whole of Canada. The king after a first visit as sovereign to Scotland met them on their arrival at Portsmouth on 1 Nov., and declared the tour to be a new link in the chain which bound the colonial empire to the throne. A few days later he created by letters patent the duke of Cornwall Prince of Wales. It was not easy, suddenly, to break the long association of that title with himself.

On 22 Jan. 1902 the year of mourning for the late queen ended, and court festivities began on a brilliant scale. Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle had been thoroughly overhauled and newly decorated, the former becoming the chief residence of the court. Windsor saw comparatively little of the new king. Sandringham remained his country residence, and he spent a few weeks each autumn at Balmoral, but Osborne he abandoned, giving it over to the nation as a convalescent home for army and navy officers (9 Aug. 1902). Although little of his time was spent at Windsor or Balmoral, he greatly improved the facilities of sport in both places in the interests of his guests.

The first levee of the new reign was held on 11 Feb. at St. James's Palace, and the first evening court on 14 March at Buckingham Palace. The court initiated a new form of royal entertainment; it was held at night amid great magnificence, and replaced the afternoon drawing-rooms of Queen Victoria's reign. A tour in the west of England during March gave the king and queen an opportunity of showing their interest in the navy. At Dartmouth the foundation stone of the new Britannia Naval College was laid, while the queen launched the new battleship Queen at Devonport and the king laid the first plate of the new battleship Edward VII. A few weeks later he made a yachting tour off the west coast, paying a visit to the Scilly Isles on 7 April. The expedition followed a course with which he had familiarised himself in early youth.

Throughout the early period of the reign the nation's political horizon was