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Of the 63 medical men officially appertaining to the Royal Family, a half dozen of the more prominent were in attendance, but George V ordered hastily summoned from Buckingham Palace his favorite chef, designating his adept maker of strengthening broths and gruels as ''that fellow who saved my life."
A careful and entirely liquid diet was prescribed by the Royal physicians, of whom Lord Dawson of Penn is the first doctor ever created a peer. Again working with him last week to save George's life with oxygen and every artifice known to science was Nurse Black.
The world press was handled with great tact by Lord Wigham, the King's Private Secretary of many years. Warm, homely details were not stifled. For example, the King, when broth and gruel palled, was permitted to have a few drops of warm brandy "as a treat."
At Sandringham the Prince of Wales, with news services sending out advance canned dispatches in which he already figured as King Edward VIII, jumped into a car with the Duke of York, drove at a fast clip for Windsor. Technically Windsor is not a "palace" but a "fortress" and, because of this, bulletins on George V's condition were not posted there as they were at Sandringham House and at Buckingham Palace.
At Windsor the Duke of York was dropped with the Duchess, who was ill with influenza, and Edward of Wales drove on through gathering fog and dusk to Buckingham Palace where the Duke of Gloucester was sitting up with a sore throat. The two brothers spoke briefly. It would have been traditional had the Prince of Wales officially summoned the Prime Minister to come to him.
Instead H. R. H. took the wheel of his car again, drove to the north entrance of No. 10 Downing St. just off the Horse Guards Parade. For nearly an hour he conferred with Mr. Stanley Baldwin. News cameramen, mostly the hardest-boiled of journalists, were asked by Edward not to snap him "in the circumstances." Not a single camera was raised, not a single shutter snapped.
At the time of the recent Silver Jubilee very nearly every newsorgan in the world exhaustively reviewed the lives of King George and Queen Mary and the events of their 25-year reign. As Privy Councilors journeyed down to Sandringham and prepared to "put the crown in a commission" (i. e. establish a Council of State to act for George V as was done during his 1928-29 illness), the nation and the world watched ever more intently Their Majesties' eldest son. At Sandringham the Clerk of the Privy Council, Sir Maurice Hankey, handed the order establishing the Council of State to Lord Dawson of Penn. The great doctor, bending over the King's bed, supported the right hand as it weakly scrawled for the last time "George, R. I."
From London Edward of Wales motored to Windsor. Thence in one of his planes he and the Duke of York flew to Sandringham. There waited the Home Secretary, Sir John Simon, who must attest each royal birth and death. Ready on parchment were words hailing "the high and mighty Prince" on his becoming "our only lawful and rightful Liege . . . by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India."