Royal Affairs: A Lusty Romp through the Extramarital Adventures that Rocked the British Monarchy

by Leslie Carroll

  Even as Daisy’s lifestyle typified the excesses of the age, in 1892 she fell under the influence of the bushy-bearded Socialist W. T. Stead, a fiery-gazed newspaper editor. Embracing Stead’s ideals with the same fervor she employed in planning dinner parties, Daisy promised to lecture the prince on his moral responsibilities to his subjects. Bertie listened good-naturedly for a time, but Daisy ultimately recognized that “there was a perpetual struggle between his sense of duty and a desire to conceal from himself that all was not well with the best of all possible worlds. . . . Those who revealed unpleasant things were not liked the better for it.”

  In January 1898, pregnant with her second legitimate son, Daisy finally ended her nine-year royal affair, writing two letters: one to Bertie and the other to Alix. According to Bertie’s reply (Alix didn’t write back), his wife was genuinely moved by both the gesture and the sentiment behind it. “Certainly the Princess has been an angel of goodness throughout all this, but then she is a Lady and never could do anything mean or small.” He closed his letter to Daisy by writing, “Though our interests, as you have often said, lie apart, still we have that sentimental feeling of affinity which cannot be eradicated by time . . .”

  In truth, Alix was far less forgiving of the affair than her husband had led Daisy to believe. Her younger son, Prince George, wrote to his wife, Princess May of Teck, “In case you should hear from Lady Warwick asking you to become a President of a Charity of hers, refuse it. Motherdear has done so and wishes you to do the same.”

  After Bertie became king in 1901, Lord Esher was dispatched by the palace to tactfully give Daisy a warning (in her words) “that he thought it would be well for all concerned if my close association with great affairs were to cease, as it was giving rise to hostile comment, which distressed Queen Alexandra.” Shortly before Esher’s visit, the queen had written Daisy a rather cordial note, to the same effect.

  By 1907, at the age of forty-five, Daisy was going broke. She was offered a substantial sum to pen her memoirs, but refused. If she told all, she’d be ostracized by the very people she needed, and if she remained “tame,” no publisher would front the extravagant advance she required to remain afloat.

  However, as her debts mounted, she tried a slightly different tack. After Edward VII’s death in 1910, between her high living and her Socialist causes, Daisy ran up debts of £100,000—over $14 million in today’s economy. In 1914, with the aid of Frank Harris, a notoriously sleazy journalist, she let it be known that she was about to publish her amorous correspondence with the late king. Her real intention was to “ransom” the letters, figuring that Buckingham Palace would buy her off. Instead, Edward’s successor, his son George V, immediately took Daisy to court, claiming the palace owned the copyright to the love letters. The matter was hushed up for the next fifty years and finally came to light in 1960 amid a discovery of the papers belonging to a man named Arthur du Cros, who had acted as a go-between for Daisy and the palace.

  Daisy devoted the rest of her life to Socialist causes and stood for Parliament in 1923, coming in third. By the 1930s, her fortune was entirely gone, as were her looks. She was too fat to get out of a chair without assistance, but she remained flamboyant to the last. At Easton Lodge, where she maintained a vast menagerie, she was often seen toddling about at feeding time, a feather boa trailing in her substantial wake. She hoped that upon her death her home would be used as a wildlife preserve. “I am a very happy woman,” Daisy said at the time. And she meant it.

  Daisy died on July 26, 1938, at Easton and was buried in the family crypt at Warwick.

  EDWARD VII and Alice Keppel 1868-1947

  Ring out the old; ring in the new was the watchword as the infant year of 1898 breached its way through the New Year’s celebrations. The “Babbling Brooke” was swiftly becoming water under the bridge and a new love—Alice Keppel—entered Bertie’s life. Alice would remain his maîtresse en titre until he literally drew his last breath.

  She famously told an interviewer that her “job” was “to curtsy first and then hop into bed.”

  The daughter of a Scottish baronet, Admiral Sir William Edmonstone, Alice possessed “superabundant vitality.” She was twenty-nine years old when she met the fifty-six-year-old Bertie early in 1898. “An understanding arose almost overnight,” according to a royal biographer. Glowing with good health, witty, vivacious, and fashionable, the petite yet voluptuous brunette was married to George Keppel, a very tall (six feet four), mustachioed army officer. Alice had already made her mark among the smart set as a bright and delightful conversationalist who, supposedly, never had an unkind word for anyone. Honest, energetic, and practical, her character was absent all malice or prejudice. Consequently, she was tremendously popular. Her elder daughter, Violet, said “she resembled a Christmas tree, laden with presents for everyone.” And a contemporary of Alice’s maintained that “she not only had a gift of happiness, but she excelled in making others happy.”

  And yet, the woman knew how to work it. Sir Osbert Sitwell described how the soignée Alice “would remove from her mouth for a moment the cigarette which she would be smoking through a long holder and turn upon the person to whom she was speaking her large, humorous, kindly, and peculiarly discerning eyes.” And she had a way of seductively lifting the veil of her hat so slowly that every male waited with bated breath to catch a single tantalizing glimpse from her blue-green eyes.

  Certainly, the initial spark between Alice and her prince was based on sexual attraction—at least from Bertie’s point of view. But he soon discovered that underneath Alice’s masses of raven hair, beyond the curves, was a woman who was as kind as she was compassionate, as amusing as she was discreet, in short, the perfect “royal friend.” Even Alix had to begrudgingly appreciate the way Alice kept Bertie’s hair-trigger temper in check. Alice truly loved him, and was the ideal mistress for an aging royal: undemanding and uncritical, a skilled lover who was just as accomplished a bridge player and raconteur.

  Many people spoke of her discretion—the anti-Daisy in that regard. But there were witnesses who remember her horning into every photograph of Bertie taken during country house parties. Her presence, while delightful to just about everyone but Alix, was most certainly a visible one. Mrs. Keppel milked her royal affair shamelessly, but it wasn’t entirely her “fault.” Her unique position, so to speak, made her the most sought-after woman in diplomatic, social, and political circles, consulted by men and women at all levels who wished to gain the ear of the man who would be king.

  As soon as it was apparent to high society that Alice had superseded Daisy as Bertie’s maîtresse en titre, they fell over themselves to extend invitations. A few upper-crust snobs snubbed her, to be sure, and from time to time Bertie would grow mischievous, such as at the dinner party where he seated his mistress next to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Alice was so good at comporting herself prudently in public that His Grace was certain that her relationship with the king could not possibly be anything but platonic. One wonders what the Archbishop might have thought of the “hanging harness complete with footholds” that Bertie had constructed in his private chamber, which enabled the 224-pound prince to—ahem—get it up.

  However, Alice’s constant presence—for the last twelve years of Bertie’s life—was one of the factors that caused Alix to retreat into the private world inside her head and to devote herself even more assiduously to her children and their pets. Hostesses tied themselves in knots wondering how to handle the protocol of inviting both princess and mistress—or having to choose between the two women. Bertie hated to appear where his mistress was unwanted, and when he did, he was guaranteed to be grumpy about it. On the other hand, he endeavored to be sensitive to Alix, much as he often ended up humiliating her. Yet Alix and Alice were both so impeccably well mannered that no one would have thought there was the slightest hint of animosity between them.

  After Bertie became king in 1901, Alice Keppel’s much-vaunted discretion made her an ideal cond
uit between the monarch and his ministers. Unlike Daisy Warwick, Alice never used her position to influence him politically, nor had she any interest in doing so. But she had a way of presenting a topic to him so that he was willing to listen and give it credence, even if his personal opinion differed. The Viceroy of India remarked that “there were one or two occasions when the King was in disagreement with the Foreign Office, and I was able, through her, to advise the King with a view to the foreign policy of the government being accepted.”

  The chic and articulate Mrs. Keppel, dubbed “La Favorita,” was at the center of it all, a highly visible—and equally respected—member of his court. As all good mistresses do, she made it her business to learn which subjects interested her lover and to become well informed about them. According to the Duchess of Marlborough, Alice “invariably knew the choicest scandals, the price of stocks, the latest political move; no one could better amuse [the king] during the tedium of the long dinners etiquette decreed.”

  Gone were the days of wide-open privy purses. Instead, Bertie gave Alice a number of shares in a rubber company, which in time earned her £50,000 (almost $7.5 million today), and he also engaged his own bankers and financial advisers to handle her investments.

  Keeping up appearances as a maîtresse en titre was difficult and very expensive. Although the king subsidized her wardrobe, she always had to be dressed in the latest fashions—and Edwardian ladies changed clothes four times a day. Hosting king-sized parties also took a tremendous toll on a courtier’s—or courtesan’s—purse.

  And Alice was evidently an exceptional entertainer. According to Sir Harold Acton—a writer, aesthete, and bon vivant of the next generation, who was a child during the Edwardian era—“None could compete with her glamour as a hostess. She could have impersonated Britannia in a tableau vivant and done that lady credit.” One wonders if he realized that he was alluding to another royal inamorata, Charles II’s love Frances Teresa Stuart, the model for Britannia.

  Life for a royal mistress, even one such as Alice Keppel, was precarious. As much as Bertie adored and valued Alice, he was not faithful to her. The official mistress, like the wife, learned to tolerate his infidelities, smilingly making the most of his presence when he deigned to bestow it. Although he was involved with several married ladies, he was never separated from Alice for very long. They weekended together, and Bertie’s green brougham (his least flashy carriage) was a frequent fixture in front of the Keppels’ Portman Square town house.

  This fastidiously dressed royal fashion plate must have been very much in love with Alice to have cheerfully indulged her two young daughters, Violet and Sonia, in a betting game the girls invented to see whose slice of buttered toast would be the first to make it from “Kingy’s” knee to the floor as it slid down the stripes of his perfectly creased trousers. Alice’s daughters recalled Bertie’s good nature in letting them use his pants as a ski slope for their breakfast, and the impression he left with the children lingered in the air. “He had a rich German accent and smelled deliciously of cigars and eau de Portugal,” the girls recalled.

  Alice and Bertie spent every Easter together in Biarritz, where they shopped, strolled, dined, gambled, and played cards. Although she was an accomplished bridge player, Bertie once chided Alice for making a foolish call. Without missing a beat, the witty mistress apologized to her royal lover, quipping that she could never “tell a king from a knave.”

  For propriety’s sake, Alice was always a guest at the villa rented by the financier Sir Ernest Cassel. However, neither spouse accompanied Alice and Bertie on these annual trips, which would extend from early March to early April. In Biarritz, Alice Keppel reigned supreme. In fact, Alix would use “Biarritz” as a byword to mean “Alice,” as in “that horrid Biarritz.”

  As time passed, George Keppel, the ultimate mari complaisant , developed a genuine affection for “Kingy.” A ladies’ man himself, the dashing officer truly considered it his patriotic duty to sacrifice his wife to the greater good of the monarch(y). When their finances dwindled drastically from trying to afford the extravagant lifestyle expected of a royal mistress, the gentlemanly Keppel gamely accepted a Buyers Association position with one of Bertie’s yachting companions, the tea magnate Sir Thomas Lipton. Their friends were shocked; it was embarrassing enough that he was a public cuckold—but to be forced to go into trade to support his wife’s position was about as vulgar and low as things could possibly get. Conveniently, George’s territory included North America. And George himself never uttered a single word of complaint or reproach. He once said of Alice, “I do not mind what she does as long as she comes back to me in the end.”

  It makes a nice little historical link to mention that George Keppel was a descendant of Arnold Joost van Keppel, 1st Earl of Albemarle, the foppish former pageboy who had been King William III’s favorite in his waning years. Regardless of the actual nature of William’s fascination with his Keppel, the Edwardians were fairly certain they knew what it was all about. When George Keppel noticed a friend reading a book by Oscar Wilde, he professed his abhorrence of the author because of Wilde’s notorious homosexual predilections. “A frightful bounder,” Keppel said. “It makes one puke just to look at him.” To this, the friend’s son, Harold Acton, wondered aloud, “Did Alice Keppel ever remind him that he was descended from William III’s minion, who was created Earl of Albemarle for his beaux yeux?”

  Whenever possible, Alix tried to see the humor in her husband’s relationship with Mrs. Keppel. Alice lost her figure over the years, and it was a matter of some pride (and glee) to Alix that she had managed to remain as svelte as she was on her wedding day. One afternoon, Alix happened to be glancing out of a window and saw Bertie and his aging mistress riding together in an open carriage that was just pulling into the drive. The sight of the two very plump figures bouncing off each other was so amusing that Alix summoned one of her ladies-in-waiting to come and look, so they could enjoy the laugh together.

  Yet there were most certainly times when the queen’s patience with her wayward husband and his too-obvious friendship with Mrs. Keppel almost entirely frayed. In 1910, Alix quarreled about it with Bertie before his annual pilgrimage to Biarritz. He had been ailing since February—couldn’t he forgo the trip this year? And when Bertie caught another chill there, Her Majesty was quick to blame the mistress for the king’s illness. If he had not been at “that horrid Biarritz. . . .”

  On May 6, 1910, when Alice Keppel heard that Bertie was dying, she located among her papers a letter he had written to her several years earlier, in which he declared that, if he were ever ill again, Alice should be admitted to his bedside. The note had been written after Alix had debarred the royal mistress from her husband’s sickroom. But now, Alix could not countermand the king’s written order. As Alice sat beside her dying lover, stroking his hand, the queen turned her back, discreetly pretending to ignore them.

  Bertie hoarsely whispered to his wife, “You must kiss her. You must kiss Alice.”

  Swallowing her pride, Alix stiffly complied. The two courtiers in the room at the time, Lord Esher and Sir Francis Laking, recalled Alix shaking the mistress’s hand and coolly saying something to her along the lines of “I’m sure you always had a good influence over him,” before turning her back on Alice and walking over to the window.

  When the king lapsed into a coma, Alix muttered to Laking to “get that woman away.” But Alice refused to budge and became hysterical. As she was bodily dragged from the room, she sobbed, “I never did any harm. There was nothing wrong between us. What is to become of me?” She was taken into another room, where she remained for some hours, until she was composed enough to leave the palace.

  Esher—never very fond of Mrs. Keppel—wrote in his diary that day, “Altogether, it was a painful and rather theatrical exhibition and ought never to have happened.”

  After the royal mistress departed, the queen finally poured out her heart to Laking. Years of pent-up humiliation and frustra
tion bubbled out uncontrollably. “I would not have kissed her, if he had not bade me,” Alix wept. “But I would have done anything he asked of me. Twelve years ago, when I was so angry about Lady Warwick, and the King expostulated with me and said that I should get him into the divorce court, I told him once for all that he might have all the women he wished, and I would not say a word; and I have done everything since that he desired me to do about them. He was the whole of my life and now he is dead, nothing matters.”

  Lord Esher couldn’t figure out why the queen was smiling at her husband’s corpse until he guessed that for the first time in forty-seven years of marriage, Alix had Edward all to herself. As she gazed at Bertie’s lifeless form she murmured to Esher, “After all, he loved me best.”

  Alice was shocked to find herself prevented from signing the official condolence book at Marlborough House. In accordance with Alix’s wishes, the new monarch, George V, and his consort, Queen Mary, had given orders to forbid the late king’s mistress from insinuating herself in any way.

  They had to reach a compromise, however, when Bertie’s corpse lay in state at Westminster Hall. The courtiers feared that if Alice were prohibited from a final farewell, there might be another scene even more hysterical—and certainly more public—than the one at Buckingham Palace. So on the night of May 17, 1910, after the doors of Westminster Hall were closed to the public at ten p.m., Mrs. Keppel was escorted to the purple-draped catafalque containing her former lover’s coffin. Alice had her final moment to say good-bye, and after one last curtsy, was escorted outside and helped into her closed carriage.