Bertie, all concern, listened patiently as Daisy unburdened her heart. “He was charmingly courteous to me,” Daisy said later, “and at length he told me he hoped his friendship would make up in part, at least, for my sailor-lover’s loss. He was more than kind.”18 Indeed he was. Daisy must have realized that there would be a price to be paid for Bertie’s assistance. As she sat in front of his desk, Daisy found that Bertie was looking at her “in a way all women understand.”19
After Daisy had left, Bertie summoned his carriage and paid a late night visit to George Lewis. As far as Lewis was concerned, the inconvenience of being dragged out of bed in the small hours was more than compensated for by the arrival of the Prince of Wales. The men were on good terms, as Lewis had been Bertie’s guest at an event to celebrate one of Lillie Langtry’s stage successes. In fact, Lewis was so impressed by Bertie’s visit that he even agreed to show him the letter from Daisy. This was highly unprofessional behavior on Lewis’s part, but he no doubt felt outmaneuvered by the Prince of Wales. After reading the letter, Bertie ordered Lewis to destroy it.
Even Lewis was unwilling to go this far. He refused, deferentially explaining to the Prince of Wales that he could not destroy the letter without the consent of his client, Mina Beresford. Bertie’s response was simple. He would ask her himself.20 And with that, Bertie went to call on Mina at her London home. Bertie ordered Mina to do the decent thing and destroy the letter, arguing that it could cause nothing but harm. But, unlike George Lewis, Mina was not overawed by the Prince of Wales and flatly refused to destroy Daisy’s letter. Bertie left the house, furious, only to return later to try again. This time, he begged Mina to be charitable and told her that Daisy had been spoken to and would never cause her trouble again. But Mina still refused to destroy the letter, arguing that it constituted her only defense against Daisy and her machinations. Again, Bertie left in a mood of anger and frustration. And then, through George Lewis, Mina Beresford proposed a different solution. Mina offered to destroy the letter on one condition and on one condition only: that Daisy was banned from London for the entire season.21
When Daisy learned about this draconian request, she was horrified. It was perfectly barbaric. How could Daisy be expected to endure social ostracism? Daisy went to see Bertie and pleaded for help, and Bertie, by now falling for Daisy, agreed to see what he could do. Once more, Bertie visited Mina Beresford, and pleaded with her to change her mind and destroy the letter. But the obstinate Mina stuck to her own terms of engagement, insisting that Daisy be banned from London for the entire season. It was then that Bertie unleashed his broadside. If Mina was not prepared to hand over the letter, said Bertie, she would forfeit her own position in society. In other words, if Mina refused to destroy Daisy’s letter, it would be Mina, and not Daisy, who suffered. As Mina later recalled, the threat was that her “position in Society!! Would become injured!!!”22 But Mina refused to change her mind on the matter.
Inevitably, after Bertie looked at Daisy “the way all women understand,” the pair became lovers. In December 1889, Bertie had been invited to Easton Lodge to attend Daisy’s birthday celebrations, at which point it appears that the affair was consummated. Writing to Daisy a decade later, Bertie observed, “how well I remember spending your birthday with you just 10 years ago at your old home,” and referred to the “very warm feelings” they had shared then.23
We have not yet heard Charlie Beresford’s reaction to these sensational events. As might be expected, Charlie had done his best to persuade Mina to surrender Daisy’s letter. As one of the offending parties, Charlie had kept a low profile, hoping that the problem would just resolve itself. But now, upon hearing rumors that Bertie had stolen Daisy away from him, Charlie cast aside all attempts at diplomacy. Due to set sail on the HMS Undaunted, Charlie demanded to see Bertie immediately, and have the matter out once and for all.
Charlie had already started shouting at Bertie before he stormed into Bertie’s study at Marlborough House. In tones of thunder, Charlie declared that intimidating George Lewis into showing him Daisy’s letter had been the act of a blackguard. Bertie retorted that Charlie was the blackguard, whereupon Charlie replied that there was only one blackguard in this case, and that was Bertie, for daring to interfere in a private quarrel. Bertie waspishly informed Charlie that it was time he controlled both his women: he must silence Mina and renounce Daisy. If he failed to do so, the Beresfords would suffer the same fate as the Churchills before them: they would become social outcasts and their names would be obliterated from every guest list in the land. Furiously, Charlie vowed that he would never give up Daisy.
“You’re not her lover!” shouted Bertie.
“Yes I am,” replied Charlie, “and I’m not going to stop!”24
At this point, Charlie forgot himself and lunged at Bertie; but before Charlie could hit him, Bertie seized the inkstand off his desk and hurled it at Charlie; it whistled past Charlie’s head and crashed into the wall, leaving a huge stain.25 Shaken, and shocked by his own lese majesty, Charlie retreated. The following day he took command of his ship and sailed for the Mediterranean.
Bertie swiftly proved that his threat was not an idle one.26 Within a few days of the quarrel with Charlie, Mina paid the price for refusing to comply with Bertie’s demands. Bertie ensured that Daisy and Brookie were invited to all the same parties as himself, and if he saw Lord and Lady Beresford’s names on a guest list, he crossed them out and substituted those of Lord and Lady Warwick. To her horror, Mina realized that Daisy was being actively promoted. “Wherever [Bertie] went, he desired that she also should be invited, and invited she was, but to the disgust of everyone!”27
In a simple word that conveyed a wealth of meaning, the Beresfords had been “dropped.” There wasn’t a hostess in the land who would risk the disapproval of the Prince of Wales by inviting the Beresfords. While Charlie, probably much to his relief, was posted to the Mediterranean indefinitely, Mina put her London house on the market and went into exile.
One beneficiary of these events was George Lewis, the solicitor who had allowed Bertie to read Daisy’s letter. Soon after the affair of the purloined letter, Lewis was spotted as a guest at Sandringham. Two years later, Lewis received a knighthood, presumably for services to the Crown. Daisy also profited from the potential scandal by becoming Bertie’s mistress. The intensity of their relationship may be gauged by Bertie’s nickname for his new lover: for the rest of his life, Bertie would refer to the Countess of Warwick as “my Darling Daisywife.”
Daisy became one of the brightest stars of the Marlborough House set, that fast crowd of the titled and wealthy who wined and dined and danced and hunted and raced with Bertie. The Marlborough House set did not so much follow Bertie as revolve like satellites around his stately body. Even Daisy, the spoiled and beautiful heiress, was overwhelmed.
“Of course, the Marlborough House set had glamour,” she recalled in old age. “Indeed, glamour was its particular asset. It created the atmosphere which intrigued the public. I can feel something of the same sense of enchantment, in recalling it, that children experienced when they watched the transformation scene at the pantomime. For them, the girls in their spangles were beautiful fairies, and the scene a glimpse of fairyland.”28
The highest social honor of all was to be invited to what were known as the “small evenings” at Marlborough House, a dazzling mixture of luxurious partying and high jinks. Young men tobogganed down the stairs on tea trays, and carpets and rugs were pushed aside for dancing. Bertie was a huge fan of slapstick and practical jokes, such as spiking the wine, sliding squares of soap among the cheeses or topping puddings with “whipped cream” made from shaving soap.29,30 This was a world that Daisy adored, and she played the role of mistress to perfection, accompanying Bertie to balls, receptions, country house parties, and horse racing at Ascot, Goodwood, and Epsom. The correspondent of The World magazine, craning her neck to see Daisy at the opera with Bertie, described “a goddess whose fame had pene
trated even to the dim recesses of the placid country, her profile was turned away from an inquisitive world, but I made out a rounded figure, diaphanously draped, and a brilliant, haughty, beautiful countenance.”31 The diaphanous fabric became Daisy’s signature look, a fittingly classical style to show off her superb figure to its uttermost. Toward the close of the century, women’s gowns had become light, fluid, and unstructured, and bustles and puffed sleeves were a thing of the past. This style suited Daisy, who dressed at Worth and Doucet and never spent less than three hundred guineas on a gown, or £30,000 at today’s prices. A particular hit was “the gauzy white gown beneath which meandered delicately shaded ribbons” worn to a dinner party with Bertie.32 On another occasion Daisy appeared in “splendid purple-grape-trimmed robes and a veil of pearls on white,” and a “violet velvet gown with two splendid turquoise-and-diamond brooches on her bodice,”33 which she wore to a hunt ball.
Daisy and Bertie’s affair was conducted against the backdrop of London society, and the stately homes of England, particularly Daisy’s own Easton Lodge. In London, a certain degree of discretion was required. Daisy and Bertie could meet at Daisy’s house in Cavendish Square, or at Marlborough House, or even, and this was a daring choice, at a restaurant. While “respectable” women did not dine in public restaurants, they were permitted to meet a gentleman in a private dining room at Rules, or the Café Royal, or Kettners. These private dining rooms provided a sofa in addition to tables and chairs, and some even featured a double bed.34 Daisy and Bertie also traveled to Paris, where for the sake of propriety they booked into separate hotels, with Bertie registered as “Baron Renfrew,” and visited restaurants and theaters, and race meetings at Longchamps and Auteuil. Life with Bertie was truly, astonishingly glamorous.
The majority of Daisy’s liaisons with Bertie were conducted at Easton Lodge, which Daisy had converted from an uncomfortable English country house to a palace fit for a king. Bertie and members of the Marlborough House set had always been regular visitors to Easton Lodge. Now Bertie’s visits increased in number and Daisy often chartered a private train down from London, building a small station on her estate where the train could stop and unload the guests and their retinue of servants and mountains of luggage. One particular attraction were the gardens, tributes to the elaborate skills of Victorian horticulturalists, where Daisy would walk with Bertie,35 delighted to have Bertie all to herself, while Bertie, who liked his women bright, but not intellectual, enjoyed sharing political gossip and discussing foreign affairs. In later life, Daisy looked back fondly on the “Garden of Friendship” where they strolled. “Many of the trees the Prince of Wales planted at Easton serve to remind me how thankfully he threw aside for a few hours the heavy trappings of his state to revel in his love of nature.”36 The gardens, with red deer in the distance beneath the shade of the ancient trees, were a favorite trysting place for Daisy’s guests. One of these was young Elinor Glyn, last seen as a little girl on Jersey, hiding under the dressing table at Government House in order to spy on Lillie Langtry. Now a beautiful young woman in her own right, with green eyes and “the most beautiful red hair I have ever seen” Elinor had been taken up by Daisy as something of a fellow spirit.37 Elinor had recently married one of Daisy’s neighbors, an Essex landowner and barrister named Clayton Glyn, and settled in a nearby mansion named Sheerings.38 As a young beauty, Elinor was receiving the cold shoulder from the ladies of the country set, who “had lost their complexions on the hunting field [and] stared incredulously at her, as though nobody had a right to be as pretty as that.”39 After meeting Elinor at a dismal hunt ball, Daisy immediately befriended her, and invited her and her husband to stay at Easton.
On the very first evening of Elinor’s visit to Easton, Daisy’s husband, Brookie, invited Elinor to come and inspect “the rosarie,” Daisy’s newly planted rose garden. Elinor accepted the invitation, but the moment that they were alone Brookie seized her in his arms, embraced her passionately, and told her that she was, by far, the loveliest rose in the garden. Elinor screamed in horror and ran inside to report the incident to her husband. When Elinor told Clayton that their host had made a pass at her, Clayton laughed out loud and exclaimed: “Did he, by Jove! Good old Brookie!”40
Elinor later recorded her impressions of Daisy and the astonishing and scandalous world of Easton, a world that would provide inspiration for the sensational romantic novels that were to make Elinor’s fortune.
“No one who stayed at Easton ever forgot their hostess and most of the men fell hopelessly in love with her,” Elinor recalled.41 “In my long life, spent in so many different countries, and during which I have seen most of the beautiful and famous women of the world, from film-stars to Queens, I have never seen one who was so completely fascinating as Daisy Brooke. She would sail in from her own wing, carrying her piping bullfinch, her lovely eyes smiling with the merry innocent expression of a Persian kitten that has just tangled a ball of silk. Hers was that supreme personal charm which I later described as ‘It,’ because it is quite indefinable, and does not depend on beauty or wit, although she possessed both in the highest degree. She was never jealous or spiteful to other women, and if she liked you she was the truest, most understanding friend.”42
Daisy was almost universally popular. At Easton Lodge, the staff and tenants loved her; she was a generous and responsible landlord, known for her good works and a social conscience, which was becoming more pronounced as the years went by. They were tickled pink when the Prince of Wales himself came up on his special train to call on Daisy; “Her tenants and estate workers—who adored her for her kindness to them—watched goggle-eyed as their own ‘Miss Daisy’ drove the Prince of Wales up her long avenue.”43 “Their lady had caught a very big fish and they cheered her for it.”44
Daisy’s generosity was legendary. On one occasion a guest borrowed Daisy’s favorite hunter, “returned blanched at tea-time to say he had broken its neck. ‘How dreadful for you,’ was all that Daisy said. Only later, alone with [her maid] Olive, did she weep.”45
But even Daisy had her enemies. Lady Beresford was unlikely to forgive the events that had seen Charlie and herself banned from London society, and was plotting her revenge. And one other person was beginning to tire a little of Daisy’s antics: Daisy’s own husband, the Earl of Warwick himself, poor dear Brookie.
Chapter Fifteen
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
Sing of Mrs Langtry, a lady full of grace,
Four-and-twenty sonnets written to her face;
Now that face is public, and we can also sing,
“Is she not a dainty dame, and worthy of a King!
—HENRY LABOUCHERE
In the spring of 1881, a pregnant Lillie Langtry fled to Paris with her mother. Lillie had spent some time in Jersey with Arthur Jones, but Jersey was no place to conceal a pregnancy and Lillie knew that she would have no privacy once the baby arrived. So Lillie and Mrs. Le Breton headed to Paris, and an apartment Bertie had organized for them on the Champs-Élysées. It was here that Lillie gave birth to her daughter, Jeanne-Marie, on March 18, 1881. On their return to England, Mrs. Le Breton took the baby, with a nurse, down to the Red House in Bournemouth, and Lillie went to recuperate with George Lewis and his wife at Ely Place, Holborn. Lewis had handled the finances and helped keep Lillie’s pregnancy secret.
Thanks to positively supernatural crisis management by George Lewis, Ned Langtry appears to have had no idea of what happened. Ned had been kept off the scene by Lewis, who had created a series of meaningless business trips to America and fishing expeditions in Scotland. But gossip about Lillie’s baby began to spread, with Bertie as the favorite when it came to potential fathers, accepting the “dubious credit of being the father as flattering to his virility and the reputation he enjoyed of being something of a Casanova.”1 In the May 14 edition of Town Talk, Adolphus Rosenberg reprinted the Langtry libel suit and, in his gossip column, stated that: “I am exceedingly gratified to hear that the Hon Miss Tabit
ha Grimalkin (real name suppressed for obvious reasons) has returned to town quite restored to health. The darling baby girl is also well.”2 It was a vicious little item. Both names are slang terms for cats, while “grimalkin” derives from the French grimaud, or “dunce.” The following week, Rosenberg teased his readers again with the observation that: “I really don’t know why we should blackguard the memory of Harry the Eighth. True, he had a great weakness for the fair sex, but, unless history lies, he married all the women he fancied, which is not a bad trait in a prince.”3
As the gossip spread, Lillie floundered. Ned was a cruel and unreliable husband, her position in society was not what it once was, and she had a child to support. Lillie could, of course, have become the mistress of another rich and influential man. She had all the accomplishments to become a top society mistress, “for there were many victims of her devastating charms, some of them in high circles.”4 In some respects, one wonders why she did not take this easy way out. Some inner prudence, perhaps—the dean’s daughter shunning a life of vice—prevented her. It was time to find another way to make a living.
One of Lillie’s biographers claims that it was the Prince of Wales himself who suggested a career on the stage. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” Bertie told Lillie. “I think you ought to show yourself to the world more. You should go on the stage.”5 According to this source, Bertie advised Lillie to exploit her physical attributes and the glittering notoriety she had earned as his mistress. He reminded her of the time, as a practical joke, she had disguised herself as a Piccadilly flower girl and sold violets to mutual friends, unrecognized. The theatrical wig maker, Willy Clarkson, of Wellington Street, had disguised her as a flower seller with makeup and a matted gray wig; she had remembered Clarkson’s advice to shuffle, not walk, and adopt a Cockney accent … and had succeeded spectacularly.6
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