In December, Charlie Beresford arrived back in London and issued an ultimatum to the Prince of Wales. Either Bertie publicly apologize to Lady Beresford and reinstate her in society, and Daisy agree to withdraw from society for a year, or Charlie Beresford would publish an intimate account of Bertie’s private life.
The next four days passed in a flurry of damage limitation, with Lord Salisbury negotiating not only with Bertie and Charlie Beresford, but with the queen herself. At the eleventh hour, just as Charlie Beresford was about to call a press conference at which he planned to expose Bertie’s affair with Daisy and resign from his position as fourth lord of the admiralty, a settlement was reached. Bertie and Charlie exchanged letters drafted by Lord Salisbury, and Daisy agreed to withdraw from court for a short period of time. This really was not much of a penance for Daisy; everybody loved her—with the exception of Mina—and as acknowledged mistress of the Prince of Wales, she could do as she pleased. At this stage, Bertie’s love for Daisy never faltered. The prince continued to write adoring letters to his “darling Daisywife,” and Daisy continued to receive his attentions, recalling in later life that “he had manners and he was very considerate.”5 But Daisy was about to experience an unexpected predicament. Although Lord Salisbury’s diplomatic intervention had concluded the standoff between Bertie and Charlie, Daisy was in trouble. Daisy’s husband, Brookie, had reached the limits of his endurance. There was only so much that he could take. For a decade or more, Brookie had put up with Daisy’s dalliances and entertained an endless succession of her lovers at Easton Lodge. Then there was the matter of Daisy selling off the contents of Warwick Castle to finance her expensive lifestyle. The Tranby Croft scandal had been the final straw, with Daisy accused of leaking the details. Now rumors flew that Brookie was preparing to divorce Daisy, naming fourteen correspondents, including Bertie, Charlie Beresford, the Duke of Marlborough, and Lord Randolph Churchill.
Such an action would have been understandable, but there were two mitigating factors. As the Mordaunt and Aylesford cases illustrated, a high-profile divorce was considered outrageous by Victorian society. Brookie had no wish to put Daisy through such a shameful spectacle, and he was also about to succeed to the title of Earl of Warwick. Brookie needed a wife by his side when he became earl, and at least Daisy, for all her faults, was the devil he knew. Daisy was also wildly popular at every level of society, from the Marlborough House set to the landed gentry and the tenants of her estate, Easton Lodge. Daisy, always a generous hostess, had also given way to “recurrent fits of philanthropy, some of it wildly extravagant and mistakenly generous, but indulged in by an impelling desire to help to put things right, and a deep conviction that things as they were were not right.”6 During their final Christmas at Easton, before the Brookes moved to Warwick Castle, Daisy threw a massive party for the children of the estate. The ballroom, with its white walls, Corinthian pillars, and blue ceiling was ablaze with electric light, and dominated by a glittering Christmas tree, so heavily laden with toys and decorations that the foliage could scarcely be seen. Along each side of the ballroom stood tables covered with gifts, including fur-lined coats for the principal household servants, jewelry or trinkets for others, bags of toys for every child, and fancy articles of dress or warm clothing for the other servants. Every man who worked in the grounds received a new red woolen jersey. A separate table held a collection of silverware and jewelry, which Daisy had provided for each member of her house party. At five o’clock the fifty household servants left their duties in order to arrange themselves on either side of the ballroom, and the village children were ushered in. Behind the children came one hundred outside workmen, gamekeepers, woodmen, gardeners, estate artisans, stablemen, and motormen. Daisy and Brookie had a welcome for everybody, and their eldest daughter, Marjorie, helped Daisy to distribute the presents.7
Daisy was resplendent in a beautiful dress designed by Doucet of Paris, made from delicately painted muslin, trimmed with fur and turquoise velvet, and a black picture hat. When the packages had been distributed, Daisy’s little son, Leopold, was hoisted onto his brother’s shoulders and stripped the presents from the Christmas tree, passing them down to the children. At the end of the party, “cheer after cheer was raised for the earl and countess and their family.”8
In December 1893, after the old earl died and Brookie became the fifth Earl of Warwick, Daisy and Brookie moved to Warwick Castle. Daisy immediately made a number of improvements, installing bathrooms and electric light. A year later, the period of mourning being at an end, Daisy gave a massive fancy dress ball, “then something of a novelty—on a splendidly lavish scale.” Guests from afar were put up by Daisy’s neighbors at house parties, and the entire county of Warwickshire buzzed with excitement and the bustle of preparation. The ball was spoken of as “the event of the winter.”9
Daisy’s four hundred guests had been instructed to wear eighteenth-century court dress, with a color scheme of white and gold. Hairdressers had been brought in from London and Paris to ensure that the party guests had appropriately powdered coiffures. Warwick Castle had seen nothing like it since the visit of Elizabeth I. Daisy’s guests emerged from the frosty night into a reproduction of the court of Louis XVI. Alongside a blazing electric chandelier, five thousand glowing wax candles softened the lighting and flattered the complexions of the ladies. The walls were hung with tapestries and embroidered cloth in silver and yellow, and arum lilies and lilies of the valley had been sent from the South of France. Daisy had spared no expense in re-creating the splendors of the Palace of Versailles just for one night.
Daisy’s youngest half sister, Angela, recalled that: “As one stood in the old hall, with its coats of arms and the men in armour, looking out across the river, the countryside decked in its glistening white mantle, the rich colours and fantastic costumes of the guests seemed enhanced by the romantic setting.”10 According to The World, “every room seemed lovelier than the last one. The gold drawing room was absolutely brilliant,…”11 while dancing took place in the Cedar Room, which was hung with Van Dykes.
Daisy had dressed up, inevitably, as Queen Marie Antoinette, in a gown of turquoise velvet brocade embroidered with real gold thread in fleur-de-lis and roses. Diamonds glittered at her throat and in her ears; an elaborate headdress with pink, white, and turquoise ostrich plumes and sparkling sapphires bobbed over her hair. Daisy’s twelve-year-old daughter, Marjorie, and her friend appeared as Daisy’s maids of honor, dressed as shepherdesses in white. As the guests waltzed to the strains of an Austrian band, several individuals could be identified in “cunning combinations of colour and coquetries of costume.”12 Brookie had come as a musketeer, in a ruby-red velvet coat trimmed with red lace and a wig of tumbling curls. His comrades included le Viscomte de Bragalonne (Prince Henry of Pless) and le Comte d’Artagnac (Lord Lovat). Harry Rosslyn, Daisy’s half brother, was the Duc de Nemours, and the millionaire coal mine owner Joe Laycock came as an eighteenth-century Indian army officer. Daisy’s half sister, Millie Sutherland, dressed up as Louis XV’s consort, Marie Leszczyńska, wearing white and silver brocade, with a ruby velvet train and masses of diamonds. Many of the women had dressed as the ladies of Louis XVI’s court, including the Duchess de Polignac and the Duchess d’Orléans. Mrs. Alice Keppel, the Scottish beauty, appeared dressed in Rose du Barry antique brocade with silver thread, and powdered hair with three rose-pink feathers and pink satin shoes with diamond buckles.
At midnight, trumpeters in cloth of gold marched through the hall blowing a fanfare to summon the guests to a banquet; forty tables had been laid with hot and cold food in the hall. Dancing continued until dawn, with “minuets, waltzes and champagne”13 and “it was fairly morning before the echo of the last carriage wheel died away into the bleak countryside.”14
Daisy’s fancy dress ball was hailed as a triumph. “The throng of splendidly gowned and costumed men and women in the setting of the noble rooms of the castle seemed at the time to make the gathering worthwhile
,”15 Daisy recalled, arguing that not only had the ball been great fun, but she had provided employment for dozens of servants, dressmakers, musicians, caterers, and florists. “I felt happy in the belief that our ball was giving work to so many people who would otherwise have been idle. The festivities of the Lords and Ladies Bountiful were being translated into terms of meat and bread for the workers.”16 “The ball was a great success,” Daisy concluded, a verdict that was echoed by all but one of the newspapers, “an obscure sheet, by name the Clarion.”17 The Clarion reached Daisy two days later, as she was having her customary breakfast in bed at Warwick Castle. To Daisy’s horror, the article in the Clarion consisted of a violent personal attack upon Daisy for holding a ball at a time of general misery, a “sham benevolence, a frivolous ignoring of real social conditions.”18 Daisy was so infuriated by this article that she jumped out of bed and took the next train to London. By noon, Daisy was in Fleet Street, the heart of the newspaper industry, searching for the offices of the Clarion. Daisy found them in an older building, at the top of a shabby staircase, with the editor’s name, Robert Blatchford, on the door.
Daisy walked straight in unannounced, as the editor looked up from his desk. Robert Blatchford showed no surprise as a gracious young woman dressed in the height of fashion appeared in his dingy office. Instead, he stared coldly at Daisy without standing up or giving her a word of welcome. Daisy stared back, thinking to herself that the garment Blatchford wore, something between a dressing gown and a lounge coat, was most undignified.
“Are you the Editor of the Clarion?” Daisy demanded.
Blatchford merely nodded.
“I came about this,” Daisy went on, thrusting the newspaper under his eyes with the offending page marked in black. Blatchford made no reply, just waited for Daisy to continue.
“How could you be so unfair, so unjust?” Daisy said. “Our ball has given work to half the county, and to dozens of dressmakers in London besides.”
“Will you sit down?” Blatchford replied, “while I explain to you how mistaken you are about the real effect of luxury?”19
And then Robert Blanchford told Daisy, as a socialist and a democrat, what he thought of charity bazaars and ladies bountiful. Blatchford made plain the difference between productive and unproductive labor, and said that labor used to produce finery was as much wasted as if it were used to dig holes in the ground and fill them up again.
By this new standard, Daisy came to understand that nine-tenths of the money spent on the Warwick ball had been wasted. Such elementary economics as that the only useful labor was labor that produced useful articles, which in turn helped labor to produce again, was all new to her. Although Daisy had had a vague idea that money spent on champagne and delicacies was wasted, she was dismayed to discover that the Blatchford doctrine included cobwebby lace and similar useless and beautiful things in the same category.
Daisy sat and listened, openmouthed. “My old ideas and ideals were all brought to naught, and it was late afternoon before this plain man with the big ideas had ceased speaking. We had both forgotten the lunch hour and the passing of time.”20 Before the end of the talk, Daisy had been convinced that “setting the poor, who themselves needed food and coal and decent housing, to build unnecessary rooms for an evening’s employment, to cook dainties for people already overfed, and to make clothes for the rich dancers, was idle work.”21 The great ball, and all its preparations, had not added one iota to the national wealth.
A somewhat dazed Daisy left Fleet Street and returned to the railway station, where she sat waiting for the train back to Warwick. During the journey home, Daisy thought about everything that she had heard, and realized that her outlook on life would never be the same. Daisy reached Warwick Castle just as her guests were going in to dinner, and when she joined the party she made no effort to explain her absence. “I was as one who had found a new, a real world. The crisis I was facing, or had faced, was emotional, and it would have been impossible then to frame such an experience in words.”22
The following day, Daisy ordered ten pounds’ worth of books on socialism, tracked down a retired professor of economics and appointed him as her tutor, and started a period of intense study without delay. “It would be idle to try to follow the circuitous path I trod, but it was Robert Blatchford’s honest talk on that memorable day that gave me a vision of how it would be possible to change and modify the unjust conditions of our modern life.”23 “Babbling Brooke” had found a new cause, and it would change her life.
Chapter Nineteen
CAPTAIN LAYCOCK OF THE BLUES
Joe, my Joe—if you could see how my hand shakes when I write your name.…
—DAISY, COUNTESS OF WARWICK
Following the critical meeting with Robert Blatchford, editor of the Clarion newspaper, Daisy’s new career as a philanthropist soon gained momentum. Given Daisy’s energy and generosity, this was scarcely surprising. She was no mere do-gooder, posing as Lady Bountiful: she had clearly developed a real sense of social justice, even if this meant plundering the contents of Warwick Castle to finance her ventures. Daisy’s achievements were indeed remarkable, and included a school for the local children and needlework instruction for the women of the estate, their output being sold at a shop opened for the purpose in London’s West End. This activity, and Daisy’s commitments as a society hostess, would have been enough to keep most women busy. But Daisy was not most women, and her private life remained as chaotic as ever.
In 1897, Daisy wrote to Bertie informing him that as she was three months’ pregnant, it would be inappropriate for them to be seen together in public. Daisy was, however, concerned that she would lose Bertie as a friend, and her place at court. Bertie responded to Daisy’s “beautiful letter” in warm and generous tones:1
My own lovely, little Daisy … [your letter] gave me a pang after the letters I have received from you for nearly nine years! But I think I could read “between the lines,” everything you wished to convey.… The end of your beautiful letter touched me more than anything—but how could you, my loved one, imagine that I should withdraw my friendship with you? On the contrary I want to befriend you more than ever.… Though our interests, as you have said, lie far apart, still we have the sentimental feeling of affinity which cannot be eradicated by time.2
The affair had run its course.
Daisy gave birth to a son, Maynard, on March 21, 1898, and inevitably there was some speculation over the boy’s paternity. Brookie was officially the father; Bertie was a putative father, but this is unlikely as he was, by this period, impotent.3 According to Daisy herself, the father was none other than Joe Laycock, the north country mining heir who had appeared at Daisy’s costume ball dressed as an eighteenth-century Indian army officer.
Captain Joe Laycock of the Blues was among the richest men in England, owning huge estates in Durham and Nottinghamshire, where he was “as popular with his miners as he was with the soldiers he commanded.”4 Joe fought in the Boer War with the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, an army reserve regiment, and was awarded the DSO in the Second Boer War. Like many men of action, Laycock possessed intense personal magnetism, despite being “the ugliest man I ever saw,” according to his daughter-in-law Angela née Dudley-Ward. Laycock was “ugly in that special way with eyes set very far apart, very lithe and yet very powerfully built and with such vitality!”5 Similar to Charlie Beresford in temperament and character, Laycock was very much Daisy’s type. “Soldier, horseman, yachtsman, natural leader of men,”6 Laycock swept Daisy off her feet and she fell passionately in love; a cad in the Flashman mode, Laycock did not entirely reciprocate Daisy’s feelings.
Daisy might have developed a social conscience, but when it came to personal relationships she had not matured one whit. “If with the Prince of Wales he had been the captive, she the conquering, he the adoring, she the adored, the reverse was nearer the truth with Laycock. Lady Warwick could still be imperious, was seldom less than demanding, but Laycock was ultimatel
y in the happy position of being the one most desired, the one more loved than loving.”7
Daisy and Laycock shared a passion for fox hunting, particularly with the Quorn Hunt in Leicestershire, which traditionally offered some of the finest fox hunting in England. The couple loved to ride to hounds, and Daisy had a hunting lodge at Ingarsby Lodge near Houghton on the Hill, Leicestershire. The hunting set chased more than foxes. These were red-blooded folk, for whom field sports merely served as an appetizer for the action to come. Like the Marlborough House set, the foxhunters had their own code, which was very similar: don’t ask, don’t tell. Everyone knew about the affairs, but nobody said anything.
As a bachelor, Laycock was free to do as he liked, and Daisy had many rivals for his affections. The most notable of these was Kitty, Marchioness of Downshire, a blue-eyed Irish beauty and a superb horsewoman. When Laycock fell from his horse during a hunting accident, it was Kitty who rode cross-country to be by his side, reaching him before Daisy came to the rescue with her pony and trap. Eleven years younger than Daisy, married with three children, Kitty was a serious rival for Laycock’s affections,8 and the source of continual torment for Daisy.
“The mere suspicion [of Laycock’s relationship with Lady Downshire] has clouded all these weeks in London,” Daisy wrote to him. “Oh say it is not true and that I am a beast to have thought it … I am sick with suspense about you know what.…”9 Lady Downshire’s husband, Lord Downshire, had similar misgivings about Kitty’s relationship with Laycock. “It has nearly broken my heart to hear your name coupled with Joe Laycock as if he was your husband,” he wrote Kitty. “… It’s more than I can stand.”10
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