The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England

by Jenifer Roberts

  In the spring of 1889, while Fanny Claremont moved into the house in Gloucester Street, Yolande and Edward crossed the Channel, en route for the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Three of the Claremont children joined them there: Harry, who had left his wife and children in London; Teddy, partially reconciled with his father now he was gainfully employed as a manager with the Edison and Swan Electric Light Company; and Emily Littledale and her husband. The party was completed by Yolande’s chaplain, Michael Dwane, who had received permission to make a second visit to France for ‘some rest and a little change’.

  On 24 April, while Fletcher Littledale stayed in the hotel, Harry and Emily accompanied Yolande and Edward to Nice. ‘Madame was despicable,’ Harry wrote to his wife that evening. ‘Emily and I came back from Nice alone. We thought Madame was better left with the General. She cannot bear anyone else being with him.’

  He wrote again the next day, complaining that the weather was ‘filthy’ with a strong mistral blowing:

  Madame never varies. She turns everything round and makes a row out of nothing. That arch humbug the Padre was here yesterday. He sat holding her hand and stroking it, saying she was without fault! Dwane told me this. If I had heard it myself, I should have said something. As soon as the Padre had gone, she went for Dwane and ranted at him like a lunatic. Emily had some roses on her dress, so she told her that only cocottes wore flowers. It is all very well for you seven hundred miles off saying ‘bear with her’ … I am dispirited and hate everything at present. However, the term of penal servitude will soon be over.

  By the 26th, Harry and Emily had decided to return to England:

  Madame has been more amiable since I announced my departure. I think she is pleased for several reasons. First, the expenses will be less. Second, she is jealous of any of us, especially the girls. Third, she can say ‘Your children leave you and I remain to take care of you’. The General is dead against our leaving but I have been ‘firm’ or, as he says, ‘obstinate’. I told him straight that Madame is jealous of everyone, even Dwane, and that if he wanted peace for the remainder of the trip, he had better absent the Padre.

  Madame is angry about my reasons for going and talks of the precious boy who is heir to so much. So far I have just laughed at her, but I think I shall give her one before leaving, just to show that my spirit is not quite broken! I never see her hardly except at meals. I find that is quite sufficient and as much as one can put up with. I have been here exactly a month and it seems like a year. It is such a relief to know that there are only two more days to put up with. It has been too beastly for words.

  Yolande was still in Monte Carlo when Scott laid the capstone on the spire of her church in Cambridge. By late June, she and Edward had returned to Paris, by which time another Exposition Universelle was underway in the city. Built to celebrate modern technology and industrial production, the newly completed Eiffel Tower formed part of the exhibition and served as the main entrance. ‘I do not hurry the General to go back to England,’ Yolande wrote on 10 July, ‘as he is so much better that it would be a pity to leave without the agreement of his doctor.’ Edward had already visited the exhibition, ‘so I do not like his going a second time for taking care of me’.

  They returned to Roehampton at the end of the month and moved to Lynford a few weeks later. During the winter, they made several visits to the church in Cambridge where work was proceeding on the immensely rich interior. Yolande took an interest in every detail. She sometimes met the architect to order alterations: the carving on the organ case; the design of the altar rails. ‘She knew what she liked and what she disliked,’ wrote a parishioner who was present at one of these meetings, ‘and this time it was the carving of the organ case that displeased her.’ Scott asked the architect how much the alteration would cost. ‘About £1,000,’ he replied. Yolande ‘handed him a cheque for that amount before she left’.4

  In March 1890, she and Edward returned to Paris, leaving Fanny alone in Gloucester Street. Edward had been unwell again during the winter, probably with stomach cancer, and the French physician treated him with several unsuitable remedies. ‘I had my doctor yesterday,’ he wrote to Kitty on 18 April:

  who is giving me what, if I were a horse, I should call correction powders. I have to take them at the beginning of each meal. Then I take homeopathic medicine five times a day, a liniment for my legs, another for my chest, coffee before I get up, mulled wine when I go to bed. It requires a good memory to keep up with it all. The last engraving of Madame’s portrait is a great success.

  ‘I have somewhat better news to give you of the General,’ Yolande wrote on 13 May. ‘The doctor finds him better and, if his appetite would increase, I think he would get stronger. I am under the doctor for the painful ailment of eczema and I hope I may get rid of it.’ This prompted a letter from Fanny, written from 4 Gloucester Street on 27 May:

  Harry’s account of the General is not very satisfactory and I am much worried about him … I am glad Mrs Lyne Stephens is so much better. I am afraid she thinks more of her own health and not enough of other people’s, but as we cannot change how we must be, the best one can do is to try and bear things patiently, and if she would not worry the General, one would manage to get on. I feel very angry with her sometimes, for she must see how weak and ill he is, and how unable to put up with it.

  She wrote again three days later:

  I would rather know the worst than be kept in the dark … It is so hard to be away so far, but the General does not seem to wish me to go to Paris. Harry says it would only worry and alarm him if anyone went, so I can only try to be patient and hope for the best. Do let me know the truth.

  At the end of the month, the doctor advised Edward that sea air and rest might do him good, so Harry accompanied his father to the Grand Hotel in Arcachon, south-west of Bordeaux. The journey by carriage was tiring, ‘the dust fearful’, and Edward was looking weak and tired when they arrived. He improved after a few days of peace and quiet. ‘He ate a capital dinner last night,’ Harry wrote on 6 June:

  The weather is heavenly, bright sun and a nice breeze so it is not too hot. We sat for a long time by the seaside en plein soleil this morning. The hotel is right on the beach and at high tide the sea washes up against the foundations. There is not a soul here, five people beside ourselves and some of them go today … Yesterday afternoon we drove through the pine forest for two and a half hours and he was not a bit tired … We dine by the open window and are in the air day and night … I can’t tell you how glad I am we came. It is marvellous what the change has done.

  Aware that the improvement was only temporary, Harry wrote to Yolande to prepare her. ‘She takes such a time to gather anything,’ he explained to Kitty, ‘that it is as well to begin to try and impress upon her the inevitable.’ He also wrote to his mother in Gloucester Street, suggesting that she should now come to Paris. Fanny set out immediately and arrived in the Champs-Élysées a few days before Harry and Edward returned from Arcachon at the end of June. Michael Dwane also arrived in Paris, to attend to Yolande’s spiritual needs.

  ‘The General is much weaker and has fallen away about the face and neck terribly,’ Harry wrote from the Champs-Élysées on 3 July:

  It is too sad to see him in such a reduced state. He seems to take very little interest in anything and doesn’t seem able to keep his mind on anything for long. Mother was very much shocked at his appearance. Madame I think knows how bad he is and so has been very nice to Mother. I hope it will last.

  Harry now wrote to Kitty every day, describing Edward’s condition and complaining about Yolande’s behaviour. ‘Madame is very nice to everyone except Dwane,’ he wrote on the 4th:

  She goes at him rather, poor old thing. She is very nearly broken already. I had a drink with her yesterday and she broke down completely. She was very nice and very kind and said she had me only to look to and she knew I would take care of her as the General had told her, so of course I said that, though I never would be what h
e had been, I would do my best. She spoke quite sensibly but was fearfully upset and I am afraid she will collapse utterly. Mother is very funny – she said she felt for Madame more than she did for herself!

  The loss of Stephens in 1860 had been painful for Yolande, but the imminent loss of Edward Claremont felt like a far greater tragedy. Her power of weeping was of little use to her now. As Harry wrote on the 6th:

  Madame hangs on to me and turns to me in everything. It will be an awful blow to her after thirty years, as she said last night, of having every wish and whim fulfilled, and every trouble and anxiety taken off her shoulders. She was quite dazed. I found her standing against the wall in her dressing room almost in a faint. She said she can’t cry. She said she would give anything to be able to.

  The following day, Yolande pulled herself together to write a coherent letter to Arthur Riddell in Northampton about vestments and altar furniture for the church in Cambridge. She seems to have had hopes of a deathbed conversion:

  The dear General is more unwell than when you saw him last. His illness is excessive and the doctor does not give any encouragement. He has now for the last two days taken to his bed. When I showed him your letter, he said ‘how very nice and kind of the Bishop, thank him very much for me’. His wife is here and she has already sent for a clergyman who came this morning and gave him the sacrament. You see that any attempt the right way would be impossible. The opposition would be great and I fear nothing would result of it. I feel quite distressed.5

  The five other Claremont children arrived in the Champs-Élysées on the 7th and Harry made a visit to Sir Richard Wallace, who had returned to live in Paris: ‘I saw poor Wallace today. He sent for me. Poor fellow, he is very ill and suffers agonies. He looks dreadful but is full of anxieties about the General. Madame has been most trying. She is nearly off her head, poor old thing.’

  On the 8th, Edward told Yolande that ‘yesterday he had hope, today not. The poor woman is in a dreadful state in consequence and wanders about aimlessly. Mother does nothing but look terribly anxious and worn.’

  On the 10th: ‘Madame has been quite detestable to everyone today. Dwane left the house on being called a liar and swears he will return to England tomorrow. This happened after she had been to church and offered two candles to Notre Dame des Victoires. She seems better now. I suppose she has worked it off.’

  On the 11th: ‘Madame has calmed down a bit, but every now and then she works herself up and fires off. No one pays any attention to her rantings, so she is forced to shut up.’

  On the 13th: ‘Madame is very nice to me but resents any suggestions of any sort. Sometimes she is in the depths of despair; at other times she is generally despicable. We all feel for her, but her grief is purely selfish, her one refrain being what will become of me and my affairs.’

  Next day, Edward became delirious, his voice so weak that no one could hear what he was saying. For two days, he passed in and out of consciousness until, on 16 July:

  He passed quietly and peacefully away before us all. He looks so beautiful, so handsome and restful … Madame goes to Méry for which I am thankful, though I shall have to return here to settle up and fetch her. She is calmer than I expected and trusts to me implicitly.

  The Château de Méry-sur-Oise, twenty miles north of Paris, was the family home of Edgar, Comte de Ségur-Lamoignon. He was a diplomat and politician of great religious zeal; his wife Marie was the daughter of Yolande’s friend Madame Reiset. Yolande visited Méry every year when she was in Paris, leaving the Claremonts in her apartment in the Champs-Élysées. Now, after Edward’s death, she would go to Méry for comfort.

  ‘Our first great grief’, Harry wrote to Kitty on the 18th. ‘We leave Paris tomorrow morning and arrive at Victoria at seven o’clock in the evening.’ Two days later, Yolande wrote from Méry:

  Yesterday I tried to follow you all day during that dreary and most miserable journey. Your telegram only came this morning and has relieved my mind. It is over, God be praised … Consolation is impossible. I like to be alone more than with other people and, still, returning to my house will be a terrible trial, in fact my place is awful to me. But no remedy! Je me sens bien malheureuse.

  On 21 July, Horace Pym read the will in Edward’s house in Gloucester Street which Fanny now made her permanent home. There was a letter attached to the will, written in Lynford Hall in January 1890 and sealed in a black-edged envelope. It was addressed to two of his sons, George and Harry, ‘to be given to one or to the other of them when I am dead’:

  When you read this I shall be no more … It would be very nice of you, when you go to Paris, to see that my mother’s grave is kept in order. I am a trustee for the mausoleum at Roehampton and you must both look after it. You all may sometimes have thought me harsh, but believe me when I say that I have been actuated solely by my desire that you should be honest men and women … I only trust that you will cherish my memory and think kindly of me, as I always have done of my own father and mother.

  Yolande was still in Méry when the funeral service was held in the Anglican church in Roehampton on 23 July. Edward had requested a simple service, with no flowers, and had also asked to be buried ‘in the most unostentatious manner and in the ground in front of the mausoleum at Roehampton if possible’.

  Although his wife would surely have preferred a different place of interment, he was buried according to his wishes. After the service, his coffin was carried into the grounds of Grove House and lowered into a grave dug in the consecrated ground below the steps to the mausoleum.

  20

  FIRST GREAT GRIEF

  I cry and sob enough to break my heart. The trial is too great, too awful for anyone to bear.

  Yolande Lyne Stephens, 27 December 1890

  Most newspapers reported Edward’s death with a brief paragraph. The longest obituary was written by the Paris correspondent of the London Evening Standard:

  Many friends in England and France will feel sincere regret at the death of General Claremont, which took place in Paris … after a protracted illness. The late gallant officer was better known here as Colonel Claremont, when … he occupied the position of Military Attaché to the British Embassy, and became deservedly popular, not only with the Commanders of the French Army, but also in social circles … He had reached his seventy-first year.

  A few days later, there was a further announcement: ‘The death of General Claremont makes a vacancy in the Royal Household for a Groom of the Privy Chamber. The salary is £120 a year, with some allowances, and there are no duties whatsoever.’

  On 29 July, Harry returned to Paris to bring Yolande home to Roehampton, the ‘terrible trial’ which she had been dreading so much. She was inconsolable when the carriage turned into the drive and she saw her servants, dressed in mourning, lined up outside the front door to greet her. Letters of condolence were waiting for her, including letters from Lady Wallace, widowed four days after Edward’s death, and General Trochu, who wrote that ‘we have lost the best, the most sure of our friends’.

  During the next few weeks, Horace Pym often came to see her with legal matters to discuss. On 9 September, she signed a codicil to her will replacing Edward as the residuary beneficiary of her English estate with Harry Claremont. Two days later, Pym accompanied George and Harry when they proved their father’s will in London. He had discovered that Edward held securities in Turkey with a value of £7,000 and the will was proved in the sum of £21,290, sufficient to give Fanny an allowance of £1,000 a year.

  On 15 September, Yolande wrote to Arthur Riddell who had asked about accessories and accounts for the church in Cambridge, which was now complete and ready for consecration:

  Dr Scott has assured me that there is nothing owing which could delay in any way the consecration of the church … I am not well and I find that, in my present state, all the work I see before me is a great deal too much. I hope and trust that Dr Scott will be able to supply the altar linen and altar cloth. As for the summary of acc
ount, I never had anything to do with it, and cannot possibly understand the least thing about it. I am afraid that if I am trusted with this great business, I shall fail quite to be of any use.1

  Yolande had lost interest in the church which, for six years, had absorbed so much of her enthusiasm, her energy and her money. During the next three weeks, Christopher Scott sourced the outstanding items ready for the consecration on 9 October. At the same time, arrangements were made for the opening service six days later. ‘Dr Scott asked me to join Baron von Hügel on the secretarial work entailed,’ wrote Maurice Croucher, one of Scott’s helpers:

  There was a lot to do and arrangements had to be made to find accommodation for all the Bishops and Abbots and others who were to be invited to the opening …What struck me was that the Bishops seemed totally unable to look up their local train service themselves; by the time we got them finally fixed up, Baron von Hügel and I could have passed an exam in Bradshaw.

  Yolande forced herself to make the journey to Cambridge on 15 October, accompanied by members of the Claremont family and by Horace Pym and his wife. She had been looking forward to this occasion for more than six years; but now Edward Claremont was gone, the pontifical High Mass in the church she had built to ‘indulge my own taste and fancy’ would give her no pleasure.

  ‘The doors were opened,’ wrote Maurice Croucher, ‘and the huge congregation began to flock in. Admission was by ticket only, but we soon discovered that people who had tickets for the aisles were passing into the seats reserved in the nave. I got into a hansom and tore down to Sayles, where I obtained a lot of rope twist which we tied round the ends of the benches.’

  The choir of the Brompton Oratory had travelled from London for the occasion and the entire Catholic hierarchy attended the service, except for the Archbishop of Westminster, ‘who was too old and feeble’, and the Bishop of Salford, who was unwell. Large numbers of clergy and members of the monastic orders were also present, together with several leading Catholics, including the Duke of Norfolk.