Royal Bastards

by Roger Powell

  It was not until Jeanne-Marie was fourteen that she learned from Margot Asquith that her so-called ‘aunt’ was in fact her mother. Mother and daughter had never got on well together and had seen little of each other, and this was the final straw. There was even less contact thereafter. Two years later, a reporter of the Sketch described Jeanne-Marie as

  ‘a simple well-bred looking girl, strongly recalling one or two of her mother’s early portraits – those taken when Mrs. Langtry was just bursting upon the world, the fairest among a world of fair women and a dream of lovliness’.

  However, he seemed to have been more taken with the mother than the daughter!

  Two years later, there was the difficulty of launching Jeanne-Marie into polite society by her presentation at Court. But this was achieved with the Prince of Wales’s help and the assistance of Gladys Countess de Grey, who presented the daughter-in-law of one of Lillie’s brothers, a Mrs. H. Langtry, at a Drawing Room, which would then enable Mrs. H. Langtry to present her cousin by marriage, Miss Jeanne-Marie Langtry.

  This was all possible because Jeanne-Marie’s father was recorded as Edward Langtry. However Jeanne-Marie’s birth took place four years after her mother first met the Prince of Wales and became his regular companion, and the question arose therefore as to whether or not the Prince of Wales might not have been her father. But her conception was at a time when their passions were on the wane and both seem to have been running other lovers in parallel. Theo Aronson in his book The King in Love, firmly refutes any suggestion that the child’s father was Edward VII, believing Jeanne-Marie’s father to have been Prince Louis of Battenberg.

  In the spring of 1880 Lillie had embarked upon an affair with Prince Louis, who was later to marry one of Queen Victoria’s many granddaughters, Princess Victoria of Hesse. If he was indeed Jeanne-Marie’s father, she would in fact have been a half sister to Princess Andrew of Greece (mother of HRH Prince Philip) and to Lord Louis Mountbatten, although Jeanne-Marie did not learn of this suggested relationship until the eve of her marriage in 1902 when she married Ian (later Sir) Zachary Malcolm, 17th of Portalloch, in Argyllshire, who became the hereditary chief of Clan Malcolm, and of a respected Scottish family dating back to 1562 (see Burke’s Landed Gentry of Scotland, 2002).

  Together they led a busy public life. He was a Conservative MP and had served for a time in the Diplomatic Corps, being awarded KCMG, in 1919 and appointed DL and JP. During his time in Parliament he, together with four others, including Winston Churchill, had founded a mildly rebellious pressure group named ‘The Malcomtents.’ Meanwhile Jeanne-Marie was appointed MBE in 1920 and CStJ in 1930 for her involvement in the Order of St John and she died in 1964 aged 82, leaving three sons and a daughter from who descend many living descendants.

  Thus any claims of the Malcolms of Portalloch to descend from King Edward VII would seem to be rather suspect, although they are probably descended from the Battenbergs and are thus related to Princes Philip, Charles, William and Harry through that line instead.

  Alexandra Maud Venetia Fawcus (née James) (1896–1981)

  Alexandra Maud Venetia James, was born on 26 December 1896, the second daughter of William Dodge James, CVO (1908) of West Dean Park, West Sussex. Her father, William (1854-1912), who had been born in Lancashire and educated at Harrow, was the youngest of three brothers, who had travelled extensively and had returned from the USA where his father had made a fortune in the railroad business.

  William bought West Dean Park in 1892, which had formerly been the seat of the Peachey family, built in castellated Gothic style in faced flintwork for Lord Selsey to designs by James Wyatt. He also bought Grey Walls, Gullane, East Lothian, but Sussex was his main base where he owned 9,000 acres, and where he duly served as High Sheriff and as a DL and JP. He married in 1880 a Scottish girl, Evelyn (Evie) Elizabeth, CBE, the eldest daughter of Sir Charles John Forbes of Newe, Bt, in Aberdeenshire. Together they had four daughters and an afterthought son, who later in 1964, established West Dean as The Edward James Foundation, an educational charity. Edward, the surrealist poet and art collector, who himself was a godson of the Prince of Wales, is said to have claimed that his mother, Evie, was the mistress of the Prince of Wales, and that she had left to him a bundle of over one hundred letters from the King to his mother. However, it is with his sister Alexandra that we are dealing.

  After William’s death in 1912, his widow married Lt. Col. John Chaytor Brinton, CVO, DSO, Life Guards, whom she was to divorce two years before she died in 1929.

  This then is the confused setting into which Alexandra was born in 1896. Both Queen Alexandra and Queen Maud of Norway were her godmothers, giving her their names, just as King Edward VII was to become godfather to her baby brother Edward, eleven years later. Clearly Edward often stayed at West Dean as many family photographs testify. Although the sprinkling of CVOs to various members of the family is an added indication of Royal service, it is difficuly to guauge just how far that Royal service went. For it is alleged by a number of people well acquainted with the family, that Alexandra (but not her siblings) was the daughter of the fifty-five year old Edward, Prince of Wales, as he then was, and that she bore a striking resemblance to him. Certainly her rather solid build was quite different from that of her slim siblings. If so, Mrs. William James did indeed entertain the King in the words of the ditty. However, in Burke’s Landed Gentry 1972 edition, under James of West Dean, Alexandra is shown as the daughter of William James, and to date there has been no hard evidence to show that this was not so.

  What is certain is that in January 1908, Count Albert Mensdorff, the Austro-Hungarian Ambasssador, records in his diary that the King visited West Dean with a large party including Alice Keppel, and two years later upon the King’s death, it was an older brother, Arthur and his wife Venetia, (née Cavendish Bentinck), with whom Alice Keppel and her children went to stay in Grafton Street so as to console themselves after the death of King Edward VII. Venetia is also alleged to have been another favourite of Edward VII, just like her sister-in-law, who is recorded on 4 May 1910, two days before the King’s death, to have been playing bridge with Alice Keppel in the Chinese Room at Buckingham Palace.

  Meanwhile Alexandra married in 1918 Lt Col Arthur Edward Flynn Fawcus, DSO, MC, TD, the second son of James Fawcus of Keswick, Cumberland. He lived in Berkshire as well as in Kenya, but was killed in an aeroplane accident in 1936 leaving two sons and a daughter, Venetia, now Mrs. Michael Worthington, who lives at Hurley, near Maidenhead. In correspondence with her, she stated that her mother

  ‘was fully aware that she might possibly have been the daughter of Edward VII, but as she adored Willie James, she liked to think he was her true father … As you see, I am unable to confirm or deny these rumours’. She added ‘I too like to think he [Willie James] was [the father of Alexandra], as from everything I have heard and read about him, make him out to be a delightful person and a much nicer character than the King’.

  Alexandra, who was prominent in the British Red Cross Society, of which she was an honorary Vice President, lived at Mapledurwell House, Basingstoke, Hampshire until her death in 1981.

  The Hon. Maynard Greville (1898–1960)

  The Hon Maynard Greville was born on 21 March 1898, the third but second surviving son of Frances Evelyn (Daisy), Countess of Warwick. She was the elder daughter and co-heir of Colonel the Hon Charles Henry Maynard, who was the son of 3rd and last Viscount Maynard which is where his name came from. From the age of three, Daisy was a significant heiress in her own right.

  Seventeen years earlier, in 1881, Daisy had married Francis Richard Charles Guy (Greville), Lord Brooke and later 5th Earl of Warwick (1853–1924), the owner of Warwick Castle, by whom she was officially to have three sons and two daughters. Of these it would seem that Leopold (later 6th Earl) (born 1882), Charles (1885–87) and Marjorie (born 1884) were all born safely before their mother met the Prince of Wales in 1889. Then twelve years after her last confinement, Maynard was born,
and perhaps it was significant that he was given no Greville names.

  For nine of those years Daisy and her Prince had been inseparable. Before her husband succeeded to the Earldom of Warwick, the Prince used to call her his ‘Babbling Brooke’ after her courtesy title, and later on, somewhat rashly, ‘His darling Daisy wife’. But Daisy ended the affair in January 1898 – two months before Maynard’s arrival – by writing to Princess Alexandra. In reply the Princess sent her ‘a small crucifix wrapt in a piece of paper on which was written these words ‘From one who has suffered much and forgives all.’’ Thus it is possible, if not probable, that the Prince may have been Maynard’s father.

  However, the King was not the father of her youngest child, Mercy, born in 1904 to a mother then aged forty-three, with whom he had broken up six years earlier. For Mercy’s mother had not broken up with the new ‘love of her life,’ Captain Joseph Laycock, who shared her left wing inclinations. They had met in 1899, according to Anita Leslie in Edwardians in Love, and it is he who is alleged to have been Mercy’s father, despite having married only two years before her birth, Katherine Mary, the recently divorced wife of the 6th Marquess of Downshire. He went on to become Brigadier General Sir Joseph Frederick Laycock, KCMG, DSO, TD (1867–1952), the father of four sons and two daughters. Meanwhile Mercy went on to marry in 1925 as his second wife, Basil Herbert Dean, the film producer, and himself a descendant of Nell Gwyn and Charles II, and they lived at Little Easton Manor, Dunmow, Essex, part of the estate which used to belong to her mother.

  Maynard was a particularly beautiful child and Daisy lavished on him the love and attention that had been singularly lacking with her other children. He was the subject of three portraits, one of which was by Rita Martin dated 1909. Maynard later served as a Lieutenant in the Royal Air Force in World War I, and had a short career as a film actor, possibly inspired by his brother-in-law Basil Dean. He was also described as a journalist, although his main expertise was as an aboriculturalist. He married in February 1918 to Dora Pape of Moor Hall, Battle, Sussex, who was the subject of four portraits by Bassano.

  The following year, they had an only daughter Felice, now the widow of Eric James Spurrier, who still lives today on part of her grandmother’s Easton estate with her son, Neil, and daughter, Caroline. This had been left to her father upon Daisy’s death in 1938 aged seventy-six, together with property worth £37,000. But this was all that was left of her vast inheritance and Maynard immediately tried to lease the house and gardens but with no success. Throughout the Second World War and up until 1950, the estate was occupied successively by the British Army, the Home Guard, the US Airforce, the Royal Air Force and then by the British Army again, all of whom wrought much destruction. Most of the house had been demolished and the estate ruined and thereafter, Maynard, who was much respected in arboriculture, started to create an arboretum there. But this was cut short by Dora’s death in 1957 followed by his death three years later on 21 February 1960, when much of the property was sold off and the gardens were completely abandoned.

  Since then, others have bought different parts of the estate and have worked wonders in clearing and restoring the gardens. In 1995 Felice leased the remainder of the gardens and work began on clearing the overgrown Italian Garden and the Glade and restoring the grandeur of former years.

  Sonia Rosemary Cubitt, née Keppel, OBE, DStJ (1900–86)

  Sonia Rosemary Keppel was born on 24 May 1900 at 30 Portman Square in London. Her mother was Alice Frederica, the Hon Mrs. George Keppel, who was the ninth and last child of Admiral Sir William Edmonstone, 4th Bt, CB, a family of Scottish Baronets, which descended from King Robert the Bruce and still live at Duntreath Castle in Stirlingshire. Her background is set out in Raymond Lamont-Brown’s book Edward VII’s Last Loves – Alice Keppel & Agnes Keyser as well as in her own autobiography.

  Sonia’s father, according to all the reference books, was Lt. Col. the Hon George Keppel, MVO, (born 1865), 3rd son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle. Alice and he had married on 1 June 1891 and they lived together, more off than on, for the next fifty-six years, until they both died within two months of eachother in 1947 and were buried together in the Protestant cemetery in Florence. They are recorded in the reference books as having had two daughters, although it is alleged that George was the father of neither, having turned a blind eye to his wife’s shenanigans and infidelities over many years.

  The elder daughter was Violet, best known as the lesbian lover of Vita Sackville-West She was born on 6 June 1894, four years before her mother met the Prince of Wales, and it was Vita who told the writer, Philippe Jullian, that Ernest William Beckett, the future Lord Grimthorpe, was Violet’s father and that she had been named after his sister, Violet. This is also corroborated by her nephew-in-law, Major Bruce Shand, who stated that

  ‘George did not like his elder daughter and made it quite apparent – largely, presumably, because she was a cuckoo in the nest!’

  Nevertheless Alice was to maintain contact with Grimthorpe and his family on and off throughout her life. This is despite the fact that Violet herself later claimed to be of Royal blood and a true ‘FitzEdward’, yet moments later, she would be resenting the inference that only her half sister was a ‘royal brat’. But be that as it may, Violet, described by Major Shand as ‘a pretty dreadful character’ married in 1919 Major Denys Robert Trefusis (who died 1929), and she died without issue in 1970 after a very controversial and scandalous life, which has no place here.

  Sonia was the younger daughter, who was born six years after her sister, and just two years after her mother, known as ‘La Favorita,’ had first met the Prince of Wales with whom she had an affair lasting from 1898 until the King’s death in 1910. Speaking later about her position, one of Alice’s best known remarks was that ‘a Royal Mistress should curtsey first – and then jump into bed’. It has been said that Alice turned adultery into an art and that the Prince used to like to visit her at teatime ‘for cake, claret and Keppel’. It is highly plausible therefore that the Prince, known to Sonia after his Coronation as ‘Kingy’ and also ‘Tum-Tum’, was in fact her real father, and perhaps this is strengthened by the fact that Sonia, some sixty years later, wrote the memoirs of her first twenty years, entitled Edwardian Daughter – a tantalising double entendre. However, within its 207 pages, there is no hint atall that her father (and Violet’s too) was anyone other than George Keppel, who is referred to throughout as Papa. However, she does concede that Kingy’s death in 1910 ‘changed all our lives’. According to her autobiography, Sonia, then aged ten, was very much aware of the sombre change in their home at the King’s death. Her mother went into deep mourning and her hair turned white almost overnight. Sonia wrote

  ‘A pall of darkness hung over the house. Blinds were drawn, lights were dimmed and black clothes appeared, even for me, with black ribbons threaded through my underclothes.’

  When Edward became King, Sonia was only a toddler, but this did not prevent her from being told by her nanny to curtsey to the bearded king whenever she saw him. This she tried to remember to do, but she often mistook her mother’s bearded financier, Sir Ernest Cassel, for the king, curtseying to him too! Her upbringing consisted of a round of visits at home and abroad to many famous people in many big houses. Later on, her sixteenth birthday party was broken up in full swing when it was learned that the Battle of Jutland was raging involving many naval friends of the family. Sonia came out in 1918, introduced by Elinor, Lady Kinloch and chaperoned by Mary, Viscountess Harcourt and Edith, Lady Jessel. Soon afterwards she also obtained a job as a parlour maid to a Russian hospital for officers in South Audley Street, before being presented at Court by her mother in 1919, whose first visit to Buckingham Palace it was since her ‘widowhood’ as the King’s mistress.

  Unlike other alleged royal bastards, the Prince was not one of Sonia’s godparents. These were the Grand Duke Mikhail Mikhailovich, grandson of Czar Nicholas I of All the Russias and his wife Sophie Nicholaievna Countess of Mere
nberg (who was created Countess Torby) when he had married her morganatically. Sonia’s other godmother was the Hon Margaret Greville, a controversial figure who later became a millionairess in her own right. She was an illegitimate daughter of the Liberal MP William McEwen by his cook and she later married the Hon Ronald Greville, a friend of George Keppel.

  Alice, often described as ‘voluptuous’, was one of the leading personalities of Edward VII’s Court and she survived his accession to the Throne, when many people thought that she would have been discarded. Although society gossips waited in vain for Alice to be appointed the 1st Lady of the Bedchamber, she was in fact maitresse en titre, and much respected and accepted and the King loved her dearly. She handled him well, besides being the soul of discretion, qualities vested also in her great grand-daughter, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.

  By contrast to her half sister, Sonia led a quiet and respectable life and was appointed an OBE (1959) and a DStJ for good works and services to the community. After a two year unofficial engagement, she married in some splendour in 1920 at the Guards’ Chapel the Hon Roland (Rolie) Calvert Cubitt, of the Coldstream Guards and of building fame and fortune, who succeeded in 1947, (just after their divorce), as 3rd Baron Ashcombe. He went on to marry twice more and died in 1962 when he was succeeded by their elder son, Harry, who is the present 4th Baron. Although the Ashcombes were a very formal family which Sonia found difficult, they remained married for twenty-seven years and lived at Hall Place, West Meon, near Petersfield in Hampshire. Sonia stayed on there after their divorce into her old age and was well placed financially having benefited significantly from her mother’s English will which was proved at £177,637 in 1947 (excluding American and Italian assets) and divided between her two daughters. Sonia had two sons, Harry and Jeremy and a daughter, Rosalind, of whom more anon. What, if anything, she received from her putative Royal father, is not known.