They All Love Jack

by Bruce Robinson

  Edward, Prince of Wales was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, and thus the most powerful Freemason on earth. But omnipotence did not faze the Yanks. They’d got rid of kings and kingdoms almost everywhere, except in their Bibles: ‘The Prince of Wales, as Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, should, in the opinion of many, be charged with conduct unbecoming in a Mason.’ That was from the Rough Ashlar.45 Another title, the Masonic Constellation, threw an even bigger rock: ‘What will the Masons do in the matter? Cringe at the feet of such an unworthy person; lick the spittles that fall from such unworthy lips? … The Fraternity in America should take some decisive steps in the matter of the disgrace that he had brought upon the Craft … A common gambler and rake … Strip the tarnished jewels from his breast, try him for gambling and adultery, and expel him from their halls.’46

  All I can say to that is, dream on. The hysteria from the colonies was not only disingenuous, it was naïve – the intention of the British Masons being precisely the opposite. This American seemed to have forgotten who was running the place. He had even more to say, but he was wasting his time: ‘It is the duty of Masons in England to guard with jealous care the purity and high standing of our loved order. There is no palliation or mitigation in such cases, and those who shield or protect are equally guilty.’47

  You can say that again. But nobody ever did. The ‘equally guilty’ responsible for shielding and protecting fellow criminals in the matter of scandal (at Cleveland Street, for example) were, almost to a man, eminent members of the ‘loved order’.

  Condemnation of the Prince of Wales was not restricted to American Freemasons. It also came from the British public. They wrote letters to the authorities, the newspapers and the police. There was irate criticism even from a famous murderer – the following came from ‘Jack the Ripper’, or at least from a correspondent signing himself thus: ‘A word of warning, beware, and protect your low immoral pot-bellied prince. God has marked him for destruction and “mutilation”.’

  Not exactly an echo of the popular press, though Fleet Street wasn’t friendly either. All in all, it was another lousy day in utopia.

  But this little fracas for Edward was as nothing – wasn’t even a pimple on the bum – to the truly awful scandal that had come down the pike but twelve months before, and threatened to destroy his son.

  An oppressive fact about the Victorian ruling estate was its isolation. You were in it, or you were not. Its encircling walls weren’t entirely visible until you ran into one. Then they were high and hard. The upper classes could slam a door in your face that you couldn’t even see. It is another fact, similarly invisible, that perhaps as few as 10,000 members of this class ran the affairs of 310 million people.

  Reading its contemporary journals and dainty lady-press, the claustrophobia (I want to say incestuousness) of the Victorian elite seems remarkable. It seemed that everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everyone else. The upper classes gave an illusion of living in one enormous mansion, residing there like superior strangers, and existing only for garden parties and fireworks around the lake. Blood (no matter how thin) or money (and a lot of it) were the only ways in. Though from time to time, of course, the System absorbed those on whom its survival relied: the bishops and lawyers, the judges and generals, and Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police.

  Plus, there were those it slept with or who otherwise amused it, people toys, like Lillie Langtry or Oscar Wilde.

  Edward, Prince of Wales was a philistine who didn’t give much for their product, but loved the company of artists. Two of the most celebrated of the age were close personal friends: the little composer with his peculiarly British talent Sir Arthur Sullivan, and a true giant of his epoch, the painter Sir Frederick Leighton.

  Both of these complimentary-ticket holders of the upper class (like Oscar Wilde) were Freemasons, as were a staggering number of the class they entertained.

  Unlike Freemasonry today, the Craft had its own class hierarchy, centralising like everything else in London, and above all at its gentlemen’s clubs. Forget the histrionics over Parliament – that was just a floor show for the proles. In the clubs they were all players in the same game, and it was at White’s, Pratt’s, the Athenaeum and their like that political business was actually done.

  Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, was a member of the Athenaeum, as were Home Secretary Henry Matthews, Judge James Fitzjames Stephen, Arthur Sullivan and Frederick Leighton. And so, for the record, were two other gentlemen we shall be hearing a great deal more of, Sir Charles Russell QC MP and London’s Boss Cop, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Charles Warren.

  Just before it hit the fan at Cleveland Street, Prince Albert Victor had a night out. It was one of many such soirées organised to celebrate the sovereign’s birthday: ‘Prince Albert Victor dined with the First Lord of the Treasury, among other guests being Bros [“Bro” means Brother in the Freemasonic vernacular] the Marquis of Hertford, the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres, the Earl of Carnarvon, the Earl of Zetland, the Earl of Londesborough, Lord Randolph Churchill, M.P., Sir Hicks Beach, Bart, Lord Harlech, Sir John Mowbray, Bart, and Sir W. Hart-Dyke, Bart, M.P.’ Other distinguished Masons feasting in honour of their monarch that week were Bros ‘Lord George Hamilton, M.P., as First Lord of the Admiralty, the Duke of Portland, as Master of the Horse, the Earl of Mount Edgecombe, as Lord Steward, and the Earl of Lathom, as Lord Chamberlain.’48

  I do not mention these names without purpose, nor seek to make an idle point. Many of the Freemasons here mentioned will acquire a specificity as the narrative proceeds.

  At another banquet at Arlington Street, Lord Salisbury entertained the Prince of Wales and his ever circulating phalanx of toadies and mattress-muck: the toast, a décolletage of diamonds in the waxy light, was the same all over London: ‘To Her Majesty the Queen.’

  It was at about this time Verdi became popular with London’s window-cleaners, whistling while they polished to the air of ‘La Donna è mobile’ lyrics courtesy of the fellows of their class.

  Arseholes are cheap today

  Cheaper than yesterday

  Little boys are half a crown

  Standing up or lying down

  Bigger boys are three and six

  They are meant for bigger pricks …

  Henry James Fitzroy, Earl of Euston, was a six-foot-four-inch aristocrat, who in his top hat must have cleared seven feet. His close friendship with Edward and Albert Victor says something about all three. Euston was a classic pile of shit, squandering family money in pursuit of endless good times. Decadence appeared to be his life’s ambition, and was one of the few activities at which it could be said he excelled.

  ‘Of distinctly Bohemian tastes,’ wrote an early biographer, ‘he soon got into a “set” that was anything but a desirable one. A host of parasites looked upon him as their prey, to be exploited and sucked dry. Nor did the women ignore him. His women friends, however, were not of the description who would have been welcomed in Belgravian drawing rooms. Not that they, for their part, had any desire to be in them. They were much more at home in the green rooms of the lesser theatres and the Haymarket night houses.’49

  It was at one of these dives that Euston fell for the wide eyes and rosewater of Kate Smith, a well-known West End slut. He had married and abandoned her by the age of twenty-four. His career in debauchery then flourished. There were plenty of other pretty faces in lipstick, although not all of them belonged to girls. It took a while for Euston to work out what kind of sex he liked, and he ended up liking all of it. By the late 1880s this enormous ex-Guards officer was a not uncommon sight in the nancy shadows of Piccadilly.

  On a late afternoon of May or June 1889, a youth emerged out of them proffering the Earl a card: ‘“Poses Plastique”, Hammond, 19 Cleveland Street. W.’

  According to Euston, when called to explain himself at a subsequent magistrates’ court, his interpretation of the term ‘Poses Plastique’ meant no more than a glass of champa
gne and the pleasant scrutiny of a little girl’s genitals. He went along to Cleveland Street and was, he claimed, surprised to find no girls.

  He would be more easily believed, at least by this writer, had he said he was surprised to find so many of his aristocratic friends. There was, for example, Lord Arthur Somerset (‘Podge’), a fellow intimate of the Prince of Wales. That very year, the Prince had travelled with Podge to Paris in a railway compartment shared by their musical pal Sir Arthur Sullivan.50 Was Podge – a notorious homosexual – another innocent victim bamboozled by some scoundrel in Piccadilly? And then there was dear Lord Beaumont, and Lord Ronald Gower, and dozens of other guileless aristocrats, all of whom had traipsed to Cleveland Street only to discover (with corporate shock) that it was a homosexual brothel.

  The secret machine was shoved into gear. When Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli said, ‘Royalty cannot survive without Freemasonry, and Freemasonry cannot survive without Royalty,’ he spoke nothing less than the truth. It is what Masonry called ‘the Mystic Tie’.

  Not a year before, the Earl of Euston had been installed as Provincial Grand Master of Northants and Huntingdonshire, and the following day he and the Duke of Clarence were star guests at the laying of a foundation stone at the New Northampton Infirmary. Having promised in his inaugural speech to do all he could ‘to advance the interests of Freemasonry’, Euston positively sweated unction in his address of thanks to the Duke:

  We recognise with pride the honour done to our ancient and honourable fraternity by so many members of your Royal House, who have entered its Lodges, and done excellent work of brethren of the mystic-tie, and we trust that that connection, so intimate and so valued in the past, may have a long continuance in the future. More especially we beg your Royal Highness to convey to his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, our most Worshipful Grand Master, the assurance of our dutiful submission and obedience.51

  Euston practised his Masonic submission under a multiplicity of disciplines. He was a member of Studholm Lodge, St Peter’s Lodge, Lodge of Fidelity, De La Pre Lodge, Bramston Beach Lodge, Royal Alpha Lodge, Stour Valley Lodge, Grafton Lodge, Fitzwilliam Lodge, Military Lodge, Pegasus Lodge, Foxhunter’s Lodge, North and Hunts Master’s Lodge, Studholm Chapter, London, and Grafton Chapter, London.52

  There is, however, one Chapter that you will not find in his obituaries, nor in his official CV at Freemasons’ Hall. It is an order of the Knights Templar – a Christian adjunct of Freemasonry that claims its genesis from the time of the Crusades – called ‘the Preceptory of Saint George, the Encampment of the Cross of Christ’. Amongst its august membership was another ‘Christian’ degenerate and friend of Euston, and he is the subject of this book.53

  Meanwhile, on the morning of 5 July 1889, Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline went to Great Marlborough Street police court seeking a warrant for the arrest of Charles Hammond, the owner of the establishment in Cleveland Street, and others involved in the ‘Poses Plastique’. The instrument was granted, charging that Hammond ‘did unlawfully, wickedly and corruptly conspire, combine, confederate and agree to incite and procure George Alma Wright, and diverse other persons to commit the abominable crime of buggery against the peace of Her Majesty the Queen’.54

  A novel way of putting it, but the game was up for Cleveland Street. One or two of its adolescent tarts were already in Abberline’s custody. A postboy called Newlove thought it most unfair that he and other lads should be isolated for blame. ‘I think it’s hard,’ he told Abberline, ‘that I should get into trouble while men in high positions are allowed to walk free.’

  Meaning precisely what?

  ‘Why,’ replied Newlove, ‘Lord Arthur Somerset goes regularly to the house at Cleveland Street, so does the Earl of Euston and Colonel Jervois.’55

  A cell door slammed on Newlove, but it didn’t shut the mouths. A disturbing rumour was beginning to do the rounds, and it wasn’t long before Hamilton Cuff, the Assistant Public Prosecutor, was writing to his boss.

  ‘I am told,’ wrote Cuff, ‘that if we go on a very distinguished person will be involved,’ a man then identified only by the glittering initials of ‘P.A.V.’.56

  Prince Albert Victor’s father, the Prince of Wales, was in Berlin at the time, hobnobbing with relatives. On receipt of the news he roared back into London – first stop, the offices of Henry Matthews, the Home Secretary. The matter was reported coast to coast in the United States, although somehow the British press overlooked it. The Washington Evening Star wrote: ‘The Prince of Wales is as much concerned about the matter as anybody else, for he went personally to the Home Office this week to see Secretary Matthews … the police can show him the name of Albert Victor, among those the telegraph boys mention as having visited the house.’57

  Matthews’ legal machine, already haemorrhaging under pressure from the man who was now asking even more of it, was nevertheless at the ready. Two things had to be done, and quick. 1) Dangerous mouths had to be silenced, and 2) Somebody had to be found to blame. The law simply couldn’t tolerate postmen backing their anuses onto whoever they felt like. Whatever happened, however it was managed, and whoever was to suffer, Prince Albert Victor was not at that house, on any night, or ever.

  The Government will go to all lengths to secure convictions of the men it wishes to punish just as it will go to all lengths to shield the men that it desires shall escape punishment.

  If the reader can believe this is a statement born of partisan bigotry, I can only refer him to the exposures which are now rending ‘respectable’ London in twain, where all the great resources of the ‘greatest empire of the modern world’ are being used to save the heir to the crown, and his worthy associates, Lord Ronald Gower, and the rest of the Marlborough House set, from exposure, their crime being, as all the world knows, the same as that for which Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, if Holy Writ is to be believed.

  If the real information can be got, Scotland Yard is willing to pay for it at the market rates; under any circumstances there is always a supply to meet the demand; and if the real article cannot be had the bogus is always forthcoming.58

  As the scandal ran for cover, the public were largely kept at a distance. Newspapers murmured, but Fleet Street didn’t need any instructions in deference. As with the crisis of Bro Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson some fifty years later, British newspapers declined to print what the whole chattering world was talking about. In the 1880s, as in the 1930s, it was the American press that forced their hand. A London special to the New York World elaborated:

  The English newspapers are at length beginning to do something more than throw out dark hints as to the existence of a great scandal. Labouchère, without mentioning the names of the criminals, charges with complete accuracy, that the Home Office has fettered [Warren’s successor] Police Commissioner Monro’s hands, and he threatens to make things warm for Secretary of State Matthews when Parliament reassembles … The names known and generally talked about thus far in connection with the case are those of Lord Arthur Somerset, Lord Beaumont, Lord Euston, Lord Ronald Gower, and one official of high rank, now in India [i.e. Prince Albert Victor].59

  As soon as the danger hit, Clarence was put on a boat heading for Hyderabad, so he could waste some tigers and any elephants he didn’t happen to be sitting on. This regal AWOL wasn’t his decision. Like everything else in this wretched creature’s life, it was the System that decided: they knew what colour the incoming was, but they didn’t yet know the size of the fan. The Washington Evening Star continued: ‘Mr Labouchère talked about the scandals at a crowded meeting in Lincoln Saturday night, remarking that the hideousness was so much the subject of general comment that London conversation was becoming almost as horrible as London vice.’60

  It was indeed a circumstance inviting not only public revulsion at the unquenchable lawlessness of the royal mob, but potentially also a dozen years in jail.

  For a few breathtakingly terrible weeks the scandal seemed to be spiralling out of government
control, the duration of Clarence’s sojourn overseas increasing in direct proportion to the crisis. At its inception it was announced: ‘With respect to the proposed visit to India of Prince Albert Victor, it has been arranged that his Royal Highness shall arrive in Bombay early in November.’ To which The Freemason added on 5 October 1889: ‘It has been decided that Prince Albert Victor shall extend his visit to Burmah, the newly acquired territory of the Empress Queen. This will so considerably prolong the trip, that His Royal Highness will not be able to return to England for at least six months.’

  And it might require longer than that. On 19 November the Washington Evening Star reported: ‘Ten days ago, it looked as though official pressure was going to succeed in hushing up the tremendous aristocratic scandal … there was a general feeling it would never get into the courts. Now the prospect is different.’

  The public were becoming truly disgusted with this charade, particularly in light of an announcement that ‘costly apartments being fitted up for Prince Albert Victor in St. James Palace’ were to be funded at the pleasure of the taxpayer. ‘It has become obvious,’ summarised the Washington Evening Star,

  that there has come to be in the past few days, a general conviction that this long-necked, narrow-headed young dullard was mixed up in the scandal, and out of this had sprung a half whimsical, half serious notion, which one hears now proposed about Club Land, that matters will be so arranged that he will never return from India. The most popular idea is that he will be killed in a tiger hunt, but runaway horses or a fractious elephant might serve as well. What this really mirrors is a public awakening to the fact that this stupid, perverse boy has become a man, and has only two lives between him and the English Throne.61

  And the seat of kings was what it was all about. Nobody gave a toss for this effete little useless pederast – that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t Albert Victor caught with his trousers down in Cleveland Street, it was an entire ruling ethic, the thing you waved your flag at – a class of the few enjoying unspeakable privilege at the expense of the many they despised. The Establishment didn’t give a monkey’s who P.A.V. buggered, they’d known about Cleveland Street for years. It was the fact that it had leaked out that freaked them, and they were stupefied with anxiety at the damage this could do to the world’s greatest conjuring trick.