The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses

by Theo Aronson

  But the Prince Imperial was not alone in his penchant for practical jokes. Bertie adored them. The late Prince Consort's admonition that no prince should ever indulge in anything as vulgar as a practical joke had fallen on very deaf ears indeed. Bertie's friends were spared nothing: apple-pie beds, pockets stuffed with sticky sweets, water squirted from bicycle pumps, pies full of mustard. And Lillie, no less a child of her time, was equally addicted to them. She tells of the occasion when the two princes hoisted a donkey into a bedroom, clothed it in a nightdress and somehow put it into the bed of the son of the house: the son being that notorious lecher, Harry Cust.

  Another of her stories concerns that other celebrated lover and dashing naval commander, Lord Charles Beresford. On the occasion of Lillie's first visit to Cowes, Beresford was in command of HMS Thunderer. One afternoon, during an impromptu dance on board, Lillie, accompanied by someone she calls 'royalty' – we must assume she means the Prince of Wales – slipped away to one of the cabins. As all the ship's cabins lay below the water line, they had to rely on shafts for ventilation. Lord Charles, having noticed the couple slip away, and imagining, only too vividly, what they were up to in the cabin, switched off the supply of air.

  'Very soon our faces became scarlet, our breathing grew difficult, and we began to go through the uncomfortable sensation which must be experienced by a fish out of water.' Beresford's prank, in other words, very quickly put a stop to whatever was going on.

  'Fortunately,' continues Lillie, 'Lord Charles did not go beyond the frightening limit, or the Beresfordjoke might have developed into the Beresford tragedy.'29

  Or – if the Prince of Wales had been discovered suffocated to death in the arms of Lillie Langtry – the Beresford scandal.

  Of all the social occasions shared by the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry, none was more characteristic of the period than the country house weekend; or, as they were more properly termed, 'Saturday-to-Monday', with the use of the word Monday emphasising the fact that one did not need to return to town at the start of the week to earn one's living. These mammoth house parties, at which sport – hunting and shooting – was combined with entertainment – dining and dancing – were very much to Bertie's taste. And by the late 1870s no host could hope to entertain the Prince if the guest list did not include Mrs Edward Langtry.

  The Prince was willing to accept the hospitality, not only of such grandees as the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton, the Duke of Sutherland at Dunrobin, the Duke of Westminster at Eaton Hall or the Duke of Portland at Welbeck, but of almost anyone rich enough to entertain him. To claim that the Prince of Wales had been a guest at one's country house was the ambition of almost every aristocratic or would-be aristocratic host. Many an enterprising socialite crippled himself financially in his determination to prove worthy of the favour bestowed by the presence of the Prince of Wales.

  The photograph of one of these autumn gatherings, with His Royal Highness seated plumply and confidently in the middle of a group of tweed-suited men and elaborately hatted women, was a greatly treasured possession: incontrovertible proof that one had been granted the supreme social accolade.

  The routine at these country house parties was unvarying. Between twenty and forty guests would be invited, with no introductions ever being made, on the assumption that all people in society knew one another. With the exception of the hostess's private wing, the entire house would be open to the guests; they could wander through the lushly furnished rooms and galleries as they wished. The hardly less luxurious bedrooms would be provided with every facility except a bathroom. In each room was a metal tub, discreetly screened, which would be filled and emptied by a housemaid. The grounds, with their walled gardens, pleached avenues, sloping lawns, winding paths, woods, belvederes and view sites, would be equally at the disposal of the guests.

  These house parties involved, as Disraeli once complained to Queen Victoria, 'a good deal too much both of eating and dressing. '30 And, of course, of shooting. Meals were gargantuan. At breakfast guests would help themselves from a row of silver chafing dishes on the sideboard: the fare would consist of fried, poached or scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, kedgeree and cold ham. Luncheon sometimes took the form of a picnic but was none the less lavish for that: every conceivable type of hot and cold food, particularly varieties of game pie, and of course wine, would be provided. Tea, in the drawing room, meant bread-and-butter, scones, tarts, cakes, sandwiches, muffins and crumpets. At dinner there were often ten courses, each with a different wine. And, later that evening, there would be yet a fifth meal to be eaten – supper, which usually included a cold chicken or lobster salad. And in the unlikely but by no means unheard-of event of anyone feeling peckish during the night, sandwiches were provided in every room.

  While the men usually changed their clothes only three times a day – tweeds, velvet smoking suits and full evening dress of white tie and tails – the ladies were expected to change at least four times. For breakfast there would be morning dresses. If they were picnicking out of doors with the men they would wear tweeds; if not, they would change into another dress for luncheon. For afternoon tea they would wear elaborate tea-gowns. In the evening they would appear in low-cut dresses with trains, wearing jewellery and carrying ostrich-feather fans.

  As the men's daytime activities were confined to shooting, or talking about shooting, the women had to entertain themselves as best they could. Between changing their clothes, they could gossip with the 'darlings' – those non-sporting men who were especially invited to keep them amused – or write letters.

  Lillie, despite her gratification at being included in these house parties, did not enjoy them unreservedly. She disapproved of hunting and shooting: 'I was once persuaded to see a stag stalked,' she says, 'but I felt so sick and sorry for the fine beast that I have never forgotten it.'31 Nor did she much enjoy the company of other women. Too lively to sit about gossiping all day, and not really a member of this milieu, she found other amusements.

  At Heron Court, the home of Lord Malmesbury, for instance, she would continue her process of self-improvement. She had always been one for keeping her eyes and ears open; now, guided by old Malmesbury, she would wander through the rooms, asking, listening, remembering. 'It was in these rooms that I learned to distinguish the different periods of French furniture, china, etc, for they contained quantities of beautiful examples, including some lovely signed buhl tables. It was, moreover, a pleasure to their owner to explain the most minute characteristics of each chair, cabinet, table or vase. The library was a vast one, and among its treasures were many portfolios filled with rare engravings and cartoons by Raphael, Bartolozzi, Angelica Kauffmann and others . . .'32

  Nor did she ever hesitate to put this new-found knowledge to practical use. On one occasion Alfred de Rothschild drew her aside at the end of an evening and murmured, 'What shall I give you, beautiful lady?' Lillie promptly picked up a lavishly bejewelled Louis XVI snuff box. 'This will do,' she said crisply. 'He had a weak heart,' she afterwards wrote, 'and for a moment I thought I had stopped it. But when he got his breath he promised me something "much prettier" and out came one of the well-known gift boxes.'33

  But not all Lillie's country house activities were devoted to self-enrichment, of whatever variety. Her natural effervescence was never far below that composed surface. One host was obliged to lock up his largest silver tray because she insisted on tobogganing down the stairs on it; another had to chide her for her 'disregard of conventionalities' for dismissing the groom who had been following her and Lord Manners as they rode through the park. Once, after she had burned her tongue with a forkful of gratin à la Grammont, she complained to her host about it being too cold; furious with his chef, the poor man gulped down a large mouthful, to the intense, if puerile, amusement of the company.

  Such spirited behaviour delighted the Prince of Wales. He would roar with laughter at her antics. It was this dash, this boldness,
this invincible joie de vivre, so closely resembling his own, that Bertie found so attractive in Lillie.

  Late at night, the house party would offer amusements of another nature. For notable as these gatherings were for the sport, the food and the dressing up, they were equally notable for their adulterous liaisons. It was chiefly at country house parties that the new code of sexual behaviour was put into practice. On arrival – at teatime on the first day – the men would eye the married women with a view to what was euphemistically called 'amusing' one of them during the next two or three days. An elaborate, if speedy, courtship would follow: glances across the candle-lit dinner table, a touch of a hand on a gloved elbow, a whispered suggestion of a private meeting, a note on a breakfast tray, a walk to the summer house, a poetry reading in the conservatory. All this led, inevitably, to a late-night assignation.

  The experienced hostess, in allotting bedrooms to her guests, would ensure that their current romantic attachments were taken into account, or that sudden sexual attraction was allowed for. A reading of the names on the cards slipped into the little brass frames on the bedroom doors would tell the informed observer a great deal. The hostess would see to it that Mr and Mrs Langtry were given separate rooms and that Mrs Langtry's room was not too far from the suite set aside for His Royal Highness. Well known Romeos would never be placed in rooms beside happily married couples.

  Yet everything was arranged with great discretion. An open scandal was to be avoided at all costs. 'Everything was all right,' claimed one such errant wife, 'if only it was kept quiet, hushed up, covered.'34 A married woman could conduct an affair more easily and in greater safety within the closed circle at a country house party than she could in a hotel or restaurant; even if she were prepared to risk the social stigma of being seen in such an establishment.

  The corridors of country houses must have been alive with the sounds of padding feet, swishing dressing-gowns and gently closing doors. A six o'clock warning bell would ensure that everyone was back in his or her own bed long before the maids arrived with the morning tea tray.

  These late-night assignations gave rise to a litany of anecdotes about miscarried plans. There was the one about the husband who, feeling hungry, carried off the plate of sandwiches which his wife had left outside her bedroom door as a sign to her lover. Or the irrepressible Lord Charles Beresford who, having tiptoed into a dark room, leaped lustfully into the arms, not of his lady-love, but of the astonished Bishop of Chester. There was even one about the Prince of Wales, who was assured by the lady on whom he was pressing his, for once, unwelcome attentions, that she would mark her bedroom door with a rose: when His Royal Highness duly crept into the room, it was to find a kitchenmaid planted in the lady's bed.

  Not that the Prince, or any other upper-class gentleman, would have hesitated to bed a kitchenmaid. They were considered to be there for the taking. When Edward Horner seduced a parlourmaid after a drunken lunch, a woman guest thought it 'eighteenth century and droit de seigneur and rather nice.'35 She would not have been anything like as approving if he had seduced an unmarried woman of his own class. That would have been regarded as a major scandal.

  Nor did the upper classes permit, among their servants, the sort of moral laxity which they – provided the women were married – enjoyed at these country house weekends. When Lord Curzon discovered that one of his housemaids had allowed a footman to spend the night with her, he was incensed. 'I put the little slut out into the street at a moment's notice,'36 he boasted. And his guests, secure behind their façade of double standards and regardless of whose bed they had spent the night in, would have agreed that their host had acted most honourably.

  But one may be sure that, for the first two or three years, the Prince would have been satisfied with Lillie by his side and in his bed. When they were not together, he would write to her. The tone of his letters was touchingly solicitous. Quite clearly, Lillie was constantly in his thoughts. He would give her the sort of news that a devoted husband gives a wife; he would write about the weather or the shooting or the racing. In describing the society beauties at Cowes, during a season that she was not with him, he would hasten to add that, somewhat to his own surprise, he was not flirting with any of them. Sometimes his letters were accompanied by a brace of pheasant; at others he would enclose the ticket to Ascot which she had wanted for a friend.

  Such was the depth of Bertie's regard for Lillie that long after the first flush of his infatuation had faded and they had gone their separate ways, he would continue to see her and to write her his tender, concerned, affectionate letters; always signing them with a simple A.E. (for Albert Edward) and always opening them with the words 'My Fair Lily'.

  4

  'Dreams of Fairyland'

  INDISPUTABLE PROOF of Lillie Langtry's social acceptability came in her second season. She was presented at court; presented, not to the Prince of Wales who sometimes deputised for Queen Victoria on these occasions, but to the Queen herself.

  Until the late 1950s, when the young Queen Elizabeth II finally abolished the by then meaningless ceremony, presentation at court was regarded as the sine qua non of social recognition. No debutante was considered fully 'out' – out, that is, of girlhood and into society – until she had been formally presented to the monarch. The ritual was enacted at special presentation parties, as soon after a girl's eighteenth birthday as possible. Together with putting up her hair and letting down her skirts, being launched at her own coming-out ball and attending a prodigious number of other balls and parties, presentation at court was part of a young woman's initiation into society.

  But presentation was not confined to debutantes. Married women – colonials, foreigners, women who had married Englishmen, who had been out of the country at eighteen or who had gained prominence in national life – could also be presented. Provided they had a 'presenter' or sponsor, usually a woman who had herself been presented, any aspiring socialite could make her curtsey to the sovereign. Some of these sponsors were not above making the necessary introductions for a cash consideration. An occasion which, in early days, had been confined to exclusively aristocratic circles, became progressively less select. 'We had to stop it,' said one member of the royal family recently, 'every tart in London was being presented.'1 A more valid reason was that, in a more egalitarian age, the whole concept of 'society' had become outdated.

  For a century or more, however, presentation at court remained the goal of every socially ambitious woman. What should she do, asked one desperate American matron of one of the young Vanderbilts, to get her daughter presented?

  'Don't you know anything about presentation at the court of St James's?' he asked.

  'No, but I do know that it would be marvellous for my girl,' she answered.

  The young man, more enlightened than most, did his best to dissuade her. In graphic detail he outlined the disadvantages of the whole business: the months of learning how to conduct oneself, the expense of the clothes, the strain on the nerves, the tedium of waiting – first in the carriage procession in the Mall and then in the palace ante-chamber – and all for the dubious thrill of curtseying to a person who would never recognise one again.

  In silence, the mother heard him out. 'I see,' she said when he had finished this grim catalogue of drawbacks. 'And now tell me what I should do to get my daughter on the list of presentees?'2

  Whereas the Prince of Wales, on ascending the throne as Edward VII, reintroduced evening Presentation Courts, Queen Victoria held them in the afternoons, when they were known as Drawing Rooms. These Drawing Rooms (at which, noted one debutante tartly, 'Her Majesty does not offer any refreshments to the guests'3) might have lacked the glamour of the evening courts, but the ceremonial was no less exacting. So it was on a May afternoon in 1878 that Lillie Langtry found herself, stiff with nerves, waiting to make her curtsey to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.

  The Prince of Wales had prepared the ground thoroughly. Earlier that season he had presented Edward Langtry
to the Queen at a levée. He had arranged for Lillie's sponsor to be Lady Conyngham, whose credentials, as a member of the Queen's household, were impeccable, and for her actual companion on the day to be Lady Romney. On the morning of the presentation he sent Lillie a huge bouquet of pale yellow Maréchal Neil roses.

  This choice of flowers had not been arbitrary. They complimented her dress perfectly. Lillie was wearing, for this great occasion, a dress of ivory brocade with a long court train which hung, à l'Impératrice Joséphine, from the shoulders and which was lined with the same pale yellow of the artificial Maréchal Neil roses which garlanded the dress. As the Queen had recently expressed disapproval of the smallness of the obligatory three white feathers which the presentees wore in their hair, Lillie had chosen three of the largest ostrich plumes she could find. It was with some difficulty that she secured these three towering feathers and the customary tulle veil, for she still wore her hair coiled in a simple knot low on her neck.

  Although gratified at the idea of being presented, Lillie was in two minds about the actual presentation to Queen Victoria. By now, the Queen would almost certainly have known about the Prince's relationship with Mrs Langtry ('Who is it tells her these things?'4 wailed one of Her Majesty's secretaries) and Lillie was, she admits, 'rather afraid'5 of the Queen. But as Queen Victoria, who now hated all public appearances, was known to spend no more than an hour or so at a Drawing Room and then hand over to the Prince and Princess of Wales, Lillie decided to delay her arrival. In this way she would still be presented at court but without having to face the probably disapproving Queen.

  She could not, though, escape the waiting which was such a feature of these presentation days. The Mall was one solid line of carriages: a picturesque river of gleaming coaches, caparisoned horses, bewigged coachmen and powdered footmen, their liveries glittering with gold and silver braid. A good-natured mob of bystanders peered into the carriage windows, hoping for a glimpse of the bejewelled and befeathered occupants.