by Theo Aronson
'It was certainly anything but agreeable,' grumbled Lillie, 'to sit in full costume, with low neck and arms, in bright sunlight, for the edification of the surging crowd.'6 The fact that many of the presentees had not eaten since early morning, and were obliged to nibble their sandwiches and sip from their flasks in full view, made it less agreeable still.
Things were hardly less tedious in the palace itself. With infinite slowness, the line inched forward. Finally, 'after hours of waiting in the crush room, penned like sheep, with a heavy train folded on one's arm, and a constant dragging at one's tulle veil,'7 the moment of presentation arrived. Although Lillie's late arrival meant that she would be the last but two to be presented, she was disconcerted to hear that the Queen was still receiving. She was more disconcerted still when, having handed her train to the pages but before having handed her card to the Lord Chamberlain, she heard him say, 'Mrs Langtry comes next, Your Majesty.' Quite clearly, the Queen had been waiting for her.
'It seems,' writes Lillie, 'that she had a great desire to see me, and had stayed on in order to satisfy herself as to my appearance. It was even added that she was annoyed because I was so late in passing.'8
True or not, Queen Victoria certainly looked annoyed as Lillie approached. Yet, to the trembling Lillie, this merely added to her air of majesty. The simplicity of the Queen's low-necked and short-sleeved black dress was enlivened by the blue ribbon of the Garter and by her many sparkling jewels: the diamond orders and decorations on her corsage, the rows of pearls about her neck, the rings on her podgy fingers and the small diamond crown on her head. It seemed almost unbelievable that someone so small and plump could look so awe-inspiring. 'I was thrilled with emotion, loyalty and pride,'9 enthuses Lillie.
Her mind filled with stories of misadventures – of fat women over-balancing as they made their obeisances, of others tripping over their trains or clutching the outstretched royal hand for support – Lillie sank into her curtsey. The Queen seemed to show no interest in her whatsoever. Extending her hand in a 'rather perfunctory manner', Victoria stared straight ahead. 'Not even a flicker of a smile crossed her grimly set lips.'10
That ordeal over, Lillie dropped a series of curtseys to the other members of the royal family – including a no doubt beaming Prince of Wales – lined up beside the Queen, and then faced her final test. This was the catching of her train, thrown to her by a nimble page, over her left arm and then exiting backwards. She executed this complicated ritual perfectly.
That evening, as a relieved Lillie danced with Bertie in the Royal Quadrille at a ball at Marlborough House, he confirmed that the Queen had remained so late expressly in order to see her. What, wondered Lillie, had the Queen thought of her three outsize ostrich feathers? The Prince had certainly been amused by them. Perhaps he appreciated their symbolism. Were they not a reminder of his own coat of arms, with the accompanying motto Ich dien – I serve?
Lillie just missed an opportunity of meeting Queen Victoria socially later that year when the royal family descended, en masse, on Scotland for their annual autumn sojourn. With the Queen and some of her family at Balmoral and the Prince and Princess of Wales at Abergeldie, it was arranged that the Langtrys should be the guests of one of the Prince's friends, the 'commercial magnate' Cunliffe Brooks, at Glen Tanar. Although Lillie could not approve of the mass slaughter of game which so enthralled the men of the house party, she loved Scotland. She was not the first southerner to succumb to the fascination of the Highlands: the colourful national dress, the vigorous dancing, the virile men, even the determined drizzle guaranteed, she says, 'to bring roses to a woman's cheeks'.11
In his Stuart tartan ('Something a little more Scots tomorrow,'12 the Prince would instruct his valet as the ship bringing him north approached the Scottish coast) even Bertie managed to look somewhat less Hanoverian. As for Alexandra, Lillie had to admit that she looked as radiant in her 'blue serge workmanlike costume'13 and deerstalker cap as she did in one of her shimmering court dresses.
One afternoon, accompanied by two other members of the house party – Lord Strathnairn and Lady Erroll – the Langtrys drove over to Balmoral. Designed by the late Prince Consort, Balmoral Castle is a mixture of German Schloss and Scottish baronial hall: a jumble of pepper-pot turrets, crenellated parapets and stepped gables. Lillie, who had never seen it before (and was never to see it again) found it 'bleak and uninteresting', utterly lacking in the romance of Scotland's older, less ersatz castles.
The party had not come, of course, to call on Queen Victoria (no one would have dared do that, uninvited; and invitations to call on the Queen were rare) but to pay their respects by signing their names in the visitors' book. Lillie hesitated to do even this, imagining that it would be an act of presumption. But Lady Erroll assured her that, as Lillie had been presented to the Queen earlier that year, it would be perfectly proper, indeed imperative, for her to sign. So they duly wrote their names and left.
Later, Lillie heard from Lady Ely, one of Queen Victoria's ladies-in-waiting, that some twenty minutes after the party had driven away, the Queen had paged through the book and, on noticing their names, had said, 'I should like to have seen Mrs Langtry.'14 A rider was promptly despatched to try and overtake them but it was too late. So history was denied the intriguing little scene of these two disparate women – the squat, dowdy, imperious Queen Victoria and the svelte and alluring Mrs Langtry – discussing who knows what subject provided it was not the one responsible for bringing the two of them together.
Although Lillie makes no mention of it in her circumspect memoirs, Balmoral was the chief setting for the juxtaposition of Queen Victoria with another unlikely personality: her gillie, John Brown. By the time of Lillie's visit, Brown had become a permanent, and much discussed, feature of the Queen's life.
What exactly was the nature of the relationship between this oddly assorted pair? On one level, Brown was Victoria's devoted servant. The Queen had always had a soft spot for Highlanders – those handsome, muscular, plain-speaking, utterly honest 'children of nature' – and in Brown she saw embodied all these stalwart Scots qualities. He had been in her service for many years but it was not until some years after the Prince Consort's death that Brown was promoted from chief gillie to 'the Queen's Highland Servant', a position which made him part-servant, part-secretary, part-confidant. In time, she could hardly bear to be parted from him. She relied on him more and more, not only for his services but for his support, sympathy and companionship. He was constantly at her elbow. When she sat working, he kept guard over her; when she drove out he sat, sturdy and impassive, on the box of her carriage.
He treated her – this most intimidating of women – in an extraordinarily irreverent manner. 'What's this ye've got on today?' he would grumble if he disapproved of her dress. 'Hoots, then, wumman', an astonished tourist once heard him shout as he pinned together the Queen's cloak, 'can ye no hold yerr head up?'15 Indeed, when they were alone, he almost always called her 'wumman'.
Some, in an effort to explain away the puzzling intimacy between the Queen and the gillie, claimed that the link between them was supernatural. They said that Brown had second sight, that he was a spiritualist medium through whom the Queen kept in touch with her late husband, that the Prince Consort's spirit had actually passed into John Brown. But others were only too ready to believe that the relationship was sexual: that the rugged, good-looking, undeniably masculine gillie was the Queen's lover, possibly even her husband. In some circles she was referred to as 'Mrs Brown' or 'the Empress Brown'.
Was this Bertie's view? The Prince certainly made no secret of his aversion to his mother's favourite. He deeply resented the bluntness and insolence with which Brown conveyed the Queen's often peremptory instructions to him, and for years he was reluctant to visit Balmoral because it meant shooting with the gillie. When, in 1884, the Queen sent him an advance copy of her book More Leaves from a Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, with its fulsome references to John Brown, the Prince was ap
palled. The worldly Bertie knew exactly how sophisticated readers would interpret the relationship. He held, he told the Queen, very strong views on the subject of this exposing of her private life to the general public and urged her to restrict the book to private circulation. Victoria, of course, ignored his advice.
Whatever Bertie's private thoughts on the nature of the relationship might have been, one of his intimate associates certainly regarded it as sexual. This was the famous Victorian courtesan, Catherine Walters, more usually known as 'Skittles'.
For many years the bewitching Skittles had been kept by the eldest son of the 7th Duke of Devonshire, the young Marquess of Hartington (the same 'Harty-Tarty' who had recently ripped the water-lilies out of an ornamental pool at a Devonshire House ball to present to Lillie Langtry) but this had never prevented her from distributing her favours among other young men-about-town. One of them was the Prince of Wales. In the years before he met Lillie, Bertie often visited Skittles and he was to remain friendly with her into her old age, frequently writing to her and even paying her an annual allowance. Whenever she was ill, his own doctor would attend her. During the course of this long and intimate association, the two of them apparently discussed many royal secrets.
Yet another of Skittles's lovers was that colourful contemporary personality, the poet and traveller Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, and it was to Blunt that Skittles revealed what she knew about the Queen and John Brown. Blunt, in turn, transmitted the astonishing revelations to his secret diary: a confidential record which was not opened until 1972, fifty years after his death. Although both Blunt and Skittles tend to be unreliable witnesses, there seems to be no good reason why either of them should lie about facts that were not to be revealed until long after both of them were dead. In fact, Skittles did not even know that Blunt was recording her memories and, 'because the story is so important historically', Blunt cross-questioned her closely.
'Brown,' repeats Blunt in his secret diary, 'was a rude unmannerly fellow . . . but he had unbounded influence with the Queen whom he treated with little respect, presuming in every way upon his position with her. It was the talk of all the household that he was 'the Queen's Stallion'. He was a fine man physically, though coarsely made, and had fine eyes (like the late Prince Consort's, it was said) and the Queen, who had been passionately in love with her husband got it into her head that somehow the Prince's spirit had passed into Brown, and four years after her widowhood, being very unhappy, allowed him all privileges. It was to be with him, where she could do more as she liked, that she spent so much of her time at Balmoral, though he was also with her at Osborne and elsewhere . . . She used to go away with him to a little house in the hills where, on the pretence that it was for protection and "to look after the dogs", he had a bedroom next to hers, the ladies-in-waiting being put at the other end of the building . . . [There was] no doubt of his being allowed every conjugal privilege.'16
Perhaps the truth was more complicated than this. That Victoria was infatuated with, indeed besotted by, John Brown, there is little doubt. But there were many factors, other than the sexual, to account for this obsession. In the first place, John Brown was a link – a tangible and not a spiritual link – with Prince Albert. The gillie had known the Queen's adored husband in the Prince's happiest periods: on holiday in their beloved Highlands. He was a living reminder of those unclouded days. Then, in this simple, trustworthy, dependable man were embodied all the peasant virtues which the Queen was coming to champion so ardently. How stalwart he seemed when set against the frivolous, immoral, self-indulgent members of the aristocracy – the Prince of Wales chief amongst them.
Queen Victoria had always been shy in sophisticated or intellectual society; with the Highland peasants, and with John Brown in particular, she could be utterly natural and relaxed. Royals do not easily make friends; they can never be quite certain of their disinterestedness. The result is that they quite often form close attachments with their personal servants. One of Queen Elizabeth II's most trusted confidantes is said to be her long-serving dresser, Miss Margaret ('Bobo') MacDonald. So, in John Brown, Queen Victoria felt that she had a friend who appreciated her for herself alone.
But, for all that, it was his masculinity she found so attractive. Brown not only gave her the physical protection she needed (time and again he saved her from danger, even death) but he gave her the masculine attention she so ardently craved. The real secret of Brown's success was that he treated Queen Victoria as a woman first, a queen second. He was not overwhelmed by her status; he was not afraid of her. He knew, by instinct rather than by calculation, that in that dumpy and intimidating figure there beat an intensely feminine heart. She was simply a woman who needed cherishing.
Whether or not Victoria allowed the relationship to develop to its obvious, sexual conclusion, one cannot know. It seems unlikely. Like Brown himself, the Queen was without guile. She never dissembled, she could never live a lie. There is no doubt that Victoria was a passionate woman, but her cravings were emotional rather than physical.
Had Skittles discussed the affair of the Queen and John Brown with the Prince of Wales? The two of them certainly discussed other intimate topics concerning members of the royal family. And did Bertie appreciate the complexity of his mother's feelings for John Brown? Possibly not. Bertie was not much given to analytical or metaphysical thought. But some indication of the depth of his detestation of John Brown – for whatever reason – came on his accession to the throne. One of King Edward VII's first commands was for the destruction of all those statues, busts, cairns and plaques which Queen Victoria had had erected to the memory of her gillie. For an exceptionally kind-hearted man, who seldom bore a grudge, this was a significant gesture.
No account of the Prince of Wales's association with Skittles can be complete without reference to one of his most famous practical jokes. Once, on an official tour of Coventry, the Prince was accompanied by Lord Harrington who had by now discarded Skittles for the more aristocratic but equally available charms of Louise, Duchess of Manchester. Unsuspected by Hartington, the Prince had instructed the mayor of Coventry to make a point of showing the royal party, and more particularly Lord Hartington, the town's bowling alley.
When, to the mayor's discomforture, his lordship seemed to be showing no interest in the bowling alley whatsoever, his worship decided to draw his attention to it.
'His Royal Highness asked especially for its inclusion,' explained the mayor in all innocence, 'in tribute to your lordship's love of skittles.'17
Presentation to Queen Victoria had unlocked the last, and most important, of the great London doors for Lillie Langtry: she could now be invited to balls and receptions at Buckingham Palace itself.
Although the Queen no longer attended state balls, having long since handed over the responsibility to the Prince and Princess of Wales, these Buckingham Palace dances remained the most important of the season. Their atmosphere was, not unnaturally, a little staid. Whereas, at other great houses, waltzes, gallops and even the occasional Highland schottische ('as an extra ebullition of hilarity,'18 says Lillie) made up the programme, stately formation dances were still the rule at the palace. Everything tended to be more formal, more restrained.
But none of this could detract from the brilliance of these occasions. The Prince of Wales never looked anything less than regal; Princess Alexandra, in her glittering fabrics, pearl choker and diamond tiara, never anything less than breath-taking. Uniform or court costume – the knee breeches and stockings that can occasionally be seen at court to this day – were de rigueur for the men. The women, 'lovely beings in diaphanous frou-frous of tulle and chiffon'19 as one lyrical guest put it, blazed with 'historic' family jewels. Most dazzling of all was the scene at the supper table: the footmen resplendent in scarlet coats and powdered wigs, the damask cloth laid with gold plate and silver cutlery, the tazzas laden with fruit and flowers from the royal gardens at Frogmore.
'These balls at Buckingham Palace,' enthused Lillie, '
completely realised my girlish dreams of fairyland. '20 She found it hard to believe that she had once felt nervous mounting the palace steps. She had, indeed, come a long, long way from St Saviour's vicarage, Jersey.
Her circle was becoming ever more elevated. She could hardly move, these days, for royal friends and acquaintances. One year at Cowes she was presented to Princess Alexandra's parents, King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Another of Alexandra's relations, Prince Wilhelm of Glucksburg, gave her a signed photograph of himself, 'with cap on head' as he scrawled under his signature. Yet another signed photograph came from King Oscar II of Sweden. At an intimate dinner party at Marlborough House she met the future German Emperor and Empress, at that stage still Crown Prince and Princess; the Princess being the Prince of Wales's elder sister, Princess Victoria.
Lillie also met Bertie's two sons, Prince Albert Victor – always known as Eddy – and Prince George. When, in September 1879, the fifteen-year-old Eddy and the fourteen-year-old George set off, as midshipmen, on board HMS Bacchante for a series of cruises, Lillie was able to give them each a small gift. Prince Eddy who was, to put it kindly, a little backward, but who was already developing an eye for a pretty face, was particularly pleased with the trinket Lillie had bought him at Bensons, the jewellers in Cowes. He immediately attached it to his watch-chain.
'I had to take off my grandmother's [Queen Victoria's] locket to make room for it,'21 he told the gratified Lillie. What Queen Victoria would have thought of this substitution is another matter.
One apparently uninvited royal caller was that notorious lecher, Queen Victoria's first cousin, Leopold II, King of the Belgians. The tall, spade-bearded King, who found his Belgian kingdom too provincial by half, was given to paying incognito visits to London and Paris. Here he could assuage that seemingly insatiable sexual appetite in ways undreamed-of in unsophisticated Brussels. Whether, on the theory that what was available to one royal lover would be as readily available to another, Leopold II imagined that Lillie Langtry would grant him her favours is uncertain, but he one day presented himself at her house at nine in the morning.