by Theo Aronson
A typical dinner would consist of hot and cold soup, whitebait, trout, quail, pullet, roast mutton, cold ham, ortolans, asparagus, gâteaux, pâtisseries, a savoury and assorted ices. With this there would be sherry, madeira, two wines, champagne, port, more sherry and then brandy. No dish was too rich for the Prince of Wales. Quails packed with foie gras, pheasants stuffed with truffles, snipe crammed with forcemeat, and all of them garnished with truffles, mushrooms, prawns and oysters and served in thick, creamy sauces, he gobbled down with great relish. And if one still felt peckish after dinner, there were always plates of sandwiches or lobster and chicken salads available.
Not everyone approved of these lavish menus. For a perfectly adequate dinner, maintained the Earl of Dudley, one needed only 'a good soup, a small turbot, a neck of venison, ducklings with green peas, chicken with asparagus and an apricot tart.'52
Late at night, after the ladies had retired to bed, the Prince and his close friends would indulge in what were generally regarded as more masculine recreations: cards, bowls or billiards. Hazily, their pungent cigar smoke would drift across the famous billiard-room screen decorated with likenesses of such irreproachable contemporary figures as Lord Salisbury or Matthew Arnold. Only on closer inspection did one appreciate that these worthies were pictured, in extremely compromising attitudes, with naked women.
No sooner had the Tranby Croft scandal died down than the Beresford scandal flared up once more. Indeed, it might have been the fact that the Prince of Wales stood publicly disgraced by the Baccarat Case that encouraged Lord Charles Beresford to renew his attack on the Prince and Lady Brooke. This attack threatened to expose the Prince to even greater public humiliation.
Lady Charles Beresford, still smarting at having been cold-shouldered by the Marlborough House set, had been watching the triumph of her arch-enemy, Lady Brooke, with increasing fury. In letter after letter to her husband, aboard HMS Undaunted in the Mediterranean, she railed against the iniquities of the Prince and Daisy Brooke. And when the person she scathingly refers to as 'that "Lady" ' was publicly received by the Princess of Wales at Marlborough House in the summer of 1891, Lady Charles felt that she could stand no more of this humiliation. Rouged cheeks flushing even redder, she wrote yet again to her husband, demanding that he take action.
In what was an extremely intemperate letter even for that intemperate man, Lord Charles Beresford attacked the Prince for behaving like 'a blackguard and a coward'.53 The days of duelling might be over, he threatened, in what was the nub of his letter, 'but there is a more just way of getting right done than can duelling, and that is – publicity.'54
This inflammatory letter was sent by Beresford, not to the Prince, but to Lady Charles, with instructions that she was to send it on to the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. This Lady Charles lost no time in doing. One would have thought that the Prime Minister of Great Britain, with its vast empire covering over a quarter of the earth's surface and accommodating over a quarter of the world's population, would have had more pressing concerns than a squabble between two society ladies. But no. Lord Salisbury attended to the matter without delay.
He had good reason for doing so. For, in a letter of her own, Lady Charles made it clear that not only was her husband in a position to blacken the Prince of Wales's reputation, but her sister, Mrs Gerald Paget, had already written a pamphlet on the Prince's affair with Lady Brooke which, if published, would blacken his reputation still further. Several people, she continued darkly, 'wanted to make use of the story at the next General Election for purposes of their own'.55
What Lady Charles wanted was 'a public apology' from the Prince of Wales. She would not be fobbed off with some minor concession, such as an invitation to Marlborough House.
Sighing, one feels certain, a great sigh, Lord Salisbury wrote conciliatory letters to both Lord and Lady Charles Beresford. According to 'the social laws of our class',56 the Prime Minister pointed out to Beresford, it would not be seemly for a gentleman to disgrace his former mistress. Swayed by this apparently unanswerable argument, Lord Charles agreed to send the Prince a less violent letter.
And there the matter might have ended had not Lady Charles's sister, Mrs Gerald Paget, begun circulating her threatened pamphlet. Called Lady River, which everyone knew meant Lady Brooke, this typewritten expose of Daisy Brooke's various activities, not least her affair with the Prince of Wales, caused a sensation. A hostess had only to announce a public reading of the scurrilous pamphlet for her drawing room to be crowded to capacity.
News of this titillating pamphlet eventually reached the ears of the Princess of Wales, at that stage holidaying with her family in her native Denmark. She was horrified. Princess Alexandra never minded – or, at least, she could cope with – her husband's infidelity in private; what she hated was being exposed to public humiliation. This latest gossip, coming hot on the heels of the Tranby Croft scandal, was more than she could bear. Instead of returning home to celebrate her husband's fiftieth birthday on 9 November 1891, she went to visit her sister Dagmar, the Tsarina Marie Feodorovna of Russia, in the Crimea. Her gesture did not go unnoticed.
And now things got worse. In December, following an urgent telegram from his wife, Lord Charles Beresford arrived home. He promptly issued an ultimatum. Unless the Prince of Wales apologised publicly to his wife and unless Lady Brooke withdrew from society for a year, Beresford would have no alternative but to publish the full details about the Prince's private life.
There followed four frantic days in which Lord Salisbury negotiated not only with the Prince and the Beresfords but with Queen Victoria herself. On the last day, with Beresford on the point of calling a press conference at which he planned both to expose the Prince and announce his own resignation from the navy, a settlement was reached. The Prince and Beresford exchanged conciliatory letters (drafted by Lord Salisbury) and Lady Brooke agreed to a temporary withdrawal from court. By the end of the year 1891, the crisis was over.
Her withdrawal from court did not, though, mark the end of Daisy Brooke's troubles. Lord Brooke, no less than Princess Alexandra, felt that this time things had gone too far. There were limits, it seems, to even his celebrated tolerance. The Beresford affair led to a major crisis in Daisy's marriage, with divorce being widely rumoured. It was said that Lord Brooke planned to name no less than fourteen corespondents, including the Prince of Wales, Lord Charles Beresford, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Randolph Churchill.
In the end, though, the action was not brought. The social stigma of a divorce, with the intimate details being published for all to see, was considered much worse than an illicit love affair, no matter how scandalous. The gallant Lord Brooke could not put his wife – nor his family's good name – through that.
The one thing that had not been affected by the sensational, complicated and long-running Beresford affair was the Prince's love for Daisy. He was as infatuated by her as ever. So powerful, in fact, was her hold on his affections that he – the most forgiving of men – would not hear of a reconciliation with Beresford. Not until five years after the quarrel – in June 1897, when the Prince's horse Persimmon won the Ascot Gold Cup – would the Prince speak to him. And his first thought, after doing so, was to write to Daisy to apologise for what he had done. His letter to her is worth reproducing in full.
'My own lovely little Daisy, I lose no time in writing to tell you of an episode which occurred today after you left – which was unpleasant and unexpected – but I hope, my darling, you will agree that I could not have acted otherwise, as my loyalty to you is, I hope, a thing that you will never think of doubting!
'Shortly before leaving Ascot today, Marcus B. [Lord Marcus Beresford, Lord Charles's brother and manager of the Prince's stud] came to me, and said he had a great favour to ask me, so I answered at once I should be delighted to grant it. He then became much affected, and actually cried, and said might he bring his brother C. up to offer his congratulations on Persimmon's success. I had no alternative but to say yes
. He came up with his hat off, and would not put it on till I told him, and shook hands. We talked a little about racing, then I turned and we parted. What struck me more than anything, was his humble attitude and manner! My loved one, I hope you won't be annoyed at what has happened, and exonerate me from blame, as that is all I care about. . .
'Goodnight and God keep you, my own adored little Daisy Wife.'57
8
Independent Women
IN THE DECADE since her liaison with the Prince of Wales had ended, Lillie Langtry had become an even greater celebrity. If her relationship with the Prince had helped launch her on her acting career, it was her own colourful behaviour that ensured its continuing success. Lillie Langtry might not have been much of an actress but she certainly knew how to fill a theatre.
Her contract with the Bancrofts had not lasted long. Once she had come to appreciate that it was her notoriety that was attracting such enthusiastic audiences, she decided to form a company of her own. A successful tour of ten British cities encouraged her to accept an offer to take her company to the United States. The boast – by Henry Abbey, the sharp-witted American impresario who had made the offer – that he never haggled about terms, proved to be an idle one as far as Lillie was concerned. She haggled until he agreed to give her the same terms as he had given Sarah Bernhardt the year before. Abbey knew that she would be worth it. The denunciation of Sarah Bernhardt from almost every pulpit in the United States had filled Abbey's pockets most gratifyingly; there was no reason, he reckoned, why the appearance of the Prince of Wales's mistress should not prove equally rewarding.
And so it did. The crowds that flocked, not only to see Lillie's arrival in New York on 23 October 1882, but to theatres throughout the country, came to satisfy their prurient curiosity, not to pay homage to great art. Lillie might parry journalists' questions about her relationship with the Prince of Wales but this never stopped newspaper cartoonists from depicting the two of them in suggestive situations. A particularly telling cartoon showed Lillie downstage, with the footlights throwing her shadow, shaped like the Prince of Wales, on the curtain behind. 'The shadow that draws the American dollars' ran the caption.
But the American public had no need to rely on reminders of her past romance for their thrills. Before many weeks had passed, Lillie was supplying New Yorkers with fresh grounds for gossip. Never one to turn her back on a wealthy admirer, the twenty-nine-year-old Lillie took up with a dark, good-looking, twenty-two-year-old multimillionaire named Freddie Gebhard. For the next few years Gebhard was her constant companion. They were seen everywhere together. 'He became famous in two continents,' Lillie afterwards announced, 'because I loved him.'1 The boot, in fact, was on the other foot: it was Freddie Gebhard who was in love with Lillie. There was apparently nothing that the besotted young man would not do for her. He bought her expensive jewellery, he paid for her sumptuous clothes, he set her up in a luxurious house in West Twenty-third Street and, most generously of all, he provided the means of travel with which she was to become most closely associated in the minds of her vast public: the $250,000 railway carriage known as 'Lalee' which carried her across the States on her many tours.
The word 'Lalee', Lillie assures us, means 'flirt' in some unspecified Indian dialect (one would have described Lillie herself as something more than a flirt) and 'Lalee' was certainly the last word in luxurious travel. The carriage was seventy-five feet long, with a white roof, a 'gorgeously' blue exterior decorated with wreaths of golden lilies, polished teak platforms, a salon with walls covered in green and cream brocade, a bedroom whose eau de nil walls, ceiling and furniture were padded to resist the shock of a collision, a bathroom with silver fittings and rose-coloured curtains, two guest compartments, a maid's compartment, a pantry and a kitchen. Underneath were ice chests, big enough to accommodate a whole stag. With Lillie travelled her English butler and several maids.
In this palace-on-wheels (the rest of her company were accommodated in much humbler carriages) Lillie travelled the length and breadth of the country, bringing to many far-flung communities if not exactly culture, then certainly excitement. During the six years that she spent touring the United States, Lillie played everything from Shakespeare (one tactful critic described her Lady Macbeth as 'astounding') to contemporary drawing room comedies. Mr Bancroft had long ago told her, Lillie would say airily, to ignore all reviews: 'it is always best to await the criticism which is supplied by the box-office receipts.'2
Whatever her limitations, Lillie always gave value for money. If the town had no theatre, she would act on some rigged-up stage. She played to audiences of gold miners and cowboys just as happily as she did to overdressed socialites in New York, Chicago or San Francisco. In her elegant clothes and with her increasingly regal manner, she processed through the country like a princess. Babies were named after her, fans begged for autographs, her Worth hats and dresses were assiduously copied, strangers proposed marriage, the self-styled 'Judge' Roy Bean even changed the name of his Texan town from 'Vinagaroon' to 'Langtry'. Her subsequent visit to Langtry was conducted with all the formality and split-second timing of a royal occasion. When Freddie Gebhard bought her a 7500 acre ranch in California, she toyed with the idea of calling it Sandringham.
With the rest of her company, Lillie's manner was forbiddingly imperious. Although she paid them as little as she could get away with, she expected unquestioned loyalty and dedication. Deception appalled her. 'She would be hurt,' said one manager of her company, 'for she had far more heart than she was given credit for, but she could not and would not endure stupidity or incompetence.'3 In short, Lillie Langtry had developed into a thorough-going professional: hard-headed, businesslike and with a strong sense of showmanship.
In between these mammoth tours of the United States, Lillie would return home. Backed by the faithful young Gebhard, she would lease a London theatre for a season. And whatever the play, she could always be sure that if the Prince of Wales were in town, he would be in the royal box on opening night. If he were away, he would send her a message. 'I am glad to hear that you are in harness again and most sincerely wish you all possible success in your tour though I fear you have hard work before you,' he once wrote from Stockholm where he was the guest of King Oscar II of Sweden. As the Swedish King had also been one of Lillie's many admirers, the Prince was able to add that 'he particularly begged to be remembered to you and wish you success in your profession.'
A few months later, on 19 January 1886, when Lillie was rehearsing Enemies at the Prince's Theatre, Bertie wrote asking her to reserve a box for him for the opening night. He would have liked to have seen a dress rehearsal as he might have been able to give her a few hints, he wrote. Would the rehearsal be on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday? He was anxious to know because of his evening engagements; or would it be in the daytime?
Having seen the play (and having, in the meantime, arranged a time and date for their next meeting) the Prince writes 'just two lines to tell you again what a success I thought your piece was. You have certainly acted better tonight than I have ever seen you.'4
These visits home also allowed Lillie to see her daughter, Jeanne-Marie, who was still living, in the care of Lillie's mother, in the Red House, Bournemouth. But after one of her visits, Lillie took little Jeanne-Marie back to the States with her. For the following few years the child, attended by a governess and a maid, lived in a bewildering variety of places: aboard the luxurious 'Lalee' as it went rocketing across the States, in Lillie's even more luxurious New York home, in the state rooms of ocean liners, in flower-filled hotel rooms. To her, Lillie was still ma tante. The girl's father, so Lillie would sigh, had been her brother Maurice, so tragically mauled to death by a tiger in India. Who then, Jeanne-Marie must surely have wondered, was Freddie – the young man with the curling black moustache who paid all the bills?
The one person whom Jeanne-Marie knew nothing about was Edward Langtry. For years Lillie had been trying her best to divorce him, but Edward would not
hear of it. Perhaps he was still hoping for a reconciliation with his now rich and famous wife. Not even the persuasive skills of the celebrated solicitor, George Lewis, could get Edward Langtry to change his mind. In the end, Lillie took matters into her own hands. In 1887 she applied for and was granted American citizenship ('without losing my love for the Union Jack, I coupled with it a great affection for the Stars and Stripes,'5 she explains) and this eventually enabled her to have her marriage dissolved.
Yet there must have been many who guessed Lillie's secret; who knew that Jeanne-Marie was her child by Prince Louis of Battenberg. Was Oscar Wilde one of them? She and Wilde had remained in touch through all her vicissitudes; indeed, he had been in the States, on a lecture tour, when Lillie first arrived in New York. Armed with a great bunch of lilies, he had greeted her on the quayside. When a reporter asked him if it were true that he had 'discovered' Mrs Langtry, Wilde's reply was gratifyingly in character. 'I would rather have discovered Mrs Langtry,' he drawled, 'than have discovered America.'6
And Lillie was not above using the occasional Wildism herself. Handing back the proofs to an American photographer who had obtained exclusive rights to take pictures of her, she said, 'You have made me pretty – I am beautiful.'
'As for the love-smitten Oscar Wilde,' wrote one wide-eyed Chicago reporter, 'he is head over heels in love with the much-discussed grass widow, Mrs Langtry.'7