The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses

by Theo Aronson

  To set her mind at rest, Ponsonby went to seek out the manager of the place. On his way he spotted M. Lépine – head of the French police and responsible for the monarch's safety – calmly eating his own déjeuner. To Lépine Ponsonby repeated Mrs Keppel's fears about the unguarded gate and the diners close to His Majesty's table. Lépine was able to reassure him. The gardener working beside the open gate was a policeman. The diners on either side of the royal table were policemen with their wives. The diner with the particularly villainous face was 'one of the best and most trusted detectives in the force'.17

  Returning to the table, Ponsonby whispered to Alice that all was well and, after luncheon, was able to tell her what Lépine had said. She was both highly amused and deeply impressed.

  Alice Keppel's position as royal favourite brought her into contact with many notable people who might not, in other circumstances, have befriended her. One of these was the ex-Empress Eugenie. By now in her eighties, the Empress remained an alert and forceful personality. Once, while Alice was staying at a hotel in Fontainebleau, her maid burst into her room.

  'Madam! Madam!' cried the girl. 'The wife of Napoleon the First is waiting to see you downstairs; she says she has only just discovered you were staying here.'

  The reason why the wife of the late Napoleon the Third had called on Mrs Keppel was to suggest that they join the guided tour of the nearby palace. Alice was intrigued. Was it insensitivity, or curiosity to hear the republican version of Napoleonic history, that was prompting the Empress to revisit the palace where she had once held court?

  Unrecognised, the black-clad Empress, with Alice Keppel in tow, joined the group as they followed the guide through the sumptuous rooms. In the salon in which Napoleon I had signed his Act of Abdication, the guide held up a pen and declared, 'And this is the pen he used.'

  'Pardon, Monsieur, you make a mistake,' interrupted the Empress. Stepping forward, she crossed to the desk, pressed an invisible spring and from a secret drawer which leapt out, produced a pen.

  'This, I happen to know, is the pen His Imperial Majesty used,'18 she announced to the astonished tourists.

  If one reason for Eugenie's friendship with Alice Keppel was that the old Empress delighted in the company of lively and good-looking young women, another was that she was devoted to Edward VII. His championship of the French imperial family, through good times and bad, had never wavered; for this the Empress was deeply grateful. Eugenie was always made welcome at Edward VII's court and if the two of them happened to be in Paris at the same time, the King never failed to call on the Empress.

  There were times, though, when their shared passion for travelling incognito had its drawbacks. One day, on calling at the Empress's hotel, the King asked the clerk at the desk if the Comtesse de Pierrefonds would receive the Duke of Lancaster.

  'Wait a moment,' answered the unsuspecting clerk, 'I am sorting the mail.'

  After a minute or two, the King could contain himself no longer. With a voice like thunder he demanded, 'Sa Majesté l'Impératrice Eugenie peut-elle recevoir le Roi d'Angleterre?'19

  He was shown up immediately.

  After a week together in Paris, the King and Mrs Keppel would separate: she to return to her husband in London, he to join Queen Alexandra on a spring cruise in the Mediterranean. In the course of these annual cruises, Edward VII would meet his fellow sovereigns: sometimes Alfonso XIII of Spain, sometimes Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, invariably Queen Alexandra's brother, George I of the Hellenes.

  It was because of these long periods abroad (he never spent less than a quarter of each year on the Continent or cruising its waters) that Edward VII came to be so closely identified with Europe. With his life-long interest in the politics, diplomacy and richly varied way of life of the Continent, the King had been able to establish a great many social and political contacts and to accumulate a considerable knowledge of European affairs. This he could now put to good use.

  Always interested in foreign affairs – which, at the time, meant European affairs – Edward VII was passionately concerned with the momentous shift that was taking place in British foreign policy: the abandonment of its position of 'splendid isolation' and its commitment to Europe. He not only presided over, but actively encouraged, his country's new series of alliances: the entente cordiale with France, the agreement with Spain, the convention with Russia. Indeed, the Triple Entente, by which Britain became allied to France and Russia, was generally regarded as 'the triumph of King Edward's policy'.20

  Although the King was in no position to initiate any of these policies, his ministers found him invaluable when it came to making the first advance or creating a sympathetic atmosphere. By a series of magnificent state visits – and no monarch enjoyed a full-blown state visit more than Edward VII – he was able to prepare public opinion for some proposed agreement or set the seal on some convention already signed.

  Who, as they watched the lavishly uniformed, self-confident King of England passing in spectacular cavalcade through the streets of Paris or Berlin or Rome, could doubt that he was a figure of considerable international importance? And who, as they saw him in earnest conversation with some foreign statesman or diplomat beneath the pleached linden trees of some spa, could deny that he was discussing a point of great political significance?

  And despite the fact that King Edward VII was never as powerful, influential or even astute a figure as was popularly imagined, he came to be regarded as a supreme royal diplomat – 'The Peacemaker of Europe' or, even more fulsomely, as 'The Arbiter of Europe's Destiny'.

  To what extent was Alice Keppel fulfilling the political role to which Daisy Warwick had once aspired? Alice's social and sexual contributions to Edward VII's well-being were only too apparent; it was her political usefulness that was more difficult to assess. Indeed, with the political position of a British constitutional monarch being a somewhat nebulous one, any political influence on such a monarch must of necessity be more nebulous still.

  That great analyst of the British constitution, Walter Bagehot, once defined the monarch's three rights as the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn. The extent to which these rights are exercised depends very much on the individual monarch. Some monarchs are more assertive than others, some more politically aware, some more experienced. A sovereign such as Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned for over thirty-five years, not unnaturally develops into a person of undeniable influence and authority.

  At his first Privy Council, Edward VII had announced that he was 'fully determined to be a constitutional sovereign in the strict sense of the word'.21 He was equally determined, though, not to be anything less. The King was very conscious of his rights: any minister who ignored these soon earned the rough edge of the monarch's tongue. He insisted on being kept fully informed on every matter, great or small. He was not going to be 'a mere signing machine'.22

  Although the King applied himself, with all the conscientiousness of his nature, to his daily work on the 'boxes', it was in the course of his regular meetings, usually with prime ministers but sometimes with other political figures, that he was able to bring his influence to bear. He in turn was influenced and advised by a number of people, principally by his private secretary, Francis Knollys, but also by a coterie of close associates which included, of course, Alice Keppel.

  In politics Alice Keppel, in common with a surprising number of others close to the King, was a Liberal. 'To be a Liberal in high society is rare,' declared Margot Asquith, whose husband became Liberal prime minister in 1908, 'indeed I often wonder in what society they are to be found; I do not meet them among golfers, soldiers, sailors or servants; nor have I seen much Liberalism in the Church, the Court or the City; but Alice Keppel was born in Scotland and has remained a true Liberal.'23

  Alice's Liberalism was not merely tribal. It could manifest itself in very practical ways. On one occasion, for instance, she taught her Portman Square neighbour, the wealthy Lord Alington, a salutory p
olitical lesson. Lord Alington, who greatly admired her and delighted in being seen in her company, used often to take Alice driving – to Hampton Court or Richmond Park in the summer and to picture galleries or exhibitions in the winter. One day, on asking her where she would like to go, she suggested Hoxton. Hoxton, in East London, was then a notorious slum: a slum in which Lord Alington, who had never seen it, owned a great deal of property.

  The drive was anything but entertaining. As Lord Alington's smart carriage passed along the dingy streets, it was jeered, or stared sullenly at, by wretchedly-dressed children and dull-eyed men and women. Through the occasionally open doorways were glimpses of depressing squalor. 'Many of the window-frames had lost their glass, and the holes had been stuffed up with old rags or newspaper or just left empty,' reported Alice. 'The afternoon was cold and rather foggy, and few of the chimneys boasted smoke.'

  It was an extremely chastened and embarrassed Lord Alington who finally dropped Alice at her home three hours later. 'I do think it was charming of you to let me see Hoxton as it is now,' said Alice meaningfully. 'Next time I go there I shan't recognise it.'24

  The value of such gestures is difficult to assess; with a man like Lord Alington, who knew that Mrs Keppel had the ear of the King, they could have been considerable.

  A lesser woman than Alice might well have used her unique position as the King's confidante to press her own views or to make political mischief. But being both astute and good-natured, such influence as she was able to exert on her royal lover was always beneficial. The remarkable tribute paid to her by Charles Hardinge, permanent head of the Foreign Office and later, as Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, Viceroy of India, is worth quoting in full.

  'I take this opportunity to allude to a delicate matter upon which I am in a position to speak with authority,' he wrote in a private memorandum soon after King Edward VII's death. 'Everybody knew of the friendship that existed between King Edward and Mrs George Keppel, which was intelligible in view of the lady's good looks, vivacity and cleverness. I used to see a great deal of Mrs Keppel at that time, and I was aware that she had knowledge of what was going on in the political world.

  'I would like here to pay a tribute to her wonderful discretion, and to the excellent influence which she always exercised upon the King. She never utilised her knowledge to her own advantage, or to that of her friends; and I never heard her repeat an unkind word of anybody. There were one or two occasions when the King was in disagreement with the Foreign Office, and I was able, through her, to advise the King with a view to the policy of the Government being accepted. She was very loyal to the King, and patriotic at the same time.

  'It would have been difficult to find any other lady who would have filled the part of friend to King Edward with the same loyalty and discretion.'25

  Herbert Asquith, when he became Liberal Prime Minister in 1908 and had to take the unprecedented step of travelling to Biarritz in order to kiss hands in the Hotel du Palais (a step for which the King was widely criticised: the monarch should have received his new Prime Minister in Britain) was similarly grateful to Alice Keppel. In a letter written to her after his return from Biarritz, he thanked her for 'your kind words and wise counsels, which I shall treasure and (I hope) profit by'.26 One may be sure that, if nothing else, Alice would have advised Asquith on how to handle the King.

  Often, Edward VII would ask Alice Keppel to do a little diplomatic scouting on his behalf; or she might decide to do some reconnoitring of her own. In 1907 Kaiser Wilhelm II, having paid a state visit to King Edward VII, prolonged his stay with a visit to Highcliffe Castle on the Isle of Wight. Count Mensdorff, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, was staying at nearby Crichel Down as a member of another large house party which included, as he puts it, 'La favorita Keppel with her "lady-in-waiting", Lady Sarah Wilson [Lord Randolph Churchill's sister]'. One evening the Kaiser came over to dinner.

  In spite of Wilhelm II's imperviousness to feminine charm in general and his aversion to Edward VII's mistresses in particular, and with a complete disregard for all rules of precedence, the Kaiser found that Mrs Keppel had been placed beside him at table. Only at the express wish of Edward VII would this extraordinary placement ever have been considered. 'The Favorita was seated next to the Kaiser,' decided Mensdorff, 'so she might have the opportunity of talking to him. I would love to know what sort of report she sent back to Sandringham!'27

  On another occasion Mensdorff, having discussed the latest Balkan crisis with Alice Keppel at yet another house party, was disconcerted to find himself taken to task a couple of days later by Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, for what Grey considered to be Mensdorff's prejudiced opinion on the subject. Quite clearly, Alice had lost no time in reporting the conversation to the King; or the King in reporting it to Grey.

  Yet Alice Keppel always denied that she was au fait with confidential political matters. She realised that this would be constitutionally improper. Years later, when Margot Asquith published her book 'More Memories', she was roundly attacked by Alice for having given the impression that Alice had been the late Edward VII's political confidante. She had never been told a cabinet secret in her life, declared Alice hotly, and Margot's assertions had 'got her into endless trouble with George V'.28

  13

  'Kingy was such a Wonderful Man'

  EDWARD VII might have been devoted to Alice Keppel but he was certainly not faithful to her. The habits of a lifetime's philandering could not be changed overnight. The King was too old and licentious a dog to learn any new tricks of fidelity now; he continued to take his pleasures wherever and whenever he found them. And Alice, as a woman of the world who was fond of, but not in love with, the ageing libertine, let him have as much rein as he wanted.

  In his sixties, the King's interest in the opposite sex was undimmed. 'Night after night as I sat in my stall at the opera and saw him coming into the omnibus box and taking up his opera glasses to survey the glittering women in the first and ground tier boxes,' remembers Robert Hitchens, 'I saw a man who looked, I thought, extremely genial and satisfied with his position in the scheme of the world.'1

  As well he might be. In the majority of cases the King needed only to find out the name of some beauty who had caught his eye for a subsequent meeting to be arranged. There was even an occasion when the beauty who had captured the royal interest was not of the opposite sex. Prince Felix Youssoupoff who, a decade later, was to become famous as the murderer of Rasputin, was generally regarded as one of the most beautiful young men of his day. One evening at the Théâtre des Capucines in Paris, as he sat in the stalls dressed as a woman (he always, he assures us, dressed as a schoolboy by day and as 'an elegant woman' by night) Youssoupoff noticed an elderly gentleman in a box eyeing him persistently. When the lights went up for the interval, he saw that his admirer was King Edward VII. Yousoupoffs brother Nicholas, who had accompanied him to the theatre, came back from smoking a cigarette in the foyer with the news that he had been approached by one of the King's equerries: His Majesty wished to know the name of the lovely young woman he was escorting.

  'I must confess,' says Youssoupoff, 'that this conquest amused me enormously and greatly flattered my vanity.'2

  If, as a monarch, Edward VII had to behave with rather more circumspection at home than he had as Prince of Wales, no such considerations inhibited him when he travelled abroad. It was true that on his various cruises Queen Alexandra was able to keep an eye on him, and at Biarritz Alice Keppel could do the same; but during his late summer sojourn at Marienbad and during his frequent stays in Paris, the King flung himself into amorous adventures with as much gusto as ever. 'I got so mixed up with the King's incessant gaieties, for which his energy and appetite are alike insatiable,' complained Sir Henry Campbell Bannerman, the Liberal Prime Minister, from Marienbad, 'that it was no rest or holiday for me. Thus when at last he was gone . . . my Dr ordered me to bed and absolute rest for forty-eight hours.'3

  For the King's equerries, it
was worse. They never knew who His Majesty was going to take up next. Amongst what one observer calls the 'semi-déclassé ladies'4 were an overblown Parisian adventuress married to a bogus Baron years younger than herself; Mrs Dale Lace with 'short skirts and a murky past';5 Mrs Hall Walker who would prepare her hotel room for the King's afternoon visits by filling the vases with flowers, spraying the air with scent and, most important of all, drawing the curtains. Then there was a Mrs X whom he would either visit in her Marienbad home or else drive out to the Café Nimrod, tucked away in the woods. For this particular excursion he would dispense even with an equerry; it would be left to a single Austrian policeman to plod among the dripping trees while the King of England took his pleasure within.

  The American actress Maxine Elliot, realising that it would be almost impossible to meet the King socially in London, decided to go to Marienbad instead. Exquisitely dressed, she sat decorously one morning reading her book on a bench in the Kreuzbrunnen. As the King and his entourage passed by on their way to the Kurhaus for their first glass of mineral water, she glanced up. His Majesty glanced back. The party strolled on but within a few minutes one of the King's companions returned with a message for Miss Elliot. His Majesty would be delighted with her presence at a dinner party that evening; a formal invitation would, of course, be delivered to her hotel later. Miss Elliot was only too delighted to accept.

  Their association blossomed and after a further visit to Marienbad the following year, Miss Elliot felt so confident of the King's interest that she bought herself a house outside London. At considerable expense she prepared a suite of rooms above her own which she would always refer to as 'the King's suite'.6

  Even more worrying for Edward VII's staff was the sort of public escapade that could so easily get into the newspapers. He once asked for the English dancer, Maud Allen, to perform at a dinner party to be given in his honour. As Miss Allen usually appeared wearing only 'two oyster shells and a five-franc piece'7 his entourage was understandably apprehensive. But as in those days journalists could be trusted to keep royal secrets if asked to do so, the newspaper corps were sworn to secrecy and the performance went ahead. His Majesty, by all accounts, was enraptured by Miss Allen's only too obvious talents, and no word of the entertainment found its way into the press.