The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses

by Theo Aronson

  Yet there were limits, it seems, even to Edward VII's taste for titillation. He once walked out of a theatre during a skit about a licentious countess who entices a monk to take off his robes. It was not so much that he was shocked: he felt that he should not have been publicly exposed to such smut. And on another occasion he again left the theatre during a performance of lewd songs by a touring Viennese cabaret company. This time, the King had been more bored than outraged.

  When news of the King's walk-out reached England, the Bishop of Ripon felt moved to write him a fulsome letter of congratulation for having taken a public stand against obscenity. But the King was no hypocrite. When his secretary asked him how he should reply to the Bishop's letter, Edward VII said, 'Tell the Bishop the exact truth. I have no wish to pose as a protector of morals, especially abroad.'8

  Paris, so long the King's happy hunting ground, had by now been rendered somewhat less happy because of that increased emphasis on security by the French police. His clandestine meeting with one beauty in the Jardin des Plantes was completely spoiled when His Majesty recognised one of the plain-clothes policemen who had been assigned to keep an eye on him. The King was furious. It was absurd, he thundered, that 'in Paris of all places'9 he should be shadowed. But any subterfuge to evade the police – such as publicly ordering his car for four o'clock and then secretly sending for it at three – was in vain; the police never let him out of their sight.

  There were other ways, though, of enjoying feminine company without police surveillance. One evening, while staying incognito at the Hotel Meurice, the King returned to the hotel early to find his equerry, Arthur Paget, in the dining room with an attractive young woman. The King promptly joined them.

  'Dear boy,' he said to Paget over coffee, 'I have worked you much too hard today; go and get some rest.'

  'I am feeling fine, Sir,' replied the uncomprehending equerry.

  Over cognac the King tried again. 'You are looking very tired,' he said.

  'But I can assure you, Your Majesty . . .' persisted Paget.

  The King ordered a second cognac. 'I advise you to go up to bed immediately,'10 he commanded.

  This time Paget understood. Hastily draining his cognac he disappeared, leaving the King alone with his conquest.

  There are countless other anecdotes. Two more will suffice. As late as 1940 a faded Edwardian beauty, the half-French Mrs Hope Vere, would sometimes astonish her listeners with a casual remark like, 'One morning the King said to me, "Put on your dressing gown and come and watch the squadron passing." '11 And an officer on board the royal yacht once heard, as he walked past the porthole of the King's cabin, the monarch's guttural voice saying, 'Stop calling me Sir and put another cushion under your back.'12

  Hand-in-hand with these stories of Edward VII's insatiable sexual appetite goes the recently revealed theory that he was impotent during the last years of his life. In his secret diary, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt reports a conversation he had with the courtesan Skittles on the subject. Blunt had asked her if the King's death, in 1910, had had anything to do with sexual overindulgence. 'Oh no,' answered Skittles, 'the King has been impotent for the last fifteen years.'13 As an ex-lover and life-long friend of Edward VII (for years the King had written to her, paid her an annual allowance and, when she was ill, arranged for his doctor to attend her) she was probably in a position to know. In fact, the King regarded his letters to Skittles as so confidential that, when it was thought she might be dying of cancer in 1908, he sent his private secretary, Francis Knollys, to collect and destroy three hundred of them.

  Skittles's contention seems to be borne out by something which the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, once told the Earl of Crawford and Balcarres. The King's affair with Alice Keppel, believed the Archbishop, had always been platonic. His Majesty indicated this by 'always placing her beside the Archbishop at table: something he would never have done if she had, as generally supposed, been his mistress. It would have been an insult to the Church and utterly unlike him.' The subtlety of this approach, said the Archbishop, 'was very characteristic of the King'.14

  On the other hand, it might not have been nearly as subtle as His Grace imagined. It may be true that by the last years of the King's life his affair with Alice Keppel had become platonic (just as his affair with Daisy Warwick had been platonic in its last stages) but his high regard for Alice's intelligence and a determination not to slight her might have provided stronger reasons for placing her beside the Archbishop, just as he had placed her beside the Kaiser. Nor could all those well-documented and widely discussed stories of his amorousness have been pure invention; surely, for instance, he did not go to such extraordinary lengths to evade the police in order to enjoy nothing more exciting than a little polite conversation?

  Impotence, of course, can mean many things. If Edward VII was indeed impotent, one can only assume that his impotence was of the type in which erection, but not ejaculation, is possible.

  There was certainly no suggestion of impotence in earlier days. In later life Lillie Langtry once repeated an exchange between her royal lover and herself which leaves the question of his virility in no doubt.

  'I've spent enough on you to buy a battleship,' he complained to Lillie.

  'And you've spent enough in me to float one,'15 came her deft reply.

  But an apocryphal story going the rounds towards the end of Edward VII's life seems to bear out the rumours of his particular type of impotence. At Cowes the King and Mrs Keppel had retired to the cabin of the royal yacht for an after-luncheon siesta. Suddenly steps were heard on the companionway.

  'Pst, there's someone coming,' whispered the King.

  'Well,' answered Alice, 'it's certainly not Your Majesty.'16

  In October 1908 Lillie Langtry, or, as she was now styled, Lady de Bathe, turned fifty-five. Although still an exceptionally handsome and stylishly dressed woman, she was beginning to look matronly: her air was assertive, imperious, almost intimidating. Except for the occasional British or American tour, her stage career was virtually over. She might still deport herself like a famous actress but she now tended to divide her time between various hotels on the Riviera, which she loved, and Regal Lodge, her home near Newmarket. Racing remained her great passion. It remained, also, her one link with Edward VII. In fact, their shared interest in the turf was responsible for their last intimate meeting.

  On 26 May 1909, the King's horse Minoru won the Derby. Having won the Derby twice before, the King was overjoyed by this third victory. The crowds were hardly less ecstatic. To a spontaneous singing of 'God Save the King', followed by frantic shouts of 'Good old Teddy! Teddy boy! Hurrah! Hurrah!' a beaming Edward VII led in his horse. In some ways, it was the happiest day of his life.

  Yet just over a month later, Lillie, at Regal Lodge, received a telephone call from Richard Marsh, the King's trainer at nearby Egerton House. Could he come and see her at once? On arriving, he told her that Lord Marcus Beresford, who managed the King's stables, had received a curt note from His Majesty to say that he intended to shut up Egerton and move all his horses to Blackwells, a training establishment in Newmarket itself. And this in spite of the fact that Minoru had been trained at Egerton. Nothing that either Beresford or Marsh could say would make him change his mind. Marsh was in despair: the King's racing stables at Egerton were his whole life. Could Lillie speak to His Majesty about it?

  She demurred. Surely there were others who could argue more forcefully? 'They know nothing of racing,' answered Marsh, 'and have no influence in that direction.' She promised to do what she could.

  At the July meeting at Newmarket she met the King in the Jockey Club enclosure. Tactfully, she raised the subject of his proposed move. 'As I expected,' she says, 'he shut me up.' But he did suggest that he visit her at Regal Lodge the following day.

  Having inspected the various improvements that Lillie had made to the house since his visit the year before, they retired to her boudoir. Amongst its chintzy and lacy furnishings
and over a bottle of chilled hock and a dish of peaches, Lillie plucked up the courage to discuss the forbidden subject, 'as sportsman to sportsman'. He explained that the Egerton establishment had become too expensive; he would save hundreds a year by moving to Blackwells.

  Employing all the charm that had melted his heart over thirty years before, and the common sense that could impress him still, Lillie set out to persuade him not to move. He would lose, she argued, not only the advantages of those private gallops which had helped Minoru win the Derby but also his own privacy whenever he visited his stables. Against these considerations, the saving of a few hundred pounds would count for very little.

  In the end, she convinced him. He went home to tell Marsh that he could remain at Egerton.

  That afternoon on the course, Lillie met Beresford and Marsh. Both were beaming. 'You're a brick!'17 exclaimed Beresford.

  As always with Edward VII, a woman's word had carried most weight.

  With Daisy Warwick, too, there was to be one last meeting. She saw her old lover for the last time early in 1910. This was in the London home of her brother-in-law, the Duke of Sutherland. 'It was a sad interview,' she says, 'for I was shocked at the change in the King. '18 He complained of the effect of the influenza injections he had been given; they made him feel ill and depressed. Usually the two of them would discuss current events and the latest gossip, but on this occasion his mind seemed filled with thoughts of the past. He spoke about Paris in the days – over twenty years before – when he had first taken her there. 'All the glamour has gone,' he sighed. 'I don't mind if I never cross the Channel again.'19 Every second sentence, claims Daisy, seemed to start with the words 'Do you remember?'20

  The King was due to dine at the home of an American friend that evening but when the worried Daisy tried to dissuade him from going, he would not hear of it. 'How I wish I could give it up,' he said, 'but I do shrink from disappointing my host. '21 That, says Daisy, was very typical.

  One of the most persistent myths adding lustre to the saga of the British royal family is about Queen Alexandra sending for Mrs Keppel to bid the dying King Edward VII goodbye. Rising, claims one of Alexandra's biographers, 'to the full height of her generous nature',22 the Queen arranged – during one of her husband's conscious moments – for Mrs Keppel to go alone into the sickroom to see the King for the last time. What, generations of royal historians have asked, could have been nobler, more self-sacrificing than that?

  The truth is rather different. A refutation of this touching scene has now come from two independent sources: the private papers of Viscount Esher, who was in the palace the day the King died, and the unpublished secret diary of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who had the story from Skittles who, in turn, had it from the King's doctor, Sir Francis Laking.

  Before the King set off on his annual jaunt with Alice Keppel to Biarritz on 6 March 1910, he appears to have had an altercation with the Queen: 'It was about Mrs Keppel and the affront put on [the Queen] by his going openly with her . . .' 23 But as the King had no intention of denying himself the pleasure of Alice's company, the couple set off, separately as always, for Biarritz. Edward VII travelled – again, as usual – by way of Paris. Here, after sitting in an overheated theatre to see Edmond Rostand's new play Chantecler ('I never saw anything more stupid and childish,'24 he reported to his son, Prince George) he caught a chill. But never one to let his health stand in the way of his pleasures, the King continued on his social round and arrived in Biarritz on 9 March.

  Within a few days he had caught another chill and was confined to his rooms at the Hotel du Palais. 'The King's cold is so bad that he can't dine out,' wrote Alice to the Marquis de Soveral, who was also in Biarritz, 'but he wants us all to dine with him at 8.15 at the Palais, SO BE THERE.

  'I am quite worried entre nous and have sent for the nurse . . .'25

  But after a week, with Alice constantly in and out, he felt better and was able to enjoy his customary walks and drives. Queen Alexandra wrote suggesting that he leave 'that horrid Biarritz'26 – by which she undoubtedly meant that horrid Mrs Keppel – and join her on a Mediterranean cruise in the new royal yacht 'Alexandra'. For many reasons, not least because he had to be close to home to deal with a threatened political crisis concerning a conflict between the House of Commons and the House of Lords, the King refused. So Alexandra, accompanied by her unmarried and long-suffering daughter, Princess Victoria, set off without him. She made for Corfu. Here, as the guest of her brother, King George of the Hellenes, she was able to enjoy one of those unsophisticated family holidays in which she revelled.

  As the King was not, in fact, obliged to hurry home for political reasons, he remained in Biarritz for almost seven weeks. He seemed loath to leave. By his side, during all those picnics, race-meetings, drives and excursions (there was even a visit to Lourdes) was Alice Keppel. It was the longest continuous period that they had ever spent in each other's company: was it rendered even sweeter by the King's premonition that it might be the last? He was certainly in a strange mood on the day that he finally left Biarritz. Going out onto his balcony he stood gazing at the familiar view across the promenade and out to the shimmering sea. 'I shall be sorry to leave Biarritz,' he sighed, 'perhaps for good.'27

  He arrived back in England on 27 April. For the following nine days, in spite of having caught another chill, which turned to bronchitis, while inspecting some alterations at Sandringham, he insisted on carrying on as usual. Nothing could undermine that ingrained sense of duty. He granted audiences, he worked at his papers, he fulfilled various social obligations. On the evening of 2 May he dined out and played bridge with Alice Keppel and 'the Keyser girls'28 – Agnes Keyser and her sister. But he looked so ill – so grey-faced, so short of breath, so racked by coughing – that Alice insisted that he go home to bed at half-past ten.

  He would not leave the palace alive again. By now the doctors were so worried that they had sent for the Queen. She and Princess Victoria came hurrying back from Corfu and arrived home on the evening of 5 May. Only on seeing her shrunken husband did Alexandra appreciate how ill he was. That same night the country was told that the King was ill with bronchitis and that his condition was causing some anxiety.

  By the following morning – Friday 6 May 1910, the last day of his life – the King was much worse. Yet he insisted on being dressed in formal clothes and on receiving various people. Sir Ernest Cassel came at noon and the King, who realised by now that he was dying, discussed what the circumspect Cassel describes as 'other matters'29 – presumably the private financial arrangements to be made, not least for Alice, after the King's death.

  During the afternoon the King, still sitting fully dressed in an armchair, suffered a series of heart attacks. But he refused to go to bed. 'No, I shall not give in,' he protested. 'I shall go on: I shall work to the end.'30

  It is from this point on that the generally accepted accounts of Edward VII's last hours are at variance with what actually happened. Queen Alexandra did not, in a gesture of touching magnanimity, send for Alice Keppel to take leave of the King. According to the royal doctor, Sir Francis Laking, who was in constant attendance that day, Alice had been in and out of the palace until the Queen's arrival home and had since sent Alexandra the letter which the King had written to her at the time of his appendix operation in 1902: it was the letter in which he had said that 'if he were dying, he felt sure that those about him would allow her to come to him.'31 That, combined with the King's request that Alice be sent for, is what forced the reluctant Queen into agreeing that Mrs Keppel should be summoned.

  There now followed an extraordinary scene. On arrival, the distraught Alice curtseyed to the Queen and Princess Victoria and was then asked by the King to sit down beside him. Stroking her hand, he told her not to cry. Calling to Alexandra, who was standing at the window with her back to this little tableau, the King said, 'You must kiss her. You must kiss Alice.' Fighting down, one imagines, her distaste, the Queen presented her cheek to Mrs Keppel,
although she was afterwards to deny that she had done any such thing. Both women then sat down beside the King. His mind, says Laking, was by now beginning to wander. He began fumbling for his false teeth and seemed uneasy at not having them in. Suddenly, quite forgetting that he was in the company of the Queen, Princess Victoria and Mrs Keppel, he said, 'I want to p ——.'

  'What is that he said?' demanded the deaf Alexandra.

  'He is asking Ma'am for a pencil,' was Laking's adroit reply.

  Mercifully, at this point, the King slumped into another bout of unconsciousness. Getting up, Alexandra drew Laking aside and hissed, 'Get that woman away.'32

  This was easier said than done. By now Alice Keppel was hysterical. Nothing would induce her to leave the side of her dying lover. Only on being told, very firmly, that His Majesty had asked to be left alone with the Queen, did the demented Alice allow herself to be led out by Princess Victoria. Shrieking at the top of her voice for 'all the pages and footmen in the passage' to hear, Alice kept repeating, 'I never did any harm, there was nothing wrong between us. What is to become of me?' All Princess Victoria's efforts to soothe her were hopeless; in 'a wild fit of hysterics' Alice was carried into Frederick Ponsonby's room. She remained there for several hours.

  'Altogether,' wrote an indignant Lord Esher, 'it was a painful and rather theatrical exhibition, and ought never to have happened. '33 It must also have been an extremely macabre one.

  King Edward VII died just before midnight. He was in his sixty-ninth year.