by John Pearson
As an action it was kindly meant, but the ‘soiled rose’, as Nellie was called, was indiscreet. She afterwards told someone what had happened, who told Lord Torrington, one of the Queen’s gentlemen-in-waiting, who felt it his duty to tell Prince Albert - who was deeply disappointed. ‘This has caused me the greatest pain I have yet felt in this life,’ wrote Prince Albert to his son. ‘You must not, you dare not be lost. The consequences to this country would be too terrible.’
In his anxiety to save his son from moral destitution, Prince Albert took the royal train to Cambridge, where Albert Edward was finishing his studies at the university. The Prince was contrite, and his father, overwrought and overtired, returned to Windsor and took to his bed with what would prove to be a fatal fever. Rarely absent from his bedside, the Queen was forced to hear her husband’s delirious ramblings on the sinful nature of their son.
Prince Albert died some twelve days later from typhoid fever, which he had actually contracted from the royal drains at Windsor before his trip to Cambridge. But the Queen remained convinced that their son’s wickedness had helped to kill him. It was a fearful thing to happen and, in her grief, she was desperate for somebody to keep the royal heir in order.
Who better than Lord Spencer? The Queen trusted him implicitly. Prince Albert had respected him; so, it seemed, did their son. As Groom of the Stole to the Prince of Wales, Lord Spencer could fill the gap left by the sorely missed Prince Albert.
To start with, all went well. Spencer was barely six years older than the Prince, and Albert Edward warmed to the idea of inheriting his father’s senior courtier. The Queen was also reassured and, if nothing else, Lord Spencer’s presence made the Prince a little more discreet about his indiscretions. But Victoria believed that the only real answer for the oversexed Prince lay in marriage. Her firm insistence that her children should marry only into European royalty made this difficult, but in 1863, careful negotiations resulted in one of the dynastic marriages of the century, between the Prince of Wales and the beautiful Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark.
Lord Spencer, who had been suffering from a patch on the lung, and who may have guessed exactly what would happen, tendered his resignation, but the Queen begged him to continue. She also offered him the Garter. He agreed.
Marriage seemed to have an unsettling effect on the Prince of Wales. Instead of calming down and enjoying wedlock with his loving wife, he became obsessively unfaithful and keener than ever on fast society. By marrying, he had freed himself from the royal apron strings, and soon embarked upon the social round which rapidly became his greatest interest. He was indefatigable in pursuing pleasure, in the form of food, sex, bridge and smart society.
Brought up in a European court with a womanising father, Princess Alexandra knew the rules and uncomplainingly assumed her role of mother and the future queen of England. She was beautiful and good and was honoured as the mother of the Prince’s children. The Prince respected her and insisted that everybody did the same. And there his commitment to his marriage ended. For Albert Edward also knew the royal rules, which were quite different for princes than for lesser mortals. Traditionally there had always been a double standard which prescribed that while the royal wife stayed faithful, the husband was allowed his freedom, provided scandal was avoided. This was an appealing doctrine for the Prince, and the skill with which he made it work made him something of a role model for the livelier male members of the House of Windsor, even to the present day. But as a royal adulterer Albert Edward had advantages over his royal successors. Television had not been invented; there was no prying mass media; and his friends and the members of the court were terribly discreet.
Soon, the Prince was being called the ‘Bismarck of Society’, because his power was as absolute as the German Iron Chancellor’s, and the more Society circled round him, the less could dignified Lord Spencer hope to influence his behaviour. As a Whig grandee, Spencer was not a narrow-minded man. He was a man of decency and breeding, married to a wife he loved, and his ownership of Spencer House made him a pillar of very grand and highly respectable London society, which had little contact with the so-called ‘Fast Set’ round the Prince. When the two worlds met there could be trouble, as was shown early in 1866 when something relatively trivial changed the whole pattern of Lord Spencer’s life for ever.
An inelegant but fearless horseman, the Prince of Wales had often hunted with the Pytchley and when the Earl arranged a hunt dinner at Althorp, he inevitably invited the Prince as guest of honour. But among his chosen friends and followers, the Prince was becoming increasingly addicted to what was known as ‘fun’. Fun was the pastime of the Victorian idle rich, and involved practical jokes like apple pie beds and sewn-up jackets. But for the Prince of Wales, fun came with a difference. Royal fun was generally at the expense of others - never of himself - as the fate of the unfortunate Christopher Sykes demonstrated.
Sykes, the owner of a Mayfair mansion and a stately home in Yorkshire, was among the most slavishly devoted of the Prince’s followers. One evening over dinner at the Marlborough Club, the Prince, having nothing better to do, poured a glass of brandy over Sykes’s head and watched it trickle slowly down his collar.
How to respond to such an act? Ignore it? Leave the table? Sykes, the perfect courtier, had what appeared to be the perfect answer. Unshaken and apparently unstirred, he simply murmured, ‘As Your Royal Highness pleases.’
Everybody laughed; and the Prince, who loved to be the source of laughter, was glad to have invented a new party game. From now on no princely dinner party was complete without the presence of the loyal Sykes as victim for the Prince who, to loud applause, would cheerfully assail the wretched man with soda water, fine Champagne, or hock and seltzer. Finally, of course, the joke wore thin, the Prince grew bored and Sykes, no longer a source of amusement, was abandoned by his friends, sinking into relative oblivion.
Lord Spencer’s dignity and rank protected him from anything remotely similar, but on the evening of the Pytchley dinner, the Prince was tempted. He knew how deeply his Groom of the Stole disliked tobacco, but since extremely large cigars were something of a symbol of the Prince’s own priapic nature, what fun to make Lord Spencer smoke one. After dinner, with everybody watching, the Prince took out his great cigar case monogrammed in gold, and offered Lord Spencer a jumbo-sized Havana.
The Prince knew - and everybody present knew - that the offer was tantamount to a command. And with unshaken dignity, Lord Spencer responded as a courtier should. He accepted the cigar, cut it, ignited it and smoked it to the bitter end in silence. It was a stylish performance, and nothing more was said. But a few days later Lord Spencer resigned as Groom of the Stole to the Prince of Wales. This time his resignation was accepted.
Resignation left Lord Spencer unemployed, but not for long. There were in fact two things Lord Balfour had omitted from his list of Lord Spencer’s virtues – one was courage, the other was a remarkable capacity for sheer hard work. Once engaged he could be enormously industrious. Like most Spencers, he lacked any claims to eloquence and so had little chance to make his parliamentary name through oratory. But when appointed chairman of the parliamentary Cattle Plague Committee, he worked at the subject with such diligence that he caught the attention of the Liberal leader, Mr Gladstone
In 1868, when the Liberals returned to power, Mr Gladstone had difficulty finding anyone suitable for the post of Irish Viceroy. As the Queen’s representative in Ireland, the Viceroy had to be an aristocrat with sufficient private wealth to cover his expenses, which were estimated at twice the official salary of £20,000 a year. At the same time, the Viceroy had to be in political sympathy with the government’s declared intention of ‘pacifying Ireland’.
When Lord Hartington and Lord Halifax both refused the honour, Mr Gladstone turned to young Lord Spencer, who, despite his total inexperience of high political position, accepted with alacrity. He was anxious, as he said, ‘to be of use’, and whe
n the Spencers took up residence as the Queen’s official representatives in Dublin Castle, Mr Gladstone got exactly the loyal and dignified representative in Ireland that he needed. The Countess, although still childless, was as popular and forthright as the Earl was dignified and shy. Hiding behind his bright red whiskers, which earned him the inevitable nickname of ‘the Red Earl’, John Poyntz Spencer was an impressive figure and he and his wife enjoyed the splendour and prestige of their position, presiding like royalty in St Patrick’s Hall in Dublin Castle.
They also enjoyed the less formal side of Irish life, with Lady Spencer visiting the poor and her husband hunting regularly with the Meath and the Kildare, and doggedly attempting to teach the Irish the rudiments of cricket on the lawns of Dublin Castle.
Politically, Lord Spencer’s inexperience suited Mr Gladstone, for it meant that as Viceroy he was perfectly prepared to follow his leader’s Irish policy to the letter. So it was not entirely Lord Spencer’s fault if Mr Gladstone’s plan to disestablish the Church of Ireland produced much argument but little satisfaction both in Ireland and Westminster. It was much the same with Gladstone’s highly complicated Land Act of 1870, while his cherished plan of creating a non sectarian university in Dublin caused such a furore in Ireland - even Spencer called it ‘a very ticklish affair’ - that it helped bring down the Gladstone government in 1874.
It also brought Lord Spencer’s five year-stint in Dublin Castle to an end. It had been an expensive and at times a gruelling period, which had cost him something in the region of £100,000, in addition to the expense of maintaining both Spencer House and Althorp in his absence. But the Earl and his Countess had undoubtedly enjoyed the splendour and the adulation of their five years reigning over Irish Society. Charlotte later said this period had been ‘the happiest five years of my life’, and her husband was proud to be returning to his home at Althorp as what he felt a Spencer ought to be - a figure of acknowledged national importance. If it had cost him £20,000 a year, he undoubtedly considered it was worth it.
The extravagance so evident throughout this period, was undoubtedly connected with the childless state of the Earl and Lady Spencer. Had they had children and an heir to inherit and carry on the line, they would have been forced to pay more serious attention to the future, and worry over who would pay for their extravagances if the economic climate changed and their income faltered. Instead it was now that Lord and Lady Spencer embarked upon the busiest, most ostentatious and certainly the most expensive period of their lives.
On the face of it they now had everything a noble couple could desire - celebrity, prestige, considerable possessions and a great position in society; at the same time the absence of children meant that they were that much more dependent on each other, and had yet more time for friends and politics and entertaining. Spencer himself enthusiastically embarked on a second and triumphant period as Master of the Pytchley which underlined his position as social leader of the county.
Ever since resigning from the court, relations between the Earl and the Prince of Wales had stayed distinctly cool, but Althorp and the Spencers were suddenly enhanced by a more glamorous and dramatic royal presence than overweight Prince Albert Edward. They had first got to know the horse-mad Empress Elizabeth of Austria in the hunting field in Ireland, and the friendship grew – particularly when the Earl appointed as her guide and companion one of the finest riders and most accomplished womanisers in the country, Captain ‘Bay’ Middleton, who soon became her lover.
Throughout this period the Austrian Empress added enormously to the glamour and allure of hunting with her dashing presence and her hour-glass figure. She also added to the glamour and allure of her friends the Spencers, and it was largely to make Althorp fit to receive Her Imperial Highness that extensive alterations were begun at Althorp by the fashionable architect, Mac Vicar Anderson. These alterations proved to be the most expensive work the house had seen since the second Earl virtually rebuilt it in the 1790s, and from 1876 to 1878 the Spencers actually moved out and lived at Harleston Hall, which they also owned, while the work was finished.
The South wing was largely rebuilt, the staircase hall enlarged to take what was left of the interior courtyard, the great staircase itself returned from white to natural wood, and Holland’s blue sitting room with Pernotin’s painted panels was re-sited and restored for the use of the Empress. She duly came and stayed at Althorp, and in 1878 her hosts were rewarded with an invitation back to Hungary as official guests of the Empress and Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Josef.
Shy though he was, the Earl was also vain and quietly determined to assert himself. Because of this, towards the end of the 1870s, his expenditure rose to a peak in spite of the great agricultural depression already looming. In addition to all the work at Althorp, he refused to restrict the work in London either, and he and Charlotte felt the time had come to bring Spencer House to the highest flights of Victorian fashion.
The Earl became impressed by the fashionable architect Frederick Sang, who proposed repainting and decorating the entire interior in the style of a baroque Italian palace, complete with coloured Italian marble pavements and painted ceilings. Although the Countess was also very much in favour, they settled instead for the more restrained but equally expensive second Empire-style interior the famous French decorator Barbier evolved for them, with an Earl’s ransom in silk damask, French furniture and velvet hangings.
During this period, Spencer House played a key role in the social and political life of London. According to Lord Elcho, the Red Earl had three personal advantages as a politician which he defined as ‘station, wealth and a large Whig house in the centre of London’. These were advantages Spencer was determined to exploit, and he and the Countess continued entertaining on the most ambitious scale. This undoubtedly helped his political career and Spencer House became famous for its grandiose receptions. When he was actually in government his house was often used for informal meetings of the Cabinet.
The food at Spencer House was famous - as was the Earl for the ‘Spencer appetite’. After a lengthy meal he once devoured a large apricot tart, and for several years in the 1880s he employed one of the most famous chefs in London, Monsieur Beguinot, formerly chef to the Duc de Morny. As late as 1881, there were still twenty-nine resident servants in Spencer House.
By then the series of appalling harvests at the end of the 1870s was affecting the English landed interest like the sudden change of climate which destroyed the dinosaurs. In 1879 the Earl was already being forced to borrow £15,000 to meet excess expenditure. By 1885 his overall income had declined by £20,000 a year, and the decline continued to the end of the century, with Althorp particularly hard hit, its rents dropping from £21,000 in 1890 to £12,000 five years later.
The Earl, with the optimism born of a lifetime’s effortless superiority, refused to waste time worrying or trying to solve what, by its nature, was insoluble. Instead he went on borrowing, including a loan for £9,000 in 1887 for just one year’s expenses as Master of the precious Pytchley.
He was not in a position to give much personal attention to such mundane matters as debts and mortgages. For in 1882, in the very middle of the crisis, he was once more summoned to the call of duty by the voice of Mr Gladstone asking him to serve a second term in Dublin Castle. And once again, despite the cost, the inconvenience and the danger, the Earl responded out of loyalty to the Chief and longing for political success.
Virtually his first task was to cope with the aftermath of the murder of his friend and kinsman, the newly appointed Irish Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Spencer had actually been riding on ahead when Lord Frederick and his under-secretary, T.H. Burke, were knifed to death by a gang calling themselves ‘The Invincibles’. For Spencer it was a murder in the family, and his tears revealed a streak of untypical emotion behind his normally impassive nature.
The murder convinced him of the need to deal with the current wave of violence, and by his ruthle
ssness and courage he seemed to be getting close to pacifying Ireland by coercion when his period in Dublin Castle ended in 1885. But by now Mr Gladstone had arrived at a somewhat different decision - to grant Home Rule to Ireland. And, as usual, when Mr Gladstone changed his mind, Lord Spencer did the same.
Back in England, debts were troubling him. While he was still in Ireland, his solicitor had reported having trouble raising a £40,000 mortgage and the situation was so serious that Lord Spencer was forced to consider leaving Ireland to take on the more lucrative – and peaceful – Viceroyship of India.
When he murmured something in Cabinet about ‘rather liking the idea of elephants and rajahs’, Gladstone instantly retorted: ‘Of course, Lord Spencer has only to raise his little finger in order to have it placed absolutely at his disposal.’
One wonders why Lord Spencer did not raise his little finger. One reason was almost certainly his wife, who loved entertaining and insisted that she had never been happier than when in Dublin or in London. He also hated the idea of leaving England and his hunting. But his most conclusive reason for continuing to pile up debt by remaining in London was political ambition. With Gladstone ageing, the premiership would soon go begging, and Delhi would have placed it firmly out of Spencer’s reach for ever.
In 1885, when Gladstone campaigned actively for Home Rule and split the Liberal party, Spencer almost alone among the Liberal grandees stood with him - even if cynics did remark that since the Spencers had no estates in Ireland, they had nothing personally to lose by giving Ireland to the Irish. Having once made up his mind, Lord Spencer was immovable, and he was at his best as he stuck by his leader and his principles. This cannot have been easy. Irish Home Rule was an emotive issue, particularly among the royal family and the higher reaches of the Establishment. The Duchess of Teck described Spencer as ‘a convert - or should I say a pervert - to the cause of Home Rule’. Queen Victoria ceased inviting him to dinner. And as for the Prince of Wales, he solemnly remarked: ‘I lose for ever the high opinion I once had of him’, and never forgave him.