The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (11 page)

When all the guests had assembled, the Prince and Princess would enter. 'The appearance of the Princess of Wales . . .' writes Lillie with studied generosity, 'wonderfully lovely and faultlessly dressed, seemed almost to dim the beauty of every other woman in the room, and her grace and fascination were such that one could not take one's eyes from her.'
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And if the guests found the Princess's flawless, almost wax-flower-like beauty remarkable, they found the Prince's energy and good nature even more so. One observer, attending a ball – not at Marlborough House but at the Prince's Norfolk home, Sandringham – watched in amazement as, in a country dance, 'the Prince and Princess
set off with their partners, round and round, down the middle and up again, and so on to the end, the Prince the jolliest of the jolly and the life of the party, as he is wherever he goes. I never saw such amazing vitality . . . He is the antidote to every text and sermon that ever was preached upon the pleasure of the world palling upon the wearied spirit.'
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The Prince was equally in his element during the recreation that followed the close of the London season: the yachting at Cowes. At the beginning of August, society shut up its London houses and made for the Isle of Wight. The Royal Yacht Squadron, headquartered in its castle on the seafront at Cowes, was, says Lillie, 'the most exclusive club in the kingdom'.
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Although Queen Victoria, ensconced in Osborne House, confined her participation to the occasional drive along the beflagged and bustling waterfront, or to watching the proceedings through a telescope, Bertie flung himself into the activity with customary gusto.

Yachting quickened his pulses no less than racing. The swelling of the sails, the shimmer of the sea, the tilting of the decks, the gusting of the wind – all these delighted him. He delighted equally in the less bracing pleasures of Cowes week: in dining aboard some luxuriously appointed two-hundred-foot craft belonging to one of his millionaire friends, or in dancing on deck, under a canopy of flags, to the music of Strauss or Waltaeufel.

But, as much as anything, he enjoyed being with Lillie at Cowes. In spite of her delicate beauty, she was no hot-house plant; she loved the outdoors. Lillie's tomboyish streak, so marked during her Jersey girlhood, was very much in evidence on these occasions. 'How I enjoyed the excitement of that race,' she once enthused, 'crowding on sail to the verge of danger, with a swirling spray drenching us to the skin.'
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Lillie and Edward would be guests of the Prince's friend – the man who had introduced them – Sir Allen Young, on board his schooner, 'Helen', while the Prince, and sometimes the Princess, would be on the royal yacht 'Osborne'. Often, to Lillie's gratification, there might be other members of Europe's inter-related royal families on board 'Osborne', and what she calls 'a favoured few' – herself, of course, included – would be invited to dine or dance.

Amongst the galaxy of royals to whom Lillie was introduced by the Prince was the widowed ex-Empress Eugenie of the French who, since the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, had been living in exile in England. She and her only child, the Prince Imperial, then in his early
twenties, would take a house at Cowes each August. The Empress, although still remarkably beautiful, was no longer the stylish, insouciant creature of Bertie's first youthful visit to Paris. The Prince Imperial, on the other hand, was one of those high-spirited, devil-may-care young men in whose company the Prince of Wales delighted.

Through this irrepressible French prince, Bertie and Lillie were once involved in two of the most popular activities of the period: spiritualism and practical jokes.

A spiritual 'investigation' or 'table-turning' session had been organised at a seaside villa and was attended by, among others, the Prince of Wales, the Prince Imperial and the Langtrys. No sooner had the company around the table joined hands and the lights been put out than the furniture began crashing about. A lighted match revealed the young Prince Imperial to be the culprit. He was promptly expelled and locked out of the room. Once again the company settled down, in the dark, to await some spiritual manifestation. It came, some ten minutes later, in the shape of a ghostly white figure. Another match revealed the same culprit. The Prince Imperial had climbed up the wisteria, in through the open window and had covered himself, and several others, with flour.

But the Prince Imperial was not alone in his penchant for practical jokes. Bertie adored them. The late Prince Consort's admonition that no prince should ever indulge in anything as vulgar as a practical joke had fallen on very deaf ears indeed. Bertie's friends were spared nothing: apple-pie beds, pockets stuffed with sticky sweets, water squirted from bicycle pumps, pies full of mustard. And Lillie, no less a child of her time, was equally addicted to them. She tells of the occasion when the two princes hoisted a donkey into a bedroom, clothed it in a nightdress and somehow put it into the bed of the son of the house: the son being that notorious lecher, Harry Cust.

Another of her stories concerns that other celebrated lover and dashing naval commander, Lord Charles Beresford. On the occasion of Lillie's first visit to Cowes, Beresford was in command of HMS Thunderer. One afternoon, during an impromptu dance on board, Lillie, accompanied by someone she calls 'royalty' – we must assume she means the Prince of Wales – slipped away to one of the cabins. As all the ship's cabins lay below the water line, they had to rely on shafts for ventilation. Lord Charles, having noticed the couple slip away, and imagining, only too vividly, what they were up to in the cabin, switched off the supply of air.

'Very soon our faces became scarlet, our breathing grew difficult, and we began to go through the uncomfortable sensation which must be experienced by a fish out of water.' Beresford's prank, in other words, very quickly put a stop to whatever was going on.

'Fortunately,' continues Lillie, 'Lord Charles did not go beyond the frightening limit, or the Beresfordjoke might have developed into the Beresford tragedy.'
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Or – if the Prince of Wales had been discovered suffocated to death in the arms of Lillie Langtry – the Beresford scandal.

Of all the social occasions shared by the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry, none was more characteristic of the period than the country house weekend; or, as they were more properly termed, 'Saturday-to-Monday', with the use of the word Monday emphasising the fact that one did not need to return to town at the start of the week to earn one's living. These mammoth house parties, at which sport – hunting and shooting – was combined with entertainment – dining and dancing – were very much to Bertie's taste. And by the late 1870s no host could hope to entertain the Prince if the guest list did not include Mrs Edward Langtry.

The Prince was willing to accept the hospitality, not only of such grandees as the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, the Duke of Beaufort at Badminton, the Duke of Sutherland at Dunrobin, the Duke of Westminster at Eaton Hall or the Duke of Portland at Welbeck, but of almost anyone rich enough to entertain him. To claim that the Prince of Wales had been a guest at one's country house was the ambition of almost every aristocratic or would-be aristocratic host. Many an enterprising socialite crippled himself financially in his determination to prove worthy of the favour bestowed by the presence of the Prince of Wales.

The photograph of one of these autumn gatherings, with His Royal Highness seated plumply and confidently in the middle of a group of tweed-suited men and elaborately hatted women, was a greatly treasured possession: incontrovertible proof that one had been granted the supreme social accolade.

The routine at these country house parties was unvarying. Between twenty and forty guests would be invited, with no introductions ever being made, on the assumption that all people in society knew one another. With the exception of the hostess's private wing, the entire house would be open to the guests; they could wander through the
lushly furnished rooms and galleries as they wished. The hardly less luxurious bedrooms would be provided with every facility except a bathroom. In each room was a metal tub, discreetly screened, which would be filled and emptied by a housemaid. The grounds, with their walled gardens, pleached avenues, sloping lawns, winding paths, woods, belvederes and view sites, would be equally at the disposal of the guests.

These house parties involved, as Disraeli once complained to Queen Victoria, 'a good deal too much both of eating and dressing. '
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And, of course, of shooting. Meals were gargantuan. At breakfast guests would help themselves from a row of silver chafing dishes on the sideboard: the fare would consist of fried, poached or scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, tomatoes, kedgeree and cold ham. Luncheon sometimes took the form of a picnic but was none the less lavish for that: every conceivable type of hot and cold food, particularly varieties of game pie, and of course wine, would be provided. Tea, in the drawing room, meant bread-and-butter, scones, tarts, cakes, sandwiches, muffins and crumpets. At dinner there were often ten courses, each with a different wine. And, later that evening, there would be yet a fifth meal to be eaten – supper, which usually included a cold chicken or lobster salad. And in the unlikely but by no means unheard-of event of anyone feeling peckish during the night, sandwiches were provided in every room.

While the men usually changed their clothes only three times a day – tweeds, velvet smoking suits and full evening dress of white tie and tails – the ladies were expected to change at least four times. For breakfast there would be morning dresses. If they were picnicking out of doors with the men they would wear tweeds; if not, they would change into another dress for luncheon. For afternoon tea they would wear elaborate tea-gowns. In the evening they would appear in low-cut dresses with trains, wearing jewellery and carrying ostrich-feather fans.

As the men's daytime activities were confined to shooting, or talking about shooting, the women had to entertain themselves as best they could. Between changing their clothes, they could gossip with the 'darlings' – those non-sporting men who were especially invited to keep them amused – or write letters.

Lillie, despite her gratification at being included in these house parties, did not enjoy them unreservedly. She disapproved of hunting and shooting: 'I was once persuaded to see a stag stalked,' she says, 'but I felt so sick and sorry for the fine beast that I have never forgotten
it.'
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Nor did she much enjoy the company of other women. Too lively to sit about gossiping all day, and not really a member of this milieu, she found other amusements.

At Heron Court, the home of Lord Malmesbury, for instance, she would continue her process of self-improvement. She had always been one for keeping her eyes and ears open; now, guided by old Malmesbury, she would wander through the rooms, asking, listening, remembering. 'It was in these rooms that I learned to distinguish the different periods of French furniture, china, etc, for they contained quantities of beautiful examples, including some lovely signed buhl tables. It was, moreover, a pleasure to their owner to explain the most minute characteristics of each chair, cabinet, table or vase. The library was a vast one, and among its treasures were many portfolios filled with rare engravings and cartoons by Raphael, Bartolozzi, Angelica Kauffmann and others . . .'
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Nor did she ever hesitate to put this new-found knowledge to practical use. On one occasion Alfred de Rothschild drew her aside at the end of an evening and murmured, 'What shall I give you, beautiful lady?' Lillie promptly picked up a lavishly bejewelled Louis XVI snuff box. 'This will do,' she said crisply. 'He had a weak heart,' she afterwards wrote, 'and for a moment I thought I had stopped it. But when he got his breath he promised me something "much prettier" and out came one of the well-known gift boxes.'
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But not all Lillie's country house activities were devoted to self-enrichment, of whatever variety. Her natural effervescence was never far below that composed surface. One host was obliged to lock up his largest silver tray because she insisted on tobogganing down the stairs on it; another had to chide her for her 'disregard of conventionalities' for dismissing the groom who had been following her and Lord Manners as they rode through the park. Once, after she had burned her tongue with a forkful of
gratin à la Grammont
, she complained to her host about it being too cold; furious with his chef, the poor man gulped down a large mouthful, to the intense, if puerile, amusement of the company.

Such spirited behaviour delighted the Prince of Wales. He would roar with laughter at her antics. It was this dash, this boldness, this invincible
joie de vivre
, so closely resembling his own, that Bertie found so attractive in Lillie.

Late at night, the house party would offer amusements of another nature. For notable as these gatherings were for the sport, the food and the dressing up, they were equally notable for their adulterous
liaisons. It was chiefly at country house parties that the new code of sexual behaviour was put into practice. On arrival – at teatime on the first day – the men would eye the married women with a view to what was euphemistically called 'amusing' one of them during the next two or three days. An elaborate, if speedy, courtship would follow: glances across the candle-lit dinner table, a touch of a hand on a gloved elbow, a whispered suggestion of a private meeting, a note on a breakfast tray, a walk to the summer house, a poetry reading in the conservatory. All this led, inevitably, to a late-night assignation.

The experienced hostess, in allotting bedrooms to her guests, would ensure that their current romantic attachments were taken into account, or that sudden sexual attraction was allowed for. A reading of the names on the cards slipped into the little brass frames on the bedroom doors would tell the informed observer a great deal. The hostess would see to it that Mr and Mrs Langtry were given separate rooms and that Mrs Langtry's room was not too far from the suite set aside for His Royal Highness. Well known Romeos would never be placed in rooms beside happily married couples.