The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (12 page)

Yet everything was arranged with great discretion. An open scandal was to be avoided at all costs. 'Everything was all right,' claimed one such errant wife, 'if only it was kept quiet, hushed up, covered.'
³⁴
A married woman could conduct an affair more easily and in greater safety within the closed circle at a country house party than she could in a hotel or restaurant; even if she were prepared to risk the social stigma of being seen in such an establishment.

The corridors of country houses must have been alive with the sounds of padding feet, swishing dressing-gowns and gently closing doors. A six o'clock warning bell would ensure that everyone was back in his or her own bed long before the maids arrived with the morning tea tray.

These late-night assignations gave rise to a litany of anecdotes about miscarried plans. There was the one about the husband who, feeling hungry, carried off the plate of sandwiches which his wife had left outside her bedroom door as a sign to her lover. Or the irrepressible Lord Charles Beresford who, having tiptoed into a dark room, leaped lustfully into the arms, not of his lady-love, but of the astonished Bishop of Chester. There was even one about the Prince of Wales, who was assured by the lady on whom he was pressing his, for once, unwelcome attentions, that she would mark her bedroom door with a rose: when His Royal Highness duly crept into the room, it was to find a kitchenmaid planted in the lady's bed.

Not that the Prince, or any other upper-class gentleman, would have hesitated to bed a kitchenmaid. They were considered to be there for the taking. When Edward Horner seduced a parlourmaid after a drunken lunch, a woman guest thought it 'eighteenth century and
droit de seigneur
and rather nice.'
³⁵
She would not have been anything like as approving if he had seduced an unmarried woman of his own class. That would have been regarded as a major scandal.

Nor did the upper classes permit, among their servants, the sort of moral laxity which they – provided the women were married – enjoyed at these country house weekends. When Lord Curzon discovered that one of his housemaids had allowed a footman to spend the night with her, he was incensed. 'I put the little slut out into the street at a moment's notice,'
³⁶
he boasted. And his guests, secure behind their façade of double standards and regardless of whose bed they had spent the night in, would have agreed that their host had acted most honourably.

But one may be sure that, for the first two or three years, the Prince would have been satisfied with Lillie by his side and in his bed. When they were not together, he would write to her. The tone of his letters was touchingly solicitous. Quite clearly, Lillie was constantly in his thoughts. He would give her the sort of news that a devoted husband gives a wife; he would write about the weather or the shooting or the racing. In describing the society beauties at Cowes, during a season that she was not with him, he would hasten to add that, somewhat to his own surprise, he was not flirting with any of them. Sometimes his letters were accompanied by a brace of pheasant; at others he would enclose the ticket to Ascot which she had wanted for a friend.

Such was the depth of Bertie's regard for Lillie that long after the first flush of his infatuation had faded and they had gone their separate ways, he would continue to see her and to write her his tender, concerned, affectionate letters; always signing them with a simple A.E. (for Albert Edward) and always opening them with the words 'My Fair Lily'.

4

'Dreams of Fairyland'

I
NDISPUTABLE PROOF
of Lillie Langtry's social acceptability came in her second season. She was presented at court; presented, not to the Prince of Wales who sometimes deputised for Queen Victoria on these occasions, but to the Queen herself.

Until the late 1950s, when the young Queen Elizabeth II finally abolished the by then meaningless ceremony, presentation at court was regarded as the
sine qua non
of social recognition. No debutante was considered fully 'out' – out, that is, of girlhood and into society – until she had been formally presented to the monarch. The ritual was enacted at special presentation parties, as soon after a girl's eighteenth birthday as possible. Together with putting up her hair and letting down her skirts, being launched at her own coming-out ball and attending a prodigious number of other balls and parties, presentation at court was part of a young woman's initiation into society.

But presentation was not confined to debutantes. Married women – colonials, foreigners, women who had married Englishmen, who had been out of the country at eighteen or who had gained prominence in national life – could also be presented. Provided they had a 'presenter' or sponsor, usually a woman who had herself been presented, any aspiring socialite could make her curtsey to the sovereign. Some of these sponsors were not above making the necessary introductions for a cash consideration. An occasion which, in early days, had been confined to exclusively aristocratic circles, became progressively less select. 'We had to stop it,' said one member of the royal family recently, 'every tart in London was being presented.'
¹
A more valid reason was that, in a more egalitarian age, the whole concept of 'society' had become outdated.

For a century or more, however, presentation at court remained the goal of every socially ambitious woman. What should she do, asked
one desperate American matron of one of the young Vanderbilts, to get her daughter presented?

'Don't you know anything about presentation at the court of St James's?' he asked.

'No, but I do know that it would be marvellous for my girl,' she answered.

The young man, more enlightened than most, did his best to dissuade her. In graphic detail he outlined the disadvantages of the whole business: the months of learning how to conduct oneself, the expense of the clothes, the strain on the nerves, the tedium of waiting – first in the carriage procession in the Mall and then in the palace ante-chamber – and all for the dubious thrill of curtseying to a person who would never recognise one again.

In silence, the mother heard him out. 'I see,' she said when he had finished this grim catalogue of drawbacks. 'And now tell me what I should do to get my daughter on the list of presentees?'
²

Whereas the Prince of Wales, on ascending the throne as Edward VII, reintroduced evening Presentation Courts, Queen Victoria held them in the afternoons, when they were known as Drawing Rooms. These Drawing Rooms (at which, noted one debutante tartly, 'Her Majesty does not offer any refreshments to the guests'
³
) might have lacked the glamour of the evening courts, but the ceremonial was no less exacting. So it was on a May afternoon in 1878 that Lillie Langtry found herself, stiff with nerves, waiting to make her curtsey to Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace.

The Prince of Wales had prepared the ground thoroughly. Earlier that season he had presented Edward Langtry to the Queen at a levée. He had arranged for Lillie's sponsor to be Lady Conyngham, whose credentials, as a member of the Queen's household, were impeccable, and for her actual companion on the day to be Lady Romney. On the morning of the presentation he sent Lillie a huge bouquet of pale yellow Maréchal Neil roses.

This choice of flowers had not been arbitrary. They complimented her dress perfectly. Lillie was wearing, for this great occasion, a dress of ivory brocade with a long court train which hung,
à l'Impératrice Joséphine
, from the shoulders and which was lined with the same pale yellow of the artificial Maréchal Neil roses which garlanded the dress. As the Queen had recently expressed disapproval of the smallness of the obligatory three white feathers which the presentees wore in their hair, Lillie had chosen three of the largest ostrich plumes she could find. It was with some difficulty that she secured these three towering
feathers and the customary tulle veil, for she still wore her hair coiled in a simple knot low on her neck.

Although gratified at the idea of being presented, Lillie was in two minds about the actual presentation to Queen Victoria. By now, the Queen would almost certainly have known about the Prince's relationship with Mrs Langtry ('Who is it
tells
her these things?'
⁴
wailed one of Her Majesty's secretaries) and Lillie was, she admits, 'rather afraid'
⁵
of the Queen. But as Queen Victoria, who now hated all public appearances, was known to spend no more than an hour or so at a Drawing Room and then hand over to the Prince and Princess of Wales, Lillie decided to delay her arrival. In this way she would still be presented at court but without having to face the probably disapproving Queen.

She could not, though, escape the waiting which was such a feature of these presentation days. The Mall was one solid line of carriages: a picturesque river of gleaming coaches, caparisoned horses, bewigged coachmen and powdered footmen, their liveries glittering with gold and silver braid. A good-natured mob of bystanders peered into the carriage windows, hoping for a glimpse of the bejewelled and befeathered occupants.

'It was certainly anything but agreeable,' grumbled Lillie, 'to sit in full costume, with low neck and arms, in bright sunlight, for the edification of the surging crowd.'
⁶
The fact that many of the presentees had not eaten since early morning, and were obliged to nibble their sandwiches and sip from their flasks in full view, made it less agreeable still.

Things were hardly less tedious in the palace itself. With infinite slowness, the line inched forward. Finally, 'after hours of waiting in the crush room, penned like sheep, with a heavy train folded on one's arm, and a constant dragging at one's tulle veil,'
⁷
the moment of presentation arrived. Although Lillie's late arrival meant that she would be the last but two to be presented, she was disconcerted to hear that the Queen was still receiving. She was more disconcerted still when, having handed her train to the pages but before having handed her card to the Lord Chamberlain, she heard him say, 'Mrs Langtry comes next, Your Majesty.' Quite clearly, the Queen had been waiting for her.

'It seems,' writes Lillie, 'that she had a great desire to see me, and had stayed on in order to satisfy herself as to my appearance. It was even added that she was annoyed because I was so late in passing.'
⁸

True or not, Queen Victoria certainly looked annoyed as Lillie
approached. Yet, to the trembling Lillie, this merely added to her air of majesty. The simplicity of the Queen's low-necked and short-sleeved black dress was enlivened by the blue ribbon of the Garter and by her many sparkling jewels: the diamond orders and decorations on her corsage, the rows of pearls about her neck, the rings on her podgy fingers and the small diamond crown on her head. It seemed almost unbelievable that someone so small and plump could look so awe-inspiring. 'I was thrilled with emotion, loyalty and pride,'
⁹
enthuses Lillie.

Her mind filled with stories of misadventures – of fat women over-balancing as they made their obeisances, of others tripping over their trains or clutching the outstretched royal hand for support – Lillie sank into her curtsey. The Queen seemed to show no interest in her whatsoever. Extending her hand in a 'rather perfunctory manner', Victoria stared straight ahead. 'Not even a flicker of a smile crossed her grimly set lips.'
¹⁰

That ordeal over, Lillie dropped a series of curtseys to the other members of the royal family – including a no doubt beaming Prince of Wales – lined up beside the Queen, and then faced her final test. This was the catching of her train, thrown to her by a nimble page, over her left arm and then exiting backwards. She executed this complicated ritual perfectly.

That evening, as a relieved Lillie danced with Bertie in the Royal Quadrille at a ball at Marlborough House, he confirmed that the Queen had remained so late expressly in order to see her. What, wondered Lillie, had the Queen thought of her three outsize ostrich feathers? The Prince had certainly been amused by them. Perhaps he appreciated their symbolism. Were they not a reminder of his own coat of arms, with the accompanying motto
Ich dien –
I serve?

Lillie just missed an opportunity of meeting Queen Victoria socially later that year when the royal family descended,
en masse
, on Scotland for their annual autumn sojourn. With the Queen and some of her family at Balmoral and the Prince and Princess of Wales at Abergeldie, it was arranged that the Langtrys should be the guests of one of the Prince's friends, the 'commercial magnate' Cunliffe Brooks, at Glen Tanar. Although Lillie could not approve of the mass slaughter of game which so enthralled the men of the house party, she loved Scotland. She was not the first southerner to succumb to the fascination of the Highlands: the colourful national dress, the vigorous
dancing, the virile men, even the determined drizzle guaranteed, she says, 'to bring roses to a woman's cheeks'.
¹¹

In his Stuart tartan ('Something a little more
Scots
tomorrow,'
¹²
the Prince would instruct his valet as the ship bringing him north approached the Scottish coast) even Bertie managed to look somewhat less Hanoverian. As for Alexandra, Lillie had to admit that she looked as radiant in her 'blue serge workmanlike costume'
¹³
and deerstalker cap as she did in one of her shimmering court dresses.

One afternoon, accompanied by two other members of the house party – Lord Strathnairn and Lady Erroll – the Langtrys drove over to Balmoral. Designed by the late Prince Consort, Balmoral Castle is a mixture of German Schloss and Scottish baronial hall: a jumble of pepper-pot turrets, crenellated parapets and stepped gables. Lillie, who had never seen it before (and was never to see it again) found it 'bleak and uninteresting', utterly lacking in the romance of Scotland's older, less
ersatz
castles.