The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (23 page)

Some of their happiest times together were spent in Paris. Travelling as 'Baron Renfrew' (a Wildean alias which fooled no-one: that corpulent figure was unmistakable) the Prince would always stay at the Hotel Bristol, just a few yards from the Hotel Vendôme in which, for propriety's sake, he would install Lady Brooke. They went to the theatre where they watched risque plays; they went up the Eiffel
Tower from where they saw magnificent views; they visited Edouard Detaille's studio where they admired the sort of battle scenes which Bertie regarded as true art; they enjoyed superb food and wines at the Voisin and the Café Anglais. She was almost afraid to admire anything in the shops, protests Daisy, because gifts were 'showered' on her 'at the slightest excuse'.
⁸

The Prince introduced her to his Parisian friends, the Marquis de Breteuil, the Marquis de Jaucourt, the Comtesse de Pourtalès. They went to the great autumn race-meetings at Longchamps and Auteuil, although Daisy was interested to note that the Prince once refused to attend a Sunday race-meeting with the Breteuils; he dared not offend Queen Victoria.

His deference to the sensibilities not only of his mother but of the Established Church has an echo today. 'If it were not for my Archbishop of Canterbury,' his great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, has said, 'I should be off in my plane to Longchamps every Sunday.'
⁹

And, of course, the Prince accompanied Daisy to the two leading couturiers of the day, Worth and Doucet. To Doucet Daisy went for her day dresses and lingerie; to Worth, son of the founder of the firm, for her evening dresses and gala clothes. She never paid less, she claims, than a hundred guineas for a Worth dress, which is something like three thousand pounds by today's standards. Often she paid half as much again. Bertie, who was always interested in women's fashion, would sit watching while the dapper Mr Worth would study his subject 'as a painter would study a woman sitting for a portrait'.

'Suddenly inspiration would come! He would call for specially woven brocade from the looms of Lyons, or other rare and costly fabric. Instantly it would appear, and with his wonderful hands he seemed to evoke the powers of Beauty.

' "This," he would murmur, "is the colour. This the outline – this – and this –"

'With each "this" the gown would grow under the image of his fingers.'
¹⁰

Daisy had always been well-dressed but now, as the favourite of the Prince of Wales, she blossomed into one of the most elegant women in society. Her years of triumph spanned the 1890s, a decade which saw the end of the bustle and the development of bell skirts and huge, puffed sleeves. Society journals were full of her spectacular dresses: the 'gauzy white gown beneath which meandered delicately shaded ribbons' which she wore to a dinner party attended by the Prince of
Wales; the 'splendid purple-grape-trimmed robes and veil of pearls on white' which she wore to a Drawing Room presided over by the Prince of Wales; the 'violet velvet with two splendid turquoise-and-diamond brooches in her bodice' which she wore to a hunt ball at which, inevitably, the Prince of Wales was present.

Even his clothes – for he was an arbiter of male elegance – were mentioned on this last occasion: the Prince introduced a new fashion for men, 'dogskin tan gloves with black stitching'.
¹¹

In the country, the couple could be together at Easton Lodge or at country house parties; in London they could use Daisy's town house or, if the Princess of Wales were away, Marlborough House. Then there were always those private rooms in London restaurants where a gentleman could entertain his lady friends. Rules, off Maiden Lane, was one of the Prince's favourite restaurants, but as it boasted only one private room, he would more often take Daisy to other restaurants, such as the Café Royal and Kettners, where the private supper rooms were furnished not only with table and chairs, but with sofas. There were even some where the touch of a button would part the panelling to reveal a double bed. The Prince of Wales, said Daisy, was 'a very perfect, gentle lover'.
¹²

Rendering the Prince's prodigious love-making a little less hazardous was the availability, by the late 1880s, of a more reliable means of contraception. Until then, contraception had been very much a hit and miss affair. Pregnancy had been avoided by various means: by
coitus interruptus
, by limiting sex to so-called 'safe periods', by the insertion of a sponge on a narrow ribbon, even by the fitting of a diaphragm. Crude sheaths or condoms, made first of linen, then of sheep's intestines or fish skin, had been in use since the eighteenth century. In London, a Mrs Philips had done a brisk trade in supplying condoms to 'ambassadors, foreigners, gentlemen, and captains of ships &c going abroad'.
¹³
But such condoms had never been simple to make, cheap to buy or easy to put on. And as recently as 1877 a seriously-written study of contraceptive practices had been condemned, in court, as obscene literature. The case had merely emphasised the fact that contraception remained an obscure and rarely-employed practice.

But the discovery of vulcanisation in the 1840s led, eventually, to the manufacture of crepe rubber, and by the 1880s rubber condoms were being widely used. Victorian wives, relieved of their fears of repeated pregnancies or of being infected by their husbands, many of whom may have slept with prostitutes, could only welcome the
development. It led to a decline in the birthrate and a more relaxed attitude towards marital sex.

And giving the whole question of the use of condoms an aura of reassuring respectability was the box in which they were sold. In those happy-go-lucky days before the introduction of any advertising codes of practice, the manufacturers had no hesitation in illustrating their new product with portraits of the two most irreproachable Victorian notables they could think of: staring stonily at each other across every box of condoms were Queen Victoria and Mr Gladstone.

One can only hope that the Prince of Wales did not feel inhibited by the frequent sight of this formidable pair.

Easton Lodge, Daisy's country home in Essex, was the chief background against which the royal affair was enacted. Although Daisy's plans to turn Easton into a mock-Gothic palace never materialised, it remained an impressive pile: a rambling mansion set in twelve hundred acres of parkland, among whose giant oaks herds of deer roamed freely. The interior of the house was the usual high Victorian amalgam of good and bad: of beautifully proportioned rooms covered in brightly flowered wallpaper; of superb old masters alongside indifferent family portraits; of priceless
objets d'art
mixed up with worthless knick-knacks. The hall was crammed with hunting trophies – witness to Lord Brooke's shooting skills – among which, rearing up higher than a man, rose the stuffed neck and head of a giraffe.

In this luxuriant setting, Lady Brooke played the
grande dame
to perfection. She was, enthused one guest, 'the loveliest woman in England, of high rank, ample riches and great intelligence, and blessed with a charming husband who adored her.'
¹⁴

Whether, in truth, Lord Brooke 'adored' his wife to the extent he had once done is a moot point, but if adoration means never standing in the way of one's beloved's happiness, then Lord Brooke certainly adored his wife. In the matter of her liaison with the Prince of Wales, he proved admirably accommodating. Daisy claimed that the Prince liked her husband's 'repose of temperament' – as well he might – and that 'they shared a great liking for sport, which drew them close together'.
¹⁵

Lord Brooke's published view of his wife's royal lover could hardly have been more bland. 'He delighted in performing kind actions, they may be said to have been his hobby; and while as a host he could anticipate every possible want of his guests, as a guest he was most
affable, courteous and responsive. He appreciated everything that was done for his comfort, and had the gift of setting everybody, whether prince or ploughman, at their ease.'
¹⁶
No hint of the cuckolded husband here.

As a matter of fact, Lord Brooke was not above indulging in a little extra-marital dalliance himself. On one occasion, a lady guest, having been invited by Lord Brooke to inspect a newly-planted rose garden, was astonished to find herself – just as she was bending over to look at some particularly choice bloom – being enfolded in her host's arms with the poetic assurance that she was the 'fairest rose' in the garden. Saved by the arrival of some other garden-inspecting guests, she fled into the house to report the incident to her husband.

'Did he, by Jove!' exclaimed her husband with admirable
sang froid
. 'Good old Brookie!'
¹⁷

Daisy paints an idyllic picture of the Prince on one of his private visits to Easton: of his throwing aside 'the heavy trappings of his state to revel in his love of nature'
¹⁸
; of their walks across the park to the little church on Sunday mornings; of their conversations as they strolled through her famous 'Garden of Friendship' with its 'Border of Sentiment'. The Prince found that Daisy was very interested in political gossip, in foreign affairs and, increasingly, in social problems. Like Lillie Langtry before her, Daisy Brooke was not just a pretty face.

Even on these intimate visits, the Prince of Wales was incapable of moving without a retinue of people. He would feel obliged to bring with him not only a gentleman-in-waiting and a couple of equerries but two grooms for his horses, two loaders for his guns and two valets for the trunkloads of clothes which he considered essential for even the shortest, most informal of visits. For if the late Prince Consort's complaint – that the only thing his eldest son was interested in was clothes – was not quite accurate, clothes certainly did come high on Bertie's list of priorities. Few things were guaranteed to irritate him more than a wrongly chosen outfit.

Stories of the Prince's obsession with correct dress are legion. To a guardsman who entered the Marlborough Club wearing a newfangled dinner jacket, the Prince said severely, 'I suppose, my young friend, you are going to a costume ball.'
¹⁹
To a secretary about to set out before luncheon to an exhibition of pictures wearing a tail coat, His Royal Highness remarked, 'I thought
everyone
must know that a
short
jacket is always worn with a silk hat at a private view in the morning.'
²⁰
And when a diplomat in mourning asked the Prince if it
would be possible for him to go to the races, his reply was unhesitating. 'Not to Ascot, where one must wear a top hat, but Newmarket is all right because you can wear a soft hat there.'
²¹

Large house parties, or what Daisy calls 'more brilliant gatherings', had to be organised on the scale, and with the precision, of a military operation. Often the royal suite had to be entirely redecorated. The Prince almost broke one poor hostess's heart when, quite unaware that his suite had just been expensively refurbished, he merely replied – in answer to her eager enquiries as to whether or not he was comfortable – that his bathroom could do with a hook for his dressing-gown.

Daisy would have to submit a list of guests for his approval and often he would suggest names of his own. Sometimes she would run a special train from London and back for her guests, and there would have to be a fleet of carriages and wagonettes to transport them and their mountains of luggage (the women always travelled with huge domed, brassbound and padlocked trunks) from the station to the house. Extra servants, in addition to the maids and valets brought by the guests, would have to be employed; a band would have to be organised; and there was always the specially ordered food – the caviar, the larks, the ortolans, the ptarmigans, the wines and the champagnes. Quite often, the usual chef had to be replaced by a specialist whose skill, sighs Daisy, 'was equalled only by his wastefulness.'
²²

A telling pen-picture of Daisy Brooke at this period is given by the equally controversial woman who became a neighbour in 1892. This was Elinor Glyn, the white-skinned, green-eyed and red-haired beauty who was to become, in time, the famous romantic novelist. Like Lillie Langtry, Elinor Glyn (or Elinor Sutherland as she then was) had once lived on the island of Jersey. In fact, as a child, Elinor and her sister Lucy, who became Lady Duff Gordon, had once hidden under the skirted dressing-table of the room in Government House in which the celebrated Mrs Langtry, on a visit home to Jersey, was to leave her cloak before going down to dine. A giggle from Lucy gave them away. Far from being annoyed, Lillie was flattered by the girls' obvious interest, while they were overwhelmed by her beauty.

And now, fifteen years later and newly married to Clayton Glyn, Elinor found herself living near the Prince of Wales's latest mistress, Lady Brooke. She was no less overwhelmed. 'No one who stayed at Easton ever forgot their hostess and most of the men fell hopelessly in love with her,' remembered Elinor Glyn. 'In my long life, spent in so
many different countries, and during which I have seen most of the beautiful and famous women of the world, from film-stars to Queens, I have never seen one who was so completely fascinating as Daisy Brooke. She would sail in from her own wing, carrying her piping bullfinch, her lovely eyes smiling with the merry innocent expression of a Persian kitten that has just tangled a ball of silk. Hers was that supreme personal charm which I later described as "It" because it is quite indefinable, and does not depend on beauty or wit, although she possessed both in the highest degree. She was never jealous or spiteful to other women, and if she liked you she was the truest, most understanding friend.'
²³

It was from Lady Brooke that Elinor Glyn learned many of the social nuances of the day. Entertaining beyond strictly aristocratic circles was as hazardous as negotiating a minefield. To luncheon or dinner one could invite army or naval officers, diplomats and clergymen. If, but only if, the local vicar was a gentleman, he could be asked to Sunday supper. Otherwise he joined the doctors and solicitors at a garden party;
they
were never invited to luncheon or dinner. As for anyone in trade or commerce, or in the arts – well, they could not be asked under any circumstances.