The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (32 page)

When Edward Langtry was buried in the Chester cemetery, a great crowd massed about the cemetery gates in the hope of catching a glimpse of the famous Mrs Langtry. But she did not appear. She contented herself with sending a wreath of lilies of the valley tied not, as is often alleged, with a ribbon in her racing colours of fawn and blue, but with a conventional purple ribbon. On the attached card was written, 'In Remembrance – Lillie Langtry.' She could hardly have said less; or more.

'In an evil hour,' observed the
Daily News
on the day of Edward Langtry's funeral, 'he was caught in the whirlwind of London fashion, and being anything but a swimmer, and having no artificial supports in fortune, he was quickly on his way to ruin. Those who remember him years ago, a gentlemanlike nobody, with a genial confiding manner that seemed to mark him one of the crew of The Good Intent, can but lament his miserable end.'
³⁷

Twenty years earlier Edward Langtry had watched his wife drop her first curtsey to the Prince of Wales at Sir Allen Young's supper party. How directly had that graceful obeisance led to his lonely and penurious death in the Chester Lunatic Asylum?

By now – the year 1897 – the Prince of Wales's great love for Lady Warwick was waning. As restless, fickle and immature as ever, the fifty-five-year-old Bertie seemed incapable of sustaining a permanent relationship. His behaviour towards Daisy remained warm and protective, but she no longer obsessed him to the extent that she had once done. For some time now their relationship had been platonic. The Prince appears to have been finding his sexual satisfaction elsewhere.

Daisy would not have minded this unduly. She had never been in love with him. In a frank moment she even admitted to a friend that she had found the Prince 'boresome as he sat on a sofa holding my hand and goggling at me'.
³⁸
What she had enjoyed was her position as
royal favourite. Daisy had always relished the idea of being a woman, not only of importance, but of influence.

In any case, not for several years had Lady Warwick been able to give the Prince her undivided attention. Ever since her friendship with Stead and her 'conversion' by Blatchford, she had been flinging herself, with customary ardour, into various worthy causes. She was then going through what she afterwards called her 'intermediate' or transitional stage: 'my middle-class period . . . that was my Board of Guardians, philanthropic, educational, lady-gardening period. I was a reformer, if you like, but not yet an avowed Socialist.'
³⁹
She was still part-lady bountiful, part-radical feminist.

While leading as lavish a social life as ever (in spite of all Blatchford's strictures, she went to the Duchess of Devonshire's famous fancy dress ball in 1897 dressed, once again, as Marie Antoinette), she served on a bewildering number of committees and inaugurated countless progressive schemes. She started, among other things, a home for crippled children, a co-educational technical school, and the 'Lady Warwick Agricultural Scheme for Women' – a quaint project in which pairs of unmarried women would set up home together and devote themselves to working the land.

Try as he might, the Prince of Wales could not interest himself in these high-minded activities. Although, in her memoirs, Daisy is very anxious to create the impression that she had won the Prince's 'whole-hearted sympathy' for her various causes (he never stayed at a great country house, she assures us, without 'writing his name in the visitors' book'
⁴⁰
of the local workhouse) and that he was the driving force behind such things as the Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund, there is no doubt that he found her enthusiasms tiresome. On one occasion he was obliged to sit in embarrassed silence in a cramped cottage parlour while one of her 'discoveries' – the aged founder of the Agricultural Labourers' Union – treated him, not to a customary show of deference, but to a diatribe on the injustices of the social system and the iniquities of the upper classes.

But what probably accelerated the end of their liaison was Lady Warwick's discovery that, at the age of thirty-five and well over twelve years since the birth of her last child, she was again pregnant. In March 1898, Daisy gave birth to a son, to whom she gave her maiden name of Maynard. On this particularly beautiful child she was to heap the sort of affection notably lacking in her dealings with her other two children, the fifteen-year-old Guy and the thirteen-year-old Marjorie.

Two months before that, however, she brought her nine-year affair
with the Prince of Wales to a tidy and eminently satisfactory close. Appreciating that not even Queen Victoria could live much longer, Daisy was anxious to ensure that she would retain at least the friendship of the future King and, even more important, that she would once again become socially acceptable to the future Queen. Budding feminist, socialist and humanitarian Daisy might be, but not to be a member of society, with a capital S, was unthinkable.

So she sat down to write two very skilful letters: one to the Prince, the other to the Princess. In her formally phrased letter to the Prince – a letter clearly intended to be shown to Alexandra – Daisy stressed the fact that their relationship was now platonic, expressed the hope that the Princess would forgive her for past misunderstandings, and made much of her anxieties about losing the Prince's friendship. In her letter to Alexandra – that 'noble and gracious woman' – Daisy hoped that her 'enemies' had not poisoned Her Royal Highness's ears with spiteful gossip.

Her letters achieved their goals admirably; or so she thought. Bertie, having passed her 'beautiful letter' on to his wife, lost no time in putting Daisy's mind at rest. The Princess, he assured her, had been moved to tears; she was quite sure that 'out of evil good would come'; any enemies of Lady Warwick's were no friends of hers; she had quite forgiven the past; and, most important of all, she was ready to 'receive' Lady Warwick once more. The Prince felt sure that if the two women were to work together on some charitable venture, they would soon become good friends.

'The end of your beautiful letter touched me more than anything,' he continued, 'but how can you, my loved one, imagine that I should withdraw my friendship from you? On the contrary I mean to befriend you more than ever, and you cannot prevent my giving you the same love as the friendship I have always felt for you.

'Certainly the Princess has been an angel of goodness throughout all this, but then she is a Lady, and never could do anything that was mean or small.

'Though our interests, as you have often said, lie apart, still we have that sentimental feeling of affinity which cannot be eradicated by time . . .'
⁴¹

Princess Alexandra's answer, if less fulsome, was no less reassuring. After all; she could afford to be magnanimous now. But she was not quite as magnanimous as her husband imagined. Alexandra was never the 'angel of goodness' of popular legend. To forgive – or to appear to forgive – her husband's ex-mistress was one thing; to work hand-in-
hand with her on some project, no matter how charitable, was quite another. 'In case you should hear from Lady Warwick asking you to become President of a Charity of hers, refuse it,' wrote Prince George, Duke of York, to his wife. 'Motherdear has done so and wishes you to do the same.'
⁴²

Yet, according to Lady Warwick, it was from Princess Alexandra that she received 'a small crucifix wrapt in a piece of paper on which was written these words: "From one who has suffered much and forgives all." '
⁴³

Part Three

'BELOVED ALICE'

10

The Hon. Mrs George Keppel

F
OR THE
British monarchy, the summer of 1897 was particularly brilliant. On 20 June that year Queen Victoria celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of her accession, her Diamond Jubilee. Although, in private, the Prince of Wales was sometimes heard to grumble about the inordinate length of time he was being kept waiting for the throne, he actually took an immense pride in the span, success and splendour of his mother's reign. With his taste for pageantry, the Prince was determined that the Jubilee celebrations should be as memorable as possible.

He heartily agreed with the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, that the occasion should be in the nature of a festival of empire. Whereas Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee, ten years before, had been marked by a mustering of European royalty, her Diamond Jubilee was designed to be an imperial fanfare, a manifestation of Britain's imperial power. Colonial prime ministers, rather than Continental crowned heads, would be the principal guests. And although Bertie did not share his mother's aversion to what she called 'the Royal Mob' (the thought of all those kings and emperors strutting about Buckingham Palace was more than the seventy-eight-year-old Queen could bear) he was delighted to know that his nephew, the braggardly Kaiser Wilhelm II, would not be present.

'Sir Arthur Bigge may tell the Prince of Wales,' wrote Queen Victoria to her private secretary early that year, 'that there is
not
the slightest fear of the Queen's giving way about the Emperor William's coming here in June. It would
never
do . . .'
¹

There was, though, no shortage of lesser royals. Princes and princesses from every court in Europe came swarming into London. 'Buckingham Palace is like a beehive,' reported Bertie's sister Vicky, the Empress Frederick, 'the place is so crammed we do not see very
much of each other. '
²
And as the Queen resolutely refused to be inconvenienced for the sake of these foreign royals, it fell to the Prince of Wales to see that they were suitably entertained. He was no less responsible for the visiting prime ministers. The Prince even arranged for Daisy Warwick – with whom he had not, at that stage, yet ended his affair – to invite the colonial prime ministers to Warwick Castle. Seeing it as an opportunity to do something for the great imperial ideal, Daisy was only too delighted to oblige. The occasion was not a success. Of the eleven premiers then in Britain, only three turned up. Perhaps these less worldly colonials did not approve of the idea of being entertained by the Prince of Wales's mistress.

Into the preparations for the various Jubilee events the Prince flung himself with gusto. His Royal Highness, noted one official, 'loved detail, no matter how small'
³
and there was no aspect of the celebrations, be it orders of precedence or stands for school-children, with which he did not concern himself. His energy, his enthusiasm, his attention to minutiae astonished those who had hitherto regarded him purely as a sybarite.

Nothing could more impressively have illustrated both Queen Victoria's position as head of a great imperial family and Britain's policy of 'splendid isolation' than the Queen's Jubilee procession through the streets of London on 22 June 1897. With the Princess of Wales sitting in the carriage opposite her and the Prince, in a field-marshal's uniform, riding his horse alongside, Queen Victoria processed through the streets in the midst of a swaggering parade of troops drawn from every quarter of her great empire. The watching crowds had never seen such a variety of races and peoples. While Alexandra leaned forward, every now and then, to press the Queen's hand, Bertie would bend down to draw her attention to this or that point of interest along the way. It was, in fact, at his suggestion that the Queen drove through the poorer districts south of the Thames as well as along the great processional ways.

'No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets . . .' wrote the gratified Queen. 'The crowds were quite indescribable, and their enthusiasm truly marvellous and deeply touching. The cheering was quite deafening, and every face seemed to be filled with real joy.'
⁴

Climax of this triumphant procession was the short open-air service of thanksgiving conducted on the steps of St Paul's Cathedral, with the lame old Queen remaining firmly in her carriage. 'The scene in front of St Paul's was most impressive,' reported the Empress
Frederick, 'and when the bells pealed out from the dark old Cathedral, and the cheers rang out again, and the sun shone on all the glitter of the escort and carriages and the countless spectators, it was as fine a sight as you could wish to see.'
⁵

And who had better reason to bask in any reflected glory than the heir to all this magnificence – the Prince of Wales?

Unlike Queen Victoria, who kept her public appearances to a minimum, the Prince revelled in all the activities of Jubilee year. He attended the great naval review where 173 warships, the largest battle fleet that had ever been assembled in peacetime, loomed like great grey castles on the sparkling waters of the Solent. Wearing the uniform of Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller of Malta, he danced at the Duchess of Devonshire's costume ball. To his immense gratification, his horse Persimmon, which had won the Derby the year before, won the Ascot Gold Cup that summer. His racing earnings amounted to over £15,000 in 1897 and he was placed second on the list of winning owners.

Between the luncheons, dinners, garden parties, soirées and balls, the Prince was able to wedge the occasional less ephemeral activity, such as the summoning of a committee to establish (with Lady Warwick's encouragement) the 'Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund'. Princess Alexandra, too, felt compelled to mark the Jubilee by some philanthropic gesture; or rather, by some impulsive act of generosity. She suggested to the Lord Mayor of London that a fund be opened to provide a meal 'for the poorest of the poor in the slums of London'.
⁶
To launch this typical scheme of Victorian charity, the Princess enclosed a sizeable donation. For some reason or other, the appeal did not catch on. Only by the intervention of the rich tea-merchant, Thomas Lipton (who was never averse to currying a little royal favour) was the Princess's project saved from abandonment: Lipton wrote out a hefty cheque to bring the sum up to the required amount.