Edward VII Read online

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  To my daughters, Rose and Alice, with love

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank the following for their help in the preparation of this book: the Hallward Library, University of Nottingham; Cambridge University Library; Charlie Viney at the Viney Agency; Charlie Spicer and April Osborn at St. Martin’s Press; Kim Lewis; the Victoria and Albert Museum; Getty Images; the Mary Evans Picture Library; Curtis Brown for permission to quote from The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West; the Gardens of Easton Lodge Preservation Trust; and finally, my husband and daughters for their support, tact, and forbearance while I completed this book. There are no words apart from thank you, with all my heart.

  INTRODUCTION

  As guests thronged into Westminster Abbey to take their appointed places for the coronation of King Edward VII on August 9, 1902, they were greeted by a bizarre spectacle. This was a pew reserved for “the King’s special ladies, whose rank did not automatically entitle them to a place in the Abbey,” and christened “the King’s loose box”1 by one of the deputy marshals, James Lindsay, Earl of Crawford.

  The term “loose box,” derived from horse racing, was appropriate enough, although the pew was more like a winner’s enclosure than a loose box. “Bertie,” as the king was fondly known, doubtless regarded the coronation as another opportunity to display his thoroughbred fillies and thank them for their years of loyal service. But some guests were left shocked and appalled by the sheer effrontery of inviting the royal concubines to the coronation.

  “It was the one discordant note in the abbey,” wrote one of Queen Alexandra’s ladies-in-waiting. “It did rather put my teeth on edge; there was ‘La Favorita’ [Alice Keppel] of course in the best place, Mrs Ronnie Greville, Lady Sarah Wilson [née Spencer-Churchill, the first woman war correspondent who had covered the Boer War for the Daily Mail], Lady Feodorovna ‘Feo’ Sturt [daughter of the Earl of Hardwicke], Mrs Arthur Paget [Minnie Stevens, the Anglo-American society hostess], & that ilk.”2 This ilk also included Lillie Langtry, Sarah Bernhardt, Jennie Churchill with her sister, Leonie, Sophia, Countess of Torby, Lady Albemarle (Alice Keppel’s mother-in-law), and Princess Daisy of Pless, daughter of Patsy Cornwallis and quite possibly the daughter of Bertie, too. Next to Alice sat Baroness Olga de Meyer, whom Bertie believed was his natural daughter by the Duchess di Caracciolo, although Olga’s paternity was the subject of much speculation.

  The most prominent men and women in the land witnessed the eighty-year-old Archbishop of Canterbury unsteadily lower the imperial crown onto the head of Edward VII, in the presence of the king’s past and present lovers. If you can tell a man by the company he keeps, then these ladies tell us everything we want to know about the character of Edward VII, henceforth referred to as “Bertie.”

  Charming and dissolute, Bertie admired beautiful, spirited women who were good sports, in and out of bed. Bertie loved smart women who sparkled in his company, but he “had a horror of highbrows, particularly writers!”3 according to his lover Daisy, Countess of Warwick.

  The women Bertie loved had one thing in common: they were nothing like his mother, Queen Victoria. Warm, generous, lively, Bertie’s women were the polar opposite of the reclusive “Widow of Windsor.” Queen Victoria’s pathological mourning for her husband, Prince Albert, who died in 1861, might have been endurable if young Bertie had ever felt that his mother loved him. But Victoria seems to have hated her oldest son from birth, and later, after learning of his first affair, wrote that “I never can or shall look at him again without a shudder.”4 No wonder the welcoming arms of any woman, from countess to courtesan, were attractive, after the Queen’s froideur.

  Bertie also possessed a ruthless streak. He was a dangerous man to cross. “Bertie never forgives,” as one companion observed after a particularly difficult episode. For all those women who sat in the king’s loose box, and the patient Princess Alexandra, or “Alix,” who stood by him for all those years and eventually became his queen, there were also victims. These included a lonely woman who died in exile, another confined to a madhouse, and a young widow who was willfully cast aside after falling pregnant. Bertie had no scruples in destroying those who betrayed or offended him.

  One wonders what the atmosphere must have been like in the loose box. Did it bristle with a spirit of competition, or, by this stage in Bertie’s life, was there a spirit of female solidarity in the harem? Every one of those women knew that Alexandra, the patient Danish princess who had been married to Bertie since 1863, was the queen in every sense. Not a woman there would have deluded herself that she could have displaced Alix; these were the days when royal mistresses were tolerated, even encouraged; it was practically a court rank in itself. No heir to the throne would have stepped aside to divorce and remarry; it would be more than thirty years before Edward VIII abdicated in order to marry “the woman he loved.” Bertie was king by divine right and his marriage was sacrosanct, no matter how many dalliances and flirtations he indulged in. It was Alix, when Bertie died, who declared, “But he loved me the best!”5 For the ladies of the loose box, becoming Bertie’s mistress allowed them to revel in a little reflected glory before, inevitably, he lost interest and another woman took their place.

  Alix was a woman for whom the description “long-suffering wife” might have been invented. Alix endured Bertie’s endless indiscretions from the earliest days of their marriage, when he went off to Paris while she was experiencing a difficult first pregnancy. As Bertie’s indiscretions became common knowledge, Alix gained in popularity and adoration. “The Princess of Wales floated through the ballroom like a vision from fairyland,”6 noted one biographer. “The county idolised her, so beautiful, so pure, so badly-treated. In the public imagination she combined the appeal of Cinderella and Andromeda. Marvelously dressed, radiant, gracious, pouring forth smiles—who could fault this paragon?”7 The fact that Alix was called “the Princess of Hearts” makes it easy to draw comparisons with the late Princess Diana, but there was to be no divorce for Alix. She stayed with Bertie and took some consolation in a platonic romance with an adoring courtier, Oliver Montagu.

  Meanwhile, Bertie, larger than life with king-sized appetites, conducted his liaisons against the glittering backdrop of London society, the Continent, and the stately homes of England, where a strict code of honor insulated the nighttime corridor creepers from scandal. In Paris, Bertie was a regular at the Moulin Rouge music hall, where his nickname was “Kingy!” and the dancer “La Goulue” yelled to him from the stage, “Oi, Wales! Are you goin’ to pay for my champagne?”8

  Much of Bertie’s behavior seems born from boredom; denied the throne, as Queen Victoria resolutely refused to abdicate, Bertie was stuck with the path in life that fate had dictated for him. He was faced with two options: to bow to convention or to live life by his own rules. And those rules were not so very different from those of other upper-class men in the late nineteenth century. As Ani
ta Leslie, author of Edwardians in Love, commented, it is hard to dislike Bertie. “After all, he merely wanted to go to bed with a lot of women and took advantage of unparalleled opportunities. Would many men act differently if put in his place?”9

  As well as his affairs with society ladies, Bertie began frequenting brothels early in his marriage. And in defense of Bertie, brothel-going was common for a man of Bertie’s class. During the Victorian period, when “respectable” women were not sexually available until marriage, and not much afterward, prostitutes were the ideal solution. Either that or priapic husbands took out their frustration on the servants. Randolph Churchill once wrote to his wife, Jennie, as friends of theirs were facing divorce proceedings after the husband had been caught dallying with the staff, “Tell Mary from me that she is a fool not to forgive Billy. What does one occasional cook or housemaid matter?”10 In his later years, Bertie would become an honored guest at Le Chabanais, a palatial bordello known as the best “house” in Paris. It was here that the aging Bertie indulged in champagne baths in a copper tub, and entertained his female companions on a specially designed siège d’amour, or “love seat,” an extraordinary contraption with footholds, padded seats, and stirrups, which lent a somewhat obstetric air to the proceedings. A surreal object, the love seat is certainly a testament to the cabinetmaker’s art, and a lasting memorial to Bertie’s devotion to duty in the lists of love.

  I first had the idea for Edward VII: The Prince of Wales and the Women He Loved while talking with my agent about Bertie’s notorious reputation as a womanizer and bon viveur. While Bertie certainly had a “type”—usually a curvaceous, lively society hostess, at home in the saddle and in bed—his lovers also embraced a wide field of occupations: There was Lillie Langtry, who went from artists’ model to actress and became the first public mistress of the Prince of Wales. Bertie lavished a fortune on Lillie, and once told her that “I spent enough on you to buy a battleship!” to which the lively Lillie retorted: “And you’ve spent enough in me to launch one!”11 And Frances “Daisy” Brooke, later Countess of Warwick, the extravagant socialite who embraced socialism and stood for Parliament as a Labour party candidate in 1923. And then, as if to prove that Bertie did not have a “type” after all, came the romance with French actress Sarah Bernhardt, celebrated for her decadent appeal and opium habit, and by total contrast the starchy Agnes Keyser, who founded a hospital for army officers. As Bertie was a serial polygamist, many of these affairs overlapped. Bertie seemed to be able to juggle his women without the women in question taking offense, an enviable state. In fact, I doubt if even Bertie could always keep track of his affairs, and in many cases it was his sentimental side, his habit of writing romantic billets doux to his women, that led to more than one scandal. So Edward VII does not claim to be an exhaustive list of Bertie’s lovers. Instead, I have selected the most outstanding and interesting lives to show “aspects” of Bertie.

  Some of the women in Bertie’s life had more to say for themselves than others. I have concentrated on the regiment of women who formed Bertie’s mistresses in chief: Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick, and Alice Keppel, his last serious mistress and ancestress of Camilla Parker Bowles, former mistress, now wife, of the Prince of Wales.

  And then there is Jennie Churchill, over whom a question mark always hovers. Jennie was too shrewd to be explicit about their relationship, despite having had over two hundred lovers. Jennie Churchill, née Jerome, was the unhappy wife of Sir Randolph Churchill, a spectacular example of the Victorian cad. Raven-haired, panther-eyed, and smart as a whip, Jennie was an immediate hit with Bertie when they were first introduced at the royal yacht club in Cowes, and following her marriage to Randolph, Bertie’s carriage was regularly spotted outside their London home.

  Many of Bertie’s established romances with society women were played out against the backdrop of the country house weekend. It was this remarkable institution that allowed Bertie and his friends to conduct passionate affairs with impunity, away from the prying eyes of the gutter press and servants who might betray their aristocratic employers for a few guineas. While Bertie might enjoy brief afternoon trysts in the grand houses of Belgravia, the only sign of his presence being the one-horse brougham drawn up outside, it was the smiling and beautiful countryside that offered a safe environment where he could take his pleasures at a leisurely pace. In a country house, Bertie’s lady of the moment was also insulated against the vulgar gaze. A secluded setting offered ample opportunities for discreet companionship without the need to risk her reputation; in those days, society women would never dare be caught out at a restaurant or even—the very idea—a hotel!

  The country house weekend was properly known as a “Saturday to Monday.” The term “weekend,” coined only in the late 1880s, was regarded as unspeakably vulgar, as it suggested one was involved in “trade,” and had to work for a living and hurry back to London on Sunday night. “Saturday to Monday,” on the other hand, emphasized the fact that Bertie’s carefree companions had comfortable private incomes. While field sports constituted the alleged attraction, with the great landed estates offering superb opportunities for hunting, shooting, and fishing, sporting activity of a somewhat different nature was the order of the day. In a country house, nestling deep among the rolling acres, scandalous flings could be flung with impunity. Discretion was assured for all parties, as long as one remembered the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not get found out. The consequences of discovery, ranging from the vilification of the divorce court to exile and death, were too ghastly to contemplate. In every generation, one or two unfortunate individuals were offered up who suffered such public annihilation. Lady Harriet Mordaunt, who ended her days in a lunatic asylum, was one; Edith Beresford, who lost custody of her children, another. Women, who had the most to lose when their “honor” was gone, were generally the victims. One unfortunate wife, Lady Somerset, who surprised her husband in bed with another man, found that she became a pariah for bringing him into disrepute.

  A typical Saturday to Monday took place in the early autumn, when the shooting season opened. Eager “guns,” having already blasted away at Scottish grouse from the glorious August 12 onward, were ready to shoot partridge from September 1 and pheasant from the start of October, while the fox-hunting season started in earnest from November 1. In Bertie’s later years, the Prince of Wales would appear in family photographs like a kind of human trophy, seated at the heart of a group of tweedy men and elaborately dressed women. Landed families loved nothing better than to bag a visit from Bertie. Despite the fact that having him to stay proved ruinously expensive, his presence guaranteed the making of an ambitious socialite or crowned the existing achievements of a great landowner. No price was too great for such an honor, and the fact that Bertie was sleeping with the hostess was discreetly overlooked. It was a brave, even foolhardy man who intervened between his own wife or mistress and Bertie.

  The Saturday to Monday had its own distinctive routine. On Saturday afternoon, between twenty and forty guests would disembark from the London train at the local railway station, to be met by carriages for the ladies, and the station bus, with its fusty smell and rattling windows, for the gentlemen. Daisy Warwick, Bertie’s mistress for nine years, built a little station for the royal train near her Easton Lodge estate in Essex, so that Bertie could reach her all the sooner.

  Upon arrival, the guests would be conducted upstairs to their luxurious quarters, their cases carried up and unpacked by the servants of the house, or by their own maids and valets if these had traveled up from London with the party. These servants would be received below stairs in the servants’ hall with a corresponding amount of ritual.

  Once changed, the ladies into tea gowns and the gentlemen into their country tweeds, the guests descended to the drawing room for tea. Tea in Daisy Warwick’s elegant gold and white drawing room was always particularly impressive, an elaborate spread of muffins, crumpets, cakes, and scones with jam and cream. No formal introductions were
made over tea, as none were necessary. It was assumed that all the guests, drawn from the narrow top drawer of London society, were already acquainted. Everyone who mattered knew everyone else through the byzantine network of family links, the royal court, public school, Oxford and Cambridge, and the army. But it was at tea that another form of connection was established, as men scanned the drawing room for ladies whom they might “amuse” over the course of the weekend, if the lady seemed interested. Like every other activity in Edwardian England, the licensed promiscuity of the country house weekend was governed by a strict social code. If married couples occasionally got a little mixed up on these excursions, discretion was the order of the day. These men and women were so assured, so certain of their position in society that they would never violate appearances or offend decorum. The penalty for such a blunder was ostracism for life.

  As one French writer observed, scandal was deeply unusual in England. Unlike Paris, where adulterous affairs were avenged with pistols at dawn in the Bois du Boulogne, there was no need for such desperate measures in England. “The dominating idea is not the cultivation of virtue, but the prevention of scandal” wrote “An Outsider.” “London society can visit any grave offence against it with penalties as severe as the bullet of a pistol or the thrust of a rapier.”12

  While men could do as they liked, as always, women were not supposed to embark on an affair until they were married and had provided their husbands with an heir and a spare. It was the task of the hostess to know who the married lovers were and place them in adjacent bedrooms, and to ensure that the current mistress of the Prince of Wales was never too far from the royal suite. To avoid confusion, and aid navigation, every bedroom door bore a little brass frame with the guest’s name written on a card within it.