Prince Eddy and the Homosexual Underworld

by Theo Aronson

  The fact that Prince Eddy was later to profess himself in love with a couple of women and that he would eventually become engaged to be married, does not prove that he was not homosexual. Still less does it prove that he would never have visited a homosexual pub or brothel. Love and sex were then two very different things: love was often cerebral, romantic, poetic, expressed in fan language, piano duets, scented billets-doux. Sex was something altogether more robust. In fact, love was often regarded as the enemy of lust. The average Victorian aristocratic husband slept with his wife for reasons of procreation but enjoyed sex with other men’s wives, mistresses, servant girls, prostitutes or, if so inclined, rent boys. For a highly sexed young man, whether homosexual or not, the sort of quick, anonymous, uncomplicated sex that can be enjoyed in parks or public lavatories, can be very convenient. It can also prove very addictive.

  For Prince Eddy to have earned his reputation for debauchery, in an age when upper-class male licentiousness was regarded as the norm (and when not even his sexually insatiable father was regarded as dissipated) can only mean that his sexual activity was in some way unusual. There would have been nothing reprehensible about a young unmarried prince sowing a few wild oats. Prince Eddy must have been committing dark and different sins. When Princess Alexandra, who had always imagined him to be such a good boy, began to describe him as ‘a naughty, bad boy’,9 it is unlikely that she was ever told exactly what form his naughtiness and badness was taking. For everything seems to indicate that the love – or lust – in which Prince Eddy was indulging was the love which, in high Victorian Britain, dared not speak its name.

  Homosexuality was nothing new in the British royal family. Indeed, as far back as the Norman Conquest, two of William the Conqueror’s sons, William Rufus and Robert, Duke of Normandy, were being accused of homosexual practices. While Duke Robert was apparently bisexual – having developed a taste for his own sex during the Crusades – his elder brother William, afterwards King William II or the Red King, was undoubtedly homosexual. Contemporary witnesses professed themselves shocked at the ‘foulest practices of Sodom’ which characterized William II’s court.10 ‘Vices before unknown, the vices of the East, the special sin, as Englishmen then deemed it of the Norman, were rife among them,’ wrote a later historian. ‘And deepest of all in guilt was the Red King himself.’ No one was surprised when the tower under which William II was buried crumbled and fell. With ‘so foul a corpse’ beneath it, what else could one expect?11

  The next undeniably homosexual monarch was King Edward II, who reigned in the early fourteenth century. To the increasing consternation of his Queen and her entourage, Edward II made no secret of his sexual preferences; chief among his many favourites was the humbly born Piers Gaveston. Eventually, in 1327, at the instigation of the Queen and her lover, the King was murdered while being held prisoner in Berkeley Castle. His murderers had obviously given careful consideration to the method by which he should be done to death: Edward II was killed by having a burning stake thrust up his anus.

  The most celebrated homosexual monarch was King James I, who succeeded Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. ‘Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen’ was a quip that was soon going the rounds. ‘The King is wonderous passionate,’ claimed one member of the court, ‘a lover of his favourites beyond the love of men to women. He is the chastest prince for women that ever was, for he would often swear that he never kissed any other woman than his own queen. I never yet saw any fond husband make so much or so great dalliance over his beautiful spouse as I have seen King James over his favourites …’12

  Ambitious courtiers, anxious to win the King’s favour and failing to do so by offering their own sons or grandsons, would hire troops of handsome young urchins whom they would proceed to have washed, powdered, perfumed and dressed in fine clothes before parading them in front of the monarch. The ‘mustering of minions’ they called it. But James I had no difficulty in mustering his own minions. He had innumerable favourites, the greatest of whom was the young George Villiers, whom he created Duke of Buckingham. Although both men were husbands and fathers, they behaved, even in public, like lovers. ‘In wanton looks and wanton gestures they exceeded any part of womankind,’ wrote one astonished observer. Their love letters were extremely outspoken. Sometimes the King would address Buckingham as ‘my sweet child and wife’ and sign himself ‘Thy dear dad and husband’; at other times, switching roles, he referred to himself as Buckingham’s wife. ‘I desire to live in the world for your sake, and I would rather live banished in any part of the world with you’, James I once declared, ‘than live a sorrow widow-life without you.’13

  The sexual preferences of King William III, who reigned jointly with Queen Mary II from the time of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, were much less obvious. William III had none of James I’s lust for life: he was a cheerless man, unattractive, abstemious, impassive. ‘He had no vice but of one sort in which he was very cautious and secret,’ claimed one of his contemporaries, Bishop Gilbert Burnet.14 The only occasions on which William III looked anything other than morose was when he was out hunting with a party of attractive young men. Usually so censorious, he would forgive these roistering blades any indiscretions.

  In 1697 William III’s partiality for male companionship caused an open scandal. For some years his close relationship with Hans Willem Bentinck who, as a young man, had accompanied William III to Britain from his native Holland, and whom the King had created Earl of Portland, had been showing signs of wear. For one thing, Bentinck was getting a bit old and staid for the King’s taste; for another, his place in William III’s affections had been taken by a much younger man, the handsome and swashbuckling Arnold Joost van Keppel. The entertaining Keppel had risen, with spectacular rapidity, from page to secretary, to Gentleman of the Bedchamber, to inseparable companion. By now he had been created Earl of Albemarle. Keppel, noted one observer, was ‘King William’s closest companion in all his diversions and pleasures, entrusted at last with affairs of the greatest consequence, had a great influence on the King; is beautiful in his person, open and free in his conversation, very expensive in his manner of living’.15

  Not unnaturally, Bentinck was violently jealous of Keppel’s position. In fact, on one occasion, the King was obliged to separate the two courtiers as they started hitting out at each other. Unable to bear the situation any longer, Bentinck resigned his offices and left the court. William III begged him to return. In a series of anguished letters, Bentinck gave the King the reasons for his decision. He also told him about the ‘malicious gossip’ concerning William III’s relationship with Keppel that was going the rounds of the army. The King was appalled. But he was not so appalled as to break with Keppel. Bentinck had to admit defeat.

  In no time, the story of this emotional triangle was being gleefully bandied about; with each telling it became more risqué. Few doubted that the homosexual allusions in Vanbrugh’s new comedy, The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, were aimed at the court. Whether William III’s passionate friendships with Bentinck and Keppel actually manifested themselves in sexual terms is uncertain but there were few of his contemporaries who did not believe that the King belonged to what the Duchess of Orleans called ‘the brotherhood of the château de derrière’.16

  But there is no need to look so far back for evidences of homosexuality at the British court. Throughout these later years of her reign, Queen Victoria was surrounded by homosexual or bisexual personalities. The list included the notorious Lord Ronald Gower, Lord in Waiting; Roden Noel, Groom of the Privy Chamber; Lord Henry Somerset, Comptroller of the Royal Household; Sir Horace Farquhar, financial adviser to the royal family and, under Edward VII, Master of the Household; Reginald Brett, afterwards Viscount Esher who, as Secretary to the Office of Works, organized Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee and who subsequently became one of the powers of Edward VII’s court; Alick Yorke, the flamboyant member of the Household who produced the amateur theatricals and who kept the Queen in ‘fits of la
ughter’ with his ‘killingly funny stories’. But not always. It was apparently to Alick Yorke that the Queen, on forcing him to repeat an improper story, made the withering remark, ‘We are not amused.’17

  One of Queen Victoria’s own sons-in-law, the Marquess of Lorne, afterwards Duke of Argyll, husband of her ‘artistic’ daughter Princess Louise and at one time Governor General of Canada, was apparently homosexual. He was a frequent guest at the ‘masculine entertainments’ given by his uncle, Lord Ronald Gower, and he was implicated in a homosexual scandal concerning the theft of the Irish crown jewels from Dublin Castle. The Royal Commission, appointed to examine the theft, was hastily adjourned, never to meet again, on hearing of the Duke of Argyll’s possible involvement. It has been claimed that Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, was obliged to brick up the door that led directly from their apartments in Kensington Palace into Hyde Park, in an effort to stop her husband’s nightly prowlings in search of soliciting guardsmen.

  In even closer contact with Prince Eddy would have been a certain equerry to his father, the Prince of Wales. Young George Merrill, the working-class boy who was to become the lover of Edward Carpenter, has a story to tell about his meeting with this unnamed equerry.

  ‘One day I was at the station there,’ he later told Carpenter, ‘and the Prince of Wales … was in the station just going off to Tranby Croft on a visit with some of his suite. Of course, they were all very smart with frock-coats and tall hats and flowers in their button-holes; but one of them was a very good-looking fellow – real nice and kind-looking – and only about 26 or 7. And he got into the last carriage just where I was standing on the platform outside, and as soon as he got in he put his head out of the window and made a movement to me to speak to him; and directly I went up he said quite sharp – “businesslike” – “Where will you be this evening at nine o’clock?” And I said “Here”, and he said “All right. Mind you come.” And the train went off. And in the evening he came all right – only in a tweed suit and cap. Oh! he was nice – such a real gentleman and such a sweet voice. And we walked along by the river, and sat on a seat under the trees, and he had brought some lovely grapes for us to eat.

  ‘And after that we met several evenings in the same way.’18

  The equerry was anxious for Merrill to come to London to stay with him but Merrill lost his address. In any case, he would have been too shy and too conscious of his humble birth to take advantage of the invitation. Would this bold equerry, in turn, one wonders, have been too conscious of the gulf between Prince Eddy and himself to risk dropping a hint about his own sexual tastes?

  Another of the Prince of Wales’s equerries was, of course, Lord Arthur Somerset. As Extra Equerry and Superintendent of the Stables, he would have been often in contact with Prince Eddy. But although Somerset was to deny that he had ever encouraged Prince Eddy’s alleged forays into London’s homosexual underworld, the revelation of his own forays were to be responsible for the spread of the allegations.

  By the beginning of 1889, the Prince of Wales was in despair about his eldest son. Prince Eddy seemed to care for nothing other than clothes and those unspecified dissipations. It was true that, at the same age, the Prince of Wales had been equally dedicated to dress and debauchery but at least he had always carried out his public duties with great flair. Prince Eddy, on similar occasions, was hopeless. When he went to Dublin to be made a Knight of the Order of St Patrick, the ceremony at Dublin Castle was acutely embarrassing. The Viceroy, Lord Londonderry, who was initiating the Prince into the Order, was astonished at the young man’s ignorance about procedure. The Viceroy’s loudly hissed commands – ‘Get up!’, ‘Kneel down!’, ‘Get up!’ – could be distinctly heard throughout the hall.19

  Equally embarrassing were the Prince’s conversational faux pas. Once, at dinner, he asked Lord Spencer, Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords, if he was a Tory. One can appreciate why the Prince of Wales was so often driven to growl, ‘Eddy, you are a damned fool!’20

  One of the troubles was that Prince Eddy simply did not have enough self-confidence to break through the deference with which, as a member of the royal family, he was invariably treated. Except in the company of his mother and sisters, he was tongue-tied. Conversation with him tended to be stilted and unnatural; only very rarely did he feel relaxed enough to exercise a certain quiet charm.

  His worth – and that of the rest of the royal family – was brought into question during the parliamentary session of 1889. Prince Eddy’s oldest, and plainest, sister, Princess Louise, was about to escape her mother’s smothering possessiveness by marrying one of her father’s sporting companions, Viscount Duff, who was soon to be created Duke of Fife. Almost twice as old as his bride-to-be, parsimonious and ill-mannered, Macduff was gratifyingly rich. This did not prevent Queen Victoria from using the impending marriage to ask the House of Commons for extra provision to be made for Prince Eddy and Princess Louise. The matter was hotly debated, with the maverick Henry Labouchere (whom Joseph Chamberlain dubbed ‘the Nihilist of English politics’21) questioning the cost of the monarchy and Gladstone making a spirited speech in its defence. The matter was settled in the time-honoured way by the appointment of a Royal Commission to look into future royal financing, and by the eventual passing of the Prince of Wales’s Children’s Bill, whereby an annual sum of £36,000 was assigned to the Prince of Wales in trust for his children.

  Prince Eddy’s approach to his military career remained as half-hearted as ever. Soldiering never seemed to prevent him from spending August and September in Scotland, from accompanying his adored mother on her prolonged visits to her native Denmark or from slipping out from Marlborough House to yield to the temptations of London’s night life.

  The Prince of Wales, who considered his son’s military career to be ‘simply a waste of time’, had at one stage appealed to the Duke of Cambridge for advice. As tactfully as possible, the gruff old Commander-in-Chief, who had also heard something of Prince Eddy’s sexual adventuring, put forward his proposals. ‘You were kind enough to ask my opinion the other day as regards the best course to be adopted, from a general point of view, for Eddy’s future plans,’ he wrote, ‘and I therefore now, after full consideration, think it well to point out to you that I would consider it would be for his advantage to leave the 10th Hussars … The Head Quarters of the Regiment will soon move to Hounslow for London duties, and I do not think that this will be a desirable station at present for so young and inexperienced a man, who would be surrounded by temptations of every description, which it requires great firmness of character to resist … I would suggest his being sent for a time abroad, to a Garrison Town like Gibraltar, where his whole time and attention would reasonably be expected to be devoted to military duties … Sir Arthur Hardinge, the present Governor, happens to be well known to the Queen, as also to yourself and Alix, and he could receive such personal instructions from you, regarding your intentions and wishes, as you might think desirable, and you would have perfect confidence in his carrying them out most conscientiously … Great interests are involved in Eddy’s future career, and certain sacrifices must be made to attain the objects in view to teach him and accustom him to habits of discipline and the knowledge of the business which he can better attain in the manner proposed than in any other way that presents itself to my mind.’22

  The Duke of Cambridge’s advice was not followed. Prince Eddy remained with the 10th Hussars in their London and other home postings. Although the Prince of Wales would have been ready enough to send his son abroad, Princess Alexandra was not. She firmly believed that the closer Prince Eddy was kept to Marlborough House, the more chance there would be of her influencing his behaviour. But she was fighting a losing battle. Eventually, rumours of the Prince’s debaucheries reached even the normally inaccessible ears of his grandmother, Queen Victoria. ‘I ask you again,’ wailed Sir Francis Knollys, the Prince of Wales’s private secretary, to Sir Henry Ponsonby, the Queen’s private secretary, ‘wh
o is it tells the Queen these things?’23

  In the end, even Princess Alexandra was forced to agree that her son should be removed from the temptations of London, if only for a while. It was decided that he should be sent to India for six months. The Prince and Princess of Wales were due to join what Queen Victoria disparagingly referred to as ‘the Royal Mob’ at a family wedding in Athens towards the end of October 1889. Prince Eddy would accompany them and, at the end of that month, set sail from Port Said for India.

  Nothing could have been more fortuitous. By the time Lord Arthur Somerset was discovered to have been a visitor to the Cleveland Street brothel, plans for Prince Eddy’s journey were well under way. And by the time the Prince’s own name was being mentioned in connection with the affair, he was safely in India.

  PART FOUR

  The Scandal

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘My Lord Gomorrah’

  Badminton House, the palatial home of the 8th Duke of Beaufort in the quiet Gloucestershire countryside, where the Somerset family had lived for almost three centuries, seemed an unlikely springboard for the sexually unorthodox career of Lord Arthur Somerset. But appearances, in this case, were deceptive. The current generation of Somersets were well known for their sexual aberrations. The 8th Duke was a notorious womanizer with a marked taste for what was delicately described as ‘unripe fruit’: prepubescent girls supplied to him by the likes of those celebrated late Victorian procuresses, Madame Marie and Mrs Jeffries.