Ever since the party had arrived in India, Sporting Joe had been writing home to Edith, describing humorous incidents on the tour, and always addressing his wife as “My darling” and concluding “Your most affectionate Joe.”7 Despite his hell-raising lifestyle, Sporting Joe apparently adored Edith and was very much in love with her. They had two daughters, but Sporting Joe was still waiting for the all-important male heir to carry on the title. Edith’s replies were few and far between, and it became a standing joke of the India trip that, when the mailbag arrived, there was a letter for everyone apart from Sporting Joe.
The reason for this soon became obvious. Within hours of Sporting Joe writing an affectionate letter home, mentioning sadly that he had received only five letters from Edith in as many months, a letter arrived. Sporting Joe opened it with excitement, as his friends gently mocked him. But within seconds of opening the letter, all the color drained from his face. Edith had written to Sporting Joe that she intended to leave him and elope with Lord Blandford, son and heir of the Duke of Marlborough, and brother of Bertie’s great friend Randolph Churchill.8
While Sporting Joe had been traveling with Bertie in India, Edith had been carrying on an affair with Lord Blandford. Within days of her husband’s departure, Edith had invited Lord Blandford to come and stay with her at Packington Hall, for the fox-hunting season. Lord Blandford moved his hunters to a nearby livery stable and rented a house in the village. Every night, Lord Blandford visited Edith at Packington Hall, leaving footprints in the snow as he headed for a back door to which Lady Edith had given him a key.9 Lord Blandford made no attempt to cover his tracks and soon everyone knew about the affair: the servants, the grooms, and the entire village. Edith’s sisters, fearing for their own position in society, were on the point of informing their brother, Colonel Williams, about Edith’s bad behavior, but before they could do so, the colonel was summoned home as his wife was critically ill.10
When Sporting Joe told Bertie and his friends that Edith was planning to elope with “that Churchill cad!”11 Bertie advised him to go home at once and resolve matters. Sporting Joe climbed into a howdah and vanished in the direction of the nearest railhead. As Anita Leslie says, “this was the last the royal party saw of him and there is nothing more melancholy, majestic and uncompromising than the hind view of an elephant.”12 “He has gone home broken-hearted at the disgrace,” wrote Lord Carrington, “and the misery it all entails is terrific.”13
Sporting Joe began his miserable five-week journey back to England, during which his anger grew. He was totally out of his depth. Sporting Joe was a man’s man, who “drank hard and gambled away his money and was more popular with men than women.”14 He was one of the greatest huntsmen of his generation, who could fly his horse over the highest fences by sheer technique, a heavyweight who “could ride with hands of gossamer.”15 Alas, Sporting Joe did not possess the same lightness of touch when it came to women. “Certainly the way he had with a horse was not his way with a woman.”16 In short, Sporting Joe loved Edith, in his way, but could not understand what would drive a nervous, insecure woman, four years his senior, into an affair with another man, let alone Lord Blandford. For all his “intelligence, wit and charming voice,” Blandford was Sporting Joe’s equal in the hell-raising stakes, an attention-seeking self-dramatist said by some to be touched with the reputed Marlborough madness.17 Humiliated and angry, Sporting Joe wrote to his mother, the Dowager Lady Aylesford, telling her to send for his daughters immediately and to keep them until he returned to England. Edith agreed to renounce her daughters—she had little choice in the matter—and wrote to her mother-in-law a few days later.
Dear Lady Aylesford,
By the time this letter reaches you, I shall have left my home for ever.… I do not attempt to say a word in self-defence, but you can imagine I must have suffered much before I could have taken such a step: how much it would be impossible to tell you … you do not know, you cannot know, how hard I have tried to win his love, and without success, and I cannot live uncared for. I do not ask you to think unkindly of your son; I know you could not do it, but for God’s sake be kind to the children, and do not hate them to hate their wretched mother, let them think I am dead, it will be the best,…18
When Sporting Joe eventually arrived back in England, he found the Churchills trying to dissuade Lord Blandford from eloping with Edith, while accepting that it was impossible to get him to give her up, despite the fact that both were married. This created bitter tensions between Lord Blandford and the Duke of Marlborough: “You have displayed to me an untold cruelty of intention,” Lord Blandford wrote to his father. “What can it affect you who I marry and who my children may be? In what manner do they come into the circle of your life? What matters it in the future of our things? For what considerations of a worldly character have you thought fit to step in to sacrifice my whole life?”19 Louisa, Duchess of Manchester, visited Edith and was concerned about her friend’s total change in personality since embarking on the affair with Lord Blandford. Edith seemed “bewitched” by him, adopting all his mannerisms and even brandishing a box of poisonous pills to take in case anything happened to him.20 Louisa described Blandford contemptuously as behaving like a character in a fourth-rate French novel.21
Meanwhile, all attempts to keep the scandal from going public were failing. Lord Blandford’s brother-in-law, Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth, wrote to the Duke of Marlborough, saying: “I don’t think anything is very generally known as yet, only the following people are aware of everything. The Duchess of Manchester, the Princess of Wales, the Charles Kerrs and Huntington and Lords Alington and Lansdowne.”22 One might just as well have announced the liaison on the front page of Reynold’s Weekly. By early March 1876, everyone knew, thanks to Sporting Joe, who prowled the gentlemen’s clubs vowing to divorce Edith and telling anyone who would listen that Bertie himself had described Lord Blandford as “the greatest blackguard alive.”23
This scandal was not restricted to the Aylesfords and the Churchills. It had particularly harmful implications for Bertie’s reputation. It was common knowledge among the Marlborough House set that Bertie was fond of Edith and had written her three mildly flirtatious letters in 1873.24 Edith showed Bertie’s letters to Lord Blandford, who immediately handed them over to his younger brother, Randolph Churchill. Randolph quickly seized on the possibilities of these letters. If he could persuade Bertie to forbid Sporting Joe from divorcing Edith, the Churchill family honor might be saved. Otherwise, Randolph would publish the letters. Randolph was proposing nothing less than blackmail.
Randolph’s next step was to visit Princess Alexandra at Marlborough House, accompanied by Lord “Bunny” Alington, a racehorse trainer and close friend of Edith, and Edith herself, somewhat against her will, one imagines, as she was keen to marry Lord Blandford.25 This visit created an additional level of embarrassment for Alix, as she should not have received someone as tainted by scandal.26 In front of Alix, Randolph insinuated that if Sporting Joe sued Edith for divorce, Bertie’s letters to Edith would be made public and Bertie “would never sit upon the throne of England!”27 Poor Alix was understandably horrified, both by Edith’s presence and by the revelation of yet another indiscretion on the part of Bertie. Going straight to the queen, Alix poured out her story, and received a sympathetic hearing. As for the queen, she wrote to Bertie:
What a dreadful disgraceful business about Lady Aylesford and Lord Blandford! And how unpardonable of Lord Alington to draw dear Alix into it! Her dear name should never have been mixed up with such people. Poor Lord Aylesford should not have left [Edith]. I knew last summer this was going on. Those Williamses are a bad family.…28
The queen’s private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, wrote to Bertie’s private secretary, Francis Knollys: “Lord R Churchill who had been a very intimate friend of the P. of Wales and Pss also spoke to Her R H’ss about it—and afterwards threatened to publish letters from the P of Wales to Lady A if HRH did
not prevent Aylesford bringing an action for divorce. The letters are said to be innocent but containing chaff which might be mis-interpreted.”29 Colonel Williams, Edith’s brother, suspected that the case was unlikely to go to court, as Sporting Joe’s own character would not stand up to public scrutiny. “Aylesford is already so unsavoury that it will not do for him to appear in the Divorce Court.”30 Among Sporting Joe’s peccadilloes was his habit of visiting Cremorne Gardens after dinner, picking up prostitutes, and going home drunk at three o’clock in the morning.31
By this point, Bertie had arrived in Cairo, Egypt, on his journey home to England. In Cairo Bertie was appalled to hear about Randolph and Edith’s visit to Princess Alexandra. Bertie’s mood degenerated further when Randolph telegraphed asking Bertie to tell Sporting Joe to drop his divorce suit against Edith. Although Bertie had so much to lose if those letters to Edith were ever published, he steadfastly refused to intervene in this private quarrel. However, Bertie had become so incensed by Randolph’s behavior that he sent a message back, via Lord Hardwicke, challenging Randolph to a duel.32 Randolph’s infuriating response was to point out that Bertie’s father, Prince Albert, had made dueling illegal in England, and to insinuate that Bertie had only offered the challenge because he knew that he could not go through with it.33 Not content with this response, Randolph added that he blamed Bertie for the whole affair, because he had taken Sporting Joe out of the country, leaving Edith vulnerable and alone.34 The friendship between the two men, hitherto a good one that had even withstood allegations about Bertie’s affair with Jennie, had been utterly destroyed.
Almost forgotten in all this was the forlorn figure of Lord Blandford’s wife, “Goosie,” daughter of the Duke of Hamilton. Goosie, real name Bertha, seems to have been somewhat naïve. Far from regarding Edith as a rival, she adored her and even copied her style of dress. A great fan of practical jokes, including ink bottles over the door frames and short-sheeted beds, Goosie commented on the scandal in her own, unique manner. One morning, Lord Blandford lifted the cover on his customary poached eggs to discover a little pink celluloid baby. Lord Blandford slammed down the lid in horror and fled choking from the room.35
While Lord Hardwicke wrangled Sporting Joe, persuading him not to divorce Lady Edith, the prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, intervened with Randolph Churchill. In his capacity as leader of the Conservative party, Disraeli attempted to argue some sense into the young MP;36 he also reminded Randolph that he had known him since boyhood and that he was ruining his prospects with this campaign against Bertie. Meanwhile, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough continued to be horrified by the scandal, which threatened to leave a blot on the Churchill family name. By the time Bertie returned to England on May 11, 1876, the Aylesford scandal was common knowledge, as was the implication that Edith had been involved with Bertie. Indeed, society people could talk of nothing else. Bertie was so keen to explain himself to Princess Alexandra that he insisted Alix join him on board before he disembarked, so that he could speak to her alone and give her his side of the story.37 After this, the couple traveled up to London together with their family, and drove past cheering crowds to Marlborough House, in what should have been a triumphant homecoming after Bertie’s successful tour of India. That evening, the Prince and Princess of Wales attended a gala performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera at Covent Garden Opera House in a bravura display of family solidarity. It was a brave move, and it worked: as the couple appeared in the royal box, the audience rose to their feet in a standing ovation.38
Eventually, Lord Blandford’s friends managed to persuade him not to see Edith for a year. Lord Blandford reluctantly agreed, and left for Belgium, where he wrote to Randolph Churchill:
Poor little Edith, I telegraphed her from Brussels. I enclose you a letter for her. Please post it at once.… I must say though with Edith it is not worth all the trouble to avoid the Divorce Court … one thing strikes me. If [Sporting Joe] leaves matters as they are between him and Edith I shall only wait till HRH comes back to appear on the scene and then if [Sporting Joe] tries to lick me I shall do my damndest to defend myself and afterwards If I am all right, I shall lick HRH within an inch of his life for his conduct generally, and we will have the whole thing up in the Police Court!39
This would have been a horrific prospect for Bertie, but he did at least have the support of his mother. Queen Victoria maintained that Bertie’s letters to Lady Edith were essentially innocent, “but the publication of any letters of this nature would be very undesirable as a colouring might easily be given and injurious inferences deduced from hasty expressions. The Queen, therefore, regrets that such a correspondence, harmless as it is, should be in existence; but Her Majesty thinks it quite right that His Royal Highness should not interfere in Lord Aylesford’s affair in consequence of this threat.…”40
The following day, Lord Hardwicke appeared at Marlborough House and announced that Sporting Joe, “not wishing to create a public scandal and mischief,” had decided not to divorce Edith. In effect, society itself had exerted so much pressure on Sporting Joe that he had to back down. There was to be no divorce, but the following year, 1877, the Aylesfords agreed to a formal separation.
The threatened divorce might have been averted, but the Aylesford scandal still caused considerable collateral damage for both families. Unable to marry Lord Blandford, Edith had to resign herself to remaining as his mistress. The couple traveled in Europe as “Mr. and Mrs. Spencer” and in 1881, Edith gave birth to a son, Guy Bertrand Spencer, in Paris.41 Guy was not permitted to succeed to the Aylesford title, as Sporting Joe was clearly not his father. Instead, Guy spent much of his boyhood at Blenheim, “a mysterious wraith in that great dumping ground for children.”42
In the Churchill camp, Randolph’s efforts to suppress the divorce ruined his relationship with his brother, Lord Blandford, but at least Jennie stood by Randolph, telling him that she thought his brother was “worthless.”43 The couple left England and went to stay with Jennie’s father in America, where Randolph was forced to sign an apology to Bertie, appropriately enough in Saratoga, New York, where British General John Burgoyne had surrendered to the Americans in 1777.
When Jennie and Randolph Churchill returned to England in the winter of 1876, it was to discover that Bertie had effectively banned them from society. While Queen Victoria was still prepared to entertain the Churchills, the Prince and Princess of Wales threatened to boycott any house that they entered, and only two people disobeyed: Louisa, Duchess of Manchester, who told Bertie to his face that “I hold friendship higher than snobbery,” and John Delacour, a close friend of Randolph, who declared, “I allow no man to choose my friends.”44
There were also repercussions for Randolph’s parents, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, whose name had inevitably been tainted by the Aylesford scandal. The wily old prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli, smoothly removed the Churchills from public view by offering the Duke of Marlborough the post of viceroy of Ireland. Marlborough had no choice but to accept and agree to what Disraeli referred to as “the dignified withdrawal of the family from metropolitan and English life.”45 In order to take up the appointment, which involved lavish and expensive entertaining, the duke was forced to raise funds by selling off many art treasures from Blenheim, a painful experience. When the queen met the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough at Windsor, she wrote that she “pitied them. They looked so distressed, wretched, and the poor Dss [duchess] especially, who could scarcely restrain her tears.”46 Randolph took on the unpaid role of private secretary to his father, duties that would not conflict with his interests as a member of Parliament but would enable him to beat a strategic retreat to Ireland. It was to be eight years before Bertie spoke to the Churchills again. In the meantime, Bertie consoled himself with the fiery Irish beauty Patsy Cornwallis-West, the latest in his long line of conquests, and one of the first “Professional Beauties” whose photographs were sold as postcards.
Having lost Edith, Sporting Joe
decided to start a new life in America and took a 22,000-acre ranch in Texas. Known as “Judge” by his cowboys, on account of his firm but fair manner, Sporting Joe needed no excuse to open a bottle of whiskey for any man who dropped in. “He doesn’t stop at one, neither,” wrote one cowboy. “I’ve been to the ranch many a time to stay all night, and woke up in the morning to find the bottles lying around thick as fleas, the boys two deep on the floor snorin’ like mad buffaloes and the Judge with a bottle in each hand over in the corner.”47 The whiskey did for Sporting Joe in the end. He died of drink in 1885, aged just thirty-six.
The death of Sporting Joe and Goosie’s eventual divorce from Lord Blandford should, perhaps, have left the way open for Edith to become Lady Blandford, and then the next Duchess of Marlborough when Lord Blandford succeeded to the title in 1883. But it was too late. By now, Lord Blandford had married Lily Price Hamersley, a rich American widow. There was to be no happy ending for Edith. Exiled from society for her affair with Lord Blandford, she died in Paris in 1897. Collateral damage once again: some of Edith’s woes were undoubtedly caused by her relationship with Bertie, and an attempt to use his letters as a bargaining tool. Did Edith’s relationship with Bertie go beyond the bounds of friendship? Queen Victoria, we know, was prepared to give Bertie the benefit of the doubt, despite her knowledge of her son’s incorrigible weakness for women. Although even Queen Victoria was forced to admit, to her private secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, “Tho’ I never believed it, some people said it was Lady A the Pce admired—as Lord A was too great a fool to be really agreeable to the Prince of Wales.”48 Perhaps, while Sporting Joe was reluctantly prepared to share Edith with the Prince of Wales, losing his wife to Lord Blandford was a step too far.
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