Chapter Eight
TAKING LONDON BY STORM
A most beautiful creature, quite unknown, very poor, and they say has but one black dress.
—LORD RANDOLPH CHURCHILL
Immediately after the Langtrys’ wedding, the couple sailed away to Cliffe Lodge, Ned’s “yachting pied á terre” on Southampton Water, where disillusion rapidly set in.1 Lillie later hinted that Ned had been an unsatisfactory lover; she also realized that Ned was far from the man of property he claimed to be. Cliffe Lodge was rented, not owned, and Ned’s connections in society extended only to a bunch of sailing cronies. Far from being a millionaire playboy, Ned Langtry was living beyond his means on a dwindling inheritance. Although Lillie enjoyed winning the International Yacht Race at Havre in a gale, “the excitement of that race, crowding on sail to the verge of danger, with a swirling spray drenching us to the skin,”2 the dreary reality of sailing was another matter. “Yacht racing could be dull in the extreme. To roll about becalmed for hours, whistling for a breath of wind, was deadly.”3 Lillie’s marriage was swiftly becalmed in the same fashion.
Lillie became increasingly isolated in an English coastal town with no friends and dwindling prospects. Within a year, Ned was forced to sell his beloved yachts and began drinking heavily. Early in 1875 Lillie fell ill, her normally strong constitution weakened by homesickness and boredom. Ned, the eternal optimist, informed her family that Lillie was pregnant. Lillie’s doctor had a very different prognosis: Lillie had contracted typhoid and was unlikely to survive. As Ned faced the prospect of losing his second wife within a year of marriage, Lillie lay close to death and unvisited by a single member of her family. After weeks of serious illness, Lillie eventually pulled through, and the question of convalescence was raised. When Lillie begged to go to London, her doctor was appalled and suggested returning to Jersey as the best course of action. London, dirty, disease-ridden, and noisy, was the last place to recover from a life-threatening illness. Lillie, with her characteristic will of iron, insisted that London, with its pleasures and its distractions, was just the place she needed to recover. “I have no idea what led us to select the great, smoky city as a sanatorium, but we leave for London early in December,” Lillie wrote to her mother. “After stopping at an hotel for a day or two we shall take suitable apartments.”4
The Langtrys moved into a small house in Eaton Place, Belgravia, the most expensive district of London, and Lillie began to plan her campaign to enter society. This was in spite of the fact that her acquaintances could be listed on the fingers of one hand and consisted of three well-connected peers who wintered in Jersey.5 These were Lord Suffield, who had suggested Lillie’s original trip to London; Lord Thellusson, 5th Baron Rendlesham (1840–1911), and Lord Ranelagh (1812–1885), a raffish character fond of art, artists, and indeed artists’ models. The Pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt, who lost a woman to Ranelagh, once described him as a “notorious rake.”6 Lacking any means of contacting these three peers directly, even Lillie was forced to confess that “it seemed unlikely that the ‘long arm of coincidence’ would bring us into contact with any of these.”7 The Langtrys were reduced to celebrity spotting, passing their time like country cousins, walking in Hyde Park waiting for royalty to pass. During the season, “the Park” was the place to be seen. The Park was, of course, Hyde Park, any other park being regarded as insufferably common. “There was only one Park, called Hyde,” recalled Daisy, Countess of Warwick, many years later.
We knew dimly of Regent’s Park as a place where the Zoo existed … St James’s and the Green Park were a short cut to the House of Lords, but when we spoke of “The Park” it was always Hyde Park near the Corner. If you entered by the Albert Memorial or Marble Arch, you were certain to be making for that select spot lying between Albert and Grosvenor Gates. Here the small circle of Society with the big “S” was sure of meeting all its members on a morning ride or drive, or in the late afternoon between tea and dinner in what was practically a daily Society Garden Party!8
Late afternoon in Hyde Park meant state carriages and barouches with beautifully dressed occupants pulled up under the trees … then there would be the clatter of faster horses, and down this mile of drive came the well-known Royal carriage with the beautiful Alexandra, Princess of Wales, bowing right and left as only she could bow, and hats were raised and knees curtsied before seats were resumed and interrupted chatter continued.9
Despite these regular outings, with her face pressed up against the shopwindow of London society, Lillie failed to spot the titled man who had first suggested she visit London. By the end of December, she had failed to make any inroads into society. Then, a year later, in December 1876, devastating news arrived. Lillie received a telegram from Jersey, telling her that Reggie, her youngest brother, had fallen from his horse while out riding on the cliffs. In her memoir, Lillie says that Reggie had already died by the time she received the telegram. “Crushed by the young mare he was riding, he fought against his injuries for three days, only to succumb at last. And I didn’t even know of the accident.”10 In fact, Lillie delayed her return to Jersey, either unaware of the extent of her brother’s injuries or reluctant to leave London. By the time Lillie set out for Jersey on December 17, Reggie was dead. There were rumors that Reggie had ridden over the cliffs in a suicide bid,11 further fueling local speculation that there had been something incestuous about their relationship.
Lillie spent that winter on Jersey, grieving with her parents, and felt that “life was over.”12 She returned to London in a state of deep depression, “caring little for anything.”13 But it was in London, in April 1877, that the “long arm of coincidence” finally operated in Lillie’s favor. On one of the Langtrys’ regular trawls around London, “the Finger of Fate pointed the way to the Aquarium at Westminster,” a popular attraction, and it was here that Lillie spotted Lord Ranelagh and his two daughters, with whom Lillie had been friends on Jersey.14 This meeting completely changed the current of Lillie’s life.15 Lord Ranelagh invited the Langtrys to his house in Fulham, which in those days was a rural retreat, five miles west of London. Lord Ranelagh occupied “a delightful creeper-covered mansion with a mossy, tree-shaded lawn sloping down to the river,”16 inhabited by “interesting” people: dancers, artists’ models, and amateur actors.17 It was one of these thespians who was to prove Lillie’s salvation. Soon after the trip to Fulham, Lillie received an invitation from Lady Georgina Sebright, an enthusiastic amateur actress, fond of literature and art, who “loved to gather together men and women conspicuous in both callings” for Sunday evening at-homes.18 As these at-homes were held at Lady Sebright’s mansion at 23 Lowndes Square, Lillie accepted without hesitation. Finally, her moment had come. Despite the fact that Lowndes Square was just eight minutes’ walk from their house in Eaton Place, the Langtrys “rattled up” to Lady Sebright’s house in a humble coach and four.19 Lillie, still in mourning for her brother, wore a simple black gown, made by Madame Nicolle in Jersey, with her radiant auburn hair twisted into a knot at the nape of her neck. She wore no jewelry, since she possessed none.20 Slowly, shyly, Lillie made her way into the crowded drawing room and sat in a corner, feeling “very un-smart and countrified.”21 But Lillie was not alone for long. Indeed, she soon realized that she was the star attraction, and some of the most famous men in London had been invited to meet her. Lillie swiftly became the center of attention, with one distinguished guest after another led across the room by Lady Sebright, eager to make her acquaintance. These distinguished guests included two of London’s most eminent painters, John Everett Millais and James McNeill Whistler; a lesser-known young artist, Frank Miles; the actor Henry Irving; William Yardley, a famous cricketer; and Lord Wharncliffe, a Yorkshire landowner whose fortunes had soared with the discovery of coal on his estate outside Barnsley, allowing him to become a generous patron of the arts. A “rush of cavaliers” offered to take Lillie in to supper,22 and victory went to Millais. A handsome Jerseyman, clearly as at home on
the grouse moor as he was in his studio, Millais appeared reassuringly familiar. When Millais invited Lillie to sit for him, so that he could record her “classic features,” she immediately agreed.23 Lillie returned home in a state of euphoria, confident that her first night in London society had been a great success. This joy was intensified the following afternoon, when Lillie and Ned returned from a walk to find the hall table heaped with invitations from people they had heard about but never met. From that moment on, invitations poured into Eaton Place at such speed that the Langtrys’ landlady was compelled to hire an extra servant to deal with the stream of bewigged footmen knocking at the door. “A complete transformation seemed to have taken place in my life overnight,” Lillie tells us. “Invitations to receptions and balls were so numerous that we were mostly obliged to attend two or three of each in an evening. Whatever my husband said and felt, I absolutely revelled in the novelty of it all … there was scarcely a great house in London that I did not visit during my first season.… I met practically all the well-born and well-known men and women of the day.”24 In fact, Ned Langtry did not say much about it at all. Obliged as he was to escort his wife to these daily events during her meteoric rise, Ned retreated into silence and drink. “We are always afflicted with Mr Langtry, who is nothing,” commented Lady Wilton later that year.25 One cannot help feeling a little sorry for him. London society in full swing was a long way from the wild wet moors and trout streams of Northern Ireland.
Lillie’s first invitation following Lady Sebright’s at-home was a dinner engagement with the Earl and Countess of Wharncliffe at their house in Curzon Street. As aristocratic landowners, the Wharncliffes had their links with the court, but their vivacious party-giving and interest in the arts placed them firmly in the category of “upper bohemia.” To Lillie’s shock and amazement Lady Wharncliffe had dyed blond hair and chain-smoked all through dinner.26 The Wharncliffes, who loved to surround themselves with artists, were well aware that Lillie would provide a considerable “draw” to other guests, and that Lillie’s allure was far more important than any conventional notions about her breeding and lineage. The guests that night included Sir Edward Poynter, later president of the Royal Academy, Madge Robertson, a leading actress, and Lord Randolph Churchill, who wrote to his wife, Jennie, that “I took in to dinner a Mrs Langtry, a most beautiful creature, quite unknown, very poor, and they say has but one black dress.”27 Banned from the Marlborough House set for his role in the Aylesford scandal, Randolph remained popular with the rakish Wharncliffes. In retrospect, these three guests prefigure the significant elements of Lillie’s life: the art world, the stage, and the British aristocracy. But at this point, it was the artists who would be the making of her. And among these the most influential was the least known: Frank Miles, an illustrator who worked only in monochrome as he was color-blind. That very night, Miles was the first to sketch Lillie.
Concepts of physical attractiveness vary from generation to generation, but Lillie arrived in London at a time when her features represented the apotheosis of female beauty. Her violet eyes and red hair,28 her “pillared throat and nobly chiselled mouth”29 appealed to the Pre-Raphaelites, while Oscar Wilde and the aesthetes claimed her for their own as “a pale distraught lady with … dark auburn hair, falling in masses over the brow [and] … eyes full of love-lorne languor.…”30
Lillie swiftly fell into a routine of sitting for artists every day, but she was no mere artists’ model. Posing for painters had a dual function: the opportunity for effortless self-promotion, as one famous artist after another queued up to record her charms, and the chance to spend time away from Ned Langtry.
Frank Miles occupied a “ghostly mansion, with antique staircases and twisting passages” off the Strand,31 where a jaw-dropping cross section of London society and high bohemia dropped in for tea. These luminaries included the actress Ellen Terry; the artists Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Morris; Lady Constance Grosvenor, Duchess of Westminster, wife of the richest landowner in the country after the queen; the poet Algernon Swinburne; the Oxford don and founder of the Aesthetics movement, Walter Pater; and his protégé, the young Oscar Wilde, who had already resolved to become famous, or if not famous, notorious. Of all these, it was the painters who made Lillie’s reputation. Within months their canvases would be admired in the capital and reproductions circulated around the world. Millais, Whistler, Lord Leighton, Edward Burne-Jones, and Sir Fredrick Watts were all eager to record Lillie’s charms for posterity. Further fame beckoned through the newly emerging medium of photography. One of the most significant technical developments of the day, photography had become increasingly popular, as many famous people posed for photographic portraits, from royalty and statesmen to all the “pretty women in society” who “rushed pell-mell to be photographed in every imaginable pose.”32 Photography led to the popularity of the so-called Professional Beauties, beguiling society women whose portraits appeared in magazines and were sold as postcards. As Lillie recalled, “some smothered themselves in furs to brave photographic snowstorms; some sat in swings; some lolled dreamily in hammocks; others carried huge bunches of flowers and one was actually reproduced gazing at a dead fish!”33 The fashion for photography at this period was even lampooned in a music hall song:
I have been photographed like this,
I have been photographed like that,
But I never have been photoed [sic]
As a raving Maniac.34
Lillie claimed to have sat only once for a photographer during this period, “who reproduced me with a dead bird in my hand and an expression of grief on my face, designed to touch the heart of the sentimental public.”35
It was not long before a chance encounter at Miles’s studio brought Lillie yet another dinner invitation. Frances Maynard, the thirteen-year-old heiress affectionately known as “Daisy,” had been sitting for Miles while he sketched her portrait. Having heard about Lillie, Frances was eager to see this phenomenon for herself and descended on the studio with her stepfather in tow. Frances was absolutely astonished by what she saw.
In the studio I found the loveliest woman I have ever seen. And how can any words of mine convey that beauty? I may say that she had dewy, violet eyes. A complexion like a peach, and a mass of lovely hair drawn back in a soft knot at the nape of her classic head. But how can words convey the vitality, the glow, the amazing charm that made this fascinating woman the centre of any group she entered? She was in the freshness of her young beauty that day in the studio. She was poor and wore a dowdy black dress, but my stepfather lost his heart to her, and invited her there and then to dine with us next evening at Grafton Street.36
“My stepfather” was Robert Francis St. Clair-Erskine, 4th Earl of Rosslyn (1833–1890), and Daisy, the impressionable young girl who was so captivated by Lillie’s beauty, was destined to become the Countess of Warwick. In time, Lillie and Daisy would be great friends, and rivals, too.
The invitation to Grafton Street represented a substantial step up the social ladder for Lillie. For most women, such an event would have provided the ideal excuse to acquire a new gown. But Lillie had already spent enough time among the artists to understand the importance of making an impression and remained steadfastly devoted to her dowdy black dress. This garment defined Lillie, so that she could be clearly identified across a room, surrounded by a sea of colorful silks and satins. With her simple black gown and air of magnificent bereavement, Lillie resembled nothing so much as a beautiful young widow. Such a shame that she had to drag the complaining Ned Langtry along in her wake. As Daisy Maynard wrote: “She came, accompanied by an uninteresting fat man—Mr Langtry—whose unnecessary presence took nothing from his wife’s social triumph.”37
After Lillie’s appearance at Grafton Street, the snowstorm of invitations intensified to a blizzard. The tributes of besotted aristocrats reached their zenith on the evening Lillie attended a political reception given by the Marquis of Hartington at Devonshire House, the family mansion in Pic
cadilly. On Lillie’s arrival, Harty-Tarty abandoned the ranks of important dignitaries and took Lillie around Devonshire House, showing her the magnificent rooms and pointing out a few treasures.38 The tour culminated in an extraordinary scene after Lillie admired the water lilies growing in marble pools in the conservatory. In full evening dress, Harty-Tarty plunged into the water and dragged out bunches of lilies, which he thrust dripping into the liveried arms of his footmen, telling them to fill Lillie’s carriage with the soaking wet flowers. Less than impressed, Ned spent the short journey home throwing the lilies out of the window.39
Lillie’s appeal was such that she even earned a mention in the society journal Vanity Fair: “All male London is going wild about the Beautiful Lady who has come to us from the Channel Islands. She is certainly the most splendid creature that has ever risen upon London from an unknown horizon, and so far beyond the pretty with which we are usually more than content, that it is as though some newer and more perfect creature had risen, like Aphrodite, from the sea. She has a husband to make her happy, but still awaits a poet to make her known” (May 19, 1877).40
Little did that husband know that his troubles were about to become a whole lot worse. Regardless of her marital status, which served to protect her from the most outrageous speculation, Lillie had begun to acquire a reputation. In the relaxed, postprandial hour, after the ladies had risen from the table and the port and brandy circulated freely, London’s gentlemen gossiped over their cigars. In between the racing chat and dirty jokes, the attractions of the latest fillies were discussed in the same terms as thoroughbred mares. It was said that Lillie, who, after all, was an artists’ model, was something of a coquette. There were tales that on inviting a gentleman into her drawing room, she would gaze at him with her ravishing violet eyes and fall in a faint, forcing the visitor to catch her in his arms. And then there was the fact that under the simple black dress, Lillie wore no corsets. This was on account of “my dislike of the ‘fitting’ process,”41 but it was also taken as a sure sign of a loose woman in the days when tight corsets and layers of undergarments deterred all but the most determined attempts at casual sex. It was known that Lillie entertained gentleman callers, although no man could precisely be identified as her lover. So it was clear that Lillie had a welcoming attitude toward exceptional members of the opposite sex. It was, therefore, no surprise when the sons of the royal family began to take an interest in this flirtatious young beauty.
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