The Beauty of Her Age: A Tale of Sex, Scandal and Money in Victorian England

by Jenifer Roberts

  9

  THE BILL OF COMPLAINT

  Yolande Marie Louise Lyne Stephens … is not entitled to receive such large benefits, and it is doubtful what amount of income she ought to receive.

  Bill of Complaint, Court of Chancery, July 1860

  At the time of his death, Stephens’s financial assets, excluding real estate, were valued at over a million pounds. In his will, dated 5 December 1851 and drafted by Meaburn Tatham seven months after Charles’s death, he named Yolande as sole executor and appointed three trustees: his friend Sir Richard Williams-Bulkeley; the banker Sir John Lubbock; and Lubbock’s eldest son, a partner in his father’s bank.

  He left legacies totalling £30,000 and bequeathed £300,000 (£33 million) to Yolande in trust. He left Grove House and his art collection to Yolande absolutely, and Lynford Hall to Yolande for her lifetime, after which it would fall into his residuary estate. This also was left to Yolande in trust. Only after her death would the fortune pass, following his father’s wishes, to the descendants of his four Lyne uncles, most of whom had little or no money of their own.

  Yolande and Meaburn Tatham proved the will in London on 29 March. A few days later, she crossed the Channel to find solace in the Hôtel Molé. Stephens had added a codicil to his will in October 1859, adding Lynford Hall to his residuary estate, but the codicil made no mention of the property in Paris which he bought in 1856. According to Yolande, she searched his papers in the Hôtel Molé and found a handwritten note in French:

  I give and bequeath to Madame Lyne Stephens, my wife, my house and messuage situate at Paris, Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, 85, together with the household furniture, horses and carriages found there at the time of my decease for her own absolute use and benefit, and to dispose of the whole as being her personal property from the day aforesaid. Paris, 17 April 1857.

  After her return to England in June, Yolande produced this note which was, she told the trustees, a valid will under French law, so the Hôtel Molé was hers absolutely and not part of Stephens’s residuary estate in which she only had a life interest. The feminine-looking handwriting was not Yolande’s, but it did not appear to be Stephens’s either. The trustees sought legal advice and were advised that, even if the note was valid in France, Stephens was domiciled in England so his ‘immoveable property’ in Paris would in any event fall under his English will.

  At the same time, the trustees were daunted by the size and complexity of the administration. To relieve themselves of responsibility, they applied to have the will administered as a friendly suit in the Court of Chancery, the court renowned for its inefficiency, the court known to swallow up whole fortunes in legal charges. Even friendly suits could drag on for decades and lawyers took their costs from the funds year by year until, in some cases, little or nothing was left for the beneficiaries. ‘At the present moment,’ wrote Charles Dickens in August 1853:

  there is a suit before the Court which was commenced nearly twenty years ago; in which from thirty to forty counsel have been known to appear at one time; in which costs have been incurred to the amount of seventy thousand pounds; which is a friendly suit; and which is (I am assured) no nearer to its termination now than when it was begun. There is another well-known suit in Chancery, not yet decided, which was commenced before the close of the last century, and in which more than double the amount of seventy thousand pounds has been swallowed up in costs.1

  The trustees (the plaintiffs) approached the court in July 1860 with a bill of complaint filed by Meaburn Tatham: ‘The plaintiffs are advised that they ought to convert the testator’s residuary estate and invest the proceeds according to the trusts of his Will … and that owing to its extent and magnitude such conversion is attended with difficulty and risk.’ Because of this ‘difficulty and risk’, they asked that the ‘residuary real and personal estate may be administered under the directions of this honourable Court, and that the rights of all parties therein may be ascertained and declared’.2

  Other issues mentioned in the bill of complaint were the legal situation regarding the Hôtel Molé (‘a residence at Paris of large value, with handsome and valuable furniture and horses and carriages there’) and the amount of interest and dividends that should be paid to Yolande from the residuary estate. Stephens’s will was clear on this point: the income from his residuary estate was to be paid ‘into the hands of my dear wife, to the intent that such interest, dividends and annual produce may be for the sole and separate use of my wife, independent of any future husband’. The trustees asked the court to vary this provision:

  The defendant, Yolande Marie Louise Lyne Stephens, claims to be entitled to the actual income of the testator’s residuary personal estate as from the day of the testator’s death, but the plaintiffs are advised that, having regard to the nature of such estate … the defendant is not entitled to receive such large benefits, and it is doubtful what amount of income she ought to receive.

  Several motives were involved in this attempt to pay Yolande less than her due, motives in which jealousy, bigotry and snobbery all played a part. Her command of English was poor and she found it difficult to communicate with the lawyers and trustees who were treating her with disrespect. They thought it inappropriate that such a large fortune should have fallen into the hands of a woman who was not only foreign but also a Catholic. They hoped the court would restrict her inheritance to the £300,000 which Stephens had left her in trust, so that income from the residuary estate could be reinvested, increasing its value during her lifetime and providing a larger payout to the English beneficiaries.

  In early 1862, the court ordered the sale of Stephens’s stables and coach-house in Melton Mowbray. The auction took place on 29 May, the lot described as ‘extensive and unequalled freehold stables, coach-house and premises, now unoccupied’. The trustees had also been trying to sell Lynford Hall, despite Stephens having left it to Yolande ‘for her own use and benefit’ during her lifetime. When Queen Victoria was looking for a country estate for the nineteen-year-old Prince of Wales, they suggested that Lynford might be suitable. The queen considered the offer but, in February 1862, she chose the larger Sandringham estate instead.

  Eight months later, the trustees gave permission for Yolande to take possession of Lynford Hall which was now ready for occupation, although work was still in progress on the stable block and other ancillary buildings. ‘There is always something melancholy,’ wrote Country Life magazine, ‘in contemplating the building of a house by one who has looked forward to dwelling therein, and to find him cut off before his hope is realised.’3

  Stephens had longed to occupy Lynford Hall. He had looked forward to playing the man of substance in Norfolk, to hosting shooting parties and showing off his great wealth. Instead, in September 1862, Yolande moved without him into the mansion on which he had lavished so much money, hope and expectation.

  The following year, the Court of Chancery met to consider the sums which had been spent on completion of the house. Nineteen barristers attended the session in November 1863 when the judge ruled that all claims should be paid from the residuary estate, except the claim for furniture which Yolande should settle on her own account.

  Finally, in a decision typical of the Court of Chancery, the judge ‘directed a reference to Chambers to inquire whether the pulling down of the old house at Lynford was for the benefit of the testator’s estate and what had been done with the materials’. Although the value of these materials might have added a tiny proportion to the value of Stephens’s estate, this would have been more than offset by the cost of lawyers investigating the matter.

  The trustees failed in their attempt to reduce Yolande’s income: the Court of Chancery upheld the wording of the will and granted her sole benefit from the Lyne Stephens fortune. The financial assets in the estate – ‘principally invested in consols, bank stock, Russian, Brazilian, and Royal Exchange stocks and annuities’ – were valued at £800,000 (£88 million). The value of the real estate in Paris, Roehampton,
Norfolk and Melton Mowbray was in addition to this.

  Yolande’s name became famous throughout the English-speaking world as newspaper articles about her husband’s will were printed and reprinted around the globe. One example was the Moreton Bay Courier in Australia which, on 28 July 1860, reprinted an article originally published in the Liverpool Albion:

  By far the most fortunate, so far as sterling fortune goes and a great many other things too, of all enriched stage favourites is the long-time belle of all ballets, unparagoned tripper on the lightest of all fantastic toes, the once superb and still sumptuous Yolande Marie Louise Duvernay, wife and now widow of the late millionaire Lyne Stephens, who has just left her the trifle of £300,000, besides making her sole executrix to twice as much ready money, as well as uncontrolled mistress of castles in the country, cottages ornées in the suburbs, chateaux en France (her native land), shooting boxes here, fishing ditto there, and hunting ibid. everywhere else. Duvernay was a divinity of dance … and it is easy to understand that she should have walked off with the heart of a captivated capitalist.

  A number of men began to cast hopeful eyes on her fortune. One of these was the Duc de Richelieu, whom Stephens had met several times at race meetings and in Melton Mowbray. On 28 June 1861, after Yolande had returned to Roehampton after a few months in Paris, The Times and other newspapers published a report titled ‘Mademoiselle Duvernay’:

  A lady much and justly admired as Taglioni’s only rival twenty-five years ago, since then the wife and now the widow of Mr Lyne Stephens, is to be promoted to the rank of Duchess. The once brilliant … Duvernay is about to give her hand to the Duc de Richelieu.

  Yolande may have flirted with Richelieu, but she was still in mourning and had no intention of marriage. She acted quickly to prevent the rumour spreading. The following day, The Times published a correction: ‘We are authorised to state that there is no foundation for the report … of the approaching marriage of the Duc de Richelieu and Mademoiselle Duvernay, now Mrs Lyne Stephens.’

  During the summer, she commissioned a stained-glass window ‘in memory of her late husband’ for the parish church in Mundford, the local village to Lynford Hall. She also applied for permission to consecrate a small area of land on the Grove House estate, close to the main entrance on Roehampton Lane. She explained in her application that she wanted to bring her husband’s body home from Kensal Green and ‘to erect a tomb of some importance to his memory’.

  Permission to consecrate the land was granted in March 1862 and she employed William Burn to design a mausoleum in Romanesque Revival style. In December, she put the land into trust with an endowment of £150, so that it ‘may henceforth … be used for a place of burial’ for Stephens and herself, ‘to remain there for ever undisturbed’.

  Completed in 1864 and built at a cost of ‘several thousand pounds’, the mausoleum forms the shape of a Greek cross almost 30 feet square. Inside, the walls are decorated with blind arcading, the floor is covered with patterned tiles, and four small windows high on the walls provide a gloomy light. In the centre stands an enormous white-stone sarcophagus, intricately carved with interleaving arches, heads of angels, and the Lyne Stephens coat of arms.

  The building was consecrated on 16 August 1864 by Archibald Tait, Anglican Bishop of London, after which a ‘limited number of relatives and intimate friends’ were entertained to refreshments in Grove House. Twelve days later, Stephens’s coffin was disinterred from Kensal Green cemetery and brought home by carriage-hearse.

  The Anglican clergy of Roehampton officiated at the reinterment. Followed by Yolande, they accompanied the coffin as it was carried through the rose garden, up the steps of the mausoleum, through the double doors, and into the gloom of the interior. The lid of the sarcophagus was lifted and, as the clergy intoned the prayers for the dead, Stephens’s remains were lowered into one side of the tomb to await the day when Yolande would join him.

  10

  A LAWYER’S WILL

  The lawyers must make more than they ought out of this will and the Lyne family must very largely suffer. Elaborate wills from a lawyer do sometimes more confuse than explain.

  Francis Lyne, 1883

  The news of Stephens’s death – and the details of his will – spread quickly through the extended Lyne family, giving rise to a great deal of excitement. A large number of potential beneficiaries attended the funeral on 6 March 1860 and followed the cortège as it made its way from Roehampton to Kensal Green.

  Two weeks later, a newspaper report, titled ‘Unexpected Legacies, Plymouth’, was published in The Times:

  The gossips of this neighbourhood have been discussing the will of a rich Englishman who has recently died on the Continent. More than a quarter of a century since, there was landed at Plymouth the body of a gentleman in a rough ship coffin covered most closely with tarred stuff. Deceased was a native of Cornwall who had made a princely fortune in Portugal and, when returning home in a sailing vessel, died on board. His will required that the two millions which he left should become the property of a poor nephew, provided he took his name, Lyne Stephens.

  These terms the nephew accepted and, for some unexpected reason, he quitted England and went to Italy where, like his uncle, he became prosperous in trade, dealing chiefly in wines. His fortune was doubled and, having died recently childless, the entire of his property, said to be four millions, falls (after the death of his wife) in equal proportions to the blood relations, most of whom are called Lyne and Stephens. They reside chiefly in this vicinity and are in number about eighty; each receives at the present time £1000 and it is estimated that, hereafter, every one of them will obtain £50,000 in addition.

  This extraordinary report was taken up by several local newspapers, prompting one of the beneficiaries, Mary Chudleigh, to write to the editor of the Royal Cornwall Gazette:

  Having heard of the many absurd stories now circulating in different newspapers respecting the family of Stephens, I beg the favour of you to insert, firstly, what I know to be true and, secondly, what I believe to be the origin of the mysterious stories which have spread about, as such marvellous tales are wont to do.

  Having told the story of the fortune (somewhat inaccurately), Mary explained that Stephens:

  had no children, but leaving his wife more than handsomely provided for, he willed, at her decease, the whole of his residuary property to the issue of his four uncles, thereby blessing about eighty claimants who will not fail to bless him for the largeness of his heart in this great outspread of benevolence, giving a joyous independence which may extend downwards through generations.1

  Stephens’s motives were not as altruistic as Mary supposed. He had signed his will seven months after his father’s death, having instructed Meaburn Tatham to draft a clause that followed Charles’s expressed desire that his son should ‘leave the bulk of the property to his and my near relations, the Lynes’.

  Tatham had worked for Charles and Stephens for many years but, whereas Charles had written his will in his own clear and unequivocal language, Stephens had relied on the lawyer to draft it for him. With no business or legal experience, he simply signed the will that Tatham placed in front of him. This stated that his residuary estate, after the death of his widow, should be divided between ‘such issue’ of his four uncles ‘as shall be living at my decease, share and share alike’. The four uncles were Richard Lyne, a clergyman in Cornwall, and his merchant brothers, Joseph, Edward and William, all three of whom had been declared bankrupt.

  In December 1860, The Times and the Royal Cornwall Gazette published a notice titled ‘The Estate of Stephens Lyne Stephens, deceased’:

  The descendants of the late William Lyne, Reverend Richard Lyne, Edward Lyne, and Joseph Lyne (uncles of the late Stephens Lyne Stephens of Roehampton), who were living at his decease or born since, are requested to furnish evidence thereof on or before Saturday 22 December next, to Albert H. Elworthy, solicitor, 14 Southampton Buildings, Chancery Lane, London.


  This was a good try by Albert H. Elworthy, who appears to have been a lawyer acting for one of the beneficiaries. On the same day, another firm of solicitors published a different notice. This was titled ‘In Chancery’:

  As solicitors engaged in the suit filed for the administration of the estate of the late Stephens Lyne Stephens of Roehampton, we hereby inform the residuary legatees entitled under the Will … that no person is at present authorised by the Court to receive their claims, and that due notice will be given to the legatees of any order that may be made by the Court relative thereto.

  Two months later, Meaburn Tatham wrote personally to the potential beneficiaries about the evidence required by the court:

  The Court of Chancery has made a decree directing the administration of the estate of the late Mr Stephens Lyne Stephens, and amongst other enquiries which are to be made, the first is as to who were the Issue at the time of the testator’s death of the former uncles named in his Will. When the proper time arrives, I am directed to take in the claims of a great number of those who represent themselves as such Issue, and I shall be glad to hear from you if it is your wish that I should carry in your claim also.

  Writing to the beneficiaries was a smarter move than advertising in newspapers and most of them did instruct him to act on their behalf. Tatham was already employed by the trustees of Stephens’s estate; now he would also work for the beneficiaries, preparing family trees and drafting documents which had to be signed and witnessed. He would make a fortune from the will he drafted in 1851; when he died twenty-four years later, he was worth more than £18 million in today’s money. As Francis Lyne, one of the beneficiaries, explained:

  My cousin was not equal to his father in knowing the value of a word. The lawyer who made his will left out some words, which my cousin did not notice, hence it became what is called a lawyer’s will and very materially frustrated the intention of my uncle and, of course, my cousin. The lawyer did much injury to the Lyne family and, not long after my cousin’s death, he told me that he already had sixty of my relations as clients. The lawyers must make more than they ought out of this will and the Lyne family must very largely suffer.2