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

by Jenifer Roberts

  The court began to divide the financial assets in the estate into ninety-three parts, although the wheels of Chancery still turned exceedingly slowly and the beneficiaries would have to wait another fourteen years before they received their full entitlement. The shares of those who had died while retaining their interest in the estate had to be distributed according to the wording of their wills – and sometimes according to the wills of those to whom their interests had been bequeathed.

  Meanwhile, the poor families in Cornwall who believed they had a claim to the fortune were stirred into action. Attics and cellars were scoured for papers and, for more than a decade, they employed people to inspect parish registers and feed their hopes. In October 1905, a Thomas Varcoe wrote to his brother and sister:

  I refer to the case of between two and three millions of money in Chancery left by a Mr Stephens who amassed it at Lisbon. Perhaps you remember the stir that has been made many times in the case? Well, I received a note from a gentleman a short time since, requesting me to call upon him. I did so, and he informed me that they have made great discoveries and there is to be a meeting of all the kindred on Wednesday next. I know you have father’s certificates from registers proving our identity and relationship and if you will let me have copies of them I shall be glad, or any information you can supply me which will throw light on the mystery. They all seem confident they can prove themselves of the stock. So must we.

  At the meeting, the families were told they had a valid claim to the money if they could prove direct descent from Lewis Stephens, the grandfather of the Stephens brothers of Portugal. ‘They seemed confident that all will be right in the course of time,’ explained Varcoe. ‘John James Stephens’s will is proved to be a forgery. He died without making one.’

  William Philp of Liskeard was still on the case. ‘As regards your being descended from the Lisbon Stephenses, doubtless is true,’ he wrote to the family in September 1906. ‘In my mind, there is not the shadow of doubt, and all the registers and certificates that have been found make you the right and lawful claimants to the paternal grandfather of John James Stephens that died in Lisbon.’ All they needed to do was to find one marriage certificate: ‘If you can find that one, your claim is at once lawful.’

  In living memory, an old man called John Stephens told his daughters about the fortune: ‘We should all be millionaires, you know, but we’ve been basely defrauded.’ He told an interesting version of the facts:

  A Stephens ancestor had estates in Lisbon. When this Stephens died, the foreman, Mr Lyne, forged the will, pinched the money and changed his name to Lyne Stephens. The will was disputed by another member of the family, but failed. The solicitor tried to persuade great-grandfather to try again. ‘You’ll be riding in your carriage in a month,’ he said.

  It was not only honest families who were trying to claim the money. In 1890, a young man called Frank Thompson was convicted of fraud at the Old Bailey. He had taken a loan in the name of one of the beneficiaries, Frederick Manley Glubb, who was living in Hong Kong at the time. Evidence was given by a moneylender in Great Russell Street:

  The prisoner called and gave the name of Frederick Manley Glubb. He asked me to lend him £100 and said that he was entitled to £10,000 under the will of Mr Lyne Stephens, at the death of Mrs Lyne Stephens, the widow. I asked him for references and he gave me the solicitors, Messrs Tathams and Pym, and his mother’s name as Mrs Fanny Glubb … He said he was a gentleman and, believing his representations, I gave him a cheque for £70 … He gave me a charge on the reversion as security.

  In December 1894, three months after Yolande’s death, Tathams and Pym wrote to one of the beneficiaries, an elderly man with one brother and two unmarried sisters:

  A Mrs Beuce claims to be a sister of Charles Lyne of Bournemouth and therefore she would be a sister of your own. She also claims, as such sister, to be entitled to a share of the Lyne Stephens estate. Will you kindly tell us if you have ever heard of Mrs Beuce? We are having an enormous amount of trouble with persons presuming they are claimants to this estate, and whose claims we must at once put an end to in order to prevent those who really are entitled being put to trouble and expense.

  Another possible beneficiary – and this time a genuine one – was the illegitimate daughter of Richard Benjamin Lyne, conceived in 1836 when he was working as a merchant in Argentina. He moved to Brazil less than two years after his daughter was born but he corresponded with her throughout his life and often sent her money. His family first learnt of her existence when the unmarried Richard Benjamin died in June 1899, aged ninety-six. In his will, he left an annuity of £4,000 to his ‘daughter, Carolina Lyne, born in January 1837 and now residing with her half-brother, Dr Carlos Durand, in Buenos Aires’.

  It came as a shock to Richard Benjamin’s executors, both of whom were husbands of beneficiaries, when the will was read by Tathams and Pym, together with a letter confirming that Carolina was his natural daughter. Now there might be ninety-four beneficiaries instead of ninety-three. One of the executors, Paul Ewens, wrote to a friend in Argentina asking for further information. ‘I have the pleasure of informing you,’ the friend replied from Buenos Aires:

  that through the Oficina de Investigacíon (Secret Police), I discovered that Carolina Lyne is still alive. One of the employees saw Dr Carlos Durand and inquired about the lady. The doctor told him that she was enjoying good health and lived near his house, but refused to give her address and said that, if anyone wanted to know about her, he should communicate directly with him. The doctor was not aware that he was speaking with a member of the Secret Police as he was disguised as a porter.

  The executors hoped that Carolina was an imposter, conspiring with Carlos Durand to claim the annuity. Ignoring the difficulties faced by children born out of wedlock (she had been passing herself as Durand’s full-sister), they demanded that she prove her identity. When she failed to provide evidence of her baptism, Ewens sent her a strongly worded letter:

  You seem to be either unable or unwilling to produce one witness, in addition to your brother, to sign the necessary documents to prove your identity. On the face of it, and till I am further advised, there would seem to be some mystery connected with the matter which I am unable to fathom. I shall await a proper interval after this letter but, in the event of not receiving a satisfactory reply, we shall take such steps as our solicitor shall advise.

  At this point, the assurance company arranging the annuity took up the matter, employing a private investigator in Buenos Aires. ‘Mr Carlos Durand, retired medical doctor, lives retired from all society and is little known,’ reported the investigator. ‘As to his character, he seems strange, rough and not very scrupulous. Ever since their childhood, he and his sister have lived together and she is known as Carolina Durand.’

  In a second meeting, the doctor him told a different story: ‘Although, in our previous conversation, he had spoken of Miss Carolina Lyne as his sister, he now declared that the Miss Carolina who lived in his house was his sister, while Miss Carolina Lyne was a different person altogether.’

  This was enough for the assurance company to turn down the annuity, so Ewens asked another acquaintance in Buenos Aires, George Watts, to carry out further enquiries. Watts visited Durand in his house in January 1903. His initial impression was favourable:

  I had half an hour with Dr Durand and my conversation with the old gentleman was entirely on plants. He only speaks Spanish but I got on well with him. If you are prepared to go to some expense, I have little doubt that something can be ferreted out through undertakers, banks, municipal registers, etc.

  Five months later, he had changed his mind:

  From all I can gather, Dr Durand is a deeply-dyed blackguard. If the woman living with him is Carolina Lyne, she is quite under his thumb. A good deal of patience is required, as no doubt Durand is on the alert. I have thought of seeing the Chief of Police on the subject, but great caution is necessary.

  Watts enclosed some note
s written in Spanish, which explained that Durand had been separated from his wife for several months and inferred that he was ‘having marital relations with a woman whom he formerly passed as his sister’. This shocked the executors, both upright members of Edwardian society. ‘It is likely,’ wrote Ewens, ‘that one of the reasons for Durand’s separation from his wife was his relationship with the woman now living with him called Carolina. It is hardly conceivable that she can be his half-sister.’

  During the next three years, letters were sent to and from Buenos Aires; investigators were employed to peruse legal documents, parish records and Durand’s divorce papers; and the executors offered to pay the chief of police for proof of Carolina’s identity. By 1905, Durand had died and Ewens was trying to obtain a copy of his will. ‘The consul is obtaining a copy bit by bit,’ wrote George Watts, ‘as the will is guarded and can only be got at surreptitiously. An illegitimate son has now cropped up. The case is interesting but for the time it occupies.’

  In October 1906, when the executors learnt that Carolina had died, they prepared a deed stating that capital for the annuity would be retained in London and, if no claim was received from Argentina within the next seven years, the funds would revert to Richard Benjamin’s estate. The deed referred only to the annuity, but the executors were more concerned about her status as a beneficiary of the Lyne Stephens fortune. Her heirs were three adopted daughters who would, if her identity was proved, be eligible to receive a one ninety-fourth share of Stephens’s residuary estate.

  At no time during their correspondence had Ewens informed Carolina of her interest in the Lyne Stephens fortune – but even if her adopted daughters had been aware of the situation, they would have had little time to make a claim. On 21 May 1906, a summons was issued by the legal firm of Robbins, Billing and Company. This requested the surviving trustee of Stephens’s estate, Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), to produce a full set of accounts so that taxes and legal costs could be deducted from the funds in Chancery, after which the fortune would be divided into ninety-three parts and distributed to the beneficiaries, their heirs, or the assurance companies which had bought the reversions.

  The final distribution was made two years later. ‘On enquiry at the Pay Office,’ explained another legal firm on 7 April 1908, ‘I am informed that the cheques have not yet been prepared as they are waiting for a statement from Messrs Robbins, Billing and Company, who have the carriage of the order. I have seen Messrs Robbins who promised to lodge the statement without delay.’

  Eight weeks later, the matter was finalised. As Tathams and Pym wrote to Paul Ewens on 25 May: ‘We have received out of Court a further part of the one ninety-third share of Lewis Jedediah Lyne, deceased, being a final division of Stephens Lyne Stephens’s estate.’ One lucky man received, in addition to his own share, the shares of five of his deceased siblings.

  At last Lord Avebury could file away his papers. He was a young man of twenty-five when Stephens died in 1860. By May 1908, he had spent forty-eight years involved in an administration in which he had no personal interest. It was not quite over yet for he remained a trustee of Yolande’s estate until Stephen broke the entailed trust in April 1909. Lord Avebury died four years later, aged seventy-nine, having had been involved with Yolande’s financial affairs for two-thirds of his life.

  25

  THE LEGACY

  French and Catholic, living amongst those who were not of her faith or nation … she was thrown entirely upon herself in all that is of the deepest concern … she was lonely in a sense throughout her life.

  Canon Christopher Scott, 7 September 1894

  The story of Yolande Lyne Stephens can be divided into four incarnations: the sexy, witty young girl who entranced the men of society in the 1830s; the well-padded matron who became one of the grandes dames of Second Empire Paris; the devout Catholic with a zeal for building churches; and the bad-tempered old lady who persecuted her chaplain and lady’s maid.

  There is little left of the first Yolande. The Salle le Peletier in Paris is long gone, but the Passage Saulnier (now the Rue Saulnier) still exists; the stage door of the Folies Bergère faces the spot where the Duvernay lodgings once stood. The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane is a landmark of London; you can walk in Yolande’s footsteps through subterranean passages which lead from the dressing rooms to the stage. Her Majesty’s Theatre in the Haymarket (the King’s Theatre in Yolande’s time) still stands too, the scene of her meeting with Félix de La Valette while Stephens waited with pistols outside the door.

  The second Yolande can be found in grand houses in England and Paris. The Hôtel Molé in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré and her apartment in the Avenue des Champs-Élysées are still standing, although it is difficult to see them because of more recent buildings which line the streets. The garden façade of the Hôtel Molé can be seen from a vantage point on the Avenue Matignon; a few windows of her apartment at 122 Avenue des Champs-Élysées can be glimpsed from another vantage point between two houses in the Rue Lord Byron.

  The Hôtel Molé remained in the family of Baron Gérard for more than seventy years. It was sold in 1947 to an assurance company which, after several incarnations, is now known as the AXA Group. For twenty years, between the late 1970s and the late 1990s, it was leased to Le Figaro, the oldest newspaper in France. In 1998, AXA took over the property as its headquarters, using the original name of the Hôtel de La Vaupalière. It restored the building to its original magnificence and built a new glass-and-steel frontage on the Avenue Matignon.

  In London, the Portman Square house was demolished many years ago, but its spirit lives on in Home House which occupies three buildings (numbers 19, 20 and 21) and is a private members’ club. Like number 32, these houses were designed in the 1770s by James Wyatt and completed by Robert Adam, and Yolande would feel at home here, having lived with Stephens in Portman Square for four years.

  Grove House in Roehampton remains much as it was in Yolande’s time. Despite her ‘earnest hope and strong desire’ that the house should never be sold, Charles Fischer exercised his option and bought the freehold in 1912. When he disappeared during the First World War, having failed to pay the full purchase price, ownership reverted to Stephen who sold it again in 1921 to Dr Claude Montefiori on behalf of the Froebel Educational Institute. Grove House now forms part of the University of Roehampton which, by happy coincidence, boasts the foremost dance department in Britain.

  The third Yolande can be found in ecclesiastic architecture in the old Catholic diocese of Northampton. Regular services are held in the church of St Francis in Shefford, the bishop still lives in the house she built for Arthur Riddell in Northampton, and the church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs is one of the great buildings of Cambridge. Christopher Scott’s hopes that it would soon be filled with Catholic students were dashed in 1895 when the hierarchy decreed that a separate chaplaincy should be established for Catholics at the university. For a while, this left the church with a capacity exceeding the needs of its congregation; today it is a parish church with a wide reputation.

  Hanging in the dining room of the rectory is a copy of Yolande’s portrait by Carolus-Duran, which the artist (or his studio) completed in the summer of 1890. Her head is carved in stone near the ringer’s doorway in the church porch. The dripstone terminations on the windows of the south aisle include the heads of Cardinal Newman; Christopher Scott; the Duke of Norfolk; the two architects, Dunn and Hansom; and General Edward Claremont, referred to in the guidebook as ‘the foundress’s agent’.

  There are rumours that Yolande built the church in honour of the children she failed to conceive with her husband. If she had a motive other than religious zeal, and if this motive was connected with children, it is more likely to have been the memory of the two babies she had to give away during her youth in Paris. Perhaps the legacy she bequeathed to the Home for Incurable Children in Vaugirard is a clue to the fate of at least one of these children.

  The fourth Yoland
e can be found in Lynford Hall where she spent the last year of her life. The Jacobean-style mansion still stands in the Breckland of Norfolk and is now a hotel specialising in weddings. Not a single bidder came forward when the property was put up for auction in July 1895; it was finally sold to Henry Alexander Campbell three years later. As a staunch Protestant, Campbell was offended by the presence of a Catholic chapel on the estate. He planted trees to hide what he called ‘the terrible eyesore’ from view.

  Michael Dwane continued to live in the presbytery, holding services in the chapel and saying Masses for Yolande’s soul every Sunday until he died in February 1913. He was remembered in Lynford with great affection: ‘His kindliness and tact, his sincerity and amiability, made him a universal favourite. He was well-known for miles around and was looked upon as a friend of all, poor and rich.’1

  Lynford changed hands several times during the early twentieth century. By the 1920s, it was in the possession of Frederick Montagu, who sold more than 6,000 acres to the Forestry Commission for the creation of Thetford Forest Park. In 1928, the hall was gutted by fire which destroyed the entire east wing. Two years later, it was bought by the Forestry Commission which offered a lease to the Scottish distiller, Sir James Calder, a man with glamorous friends. Ernest Hemingway is reputed to have propped up the bar and Joseph Kennedy, US ambassador to London between 1938 and 1940, came to stay for shooting parties, sometimes accompanied by his son John F. Kennedy, future President of the United States. As Catholics, they attended Mass in Yolande’s chapel.

  After the Second World War, the hall was used as a Forestry Commission training school. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, episodes of television series were filmed here: Dad’s Army, The Professionals and You Rang, M’Lord. A corner of the stable block was used for the exterior of René’s café in ’Allo ’Allo! – a series with a surreal echo of Yolande’s strong French accent.