The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

  These kinds of aphorisms and adages tweaked her mind and caused her to admire him for his insight. In her maturity, people with insight, and those with ‘second sight’, captivated her as much as men with good looks and bodies. The ‘colour’ in Disraeli’s character infused his use of the language. He carried it on in his florid novels, which Victoria lapped up. She could count on witticisms from him in person, which demonstrated his fertile, kaleidoscopic mind was not just evident when crafted on paper. Disraeli had personality. He used his considerable charm—part genuine, part contrived for his queen—to overcome her initial repugnance. Some viewed his manner as unctuous; others devious. But once the more mature Victoria had to deal with him as her prime minister her attitude changed.

  A quarter of a century after being unsure about him,Victoria’s benefit of the doubt was given. Misgivings were overtaken by an overwhelming personality. Disraeli romanced her just short of seduction. It began with their first meeting with him in the highest office. He humbly took her tubby fingers in his and, eyes down, mumbled, ‘in loving loyalty and faith’. Some prime ministers genuflected to her, but none did it with such panache. His approach to her was charged sometimes with a near-operatic sweep or literary expositions that reflected popular histrionics of the era. No leader had touched her so much with such humility, and it seemed genuine. Victoria believed that he was sincere. It suited her own view of how she, as queen, should be treated. Those in service, including all elected officials, should be dutiful and devoted. Other prime ministers had been too mature, too intimidated, too dignified, too vain, too self-important or too conscious of their position vis-a-vis hers. But here was a very independent-minded, strong-willed, brilliant individual who took his role as her number-one minister so seriously that he bent his knee to the floor and kissed her hand with passion. This meant much to her. It pushed aside the unwritten division of powers between the institution of parliament and the monarchy. His professed attitude placed the queen above everything. Disraeli’s style was comforting. It restored her faith in the importance of her role. It seemed to stop, at least in her thinking, the slide of the monarchy to oblivion with the rise of democracy. His philosophy here was both cynical and two-faced.

  ‘Everyone likes flattery,’ he noted, ‘and when it comes to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.’

  Disraeli’s method was effective. When Victoria later expressed fear about a foreign venture to him, he observed that ‘fear makes us feel our humanity, your majesty’. Little wonder he almost always left her with a warm inner glow. Having created the ambience they were experiencing, he then articulated her emotions by summarising their future relations as ‘on her part, perfect confidence; on his part, perfect devotion’. He went on to compliment her unmatched experience, which surpassed ‘all living princes and most living people’. Disraeli begged her ‘not to withhold the benefit of her guidance’. He promised to submit all the grand issues of the day to her. He would look after the trivial matters to save her from the tedium. It was a cunning declaration, and he reversed it in action. Disraeli put only the less important matters to her and burdened himself with the big decisions and issues. But it was the impression that counted. Having been flattered by his expression of the importance of her role, she was happy to be ignored over the more contentious problems facing the empire.Victoria turned 49 in 1868 and had no inclination to work like her husband had on expanding the role of the monarchy.

  Disraeli’s stint in office was just ten months. He was replaced by the 59-year-old William Gladstone, with whom Victoria had always clashed when he was chancellor of the exchequer in the mid-1850s, and again from 1859 to 1866. First among her complaints about this accomplished orator was that he always addressed her ‘as if I were a public meeting’. There was none of Disraeli’s finesse, flattery or gentleness.The granite-faced Liberal statesman had had a half-century of political life and he never felt inclined to pay too much attention to his monarch. He had a nation to run.This approach displeased Victoria.To confront was one thing; to ignore her importance was a sin in her eyes. Disraeli tried to downgrade him by saying Gladstone was ‘God’s only mistake’. But such a trite put-down could not wipe away Gladstone’s skills and their fierce rivalry. It had gone on for decades in parliament and outside it.Victoria was jealous of Gladstone. He was popular with the electorate and had been dubbed the ‘people’s William’. His portrait was in homes across the country alongside that of the monarch, or it replaced hers.Victoria was not amused by his style of campaigning, which she referred to as ‘Royal Progresses’. She called his press reports ‘Court Circulars’, indicating her envy of him as an alternative ‘monarch’.Their relationship was not helped by Gladstone’s determination for reforms, including the extension of the voting franchise, elections by secret ballots and a reduction in the power of the House of Lords.Victoria opposed them all. Gladstone paid no attention to her protests, and pushed on with all these changes.

  37

  BOUNTIFUL BERTIE

  Bertie began to find his own way a decade after his father’s death, despite his mother’s strictures. Providence conspired in 1871 to generate a profile for public consumption. First, he opened the Thames Embankment, not a world-shattering event, but royalty had rarely given themselves so willingly for such ‘use’ at public events before.Then he fell ill with the ubiquitous killer typhoid when staying with other guests at a lodge in North Yorkshire. One of the guests, Lord Chesterfield, died. The nation became concerned.There was universal relief when the heir to the throne recovered. When his youngest son, John, died just a day after being born, the nation saw a side of the man that endeared him to it. He insisted on placing the tiny body in the coffin and cried when he did it.The press reported his emotion and grief. Suddenly there was the image of a public prince with a human face and feeling.

  It allowed Bertie some ‘credit’ as the nation became aware of his ‘good time’ attitude to life, which he filled with frivolous attractions. He took regular trips to Paris when the Belle Époque era had established itself with the high-kicking girls in clubs on the stunning boulevards, Impressionist artists prevalent and cafe society at its peak. ‘France is my mistress and England my wife,’ he would say often, and at home he made country house parties his favourite pastime. Hosts had to provide everything, including large quantity of game needed for a big shoot. He had his own set of friends that his mother did not vet and would not have approved of. He was fast laying claim to being the nineteenth century’s most impressive charmer. Bertie appreciated his luck in being born into an elevated social position and luxury. But instead of flagellating himself over this as his father had, Bertie accepted and enjoyed it. He reached out for those outside his privileged family and circle, regardless of background, although those he patronised all had to be high achievers and with wealth. Bertie surrounded himself with aristocrats and powerful businessmen, but his interest in people spread far and across class barriers. He met the Labour leader, Joseph Arch. He invited the working-class member of parliament Henry Broadhurst to stay at his country house at Sandringham in Norfolk. But there were borders of etiquette that Bertie would not cross. Broadhurst did not possess evening dress, and dinner was served to him in his room to save him from embarrassment.

  Bertie’s love affair with Paris and many of its more stunning inhabitants was well established in his thirtieth year in 1871. He was even-handed in his largesse. He became friendly with General Marquis de Gallifet, who had suppressed the Paris Commune in that year with executions of leftist rebels, but he also embraced the radical politician Leon Gambetta. He demonstrated an unusual public relations skill by persuading these sworn enemies to lunch with him at the Café Anglais. Bertie was in his element, using his fluent French, while working his kind of high-mileage diplomacy over a huge meal featuring roast beef and potatoes, horseradish sauce and Yorkshire pudding, and the most expensive champagne. Neither Frenchman had eaten such fare, which Bertie was turning into a staple British favourite, usually for Su
nday lunch. The two Frenchmen were intrigued by something so quintessentially un-Gallic. They were captivated, if not with the food and each other, then with this agréable anglais and his attempts to solve their disagreement. Bertie told them he had a vested interest. He did not want civil war in France. It would interfere with his annual ‘fun’. How could they be other than enchanted with someone so influential who enjoyed good times in their country even more than in his own? His bonhomie and efforts like this to foster good relations with the French and other European countries earned him the sobriquet ‘peacemaker’. His only failure was with his universally disliked, difficult nephew Wilhelm, of Germany, Vicky’s son, a grandson of Victoria. Bertie had found him tricky. But he was not alone. Wilhelm cultivated as many enemies in Europe as his uncle won friends.

  Bertie could not bear to be alone. It brought back memories of those dreadful days studying as a child and youth with just books to keep him company. Now he yearned often for male companionship and eschewed reading, while liking women more than either. He craved the attention of beautiful females, in complete contrast to his father, who had avoided the company of women. In this way Bertie was nearer in make-up to his mother, who commanded male companions who were not always her physical or generational match. But what Bertie lacked in pure handsomeness was more than made up for by his personality, style and elegance. He was a slavish creator of fashion rather than a follower of it. He made wearing tweed, Homburg hats and Norfolk jackets fashionable. He popularised black ties and dinner jackets.White ties and tails were out once Bertie left them in the royal closet. Fashion was one facet of society where he could lord it over others. Once he told off Prime Minister Lord Salisbury for wearing the wrong formal jacket-and-trouser combination. Salisbury had been deeply involved in an international crisis at the time.

  ‘Forgive me, your royal highness,’ Salisbury had responded, ‘it was dark this morning and my mind must have been occupied by some subject of lesser importance.’

  Bertie’s fashion passion, plus his title, potential wealth (he would not be ‘rich’ until he was king) and reputation as a trendsetter who loved socialising, saw society’s most accomplished beauties manoeuvring into his orbit in the hope of making a stellar attraction. Some of the most compelling and sensual women of the era in England and Continental Europe gravitated his way. Actress Hortense Schneider in Paris experienced his pull, and he felt hers, as did Sarah Bernhardt in London. The latter maintained her histrionics off stage by making love to Bertie in a silk-lined coffin that she kept in her room. His best-known courtesan paramour was a parson’s daughter, Lillie Langtry. She loved press attention, especially when a London journalist wrote at the top of his gossip column that there was nothing whatsoever between the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry. The next week in the same space he wrote: ‘Not even a sheet.’

  Langtry lost favour when she became bored at a dinner party and tried to liven things up by pouring strawberry ice-cream down the back of Bertie’s neck. Once ostracised from his set, she took her cue from namesake Lillie Clifden by becoming an actress to cash in on her notoriety.

  Society stunners over the decades in France and England—including the Princess de Sagan, the Duchess of Mouchy, Lady Brooke (the future Countess of Warwick) and the Hon. Mrs Alice Keppel—were lured Bertie’s way for fabulous holidays at Biarritz on the French coast. Keppel was a favourite; so was the demure, elegant French socialite Aline Caroline de Rothschild, who married his close friend Edward Sassoon. Lady Randolph Churchill (mother of Winston) and noblewoman Susan Pelham-Clinton were also not immune to his allure. Nor was the wealthy humanitarian Agnes Keyser able to gyrate away from him. Later Bertie remained serenely vulnerable to brilliant courtesans, such as the Spanish singer-dancer Cora ‘La belle’ Otera, who performed a magnificent dance for him while stripping to Spanish music.Then there was Guilia Barucci, who removed her gown as soon as she was introduced. Bertie didn’t need a second invitation. Plymouth-born, Paris-based Cora Pearl went one better. She was served to him naked and smothered in cream on a huge silver platter, which appealed to his two favourite pursuits concurrently.

  Bertie took his devotion to the search for his original excitement over Nellie Clifden to a new level by having his own special room at the Paris brothel La Chabanais tucked away in a side street (at 12 Rue Chabanais) near the Louvre in an attractive part of the old city between the Opera and the Palais Royal.

  At his request, the coat of arms of the Prince of Wales was placed above the bed in the Chambre Hindoue—the Hindu Room. He even had his own ‘love-chair’ built to order; a curved and gilded wooden structure sculpted in Louis XVIII style. It was covered in green satin cushions. The lower level was a long mattress. The upper section, built on four strong legs, leant backwards with vertical arm-rests and its front had two gilded stirrups.There were foot-rests on the legs.This allowed him to make love to two, even three women at a time. Bertie also had his own silver-plated copper bath, built in the design of a half-woman, half-swan. It was filled with champagne for a wash after exotic love-play. If his affair with Nellie had not killed his father, knowledge of these extreme erotic endeavours surely would have finished off Prince Albert, especially as it was all done under a royal insignia.

  An equally celestial accomplishment was to train his lovely wife, Alix, to turn a blind eye to all this playing. She remained faithful as long as some of his well-spread affections were sprinkled on their children, if not her. But her loyalty was tested. There were occasions when his indiscretions turned into scandal that Victoria, Bertie’s household and the government could not contain. In 1870 the prince was subpoenaed to give evidence when Sir Charles Mordaunt, a member of parliament, brought a divorce petition against his wife, whom he claimed had committed adultery with two of Bertie’s playboy friends. Lady Mordaunt signed a confession admitting her adultery, but threw in Bertie as a third co-respondent for good measure.The evidence maintained that he had visited the sensual lady on several occasions at her home, notably in the afternoon.This was the time in the day when all promiscuous gentlemen and gentlewomen of leisure were ready for another assignation, and all good parliamentarians were in the Commons or Lords. Bertie, looking resplendent in court and even princely in his innocence, denied the claim, which caused those in the know to smile. He made out that he just dropped around to hear Lady Mordaunt’s piano recitals, while she was adamant that she entertained him more royally.

  38

  BROWN THE BODYGUARD

  By 1872, after a six-year close relationship, Victoria was beginning to venture out more with John Brown, which gave him a unique status in the history of the monarchy. He had begun as a humble servant but had advanced to being something much more important. When early in the year Victoria sat next to him in her carriage coming back to the palace from St Paul’s, it was a sign to the world that he was surely her man, rather than manservant. Brown looked powerful, even indestructible, with his solid jaw, and his tree-trunk legs visible under his short kilt.Victoria had proved courageous in the numerous attempts to assassinate her or do her harm, but for the first time as queen she felt properly protected with Brown beside her. In this respect he was also her bodyguard and he took his role seriously. This was made clear when Victoria ventured out two days later to ‘feel’ the atmosphere in the streets as the republican push that had worried her for so long began to subside. The streets were crowded. There was clapping and cheering. Emotion, for that was the fickle barometer of popularity of the time, which very much influenced Victoria’s moods, was sweeping her royalist way again. One indicator that was never measured, but which may have had much to do with her rise again in the public esteem, was the link with Brown. He had been ridiculed in the press and the upper classes but the far greater numbers in the working class of England and Scotland were impressed by her undemonstrative yet obvious loyalty to one of them. This showed the masses that she was, in a solid way, a queen and symbol for all the people, not just for her own class. Here was this tiny empres
s and queen riding closely with a man mountain who would not have been out of place in the popular bare-knuckle boxing rings of the day.

  Just at the end of the ride as the carriage approached the entrance to Buckingham Palace, a youth pushed his way through the crowd and passed police to the carriage door. He lifted a pistol and pointed it at Victoria. Brown did not cower or pull back. He leapt straight at the would-be assassin and gripped his throat so hard that the youth’s body went limp. Several policemen jumped to Brown’s aid but they were superfluous. Their only service was to stop Brown from strangling the attacker, a seventeen-year-old Fenian, Arthur O’Connor. As they apprehended the young Irishman, Brown took the pistol, opened it and smashed it on the ground. O’Connor claimed that the weapon was inoperable and that all he wanted to do was to ‘beg’ the queen to support a petition for the release of Fenian prisoners.Victoria wanted him transported.

  ‘Uch nay!’ Brown told her.‘That will only bring the beggars at you again. Let the court sentence him as it sees fit.’

  O’Connor was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment and twenty strokes of the birch, which was not enough in Victoria’s eyes. But the attack had benefits. Demonstrations of loyalty increased. Brown was billed as a hero by even the most scathing members of the press who had until then viewed him negatively.The two rode out a third time in week. Crowds surged to the carriage in every street. The queen waved and delivered a smile, albeit a wan one, while Brown sat unmoved watching the circling masses like an eagle looking for prey.

  The queen was smitten by the Highlander more than ever. She established a gold ‘Victoria Faithful Servant’ medal for him, which was supposed from then on to be given for ‘any very special act of devotion to the Sovereign’. Brown was the only person ever to receive one. The relationship between Victoria and John Brown had progressed to an accepted thing to the public at large, although it would remain unacceptable to the royal court. Bertie detested the Highlander. Victoria, fearing a confrontation, made sure they were kept apart. The unofficial coupling of queen and servant brought reaction from many quarters. Fledgling republican movements pounced on the relationship. Anti-Brown propaganda mounted sporadically in the 1870s and referred to the queen’s ‘morganatic husband’, which more than implied that Victoria and Brown had secretly married but without him having claims to any title. Rumours began about them having a child, then children. The foreign secretary, the Earl of Derby, recorded in his diary that the two slept in adjoining rooms contrary to etiquette and even decency. Rumours almost always surfaced as tittle-tattle, but not from the Highlanders who looked after Victoria at Balmoral or Loch Ordie, where she stayed on occasions; they were discreet to the point of open hostility to prying questions from the press.Victoria was enjoying sex again although Brown’s performances were sporadic. They would sit by an open fire tippling with his favourite Begg’s Best whisky, with Victoria gaining a taste for it.Then, depending on the level of Brown’s drunkenness, they would retire to her bed for ‘hochmagandy’, as the queen too began to refer to their lovemaking.