by Andrew Rose
Duff Cooper, then a First Lieutenant in the Grenadier Guards, recorded such a late-night visit in a diary entry made the following year. His account illustrates how Marguerite and her Prince might have spent an evening together in that latter part of the Great War. Duff had taken a fancy to a woman seen at Maxim’s. ‘When she left the restaurant I … boldly followed her – drove her to her flat and then back to the Folies Bergère where we had taken two boxes for the performance of Zig-Zag. Afterwards I went off with my new friend to an establishment where one could dance and drink – a pleasant place more like a private house. We drank a little and danced a little and then went to her flat…’140
It was, of course, the lady’s performance in bed which was the most desirable and significant feature of the Prince’s stay in Paris, but, for the time being, the young man was giving nothing away. When Regy Esher had a ‘delightful talk’ with the Prince over lunch at the Crillon on Thursday 27 April, the last day of his Paris leave, the infatuated Prince made no mention of love sessions with Marguerite, the beauty who had sat so demurely opposite him in the same restaurant just three days before. ‘A real affectionate little talk,’141 Esher crooned and, unaware of the facts, described his young companion as ‘looking splendid … one of those fine lads that one loves and admires more day by day’.142
The Prince’s own record of these pleasurable rites of passage has been largely torn out of his wartime diary, but fragments remain, hinting at the depth of passion felt for his new love. A few days after his return from Paris to the humdrum life at XIVth Division HQ, the Prince wrote ‘… how perfectly bloody this endless war is!! Of course those 3 days bliss in Paris have made it all the more bloody … Dinner was rather an ordeal after Paris & I’ve develloped [sic] that “feeling of revulsion” for the whole corps staff except Fatty, Claudie, Joey and Bucknall who shoved off for Paris this morning.’ This brief, but intense, episode of sensuality had upset the Prince. ‘I simply could’nt [sic] write & turned in about 12.00!!’143
Trench filling and army paperwork were no substitute for Marguerite. The Prince, determined to keep fit, went on long solitary runs. ‘Heavens how I sweated which only shows how fat one gets in Winter,’ he recorded in his diary, adding confidently, ‘I’m getting rid of the flesh all right now.’ The even tenor of life in camp near Meaulte had become hopelessly disturbed by thoughts of Marguerite. ‘I still cant [sic] settle down to any writing,’ he noted two weeks after meeting her, ‘its [sic] fearful what a change in my habits “48 hours of the married life in Paris” has wrought.’144
On 11 May 1917, he crossed the Channel for two weeks’ leave in London, somehow managing to escape the constraints of family life with the King and Queen. ‘I had a wonderful time,’ he wrote to Captain Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, ‘went to 3 or 4 dances & 1 pols dance…’145 The ‘pols dance’, probably attended by ‘fast’ women rather than by working prostitutes, enabled the Prince to try his luck with chorus girls and actresses, such as Madge Saunders, the same age as the Prince and originally from Johannesburg. Madge, ‘a dark-haired voluptuous woman with a full bosom and an even broader sense of humour’,146 turned out not to be the expected pushover. Using a motoring metaphor, the Prince recalled ruefully how ‘I tuned up Madge, tho’ there was absolutely nothing doing!!’147 – later writing wistfully to his friend, ‘You think Madge is a cock teaser; I think so!! What can be done?’148
Despite the fun and the London shows (the Prince enjoyed The Bing Girls, Zig-Zag and Under Cover, hugely successful reviews), he yearned for the City of Light. ‘It’s so bloody being so far from Paris … Oh!! bugger this war!!!!… I shall have a shot for Paris leave later on.’ Both Paris and Marguerite had a certain something noticeably absent from the London scene: ‘A little of the English tart goes a long way & they aren’t a patch on the French ones, are they?’149
On his return to France, the Prince spent a couple of weeks at Flêtre, on the Cassell-Bailleul road, followed by a spell in June in the rather odd surroundings of a ‘Trappist Convent’ at Saint Sixte. Although after the first fine careless rapture with Marguerite the Prince had found it hard to get down to writing letters, the gnawing absence from Paris could be assuaged, in part, by the act of correspondence. Late at night, the Prince would lie in bed, using pencil to avoid spilling ink on the sheets, writing innumerable letters to family, friends, acquaintances, and to his new inamorata. During 1917 and 1918, the Prince wrote some twenty letters to Marguerite, greeting her as ‘Mon Bébé’, signing himself ‘E’. He enclosed photos of himself, uniformed or in shirtsleeves, in camp or at table, sometimes adding souvenirs from the front, such as Prussian tunic buttons or even a German helmet.150 As with Jacques de Breteuil, correspondence was sent by King’s Messenger to avoid interception, a practice that the Prince foolishly seems to have thought would ensure complete security.151
Letters to a later mistress, sent the following year, contain elaborate romantic flourishes in French, a style surely honed during his extensive correspondence with Marguerite. A typical example is, ‘Bonne nuit et à bientôt petite amour chérie à moi; ce n’est que TOI seule qui occupe toutes les penseés de ton petit E qui t’adore chaque jour plus follement et qui t’appartient entièrement entièrement!! Tous, tous mes baisers les plus tendres … Ton E ’ (‘Good night and see you soon little love dear to me; it’s YOU alone who occupies every thought of your little E who adores you every day more crazily and who belongs to you completely, completely!! All, all my most tender kisses … Your E’).152
The letters to Marguerite, no doubt written in this slightly formal French, were indiscreet. Just as he had done in correspondence with Jacques de Breteuil, the Prince made comments about the conduct of the war which could have damaged the Allied cause had they fallen into enemy hands.153 He also mocked his father, the King (a few years later, he would refer scathingly to ‘my charming father, the one & only royal beaver’).154 Such passages were not likely to do much harm if confined to trusted recipients, male family members, Regy Esher or other courtiers, brother officers in the Grenadier Guards, or to French aristocrats such as the old Marquis de Breteuil and his sons. Nevertheless, the Prince, with remarkable naivety, even stupidity, given three years’ experience of life in an army HQ, chose to send this dangerous material to a Paris poule de luxe …
The Prince, thrilled by Marguerite’s replies, recorded eagerly that she ‘writes me the most wonderful letters!!’155 In addition to sharing these stimulating literary talents, Marguerite sent her lover small presents (‘I got a box of chocolates from Paris this morning!!’156), as well as mildly erotic literature, such Les Aventures du Roi Pausole, a witty fantasy by Pierre Louys, featuring gender confusion, cross-dressing and lesbian themes, later adapted as an opera by Honegger. The Prince appreciated the gift and was much taken by its contents. Marguerite later recalled that she had never seen the Prince so amused by any other book.157
A more heavyweight title, galumphingly British in its approach to matters of sex, came into the Prince’s hands in the summer of 1917. Captain Wilfred Bailey, the young Grenadier Guards officer whose ‘hell of a time’ in Paris had won the Prince’s admiration a year before,158 sent his friend a copy of ‘Walter’. The full title of this notorious work is My Secret Life by ‘Walter’ and the identity of its author has never been definitely established. First published in Amsterdam in 1880, the book ran to no less than a thousand pages in eleven volumes.
The text suggests that the author of My Secret Life was British, though the narrative takes the reader to the naughty Continent from time to time. Every possible permutation of heterosexual activity is chronicled in inordinate detail, with lesbianism and some male homosexuality added to a text liberally sprinkled with f- and c-words. The female characters, often domestic servants, dairy maids or shop assistants, are treated as lower-class sex objects, fit only for a wealthy man’s pleasure. In a relatively mild example, one episode refers to a workman’s wife, who – of course – has eagerly accepted Walter’s advances: ‘
I was in a bursting state of randiness and she must have been the same; for I had no sooner entered her than her breath shortened, she clasped me tight, shivered and wriggled and we both spent…’ My Secret Life also includes sequences set in the brothels of Paris, one of which intriguingly refers to ‘the red-haired French woman’. Marguerite, rightly proud of her auburn tresses, was unlikely to have been impressed by the reference.
My Secret Life, banned in the United Kingdom until the 1960s, was extensively pirated abroad. The Prince’s copy may have been an edited version, but its content seems to have pleased him greatly. A week after receiving the book, he wrote that the ‘album poem’ (perhaps a saucy squib) sent to him by Captain Bailey, ‘isnt [sic] a patch on “Walter”’.159
The Prince’s hopes for a further short spell of leave in Paris and the chance to see Marguerite again were cruelly dashed by knowledge that he would be required to attend King George and Queen Mary on a morale-boosting visit to France in July 1917. Amid a blanket of Allied press secrecy, the Prince greeted his parents at Calais on 3 July. They had crossed over in HMS Pembroke, accompanied by two destroyers, with seaplanes flying overhead for the duration of the voyage. Lunch at Boulogne station was grim. Food was already rationed in France and it was a ‘meatless day’, the dull fare accompanied by what turned out to be ‘aperient mineral water’. Although the King had foresworn alcohol for the duration of the war, this attempt at healthy refreshment by the French authorities was not appreciated by the royal party.160 The King, especially, deeply affected by the process of war, ‘looked old and tired & was occasionally very cross…’161
Within two days of his parents’ arrival, the Prince was standing with his father and other senior British army personnel on the battlegrounds of Messines and Vimy Ridge. Great care was taken not to draw enemy attention to the sightseeing party. The Germans had posted observers in balloons behind the German lines, who could have noticed a procession of official-looking cars, signalling the fact to their long-range gunners. As it was, some shelling occurred in the vicinity but later the Prince was seen to be poking at the ground, looking for relics, some of which may have found their way to Marguerite in Paris, enclosed with those unwisely written love letters. Whatever his private opinions of his father, the Prince played the role of dutiful son, even to the extent of clambering with the King into a tank (then a very new military development), which was then driven off, bumping over the disturbed ground for some ten minutes, King-Emperor and Prince crouching uncomfortably in its smelly and cramped interior.
The German intelligence network was not to be underestimated. ‘As usual,’ wrote the owner of a nearby château, ‘the enemy knew of the visit, but fortunately were not accurately informed of the dates.’162 The night after King and Prince had left Messines, the town suffered a severe air-raid, so bad that HQ General Staff were transferred to the chateau at Flêtre.
The Prince stayed at the King’s side until the end of the week, when – with some relief – he joined his mother at the Château de Beaurepaire, near Montreuil, on Saturday 7 July. Many young officers relished ‘joy rides’, short excursions which offered the hope of sexual adventure, but the presence in France of his royal parents threatened to put a brake on the Prince’s amorous adventures.
The Queen (accompanied by the redoubtable Mabel, Lady Airlie, as her lady-in-waiting) had created her own special itinerary for this short visit to France. Their first Sunday together was spent at Albert, where they lunched with ‘Bungo’, better known as Lord Byng of Vimy, one of the few competent British generals on the Western Front. Mother and son then ‘motored’ to a chateau near Rouen, so that the Queen could see Rouen Cathedral and the almost equally magnificent church of St Ouen, plus take a look at Amien Cathedral, her unflagging energy taking in hospitals, aerodromes, nursing hostels and casualty clearing stations. The Queen did not flinch at touring the killing grounds, ‘the devil’s charnel house’ in Lady Airlie’s words: ‘The Queen’s face was ashen and her lips were tightly compressed. I felt that, like me, she was afraid of breaking down.’163
The Prince accompanied his mother on some of her visits, including a trip to the site of the Battle of Crécy. He longed to get to Paris or Deauville, ‘the latter place would do me best … and you can guess why!!’164 The Prince’s interest in Deauville, a fashionable resort on the Channel coast some 60 miles from Rouen, arose from the presence there of Marguerite, who had installed herself at the Hotel Normandy for the summer season.
The temptation of seeing Marguerite again was too much. ‘It is a sin to waste another Summer on war!!’ he wrote.165 Perhaps the breathless accounts of sexual exploits described by ‘Walter’ motivated the Prince – once so reluctant to pursue the opposite sex – to take a radical course, effectively under the nose of his royal mother. ‘Four days running,’ recorded Regy Esher in words of manifest astonishment, ‘the boy started off for Deauville in his open motor, driving himself, and was back in Rouen by 7 next morning. I doubt whether King Edward [VII] ever showed more spirit…’166
On the first day of these flying visits, the Prince drove Marguerite in his open Rolls-Royce some 12 miles for lunch at the Auberge de Guillaume le Conquérant, a world-famous restaurant, subsequently patronised by the likes of Winston Churchill, Max Beaverbrook and Duff Cooper. Afterwards, they drove to Caen, then a city of great beauty, with its half-timbered medieval houses, stone guildhalls and great Norman churches, almost entirely razed to the ground in 1944. On another day, they toured the unspoilt fringes of the Seine estuary, visiting Touques, from where William Rufus embarked to claim the English throne after the Conqueror’s death, and on to the fishing port of Honfleur.
Although it was wartime, the Deauville season found ways to carry on as if nothing had happened. At the outbreak of hostilities, the Prefect had roped off the ‘Potinière’, the promenade beloved of fashionable visitors, closed the Casino bar, forbidden the playing of baccarat, and banned the tango as a symbol of decadence. As a result, clandestine nightspots and gambling joints mushroomed in cellars around the town. Eventually the authorities had to relent and, by 1917, entertainment was more or less at pre-war levels, the smart set unfazed by exorbitant prices. That summer, despite the terrible fighting on the Western Front and food shortages, the Casino’s grill-room was packed with celebrities from the world of finance, the arts, the law and the armed forces sharing grilled chicken at sixty francs a wing.167
Prominent among the visitors, as the Prince would surely have noticed, were large numbers of American and British officers, often drunk on the gamut of wartime cocktails available from Charlie, the ‘king of cocktails’, whose American mahogany bar offered such delights as the ‘Whizz-Bang’, the ‘Bulldog’, the ‘B.E.F’ and the ‘Canadian Corps Special’.
At the Casino, supper was served in the early hours. Free from wartime restrictions in Paris, Marguerite and her Prince could dance until dawn, far from the theatre of mud, misery and death a hundred miles away. They would not have been alone in trying to forget the horrors of the Western Front. One summer morning that year, at 3 a.m., a naked woman was seen running along a bedroom corridor of the Hotel Normandy, in hot pursuit of a dinner-jacketed man, whipping him mercilessly with her rope of pearls …168
Regy Esher, always the eager recipient of confidences, concluded that the Prince’s ‘first amourette’ was going rather well. Marguerite (described archly as ‘the little French lady’) had shown ‘the assurance and persistency to overcome his extraordinary shyness’.169 Esher’s source for this intimate intelligence may have been Joey Legh or even the Prince himself, now confident enough to declare his new infatuation. In any event, it appears that Esher was given no hint of Marguerite’s more adventurous tutelage in the arts of love.
After the departure of the King and Queen, safely back in England, the Prince resumed his dull round of duties at XIVth Army HQ, escaping for short periods of leave in Paris, where he could visit Marguerite again. By now, the Prince was becoming more of a party animal an
d seemed to enjoy the gatherings held at Marguerite’s apartment.
Marguerite was keen to impress her latest catch with her artistic and cultural connections, perhaps not realising how little such matters meant to the Prince. Among her guests, the Prince would have encountered the classical music singer, Hélène Baudry, protégée of François de Breteuil (whose family thought that Hélène’s collatura voice enchanted him more than her physical beauty).170 At one party, the Prince had a gramophone delivered to Marguerite’s apartment, wound it up himself, and amused the company by dancing with the glamorous Suzanne Dantès, then a young actress in her mid-twenties, later to become a French film star, playing alongside the likes of Arletty, Sacha Guitry and Jean Gabin. Marguerite, with her very special skills, had no reason to fear introducing the Prince to attractive women from the beau monde. In any event, according to Marguerite, the Prince always remained très reservé, très prince (very reserved, very much the prince).171
For variety and perhaps more advanced diversions, the Prince could be taken to perhaps Mme Théval’s maison de rendezvous at 20 rue Bizet, a few steps from Marguerite’s apartment. The Prince, evidently intrigued by the lesbianism explored in Le Roi Pausole, may have witnessed performances involving Marguerite and the demi-maîtresse Ginette Folway. In this context, a few years later, an English private detective wrote – evidently with the most extreme embarrassment – of news gleaned in Paris that Marguerite had been ‘addicted … to committing certain offences with other women and … there is nothing that goes on in such surroundings as she has been moving in in Paris that she would not be quite well acquainted with…’172
Among her specialités, Marguerite enjoyed a reputation as dominatrix. Her skill at riding and stable of ten horses provided the inspiration for a photograph of herself, probably part of an album available to clients at the maison de rendezvous, showing her dressed mannishly in riding gear, horsewhip prominently displayed. As is now well known, the Prince was drawn to women with strong, dominating personalities, an attraction suggestive of elements of masochism in his character. ‘Please come up to London,’ he wrote to a later mistress, ‘to give me that hiding.’173
