Although he had suffered a great deal at the hands of his father, the Prince had definitely been fond of him, but it was cruel and wrong to make out, as the Queen did, that he had committed an unforgivable sin.
But all these constrictions undoubtedly made him determined that one day he would be free, and one day he would be able to enjoy himself in the way he wished to do.
Hearing all about it from her father and listening to hushed conversations about him, Wenda felt very sorry for the Prince.
There had also been a great deal of gossip about him later and Wenda had however heard little of it because her parents never talked about it in front of her.
Living in the country she was unaware of what was happening in London but nevertheless she was exceedingly interested in the Prince and his wife. She was the beautiful Princess Alexandra he had married at twenty-one.
Wenda now waited breathlessly for her brother to tell her what he had been doing.
“I have been most fortunate,” Robbie was saying, “in that the Prince of Wales now counts me as one of his friends. I have been to Marlborough House a great deal and I have been included in Royal house parties.”
“House parties!” Wenda exclaimed. “Do you mean you stayed with the Prince and Princess at Sandringham?”
“I have not been to Sandringham yet, but I am sure I will be asked.”
“That is thrilling for you! I cannot wait for you to tell me all about it.”
“What I am really waiting to tell you,” said Robbie, “and I am not quite certain what you will feel about it, is that the Prince of Wales wants to come here.”
Wenda stared at him.
“Come here! You must be joking!”
“No, I mean it – although it is rather difficult to explain why.”
“But there must be hundreds of houses for him to visit,” protested Wenda.
“Yes, of course there are, but he always wants to go somewhere new where he has not been before and that is why he has asked to come here.”
“I don’t believe it, Robbie! You must have been dreaming that he invited himself.”
“No, he actually has, and I cannot refuse him. He wants to come this weekend.”
Wenda gasped.
“I think you have gone mad, Robbie!”
CHAPTER TWO
All the way down from London Robbie was trying to work out how he could explain it all to his sister.
He realised that, living in the country and being so young, she knew very little about the Social world. Also little, if anything, about men.
It was thus very difficult to put into words what he was thinking and feeling about the Prince of Wales or how much it meant to him to be one of H.R.H.’s friends.
In previous years there had been an unwritten law that whatever happened or whatever the Prince of Wales did, it was on no account to be known to the newspapers – the parties that he attended which were his joy and delight were to be kept as quiet as possible.
To amuse himself the Prince had to make up for the long empty years of his boyhood when he was guarded and protected from all temptations to immorality.
He had been married off when he was only twenty-one and Queen Victoria believed that only being married would keep him away from dangerous women.
However there were still rumours and scandal in the background and the Prince himself began to realise that he must be extremely careful that nothing he did leaked out into the newspapers.
Unfortunately any scandals concerning his friends reverted on him and he was finding it difficult by the end of the 1860s to keep at bay the greatest enemy of them all – boredom.
His friends and Society as a whole did their best to keep him happy and the Social world made a tremendous fuss of him.
He was not a great wit, but he enjoyed anecdotes and these were collected by everyone he knew to amuse him. When conversation failed it was difficult to find other interests until they discovered that the Heir to the Throne enjoyed a practical joke.
He laughed loudly when shaving-soap was put into the meringues and louder still when Lord Dupplin found a live lobster in his bed.
As Robbie was to learn there was much more to the Prince of Wales than large meals, large cigars and large women.
He had been brought up to rule, but ruling was the one activity he was not allowed to do and he still longed to peep into all the red boxes from which his mother directed British foreign policy, but he could not touch them.
He was therefore forced, whether he wanted to or not, to continue to enjoy himself.
The only difficulty was to find any variation that would take his fancy.
His closest friends did their very best, but they were frightened of the nosey newspapers, which became more dangerous as the years passed.
Then the Prince of Wales’s friends decided among themselves that they would make their enjoyment more secretive than it had ever been – but, most important of all, keep what was happening from the Queen.
It was after a scandal that the Prince was involved in, although he had had very little part in it, that the idea of house parties was introduced.
They immediately became a success and the Prince of Wales’s wealthy friends all loved to be exploited by him.
Husbands whose wives he slept with felt it was an honour and the ‘ladies of the town’ all spoke of him most tenderly. They all naturally claimed vigorously to have received his favours whether it was true or not.
At Marlborough House he played the host and he made certain that everyone enjoyed themselves.
At Sandringham, wearing his well-cut tweeds, he made the ideal Country Squire. He hunted, shot and spent a great deal of money on the house and the estate.
What was really most important from the Prince’s point of view was that Sandringham became the home of Princess Alexandra and their five children and he was the doting father, humane and understanding.
Even the Queen felt they were being kept from contamination by Society at Sandringham.
But the Prince of Wales still required something new and something different.
This came about when he realised that the actresses and ‘ladies of the town’ in whom he had been interested talked too much and sooner or later what they said reached Windsor Castle.
It was then that the Prince, or one of his favourite friends, started the idea of house parties.
Each guest took with him the lady of his choice and they indulged themselves at a ‘secret weekend’ and there were no gossips around proclaiming to all and sundry what had happened.
The Prince’s closest friends at this particular time were the Duke of Sutherland, Lord John Carrington, Lord Charles Beresford and Lord Hardwicke and they were invariably beside him at every party.
But it was wise for the host if he could introduce someone new to whom His Royal Highness would take a liking and there were certain rules not written down but obeyed by everyone who entertained the Prince.
They must be careful not to invite anyone who had caused a scandal, like the Marquis of Hastings, who had actually been the Prince’s earliest guide to the low life of the City – rich and irresistible he had become a dangerous influence on the Prince, as was feared by Queen Victoria.
The Marquis had developed a passion for the seedy side of life and criminals made him feel at home in their brothels and the sailors’ dives at Rotherhithe.
He squandered a huge fortune on lunatic bets and slow horses, but he remained a favourite companion of the Prince when he went to any of the lower haunts of London.
At Mott’s Dancing Rooms in Folly Street, a very low but undoubtedly amusing place, he was known to be a ‘hell-raiser’.
And it was at Mott’s that Hastings had perpetrated one of the most outrageous and talked about jokes of the year.
He had paid a rat-catcher twenty guineas to produce two hundred fully grown sewer rats, tied them up in sacks and when the dancing was at its height on the Marquis’s instructions one of his friends turned o
ut the lights.
It was then that his Lordship released the rats and pandemonium broke out amongst the female dancers.
The jape made the Marquis’s name as one of the liveliest blades in Society, but Her Majesty the Queen was not amused.
The Prince now however was growing older and he enjoyed comfortable weekends in comfortable houses more than the Dance Halls of his rakish youth.
It was not surprising that his friends were only too glad to pander to this new idea, which started the unwritten law that for a husband it was more a duty than dishonour to allow his wife to be the object of the Royal passion.
Naturally the Prince benefitted by this enormously.
He had no taste for young unmarried girls, who had no Social experience and thus never appealed to him, but he did require endless variations and, what was even more dangerous in many ways, plenty of excitement.
He loved women and he had been forbidden them when he was young, so he gloried in his power to attract them – even, it seemed, to make them fall in love with him.
It was not for nothing that he gained the reputation of being ‘a great lover’.
The difficulty which always confronted his friends was to give him variety and to keep his affaires-de-coeur hidden from the public.
He particularly enjoyed making new friends among the aristocracy, but he was always loyal to those who had been loyal to him.
After being scrupulously guarded, supervised and watched by his mother, he was suddenly free and he found himself not only loved by so many but envied because of his Royal position.
It was just what he had always longed for, but he believed it was impossible for him to have any freedom until he became King.
When he met young Lord Creswell, he had been charming to him and they reminisced over Robbie’s father, who had always gone out of his way to help the Prince.
After the first invitations to Marlborough House the Prince had found Robbie to be amusing and witty – a man who enjoyed life almost as much as he enjoyed it himself.
Then Robbie found himself invited almost nightly by the Prince or his friends to make up a party and it was then he learnt about and enjoyed the secret weekends when they stayed in the same large comfortable country houses.
Each gentleman took the lady he was particularly interested in at that moment and there was no need to warn the Prince’s special friends that the women they invited must be acceptable in Society.
They needed therefore to arrange the parties so that they did not interfere with the real Lady of the House.
This was usually easy in the same way as Princess Alexandra and her children stayed at Sandringham, most of the Prince’s friends would keep their wives and children in the country, especially in the summer when the boys were home from school.
As Robbie reflected when he was driving as fast as possible to Creswell Court, it was in Paris where the Prince had really found his liberation.
He had not thought of telling Wenda when he had gone abroad, but he had accompanied the Prince and found the glittering City something he had never imagined in his wildest dreams.
The cocottes and courtesans dominated the smart life of Paris making France so different from England ruled over by Queen Victoria.
These exciting and beautiful women were the real celebrities of Paris and many owned their own sumptuous houses with a string of wealthy and titled lovers in tow.
The Prince of Wales was popular in Paris and he and his party of friends were hailed with delight whenever they appeared.
Robbie had been introduced to La Païva, who was a Russian. She was the most expensive and most celebrated courtesan of the age and she had just opened her mansion in the Champs Elysées.
He also met Cora Pearl, a young English girl from Plymouth who had become the mistress of the Emperor of France and every member of the Jockey Club!
The Prince of Wales had been fascinated by her on a previous visit and it was for him that at the Café Anglais she had been served up naked beneath an enormous silver cover as the piece de resistance.
Robbie was amazed to find that the Prince of Wales travelled as the Earl of Chester, besides having his own suite at the Hotel Bristol.
If he was to really enjoy Paris, Robbie’s enjoyment exceeded his. He had never known that love affairs could be carried on in such a surprising and extravagant way.
He laughed, thinking if he never saw Paris again, it would always remain in his memory as one of the most delicious moments of his life.
There were many other parties for Robbie after they returned to England and it was when he was dining two days ago at Marlborough House that the blow struck.
Princess Alexandra was visiting her family abroad and had not yet returned and it was the Duke of Sutherland who had asked vaguely,
“What are we doing next weekend?”
The others at the table looked at the Prince eagerly as it was always he who had a pertinent suggestion to make and who invariably made any party memorable.
They recalled all the discreetly chosen actresses and the Prince’s private secretary, Francis Knollys, arranged it for him at a chosen rendezvous.
But what had been different lately was the married ladies of the Prince’s circle, who he seemed to prefer to the glamorous beauties of the stage who were often somewhat disappointing when the footlights were switched off.
It was well known to Robbie and the others present that His Royal Highness usually visited the married ladies he was currently interested in at their own houses in the afternoon.
It was understood that after tea husbands went to their Clubs and the servants to the basement, and another unwritten law was that no one asked questions if a hansom cab bearing the Prince of Wales’s crest was seen standing outside a front door in Mayfair or Belgravia.
What was also on the list of amusements and in fact now ranked number one, was the entertainment of beauties who were in Royal favour and who could only be properly enjoyed quietly and secretively in a weekend house party when the Mistress of the house was not present.
This was where Francis Knollys would arrange that the ladies invited had no other engagements that particular weekend.
And there was of course one vital condition to all these arrangements – that was there must never be any scandal or embarrassment for the Prince of Wales.
The Society he controlled allowed him to make the rules and the prime condition of his friendship to those who surrounded him was that he must never suffer damage to his reputation as the future King of England.
It was recognised, when people looked back, as one of the greatest achievements of the Prince’s life that he had managed to create an exclusive Social sexual game for the English Society to play without fear.
Naturally it was a game in which he made the rules and enjoyed himself personally with undiminished vigour until he was well past middle age.
But to Robbie it was all new, exciting and different.
At the same time he was only too easily aware that just as he had been picked up and become to all intents and purposes a close friend of the Prince of Wales, he would, if he made a mistake, be just as easily dropped.
He had inherited his father’s native intelligence and he appreciated that it was very important for him to keep the Prince’s friendship and not, as some of his friends had done, lose it suddenly overnight.
He had therefore just managed not to exclaim with horror when the Prince had proposed,
“I have just thought of one house I have not visited, which I have always heard is very fine and has a superb collection of pictures.”
“Where is that?” someone asked.
Robbie froze as the Prince replied,
“Creswell Court. I remember my father telling me how many treasures it contains. Is that not true, Robbie?”
For a moment it was difficult for Robbie to speak and then he replied rather tremulously,
“It is still there, sir, and as you say has an excellent collection of p
ictures.”
“Then that is where we will go next weekend,” the Prince declared. “I feel sure your father, Robbie, would like me to see it and I bet you have some excellent horses we can ride.”
There was nothing Robbie could say except that it would be a great honour to welcome him.
“Very well,” the Prince had said, “as it is quite near it will be far easier to drive there than to have my private coach attached to the train.”
He glanced at the others as he added,
“Of course Francis Knollys will arrange everything as he always does and I am sure you will be able to greet us on Friday evening at about six o’clock.”
Robbie went pale but no one noticed.
They were busy planning who they would take with them on the Prince’s secret weekend and they all felt that it would certainly be amusing to go to a place none of them had ever visited before.
It was only when he had returned to his lodgings that Robbie wondered what he could do.
For a moment he thought of pretending to be ill or saying the house had burned to the ground or anything else which came into his mind that would prevent the Prince paying him the visit he intended.
Then he told himself he was just being stupid.
After all the house was there, the collection which no one could criticise was in its place, and all he had to do was to make the place habitable for His Royal Highness.
He had gone to bed late and spent most of the dark hours awake until he left London as soon as it was light.
He knew better than anyone else how much there was to do if the Prince was to be entertained as he expected at Creswell Court.
*
But now with his sister staring at him incredulously he found it hard to put into words exactly what he required.
“How can you possibly entertain the Prince here?” Wenda was saying, “unless of course you mean for him just to come for tea. I suppose we could clear up the place for tea, if nothing else.”
Robbie squared his shoulders.
“The Prince and his friends are coming here for the weekend. I have accepted his hospitality a dozen times already and he even took me with him to Paris.”
Secret Love Page 3
