by Jane Ridley
Nonetheless, 1878 was Lillie’s year of triumph. She and her husband, Ned, moved into a house at 17 Norfolk Street, off Park Lane, early in the New Year. Money was tight—when her furniture was sold a few years later, “the only thing at all nice was a low Chippendale wardrobe”—but Lillie by now was earning a little.38 Cartes de visite of her photographs filled the shop windows, and the society papers fed their readers with titillating crumbs of gossip about her. Her portraits by Millais and Poynter were the star attractions of the Royal Academy summer exhibition, and Lillie was mobbed by admirers as she walked through the rooms on the night of the opening banquet.39
One of her admirers was Bertie’s friend Rudolf, the eighteen-year-old Austrian Crown Prince. He had come to England to see his mother, the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, who was spending the winter riding to hounds in Northamptonshire, much to the annoyance of Queen Victoria, who thought it “very unbecoming”: “It lowers Royalty, and female Royalty above all to have an Empress coming over to hunt.”†40 The callow prince danced with Lillie at a ball given by Ferdinand de Rothschild. Lillie, who was wearing an expensive gown of pale pink crêpe de Chine, suddenly realized that Rudolf had become unpleasantly hot, and his sweaty hands were making marks on her new dress. When she asked him to put his gloves on, he ungallantly replied, “C’est vous qui suez, madame” (“It’s you who sweats, madam”).‡ Rudolf had misread the signals. He had called often at Lillie’s Norfolk Street house, presumably under the impression that Mrs. Langtry was a royal poule de luxe, but he was unwelcome.41
Lillie claimed in her memoirs (and her biographers have repeated it) that she went everywhere with Bertie in the season of 1878. Their friendship has often been described as a domesticated love affair, but there is a hole—a silence—at the center of the narrative. No letters from this time survive. Many of the stories seem to be exaggerated or wrong. Lillie is alleged to have consummated her relationship with Bertie when Alix refused an invitation to accompany him to a royal house party at Crichel, Dorset, with Lord Alington in January 1878. In fact, Alix was there, playing a central role in the ball and festivities, which lasted a week. Louise Manchester reported to Disraeli that Bertie was “very snappish” throughout the whole visit; the Langtrys are not mentioned.42
Lillie was presented to Queen Victoria in May. Her husband had been presented by Bertie a few weeks earlier, and Lillie’s presentation validated her ambivalent social status.43 She was low down the list of ladies, but the Queen, who usually left her drawing rooms well before the end, stayed on purpose to see her, or so Lillie believed. Victoria, dressed in black satin with the blue Garter ribbon across her bosom, looked straight in front of her and put out her hand, Lillie thought, in “rather a perfunctory way.” Lillie worried that her headdress, of three ostentatiously large ostrich feathers, cheekily aping the Prince of Wales’s crest, had annoyed the Queen. According to her own account, she went on to curtsey to the waiting row of royalties, beginning with the Prince and Princess of Wales; and later that evening, while dancing at Marlborough House, Bertie chaffed her on her feathers. Most of this anecdote seems to have been make-believe on Lillie’s part. Bertie was not present at Lillie’s drawing room. He was in Paris. So was Alix. Lillie’s presentation had been arranged in order to avoid embarrassment to the Princess of Wales.44
We can glimpse Bertie’s relationship with Lillie in a gossipy letter written by Disraeli, newly ennobled as Earl of Beaconsfield. One night his private secretary, Monty Corry, dined with Prince Hal, as Beaconsfield called Bertie. Afterward, Bertie took Monty to supper with a friend, and there he found “Mr. Standish and Mrs. [Sloane-] Stanley and the Jersey beauty whose name begins with an L; and what with oysters and champagne and so on it was getting very late and very late it was when they broke up. And then Prince Hal said, ‘I shall go to the Turf now and play whist!’ Even Monty could not stand that and escaped, having had a real day with Prince Hal!”45 Perhaps, like Shakespeare’s Hal, Bertie was a prince who roistered and drank until the small hours, and Lillie was his wench. Perhaps their relationship was not a grand passion, but a matter of companionship, of low life and late nights.
Bertie was taking risks, nevertheless. He had become the first modern gossip-column prince, keenly spied on by the new society papers such as Truth, Vanity Fair, and The World that mushroomed in the 1870s, competing for royal scoops and syndicating their columns to the provincial press. Everything he said or did was commented upon and often distorted. The World hinted at adultery, and warned Prince Hal, as it also called him, of the “gathering disfavour with which his widely conspicuous life is beginning to be watched.”46 The Queen’s private secretary Henry Ponsonby reported “an undefined feeling” against Bertie, as he “does not treat the Princess fairly.” Because Alix was more popular, any suspicion of unfaithfulness created indignation against him. He was accused of leading a frivolous life, but this, thought Ponsonby, was “hard on him for what is he to do.”47
The week before Lillie was presented at court, Bertie made a speech in Paris at the opening of the great Exposition. He chaired the British section, and in his speech he declared, “I am convinced that the entente cordiale which exists between this country and our own is one which is not likely to change.”48 His words were welcomed by the French as signaling a thaw in relations with England, which had frozen into a cold war ever since the birth of the Third Republic. On 6 May 1878, Bertie met Léon Gambetta, the architect of the Republic, and the two men agreed in their distrust of Germany and Chancellor Bismarck. The visit had turned into a state event, and Bertie was followed by reporters wherever he went. When “Vive la République!” was cried and Bertie was seen to put his hat on his head, a gesture of sympathy that he didn’t intend, he remarked, “I thought they were going to say ‘Vive la France!’ ” The Times reporter insisted that Bertie had put his hat on simply because it was raining.49
Never before had Bertie been taken so seriously as a diplomatic figure. The experience went to his head. He confided in Carrington that when he became king, he intended to act as his own foreign secretary. Carrington repeated this to Gladstone, who was horrified, and growled that in that case, the prince would “probably find his Foreign Office in foreign parts.”50 In England, anyone who disagreed with Bertie’s politics instantly declared that he was exceeding his constitutional powers. Abroad it was different. When he spoke to the Russians or the French, he was taken seriously; foreigners assumed that the British heir apparent carried the same weight at home as his counterparts abroad. This was the secret of his lifelong involvement in foreign politics. He had discovered that, in a Europe of monarchical great powers, his position gave him far more freedom and power to influence events abroad than those at home.
Bertie’s biographers, trying to give shape and purpose to the life of the future king, picture him taking an active interest in the Balkan Crisis of 1876–78.§ His views on the 1876 revolt of Serbs and Bulgarians against Turkish rule were certainly forthright. He staunchly supported the Ottoman Empire and blamed Russia for encouraging and promoting the Slavs. This brought him into line with Queen Victoria, who was fiercely anti-Russian, but caused a split with Affie, whose wife, Marie, was the daughter of the czar Alexander II. Alix’s loyalties were also pro-Russian. Not only was her sister Minnie the wife of the czarevitch, but her brother Willie, King George I of Greece, depended on Russian support for his throne. But though the Balkan Crisis made fault lines in British politics, its impact on the royal family was far less seismic and divisive than the wars of German unification had been.
Bertie agreed with the pro-Turk Beaconsfield, who stubbornly refused to declare his sympathy for the Bulgarian Christians massacred by the Turks in the summer of 1876. When Gladstone launched a moral crusade against the Bulgarian atrocities and published a bestselling pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, Bertie wrote to prime minister Beaconsfield giving his support. “I deeply deplore the present agitation over the so-called Bulgarian atrocities.… It mus
t, I fear, weaken the hands of the government, who are so anxious to do all in their power to obtain peace.”51
But the Foreign Office no longer sent Bertie dispatches. Beaconsfield grumbled that Bertie talked indiscreetly to his friends about government secrets, and Victoria ordered that dispatches should not be sent.52 Her refusal to confide in Bertie contrasted starkly with her confidence in Leopold, twelve years Bertie’s junior, who acted as her private secretary on Beaconsfield’s recommendation (this was a move to block the influence of the Liberal Ponsonby, as Leopold was a staunch Tory). For his twenty-fourth birthday in April 1877, Leopold received a Cabinet key to the government red boxes, the coveted symbol of admission to the Queen’s confidence, which had always been denied to Bertie. To avoid trouble with Leopold’s “Royal Brothers,” Beaconsfield advised the Queen to ask for a second Cabinet key for her own convenience, rather than mentioning Leopold by name.53 Such matters were not discussed between Bertie and Victoria.
As Ponsonby wrote: “It is true that the Queen does communicate all unpleasant matters with the Prince of Wales through third persons—but so does he. They dread personal meetings on these controversies. Whenever they take place the Queen has always the best of it and he gives way on all points and throws any blame off himself quickly. But they write a great deal to each other—but even then avoid controversial subjects.”54
Bertie’s judgment on foreign affairs was worryingly naïve. His chief source of information on the military position in Turkey was his friend Colonel Valentine Baker, who had been dismissed from the 10th Hussars, of which Bertie was colonel in chief. Baker had been accused of attacking a girl in a railway carriage, and though he was acquitted of rape (but convicted of indecent assault), Victoria, who considered that he was a disgrace to the British Army, insisted on cashiering him. Bertie stood loyally by his friend, helping to get him appointed as a military adviser to the Turks, and as Pasha Baker, he became a military hero.55 Bertie pestered Beaconsfield to see Baker, but the prime minister, who was no doubt fearful of annoying the Queen, declined to take his advice.56 Ponsonby despaired at Bertie’s inability to concentrate. “Nothing can be more genial and pleasant than he is for a few minutes. But he does not endure. He can’t keep up the interest for any length of time. And I don’t think he ever will settle down to business.”57 To the suggestion that he should follow up his Indian tour by becoming a member of the Indian Council, Bertie was indifferent. (He did, however, lend his collection of Indian animals to London Zoo, which probably did more good, as visitor numbers soared, increasing the zoo’s takings by over £6,000.)58 Knollys complained of the difficulty of getting him to enter into any subject and decide on it. “They have to catch snap answers from him as he goes shooting etc.”59
Just how much of a loose cannon the prince could be became evident in the winter of 1877–78, when Russia invaded Turkey and advanced toward Constantinople. Bertie now spoke openly about war with Russia; Lord Derby, the foreign secretary, who was a dove, complained that the hawk prince “talks loudly and foolishly in all companies.”60 English politicians dismissed Bertie’s violent language as out of order, but, as Derby discovered, in Russia his explosions were taken seriously and created the impression that England was bent on war. Count Schouvaloff, the Russian ambassador in London, who knew better, “in vain tried to explain the position of the Prince of Wales, and the little importance that attaches to his words: but that is not easily understood in Petersburgh.”61
Russia was eventually brought to book at the Congress of Berlin (13 June–13 July 1878). This was a personal triumph for Beaconsfield; Turkey regained its independence, and Britain gained Cyprus. The Congress alarmed the French, who feared a threat to their influence in Egypt, and made Britain so unpopular that the ambassador in Paris advised Bertie to postpone the visit he was due to make in July. Bertie did the opposite. He went to Paris; and he held mediation talks with Gambetta, which helped win around the French. Salisbury, newly appointed foreign secretary, wrote to thank him “very earnestly.”62 When Bertie did what his foreign ministers wanted, they were all smiles, but his position at home was always vulnerable.
At a reception that summer (Lillie related), the parchment-faced Beaconsfield sat wearing his newly awarded Garter ribbon. He was introduced to Lillie. “What can I do for you?” asked the prime minister. “Four new gowns for Ascot,” came the pert reply, at which he laughed, patted her hand, and said, “You are a sensible young woman. Many a woman would have asked to have been made a duchess in her own right.”63
Lillie’s own story (which is unsubstantiated) implies that she was now recognized as royal mistress, like Charles II’s Nell Gwyn. As her biographer has observed, however, her career was one of invention. She excelled at self-fashioning, carefully constructing an image of herself as royal mistress to project to the world.64
Historians will probably never know the intimate truth about Bertie and Lillie, but Bertie certainly pulled strings to advance her family. He asked Lord Lytton, the Indian viceroy, to promote her brother in the Indian Civil Service; Lytton, however, replied that Le Breton had only recently been promoted to chief inspector of post offices in Rajputana, and “to put him over the heads of all his seniors … would I fear be too rapid promotion even for Mrs. Langtree’s [sic] brother.”65
The Murrietas were rumored to have created a love nest for Lillie on their estate at Wadhurst, the new house that the two bachelor brothers, Christobel and Adriano de Murrieta, had built with the profits of their Argentinian trade. Here Bertie’s friend Jesusa and her husband José de Murrieta, now ennobled by the King of Spain as the Marquess of Santurce, created fashion history by seating guests at separate tables in the dining room, arranged like a restaurant.‖66
Members of the Marlborough House set attempted to curry favor by dotting the countryside with cottages ornées where the prince could conduct secret assignations. At Gunton, near Sandringham, it is well authenticated that Lord Suffield, who was Lillie’s friend, lent her a shooting box, Elderton Lodge, where she could meet the prince.67 The stories about royal love nests always feature Lillie, and never the other mistresses.68 By keeping Lillie in secret houses, Bertie hoped to live a double life and shield Alix from embarrassment. The tales are revealing, too, about Lillie’s ambivalent social status—in spite of her friendship with the prince, she was not considered a suitable house party guest.
Alix seems to have found some consolation in the support of Oliver Montagu. As Lady Antrim, later Alix’s lady-in-waiting, recalled, the gallant Montagu “shielded her in every way, not least from his own great love, and managed to defeat gossip. Oliver Montagu was looked upon with awe by the young as he sauntered into a ballroom, regardless of anything but his beautiful Princess, who as a matter of course always danced the first after-supper waltz with him. But she remained marvellously circumspect.”69 An enigmatic letter that Montagu wrote to his father, Lord Sandwich, in October 1878 can be read as evidence of his tortured relationship with the princess:a
Yes, believe me, that though I says it as shouldn’t, the cock child is not a bad’un at bottom. I know he has faults as others have, and perhaps even more of them, but his heart is in the right place. Outwardly he is a noisy crowing brute, but if everyone knew what his inward feelings are and what he has had to go through, they would not envy him his existence. I know not nor have I read of anyone put in the unfortunate position that I have been and yet, thank God, to have got through the worst without much damage to others.70
He could be talking about anything. But the words about his feelings and the position into which he has been put suggest that the unspoken subject of this letter is his painfully platonic relationship with his princess. Loyal cavalier that he was, he could hardly mention her by name.
* * *
* She may have used the name in letters to Minnie to distinguish Victoria from her own mother Queen Louise; more likely, it was a disparaging reference to Victoria’s pro-German sympathies.
† The fitness-obsesse
d empress ruined the shoes of her ladies-in-waiting by walking each morning twice around Hyde Park (about eight miles). Though a skilled haute école rider, she lacked the hunting woman’s ability to make a horse gallop. “Come on, madam, come on!” her exasperated pilot, Bay Middleton, would yell; her trail across country could be followed like a paper chase from the throwaway squares of Japanese rice paper that she used as handkerchiefs. (Cornwallis-West, Reminiscences, pp. 76–78.)
‡ Men dancing with sweaty hands is a trope of royal stories. My father as a young man once danced with Princess Margaret, who was wearing a sequinned dress. He was nervous and hot, and afterward he noticed that his right hand was covered with sequins. To his horror, he saw an imprint of his hand on the princess’s waist.
§ Sidney Lee titled his chapter on Bertie’s life in 1876–78, “Political Estrangement from Russia,” writing as if foreign policy was the prince’s chief occupation. (Lee, Edward VII.)
‖ Wadhurst Park was built by E. J. Tarver in 1872–75, and another wing was added to entertain the Prince of Wales in 1881. It is now demolished. The Murrietas, who invested heavily in Argentinian railways, lost their fortune in the Barings crash of 1890, when Argentina defaulted on bond payments.
a Montagu made frantic attempts to obtain a post in the royal household, but the Queen disliked his free and easy manners. (Richard Davenport-Hines, “A Radical Lord Chamberlain at a Tory Court,” Court Historian, vol.16 [2011], p. 224.)
