The Heir Apparent: A Life of Edward VII, the Playboy Prince

In Bertie’s circle, adultery was a sport that had to be played according to strict rules. The first of these was Never Divorce. Not only did divorce bring social disgrace, but court cases risked public exposure, which could be horribly damaging, as Bertie had discovered during the Mordaunt case.

To understand the explosive impact of Edith’s letter, we need to track back to November 1874, when Joe and Edith Aylesford entertained Bertie and Alix at Packington Hall, their Warwickshire home near Birmingham. This was one of those defining house parties that shaped Bertie’s life as Prince of Wales. He and Alix stayed for five nights at Packington. Sporting Joe could ill afford it, but he spared no expense. A lake was created in the center of the vast dining room table (this unfortunately leaked, spoiling the dresses of ladies sitting at dinner), and a temporary wooden ballroom was constructed on the terrace. Fireworks rocketed money into the air, and adorning every room were wreaths of flowers and exotic plants, grown in the luxurious new conservatories that were specially admired by Alix. The chief entertainment was shooting in the Capability Brown park. After every second drive, each gun would shout “Boy!” and there would appear a bottle of champagne, curiously shaped like a “retort,” which must be drained instantly.^* Luncheon, which the ladies attended, was held in a tent, and throughout the meal the party was serenaded by the band of the Warwickshire Yeomanry Cavalry. Afterward, Edith and Alix sat together in the pony carriage for an elaborately posed photograph, and then went driving together. Edith had four ponies, known as “rats,” which she drove at speed around the estate.^†³

The guest of honor was the czarevitch, Bertie’s brother-in-law, who arrived in time for the climax of the visit, a grand ball on the last night. Six hundred guests thronged the temporary ballroom, which was decorated in crimson and hung with gold coronets. In the center stood an alpine grotto, constructed of rough virgin cork, flanked by pines, decorated with ferns, and containing a fountain that spouted sprays of water in the shape of the Prince of Wales’s feathers. One guest who is listed as staying in the house on the night of the ball, but not earlier in the week, was Lord Blandford.⁴ He was the eldest son of the Duke of Marlborough and a long-standing friend of Bertie’s.⁵ Clever and attention seeking, his aim in life was to wreak as much havoc as possible and achieve fame as a rakehell.

The last dance ended at two o’clock. Upstairs in the darkened house, lights still burned as ladies’ maids dismantled their mistresses’ elaborately pinned and padded hair, unlaced their stays, and arranged them for bed. Long afterward, the passages continued to creak. For the faster members of the Marlborough House set, corridor creeping was the dangerous sport of house party entertainment, and to signpost their nightly wanderings hostesses posted helpful names into brass plates screwed to bedroom doors.

The suggestion is that the two men had reached an understanding. Blandford agreed that for now Bertie would have his way with Edith. In exchange, Bertie would arrange to take Joe with him to India, leaving Blandford to conduct an affair with Edith while her husband was thousands of miles away.

This theory—that Edith was Bertie’s mistress, and that he colluded with Blandford—rests largely on hearsay and is incapable of proof. Many people believed it at the time, however, and it was this that made the Aylesford affair so scandalous.

Joe knew that Bertie admired Edith, because he had seen the prince’s letters to her, written in December 1873. These letters (as Blandford later related) “had been shown to Lord Aylesford by Lady Aylesford when she received them, but had been taken no notice of by her husband.”⁷ It would not be surprising if Joe took the view that the letters were not incriminating. Possibly he chose to ignore them because it was to his advantage to allow the prince to flirt with his wife. His reward was admission to the inner circle of Marlborough House. He and Edith were invited to travel with Bertie to Russia for the wedding of Prince Alfred to the czar’s daughter in 1874, he was allowed the dubious privilege of bankrupting himself by entertaining the Waleses at his Packington estate, and he was taken by Bertie to India.

Joe was four years younger than Edith, who was convinced that he had long ceased to care for her. “You do not know, you never can know,” she told her mother-in-law, “how hard I have tried to win his love and without success.”⁸ Later, in court, it emerged that he was in the habit of going after dinner to Cremorne Gardens and forming “vulgar amours” with prostitutes, then drinking at his club and returning home intoxicated at three or four a.m.⁹

From India, Joe had written chatty, affectionate letters to Edith, complaining forlornly, “I have not had a letter from you for a very long time in fact I should hardly know your handwriting HRH says that I am the only one that hardly has any letters when the bag is opened.”¹¹ When Edith wrote announcing her affair with Blandford, something snapped inside good-natured Joe Aylesford. Two days after receiving Edith’s letter, he wired: “By your letter you have decided for yourself about your future and have no other alternative but to leave at once.”¹² The same day, he telegraphed his mother: “Send for the children and keep them until my return. A great misfortune has happened.”¹³ On 28 February 1876, he left the prince’s camp in an elephant howdah. “He is gone home broken-hearted at the disgrace,” wrote Carrington.¹⁴

In Nepal, the telegraph wires were buzzing. In England, news of the scandal spread like fire, and Alix soon heard of her friend Edith’s defection. She telegrammed Bertie, imploring him to prevent Joe suing for divorce. “Tell Joe not to take rash steps,” she wired. “Mother done nothing yet.”¹⁵

Louise Manchester telegraphed Bertie. “Entreat you persuade A[ylesford] bid her stay till his return. Not too late—you can prevent much misery. Essential you exert influence.”¹⁸

“It is too late,” replied Bertie. “After letter A received a week ago reconciliation is impossible. He will not allow her to remain under his roof, and returns to England at once.”¹⁹

Louise Manchester visited Edith at Packington. As soon as she saw her, she knew the case was hopeless. “I might just as much have talked to a stone,” she told Bertie. “She is an altered woman—speaks, thinks and talks like Lord Blandford who seems completely to have bewitched her.” Louise blamed Blandford, who was determined to get Edith into his power and “create as much scandal and notoriety as he could in imitation of a bad 4th rate French novel.” He had given Edith a box of poisonous pills to take in case anything happened to him, and she kept rattling them about in her pocket.²⁰

Blandford reveled in the attention and the drama. Heedless of the fact that he was himself still married, and his wife, Bertha, refused to divorce him, he demanded that Aylesford divorce Edith. If he refused, raved Blandford, “I shall only wait till HRH comes back to appear on the scene and then if A tries to lick me I shall do my damnedest to defend myself & afterwards if I am all right, I shall lick HRH within an inch of his life for his conduct generally, and we will have the whole thing up in the Police Court!!”²¹ His wife’s response was apt: When Blandford came down to breakfast one morning, he lifted the silver chafing dish to find a pink doll, instead of the customary poached egg.

Far pushier than Lansdowne was Blandford’s younger brother, Lord Randolph Churchill, who was a friend of Bertie and a member of his circle. He bombarded Bertie with telegrams begging him to intervene. “For God’s sake use your influence to defer final decision of Aylesford’s till his and your return,” he wired on 28 February.²⁴

“Matters can never be arranged,” replied HRH. “Had you seen certain letter you would say the same. Deeply regret that such should be the case.”²⁵

Randolph tried bullying. “For your own sake advise Aylesford … to come to no hasty decision. Your Royal Highness will be held responsible generally for whatever line of conduct is adopted and is already credited with the initiative in this matter.”²⁶

Bertie was mystified. “Your telegram received today has caused me even more astonishment than your last. Have not advised A though entirely approve of line he has taken.”²⁷

When Bertie refused to be bullied, Randolph Churchill tried blackmail. Edith had by now been persuaded by her sisters to think again about divorce. She then produced her secret weapon: the packet of letters Bertie had written her in the winter of 1873. She gave copies of these to Churchill.

A shaken Alix confided in Bertie’s former comptroller, old Sir William Knollys. While she was discussing the bruising interview she had endured with Randolph, her friend and cousin Mary, Duchess of Teck, was announced.^a Quick as a flash, Alix invented a white lie, telling Mary that she had misheard when the footman announced that Edith Aylesford had called, and agreed to see her under the impression that it was her friend Lady Ailesbury.²⁹ Though this story gained credence, it seems likely that Alix, in defiance of Bertie’s command, had in fact prearranged Edith’s visit.^b

Meanwhile, Alix’s subterfuge succeeded. She asked her cousin for advice as to how to limit the damage, and Mary knew exactly what to do: “Order your carriage at once, go straight to the Queen and tell her precisely what has happened. She will understand and entirely excuse you from any indiscretion. It will be in the Court Circular that you were with the Queen today and any comment will be silenced.”³⁰ Sir William Knollys agreed. “Her Royal Highness is giving very good advice. Pray follow it at once.”³¹

Bertie, meanwhile, was steaming home from India on board the Serapis. By the time the news of Randolph’s bursting in on Alix reached him (28 March), he was staying at Cairo in the khedive’s palace. In a rage, he dispatched Lord Charles Beresford in the royal yacht Osborne to England with a letter to Lord Hardwicke, the Master of the Buck Hounds. Evidently “written under great excitement,” the prince’s letter called for “a hostile meeting” with Randolph—in other words, a duel.³⁴ Churchill’s response was superbly insolent. He apologized for approaching the princess on so painful a subject, but “this is the only apology which circumstances warrant my offering.” He refused to apologize to the prince; and with regard to Bertie’s challenge to a duel, he was crushing: “No one knows better than HRH the P[rince] of Wales that a meeting between himself and L[or]d R. C. is definitely out of the question. Please convey this to HRH.”³⁵

The idea that Alix had hitherto been sheltered from all unpleasantness was a romantic fiction; it cannot have come as surprise to her to learn that Bertie had conducted a flirtation with Edith Aylesford. But by confronting her with evidence in the shape of Bertie’s letters, Randolph Churchill had torn away the veil and forced her to confront the painful fact that her husband was repeatedly and publicly unfaithful. With brutal accuracy, Randolph had skewered the web of lies and deceit that Bertie had woven around his marriage. While her husband was away in India, Alix had poured out page after page of longing for “my angel Bertie” in her letters to Minnie, and no doubt she wrote like that to Bertie, too.³⁶ Now not even Alix, whose capacity for self-deception seems almost unlimited, could still cling to the belief that her Bertie really was an angel.

Randolph’s claim that Aylesford wanted to throw his wife into the arms of Lord Blandford seems bizarre, and his allegation that Bertie forced Joe to go to India against Edith’s will was untrue. Afterward, Bertie found letters from Edith (which he showed to the Queen), in which she gave up her opposition to Joe’s visit to India, agreeing with Bertie that “it would be greatly to Lord Aylesford’s advantage that he should accompany HRH.”³⁸

When Bertie received a fifty-page letter from Hardwicke reporting Randolph’s threats, he appealed immediately to the Queen. Victoria was staying at Coburg. She unhesitatingly believed his claim that the letters to Edith were innocent. That Bertie said so was enough—true, it was unfortunate that there were any letters at all, but writing letters, said the Queen with a smile, was a family failing.³⁹

The letters that Bertie wrote to Edith Aylesford in December 1873 were preserved by Francis Knollys, tightly folded in a sealed envelope.^c The first, dated 11 December 1873, was written from Blenheim, where Bertie was staying for a shooting party.

Much of this seems a flirtatious code. Edith’s correct title was of course Lady Aylesford, not Lady Joe, and Joe’s first name was actually Heneage. Bertie was a stickler for correctness, so calling Edith Lady Joe was a form of intimate joshing, as presumably was the sixpence.

In his second letter, written a week later from another house party, Bertie enlarges on the theme of “discretions.”

The PS is the closest Bertie came to showing his hand, but even this is arch and playful. Letter number three, written from Sandringham on 26 December 1873, firmly closes the correspondence.

In 1876, Lord Randolph Churchill was twenty-seven and MP for Woodstock. He wore a bristling waxed moustache and he had inherited the gooseberry eyes of the Churchill family, along with their bad temper. Thin, with an electric, restless sort of energy, he looked younger than he was, and people often remarked on his schoolboy charm. He suffered from mood swings, when he became depressed and paranoid, and he could be brutally rude.^d

Randolph claimed that his motive in blackmailing Bertie was to protect the honor of the Marlboroughs by preventing Blandford from divorcing and thus disgracing the family name. As the younger, favorite son, he saw it as his duty, or so he said, to save the family from his dissolute brother. He was envious of Blandford and never ceased to complain that he was a “horrid bore,” “heartless,” “selfish,” and “very bad.”⁴⁵ It was no coincidence that for Randolph, protecting the family honor involved preventing Blandford from getting his way. At once dutiful and rebellious about his background, Randolph was nonetheless closer to Blandford than he was to his distant father the duke or his overbearing mother, at the rustle of whose silk dress the household trembled.⁴⁶

At the wedding in Paris in April 1874, Francis Knollys was best man. Bertie gave Randolph a silver cigarette box from Moscow; Randolph told Jennie that HRH was “very cordial and nice, asked much after you and said that … he was very glad that everything was so pleasantly settled at last.”⁵⁰

Not without reason, Bertie considered that Randolph owed him a debt of gratitude. Thirty-five years later, he remarked of Winston Churchill: “If it had not been for me and the Queen, that young man would never have been in existence.” How so? “The Duke and Duchess [of Marlborough] both objected to Randolph’s marriage, and it was entirely owing to us that they gave way.”⁵¹

Jennie’s first child was born at Blenheim in November 1874 after only seven months of marriage. The family insisted that the baby Winston was premature, though it is often suggested that Jennie was already pregnant when she married.⁵² No suspicions were raised, however, about the baby’s paternity.

Shortly after the birth, the Churchills returned to their London house on Charles Street. Jennie’s sister Clara, who stayed for six months, wrote: “I don’t know why it is but people always seem to ask us when HRH goes to them. I suppose it is because Jennie is so pretty, and you have no idea how charming Randolph can be.”⁵³ HRH’s engagement diary for 1875 reveals that he dined with the Randolph Churchills on 21 March; they dined with him in Paris on 4 April; he drank tea with Jennie at her house on Charles Street on 15 August.⁵⁴ The young Lady Randolph had entered Bertie’s life, and would remain his friend on and off for thirty-five years.

Jennie Churchill wrote an autobiography. Published in 1908, this volume of society memoirs is predictably discreet. Bertie’s name barely features, but if, as her great-niece Anita Leslie suggests, he was “toying with the idea” of an affair with her in 1875, her memoirs give a good idea as to what attracted him.⁵⁵ An American in London, Jennie found herself cold-shouldered as a cross between a “Red Indian” and a Gaiety Girl. She had spent her teenage years in Paris, growing up in the scented hothouse of the imperial court, where her mother was a friend of the Empress Eugénie. As Lady Randolph Churchill, Jennie found herself plunged into the chilly, Old World stateliness of Blenheim Palace. At luncheon, massive silver covers were placed in front of both the duke and the duchess, each of whom carved a vast joint to feed the entire household. Every night at eleven, the family trooped out to an anteroom and, lighting candles, each in turn kissed the duke and duchess good night.⁵⁶

Randolph’s extraordinary anger against Bertie is more understandable if it was fueled by sexual jealousy. If Bertie really was flirting with his wife, then social suicide was perhaps not too high a price to pay.⁵⁸

Bertie was still fond of Randolph, but Randolph’s ungrateful insolence and his bullying of Alix enraged him. When Lord Charles Beresford returned bearing Randolph’s non-apology, the Serapis was at Malta. Bertie decided on a sudden change of plan, delaying his return by an impromptu visit to Spain.

Queen Victoria worried that Bertie would make himself unpopular with the animal-loving English by witnessing a bullfight in Spain.⁵⁹ The prince refused all bullfight invitations, but his actual destination was far more compromising. He spent three days sightseeing at Seville. Here, as the foreign secretary, Lord Derby, related, he had arranged to meet “a certain Madame Murieta [sic], well known in London society.”⁶⁰

Jesusa Murrieta was the Spanish wife of José de Murrieta, a South American merchant living in London.⁶¹ Bertie had scandalized the Foreign Office by traveling to France with Madame Murrieta before he left for India.⁶² The Murrietas belonged to the London smart set and entertained lavishly at their houses in Kensington Place and Wadhurst in Sussex. They were friends of Jennie Churchill’s, and if Bertie intended by his visit to Madame Murrieta to put Jennie’s nose out of joint, he certainly succeeded. “I have no doubt [HRH] will abuse me,” she told Randolph when she heard about the visit, “as most likely she will talk about me.”⁶³

“Pray be careful your Royal Highness is not taken prisoner like Coeur de Lion on your return from your Crusade,” wired Disraeli to Bertie in Seville.

Meanwhile, the prince made careful diary plans, choreographing a triumphant return home. He wrote Alix “a very dear letter,” telling her that on his return to English waters, he wished to see her “first and alone.”⁶⁶ The Serapis arrived off Yarmouth, Isle of Wight, at eleven a.m. on 11 May 1876, where Bertie boarded the Enchantress and was reunited with Alix and his children.⁶⁷ In London, Bertie and Alix visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace, where a large crowd had gathered. Victoria, jealous of her own popularity, noticed that when Bertie and Alix drove away, and she appeared alone at the palace window, the crowd “turned round and cheered”—the enthusiasm for herself was greater than for Bertie, she thought.⁶⁸

By the time of Verdi’s second act, the opera house was packed. Women glittering with diamonds waited and whispered with anticipation until at last the prince and princess arrived. The whole assembly rose, and it seemed the cheers would never cease. Bertie bowed and bowed repeatedly, and then, in accordance with his instructions, the soloist Mme. Albani sang “God Bless the Prince of Wales,” with such vigor that renewed cheering broke out.⁷⁰

The following evening at seven thirty, Lord Hardwicke called on Bertie at Marlborough House. He had just come from seeing Lord Aylesford, and he brought the news that Sporting Joe had decided not to divorce Edith, but to arrange a private legal separation.⁷¹ The scandal had been averted.

There is at Packington Hall a large silver cigar box in the shape of a log cabin, designed for handing round cigars after dinner.⁷² The Packington log cabin was a present from Bertie to Sporting Joe.

Bertie had much to be thankful for. Joe had returned from India in a confused and reckless state of mind, determined to fight a duel with Blandford. On discovering that under the rules of dueling “if I call him out … he is not allowed to shoot at me … but I have a cool shot at him,” and considering this unfair, Joe agreed instead to hire a lawyer.⁷³ He was advised by friends such as Hardwicke to agree to a legal separation, as in a divorce case all his past misdeeds would come out in court.⁷⁴ But Joe’s real reason for deciding against divorce was perhaps to protect the Prince of Wales. When someone mentioned that Bertie had written letters to Edith, he threatened to horsewhip the tale-teller for propagating “a scandalous falsehood,” even though he already knew all about the correspondence.⁷⁵ Blindly loyal to his prince, Joe was willing to give up all he had—his wife, his fortune, even his home—to serve him.

Later he immigrated to Texas—hence the log cabin cigar box. Installing himself and his retinue in the only hotel of a shanty town named Big Spring, he bought twenty-two thousand acres. The cowboys set about separating him from his cash, but it’s good to learn that he won their respect and “they would spill their blood for him as quickly as he would open another bottle for them.”⁷⁸ Joe died of drink at age thirty-six. Bertie’s note in his diary signifies that he still considered Joe one of his court: “Receive sad news of death of L[or]d Aylesford in Texas USA.”⁷⁹ The curmudgeonly Lord Derby commented: “He had run through his whole fortune by gambling, racing and extravagance generally; and was one of the very worst examples of the English peerage. Naturally he belonged to the Marlborough House Set.”⁸⁰ This was a harsh verdict. Joe had inherited debts, and he spent a good deal of his fortune serving the Prince of Wales.⁸¹

As for Randolph Churchill, he got his way and stopped the Aylesford divorce, but he had broken all the rules of courtly behavior and for this he had to be punished. Nothing if not stubborn, Randolph refused to grovel. Bertie appealed to Prime Minister Disraeli, Lord Chancellor Lord Cairns, and Hartington to arbitrate. Arrangements were made for the entire Churchill family to go into exile. The Duke of Marlborough reluctantly accepted Disraeli’s offer to become Viceroy of Ireland. The royal connection had already cost him dear—in 1875, shortly after entertaining the Prince of Wales at Blenheim, he had disposed of the Marlborough gem collection for thirty-five thousand guineas. The duke grimly sold off more land, and arranged to take Randolph with him as unpaid private secretary.

Randolph first skipped off to America. As Jennie breezily put it, having had “serious differences of opinion with various influential people,” Randolph felt in need of “a little solace and distraction.”⁸⁴ A form of apology drafted by the Lord Chancellor was sent for him to sign, and he succeeded in doing this in what the Lord Chancellor thought was “the most ungracious and undignified way that was possible.”⁸⁵

However ungracious, the apology had been extracted, and Bertie had seemingly won his point. The Queen entertained the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough at Windsor in December 1876, and Bertie grudgingly agreed that he would bow to Randolph. However, he let it be known that he would not speak to him and would boycott any house that entertained the Randolph Churchills. This was not mere spite. No one mentioned the fact, but Randolph still had Bertie’s letters to Edith in his possession. Being a social exile was the making of Randolph as a politician, as he no longer wasted his time partying at Marlborough House.

* A retort is a long-necked glass container. HRH once visited Joe in the hospital with a broken leg. He brought two “boy” champagne bottles. “Joe, have a drink,” said Bertie. “Oh, after you, Sir,” replied Joe, whereupon HRH opened a bottle and drank the lot (no mean feat). After more chat the episode was repeated, and the prince quaffed the second bottle, too. (Author interview, Lord Aylesford, November 2006.)

† Edith gave birth to a daughter the following year, and Alix stood as godmother. At the baptism at the Chapel Royal on 24 July 1875, Alix held the baby over the font, and it was christened Alexandra.

‡ This is corroborated by the photograph of the party posed on the balustrade beside the conservatory. Bertie in the center is flanked by Alix and Edith, who stands next to Joe Aylesford and Louise Manchester. The czarevitch is on Alix’s right. Apart from Hartington, who was Louise Manchester’s acknowledged lover, Bertie is the only bearded man.

§ These brief messages are the only known communications between Bertie and Alix that have survived the bonfires of letters after their deaths.

‖ It was not true that the solicitor general had seen Edith’s letters, as Randolph claimed. The opinion that Bertie would never sit upon the throne of England if the letters came out in court was based on a hypothetical case. (St. Aubyn, Edward VII, p. 183.)

a Mary, Duchess of Teck, was related to both Bertie and Alix. Her father was the Duke of Cambridge, Bertie’s great-uncle, and her mother, Augusta of Hesse-Cassel, was a first cousin of Alix’s mother, Queen Louise. Alix wrote to her sister when the duchess was pregnant with the future Queen Mary: “Mary of Teck is here—you probably know that she is in a certain condition!!! Can you imagine her so—she is enormously big but we do not really see yet as she is so fat above, and thereby is hiding the lower part of her body!!” (Copenhagen Letters, Box 102, Alix to Minnie, 21 January 1867.)

b Bertie had strictly forbidden Alix from becoming involved in the Aylesford divorce, and she knew that receiving a woman as tarnished as Edith might damage her reputation. Edith told Louise Manchester on the day of the interview that “the Princess had sent for her to go to Marlborough House at 6.” According to Louise, “It was that busy body Mr. Sturt [Lord Alington] who most improperly went to the Princess and urged an interview, and … her kindness of heart prompted her to see what she could do to save misery to so many people.” (RA VIC/Add C07/1/1090, Duchess of Manchester to B, 27 March 1876; see Henry Ponsonby to Francis Knollys, n.d., in Randolph Churchill, Churchill: Companion, vol. 1, part 1, pp. 30–31.)

c Queen Victoria forbade publication of the letters, as (Ponsonby wrote) “colouring might be easily given & injurious inference deduced from hasty expressions.” (Henry Ponsonby to Francis Knollys, 18 April 1876, in Randolph Churchill, Churchill: Companion, vol. 1, part 1, p. 38.) Not publishing gave rise to wild speculation about the lurid contents of the letters (see, for example, Mary S. Lovell, The Churchills [Little, Brown, 2011], p. 57). These extracts from the letters that Randolph Churchill used in his attempt to blackmail the Prince of Wales have never before been revealed.

d In later life his moods were exacerbated, possibly by syphilis; but Lord Derby for one believed that Randolph had inherited mental illness through his mother. (John Vincent, ed., Later Derby Diaries, [Bristol, 1981], pp. 74, 88.) The Duchess of Marlborough was a daughter of the formidable Frances Anne, Lady Londonderry, and a sister of Lord Adolphus Vane-Tempest, mad husband of Bertie’s former mistress, the unhappy Susan Vane-Tempest—odd to think that she was Winston Churchill’s great-aunt.

e Many years later, at Dunkirk, Michael, the 9th Earl of Aylesford, who was Joe’s nephew, allegedly met a French officer who introduced himself as Guy Bertrand’s son. Michael Aylesford invited the Frenchman into his tank to shelter from the bullets, but both men were killed when it was hit by a shell. (Author email from Lord Aylesford, 3 December 2006.)

CHAPTER 12

The Aylesford Scandal

1876