As rare as any oiseau bleu, a great heiress and a great beauty.
—DAISY, COUNTESS OF WARWICK
Frances Maynard was born in Berkeley Square on December 10, 1861, during a black and gloomy winter that saw London hung with mourning for the recently deceased Prince Albert.1 “Daisy,” as she was known from her earliest years on account of her white skin and bright eyes, had illustrious forebears, including Nell Gwyn, mistress of King Charles II, and the Duke of St. Albans. Daisy’s father was the wild and headstrong Charles Maynard, son of Henry Maynard, 3rd Viscount Maynard. Charles Maynard, tall, red-haired, with blazing blue eyes, was a famous athlete, and many of his exploits when colonel of the Blues had become legendary. Charles was such an accomplished rider that he could jump his favorite horse over the mess table without disturbing a single wineglass, and he had once interrupted a bullfight in Spain and ridden the animal around the ring by the horns, much to the consternation and anger of the onlookers.2 Charles had met Daisy’s mother, Blanche, while visiting his family’s estate in Northamptonshire, and, although the marriage between a humble vicar’s daughter and an extroverted aristocrat twenty years her senior seems unconventional, the match brought Blanche great wealth and Easton Lodge, the sprawling gothic mansion near Dunmow, Essex.
Three years after Daisy’s birth, tragedy struck. Charles Maynard died suddenly at the house in Berkeley Square and left Blanche a widow, alone in the world with Daisy and her little sister, Blanchie. After Charles had been buried in the family vault at Little Easton church, old Viscount Maynard invited Blanche to visit Easton Lodge, and bring the children with her. All that Daisy could remember was her grandfather “as an old man, being dragged round uncarpeted rooms at Easton in a bath chair, and feeling the thrill of his wonderful eyes as he gazed on me.”3 The old viscount died, just two months later. But Daisy had made an impression. Blanche was once again summoned to Easton Lodge, this time to hear the family solicitor read out Viscount Maynard’s last will and testament in the breakfast room. It was commonly supposed that, following young Charles’s sudden death, the bulk of Viscount Maynard’s estate would be inherited by the Capel boys, two cousins who had been brought up at Easton Lodge. To Blanche’s astonishment, the old viscount had other ideas. After meeting young Daisy, Viscount Maynard had altered his will, making the little girl his heir, and leaving the estate to her.4
This made some members of the family so angry that they threw pats of butter at the viscount’s portrait, despite the fact that he had provided “amply for all of them.”5 Thus, the Maynards went from genteel poverty to a life of luxury, moving immediately to Easton Lodge. Years later, Daisy recalled “the long drive from the station on a wet night, the plop-plop of the horses’ hoofs, and the swaying motion of the heavy closed brougham which made me physically sick.”6 Family feeling over the inheritance was so strong that Blanche feared for Daisy’s safety, and the children were accompanied at all times by a bodyguard whenever they ventured farther than the gardens.7
Easton Lodge, with its rolling ten thousand acres of estate, gentle parkland, and elegant gardens, formed the ideal backdrop to an idyllic childhood. Originally the Manor of Estaines, Easton Lodge had once been the property of the Crown. According to Daisy, the manor was “full of historic memories. There are even fragments of Roman remains in the foundations of the old house … there are reminiscences of monastic occupation.…”8 And Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV, had spent her honeymoon at the old manor house.9 A century later, Queen Elizabeth I granted the manor to Henry Maynard as a reward for his duties to Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s private secretary. Henry Maynard demolished a hunting lodge on the land known as Easton Lodge and commissioned a vast Elizabethan mansion, similar in appearance to Blickling Hall in Norfolk. From the seventeenth century, Easton Hall became noted for its formal gardens, while the house was regarded as a masterpiece of Tudor architecture until the terrible night in 1847 when the hall was almost entirely destroyed by fire. Easton Lodge was rebuilt at a cost of £12,000 to a design by Thomas Hopper, who specialized in the Victorian gothic style. A watercolor of the Victorian incarnation of Easton Lodge reveals a gothic monstrosity in glowing redbrick of little aesthetic value, with heavy casement windows, and an ungainly turret topped with battlements.10
But to a child, such aesthetic considerations were meaningless. As far as Daisy was concerned, Easton Lodge was a wonderful place to grow up and run wild. For Daisy was a tomboy who loved “climbing, running, jumping, and challenging all the rules.”11 She could climb trees “like any sailor lad”12 and loved animals, birds, and even watching an ants’ nest for hours on end. “Birds, kittens, rabbits, dogs, even toads and frogs were our pets.”13 But Daisy’s greatest love was horses. “I had my first pony when I was five, I can scarcely remember when I could not ride.”14 When Daisy’s mother married the Earl of Rosslyn, a famous racehorse trainer, horses proved a great bond between Daisy and her new stepfather. The Earl of Rosslyn built new stables at Easton Lodge, and “my stepfather had such confidence in our fearlessness that he used to let us children ride his young thoroughbreds that were unfit to race and showed temper. It was excellent practice for us, as the horses were often unbroken, and few of them had natural good manners.”15 Daisy even took out a beautiful horse named Crust, who had bucked off Lord Ribblesdale, the Liberal peer, in front of Easton Lodge. Ribblesdale warned Lord Rosslyn that Crust was unfit for any girl to ride, and would savage anyone he could throw, but Daisy leaped determinedly on the horse’s back. “I knew that I must stick on at any price!”16
Blanche Maynard proceeded to have five more children with the Earl of Rosslyn, two sons and three daughters, and soon there were seven children growing up at Easton Lodge. Their life was a secluded one, without parties or social entertainment outside the family, but they had the consolation of living “in a beautiful country place” with “ponies to ride and animals to caress.”17
The girls were educated at home by a devoted tutor and a governess who took a genuine interest in their education, and from an early age, Daisy learned the importance of noblesse oblige. Daisy would accompany her mother on visits to the sick and elderly, with blankets and provisions. She developed a social conscience, and understood that to be a landowner was to be responsible for all who lived upon one’s estate, however lowly. This gave Daisy “a passionate sympathy with the under-dog; a troubled awareness that life for all the world was not as it was in the garden of Easton.”18
By the age of fourteen, Daisy was a beauty in waiting. Even being forced to dress in her mother’s castoffs merely served to offset Daisy’s dazzling ash blond hair and deep blue eyes. The earl was duly instructed to take Daisy to have her looks recorded by Frank Miles at his studio off the Strand, and it was here that Daisy met Lillie Langtry for the first time, and the earl invited Lillie to visit to the Rosslyns’ London mansion. Lillie’s arrival the following evening was watched by Daisy and her little sister, Blanchie, peeping through the banisters as Lillie and Ned arrived in the magnificent entrance hall.
By the following year, Daisy’s nascent loveliness was beginning to captivate admirers, much to the surprise and delight of this self-confessed gawky tomboy, who found “in men’s eyes an unfailing tribute to a beauty I myself had not been able to discern.”19 Such was Daisy’s appeal that her parents knew she could make a match of the highest order. And so it was that at the age of seventeen, before Daisy had been officially launched into society, she found herself at the theater one evening alongside former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, now sitting in the House of Lords as Lord Beaconsfield.
Seated at the Lyceum Theatre, in a box that had been lent for the occasion by Baroness Burdett Coutts, Daisy and Disraeli made an odd couple. Here was Daisy, a tall girl in a white muslin frock with a blue sash,20 alongside her distinguished companion of seventy-three, a regular guest at Easton Lodge. Very few young women could boast of being taken on a “date” by a former prime minister. Daisy stared around her at the glittering audience, the men in evening dress and the ladies bejewelled and dazzling in beautiful gowns. For once, the pearls of wisdom from the lips of the legendary politician and author fell on deaf ears. Daisy had come here to worship Ellen Terry, appearing that night in Romeo and Juliet. The performance made such an impression on Daisy that she begged her stepfather for a volume of Shakespeare, and eventually received an “expurgated” volume of his plays, learning Hamlet by heart.
While marriages across the generations were not unusual by Victorian standards, even Daisy’s mother might have balked at the age difference between her beautiful young daughter and the ancient Lord Beaconsfield. But, while Disraeli had been widowed four years previously, marriage was not on the agenda. Daisy’s visit to the theater had been an audition. Queen Victoria herself had instructed Disraeli to spend the evening in Daisy’s company and see for himself what sort of a wife she might make for Prince Leopold. The youngest son of Queen Victoria had become a frequent visitor to Easton Lodge and had expressed an interest in Daisy. It was true that they had nothing in common. Daisy was a horse-mad tomboy, full of high spirits, while Prince Leopold was a lifelong invalid, a hemophiliac “too delicate in health to ride or to take part in any sport.”21
Disraeli’s report was clearly a glowing one, for soon there came a request for a photograph of Daisy. There was just one drawback. Whenever Prince Leopold came to visit Daisy, he was always accompanied by his equerry, Lord Brooke. Eight years older than Daisy, Francis Greville, heir to the Earl of Warwick, or “Brookie” to his friends, was Daisy’s match in temperament. After leaving Christ Church, Oxford, without taking his degree, Brookie had obtained a post as aide-de-camp to Robert Bulwer Lytton, viceroy of India, and traveled in the East before returning to England. Intent on a political career, Brookie had been selected as Tory candidate for the safe seat of Somerset East, and would become a member of Parliament at the next election. Brookie’s people were genuine aristocrats, of ancient lineage, but not particularly wealthy. As far as Daisy’s family was concerned, Brookie could not compete with a prince of the royal blood. But Daisy’s parents, it appeared, were no match for true love. “In Lord Brooke’s eyes I had recognised something that told me, in mute appeal, that his happiness and destiny were inseparably linked with mine.”22
Just before Daisy’s eighteenth birthday, she was summoned to Windsor Castle, “that I might be inspected as a future daughter-in-law.”23 This was an alarming prospect for even the most sophisticated young ladies, with a dismal protocol that dictated that the guests spend three-quarters of an hour shivering in a drafty corridor before dinner at eight-thirty. Dinner was “served with hot haste” as Lord Rosslyn, a favorite of the queen, did his best to amuse her.24 The dinner was also significant for another reason. It was here that Daisy first encountered Bertie, her senior by twenty years. Daisy said nothing of this first meeting in her memoir, apart from the fact that Bertie had inherited his mother’s “ingenuous, charming smile.”25 After dinner, Queen Victoria, who reminded Daisy of her old nurse, came over to talk. “How did I like the idea of coming out? Was I fond of music or of drawing?”26 This interview was an ordeal, as the agonizingly shy Daisy struggled to respond to the queen’s questions, despite the fact that these were softened by the gleam of the rare smile.
In December 1879, Daisy celebrated her eighteenth birthday with a magnificent ball at Easton Lodge. Daisy would not, of course, be officially “out” in society until she had been presented at court, but this lavish occasion would mark her debut as one of the most beautiful and sought-after heiresses of the day. The ball was so magnificent that a top hairdresser was brought down from Knightsbridge, London, to attend to the wigs of the footmen.27
The following February, Daisy was invited to visit Prince Leopold at Claremont, his country estate, in the hope that the meeting might lead to the longed-for proposal. And indeed, “one afternoon, the Prince opened his heart to me,” Daisy breathlessly confides. But the prince did not say the words that Daisy had expected to hear. Instead, Prince Leopold confessed that he was in love with someone else, and that he had guessed how Brookie felt about Daisy, and indeed how Daisy felt about Brookie. It emerged that Prince Leopold had fallen in love with the German Princess Helena of Waldeck-Pyrmont, a kindly young woman celebrated for her warm heart, keen intelligence, and charitable work.28 Prince Leopold offered to explain this all to his mother, the queen, and to ensure that Daisy would be able to marry Brookie. Daisy and the prince talked for hours, telling the footman who attempted to come in to pull down the blinds and light the lamps to come back in ten minutes. The poor footman was left to come and go for over an hour while Daisy and Leopold made their plans.29
The following day, although it poured with rain, Daisy and Brookie went out for a walk together. “Under a large umbrella, on the muddy road between Claremont and Esher, he proposed to me” wrote Daisy. “And I accepted.”30 When they returned to the house, Prince Leopold was waiting at the front door, full of genuine delight at their happiness. There was just one problem: as it was considered inappropriate for young ladies to become engaged before “coming out,” the engagement must remain secret.
In March 1880, Daisy was presented at court in a gown of silver tissue.31 Daisy was that rare thing, “as rare as any oiseau bleu a great heiress and a great beauty. Only those who were alive then know the magic that word held for the period. I was physically fit, unspoilt, and I adored dancing.”32 Daisy’s parents rented 7 Carlton Gardens (now part of the Carlton Club) and Daisy was fêted, feasted, courted, and adored, in one continual round of gaiety. Daisy attended balls thrown in her honor where she floated through “fairy palaces, where lovely beings in diaphanous frou-frous of tulle or chiffon swayed in the grace of the rhythmic waltz … [which] never failed to make me thrill and pulsate in an abandonment of young ecstasy.”33
At this point, Queen Victoria believed that Daisy was still potential daughter-in-law material. So did Disraeli, Lord Beaconsfield. But in May 1880, against the wishes of her mother, Daisy officially rejected Prince Leopold as a potential suitor. When Daisy’s engagement to Brookie was announced the following month, the queen was angered by the news, as indeed was Disraeli, disappointed to see his matchmaking thwarted. But Prince Leopold also got his own way. He married Princess Helena in 1881 and they enjoyed a brief but happy marriage before Leopold’s untimely death in 1884.
When Daisy developed measles that summer of 1880, the wedding was postponed until the following April. On a day welcomed by one guest who declared that “Henceforth, this beautiful Daisy will flourish by a brook-side”34 the couple were married at Westminster Abbey. The streets leading from 7 Carlton Gardens to the abbey were lined with hundreds of well-wishers, celebrating “the most brilliant wedding of a dozen seasons.”35 Guests, including the Prince of Wales and Prince Leopold, who had volunteered to be Brookie’s best man, crushed into the abbey from the choir to the door. Daisy had no less than twelve bridesmaids, whose names read like a digested version of Burke’s Peerage.
A day later, the bride and groom were commanded to dine with the queen at Windsor Castle, and, as was the custom at that period, Daisy was required to wear her wedding dress, “orange blossom and all!”36 for her first official dinner as a married lady. The shy bride was already mortified with self-consciousness by the time the queen asked if she could take a spray of orange blossom from Daisy’s corsage as a souvenir.37 But Queen Victoria went out of her way to be kind to the young newlywed, saying “many charming things about the beauty of my frock.”38 Indeed, so charmed was the queen that she asked Daisy to have a photograph taken of herself wearing her wedding dress.39 Daisy had clearly made an excellent impression on the queen, despite her refusal to marry Prince Leopold.
However, this genuine goodwill on the part of the queen was severely tested the following year. Daisy and Brookie were invited to dinner and to spend the night at Windsor Castle. Headstrong Daisy, who planned to go hunting, tried to postpone the engagement, reminding the queen that Brookie would be away fishing in Ireland. Daisy’s objection was batted away as the excuse it so obviously was, and Daisy was instructed to attend the dinner on her own. Daisy was furious, as she had a horse running in the Essex Hunt races the following day, and she had planned a morning’s fox hunting first. The train times between Windsor Castle and Essex were prohibitive, and it seemed impossible to get away from Windsor in time to attend the hunt meet at eight o’clock in the morning.40
Carefully, Daisy made her plans. The dinner at Windsor was to be a quiet affair, just six guests with the queen and Princess Beatrice. The custom was that the following morning, guests would depart from Windsor on a specific train, with a lord-in-waiting to see them off. As this train would leave too late to allow Daisy to arrive at the hunt meet in time, Daisy rose early and put on her hunting clothes, including her coat of “pink,” “a fashion innovation of my own.”41 Hunting “pink,” the distinctive red jacket worn on the hunting field, was reserved for men. Women habitually wore black, with a black top hat. By dressing in a coat normally worn only by male riders, Daisy revealed a characteristic streak of vulgarity. She had ordered a carriage to take her to the station to catch an earlier train, much to the irritation of the lord-in-waiting, “Lord C,” who stumped downstairs yawning to see her off, scandalized by this breach of protocol and Daisy’s pink hunt coat. Daisy caught her train on time and had a “splendid day’s hunting” before heading off to the Essex races, where her horse won the cup.42 But Daisy’s escapade had not gone unnoticed. The queen, always an early riser, had glanced out of her window that morning to see Daisy clamber into her carriage in her bright pink coat. The queen was less than impressed. “How fast! How very fast!” she muttered to her lady-in-waiting.43 The queen’s verdict was prescient.
As the hunting jacket reveals, Daisy was not the sort of wife to bow to convention. Strong-willed, beautiful, impulsive, Daisy had only one person to please in her life, and that was herself, and she soon took up her place in what she referred to as “the social pageant” in a characteristically lavish and flamboyant manner. In 1882, Daisy and Brookie settled at Easton Lodge, as its attractions rivaled those of Brookie’s more modest Warwick Castle. At Easton, “we entertained shooting-parties and friends … my husband was one of the best shots of the day.”44 The couple also rented a furnished house in London for the season. Daisy moved with ease between the two main groups of society, the court set and the less conventional world of high bohemia. At Lord Wharncliffe’s house in Curzon Street Daisy socialized with Lord Leighton and Edward Burne-Jones, Millais, Watts, and Whistler.45 At Lady St. Helier’s literary salon Daisy met the poets Tennyson, Browning, and Matthew Arnold. Sarah Bernhardt became a friend and was invited to perform Hamlet at Warwick Castle, while another new acquaintance was Lady Florence Dixie, née Douglas, daughter of the 8th Marquis of Queensbury. A headstrong and intelligent woman, Florence enjoyed walking her pet jaguar in Kensington Gardens and later served as a war correspondent during the Boer War, one of the first women to embrace this dangerous occupation. Daisy had moved into a world where the normal rules of social behavior did not seem to apply, but this was something of an illusion. Many of those who were drawn, mothlike, to the glittering world of society had their wings burned, and Daisy would be no exception.