Bertie never forgives.
—PRINCESS ALEXANDRA
Despite all attempts to keep the Tranby Croft scandal secret, news of the affair spread like wildfire through the Marlborough House set. Lady Mina Beresford, eager to take revenge on Daisy for her affair with Charlie Beresford, claimed that Daisy Brooke was the source of the leak, and nicknamed Daisy “Babbling Brooke.”1 It was said that Bertie had bumped into Daisy and Brookie at York railway station, where the couple were on their way to Scotland for the Earl of Rosslyn’s funeral, and shared the extraordinary tale of Gordon-Cumming with them.2 Over twenty years later, Daisy took the opportunity to defend herself from these allegations in a letter to The Times:
“The subsequent funeral and deep mourning prevented me for a long time joining any social gatherings so that I was among the last to hear of what, at the time, set Society agog.”3
Mrs. Wilson and her daughter Ethel were another potential source of the leak, although Mrs. Wilson had been at pains to cover up the allegations when first told about Gordon-Cumming’s behavior by her son. It was perhaps inevitable that suspicion would rest upon the Wilsons, as Mrs. Wilson and Ethel had not signed the letter.
There were plenty of other people whom Gordon-Cumming had offended who were ready to let the cat out of the bag. Gordon-Cumming had made many enemies over the years, and the list of people who wanted to get their own back was extensive. Examples of Gordon-Cumming’s infamous rudeness included this anecdote: “A gentleman whom [Gordon-Cumming] had just met for the first time came up to him and said how delighted he was to have made his acquaintance but might he just mention that his name was Gilette with G soft as in gentleman? Gordon-Cumming replied ‘I thought it was hard, as in beggar.’ It is not even certain that he said beggar.”4 On another occasion, Gordon-Cumming had just come off guard duty at Buckingham Palace when he encountered a physician who had just attained his life’s ambition and been summoned to the royal bedside. “Did you see my brougham at the palace gates?” the doctor proudly asked Gordon-Cumming. “No, really?” Gordon-Cumming replied. “Is one of the servants ill?”5 Gordon-Cumming’s rudeness had extended to Leonie Jerome, Jennie Churchill’s little sister, even before her marriage. Spotting Leonie in Hyde Park, Gordon-Cumming had marched up to her and asked, “with a sneer, if Leonie was ‘Over here husband-hunting?’”6
Queen Victoria responded wearily to yet another scandal with her son at its center. “It is a sad thing Bertie is dragged into it.…”7 The queen was also anxious to make it clear that Bertie was not attempting in any way to shield “this horrid Mr Cumming. On the contrary he is most anxious that he should be punished. The incredible and shameful thing is that others dragged him into it and urged him to sign this paper which of course he never should have done. He is in a dreadful state about it for he has been dreadfully attacked about it.”8
Queen Victoria believed that the most appropriate course of action was for Gordon-Cumming to undergo a court-martial. Gordon-Cumming himself had offered to retire on half-pay for the duration of the trial, but the army regarded this as unacceptable, and Gordon-Cumming was immediately suspended pending an investigation. At this point, Gordon-Cumming offered to break off his engagement to the American heiress Florence Garner, but Florence refused, determined to stand by him.
By now, the newspapers were feasting eagerly on the impending scandal. Despite legal threats, the Echo claimed that:
The Baccarat Scandal is to be hushed up … a very comfortable arrangement for all parties immediately concerned, especially for the exulted personage who condescended to act as banker at the Tranby Croft gambling table but it is certainly discreditable … the nation has a right to expect that a prince who pitches the key-note to society should recollect that his evil example is tenfold more mischievous than that of the common run of men … the spectacle of a prince presiding at a gambling table is far more demoralising than the circulars of betting touts.… The sense of justice is shocked when a couple of street urchins are sent to prison for playing pitch-and-toss whose offence in its essence is no wise distinguishable from that or peers and princes.…9
As soon as Gordon-Cumming discovered that the secret pact had been broken, he went straight to his solicitors, Messrs Wontner’s in St. Paul’s Chambers, and instructed them to demand a retraction from everyone who had signed the letter, along with an apology and £5,000 each, otherwise he would bring an action for slander against them all, including the Prince of Wales.
The Wilson family, finding themselves hit with a writ for slander, went straight to George Lewis. Unfortunately, the dispute had gone too far before they called him in. The only course of action was to fight the case. George Lewis’s primary objective was to keep Bertie out of court. Both Lewis and Bertie himself knew that Bertie’s presence in court would provoke a hostile reaction from the public and the press. The stress of the impending trial began to tell upon Bertie; Captain Somerset, who ran into Bertie leaving the Marlborough Club, was shocked to see that half of the prince’s beard had turned gray.10
On May 13 it was announced that the case would be heard on June 1 before the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Coleridge, at the Royal Courts of Justice. The Lord Chief Justice’s court was converted into a new courtroom with a raised bench, witness box, and chairs instead of the usual seats. According to The Times, admission was by ticket only, with thirty seats reserved for the press, and the remaining seats to go to members of the bar, witnesses, and special guests. Most significant of all, the Prince of Wales would be present.
The clerks were besieged by requests for tickets, as if for an important theater premiere. The Prince of Wales was to be the star attraction; as the showman P. T. Barnum had once told Bertie: “[I]t is you, sir, who will be the greatest show on earth.”11
On June 1, fashionably dressed people began to queue outside the iron gates of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand from nine-thirty in the morning, even though the proceedings were not due to begin until eleven. The clerks stalwartly refused all applications from anyone without a ticket, and by half past ten the courtroom was packed. According to the correspondent of the Telegraph: “A bright fine sun streamed through the skylight upon a gallery filled with ladies in the gayest of summer dresses and dainty bonnets, all looking as exactly interested as though they were going to witness a wedding instead of a trial. Many of them had provided themselves with opera glasses, others carried lorgnettes: they amused themselves by spying out the counsel as they arrived.”12 According to the reporter from the Pall Mall Gazette, who had squeezed in like a sardine in a can, “the court presented an appearance which, save for the dignity of its own fittings and its rows of learned-looking law books, might have been taken for a theatre at a fashionable matinée.”13 Sir Edward Clarke, attorney general and defense counsel for Gordon-Cumming, recalled later that “the court had a strange appearance,” because the judge, Lord Coleridge, had “appropriated half of the public gallery, and had given tickets to his friends.”14 Lady Coleridge, the judge’s attractive young wife, arrived wearing a blue fox fur around her shoulders and took her place on the bench alongside her husband, armed with a fan to tap the judge on the arm when he fell asleep. “Close to the footlights,”15 as Sir Edward Clarke later described it, sat the judge’s daughter-in-law, Mrs. Gilbert Coleridge, sketching the chief protagonists of the drama for posterity.
The jury all arrived promptly, a remarkable feat in those days, and every barrister in London not employed elsewhere crowded into the courtroom. This was an exceptional day in legal terms. Apart from Bertie’s brief appearance as a witness in the Mordaunt divorce case, no heir to the throne had appeared in court since Prince Hal, the future Henry V and hero of Agincourt, was committed for contempt of court by Judge Gascoigne in 1411.
All eyes were on Bertie, dressed in a somber black frock coat and seated in a red leather chair between the judge and the witness box, with Sir Francis Knollys behind him. One could be forgiven for assuming that it was Bertie himself who was on trial.
The instigator of the proceedings, Gordon-Cumming, sat beside his solicitor, St. John Wontner, as Gordon-Cumming’s counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, Attorney General, opened the case for the defense. Clarke focused on Gordon-Cumming’s previous good character, his military record, and his long-standing friendship with the Prince of Wales. Why, Clarke demanded, would a man accustomed to such advantages suddenly take to cheating at cards? He also made his views on baccarat clear to the jury by commenting that baccarat was “about the most unintelligent mode of losing your own money, or getting somebody else’s, I ever heard of.”16 Calling Gordon-Cumming as a witness, Clarke took him through the events at Tranby Croft, and concluded by asking Gordon-Cumming if he had cheated at cards on that night. Gordon-Cumming replied that he had not.
Clarke also outlined Gordon-Cumming’s coup de trois system of placing bets, which, he explained, could have been mistaken by the inexperienced players as cheating, rather than a correct method of gambling. After his opening speech, Clarke then questioned Gordon-Cumming, and his approach was to show that Gordon-Cumming “was a man of honour who had been sacrificed to save the courtiers.”17
After the court had adjourned for lunch, it was time for Gordon-Cumming to be examined by Sir Charles Russell. Sir Charles was a natural choice to represent the Prince of Wales against Gordon-Cumming’s libel suit. Flamboyant and stylish, Sir Charles was a member of the Jockey Club, owned a racehorse called Miss Shylock, and never traveled without a pack of cards. He was also a formidable advocate who could tie any witness up in knots.18
Russell provided a model of the table used for the game of baccarat and a photograph of the room, and questioned Gordon-Cumming about the bets where cheating had been suspected. Russell also asked him about why he had signed the document agreeing not to play cards: Gordon-Cumming stated that he had “lost my head … on that occasion. If I had not lost my head I would not have signed that document.”19 Gordon-Cumming’s cross-examination ran into the second day, after which he was then reexamined by Clarke; his time in the witness box lasted until 1 P.M. The Illustrated London News concluded that Gordon-Cumming made an admirable witness. “Leaning easily on the rail, his grey-gloved left hand resting easily on the bare right, perfectly dressed, his tones equable, firm, neither over-hurried nor over-deliberate, cool, but not too cool,”20 while the Pall Mall Gazette decided that “Sir William faced the fire of the most deadly cross-examiner in England much as he would have faced his foe on the battle-field … knowing that its issue was social life or death.”21
Bertie followed Gordon-Cumming into the witness box and, according to the Daily Chronicle, he appeared to be nervous. “The Prince stood with one hand easily resting on the rail, his head a little down, his attitude free and not undignified. His voice was a little hoarse and rough, and somehow had a queer unfamiliar note in it; but the replies were given with great readiness, and even rapidly.”22 The reporter for The New York Times observed that “the heir apparent was decidedly fidgety, that he kept changing his position, and that he did not seem able to keep his hands still,”23 and the Daily News agreed and stated that Bertie made an unfavorable impression.
Examined by Clarke, Bertie stated that he had not seen any cheating, and was ignorant of the accusations until he was told by Lord Coventry and General Williams; although Gordon-Cumming had been a good friend for years, Bertie believed he was guilty of cheating.
After twenty minutes of questions from Clarke and Russell, Bertie was told that he was free to leave the witness box. As Bertie was turning away, a “sharp clear voice with a cockney accent” rang out. “Excuse me, your Royal Highness, I have a question or two to ask you!”24 This question, not strictly admissible, came from a member of the jury. Bertie wheeled around with a smile, and stood to attention as the juryman asked him two questions: Had Bertie seen nothing of the alleged malpractices of the plaintiff? And what had Your Royal Highness thought at the time of the charges made against Gordon-Cumming?
To the first question Bertie replied that he had not seen anything suspicious, although he explained that “it is not usual for a banker to see anything in dealing cards.”25 To the second, Bertie responded that “the charges appeared to be so unanimous that it was the proper course—no other course was open to me—than to believe them.”26
The queen was horrified by the trial, and Bertie’s involvement in the case:
This horrible trial drags along and it is a fearful humiliation to see the future king of this country dragged, and for the second time, through the dirt just like anyone else in a Court of Justice. I feel it is a terrible humiliation, so do all the people. It is very painful and must do him and his prestige great harm. Oh! If only it is a lesson for the future! It makes me very sad.27
The following day: “I hope and think there is no doubt that the verdict will be given against Sir William G Cumming as the evidence is perfectly clear, but even if it is not he will be turned out of the army and society … his lawyer, the Solicitor-General most unjustifiably attacked Bertie most unjustly and unfairly. The whole thing must do Bertie harm and I only pray it may be a warning.”28
The last witness for the prosecution was General Williams. Questioned by Sir Edward Clarke, the general admitted that he had not seen Gordon-Cumming in any way that suggested cheating.
The case for the defense began on the third day of the trial, with Stanley Wilson, the son of the house, in the witness box. Stanley said that he had seen Gordon-Cumming illicitly add counters to his stake twice on the first night and at least twice on the second night, although he could not remember the full details. Stanley was followed into the witness box by Sub-Lieutenant Berkeley Levett, who confirmed that on the first evening he had seen Gordon-Cumming add counters after the hand had finished but before the stake had been paid. He was unsure of other details of the evening’s play, and had not witnessed anything on the second night.
Next came Edward Lycett Green, “the emotional force behind the accusations.” Lycett Green stated that he had seen Gordon-Cumming twice push counters over the chalk line when he should not have done so; he had considered accusing Gordon-Cumming at the time, but decided against it because he “did not like to make a scene before ladies.”29 At points in the examination Lycett Green contradicted the course of events outlined by Stanley Wilson, and his evidence seemed to be remarkably shaky. Given that Edward Lycett Green had first raised the alarm over Gordon-Cumming’s behavior, it “seemed remarkable that he, the prime mover in the affair, seemed unable to say anything without qualifying it with some such remark as, ‘I don’t exactly remember’. The hedging by the principal accuser certainly weakens the defendants’ case. Lycett Green’s refusal to remember anything seemed almost like a deliberate policy.”30
Mrs. Lycett Green followed her husband into the witness box, and confirmed that she had seldom played baccarat before; although she had seen nothing untoward on the first night, she accepted her husband’s secondhand version of events as the truth, but did not agree that as a result she had been watching Gordon-Cumming. Mrs. Lycett Green provided a different series of events from those outlined by other witnesses, but stated that she thought she had seen Gordon-Cumming illicitly add to his stake.
After Mrs. Lycett Green had finished giving evidence, her place was taken by her mother, Mrs. Wilson. Examined by Russell, Mrs. Wilson stated that she thought she saw Gordon-Cumming cheat twice by adding additional counters to his stake. When Clarke cross-examined her, he asked if anyone had placed a stake of £15. Mrs. Wilson stated that only her husband had placed such an amount, but Wilson had not played on either night as he disliked both the game and high-stakes gambling. Havers, in his account of the case, regarded it as “rather shocking really, considering that she had sworn to tell the truth … to find her coming out with this … lie spoken, apparently, with the complete self-assurance that the other members of her family had shown.”31
The final witness called for the defense was Lord Coventry. He was one of the nonplaying members of the party who had witnessed no cheating, understood little about gambling, and, as a non-soldier, knew nothing of Article 41 of the Queen’s Regulations. When cross-examined by Clarke, Coventry confirmed that as far as he was aware, the witnesses had all decided to watch Gordon-Cumming’s play on the second night, despite their claims to the contrary.
The Daily Chronicle noted the “obvious doubts which tainted the accusations of the defendants … they and the Prince’s flunkeys all contradicted each other on material points.”32 Russell’s summing up for the defense took the remainder of the day and the court adjourned until the following Monday, when he continued. He referred to a possible thirteen acts of cheating that the defendants were alleged to have seen, and that “we have five persons who believe he cheated, swearing unmistakably they saw him cheat, and telling you how they saw him cheat.”33
Once Russell had completed his speech for the defendants, Clarke gave his reply, considered by the Daily Chronicle to be “a very brilliant, powerful, wily and courageous effort.”34 Clarke pointed to the many inaccuracies in both the written statement prepared by Coventry and Williams, and in the memories of all concerned. He went on to outline that there had been celebrations at the races—the prince’s horse had won on the first day, and the St. Leger had been run on the second—combined with the full hospitality of the Wilsons to consider: according to the court reporter for The Times, Clarke “alluded to the profuse hospitalities of Tranby Croft, not with any idea of suggesting drunkenness, but as indicating that the guests might not be in a state for accurate observation.”35 He also drew the jury’s attention to the gaps in the defendants’ memories, where they were so precise about some of their observations but could not remember other key details.36 Clarke lampooned some of the involved parties, referring to Lycett Green as “a Master of Hounds who hunts four days a week,”37 while Stanley Wilson was a spoiled wastrel from a rich family who lacked initiative and drive. Above all, Clarke indicated, the defendants, with the exception of Stanley Wilson, saw what they had been told to expect: “the eye saw what it expected or sought to see, there was only one witness who saw Sir William Gordon-Cumming cheat without expecting it—young Mr Stanley Wilson. The others were all told there had been cheating, and expected to see it.”38 At the end of his reply, Clarke’s speech was greeted by applause among those in the galleries. The British lawyer Heber Hart later wrote that Clarke’s speech was “probably the most conspicuous example of the moral courage and independence of the Bar that has occurred in modern times,”39 while Clarke considered it to be one of the best speeches he ever made.
When Sir Edward Clarke sat down after completing his speech to the jury, there was a brief clatter of applause from throughout the court. The judge, Lord Coleridge, uttered a fierce and angry cry of “Silence!” This was unusual for him as he had a mild and quiet manner. “This is not a theatre!”40 According to one newspaper, there was a retort from the back of the court, “You have made it so!”41As soon as Clarke made to leave the courtroom, “the overcharged feelings of the spectators again broke out and, unchecked this time, they gave way to their feelings.”42
On the eighth day of the trial, Bertie did not attend court. He went to Ascot instead, and the waggish Star commented that the racing would be a trivial affair compared with the struggle for life and honor now reaching its climax at the Royal Courts of Justice.
On the following day, June 9, Lord Coleridge began his four-hour summing up. His summary was a response to Clarke’s, and he went through on a point-by-point basis to discredit the attorney general’s speech, although in places his description “was directly contrary to the evidence.”43 The jury retired at 3:25 P.M., and every eye in the courtroom fixed on Gordon-Cumming, “the man whose social life hung in the balance.”44 Gordon-Cumming coped well with this ordeal. “He clasped his gloved hands on his stick, and with composed features waited … like a figure of stone.”45
The jury came back after just thirteen minutes, and Gordon-Cumming turned his cold, gray eyes upon them as the foreman told Lord Coleridge: “We find for the plaintiffs.” Hissing and booing broke out from the public and the junior bar. A telegram was dispatched to the prince immediately by Mrs. Wilson, who had brought a form with her for just this purpose. The hissing and booing continued and became louder as the jury filed out of their box. Gordon-Cumming remained seated, “perhaps dazed for the moment with the shock of the stupendous doom which those dreadful words had conveyed; and then, without a word, without a tremor, walked squarely to the well of the court and disappeared into the world that will know him no more.”46
Scenes outside court following a verdict are often dramatic, and this was no exception. It was not a popular verdict. “The defendants, who had the grace not to smile and who behaved with perfect dignity, were so fiercely mobbed that they had to take refuge under Mr Lewis’ sheltering wing in Mr Justice North’s court, and then get quietly away.”47
According to Reynolds News, the Wilsons were encircled by a large crowd in the narrow corridors outside the courtroom, and “hissed and hooted and jeered in the most excited fashion.”48 Fearing for their safety, they took refuge in a neighboring courtroom while the people outside crowded around the doors and waited for them to come out.
Bertie escaped the possibility of public humiliation at the Royal Courts of Justice, but at Ascot the crowds were waiting for him. As the royal procession arrived at one o’clock, with the rich scarlet and gold of the liveries of the royal servants glittering in the green landscape, no cheer greeted Lord Coventry, Master of the Buckhounds, as he trotted in front of the royal carriage on a big bay horse. There was no ovation for the royal party, indeed, never had it been received with such coldness. As the Prince and Princess of Wales were driving around the course, there were catcalls and booing and cries of “Oi! Baccarat! Have you bought your counters?” “There’s ten pounds more to pay here, sir,” and “If you can’t back a horse, baccarat!”49 Princess May of Teck, who was in one of the carriages, described it as “a most unpleasant ordeal.”50 Only Bertie, cutting a fine figure in his dark gray frock coat, seemed to emerge unscathed.51 On hearing the verdict, he commented that “George Lewis tells me that the Solicitor-General’s speech will give the Radicals 100,000 votes at the General Election.”52
The newspapers had a field day. The Times “profoundly regretted that the Prince should have been in any way mixed up, not only in the case, but in the social circumstances which prepared the way for it.”53 The Review of Reviews condemned Bertie as “not only a gambler but as a wastrel and whoremonger.”54
The prime minister, Lord Salisbury, subsequently recommended that Bertie should avoid playing baccarat for six months and then leak a letter to the press stating that the trial had been a lesson to him and he no longer permitted baccarat to be played in his presence.55 Meanwhile, the queen suggested that Bertie write an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his disapproval of gambling. While Bertie and Lord Salisbury dismissed this suggestion out of hand, Bertie wrote a private letter to the archbishop, expressing his feelings about “the horror of gambling,” which he regarded as the equivalent of drunkenness as a social evil, “one of the greatest curses that a country can be afflicted with.”56
After this, Bertie stopped playing baccarat and took up whist instead, which he also played for money.
A notable feature of the Tranby Croft trial was that, for the first time, the inner workings of the Marlborough House set went on show. The trial revealed that the heir to the throne sat up half the night gambling for massive amounts of money with his cronies; that one of them had been accused of cheating; and that there had been an attempted cover-up. The fact that the Prince of Wales gambled at all was regarded as scandalous by earnest churchgoers, but was seen as endearingly raffish in the opinion of Bertie’s working-class subjects; here was further evidence that Bertie, with his smoking, drinking, and womanizing, was indeed “one of us.”
The real victim in all of this was Gordon-Cumming. Following the trial, the leader in The Times stated that “He is condemned by the verdict of the jury to social extinction. His brilliant record is wiped out and he must, so to speak, begin life again. Such is the inexorable social rule.… He has committed a mortal offence. Society can know him no more.”57
Just like the Churchills and the Beresfords before him, Gordon-Cumming was ostracized. The difference was that Gordon-Cumming would never be allowed back into the royal circle. Anyone who spoke to Gordon-Cumming, or accepted his hospitality, would never be asked to Marlborough House again, and Bertie refused to meet anyone “who henceforth acknowledged the Scottish baronet.”58 On June 10, 1891, the day after the trial, Gordon-Cumming was dismissed from the army and blackballed from his clubs, the Carlton, Guards’, Marlborough, and Turf. “So the vengeance was thorough.”59 On the same day, Gordon-Cumming married his fiancée, Florence Garner, by special license at Holy Trinity Church, Chelsea. Gordon-Cumming was faultlessly turned out in a frock coat and pearl-gray gloves, but looked fatigued, while his tiny vivacious bride wore a dove-gray walking dress with a black straw hat. Florence walked up the aisle bubbling with good spirits, a contrast to Gordon-Cumming, but he threw off his gloom as the service proceeded.60
When the couple returned to Gordon-Cumming’s estate in Scotland, he was greeted by cheering locals who pulled their carriage through the streets by hand. “That the prince and society considered him a social outcast mattered not at all to his people.”61
It mattered to Gordon-Cumming, though. Despite the beautiful estate of Altyre and the gloomy ancestral castle of Gordonstoun, the presence of a loving wife and local friends, Gordon-Cumming hankered for society. He threw a number of house parties, which Florence hated, especially when one of the guests tried to seduce her and Gordon-Cumming responded, with complete lack of empathy, “My dear child, don’t be so silly. You must learn to take care of yourself!”62 Florence died at fifty-two, exhausted by anxiety and disappointment, and Gordon-Cumming followed her to the grave eight years later, aged eighty-one, having lived “outside society” for forty years.63 According to his daughter Elma, who later became a successful writer, Gordon-Cumming “never lost that touch of swagger in his walk, the hint of scorn for lesser mortals, the suggestion that he was irresistible. He had worn it for so long that neither trouble nor disgrace nor old age could change his habit.”64
Opinion is divided as to whether Gordon-Cumming cheated or not. The Duke of Portland, William Cavendish-Bentinck, Bertie’s master of the horse, wrote in his memoirs that:
I knew Bill Cumming very well, and for a long time liked and admired him, both as a gallant soldier and as a fine sportsman.… A friend of mine who went tiger shooting with him was loud in his praise of Bill’s sportsmanship, bravery and unselfishness … but he had one serious failing: he could not play fair at cards.… In the days of duelling, it would have been a brave man who accused Bill of any such thing, as he was a dead shot with a revolver or a pistol. If England had always been at war, or if Bill had always been in pursuit of big-game, everyone would have thought, quite rightly, that no better soldier, or finer fellow in every way, ever existed.65
Gordon-Cumming’s problems began when he challenged his accusers. Had he been content to accept a lifetime ban on gambling, he might have maintained his status. The case also points up the disparity between the nouveau riche Wilsons and old money. The Wilsons, hell-bent on convicting Gordon-Cumming, wrecked his career. The Times saw the Wilsons as little less than murderers. “With or without their will, [the Wilson family] have been the cause of the social death of a distinguished man. When a man dies physically those who have to do with him remain in seclusion for a time. Those can hardly do less who are indirectly responsible for this far more tragic calamity, the ruin of a fine career.”66
Daisy Brooke, blamed for Gordon-Cumming’s downfall by Mina Beresford, remembered him as “more sinned against than sinning … a constant friend, but he cut us all off in his retirement, and I often had sad thoughts of him and always kept a warm corner in my heart for him”67 Perhaps it is here that we have the real reason for Gordon-Cumming’s exclusion from society. In September 1890, three days before the events at Tranby Croft, Bertie had returned early from traveling in Europe. He visited Harriet Street to discover Daisy Brooke “in Gordon-Cumming’s arms.” What better way, then, to remove Gordon-Cumming for good, than by accusing him of cheating at cards? We have seen Bertie’s ruthless streak at work before. Here it was again. Or in the words of one of his circle: “Bertie never forgives.”68 Gordon-Cumming had been taught a painful, and permanent, lesson.