To sin in secret was one story, to shake the home by getting into the newspapers or law courts another.… Society turned pitilessly on those who tumbled openly into trouble.
—ANITA LESLIE, EDWARDIANS IN LOVE
In 1869, Harriet Mordaunt, wife of Sir Charles Mordaunt, MP, gave birth to her first child at their country seat, Walton Hall in Warwickshire. Harriet’s baby, a daughter named Violet Caroline, was born prematurely and swiftly developed an eye infection. While this is a common-enough condition, Harriet became obsessed with the idea that there was something seriously wrong and that Violet had been born blind as a result of inherited venereal disease. Harriet seems to have developed postpartem psychosis, and servants later alleged that she had even tried to kill her baby. Harriet sent for her husband, Sir Charles Mordaunt, and confessed that she had committed adultery “in open day” with three men: Lord Cole, the Earl of Enniskillen; Freddie Johnson; and the Prince of Wales.1
The eye infection was soon cured, and there was no evidence that Violet had inherited venereal disease, but the damage was done. Sir Charles broke into Harriet’s desk, found three letters from Bertie, and commenced divorce proceedings. This was an almost unprecedented action in Victorian upper-class society. The convention was that a gentleman would avoid the scandal of divorce at all costs, and accept the “bastard child” into his family. But Sir Charles was not a gentleman, and was unwilling to play by Marlborough House rules.2
Bertie’s culpability in all this is debatable. Bertie had certainly written to Harriet, sending her those noncommittal little notes that he sent to all his lady friends, lovers or otherwise. There was also a valentine, but perhaps that was a lighthearted gesture. In some respects, Harriet occupied the role of old friend rather than mistress. Bertie had known Harriet from childhood, when she had been little Harriet Moncreiffe, growing up near Balmoral in a family of Scots beauties. Sensitive and highly strung, Harriet was not really mistress material; she lacked “that asbestos lining to the sensibilities that was so necessary for any woman playing sexual hide-and-seek around the Prince.”3
Harriet had entertained Bertie at the Moncreiffes’ London home before her engagement to Sir Charles Mordaunt, MP for South Warwickshire, and Bertie’s visits had continued after their marriage. Given Bertie’s reputation, Sir Charles’s suspicions were understandable. But the Mordaunts had seemed at ease with the Marlborough House set, visiting the theater with Bertie and Alix and even staying as guests at Sandringham. Whether there was something more between Harriet and Bertie was a matter for conjecture. During the divorce trial, servants giving evidence on behalf of Sir Charles claimed that Harriet had entertained male visitors alone at Walton Hall, acting like “a beast of the field.”4 Bertie was just one of those male visitors. In July 1869, Sir Charles returned home unexpectedly from a fishing expedition and found Harriet driving two white ponies, a gift from Bertie, while Bertie stood on the steps and looked on. Bertie left immediately and Sir Charles ordered the grooms to bring the ponies round. Sir Charles dragged Harriet down the steps and shot the ponies dead in front her.5
Harriet’s family, fearing the loss of their good name, declared that she was insane from the outset and the tales of affairs were nothing more than fantasy. While Harriet’s family maintained that Harriet was unfit to appear in court, Sir Charles responded that she was faking her symptoms to avoid a trial. Harriet was examined by medical experts, including the leading and enlightened “mad doctor” Thomas Harrington Tuke and Bertie’s personal physician, William Gull, who could not agree on a diagnosis. As a result, the judge, Lord Penzance, ruled that the question of Harriet’s sanity would have to be decided upon by a jury, in open court. By the time the case came up, Harriet had deteriorated physically and mentally; her symptoms included hysterical laughter, eating the fluff off the carpet, and daubing feces on the walls.6 But the legal point was whether Harriet was actually mad when the writ for divorce was served on her.7
Bertie found himself in the highly embarrassing position of being subpoenaed as a witness in the Mordaunt divorce trial. No Prince of Wales had ever been subpoenaed to appear in court before, let alone in a divorce case, and the prospect of being cross-examined was dreadful.
“I shall be subject to a most rigid cross examination by [Mordaunt’s counsel] who will naturally try to turn and twist everything that I say in order to compromise me,” Bertie wrote to the queen. “On the other hand, if I do not appear, the public may suppose that I shrink from answering these imputations which have been cast upon me. Under either circumstance I am in a very awkward position.”8
The press had already smelled blood. The republican Reynold’s Newspaper accused Bertie of being “an accomplice in bringing dishonour to the homestead of an English gentleman.”9 As one biographer put it: “the irresponsible gossip spread a misconception of the Prince as a superman of pleasure, who lacked serious interests.”10
Bertie’s family and friends went to great lengths to save him from the embarrassment of having to appear in court. Queen Victoria wrote to the lord chancellor, Lord Hatherley, saying that the court appearance would damage Bertie in the eyes of the middle and lower classes, showing him as imprudent in forming a close relationship with a young married woman.11 The lord chancellor replied that the law was clear in this respect: even the heir to the throne could be subpoenaed and forced to appear. In desperation, Bertie turned to George Lewis, the most famous solicitor of the day. Lewis was described in The Dictionary of National Biography as a solicitor who “obtained what was for more than a quarter of a century the practical monopoly of those cases where the seamy side of society is unveiled, and where the sins and follies of the wealthy classes threaten exposure and disaster.”12 While Lewis appeared in almost every cause célèbre in the London law courts for thirty-five years, his reputation lay not in just his skill in winning cases but in keeping them out of court altogether.13 On this occasion, however, even Lewis could not keep Bertie out of court. Lewis’s advice was: “Accept the summons. Go boldly into the witness box—it is the only way to clear your name.”14
Bertie was called to give evidence before Lord Penzance and a special jury on February 23, 1870. It had been decided not to cite Bertie as a corespondent but as a witness on behalf of Harriet, who by this time had been declared insane and confined to an asylum. Bertie underwent a seven-minute examination in the witness box by Harriet’s counsel, who asked outright, “Has there ever been any improper familiarity between yourself and Lady Mordaunt?” As Bertie replied resoundingly, “No! Never!” applause rang out from the public gallery. Bertie was not cross-examined by Sir Charles’s counsel, and Sir Charles’s petition for divorce was dismissed on the grounds of Harriet’s insanity.
“I trust by what I have said today, that the public at large will be satisfied that the gross imputations which have been so wantonly cast upon me are now cleared up,” Bertie wrote to his mother later that day.15 But the public at large was not so easily silenced. Reynold’s Newspaper speculated that “even the staunchest supporters of monarchy [must] shake their heads and express anxiety as to whether the Queen’s successor will have the tact and talent to keep royalty upon its legs and out of the gutter”16 upon reading that Bertie was appearing in a divorce court.
Bertie’s indiscretions were treated as crimes: he was hissed at in the streets of London, and greeted with boos and catcalls when he arrived at the theater. Princess Alix stood by throughout these events, accompanying Bertie to official functions, and winning hearts and minds of her own on account of her loyalty. On one occasion, at a City of London dinner, when the toastmaster summoned guests to raise their glasses to the Prince of Wales, the guests shouted: “To the Princess!”17 Three months later, at Ascot, Bertie was met with further abuse, but when one of his horses won the last race, the crowd relented and cheered him. “You seem to be in better temper now than you were this morning, damn you!”18 Bertie retorted, and the crowd whooped and laughed. All was forgiven. Bertie was the people’s Prince once more.
Throughout the Mordaunt divorce case, Bertie demonstrated his extraordinary instinct for self-preservation. Had Bertie undergone a cutthroat cross-examination from Sir Charles’s counsel, and somehow implied that he had been involved with Harriet, the consequences were unimaginable. To sin so outrageously against the Victorian moral code could only lead to exile and death, as Oscar Wilde was to discover a generation later. But Bertie neatly sidestepped the allegations and it was accepted that Harriet, far from telling the truth by a confession of adultery to her husband, had been out of her mind. This would not be the last time that Bertie would escape a public whipping and leave a victim bobbing in his wake; he may not have intended to sacrifice Harriet, but that was the consequence.
The real scandal in all this was the fate of poor Harriet. Whether or not Harriet had originally been mad, and her symptoms suggest postpartum psychosis, she had certainly become mad by the time of the trial. Harriet’s daughter, Violet, was taken from her, and raised in a cold and loveless fashion at Walton Hall. Harriet never recovered, and spent the remainder of her life in asylums. Mercifully, she was spared the worst excesses of Victorian mental treatment as a patient of the enlightened Dr. Tuke, who ran a progressive and liberal regime at the Manor House Asylum in Chiswick. Harriet later moved on to Hayes Park Private Asylum in Hillingdon, which specialized in distressed aristocrats, and died in 1906. She was buried in Brompton Cemetery.19 Harriet, mad or not, never had any doubt that Bertie had been responsible for her downfall; the last we see of Harriet is the poor woman hurling a teacup at a portrait of Bertie and screaming: “That has been the ruin of me. You have been the curse of my life, damn you.”20