I had gone from being an absolute “nobody” to what the Scotch so aptly describe as a “person.”
—LILLIE LANGTRY
Lillie Langtry later admitted that meeting the Prince of Wales for the first time had filled her with utter terror. “I was panic-stricken, and for one bewildered moment really considered the advisability of climbing the chimney to escape.”1 But the resilient Mrs. Langtry held her nerve, stood her ground, and made her curtsey, confessing that “for various reasons I greatly enjoyed watching my husband go rather stammeringly through a similar ordeal.”2 Sir Allen had arranged that Lillie would be seated next to Bertie at dinner, but Lillie was so overcome by the royal presence that she could only respond to the prince’s inquiries with monosyllables, finding him good-natured but slightly aloof. While he complimented the servants and obviously worked hard to make the evening enjoyable, “it would have been a brave man who, even at this little intime supper-party attempted a familiarity with him.”3 Some years later, Lillie told the actor Alfred Lunt that she had always been a little afraid of Bertie, and that “he always smelt so very strongly of cigars.”4 Given Lillie’s physical courage and strong personality, this was an unusual confession. Perhaps Lillie realized, even at that first meeting, that this was one man she must keep on the right side of.
Within weeks of this introduction, Lillie became Bertie’s mistress. Although Lillie’s memoirs do not reveal exactly how the affair began, Bertie had a fixed modus operandi when it came to married women. At some point in the proceedings, perhaps on the very night that they were introduced, Bertie would have asked Lillie discreetly whether he could call on her at home one afternoon. The meaning of this would have been clear to Lillie: she had, after all, entertained a number of admirers in this fashion, including Bertie’s younger brother, Prince Leopold. On the rare occasion that a young woman resisted Bertie’s advances, he would retreat graciously and never trouble her again. Once Lillie had consented to Bertie’s request, the gentle inquiry would be followed up with a letter, hand-delivered by a royal footman, asking if the prince could call upon a specific afternoon.
Bertie’s reputation preceded him and there was a royal protocol to his afternoon visits. When the Prince of Wales came to call, the master of the house was required to make himself scarce. Just as with every other aspect of social intercourse, there was a fixed code of practice regarding adultery if the man in question was the Prince of Wales. In a typically English fashion, this sanctioned cuckoldry revolved around the golden hour of teatime. Long before the discreet royal carriage appeared at the door, the gentleman of the house would have taken himself off to his Pall Mall club, where he would remain until dinner, when it was safe to return home. Or the gentleman in question might very well have gone to visit a mistress of his own. Among the upper classes it was not unusual for a wealthy man to support two households, one for his wife and family and a separate establishment for his mistress. Poor Ned Langtry, being something of a social outcast, had no club to retire to. Instead, he had the choice of spending the afternoon in a public house or walking the streets until their royal visitor had left. Whatever his belief in allowing his wife to do her patriotic duty by sleeping with their future king, Ned must have been appalled by the prospect of Lillie betraying him with Bertie.
Once the tea tray had been taken in to the drawing room, the parlor maid, trying not to stare at Bertie, would withdraw, leaving Lillie alone with the royal visitor. As Lillie hated corsets, she was doubtless already prepared for the occasion, in her loose black dress or a long, floating tea gown. More formal dress presented formidable obstacles to sexual congress: all those layers of corsets and petticoats, elaborate coiffures and jewelry. As one commentator said, seduction in day dress seemed like “an enterprise which would have to be organised like a household furniture removal.”5
We shall never know whether their mutual captivation was consummated on Bertie’s first visit, or the second, or the third. But as Bertie was a fast worker and Lillie was already notorious for her habit of swooning into the arms of a gentleman caller, it is fair to assume that the relationship was established quickly. Lillie was so determined to make her way in society that it is entirely likely she initiated full sex then and there, in the drawing room of Eaton Place, as her landlady and the maid waited expectantly in the basement kitchen, ears cocked for the hurly-burly of the chaise longue or the collateral damage of a smashed teacup.
If Lillie had held out for something more romantic than a quickie on the sofa, she and Bertie would have spent their first night together in the congenial surroundings of a stately home, at a safe distance from Princess Alexandra, who loathed weekending and refused all invitations.6 Lillie and Bertie’s amorous pursuits would have passed without comment in the round of aristocratic wife swapping that characterized country house weekends. But one factor swiftly became evident: Bertie was completely smitten with Lillie and she was more than just another affair. Previously discreet, Bertie was soon parading Lillie in public as his first official mistress. And, given their shared love of horses, what better place to show off this marvelous young filly than riding along Rotten Row in Hyde Park?
Lillie owned a beautiful chestnut gelding called Redskin, presented to her by a young admirer named Morton Frewen before he departed for America. Redskin came with a wonderful testimonial saying that he had “the nuances and devotion of your favourite dog.”7 The horse, or possibly Lillie, was later described by Margot Asquith, who as a child watched Lillie out riding, as “a chestnut thoroughbred of conspicuous action.”8
For Lillie, riding along Rotten Row with the Prince of Wales meant her wildest dreams had come true. Here she was, the dean’s daughter from Jersey, poised on her high-stepping chestnut, next to the heir to the British throne. Lillie cut a magnificent figure in her beautifully cut, skin-tight riding habit, while Bertie, despite his increasing weight, was still a keen rider, and the red browbands of the Prince of Wales and his equerries never failed to create a commotion on the Row.9 In the mornings, Bertie rode out with “the Liver Brigade,” a cohort intent on “shaking up” their sluggish livers with a spot of vigorous trotting, including Sir Allen Young, Christopher Sykes, and the mischievous Beresford brothers. Accompanying these luminaries were the royal equerries, and officers from the Prince of Wales’s regiments, the “Blues,” the Royal Horse Guards, and the “Royals,” the 10th Royal Hussars. Magnificent in its way, Bertie’s appearance was reminiscent of the royal progresses of his ancestors, who themselves had once ridden through London, to the general awe of their subjects.
Bertie also liked to ride through the Park late in the afternoons, between lunch and dinner engagements. The closest Lillie came to acknowledging the significance of their relationship is this story:
The latter hour [seven o’clock in the evening] caused dinner to be a very late meal, seldom commencing before nine o’clock. I remember that, on one occasion, when riding with the Prince, it was past that hour when I left the Row, as etiquette demanded that I should ride on so long as His Royal Highness elected to do so. Mr Langtry and I were, as usual, dining out, and when I arrived home I found him impatiently waiting on the doorstep, watch in hand, and in all the paraphernalia of evening dress. After a scrambling toilette we eventually arrived at the Clark-Thornhills’, in Eaton Square, where we were due, to find it nearly ten o’clock. Everyone was waiting, of course, but before I could apologise, my hostess greeted me pleasantly, saying: “Sir Claude Champion de Crespigny on his way here saw you riding in the Park, and, as we knew you couldn’t get away, we postponed dinner indefinitely.” After the very natural grumbling of my husband, these words served as balm to any troubled soul. It is so difficult to please everyone.10
Lillie pleased the prince, and that was all that mattered. In the giddy weeks that followed, Lillie began to appear in public with Bertie and realized that she had at last entered the world for which she had been intended. It soon became evident to any hostess that she could not invite the Prince of Wales without inviting Lillie. “There was nothing clandestine about their affair. Lillie became an openly acknowledged and apparently permanent feature of the Prince’s life. She became, in short, his first official mistress.”11
Now Lillie had Bertie, and London, at her feet. But there was another aspect to her conquest, and one that would, over the coming months, become unendurable. Lillie was famous. The simple country girl with a tragic past, dressed in a plain black gown, had become public property, a state for which she was not fully prepared. From the satisfying experience of being celebrated within the safe confines of London society, where the most alarming thing that could happen to her was the fellow guests at a reception standing on chairs to get a better view, Lillie was now experiencing the reality of life as a celebrity.
Thanks to the artists and photographers who had circulated her image around the country, Lillie was forced to forgo the simple amusements of the past. She could not pop out to a shop without drawing a crowd and having to leave through the back door. If she attempted to go for a quiet walk in Hyde Park, she was stalked and swiftly surrounded by adoring fans. When she took Redskin out for a canter on Rotten Row, Lillie had to ensure that the stable gates were closed before she mounted her horse, so that the crowds could not surge in and block her way. When a young girl bearing a slight resemblance to Lillie was spotted in the Park, there was such a stampede that she was almost crushed to death and had to be taken away in an ambulance.12
“It is easy to imagine the marvel of it all to a country girl like me, who had not been allowed by my band of brothers to think much of myself in any way.”13 Lillie had changed, in the course of a few weeks, “from being an absolute ‘nobody’ to what the Scotch so aptly describe as a ‘person.’14 “Surely,” Lillie concluded, “London has gone mad.”15
There was one other “person” who had become distinctly troubled by Lillie’s transformation. While Lillie was prepared to sacrifice her privacy and her reputation in order to promote her social ambitions, the same was not true of Ned Langtry. According to Lillie, her husband had grown increasingly more irritated by Lillie’s status as a “species of phenomenon” to the extent that he was “sometimes losing his temper and blaming me!”16 Ned’s temper would continue to deteriorate, along with his behavior, on an exponential level as Lillie’s fame increased.
But as far as Lillie was concerned, she had arrived. She had only to fasten her hair in a loose knot at the base of her neck for the style to be dubbed the “Langtry.”17 When she twisted a band of black velvet around her head and secured it in place with a feather for an afternoon’s racing at Sandown Park, milliners swiftly copied the look and marketed it as “the Langtry Hat.”18 So famous, indeed, had Lillie become that she began to dispense with her original persona and change her distinctive appearance.
In June 1877, Lillie was invited to “a magnificent ball given at Dudley House for some visiting royalty.”19 Lady Dudley had tactfully requested Lillie to discard her mourning for the evening, as Lord Dudley hated black, to the extent of banning his wife from wearing it, “so strangely that he could not bear the idea of anyone appearing at his house in that sombre hue.”20 Lillie tells us that the poverty of her wardrobe was not only the result of her own lack of funds and her dislike of the fitting process but “my absolute indifference at the time to elaborate frocks.”21 This, like everything else about Lillie, was soon to change. Deciding that the Dudley House ball was important enough to undergo the ordeal, Lillie commissioned “a fashionable London dressmaker,”22 Mrs. Stratton, to create a “white velvet gown, severely cut, embroidered with pearls.”23 The gown and its wearer caused a sensation. As Lillie entered the ballroom, the other dancers stopped dead and crowded around her, and then parted like the waves of the Red Sea as she proceeded toward her hostess.24 And the fantastic white velvet gown did not cost Lillie a penny. Lillie had become so famous that Mrs. Stratton offered unlimited credit, knowing that Lillie would serve as a great advertisement for her skills. This gesture, welcomed at the time, heralded the beginning of a line of credit that would almost destroy Lillie.
Lillie remained Bertie’s close companion until the end of the season, which concluded in London with a magnificent ball at Marlborough House, such a significant event that no other hostess in London would dare to throw a party the same night. The following Monday, Lillie and Ned accompanied the Prince of Wales to Goodwood, for the most fashionable race meeting of the season, and joined Bertie at an exclusive house party thrown by Lord Ferdinand Rothschild, who had rented a house near the course. As soon as Goodwood was over, it was off to the Royal Yacht Squadron on the Isle of Wight for Cowes Week. But this was the last engagement of the season, and it was here that Lillie and Bertie must part. For even Bertie could not overthrow royal protocol and delay his visit to the royal family’s Scottish retreat at Balmoral, where Queen Victoria demanded his presence. Lillie must have been grateful that she had a standing invitation to go and stay with Frances “Daisy” Maynard at Easton Lodge, the family estate in Essex. Daisy remembered the visit with pleasure.
“Soon we had the most beautiful woman of the day down at Easton, and my sisters and myself were all her admiring slaves. We taught her to ride on a fat cob, we bought hats at the only milliner’s shop in the country town of Dunmow, and trimmed them for our idol, and my own infatuation, for it was a little less, for lovely Lillie Langtry, continued for many a day.”25 No doubt for her own reasons, Lillie concealed her riding skills from Daisy, who was her equal as a horsewoman. But Lillie clearly enjoyed the time she spent at Easton, saying that the visit stood out in her memory, and “I think I felt more at home there than anywhere else, galloping about the park with their nice daughters, and enjoying myself thoroughly.”26
Lillie and Bertie were reunited in the autumn when Bertie invited Lillie to a number of country house parties with Ned Langtry invited along, too, for appearances’ sake. And so that they could spend time alone together, Bertie built Lillie a home by the sea at East Cliff in the fashionable resort of Bournemouth, away from prying eyes and away from Ned Langtry. In the past, Bertie had showered his mistresses with jewelry. But those mistresses had houses of their own, and complaisant husbands who were only too happy to be cuckolded by the Prince of Wales. Lillie had nowhere to receive him apart from her rented house in Eaton Place, and so Bertie, for the first time, decided to build his mistress a home of her own. “The Red House,” built on land acquired from Lord Derby’s estate, overlooked the sea; on a clear day, one could see the outline of Jersey. The Red House was very much Lillie’s from the beginning: we can see her taste and style in it. Dispensing with any claims to aesthetics, it is an overgrown suburban villa, all leaded lights and inglenooks, with stained-glass windows and a minstrels’ gallery in which the smoke from Bertie’s cigars might disperse. The prince had a room of his own with a massive bed, discreetly connected with Lillie’s apartments by means of a passageway. Lillie made it her own from the first, with a foundation stone reading “1877 E L L” and her initials scratched on a windowpane with a diamond. As for Ned Langtry, he never visited and it is unlikely he even knew that the Red House existed.27
At Christmas 1878 the Langtrys made a triumphant return to Jersey, sailing in on Bertie’s yacht, Hildegarde. Lillie reveled in the attention, and in seeing her photograph for sale on dozens of postcards in the local shops, alongside the other Professional Beauties. Lillie was no longer just the dean’s daughter. She renewed her acquaintance with a childhood friend, Arthur Jones, who would later play a major role in her life, and, as an acknowledgment of her status, Lillie was invited to dinner at Government House. Even in her new role Lillie must have realized what a tremendous honor this was. When she paused to check her reflection in the ladies’ room before making her entrance, Lillie was surprised to hear a childish giggle. Pulling aside the skirts of the dressing table, she found two little girls who were eager to see the beautiful Lillie for themselves. One of these little girls, with her red hair, green eyes, and pale skin, was Elinor Glyn, the future romantic novelist.28
Back in London, the Langtrys and Dominique, Lillie’s faithful maid, moved into a new house in February 1879. According to Lillie, 17 Norfolk Street, off Park Lane and Oxford Street, was not particularly extravagant, “a modest, blushing, red-brick abode”29 but with ten rooms it could scarcely be described as modest. Lillie decorated Norfolk Place with the help of the American artist James McNeill Whistler, who arrived one morning with a pot of gold paint and some palm leaves. They used the palm leaves as stencils, painted two birds on the ceiling, and emerged later spattered with gold and with gold paint glittering on their eyelashes.30 Lillie, who became easy prey of so-called antique dealers,31 furnished the house with distressed furniture and worm-eaten oak, a set of prints from Lord Malmsbury, and a stuffed peacock, a gift from the Earl of Warwick. Peacocks were the signature bird of the aesthetic movement. They were also, as Lillie would learn, considered to be unlucky.
Funereal, pretentious, and a constant drain on the Langtrys’ resources, 17 Norfolk Street was said to be haunted by the victims of the notorious Tyburn gallows,32 which had stood nearby. Mysterious incidents included doors bursting open at embarrassing moments and an unaccountably eerie atmosphere. The butler complained of being woken by the ghosts of Tyburn victims rolling over him with their heads in their hands or swaying from gibbets at the bottom of his bed. Lillie, who attributed these terrifying experiences and his haggard features to whiskey, remained sternly indifferent to the butler’s plight and he resigned. Months later, when a reliable housemaid complained that the ghost of a cavalier had barred her way downstairs one morning in broad daylight, Lillie conceded that the house might be haunted after all.33
In the spring of 1879 it was agreed that Lillie should be presented at court. This ceremony ensured that Lillie could take her rightful place in society and enjoy the coming season as an insider. It was unusual for a married woman to be presented at court, and the fact that Lillie was presented at all was down to the intervention of Bertie. As Lillie’s own mother, Mrs. Le Breton, had not been a debutante, protocol required that Lillie have a “presenter.” Lillie found one in the form of Lady Jane Churchill, née Conyngham, who had an official position in the queen’s household.34
Lillie’s mother and aunt arrived from Jersey and reveled in helping Lillie prepare for her big day. The excitement of their own Lillie taking her place at the heart of society more than compensated for that dreadful false start when Lillie first came to London, and made up for the dismal wedding to Ned. Now, on an occasion where “no mere maid was to be trusted,” Lillie was eased into an ivory brocade gown with a long “court train” made of the same material pinned to her shoulders. Both gown and veil were garlanded with Maréchal Niel roses, golden yellow with a strong tea rose scent, and the train was lined in the same golden yellow as the flowers. On the orders of the lord chamberlain, debutantes were expected to wear large feathers, as the queen had complained that the feathers used in the ceremony were getting too small. To be on the safe side, Lillie had obtained three of the longest white ostrich plumes she could find, and had great difficulty in keeping them balanced on her head, as she still wore her hair low, coiled on her neck.35
“Courts” were held at three in the afternoon, with debutantes driven along the Mall toward Buckingham Palace and then lined up in St. James’s Park, seated in their state coaches with their bewigged footman in livery standing at the back. It was a magnificent sight: dozens of the daughters of England’s most eminent families, in superb gowns and glittering with jewelry, waiting their turn, while the band of the Household Cavalry roared away and the Beefeaters stood guard in their magnificent red costumes.36 Then the girls were sent to wait in the crush-room, penned in like so many sheep, with their heavy trains over their arms.37 Among these young daughters of the nobility sat Lillie, with low neckline and bare arms, in full sunlight on a hot May afternoon, starving as she had been too nervous to eat, and clutching a huge bunch of Maréchal Niel roses sent by Bertie.38
As if Lillie wasn’t nervous enough, there was another shock to come before she was beckoned into the chamber. Lillie had been told that Princess Alexandra would be “receiving” the debutantes, which she was pleased about, as she was understandably scared of Queen Victoria, the monarch herself who had stood on a chair to remove Lillie’s portrait from Prince Leopold’s bedroom wall. To Lillie’s horror, she heard the lord chamberlain declare: “Mrs Langtry comes next, Your Majesty!”39
Lillie was ushered into the royal presence in a state of turmoil. There sat Queen Victoria herself, a petite woman but the very embodiment of majesty, dressed in black, with a small diamond crown and tulle veil with black feathers, ropes of pearls glimmering around her neck and the blue ribbon of the Garter across her ample bodice. Lillie smiled and curtseyed nervously, while the queen stared straight through her and extended her hand in a perfunctory manner. “There was not even the flicker of a smile on her face,” Lillie recalled, “and she looked grave and tired.”40
The most difficult aspect of being presented at court that every debutante had to learn was the trick of catching her train over her left arm as it was thrown to her by the pages after her presentation. This called for some physical dexterity, as one was simultaneously catching the train and backing out of the royal presence. And it all had to be done without looking back over one’s shoulder, a sure sign of being a gauche country girl. There were awful tales of debutantes failing to accomplish this feat and dropping their trains or, worse, falling over. Mercifully, Lillie managed to achieve this sleight of hand and retreat gracefully from the throne room.41
That evening, at a ball at Marlborough House, Lillie told Bertie that she had been surprised to see Queen Victoria receiving the debutantes. Bertie explained that his mother had been overcome with curiosity and had deliberately taken the opportunity to see Lillie for herself. The queen had been annoyed, Bertie said, because Lillie was one of the last to appear. Lillie replied that she hoped that her ostrich feathers had lived up to the queen’s strict specifications.42