The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (39 page)

This possibility was made frighteningly clear in the summer of 1902. A few days before the Coronation – set for 26 June – the King was taken ill. Although insisting, to his worried doctors, that he would be crowned if it killed him, Edward VII was finally obliged to postpone the ceremony and to undergo an operation for appendicitis. It seemed doubtful that he would survive the ordeal. The surgeon afterwards told the King's unmarried daughter, Princess Victoria, that 'his firm conviction was that His Majesty would die during the operation'.
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This, apparently, had been the King's conviction as well. He suspected that he might have cancer of the stomach, as both his brother, Prince Alfred, and his sister, the Empress Frederick, had recently died of cancer. It was when he was in this apprehensive state that he wrote a letter to Alice in which he said that if he were dying, he felt sure that 'those about him would allow her to come and see him'.
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The operation was a complete success. On the day after, the King was sitting up in bed, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigar. Relief, not only in the palace but throughout Britain and the Empire, was profound. And by few was it more genuinely felt than by Alice Keppel.

Yet, ever practical, Alice kept the King's letter. Very carefully, she filed it away. She was to put it to good use at a later date.

With Edward VII making no secret of his love for Alice Keppel or of his determination that she should be received in public, society found itself in a dilemma. Should Queen Alexandra and Mrs Keppel be invited to the same parties? Hostesses knew that the Queen would be irritated, or insulted, if Mrs Keppel were invited; and that the King would be in a bad mood if she were not. A
cri de coeur
from the Duchess of Westminster to the Marquis de Soveral (who managed to remain on friendly terms with the King, the Queen and Mrs Keppel) sums up
this general quandary. 'I want the King to be happy, but I don't want to annoy the Queen, so please tell me what would be best,'
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she begged on one occasion.

But not every host or hostess was similarly torn. For although even Queen Alexandra was obliged to receive Alice Keppel, not only in the official royal residences but in her own home, Sandringham, others felt no such obligation. Those pillars of Victorian and Edwardian rectitude, Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Portland and the Duke of Norfolk kept the doors of their houses – Hatfield, Welbeck and Arundel – firmly closed against the King's mistress.

The good-natured and worldly-wise Alice Keppel never allowed herself to be put out by these social embarrassments. Quite often, she triumphed over them. Once, when Lord Salisbury was entertaining the sovereigns at Hatfield, from which Alice was barred, she accepted an invitation to spend the weekend at nearby Knebworth, the home of Lord Lytton. The result, reports Count Mensdorff, the ambassador for Austria-Hungary, from Knebworth, was that 'all the guests (from Hatfield) came over here to tea – naturally, because
La Favorita
is here'.
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Yet so exquisitely mannered were both Queen Alexandra and Alice Keppel that on the many occasions that they were invited together, there was never any suggestion of animosity. Daisy, Princess of Pless, a daughter of Edward VII's old flame, Patsy Cornwallis West, was a guest at a huge house party given by the Duke of Devonshire (another of the King's old friends, Harty-Tarty, who had by now succeeded to the title) at Chatsworth in January 1904. While the King and Mrs Keppel – 'with lovely clothes and diamonds' – played bridge in a separate room, the Queen – 'charming and beautiful as always' – was entertained with songs and music in the spacious corridor.

'The last evening there was very cheerful,' writes the Princess of Pless, 'the Queen danced a waltz with Soveral, and then we each took off our shoes to see what difference it made to our height. The Queen took, or rather kicked, hers off and then got into everyone else's, even into Willie Grenfell's old pumps. I never saw her so free and cheerful but always graceful in everything she does.'
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For however much, in private, Alexandra might resent her husband's infidelities, in public she always presented an untroubled image. She was sustained by the knowledge that she was immensely popular. Alexandra brought so many things to the monarchy. The general public knew very little about her failings; to them she was a decorative, socially accomplished Queen with a reputation for bound
less sympathy for those in suffering. She was appreciated for being virtuous and vivacious, dignified and natural, caring and
insouciant
. They called her the Queen of Hearts.

One of Alexandra's minor, but not insignificant, contributions to the monarchy was her way of dressing. It was to influence royal fashion for the following three-quarters of a century. Ignoring the fashion changes of the Edwardian era – the loosely-knotted hair, the outsize hats, the high waists, the narrow skirts – Queen Alexandra stuck resolutely to the style which she had decided suited her best. Her high-dressed, tightly-curled wig would be crowned by an elaborate toque; her slender neck would be encircled by a jewelled 'dog-collar'; her waist would be laced to its narrowest. Her clothes never looked anything less than opulent; she dressed as though she were on stage. There seemed nothing incongruous about her opening a row of workers' cottages wearing a toque of parma violets, a mauve ostrich feather boa, a dress of silver-embroidered lace, ropes of pearls, clusters of diamonds, and pale satin shoes.

In this way Queen Alexandra set a style in royal dressing. It had nothing to do with fashion but everything with effect. Her example was followed by the two queens who came after her: George V's consort, Queen Mary and George VI's consort, Queen Elizabeth. All three women perfected, and remained faithful to, a strongly personal style. When, in 1938, Queen Elizabeth accompanied George VI on his state visit to Paris, the verdict of that fashion-conscious city was that although she was not chic, she dressed like a queen. Her achievement is not as unimportant as it may seem. This art of royal dressing – an art which has now been lost – provides the monarchy with several, not inconsiderable advantages: a touch of essential theatricality, an instantly recognisable image, and a stable, dependable, unchanging air.

Never was Queen Alexandra's highly developed personal taste more in evidence than at the postponed Coronation, on 9 August 1902. Ignoring both tradition and fashion, she announced that she would wear 'exactly what I like and so will all my ladies –
Basta
!'
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She was proved right. In a dress of golden Indian gauze, shimmering with diamonds and pearls, and trailing a richly-embroidered, ermine-lined train, she looked magnificent.

Even at that age of fifty-seven, Alexandra had no need to fear competition from younger women. She outshone them all. In Westminster Abbey that day was a bevy of the King's specially invited women friends, including Alice Keppel and Sarah Bernhardt, all sitting in a pew irreverently referred to as 'the King's loose box'.
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What Queen Alexandra thought of this collection of her husband's women friends one does not know, but one of her ladies-in-waiting leaves no doubt about her own feelings. To her 'the well-named loose box' was 'the one discordant note in the Abbey – for to see the row of lady friends in full magnificence did rather put my teeth on edge –
La Favorita
of course in the best place, Mrs Ronnie Greville, Lady Sarah Wilson, Feo Sturt, Mrs Arthur Paget and that ilk . . .'
³⁸

Nor, apparently, was this the first time that the King had invited a selection of his old flames to witness him in his new regal state. 'King Edward, it appears, goes among his lady friends as "Edward the Caresser",' writes Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. 'When he succeeded to the throne he wrote to divers of these ladies to say that though called to other serious duties he hoped still to see them from time to time. They had all gathered in the Ladies Gallery of the House of Lords when he made his speech from the Throne and there was much speculation as to whether he would address any part of it to them. He looked up twice, but maintained his solemnity . . .'
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Yet another of Edward VII's old lady loves, who was attending the Coronation ceremony in her own right, as a peeress, was Daisy Warwick. She had arrived alone in the cumbersome family coach as her husband, the Earl of Warwick, had decided that he would prefer to travel to the Abbey in his new 'motor-brougham', having first applied to the police for permission to do so. 'I was agreeably surprised to learn that they would welcome it,' he writes, 'as old coaches were so difficult to move out of the way.'
⁴⁰

For 'stately grace and absolute beauty', decided the watching Lord Rosebery, Lady Warwick's entry into the Abbey 'was next to that of Queen Alexandra'.
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Of all the memorable moments in the Abbey that day, it is not altogether surprising that the scene which most impressed the King was an exclusively feminine one. It came just after the Queen had been crowned, when all the peeresses, in one graceful, fluid, simultaneous movement, placed their coronets on their own heads.

'Their white arms arching over their heads', the King afterwards declared, had resembled 'a scene from a beautiful ballet'.
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On 30 June 1902, four days after the original date of Edward VII's Coronation, Lillie Langtry's daughter Jeanne-Marie married the Honourable Ian Malcolm at St Margaret's, Westminster.

Lillie could hardly have wished for a more socially acceptable
match. The credentials of the thirty-three-year-old Ian Malcolm were, by the standards of the time, impeccable. Heir to the hereditary chieftainship of the Clan MacCullum and to a vast estate in Scotland, Malcolm led not only a privileged but a useful life. Eton and Oxford had been followed by a spell in the diplomatic corps, where he had served as an attaché in the British embassies in Paris and Berlin. Since 1895 he had been Conservative member of parliament for Stowmarket in Suffolk. Together with four other young Conservative members, among them Winston Churchill, he had formed a mildly rebellious group; in fact their name, 'The Malcolmtents', acknowledged him as their founder. Cultivated and capable, Ian Malcolm seemed set for a successful parliamentary career. In time, he would be knighted, and Jeanne-Marie would become Lady Malcolm.

As the King was recovering from his operation a few days before, there was no question of his attending the fashionable wedding ceremony, although it was reported that he had sent the bride a valuable piece of jewellery. Less easily explained was the absence of the bride's step-father, Lillie's new husband, Hugo de Bathe. Perhaps the fact that he was younger than the bridegroom was one explanation; the lack of rapport between him and Lillie might have been another. But then this outwardly conventional wedding was beset with irregularities; not least by the fact that by now Lillie and Jeanne-Marie were barely on speaking terms.

The relationship between mother and daughter had never been harmonious. A gentler, more reserved person than Lillie, Jeanne-Marie had never really approved of her mother's flamboyant way of life. She had once been heard to say, on being told by some ageing Lothario that he had known her mother in younger days, that yes, a great many elderly men had told her the same thing. But the chief reason for Jeanne-Marie's antipathy towards her mother was the discovery, not long before her marriage, that she was illegitimate: that her father had not been the late Edward Langtry but Prince Louis of Battenberg.

She had, it seems, first heard this astonishing news from Margot Asquith. What, asked Margot, had Jeanne-Marie's father given her for her recent birthday? When the bemused girl protested that her father was dead, the always outspoken Margot told her that, on the contrary, her father was still very much alive. He was Louis Battenberg. Surely her mother had told her this?

Jeanne-Marie was appalled. For a girl who had spent the first half of her life believing that her father had been one of Lillie's brothers and
that Lillie was her aunt, and the second believing him to be Edward Langtry, the news came as a severe shock. Hurrying home, she confronted her mother with the allegation. Lillie, who happened to be sitting at her dressing table when her distraught daughter burst in, did not even, it is said, turn round to face her. 'You shouldn't believe everything you're told,'
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she said coolly. But Jeanne-Marie would not be fobbed off in this way, and attacked her mother for her duplicity. It was in the course of a heated exchange that Lillie asked Jeanne-Marie if she did not prefer a father like Prince Louis to 'a drunken sot'
⁴⁴
like Edward Langtry.

But Jeanne-Marie refused to be mollified. Once her wedding, followed by a reception at the Hotel Windsor, was over, she broke with her mother. At first, Lillie seems not to have appreciated the finality of the break. Not until over three months later, after she had written to Jeanne-Marie to demand 'some sort of explanation' for her long silence, was Lillie made aware of the strength of her daughter's feelings.

'I think I have always shown my intense love for you,' Lillie had written, 'and to be in the same town with you and not see you makes me so wretched that I am quite ill. Please darling, write me a nice letter . . .

Jeanne-Marie's reply was chilling. Having reminded her mother of their row about her parentage, Jeanne-Marie goes on to say, 'What I suffered the last days under your roof, knowing this change to have come upon me, yet feeling powerless to alter it . . . Had it not been for the support of the pure love and devotion of the strong man who wished to make me his wife, in spite of all, I think I should have gone mad . . . I have felt within the last year or two that our tastes are widely different. Therefore in future we had best live our own lives apart. In conclusion, please believe that, painful as I know it must be for you to receive this letter, the necessity of writing it causes the most intensive misery to your daughter – Jeanne. '
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