The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (46 page)

The worried du Cros went, if not exactly to the palace, to one of George V's equerries, the Earl of Albemarle, who happened to be, in this royal merry-go-round, a brother of Alice Keppel's husband, George. Albemarle went, in turn, to the King's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham. And Lord Stamfordham went to the King.

In contacting the palace, Arthur du Cros had come up against that elaborate stockade which encircles the monarch. Self-preservation is one of the monarchy's chief concerns and the discreet, courteous and apparently honourable gentlemen with whom du Cros now found himself dealing were all past-masters in the art of protecting the royal image. Once they had convinced themselves that du Cros was not in league with Lady Warwick, Stamfordham and the King's solicitor, the equally urbane Charles Russell, decided to make use of the loyal du Cros to serve their own ends. If blackmail were indeed being considered by Lady Warwick, then let du Cros be the one to carry out any distasteful negotiations. What was to be avoided at any cost was a royal scandal.

Would Mr du Cros, they now asked politely, go back to Lady Warwick 'to ascertain the monetary value she attached to [the letters] with a view to their purchase'?
⁵

The highly gratified Lady Warwick put the monetary value of the letters at £85,000. This was increased to £100,000 at a subsequent meeting at the Ritz Hotel in Paris between herself, du Cros and Frank Harris. Out of this she would get £85,000, Harris £15,000.

On their way back from Paris, Lady Warwick indicated to du Cros that she did not, in fact, mind who paid her the money: if a loyal and patriotic man like himself felt like serving his sovereign by footing the bill, she would be quite happy to settle for that. And just before taking leave of her travelling companion at Charing Cross station, Daisy handed him a written ultimatum. Unless the money were forthcoming, Harris would shortly be leaving for New York to market both her
memoirs, in which the letters would be incorporated, and, after publication, the letters themselves. From this she hoped to make £200,000.

But it would never, Daisy imagined, come to that. Before then, either the palace or du Cros himself would hand over the £100,000 she was demanding.

In all good faith, du Cros reported back to the King's men, Stamfordham and Russell. If they were prepared to meet Lady Warwick's debts, he told them, she would hand over the letters. Assuming that his part in the affair was now over, du Cros was somewhat surprised to hear that the courtiers wanted him to continue negotiations with the lady for a while longer: there were still, they said, some loose ends to be tied up.

At this point, Lady Warwick lost patience. Enlisting the services of yet another intermediary, Bruce Logan – one of those handsome and athletic young men for whom she had such a
penchant —
Daisy tried to pressure du Cros into making an immediate payment. Unless she were paid, promptly and in cash, an American deal would be finalised. She also took the precaution of lodging the precious letters in the safe of a London insurance broker. In mounting agitation, du Cros tried to stall Lady Warwick. It was, she warned him,
'practically
too late' – by which she meant that as she had not yet signed the American agreement, there was still time for the palace to buy her off.

When du Cros, on 31 July 1914 – the last day before Europe was plunged into war – reported yet again to Russell, he was greeted with some astonishing news. An interim injunction had been served on Lady Warwick, restraining her from publishing the letters.

Quite unsuspected by du Cros, the palace had been contemplating this action all along. They had never even considered paying Lady Warwick for the letters. For weeks, their detectives had been trailing all the parties concerned; du Cros had simply been used to stall Lady Warwick until such time as the palace authorities had ensured that the letters had not been given to Frank Harris or sent to America. They knew, by now, that she had lodged them with an insurance broker.

The injunction forbidding publication of the letters had been applied for in the strictest secrecy; in all documentation, Edward VII was referred to simply as 'The Testator'. And the fact that the injunction had been applied for 'in Chambers' instead of in open court ensured that the identity of 'The Testator' was never revealed.

Except for Lady Warwick and Frank Harris, only a handful of people – all of them utterly loyal to the monarch – knew about the
injunction. And as Britain had declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, the palace authorities were able, by invoking the extraordinary powers of the Defence of the Realm Act, to threaten Lady Warwick even more effectively. She now stood in danger of being arrested – although how the suppression of the late Edward VII's love letters could in any way defend the realm is" difficult to imagine.

Lady Warwick, beaten at her own game by the palace professionals, was incensed. But she was not cowed. If she was not allowed to publish the letters, she would publish something equally revealing. Once more poor du Cros was visited by Lady Warwick. This time she threatened him with a manuscript which contained not only the full story of the way in which the palace had tried to silence her but a great deal of defamatory information about other prominent national figures. She even hinted, to the increasingly discomforted du Cros, that she knew one or two things about his past which he would probably prefer to be kept dark. In panic, du Cros suggested a couple of wildcat schemes whereby she might be able to make some money and, at a later stage, even went so far as to release her from paying back all the interest she owed him.

The injunction against the publication of the letters had been a temporary measure, and the business was finally settled on 5 July 1915. The action against Lady Warwick was stayed on condition that the letters were destroyed. She was forced to comply. Edward VII's love letters, on which she had hoped to raise £100,000, were handed over.

'I am handing back with splendid generosity,' runs her self-righteous statement of defence, 'the letters King Edward wrote me of his great love, and which belong absolutely to me. I have done nothing with these letters, and have never dreamed of publishing such things. My memoirs are my own affair, and every incident of these ten years of close friendship with King Edward are in my brain and memory . . .'
⁶

It was, in short, a warning. They need not think that because she had been prevented from publishing the letters, she could be prevented from one day writing her memoirs.

The palace, in its anxiety to sweep the whole scandalous business under the carpet, went to the extraordinary lengths of removing all traces of the legal action from the records. The affair must be kept absolutely secret. And so it was, until the day that Arthur du Cros's own meticulously detailed account was discovered by Theo Lang in that deed box in Switzerland, half a century later.

In the end, the irrepressible Daisy Warwick did not do too badly out of the affair. For this, the well-meaning du Cros was responsible. Having already agreed that she need not repay the interest on his loan, he released her from paying back the £16,000 loan itself. He then, in a gesture of extreme generosity, took over all her outstanding bills, amounting to £48,000. Perhaps du Cros had taken her threats of exposing his past seriously; perhaps he simply wanted to put an end to the whole wretched business; perhaps he still saw it as a way of serving his sovereign.

So what Daisy Warwick finally obtained – obliquely – for Edward VIIs love letters was £64,000. What du Cros obtained, a year later, was a baronetcy. Frank Harris, apparently, got nothing.

By the time she finally came to publish her autobiography, fifteen years later, Lady Warwick seems to have convinced herself that her discreditable attempt at blackmail had never happened. Her friends, she claims, had expected her memoirs to be full of confidential information. But how, she asks piously, could she possibly betray those 'great ones' who had been her 'intimates'? The fact that 'they' were dead was all the more reason for her silence; 'those' who remained trusted her to keep silent.
⁷

One summer evening during the First World War, the gardens of Easton Lodge were the setting for an interesting encounter. Two of the late Edward VII's mistresses, Daisy Warwick and Lillie Langtry, were to be seen strolling arm-in-arm among the famous roses. With Lillie in her early sixties and Daisy in her mid-fifties, both were undeniably middle-aged, but whereas Lillie was merely plumper than she had once been, Daisy was frankly fat. Of the sylph-like shape that had so enchanted the Prince of Wales, no trace remained. Yet there were traces, in both women, of their once celebrated beauty. And it was about this that they were talking as they moved through the sweet-scented garden.

'Whatever happens, I do not intend to grow old!' announced Lillie. 'Why shouldn't beauty vanquish time?'

'I forgot what I answered,' writes Daisy, 'for I was busy analysing what she had said. I stole a glance at her, and certainly Time's ravages, although perceptible to the discerning eye of one who had known her at the zenith of her beauty, were disguised with consummate artistry, while her figure was still lovely.

'But it came to me then that there was tragedy in the life of this
woman, whose beauty had once been world-famous, for she had found no time in the intervals of pursuing pleasure to secure contentment for the evening of her day. Now that she saw the evening approach, Lillie Langtry could only protest that it was not evening at all, but just the prolongation of a day that was, in truth, already dead.'
⁸

There was something in what Daisy Warwick said. Lillie Langtry was growing old any way but gracefully. It was not that she behaved indecorously – she was far too dignified for that – it was simply that she bitterly resented the passing of time. Again and again, those who knew Lillie during the last dozen or so years of her life (she was to die in 1929) speak of her sadness, her loneliness, her inability to come to terms with the fact that her day was over.

'Lillie Langtry interested me,' wrote the publisher, Newman Flower, who used to visit her in her London hotel in the early 1920s, 'because of the manner in which she strove to keep herself alive, after that particular Social World, which she had queened, was dead. She always appeared to be a lingering leaf on an autumn tree which hangs on and will not die nor perish beneath the blast of Winter, because it has once belonged to a never-to-be-forgotten Summer. She could not let go. She fought in order not to let go.'
⁹

Yet he, again like many others who knew her, paid tribute to Lillie's remarkable intelligence. Under all the theatricality, under all those anecdotes, impersonations and jokes, lay a bedrock of good sense. 'I discovered, stage by stage,' writes Flower, 'how deep-thinking was her mind. No one ever gave Lillie Langtry credit for her cultured mind. But she acquired something untaught from Life. She drew knowledge unto herself and stored it, and brought it out at the required moment.'
¹⁰

Occasionally, she would speak to him about Edward VII, as Prince of Wales. They had only had one serious difference throughout their relationship, she claimed. It had been 'a most stupid' quarrel. 'I wore a dress of white and silver at two balls in succession. I did not know that he was going to be present at both balls, but he was. He came up to me on the second night and exclaimed: "That damned dress again!"

'He walked away in a temper . . . It took me a long time to make it up . . . That was the only quarrel we ever had.'
¹¹

It was, of course, exactly the sort of trivial thing that annoyed the Prince.

Not long after the war, Lillie sold her various English houses and bought a villa, overlooking Monte Carlo, which she named Le Lys.
Set in a flowery garden, against pine-covered slopes and with a view over the glittering Mediterranean, Le Lys was something of a showplace. Occasionally Lillie's husband Suggie, the dapper and ineffectual Sir Hugo de Bathe, was to be seen in her company but a more constant companion was a Mrs Mathilde Peate, who acted as part-housekeeper, part-secretary and part-confidante. Lillie's days were spent in strolling along the promenade, gambling in the casino, meeting friends for tea and giving or attending little dinner parties. Always well dressed and regally mannered, she remained, amongst the fashionable crowd that thronged the Riviera, very much of a celebrity in her own right.

It was, quite naturally, as the one-time mistress of King Edward VII that Lillie Langtry was chiefly celebrated. And although, in private conversation, she was ready to tell the odd anecdote about their association, she was careful not to commit anything to paper. Yet as long ago as the 1890s publishers had been pestering her to write her memoirs. 'I would go up to £40,000 and it would be worth it,' one publisher assured the journalist William Colley, 'if she would write all the truth and all she knows.'

'Mr Colley,' exclaimed an amused Lillie on hearing about the offer, 'you don't really think I would ever do such a thing as to write my
real
reminiscences, do you?'

'No,' admitted Colley, 'I don't.'
¹²

Lillie then gave him, says Colley, her reasons for not writing her
'real
reminiscences'; these, he says nobly, he would never disclose.

But her well-known reluctance did not stop other publishers, or newspaper editors, from trying to get her to change her mind. 'Her frank reminiscences,' one journalist told Lord Northcliffe, 'would provide the best Sunday reading for many a long day.'
¹³

Newman Flower came closer than most. After he had been begging her for months to write her autobiography, Lillie one day invited him to her London house to discuss it. 'I was shown into a room where the litter of lunch still lingered – two used table-napkins thrown across the table, two stained glasses, an empty bottle, a cigarette-end still smouldering in a glass ash-tray . . .

'She came in presently. There was no make-up on her face. She was depressed and unhappy. Restive. She pulled out a chair, and sat corner-wise on it. She pushed the plates and glasses aside in a noisy clatter.'