The Intimate Sex Lives of Famous People (70 page)

Victoria and Albert had, by any account, an intimate companionship. What the straitlaced and abstemious consort lacked in passion he made up for in devotion, calling Victoria “little wifey” in German, choosing her bonnets, and even putting her stockings on for her. He knelt at her feet and held her hand even while enduring her emotional outbursts. The two shared a mutual love for music, mountains, history, and family. Both were jealous and possessive—Albert of influence over his wife, Victoria of attractive women, even her oldest daughter. For it was the queen who was the child in the royal family, enjoying in her patient and protecting husband the father she never knew.

Albert’s public role was to foster the national climate of piety and prudery which typified “Victorianism.” Lacking the queen’s natural vigor, he damaged his health irreparably in a fit of hysterical indignation over the Crown Prince Bertie’s illicit escapades. After Albert’s sudden death at the age of 42, Victoria was consumed with grief and longing. “Poor Mama,” her daughter Vicky said, “has to go to bed and has to get up alone—for ever.” Not quite alone. There were Albert’s nightshirt clutched in her plump arms, a portrait of him on his pillow, and a cast of his hand nearby.

A WIDOW’S CONSOLATIONS:
The usual image of the widowed Victoria is a plump, plain figure with bulbous eyes and a little kerchief on her head, mourning for her sainted Albert. Remarriage was unthinkable, but there were diversions. Chief among these was John Brown, a burly, brusque Scots manservant

who became the queen’s closest companion after Albert’s death. “Wumman,”

he would say familiarly, “what’s this ye’ve got on today?” Victoria’s son and successor, Edward, was appalled at her attachment to Brown. He ordered a wooden pavilion dismantled which had been a favorite resting place of his mother’s when she went on outings with Brown. Victoria promptly commanded that it be rebuilt, and retaliated by giving Edward the silent treatment for several weeks. The pavilion most likely harbored drinking buddies and not lovers, since Victoria and Brown shared a fondness for whiskey. Victoria for her part publicly acknowledged Brown as her “friend and most confidential attendant,” refusing to give him up despite scandalous rumors that they were secretly married. (It has even been argued that Victoria bore Brown a son, who died a recluse in Paris at the age of 90.) Brown himself died in 1883.

One of Victoria’s last conquests was Benjamin Disraeli, who as prime minister (1868, 1874–1880) became the queen’s close friend and confidant. Also a bereaved spouse, Disraeli was a romantic who consoled and flattered Victoria, restoring her taste for power by making her empress of India. Although Victoria once paid “Dizzy” the honor of visiting him at his country house, he declined another royal visit from her on his deathbed, saying, “No, it is better not. She will only ask me to take a message to Albert.”

—C.D.

X

Follow the Leader

U.S. LEADERS

The Master Of Monticello

THOMAS JEFFERSON (Apr. 13, 1743–July 4, 1826)

HIS FAME:
The third president of the

U.S. wrote his own epitaph. It reads,

“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson,

Author of the Declaration of Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for

Religious Freedom, and Father of the

University of Virginia.”

HIS PERSON:
Irony and ambivalence

were as much a part of his makeup as were

his red hair and 6-ft. 2-in. stature. One of

history’s most complex characters, he once

asked the Virginia legislature for permission to free his slaves and later in his first

draft of the Declaration of Independence

he condemned slavery. However, in his

Notes on Virginia
of 1785, he compared blacks to whites unfavorably, citing “a very strong and disagreeable odor,” laziness, and the inferior intellect of the former.

Furthermore, he said, blacks themselves prefer the beauty of whites much like “the preference of the orangutan for the black women over those of his own species.”

Psychohistorians have suggested that his role in the rebellion against the mother country was due in large part to hostile feelings toward his own mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, who was widowed when Tom was 14 and with whom he lived until he was 27. Jefferson once told John Adams that if he had to live his life over again, he’d skip the first 25 years, and in a letter to his mother’s brother in England, dated May, 1776, he dismissed news of his mother’s death the previous March with three unsentimental lines.

LOVE LIFE:
His first love was Rebecca Burwell. He was 19 and she was 16, and the relationship had a certain adolescent air about it. She gave him a silhouette of her profile, and he referred to her in code in his letters. But because he failed to make his intentions clear, he lost her to another man. “Never again,” says biographer Fawn Brodie, “would he fall in love with a virgin with whom marriage would be in every case socially acceptable.”

His first nonvirgin was Betsey Walker, wife of his friend and neighbor John Walker. Jefferson had been a member of the Walker wedding party in 1764 and was named executor in Walker’s will, but in 1768, while Walker was away for the summer, Jefferson made advances to Betsey. She admitted that much to her husband almost 20 years later. In 1802 the Walkers and President Jefferson became the object of a national sensation over the President’s past relationship with another man’s wife. Only through the mediation of mutual friends was the President able to avert a duel with John Walker, who—34 years after the fact— had become the most famous cuckold in the land.

Martha Wayles Skelton’s husband had also been a friend of Jefferson’s. After Skelton’s death Tom and Martha were married, on New Year’s Day, 1772.

Jefferson virtually removed himself from politics during the marriage, preferring his gentleman-farmer pursuits at Monticello, his Virginia estate. Martha was a bit of a Tory and historians contend that Jefferson never would have become president had she lived longer. But she was not a healthy woman. She lost three children in infancy and after giving birth to their third daughter she herself died in 1782, leaving Jefferson with a suicidal sadness and a deathbed promise that he’d never marry again.

After overcoming his grief he agreed to succeed Benjamin Franklin as minister to France, and he set sail for the Continent in 1784. The carefree lifestyle he encountered was a revelation to him, and everywhere he looked it seemed that men such as his friend Lafayette and his aged countryman Benjamin Franklin were in joyous pursuit of women. In 1786 Jefferson, too, succumbed. He met Maria Cosway, a 27-year-old artist and the unhappy wife of English miniaturist Richard Cosway. Their mutual attraction was immediate, and their private correspondence, including Jefferson’s famous “My Head and My Heart” letter, reflects the emotional depth of their relationship. Part of that 12-page letter reads: “Deeply practised in the school of affliction, the human heart knows no joy which I have not lost, no sorrow of which I have not drank! Fortune can present no grief of unknown form to me.” Maria left her husband in London and spent almost four months in Paris in the fall of 1787, but because of her Catholicism or her fear of Cosway or simple confusion, she returned to London in December, leaving Jefferson with a letter of good-bye. She was to write him many more letters, almost until the day he died. Most of her letters the heartbroken Jefferson left unanswered.

“It is well known that the man, whom it delighteth the people to honor, keeps, and for many years has kept, as his concubine, one of his slaves. Her name is SALLY.” Thus scandalmonger James T. Callender, writing in the
Richmond
Recorder
on Sept. 1, 1802, launched one of the most blistering attacks ever leveled at the private life of an American president. “Sally” was Sally Hemings, the beautiful mulatto daughter of slave Betty Hemings and her master John Wayles, Jefferson’s former fatherin-law. Sally had accompanied Jefferson’s daughter Polly to France in 1787 when she was 14 years old, and she remained with Jefferson, occupying a place of special privilege at Monticello, until his death 39 years later. Only recently have white historians begun to accept what black historians have maintained for years, that Thomas Jefferson was the father
of Sally Hemings’ seven children, and that there was some truth to a ballad that made the rounds during his presidency. Sung to the tune of “Yankee Doodle”

and presented from the point of view of Jefferson, it included the following verses:
When press’d by loads of state affairs,

I seek to sport and dally,

The sweetest solace of my cares

Is in the lap of Sally.

She’s black you tell me—grant she be—

Must color always tally?

Black is love’s proper hue for me—

And white’s the hue for Sally.

—D.R.

Bachelor President

GROVER CLEVELAND (March 18, 1837–June 24, 1908)

HIS FAME:
New Jersey-born Stephen

Grover Cleveland, the only president in

U.S. history to serve two nonconsecutive

terms (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), is

remembered for his opposition to that era’s

tariffs and for his prolific use of the veto—

413 times in his first term alone. Many

thought of him as an uncouth, uneducated,

barroom ruffian, while others saw him as an

honest statesman and a man one could

count on. As sheriff of Erie County, N.Y., in

1871, “Big Steve” was required by law to fill

in when the usual hangman wasn’t available.

Twice Cleveland threaded the noose around

a murderer’s neck and sprang the gallows

trapdoor. This attention to duty provoked

his enemies to dub him “the Hangman of Buffalo.” He was described as unim-pressive and charmless, but his physical size was notable. Short and stocky, he weighed 250 lb.

HIS LOVES:
While Cleveland was an unlikely choice for the role of president, let alone paramour, he began his first term amid the hubbub of a sex scandal. His trudging efficiency and integrity as governor of New York State had at first made him the perfect Democratic opponent to Republican nominee James G. Blaine in

the 1884 election because Blaine’s political career had been tainted with corruption. Early on in the campaign, however, the Republican party revealed that Cleveland had fathered a son out of wedlock. Apparently Cleveland had regularly enjoyed the company of women during his years in state and local politics, for his saloon pals took no special notice of a tall, slender widow named Maria Crofts Halpin. The 35-year-old mother of two was different from most of Cleveland’s female friends in that she seemed cultured and educated, never swore, and seldom drank. Then, in 1874, she bore a son. Although he wasn’t certain the child was his, Cleveland never denied that he was the father. Desperate for a husband, Widow Halpin tried to cajole Cleveland into marrying her. He refused and the despondent woman turned to drink. Ever conscientious, Cleveland placed the boy in an orphanage until foster parents could be found, and when Maria protested, she was committed to a Buffalo asylum for five days. Later, she tried to win legal custody of her son until Cleveland gave her $500 to drop the suit. Maria moved to Niagara Falls, where she started a small business with more of Cleveland’s money, and ultimately remarried. A wealthy couple was located to adopt the boy, who grew up to become a doctor. The gossip faded out until 1884. Then the Republicans—taunting Cleveland with their “dirty tricks” campaign slogan, “Ma, Ma!

Where’s my Pa? Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”—brought the long-dead affair into the open. When his campaign workers asked how they should respond, Cleveland commanded them, “Tell the truth.” This they did, right down to the fact that Cleveland had financially supported the mother and child. Such unprecedented honesty turned the scandal into a political asset.