The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses (29 page)

William Thomas Stead was one of the great crusading journalists of the late Victorian age. Bushily bearded and burning-eyed, this son of a Congregational minister brought to his journalism a powerful blend of moral indignation and sensationalism. Tirelessly, he flung himself into cause after cause; devoting to each, in turn, all his energy, enthusiasm and idealism. He originated what was to be known as 'the new journalism' of the late nineteenth century: the journalism of frankness, conviction and vision.

One of his most celebrated journalistic exposés was the series of astonishing articles entitled 'The Maiden Tribute to Modern Babylon' which he wrote for the
Pall Mall Gazette
in 1885. The number of male brothels in Victorian London was as nothing compared with the number of female brothels; and of all forms of prostitution, none was more reprehensible than child prostitution. Girls as young as eight or nine were readily available and, with virgins (or what were passed off as virgins) being especially highly prized, these young girls were in great demand. The widely-held belief that the taking of a girl's virginity could cure venereal disease made them even more sought after. One of the clients of the notorious Mrs Jeffries, who ran a child brothel, was said to have been another of Lillie Langtry's admirers, the lecherous old King Leopold II of the Belgians.

Determined to expose the evils of child prostitution, Stead bought a thirteen-year-old girl. His accounts of this transaction, and of the sordid world in which such trade flourished, ran for weeks in the
Pall Mall Gazette
. Whereas today such investigative journalism would be applauded, in the late nineteenth century it was deplored. The Victorians were far more shocked by the writing of the articles than by the circumstances which caused them to be written. On the grounds that Stead had not secured the consent of the girl's father when buying her (
and regardless of the fact that the incident had been stage-managed and that Stead had no intention of having sex with the girl) he was charged with criminal abduction and sent to jail for two months.

Stead's imprisonment did nothing to quench his crusading ardour. His campaigning, after he moved from the
Pall Mall Gazette
to the editorship of
Review of Reviews
, remained as fervent as ever. And when, at a dinner party in the spring of 1892, he met Lady Brooke, Stead immediately saw in her the means whereby he could further yet another of his causes: the moral and intellectual uplifting of the Prince of Wales.

In researching his article on the Prince the year before, Stead had clearly come to appreciate something of his subject's potential. If only the Prince had been given a chance, if only he had been entrusted with some of his father's responsibilities, claimed Stead, 'he might have developed somewhat more of his father's virtues.'
³⁶
The tone of Stead's article had come as a pleasant surprise to the Prince. Knowing all about Stead's high-mindedness and outspokenness, Bertie had been afraid to read it.

'I am told that there is an awful article in here about me,' he had said to Daisy, handing her a copy of
Review of Reviews
. 'I dare not open it, I want you to do so, read it, and tell me what it says.'

She had been able to put his mind at rest. Daisy considered it 'a very good article, very just, and that it gave him good advice and was very fair.'
³⁷
In fact, Stead had succumbed to a bout of that deference which afflicts even the most hard-bitten of journalists, then and now, when writing serious articles about princes of Wales.

On meeting Lady Brooke, Stead lost no time in interesting her in his scheme for 'improving' the Prince. And who more suitable to undertake this important task, he asked her, than herself? She must use what he tactfully called her 'friendship' with the Heir to influence him for the better. Daisy was only too ready to oblige. Already she had recognised in Stead a soul-mate and a mentor: someone who could both share and direct her as yet unformed yearnings to lead a more useful life. So his suggestion that she help lift her royal lover's eyes towards more worthwhile goals, that she interest him in philanthropic causes and moral issues, was very well received. Few women, and least of all Lady Brooke, would have turned down the opportunity of using her powers to mould a great public figure.

Just how anxious the Prince was to be moulded is another matter. To date, his interest in what were then described as 'social questions' had been, at best, fitful. Although always careful to cultivate leading
Radical figures such as Sir Charles Dilke and Joseph Chamberlain (partly, as has been suggested, 'from a perverse desire to know those of whom his mother disapproved'
³⁸
), he would issue dire warnings against 'the lower classes getting the upper hand'.
³⁹
But this, too, might have been in reaction to Queen Victoria's championship of the hard-working 'lower orders' against the frivolous 'higher classes'.

Some years before, in 1884, the Prince had agreed to sit on a Royal Commission concerned with housing the working classes. This had entailed a tour, incognito (a slouch hat and an off-the-peg ulster) through the slums of Holborn and St Pancras. What he saw appalled him. He had had no idea that people lived in such squalor and misery. His immediate reaction – to start handing out money to ragged beggarwomen – was prevented by his companions: that was hardly the wisest way to alleviate poverty.

In a subsequent speech to the House of Lords, the Prince spoke out strongly in favour of legislation to improve these 'perfectly disgraceful'
⁴⁰
conditions, while admitting that his own London properties – the estates of the Duchy of Cornwall – were in just as disgraceful a condition. He would not be the last Prince of Wales to find himself embarrassed by the state of his own back yard. To this day, even as altruistic a landlord as the present Prince of Wales is occasionally attacked for some example of exploitation or neglect in his Duchy properties.

Again, in 1892, the Prince sat on another Royal Commission, this time concerned with the problems of destitution in old age. And although, on both commissions, his colleagues found him to be affable and sympathetic, his attendance was intermittent. His frequent absences were as often due to social engagements as they were to public duties.

For Daisy Brooke, though, he was always prepared to make the effort. In 1894 she decided to stand for election as a trustee of a local workhouse. If standing for public office were not innovation enough, Daisy also beat a resoundingly feminist drum in her election message. She spoke of 'the great principle, which is gradually gaining recognition, of the joint and mutual responsibility of man and woman, which is equally important in the administration of the affairs of the community as in the management of the home.'
⁴¹
In the 1890s, that was very progressive thinking.

Daisy was duly elected and among the first visitors she showed over the workhouse was the Prince of Wales. 'I did everything that was in my power to let him know the truth about such places as workhouses
and prisons,' she afterwards wrote, 'and I told him all I knew of the lives of the poor he would one day govern.'
⁴²

How much
she
knew at that stage of her life is debatable. But Stead must have felt very gratified.

9

The Socialist Countess

I
N DECEMBER
1893 Daisy's father-in-law, the Earl of Warwick, died, which meant that her husband became the fifth Earl of Warwick and that after being known for twelve years as Lady Brooke, Daisy became the Countess of Warwick.

With her new title came a new home: Warwick Castle. Towering cliff-like over the wooded banks of the River Avon as it flows through Warwickshire, Warwick Castle is one of the most picturesquely sited and architecturally impressive castles in the country. Dating back to the Normans, it is, after Windsor Castle and the Tower of London, the best known and oldest continuously inhabited castle in Britain. Even the new Earl of Warwick, who tended to wax lyrical only about hunting and fishing, claimed that to stand by the banks of the River Avon 'in the earliest light of a June morning, when the colour of the castle walls was luminous pearl grey, when a full choir was wakening in the woods and great fish were leaping from the water, was to have sense of a beauty that remained secure against all the assaults of time and change.'
¹

During the time of Daisy's father-in-law, the modest and frugal fourth Earl of Warwick, the castle had been a singularly cheerless place, but with the arrival of the energetic young Countess, fresh life – and a great deal of uncertain taste – was introduced into the ancient family seat. Among the many changes made by Daisy was the organising of a special suite for the Prince of Wales – a bedroom with a recessed and elaborately painted ceiling, a dressing room, a bathroom and a lavatory – situated a few yards from the door of her own 'Chinese' bedroom.

Nothing, perhaps, better reflected the new chatelaine's love of gaiety and display than the great costume ball which she gave, in February 1895, to celebrate the end of the year of mourning for the late
Earl and her own husband's entry into his inheritance. The Victorians dearly loved a fancy-dress ball; the more elaborate and expensive the costumes, the happier they were. Lady Warwick had stipulated that Louis XVI dress was to be worn, and with a colour scheme of white and gold (as it was mid-winter, arum lilies and lilies of the valley had to be brought from the South of France) she planned to create, for one night, the splendours of eighteenth-century Versailles.

Daisy appeared, of course, as Queen Marie Antoinette. Her dress was of turquoise velvet brocade embroidered with real gold thread in
fleurs-de-lis
and roses. Diamonds flashed on her shoulders, about her neck and in her powdered hair. On her head towered a confection of pink, white and turquoise ostrich plumes, fastened by sapphires set in yet more diamonds.

No fewer than four hundred guests, some accommodated in the castle and others arriving by special trains from nearby country seats, attended the great ball and banquet. With every well-known hairdresser in London already roped in for the dressing and powdering of the guests' hair, more hairdressers had to be brought over from Paris. Not even during the famous visit of Queen Elizabeth I, three centuries before, had Warwick Castle seen such a show of wealth, colour and beauty. 'The effect of the throng of splendidly gowned and costumed men and women in the setting of the noble rooms of the Castle seemed
at the time
to make the gathering worth while,'
²
remembers Daisy.

At the time, yes; but within a couple of weeks Lady Warwick was seeing it very differently. For the famous
bal poudré
at Warwick Castle – and its immediate aftermath – marked, she tells us, a dramatic turning point in her life. It became, in a way, her light on the road to Damascus.

Extremely gratified by the various newspaper accounts of her ball, Daisy one morning came across an article, in a weekly journal, that was anything but complimentary. In a left-wing paper called the
Clarion
she read, in mounting indignation, a violent attack on herself. How, asked the writer, could the spending of thousands of pounds on a 'few hours silly masquerade'
³
possibly be justified when so many people were forced to live in grinding and degrading poverty?

Daisy could hardly believe her eyes. Her rage on reading the article was so violent, she wrote over thirty years later, that she could feel it still. For she considered the attack to be completely unjustified. Was she not known for her sympathy for anyone in distress? Had she not started a needlework school to help the unemployed; had she not
become a trustee of the local workhouse? Had her ball not provided work for dozens of dressmakers, hairdressers, decorators, gardeners, cooks, maids and footmen?

Always impulsive, Lady Warwick got out of bed, dressed, and without a word to her guests, took the first train to London. By midday she was in Fleet Street, looking for the editorial offices of the
Clarion
. On finding them, on the top floor of a dingy old building, she burst into the editor's office unannounced. If Robert Blatchford – for that was the editor's name – was surprised by the sight of this beautiful and fashionably dressed woman standing opposite his desk, he did not show it.

'Are you the editor of the
Clarion?'
she demanded.

He merely nodded,

'I came about this,' she continued, thrusting the paper at him.

Still he said nothing.

'How could you be so unfair, so unjust? Our ball has given work to half the county, and to dozens of dressmakers in London besides.'

At last Blatchford spoke. 'Will you sit down,' he asked, 'while I explain to you how mistaken you are about the real effect of luxury?'
⁴

And this is what, with great eloquence and persuasiveness, Blatchford proceeded to do. He told her, in no uncertain terms, what he thought of 'ladies bountiful'. He explained to her the differences between productive and unproductive labour. He made clear to her that the making of expensive costumes for the wealthy, the providing of rich delicacies for the overfed, and the erection of temporary pavilions for the already well-housed was so much wasted effort: it was like digging holes in the ground and then filling them up again. 'The great ball and all its preparations,' realised Daisy, 'had not added one iota to the national wealth.'
⁵

Although Daisy could not take in everything that Blatchford was saying, she was profoundly shaken by his arguments. Quite forgetting about lunch, she sat listening to him all through the winter's afternoon. When, finally, she left to catch her train home, she felt dazed. 'During the journey home I thought and thought about all that I had been hearing and learning. I knew that my outlook on life could never be the same as before this incident . . . I was as one who had found a new, a real world.'
⁶