Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

It was usual with the King after he had let himself go and cursed someone to soothe matters by being nice to them afterwards. But in this case he resented my being so outspoken and made no attempt to forgive me. It was not till years later that I understood that he had really agreed with me but had been much annoyed at not being able to give something good. During the visit to Berlin [in 1909] when the King was ill with a chill and quite unable to attend to anything, he said, ‘I must leave the presents entirely to you to do, and I know you will do everything perfectly and not give anything shoddy like I did in Paris.’

As Ponsonby observed, the King’s rages soon cooled, particularly when he was abroad and enjoying himself as — while on the Continent — he usually was. Indeed, he was never at home for long before he began to look forward eagerly to his next foreign visit. In the year before he died he told his son with the deepest satisfaction, ‘I have crossed the Channel six times this year!’

He was particularly fond of France. He paid regular visits to the Riviera where he engaged with relish in the annual battle of the flowers, once dressed as Satan complete with scarlet robes and horns, and where he played roulette ‘comme d’habitude’. He was even more frequently to be seen in Paris, where he sometimes stayed at the Ritz or the Hôtel de l’Ambassade, but usually at the Bristol, being known there as the Earl of Chester or the Duke of Lancaster, a title which Lord James of Hereford, for one, considered him unjustified in using as it properly belonged to the descendants of John of Gaunt and did not go with the Duchy.

As Prince of Wales he had loved to go for walks in the Bois de Boulogne and down the Champs Elysées, to sail up and down the Seine, to stroll along the boulevards, looking into the shop windows in the rue de la Paix, buying shirts at Charvet’s, jewellery at Cartier’s, handkerchiefs at Chaperon’s and hats at Genot’s. He had enjoyed meals at his favourite restaurants — Magny’s, Léon’s and Durand’s, the Voisin, the Bignon, the Café Américain, the Café des Ambassadeurs and the Café de la Paix. He had wandered into one or other of the clubs of which he was a member — the Jockey Club, the Yacht Club de France, the Cercle des Champs Elysées, the Union Club, the Nouveau and the Rue Royale. Almost every evening he had been to the theatre — the Théâtre Français, the Théâtre des Variétés, the Gymnase, the Vaudeville, the Odéon, the Palais Royal, the Nouveautés, the Renaissance or the Porte St Martin. Afterwards he had paid calls backstage with friends from the Jockey Club, or he had gone to the Epatant for a game of baccarat, or to 16 rue de la Pépinière for ‘une soirée intime’, or to the cabaret at the Lion d’Or, the Bouffes-Parisiens or the Moulin Rouge. Once he had played the part of the murdered prince in Sardou’s Fedora while Sarah Bernhardt wept over him. And he had entertained Bernhardt and other actresses in the Café Anglais in the ‘Grand Seize’, an exotic private room hung with red wall paper and gold hieroglyphics, furnished with gilt chairs and a crimson sofa, and softly lit by gasoliers.

He had made elaborate efforts to give the slip to the indefatigable French detectives who, to his extreme annoyance, followed him everywhere, suitably disguised, even to the extent of wearing clothes appropriate to the different parts of the theatres to which they were assigned and taking their wives with them to restaurants. Occasionally the Prince’s carriage had suddenly rattled off at such a pace from the Hôtel Bristol that the police had lost track of him. But generally they managed to keep up with him and were able to submit reports of meetings with celebrated beauties in the Jardin des Plantes, of long afternoons spent with his intimate friends, the Comtesse Edmond de Pourtalès in the rue Tronchet, the Baronne Alphonse de Rothschild in the Faubourg St Honoré, and the Princesse de Sagan on the corner of the Esplanade des Invalides.

The police had watched him on his visits to Mme Kauchine, a Russian beauty who rented a room in the Hôtel du Rhin; to ‘the widow Signoret’, mistress of the Duc de Rohan; to a certain ‘Dame Verneuil’ who had an apartment on the second floor at 39 rue Lafayette; to the Baronne de Pilar at the Hôtel Choiseul; to Miss Chamberlayne (described in 1884 as his ‘maîtresse en titre’) at the Hôtel Balmoral; to unidentified ladies in the Hôtel Scribe and the Hôtel Liverpool in the rue de Castiglione. The police had been particularly concerned by his visits to the Hôtel de Calais, where he often spent most of the night with a mysterious woman known to the chambermaid as Mme Hudrie, ‘a very beautiful woman, aged about thirty, tall, slim, blonde, remarkable for her magnificent colouring and her perfect elegance … usually dressed in white satin, but always in black when she meets ‘the Prince’. This turned out to be the Comtesse de Boutourline, wife of the Prefect of Moscow, sister-in-law of General Boutourline, formerly military attach? at the British Embassy in London, and granddaughter of Princess Bobinska, with whom she claimed to be staying in the rue de Chateaubriand, though the police discovered that she was actually living in a house belonging to the Comte de Guinsonnas.

The Prince had spent other evenings with the delightful English courtesan, Catherine Walters; and had visited his favourite brothel, Le Chabanais, where the chair upon which he sat with his chosen young women was still displayed over a generation later to the brothel’s customers. He had gone to the Maison Dorée with the Duc de Gramont to meet the generous, passionate and consumptive Giulia Beneni, known as La Barucci, who arrived very late and, on being reprimanded by the Duke, turned her back on the royal visitor, lifted her skirts to her waist and said, ‘You told me to show him my best side.’ He had asked also to meet La Barucci’s rival, Cora Pearl, who had appeared before him naked except for a string of pearls and a sprig of parsley.

On one occasion, when Queen Alexandra was feeling depressed and out of sorts, the King asked her if she would like to go with him to Paris. Immediately she accepted the invitation with the excited eagerness of a little girl. They stayed at the British Embassy; and, for the first time in her life, the Queen was able to dine in public in a restaurant. She had been ‘delighted’ with Paris on a previous visit many years before, and she was equally entranced by it now.

Although they were very rarely in Paris together, the King often went with the Queen on her annual visit to her family in Denmark. He did so out of kindness, for he was overcome by boredom and restlessness while he was there, having to dine with his ancient father-in-law at six o’clock or half past six at the latest and then to play boring games of whist for very low stakes. He pretended to enjoy it all for the Queen’s sake. But the enclosed, provincial atmosphere, sometimes enlivened by a huge family party at the castle of Fredensborg where seven different languages were spoken, he found desperately tedious. Once, after visiting every museum, art gallery and house of historical interest which Copenhagen had to offer, he was driven to going over a farm which sold butter to England. He always longed to be back in Paris again and to take on once more the persona of the Duke of Lancaster.

The incognito was scarcely necessary for almost everyone in Paris knew who the Duke was; and he seemed quite content that this should be so. ‘Ullo Wales!’ La Gouloue, the famous dancer, would shout at him on his appearance at the Moulin Rouge, and he would smile indulgently and order champagne for the dancers and the members of the orchestra. Those who did not recognize him were soon made aware of his identity, as was ‘a prosperous-looking American with a large cigar in his mouth’ who stood waiting for the lift in the lobby of the Grand Hotel. The King also stood waiting to be taken up to the floor on which the ex-Empress Eugènie had taken a room. When the doors opened the American moved forward to enter first as he had been waiting the longer. The King, so accustomed to having everyone else wait for him that he took no notice of his neighbour, strode forward at the same time, collided with him, knocked him off his balance with the superior weight of his great bulk and sent the cigar shooting out of the American’s mouth.