Anonymous - Dara

'Does your husband know about this escapade of yours in the theatre at Dublin?' he asked.

'No,' I answered, 'and I hope you won't tell him or anyone else.'

'Your secret will be safe with me,' he replied with some dignity. 'What puzzles me,' he said after a thoughtful pause, 'is how you can be a wife to Pulrose. From all accounts he is a most effeminate creature with little interest in women.'

'Yes, this is true,' I said with a sigh, 'I discovered that after we married. I'm his wife in name only and am now residing at Cheyney House in Catherine Place while Sir Charles Cheyney is in Australia.'

Our little talk had given the Prince some assurance and helped him to regain his confidence. Clasping a hand around one of my breasts, he kissed me most warmly. He knew what to do, this time, to assuage the lusty desires that my feminine wiles had aroused in his loins and he set to with a vigour and enthusiasm that was most admirable. He made no bones about enjoying the delights of my female flesh and his virility boded well for the procreation of further royals in the years to come.

My lover was sound asleep when I kissed him goodnight. His loyal friend, Frederick Stanley, was waiting to escort me to the cab for the journey back to my Dublin hotel. The first faint rays of daylight were emerging from the silhouette of the eastern horizon when I entered the vehicle. The Lieutenant held the open door for a moment to whisper, 'Will you honour us with another visit tonight?'

'Yes,' I replied, 'if it is the wish of your friend.'

I had two more assignations at Curragh Camp before the Prince left Ireland on the twentieth of September to return to London. He had been attached to the Second Battalion of the Grenadier Guards under the command of Colonel Percy. Although he had gained great satisfaction from the ten weeks of the comparative freedom of military life, he was now looking forward to seeing Vicky, his elder sister, the Crown Princess of Prussia.

As he had two or three days at Buckingham Palace before visiting Berlin, we made detailed arrangements for a nocturnal meeting at my home in Catherine Place, the first of many visits by the Prince to Cheyney House, so conveniently close to the Palace that he could make the journey on foot in less than five minutes.

When I got back home there was a sealed letter from the Prince awaiting me.

'My Dearest,

You are constantly in my thoughts. I think about you with deep affection, a feeling I am sure that will abide with me always. Because of your rank and situation amongst the nobility I am delighted that we will be able to meet often at social functions and private dinner parties. I look forward to being with you tonight. Your sincere admirer, Bertie.'

Reading this letter brought it home to me just how much this affair with the Prince was going to affect my life style in the future. My servants could be a problem if I was unable to count on their loyalty and discretion.

I broke the news to Billings, my butler, by informing him without any hesitating preliminary talk that the Prince of Wales and I had become good friends and that we could expect His Royal Highness to be a frequent visitor to the house from now on as I wanted my home to be a comfortable refuge for him when seeking relaxation.

Try as he may, Billings was incapable of hiding his pleasure and excitement. From the expression on his face I knew we would get his full cooperation to keep this affair a secret and he would see to it that there would be no seepage of gossip from the house to the world outside.

Our plans for the autumn went steadily forward. After his visit to Berlin, the Prince would return to Cambridge on the thirteenth of October to continue his studies at Trinity College and I would find lodgings at one of the numerous inns or taverns in the town. The Prince had his own private accommodation at Madingley Hall, a spacious country mansion about four miles outside the town.

I was enraptured by Cambridge with its venerable colleges and quiet cloistered courts. The great antiquity of the pleasant and extensive buildings surmounted by pinnacles and minarets absorbed my interest. My social life was enriched by association with the Prince's friends in the Amateur Dramatic Club. Because of his royal influence, I became the resident actress at the Club's premises behind 'The Hoop' hotel in Jesus Lane and a good friend of Francis Burnand, the founder of this theatrical group for undergraduates. Soon after his arrival at the university the Prince was an appreciative spectator of the farces and extravaganzas to which the Club's programmes were confined, and his favour secured for it a fuller academic recognition than it had enjoyed before.

We had much pleasant intercourse both in conversation and in physical intimacy in my dressing room near the stage whenever he was able to escape from the watchful eye of his Governor at Madingley Hall. His close companions and fellow students at Trinity College, the Duke of St Albans, Charles Beresford and Nathaniel Rothschild, often joined us for supper in my rooms at 'The Hoop' hotel.

One evening he arrived in great agitation, looking a little off colour and a bit pale around the gills. It seems that one of the cabbies in Dublin had talked of a liaison with an actress. The scandal had become the gossip of London high society and had reached the ears of his parents. Deeply shocked by the news of this fall from grace, the Queen had sent her husband to Cambridge to administer a very severe reprimand to their wayward son. Prince Albert inspired nervous reverent awe in Bertie, who, under stern admonishment, broke down and admitted he had 'yielded to temptation'. He assured his father that the affair with Nellie Clifden was now over, which to some extent was true, as, strictly speaking, I'm not known by that name. His father was much relieved to hear this and told him: 'As the future sovereign of the British Empire you must not, under any circumstances, stray from the path of righteousness. The consequences for this country, and for the world, would be too dreadful to contemplate.'

Discussions immediately got underway at Windsor Castle as to what to do about the future of the Prince of Wales. His father began to arrange for a five month tour of the Near East for his son, and the Queen drew up a list of seven young European princesses for consideration as Bertie's future wife on the principle that if one must yield to temptations of the flesh, it should be done in accordance with God's will in wedded bliss. But all these plans were overtaken by something even more catastrophic.

Prince Albert caught a chill from the cold, wet weather that prevailed during his stay at Cambridge and within two weeks died of typhoid fever at Windsor. Much to Bertie's distress his mother, in her grief, blamed him for the death of her husband, because Prince Albert was on his way to discipline his son when he contracted typhus. In the first stupefaction after the death of her husband she vowed fidelity to all his views and said she would: 'Apply them particularly to Bertie whose future has been planned so carefully by my beloved Albert.'

The Queen went ahead with arrangements for her son's tour, determined to carry out her late husband's wishes. So I was deprived of Bertie's company for five months while he toured Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Greece and a number of other countries in that area. When he got back on the thirteenth of June he regaled me with his accounts of shooting wild boar in Albania and shooting crocodiles on the banks of the River Nile. During his tour abroad the Queen had proceeded with negotiations for her son's marriage to the beautiful Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

Shortly after his return to London at his request I took him, one dark night, to see some of the slums where I had lived at one time. Horrified by the degradation of the poor and moved almost to tears, he began to hand out gold sovereigns to the starving ragamuffins who quickly surrounded us. He had to be restrained as I feared we would have a riot on our hands. I got him back into our waiting cab as quickly as possible and away from a demanding crowd that was threatening to get ugly and dangerous.