If the relationship between the Queen and the Prince of Wales continued to be imperfect, all differences between her and the Princess were now forgotten. They had come close together at the time of the Prince’s illness; and, after the death of Princess Alice, the Prince’s favourite sister, when ‘dear Alix’ proved to be a ‘real devoted sympathizing daughter’ to the Queen, they remained deeply attached to each other up till the day the Queen herself died.
The Princess was much affected by her mother-in-law’s death. She was the only woman seen to be in tears at the private funeral service at Frogmore. And afterwards she told Lady Downe how sad and strange Windsor Castle seemed without her: ‘I feel as if she were only gone abroad and I keeping house for her in her absence.’
The relationship between the Princess and her husband was more difficult to understand. Lady Antrim, who knew her well, thought that if she had loved him as much as he loved her he would have been more faithful to her. No one doubted, though, that she did love him. ‘I miss my little Man terribly,’ she told Lady Downe when he was abroad after the Mordaunt divorce case; and it was obvious that, although her children came first in her life, she did miss him terribly. It was obvious, too, that despite his affairs and many intimate female friendships, he loved her in return. ‘After all,’ she said of him when he was dead, ‘he always loved me the best.’
He seems, all the same, never to have found her particularly attractive sexually. Perhaps no man did so, not even Oliver Montagu, for she was evidently not in the least a sensual woman. She inspired admiration, respect, and, usually, affection in almost everyone who knew her, but never the passion aroused by those whom Lord Carrington referred to as ‘the Prince’s other ladies’. ‘Every time one sees her,’ wrote Edward Hamilton soon after her thirty-ninth birthday, ‘one is more struck by her refined beauty and her extraordinarily youthful appearance.’ Such comments were commonplace. So were tributes to her still ‘lovely figure’ and ‘straight back’, ‘her fresh red lips which were never painted and always moist’, her gaiety, her sense of fun and of the ridiculous. Charming stories were told of her suddenly exploding with irresistible laughter as, for instance, she did in St Petersburg when the Prince entered the Throne Room of the Anitchkoff Palace followed by five members of his staff, solemnly bearing on velvet cushions the insignia for the Tsar’s installation as a Knight of the Garter and looking ‘exactly like a row of wet-nurses carrying babies’. There was also that well-remembered occasion when, having asked Tennyson to read aloud the Ode of Welcome which he had written for her wedding, she could not contain her laughter, which proved so infectious that soon Tennyson, too, was laughing helplessly and dropped the book on the floor. Yet, even when romping about at Sandringham, making rather childish jokes, squirting her son with a soda-water syphon, or trying on everyone else’s shoes on the dance floor at Chatsworth, she never lost her poise and dignity. As Lady Frederick Cavendish said, she could gather up her stateliness at any moment.
Extravagantly generous with her money, handing out cheques and cash to anyone who seemed in need of help, or pressing a pair of gold cuff-links into the hand of an unhappy-looking footman, she was not in the least discriminating, giving her nieces presents which were nearly always ‘inappropriate’. Often thoughtless, sometimes obstinate and always unpredictable, she could also be distressingly inconsiderate, particularly to her maids of honour, most of whom had cause to feel at some time during their service that the Princess paid little heed to their own welfare, and one of whom was seen to receive a sharp blow from her mistress’s long, steel umbrella for some offence during a drive in an open carriage. Utterly unimaginative, she was also in no sense clever, although her deafness, which grew progressively worse after her illness, occasionally made her seem more stupid and less interesting than she really was, especially when she attempted to conceal it by a continuous stream of talk which allowed of no comment or reply. Her deafness also prevented her from enjoying many of those social activities in which, in company with her husband, she had formerly delighted. After the onset of middle age, they spent more and more time apart.
She never became the least bitter, though, and never displayed any jealousy she may have felt when her husband, who, in the later years of their marriage, treated her always with the greatest courtesy and respect, made it obvious to the world that he preferred the company of ‘his other ladies’ to that of his wife. She sometimes referred to them disparagingly. The lovely American debutante, Miss Chamberlayne — with whom Edward Hamilton, in the summer of 1884, saw the Prince ‘occupying himself entirely’ at a party at Mrs Allsopp’s — she nicknamed ‘Chamberpots’. But she was always perfectly polite to her when she met her. And when her husband, having finished flirting with ‘Chamberpots’, embarked upon a much more serious affair with Mrs Edward Langtry, the Princess sensibly accepted the situation and raised no objection to his new inamorata’s being invited to Marlborough House.
The Prince had first met Lillie Langtry on 24 May 1877 while the Princess was in Greece staying with her brother and convalescing after an illness. The meeting took place at a small supper party given especially for the purpose by the Arctic explorer, Captain Sir Allen Young, an unmarried friend of the Prince who had a house in Stratford Place. The Prince was immediately captivated by the tall, graceful, glowingly voluptuous woman who had recently established herself as one of the most celebrated and sought-after beauties in London. The daughter of the Revd William Le Breton, Dean of Jersey, she had been married three years before, at the age of twenty-one, to Edward Langtry, a widower of twenty-six whose family had made money as shipowners in Belfast and whose yacht, his bride later confessed, interested her more than its owner. Edward Langtry was, indeed, a rather nondescript character, kind and amiable but indecisive and suggestible, the victim of moods of deep despondency — no match, in their frequent differences, for his wilful and determined wife. Persuaded to move to London he set up house in Eaton Place where, though he had sold his yacht, his income was insufficient for the kind of life his wife proposed to lead. He was like a fish out of water, Mrs Langtry said; and consoled himself by drinking while she set about making their entry into society.
She experienced no difficulty in doing so. Helped by Lord Ranelagh, whom she had met occasionally in Jersey, where he had a house, the Langtrys were soon introduced into the kind of drawing-rooms where she wished to be seen and where her beauty, her confident bearing and her deliciously proportioned body could not fail to be admired. Lord Randolph Churchill met her at Lord Wharncliffe’s and told his wife, ‘took in to dinner a Mrs Langtry, a most beautiful creature, quite unknown, very poor, and they say has but one black dress’.
Within a few months Mrs Langtry was quite unknown no longer. She was painted by Millais and Edward Poynter, by Whistler and Edward Burne-Jones, one of whose portraits of her was bought by the young Arthur Balfour. Photographs of her were to be seen everywhere. And, once her intimate friendship with the Prince of Wales became common knowledge, crowds gathered to stare at her whenever she went shopping or rode in the park on a horse which had been given to her by another admirer, Moreton Frewen. ‘It became risky for me to indulge in a walk,’ she recalled with pride. ‘People ran after me in droves, staring me out of countenance and even lifting my sunshade to satisfy their curiosity.’ The young Margot Tennant saw ‘great and conventional ladies like old Lady Cadogan and others standing on iron chairs in the park to see Mrs Langtry walk past’.
The Prince took no trouble to disguise his love for her. He let it be known that he would like her invited to certain country houses where he was going for the week-end; he took her to Paris where he was reported to have kissed her on the dance floor at Maxim’s; he was often to be seen with her at Ascot; he arranged for both her and her husband to be presented to the Queen. She became, in fact, almost maîtresse en titre; and felt quite secure in that position even when Sarah Bernhardt, with whom the Prince often dined in Paris, came to London in 1879 and was invited to Marlborough House. ‘London has gone mad over the principal actress in the Comédie Française who is here, Sarah Bernhardt — a woman of notorious, shameless character,’ wrote Lady Frederick Cavendish disapprovingly in her diary. ‘Not content with being run after on the stage, this woman is asked into people’s houses to act, and even to luncheon and dinner; and all the world goes. It is an outrageous scandal!’