For two years after her exile from Bavaria Lola traveled about Europe, where her title was ridiculed by true blue bloods. Curiously, her title did her more good in the United States, where she lived in the 1850s. Unlike the ossified European nobility, Americans were thrilled to meet a real Bavarian countess and didn’t care how she had come by the title.
Gambling Debts
In past centuries gambling debts routinely made up a significant part of the cost of living. Those in the upper echelons of society were expected to play cards and dice and wager large sums on the outcome. Those who refused were considered boring or, even worse, poor. Needless to say, many of the players suffered extraordinary losses, which as a matter of honor had to be paid promptly. One of the most satisfying perquisites of a royal mistress was the certainty that the king would pay her gambling debts.
Throughout her decade-long reign at court—and a decade beyond that—Charles II would pay what in today’s money would be millions of dollars in gambling debts for Lady Castlemaine. She would lose—and sometimes win—startling amounts, wagering princely sums without blinking an eye. In 1679, Lady Castlemaine returned to England from a long stay in France. One courtier reported that upon hearing this, “His Majesty gave the Commissioners of the Treasury fair warning to look to themselves, for that she would have a bout with them for money, having lately lost 20,000 pounds in money and jewels in one night at play.”11
Lady Castlemaine’s contemporary and French counterpart Athénaïs de Montespan was also an avid card player and gambled heavily, sometimes hazarding several hundred thousand pounds on the play of a single card. She won often, and when she didn’t, Louis XIV routinely paid off her debts. One Christmas Day she lost the staggering sum of £230,000, kept playing, and won back £500,000 on one play involving three cards.
Since the beginning of her relationship with Emperor Franz Josef in 1886, Katharina Schratt benefited by having her gambling debts paid. She routinely lost frightful sums at the casino in Monte Carlo and seems to have suffered an addiction to gambling. In 1890 she lost all her travel money and had to borrow her train fare back to Vienna. This happened again in 1906, when she lost no less than two hundred thousand francs and found herself stranded on the Riviera with a nasty red rash all over her body. She immediately contacted the emperor, who was so angry he let her stew awhile before responding. He finally sent her the money and a letter brimming with reproaches.
The imperial mistress replied, “A thousand thanks for your dear kind letter. The doctor, who at first thought I had chicken-pox, is now of the opinion that Monte Carlo is responsible for my rash. My heavy losses appear to have upset my stomach, then my nerves and finally affected my skin. If only your Majesty had inherited the gambling instincts of some of your ancestors, then you would be able to sympathize and understand, and I would not have to go through the world disfigured and misunderstood.”12
The emperor, so thrifty that he wrote urgent telegrams on old scraps of paper, wrote back, “I am glad you are happy again and so hope that by now you are fully recovered. Medical science has obviously made a new discovery through your illness, for I have never before heard of a rash brought on by bad luck at gambling.”13
Pensions and Cash
Royal mistresses were usually given monthly allowances—often startling sums—which rapidly vanished, often leaving the mistress in debt at the end of the month. What happened to the royal largesse? Quite simply, the mistress had to keep up appearances—royal appearances. She was required to be a glorious accessory to the glory of the king. Not all her gowns and jewels arrived in gift boxes from her royal lover; the mistress had to keep herself fashionable with part of her allowance. There was an unspoken rule that the royal mistress’s wardrobe had to outshine that of all the other ladies at court—including the queen.
Even Lillie Langtry, who did not receive a regular allowance from Edward VII, was expected to appear in an astonishing array of new gowns. In her later years, Lillie reported that she had had only one quarrel with Edward during her three-year tenure as his mistress. “I wore a dress of white and silver at two balls in succession,” she reminisced. “I did not know that he was going to be present at both balls, but he was. He came up to me on the second night and exclaimed, ‘That damned dress again!’ He walked away in a temper…. It took me a long time to make it up…. That was the only quarrel we ever had.”14
Lillie, who had come to London with just one plain black dress, patronized the fashion houses of Worth and Doucet. Her evening gowns were embroidered with pearls, her tea gowns bordered with silver fox, her dressing gowns lined with ermine. For a ball at Marlborough House, Lillie appeared in a confection of yellow tulle over which a gold net held preserved butterflies of various sizes and colors.
In the 1890s Edward’s second official mistress, Daisy Warwick, never paid less than five thousand dollars in today’s money for a gown, often far more. Society columns gushed about the “violet velvet with two splendid turquoise-and-diamond brooches in her bodice” she wore to a ball; the “gauzy white gown beneath which meandered delicately shaded ribbons” she wore to a dinner party; the “splendid purple-grape-trimmed robes and veil of pearls on white” she wore to a drawing room.15
More expensive—and certainly less rewarding than the mistress’s own bodily glorification—was the management of a large household of retainers and servants. In the 1590s Gabrielle d’Estrées managed a household consisting of eighty-three ladies and gentlemen, seventeen crown officials, and more than two hundred servants. This large tribe of hangers-on needed to be fed, housed, paid a salary, and in some cases clothed.
A portion of the mistress’s cash went to maintain the ultimate status symbol of centuries past: a magnificent coach. The mistress needed to keep her coach in good order—fresh paint and gilding on the outside, plush upholstery and plump pillows on the inside. The carriage was pulled by horses which she needed to feed and stable. In addition, she had to pay the staff that looked after them. Madame de Montespan, the proud owner of a luxurious carriage drawn by six horses, was flabbergasted to see her younger rival, the teenage Mademoiselle de Fontanges, drive by in a grander carriage pulled by eight horses.
The mistress arranged entertainments for the king, often lavish ones, where she paid not only for food, cooks, and waiters but for actors, singers, musicians, theatrical sets, costumes, and fireworks. In 1671, for instance, as a token of her gratitude for being created a duchess, Louise de Kéroualle gave a dinner for the entire English court.
A portion of the royal mistress’s pension went to purchase expensive gifts for courtiers, ambassadors, and servants, as well as for the king himself. She was expected to contribute to charities—the church poor box, indigent families, wounded soldiers, hospitals, orphanages, and the like. In time of war she might receive hints to donate money back into the royal treasury from whence it had come.
We can understand the financial side of a mistress’s life by examining the meticulous records kept by Madame de Pompadour of her expenses from September 9, 1745, when she was officially installed as king’s mistress at Versailles, until her death in April 1764. During those nineteen years, she was given the astonishing amount of 36,827,268 livres, or what today might be valued at $200 million.