Edwardian Society

When the Prince of Wales was given the lease to Marlborough House upon his marriage

to Princess of Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, the house quickly became the social center of

society. Just as the society formed around Prinny (George IV) was dubbed the “Carlton House

Set”, the Prince of Wales’ bevy of friends and acquaintances garnered their moniker from

Bertie’s London residence.

From the start, his set of friends was different. As the future King of England and Wales,

Scotland and Ireland, and Emperor of India, etc, Bertie viewed himself as head and shoulders

above everyone by birth, and as such, he welcomed a variety of people into his inner circle. Most

shocking to the Establishment was his embrace of the wealthy Anglo-Jewish families who had

never before been welcomed into “Gentile” homes. Alongside the Jewish element were the

scores of spendthrift Americans eager for titles and social cache–and they got it, for the Prince of

Wales loathed boredom, and wealthy aspirants willing to spend and spend to entertainment him

found Bertie an eager accepter of invitations.

Queen Victoria abhorred the people the Prince of Wales chose to surround himself with

and regularly sent letters to his residences to express her disapproval. Nonetheless, when his

choice of friends found Bertie in a number of sticky situations, the Queen supported her son,

though he refused to give up his frenetic round of entertainment and lavish amusements.

Forming the King’s inner circle were Lord Esher, Sir Ernest Cassell, the 8th Duke of

Devonshire, Lord Charles Beresford, Portuguese Ambassador Marquis de Soveral, and Baron de

Hirsch. Among the ladies, Louisa, Duchess of Manchester (later Devonshire); Lady Randolph

Churchill; Theresa, Marchioness of Londonderry; Daisy, Countess of Warwick; and Gladys,

Marchioness of Ripon reigned supreme. Others who regularly took part in Edward’s fun were

both Consuelos (the duchesses of Marlborough and Manchester), the Sassoons, the Rothschilds,

and the “Yellow Earl” Hugh Lonsdale, as well as a considerable number of Continental

aristocrats, such as the Bohemian Count Charles Kinsky and the Italian Duchess of Sermoneta.

Also, while Bertie was not an intellectual, with his innate charm and skill as a conversationalist,

he nonetheless formed close relationships with brainy politicians such as Arthur Balfour and

Lord Curzon, who formed the Souls.

One of the first scandals that rocked the Marlborough House Set was the Mordaunt

divorce case. Having given birth to a blind daughter, Lady Mordaunt was convinced the girl’s

affliction was retribution for her sin of adultery and in contrition, she confessed to her husband.

Sir Charles Mordaunt was much less forgiving and soon filed for divorce. This scandal would

have been short-lived had not the Prince of Wales foolishly written a number of innocent letters

to the lady, and her defense promptly called him up as witness to her defense. The scandal of a

member of the Royal family in court rocked the nation and questions arose concerning the

propriety of the heir to the throne sending letters to a married woman and paying calls on her

when her husband was absent. Thankfully, he acquitted himself correctly and unable to find fault

with his defense, the Court breathed a sigh of relief over the Prince’s first brush with infamy.

Unfortunately, for Bertie, it was not to be his last. A few years later, he became entangled

in another aristocratic divorce, this one involving the Marquess of Blandford and Edith

Aylesford, who eloped to Europe whilst Edith’s husband was on a hunting trip in India with the

Prince of Wales. Blandford’s younger brother happened to be the hot-headed Lord Randolph

Churchill, who did the unthinkable by approaching the Princess of Wales with the scandal,

hoping to influence her to pressure Bertie to pressure Joe Aylesford to not divorce his wife. This

backfired, and Lord Randolph—and his vivacious American wife the former Jennie Jerome of

Brooklyn—was banished from society. In the 1890s, two scandals hit Bertie back-to-back: first,

the episode at Tranby Croft, where a member of his circle was accused of cheating and pulled

Bertie into court in a libel case (the scandal was less about cheating than by the horror of a royal

gambling); and secondly, when his former lover, Daisy Warwick, was blackmailed by the wife

of her new lover, Lord Charles Beresford.

On a somewhat lighter note, Edward set the precedence within the Set for aristocratic

marriages. He fell in love many times over the course of his 50+ years of marriage, most notably

with Lillie Langtry, Daisy Warwick, and Alice Keppel. The Golden Rule for his circle? “Thou

Shall Not Be Found Out“. Woes betide anyone who broke the cardinal rule by causing a scene if

they discovered their spouse began an affair. Unmarried women were strictly forbidden, and if

married, a lady was morally obligated to her spouse to birth at least a few of her husband’s

children (most importantly the “heir and spare”, as coined by Consuelo Marlborough) before

dotting the nursery with her lover’s offspring. One young lady, upon coming out was given an

extremely important bit of advice by her mother: “one must never comment upon a likeness“.

This code of conduct lead to a number of heartaches, such as the case of when a young lady

found her husband in bed with a footman and had the nerve to speak about it! She was promptly

packed off to Scotland by her family and never heard from again.

The Marquess of Londonderry followed this code to a tee. The Marchioness of

Londonderry had the misfortune of having her letters to her lover Harry Cust discovered by her

rival for his affections, Lady Ripon. After chaffing Theresa Londonderry by reading the letters

aloud to her friends, Glady Ripon decided to wrap the letters in a bow and send them to the

Marquess. What followed was the coldest conversation ever known to man. Londonderry read

them and set them on Theresa’s boudoir table with a note inscribed “henceforth, we do not

speak“.

And they didn’t.

When the Marquess lay on his deathbed years later, he refused his wife’s note begging to

see him. Years after this, when Lady Ripon lay on her deathbed, she sent Theresa a note asking

for forgiveness. Taking a page from her husband’s book, Lady Londonderry sent a curt response:

“No!”.

When the Prince of Wales set the fashion for trips to the Continent in the summer and

winter, his set–and aspirants to it–followed. Because of the sheer amount of rich, gravy-laden

foods and heavy wines consumed by the Edwardians during the season, a trip to such Bohemian

spas as Marienbad and Carlsbad were de rigueur to fix the errors of the digestion caused by the

impressive appetites of the Set. A popular pastime of the King was picnicking. To the

consternation of his companions, when visiting Biarritz, Edward loved setting up the picnic

alongside the busiest stretches of the roads, certain of his anonymity as he exchanged greetings

with the occupants of passing motorcars and carriages.

With all of the scandals and social ‘round Bertie involved himself in, it was most likely a

relief to take a jaunt to his country residence in Norfolk with his wife. Supportive through his

scandals and infidelities, despite having grown quite deaf because of an illness during her last

pregnancy, she continued to have a sense of fun well into her eighties, ready to clear space to do

a cartwheel or crawl on the floor with her baby grandchildren.

Society in the Edwardian era was a far more complex and complicated affair than at any

other time in history. Neither Good birth nor ennoblement were indicative of acceptance in

society, yet wealth did not mean one could buy their way into Society’s inner circle. Combine

this with the numerous cliques divided by politics, sports, personal interests and even where one

resided, and you have the baffling, tumultuous mass called “society”. Even the raffish cluster of

the King’s friends known as the “Marlborough House Set” could find doors shut to them if they

failed to meet a certain criteria for a particular circle.

However, England was and had always been, a land ruled by politics, and political

hostesses held sway over the general populace of society. At the top were the Duchesses of

Devonshire and Sutherland, and the Marchioness of Londonderry. The most powerful, Louisa

Devonshire, was known as the “Double Duchess” for the coup of marrying first the Duke of

Manchester and then, after a clandestine relationship of over thirty years, the Duke of

Devonshire (himself known to friends as “Harty-Tarty”). Her position so assailable, being the

daughter of a German count and having known the King for over fifty years, it was said she

offered in greeting three fingers for her inner circle, two fingers for influential guests, and one

finger for the rabble.

A prominent Conservative Party hostess, political careers were regularly made and

broken in Devonshire House along Piccadilly. Millicent Sutherland had the distinction of being

the half-sister of the Countess of Warwick, erstwhile mistress of the King, and many memoirs

describe her, standing in her diamond tiara at the top of the staircase in Stafford House to receive

guests. The Duke’s politics made her one of the leading Liberal hostesses. The Marchioness of

Londonderry was a Conservative from Ireland whose hatred of Lloyd George disrupted the

alliance of the Liberals and Conservatives early in Edward’s reign. Other political hostesses

included the Duchess of Buccleuch of Montague House, and Lady Tweedmouth, who also ruled

over the Liberals.

In conjunction with those powerful ladies we have The Souls. This uber-intellectual

group had been christened in the ’80s by Lord Charles Beresford during a dinner in which he

declared, “You all sit talking about each other’s souls, I shall call you ‘The Souls’.” The name

stuck, marking such illustrious members as Lord Curzon, Margot Asquith, and Arthur Balfour a

force to be reckoned with in society. A tightly knit group, each member played a significant part

in the British Government: Balfour as Prime Minister from 1902-1905, Margot’s husband H.H.

Asquith from 1908-1916, and Lord Curzon reaching the highest position in the land as Viceroy

of India from 1899-1905. Though each member indulged in light love affairs, a surprising

member was Harry Cust, a playboy with such a roving eye, many children with his bright blue

eyes turned up in society in the passing years (Lady Diana Cooper, nee Manners, the leader of

The Coterie–The Souls’ 2nd generation–one of them).

Such was their influence, their opinion of the King–not intellectually inclined–was an

open secret. Quite clannish after twenty years together, they were wary of outsiders and those not

considered up to par, and as a result, Lord Curzon, in his bid for Premiership, willingly dropped

his torrid affair with novelist Elinor Glyn when their disapproval of her was made known. But

political entree still did not make one part of society.

As the Conservatives and the House of Lords lost power over the next fifteen years,

outspoken Liberals and Labour Party members who clawed their way up from the lower and

middle classes (Lloyd George and Keir Hardie amongst others) were decidedly frowned upon–

and rightly so these “upstarts” thought, for they were the new breed of politicians for the 20th

century, the sort who placed emphasis on the people rather than the ruling class.