And yet, despite the words and pictures that convey Langtry’s image to our time, despite the “autobiography” that conceals far more than it reveals, the real Lillie Langtry remains a fascinating enigma. She was a brief sensation on the London social scene in the late 1870’s; she gave birth to a daughter whose paternity can only be guessed at (good guesses are Prince Louis of Battenberg and the Prince of Wales); she spent two decades as a mediocre actress whose figure, face, costumes, and jewelry excited far more attention and approval than did her acting or the plays she produced; and she relied for much of her financial support upon the generosity of a string of wealthy lovers. She married Hugo de Bathe in a private ceremony in July of 1899 (the only congratulations came from the Prince of Wales, who telegraphed to Mr. Jersey his compliments not on her marriage but on Merman’s winning of both the Goodwood Plate and the Goodwood Cup) but she had to wait eight long years for old Lord de Bathe to die so that his son could inherit his baronetcy. Long before Mrs. Langtry became Lady de Bathe, however, Hugo had found other entertainments; although they remained married through Langtry’s lifetime, the two lived together for less than a year. She outlasted the glamour of the theater and the glitter of the Edwardian period; nearly twenty years after King Edward VII died in 1910, she was living alone and embittered in a villa in Monte Carlo. “If the world could see the turmoil going on in my heart,” she said to a friend, “it would be startled beyond words. I have lost my daughter, the only thing that is dear to me. My life is sad indeed.” She died of pneumonia in 1929, at the age of seventy-six, and was buried on the Isle of Jersey.
But while these facts of Lillie’s life are known, the mysteries we have portrayed in this book remain unsolved. What did happen to the jewels-worth more than two million dollars in today’s currency-that were taken from the Union Bank in 1895? How did Edward Langtry die? What was her relationship with Jeanne-Marie?
We don’t know the answers to these questions. Nobody does. But a study of Langtry’s life certainly suggests that she was the kind of woman who might have converted her jewels to ready cash and had the paste copies stolen to cover up the substitution. To gain her freedom, she might also have connived at Ned Langtry’s death; he was an alcoholic and relatively easy to dispose of-and the circumstances of his death in Chester Lunatic Asylum, where he was taken after being involved in some sort of accident at Chester Station, were certainly mysterious enough. And while we can’t know for certain that Jeanne actually renounced her mother, we do know that Lady de Bathe was not given an invitation to Jeanne’s wedding (in 1902, to the Honorable Ian Malcolm) and had to plead with a policeman to admit her. We also know that Jeanne promised the Malcolm family, before her marriage to Ian, that she would sever all relations with her mother.
Like Marilyn Monroe, like Madonna, Lillie Langtry was as notorious as she was famous and as scorned as she was praised. But whatever else she was, she remains an intriguing subject for fiction.
REFERENCES
Here are a few books that we found helpful in creating Death at Epsom Downs. Other background works may be found in the references to earlier books in this series. We hope that the next time you travel to England, you will take time to visit the National Horse Racing Museum, in the High Street, Newmarket, Suffolk, where you’ll find Lillie Langtry’s boots on display. If you can’t go to Newmarket, visit the Museum’s Web site at http://www.nhrm.co.uk/body_index.html. If you have comments or questions, you may write to Bill and Susan Albert, P.O. Box 1616, Bertram, TX 78605, or E-mail us at china@tstar.net. You might also wish to visit our Web site, where you will find additional information about the life and times of Lillie Langtry: http://www.mysterypartners.com.
The Annual Register 1899. London: Longsman, Green and Co., 1900.
Blyth, Henry. The Pocket Venus: A Victorian Scandal, New York: Walker and Company, 1966.
The British Journal Photographic Almanac & Photographer’s Daily Companion. London: Henry Greenwood, 1899.
Brough, James. The Prince and the Lily: The Story of Lillie Langtry-The Greatest International Beauty of Her
Day. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc., 1975.
Cannadine, David. The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990.
Dudley, Ernest. The Gilded Lily: The Life and Loves of the Fabulous Lillie Langtry. London: Odhams Press Ltd., 1958.
Fairfax-Blakeborough, J. M. C. Paddock Personalities: Being Thirty Years’ Turf Memories. London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1936.
Hunn, David. Epsom Racecourse: Its Story and Its People. London: Davis-Poynter, 1973.
Onslow, Richard. The Squire: A Life of George Alexander Baird, Gentleman Rider 1861-1893. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., 1980.
Plumptre, George. The Fast Set: The World of Edwardian Racing. London: André Deutsch Ltd., 1985.
Tuchman, Barbara W. The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War 1890-1914. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1962.
Tobin, Thomas. Drugs and the Performance Horse. Springfield Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publishers, Ltd., 1981.
Welcome, John. Neck or Nothing: The Extraordinary Life and Times of Bob Sievier. London: Faber and Faber, 1970.
Paige Robin
