The Petticoat Men (3 page)

Because of subsequent events, this ball at Mr Porterbury’s Hotel, and several others like it, became somewhat notorious. They were gossiped about in gentlemen’s clubs and particular backstreet venues and certain private publications in what can only be described as a pornographic manner – with much mention of stiff pulsating members and open orifices spied in the side rooms off the ballroom. Nevertheless it is indisputable that those who had actually been present at this most amusing evening, those who had had the pleasure of hearing the dulcet tones and ladylike presentations of Stella, Star of the Strand, would of course have reacted with
complete outrage
– in a witness box in a court case, say – to such pernicious
lies.

3

‘Give me champagne, Susan!’ cried the Prince of Wales, and he actually threw his hat across the drawing room of the house in Chapel-street of his most intimate and long-standing mistress. ‘You and I have fifty minutes before I must dine with the Prime Minister and I, my dear, require much champagne and ministration from you!’

The Prince of Wales was
extremely
relieved.

It was perfectly well known (but of course never publicly mentioned), by the aforementioned mistress, and by the upper echelons of society, and by servants in fine and not so fine houses – and by hansom-cab drivers – that the Prince of Wales seemed to be able to manage several liaisons at any one time in little pre-arranged afternoon visits all over London.

However, today the Prince had finally emerged – only
just
untainted – from the scandalous Mordaunt divorce case in which His Royal Highness, among others, had been named by Sir Charles Mordaunt, the wronged husband. This accusation, which nothing could induce Sir Charles Mordaunt to withdraw, had been mentioned at some length in the newspapers.

The Prince – and his long-suffering but loyal and loving Danish wife, the Princess Alexandra – had been outraged that his unfortunate public naming (out of spite, obviously) had resulted in newspaper coverage that was less than supportive. Eventually the Prince had been forced to stand – oh, unheard-of impertinence! –
in the witness box
during the case. It had taken much political and judicial behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to prevent His Royal Highness facing any sort of cross-examination; it was inconceivable that the dignity of the heir to the Royal Throne of England should be besmirched in such a manner. Instead the Prince was questioned politely (the word ‘deferentially’ is a word that might perhaps be used) by lawyers for the defence.

‘I would like to ask Your Royal Highness if you are socially acquainted with Lady Harriet Mordaunt?’

‘I am.’

‘I wonder if I might ask if it is true that on some afternoons Your Royal Highness paid visits to Lady Harriet Mordaunt when her husband was not present?’

‘Very occasionally; only if I happened to be passing.’

‘Did anything of any nature likely to offend her absent husband, occur between you on these visits?’

His voice was loud and clear and royal. ‘Certainly not.’

‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness.

‘No questions,’ murmured the prosecution.

But public opinion and journalistic coverage was not deferential in some cases, and apart from the unforgivable fact that
The
Times
had actually reported the case and mentioned the Prince
,
an also unforgivable – nay,
disgusting –
article was splashed insolently over the pages of one of the less conservative newspapers.

The great social scandal to which we have frequently alluded has now become blazoned to the world through the instrumentality of the Divorce Court. Every effort was made to silence Sir Charles Mordaunt; a peerage, we believe, was offered to him. All the honours and dignities that the Crown and Government have it in their power to bestow would readily have been prostituted to ensure his silence.

We have no hesitation in declaring that if the Prince of Wales is an accomplice in bringing dishonour to the homestead of an English gentleman; if he has deliberately debauched the wife of an Englishman; – then such a man, placed in the position he is, should not only be expelled from decent society, but is utterly unfit and unworthy to rule over this country or even sit in its legislature.

However, today, the verdict had been given that had led straight to the Prince’s champagne-imbibing and other delightful activities with his mistress in Chapel-street. Lady Harriet Mordaunt, aged twenty, the offending wife – who had certainly received letters from various gentlemen not her husband and who had recently given birth – was pronounced insane by the court, to the relief of many people (except her husband who therefore could not obtain a divorce). Because if she was insane, she was not, therefore, responsible for her wild accusations against other gentlemen, including His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales – who had given her two high-stepping ponies, certainly.

Which her husband had shot dead.

Mr Gladstone had already spoken gravely to Queen Victoria.

The Queen could not bear Mr Gladstone: his booming voice, his ridiculous high collar, his business antecedents, his pompous manner in addressing her.

‘But I feel sure, Your Majesty,’ the Prime Minister insisted in his – it is true – somewhat booming tones, ‘that giving the Prince some real work to do, letting him see some official papers, perhaps sending him to Ireland, might be of great benefit to the renown of Your Majesty’s family.’

But Her Majesty had answered disdainfully that she would not hear of giving her son and heir any work of importance, as he was not fit to have any hand at all in affairs of state. Her Majesty was now in the ninth year of mourning following her husband’s death. She wore black at all times, and refused almost all requests to be seen in public or to carry out royal duties, but continued to ask for money – from the public purse – to maintain her family’s position. She knew perfectly well that the unbecoming (not to say rakish) activities of her married, eldest son, the Prince of Wales, did not help her case but she did not quite understand perhaps the feeling about the monarchy that was growing in parts of the country. The Queen advised Mr Gladstone, with much certainty, that her subjects loved her.

It was Mr Gladstone who understood that royalty was becoming more and more unpopular in certain quarters with the almost-disappearance of the reigning monarch; he felt it might be difficult to weather another such ‘revelation’ as the present one. (He did not quite put it into those words.) But when he delicately raised with the Queen the subject of the
purpose
of the Royal Family, she remarked to her intimates that he addressed her as if she were a public meeting.

The Prince himself, ensconced with his family and his coterie in Marlborough House, did not want to go to Ireland in the least. But he had had a terrible fright.

His mother might not have admired Mr Gladstone but the Prince of Wales was extremely grateful to him, and (after his relaxing fifty minutes in Chapel-street) he and the Princess Alexandra dined with the Gladstones in their large house in Carlton House Terrace where more champagne was consumed (especially by His Royal Highness who was particularly affable and jolly). Late that night Mr Gladstone, who often wrote of discreet matters in his diary with no comment, was discreet once more, recording that the Prince and Princess of Wales had come to dine with a large party. But later he stared out at the dark, shadowed trees across the Mall and said to his wife Catherine, ‘This is a dangerous time for the Royal Family and I do not know if they are entirely aware that it is so.’

The Prince had certainly been shocked at the public reaction to his private business. What is more, for some weeks afterwards, apart from his being written about so disrespectfully in many of the newspapers, the Prince of Wales was booed at race meetings and his carriage hissed upon in the streets. He and his wife grimly continued planting trees and cutting ribbons, regally.

As for the unfortunate young Lady Harriet Mordaunt, she might or might not have been insane at the time of the court case – perhaps she was merely pretending as the prosecution intimated (under her father’s guidance, possibly in confidential collusion with the advisors to the Prince of Wales) – but she certainly became insane afterwards. She spent much of the rest of her life in a lunatic asylum, and never caused the slightest trouble to the Royal Family ever again.

That another scandal was about to emerge that could embroil both the Prince
and
Mr Gladstone was unthinkable.

4

E
VERY
S
UNDAY
MY
brother Billy buys a great pile of newspapers, he reads every blooming newspaper in England it seems to me, the
Reynolds Newspaper
even though it shouts (especially about the Royal Family), and the
News of the World
and the
Weekly Times
(which calls the House of Lords “The House of Obstructives”) and all those gentlemen’s papers as well, like
The
Times
and the
Telegraph
and the
Pall Mall Gazette.
He’s newspaper mad! The one that entertains me and Ma the best is that shouting one, the mad old
Reynolds News
, the loud headlines make us laugh. And the
Illustrated Police News
always has big gory drawings on the front page.

Well. Well – well I have to start somewhere.

One Sunday, it was the first Sunday in May and a sort of chilly spring morning, well that Sunday we grabbed those newspapers as soon as Billy got them in the door, a bit like maniacs we were because we already knew that Freddie and Ernest, two of our lodgers, were in some sort of trouble.

Because on Friday a really unruly policeman had left his police cab right outside our house – neighbours heads looking out of all their windows like rows of cabbages – and he came rudely up to me scrubbing our front steps and insisted on pushing his way into our hall, asked for Freddie and Ernest’s room.

‘What do you want their room for?’
I said, scrambling up from the steps still holding the scrubbing brush.

‘Either a freak or a lark, young lady!’ he said to me back, and he went straight in, looked about, took up gowns and corsets and powder, even old discarded stuff they kept in a portmanteau in a corner which was full of clothes they meant to clean one day, and photographs and papers, and then he had the cheek to put a lock on the door of the room and took the key with him.

‘Bloody stop that!’ I yelled but he didn’t and I should’ve thrown the blooming scrubbing brush at him in his stupid policeman’s uniform. But as soon as he disappeared with all the things Mr Amos Gibbings, another of our casual lodgers, came rushing in. And he smashed the police lock open, and took up a case of dresses and some jewellery in a hidden box and also some gentlemen’s clothes and shoes and two top hats. And me, I went running after him as well: ‘Whatever’s
happening
, Mr Gibbings? Why did the policeman take Ernest and Freddie’s gowns and things? Why are you smashing our door?’

‘Sorry, Mattie, tell your ma I’ll pay for it fixing,’ and off he went moments later with the case and trousers and top hats, he had a cabriolet waiting. As Mr Gibbings when he lodges with us always pays his bills I wasn’t thinking of the money at all, just the shock of everything – the rude policeman driving off with the gowns, and next minute a cabriolet driving off with Mr Gibbings and clothes and boxes and nobody explaining
anything
to me, as if I was just a demented rag doll requiring to be ignored in the hallway of our house.

Old Mr Flamp had come out of his room by now. ‘The world’s full of madmen, Mr Flamp!’ I yelled at him and he nodded and said in his quaky old voice, ‘I’ve always known that, Mattie,’ and shuffled off again. Then later still that same policeman came back again, found the broken lock, and ranted that things had been
stolen
.