The King in Love: Edward VII's Mistresses by Theo Aronson

dreams of fairyland. ' 20 She found it hard to believe that she had once felt nervous mounting the palace steps. She had, indeed, come a long, long way from St Saviour's vicarage, Jersey.
    Her circle was becoming ever more elevated. She could hardly move, these days, for royal friends and acquaintances. One year at Cowes she was presented to Princess Alexandra's parents, King Christian IX and Queen Louise of Denmark. Another of Alexandra's relations, Prince Wilhelm of Glucksburg, gave her a signed photograph of himself, 'with cap on head' as he scrawled under his signature. Yet another signed photograph came from King Oscar II of Sweden. At an intimate dinner party at Marlborough House she met the future German Emperor and Empress, at that stage still Crown Prince and Princess; the Princess being the Prince of Wales's elder sister, Princess Victoria.
    Lillie also met Bertie's two sons, Prince Albert Victor – always known as Eddy – and Prince George. When, in September 1879, the fifteen-year-old Eddy and the fourteen-year-old George set off, as midshipmen, on board HMS Bacchante for a series of cruises, Lillie was able to give them each a small gift. Prince Eddy who was, to put it kindly, a little backward, but who was already developing an eye for a pretty face, was particularly pleased with the trinket Lillie had bought him at Bensons, the jewellers in Cowes. He immediately attached it to his watch-chain.
    'I had to take off my grandmother's [Queen Victoria's] locket to make room for it,' 21 he told the gratified Lillie. What Queen Victoria would have thought of this substitution is another matter.
    One apparently uninvited royal caller was that notorious lecher, Queen Victoria's first cousin, Leopold II, King of the Belgians. The tall, spade-bearded King, who found his Belgian kingdom too provincial by half, was given to paying incognito visits to London and Paris. Here he could assuage that seemingly insatiable sexual appetite in ways undreamed-of in unsophisticated Brussels. Whether, on thetheory that what was available to one royal lover would be as readily available to another, Leopold II imagined that Lillie Langtry would grant him her favours is uncertain, but he one day presented himself at her house at nine in the morning.
    Woken from sleep, Lillie scrambled into a dress and rushed downstairs. There stood the stork-like figure of King Leopold, sopping wet from having trudged through the rain from his hotel. The two of them sat making polite conversation – although conversation, polite or not, was hardly King Leopold's forte – for 'an interminable period' 22 , and he left. At nine the following morning, the King called again. This time Lillie sent down a polite excuse. Or so she tells us.
    An even more determined caller was Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria. Only son of the stolid Emperor Franz Josef and the beautiful but wayward Empress Elizabeth, the twenty-year-old Crown Prince Rudolph had inherited much of his mother's fascination and still more of her emotional instability. The arrival in London, in 1878, of this handsome and headstrong heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne was regarded as a significant social event, and he was lavishly entertained.
    One of the first private dances in his honour was given by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild at his home in Piccadilly. Determined that his famous white and gold 'Louis XVI' ballroom would be the setting for an occasion of unparalleled magnificence, the Baron invited a dozen celebrated beauties – Lillie amongst them – to a special luncheon party at which he offered to buy them each a new Doucet dress for the ball. Needless to say, the offer was snapped up. For Lillie, Doucet created a dress in pale pink crepê-de-chine, subtly draped and richly fringed. It was delivered to Norfolk Street, together with a petticoat which the couturier considered essential for the hang of the gown.
    Months later, Doucet sent Lillie a bill for the petticoat. Although the sum was