The Dukes (45 page)

Such were the bare bones of the rumour, which spread like a forest fire throughout Europe and screeched in all the newspapers. There was never any real truth to support it, except the flirtation, which was real enough, "such as is continually going on without any serious result between half the youths and girls in London".
²⁸
The Duke of Beaufort, forgetting the dramatic proportions of his own youthful passion for Miss Wilson, was indignant; he caused a formal contrac­tion of the story to appear in
The Times,
but it was too late. The damage was done. "There is such a disposition to believe such stories and such a reluctance to renounce such a belief once entertained . . . this calumny will affect the lady more or less as long as she lives." She was not pregnant, but "it is probably true enough that she behaved with very little prudence, delicacy, or reserve, for she is a very ill-behaved girl, ready for anything that her caprice or passions excite her to do". Like father, like daughter.

The worst of it was that the Queen herself believed the entire story. One would have thought that she would have known better, after the recent unpopularity she had incurred by her shameful treat­ment of poor Lady Flora Hastings, who had died partly as a result of the scandal the Queen provoked. But no. She forbade the Court to speak to or acknowledge Lady Augusta. When the Duchess of Cambridge (Prince George's mother) took Lady Augusta to Windsor, all the young ladies at court turned their heads to the wall.
The
Queen exploded in a violent temper. How dare the Duchess attempt to bring respectability to Lady Augusta by having her appear at Windsor! It was scandalous that she should even be in the castle! The Queen knew that the stories were true, she said. The Duchess strode out, seething, and the Queen returned to her prudish husband. Prince George gave his word that there was no truth in the matter, to which Prince Albert grudgingly replied that he and the Queen "supposed they must believe that it was so". Neither Cambridge nor Beaufort was satisfied with this. Beaufort approached Peel, who was scared of the Queen and dared not raise the subject. Finally, he sum­moned his courage, and the Queen allowed that she was entirely satisfied and wanted to hear no more about it.
²⁹
Beaufort boiled with rage and indignation for months afterwards. When Prince Albert sug­gested his son Lord Worcester as Lord-in-Waiting, Beaufort sent a peremptory refusal. As for Lady Augusta, she married the Austrian Ambassador, Baron Neumann, the following year (1844); foreigners were less touchy about scandal, and Neumann, being the son of Metternich's father's gardener, was in no position to assume a holier- than-thou attitude. (Metternich's father had also sported with the gardener's wife.) Augusta died in 1850. Three years later the Duke himself, a founder member of the Garrick Club, died, and the dukedom passed to his son, 8th Duke of Beaufort (1824-1899), whom we know as "The Blue Duke". (The Beaufort Hunt wears blue instead of the usual red).

Like his grandson, the Blue Duke was before all else the best known sporting figure in England. Not only a Master of Foxhounds, but a first-class shot, angler, racing man. He edited the
Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes,
a collection of handbooks covering everything from archery to dancing, and the game we know as "Badminton" was invented at his house. He possessed the same romantic energies as his sisters and father, and was well-known for the number of his mistresses. His duchess, moreover, accepted their existence with exemplary calm. A fine example of this marble reserve at work is given in E. F. Benson's book
As We Were.
"The Duke of Beaufort was away, but there was a party in the house, and one day the butler told the Duchess as they went into lunch that a case had arrived for His Grace, which he had unpacked: it contained a picture, and he wanted to know where he was to hang it. So the whole party went into the corridor, when lunch was over, to see the picture, and there they found the portrait of a very pretty young lady whom everybody knew to be the Duke's mistress. Was that an awkward situation ? Not in the least. The Duchess with complete self- possession looked admiringly at it, and said, 'Is it not charming? A fancy portrait, I suppose,' and without a grin or a wink or a whis­per, they all looked at the fancy portrait, and liked it immensely. It would do very well, thought the Duchess, just where it was, hung on the wall there. Then as they moved quietly on, she changed her mind. 'His Grace might like it in his own room perhaps,' she said to her butler. 'You had better hang it there.' That was all. Reticence and dignity had perfectly solved the method of dealing with this awkwardness, and when the Duke came home there was the fancy portrait hanging in his room as a pleasant surprise for him."
³⁰

The Duke, it appears, had far less self-control than the Duchess, and would turn blubbering to his sons when the mistress ditched him for someone else.
³¹
Perhaps the spectacle of father's heaving shoulders and mother's stately reserve influenced the next generation of Beau­fort children more than they knew; two of the 8th Duke's sons were deeply involved in the one kind of emotional attachment which the Victorians icily forbade - the homosexual kind.

Lord Henry Somerset (1849-1932) was the Duke's second son. His career was conventional enough to begin with: member of Parlia­ment for Monmouthshire in 1871, married in 1872, appointed Comp­troller of the Royal Household in 1874. His wife was Isabel, whose mother Lady Somers was one of the fabulous Pattle sisters. Virginia Pattle had been so beautiful that she was mobbed and followed the way film-stars are a century later. Her every move was noted by the Press. The same family were to give us Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell, the former being named after her great-aunt Virginia Pattle, Lady Somers. Of Lady Somers's two daughters, one became Adeline Duchess of Bedford, and the other married Lord Henry Somerset. Presumably the pressures of convention made Lord Henry enter the alliance, for there can be no doubt that his inclinations lay elsewhere. What he did not bargain for was a mother-in-law who, in addition to being an astonishing beauty, was a meddlesome, domi­neering, frightful busybody. At the wedding, people noticed how the bride clung to her mother when it was time to leave for the honey­moon.
³²
This did not augur well. Lord Henry did his duty by his wife, producing the required offspring to satisfy public (and family) morals, but his tenderest love was reserved for men. One in particu­lar, a commoner called Harry Smith, who was seventeen when his relationship with Lord Henry began, provoked a disastrous response. Of course, Lady Henry knew what her husband was up to, and she was not made to suffer thereby; had she kept quiet, there is no reason why she should not have remained comfortable and reason­ably content for the rest of her life; more than that no Victorian lady had a right to hope. But she made the mistake of revealing all to mother, who sparked off like a catherine-wheel. "Lady Somers descended on the situation, in a whirlwind of French horror and dramatic tableau, and persuaded her daughter not to spend another night in her husband's house."
³³
Naturally, a public scandal ensued, out of which nobody emerged triumphant. The London clubs began to whisper about the "foul charges" which Isabel and her mother were spreading about London against Lord Henry. Isabel claimed in public that her husband was guilty of a crime mentioned only in the Bible, and the Victorian drawing-rooms fell hushed in mute horror. She sued for a separation, stating the reasons, and she won her case. Lord Henry was denied custody of his child. He resigned his post as Comptroller of the Royal House, and took the only course open to him; he fled the country in 1879. His wife was ostracised by society, much to her amazement, because, though she was the "innocent" party, she had sinned against the unwritten law, "thou must not admit the truth". She had mentioned the unmentionable and brought disrepute upon the head of the Beaufort house, when all could have been kept quiet. She would have done better to copy her mother-in- law, the imperturbable Duchess, rather than her excitable mother. From now on, she received no further invitations, was no longer welcomed in polite society, and, of course, could never marry- again. She retired to the country, where she devoted herself to looking after drunkards.

Meanwhile, Lord Henry took refuge in Italy, and there wrote some beautiful poems celebrating his love for Harry Smith, who he admit­ted quite candidly was "dearer to me than my life".
³⁴
He was never to see Harry again after the scandal, but his poems were published in London by Chatto & Windus under the title
Songs of Adieu
ten years later (1889), and in them he expresses the poignancy of a des­perate affection which though killed by events yet refuses to die. He pleaded with Harry to join him :

"I cannot live without thee - oh, come back !

Come back to him that, weeping, waits for thee;

For life is death without thee - oh, come back!

Dear love, thou art the very life of me.