Lillie Langtry
- This article refers to Langtry, Lillie. For other uses, see Langtry (disambiguation).
Lillie Langtry (née Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, nicknamed the Jersey Lily) (13 October 1853 – 12 February 1929) was a British actress and courtesan born on the island of Jersey in 1853.
Emilie Le Breton was the only daughter of the Dean of Jersey, Rev. William Corbet le Breton, having six brothers. She was educated by a French governess, her brothers' tutor.
Marriage
In 1874, Emilie married Irish landowner Edward Langtry. One of her attractions to him was the fact that he possessed a yacht, and she insisted that he take her away from the Channel Islands; eventually they set up home in London. She did not begin her stage career until several years later, after her husband became bankrupt. [1] A letter of condolence written by her to a widow reads in part: "I too have lost a husband, but alas! it was no great loss" (Letter in the Curtis Theatre Collection, University of Pittsburgh) ll
Relationships, affairs and scandals
Lille Langtry was, throughout her marriage, unfaithful, and throughout her lifetime promiscuous. She had many notable lovers, most prominent and well-connected men of the time. Langtry's heyday as a society beauty and courtesan culminated in her becoming a semi-official mistress to the Prince of Wales, Queen Victoria's son Albert Edward ("Bertie"), the future king Edward VII. Edward VII's relationship with Lillie cooled down when at a party she consumed so much alcohol she became intoxicated, and slipped and fell after stepping on a piece of ice, which infuriated him. [2] For some time he didn't even see her. Nevertheless he continued being fond of her, and he spoke fondly of her as a theatre actress. He later (possibly to rid himself of the affair) encouraged Prince Louis of Battenberg to replace him as Lillie's lover. Prince Louis, the First Sea Lord, once complained to Lillie, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship," whereupon she tartly replied, "And you've spent enough in me to float one." That quote is actually most commonly attributed to the Prince of Wales, and not Louis of Battenberg.
She had a daughter, born in 1881 (Jeanne Marie Langtry), who later married Sir Ian Malcolm of Poltalloch in 1902. Her daughter and her husband had four children. Jeanne died in 1964.
Her daughter Jeanne's father was definitely not Lillie's husband. The child's actual father was reportedly Lillie Langtry's extra-marital lover at the time, Prince Louis of Battenberg (later 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, 1854–1921), who married Princess Victoria of Hesse and the Rhine in 1884 and became father of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, who became the last Viceroy of India (and great-uncle of Prince Charles) and uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. When Prince Louis confessed to his parents he was the father of Lillie's baby, he was assigned to the warship HMS Inconstant, and Lillie, after receiving some money, retired to the country.
A recent biography of Langtry suggests that another of her extramarital lovers, Arthur Jones, may have been Jeanne Marie's father, although Prince Louis's son, Lord Mountbatten, always maintained that it in fact was his father.
Other lovers included wealthy Britons Robert Peel and George Baird.
Among her friends were the Irish writer Oscar Wilde and the American artist James McNeill Whistler. She was for a time the manager of the Imperial Theatre and also manufactured claret at her 4,200 acre (17 km²) winery in Lake County (northern) California, which she purchased in 1888 and sold in 1906.
American citizenship and after
In 1887, Lillie became an American citizen, and divorced her husband the same year in California. In 1899, she married the much younger Hugo Gerald de Bathe, who would inherit a baronetcy, and became a leading owner in the horse-racing world, before retiring to Monte Carlo. Her last years of acting were performed with vaudeville.
She resided during her final years in a home in Monaco, with her husband living separate from her a short distance away. During this period the two only saw one another when he was called upon by her for a social gathering, or brief private encounters. Her constant companion during this time was her close friend, Mathilda Peat, who was the widow of Lillie's deceased butler. She died there in 1929, and was buried in the graveyard of St. Saviour's Church in Jersey – the church of which her father had been rector.
Cultural influence
Her nickname, "The Jersey Lily", was taken from the Jersey lily flower (Amaryllis belladonna) – a symbol of Jersey. The nickname was popularised by a portrait of Lillie Langtry, entitled A Jersey Lily, painted by Sir John Everett Millais, a fellow-countryman (according to tradition, they spoke Jèrriais to each other during the sittings).
The painting caused great interest when exhibited at the Royal Academy, but Lillie is holding a Guernsey lily (Nerine sarniensis) in the painting rather than a Jersey lily, as no Jersey lilies were available at Covent Garden during the sittings.
Besides sitting for Millais, Frank Miles and Sir Edward Poynter, she is also depicted in works by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
She used her high public profile to endorse commercial products such as cosmetics and soap, becoming an early example of celebrity endorsement.
Lillie Langtry's story was dramatised by London Weekend Television in 1978 as Lillie, with Francesca Annis in the title role. Annis had previously played Langtry in two episodes of ATV's Edward the Seventh. She was also portrayed on film by Lillian Bond in The Westerner, and by Ava Gardner in the 1972 movie The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
A heavily fictionalized incarnation of Langtry was performed by Stacy Haiduk in the 1996 television series Kindred: The Embraced. In the series, Langtry is the immortal leader of a sect of vampires living in the present day.
Langtry is also a featured character in the tongue-in-cheek western novel, Slocum and the Jersey Lily by Jake Logan. She figures prominently in "Death at Epsom Downs" by Robin Paige, the pseudonym of Bill and Susan Wittig Albert who write a series of Victorian novels featuring actual people.
The song Pictures of Lily, wrote in 1966 by The Who, is about a guy who had his childhood's problems resolved by "Pictures of Lily" put in his bedroom by his father to help him to sleep at night
Places connected with Lillie Langtry
The town of Langtry, Texas, was not named for her, although its most illustrious inhabitant, Judge Roy Bean, was an ardent admirer, naming the saloon where he held court "The Jersey Lily". Bean himself spread the rumor about the town's name. He also built an opera house in anticipation of a visit, and Mrs. Langtry appeared there after Bean's death. (The town was named for railroad supervisor George Langtry.)
The Langtry Manor hotel in Bournemouth, Dorset, was built as a romantic retreat for Lillie and the Prince of Wales. - of course it was not built as a hotel but as a private house.
Lillie Langtry lived at 21 Pont Street, London from 1892 to 1897. Although from 1895 the building was actually the Cadogan Hotel, she would stay in her old bedroom there. A blue plaque on the hotel commemorates this
Merman Cottage in Saint Brelade, Jersey, was owned and occupied by Lillie Langtry (Merman was also the name of one of her racehorses).
In the Golden Triangle area of Norwich, England, there is a public house named the Lillie Langtry, which is decorated in the Edwardian theatre style and has articles from newspapers of the time and old documents celebrating the talent of Lillie Langtry.
Lillie Langtry stayed at Teddy's Nook.
Book
Langtry, Lillie, The Days I Knew, 1925. (Autobiography.)