Lillie Langtry
Lady Lillie Langtry , née Emilie Charlotte Le Breton (born October 13, 1853 on the island of Jersey , † February 12, 1929 in Monte Carlo ) was a well-known figure in British society and temporarily mistress of the Prince of Wales , later King Edward VII. of Great Britain and Ireland . She was a model for numerous painters at the time, including John Everett Millais , Edward Burne-Jones , Edward Poynter , James McNeill Whistler and George Frederic Watts.
The affair with the Prince of Wales lasted three years. After the end of the affair and the birth of an illegitimate child, whose father was Prince Louis von Battenberg , she turned to acting due to her cramped financial situation and became one of the better known actresses of the Victorian era .
Life
youth
Emilie was the only daughter of William Corbet Le Breton, Dean of Jersey, and his wife, Emilie Davis. She grew up with her six brothers in St. Savior on the island of Jersey and was raised by a French governess and her brothers' tutor . Neither by her father, about whom numerous female affairs became known, nor strictly supervised by her ailing mother, she developed into a young woman, regardless of her conventional upbringing and family background, who clearly differed in her self-confident, unconstrained demeanor from her more modestly raised contemporaries. Judging from her own, though sometimes somewhat exaggerated, accounts, she must have been aware of the double standards of Victorian society very early on. Her intense affection for a young man in Jersey was ended when her father pointed out that he was his illegitimate son.
Langtry's beauty was evident early on. At the age of fourteen she received a marriage proposal. As a sixteen year old debutante in London, her first season was humiliating. Accompanied by her mother, she attended several balls. According to her later memories, she felt like a peasant trampoline there and in her simple dress (see illustration above) resembled the maids present. She never learned to dance the waltz. The food was alien to her, and at dinner she overwhelmed the numerous cutlery that lay to the left and right of her plate. These bitter experiences made her want to one day establish herself in London society. In order to achieve this, an appropriate marriage was the appropriate way.
Marriage to Edward Langtry
On March 9, 1874, after reluctant consent from her parents, Langtry married the Irish landowner and merchant Edward Langtry (1848-1897). Langtry later joked in her memoir that one day a wonderful yacht sailed into port, she met the owner and fell in love with the yacht. To become mistress of the yacht, she married Edward Langtry. Langtry quickly became disillusioned with their marriage. Edward Langtry was less wealthy than she had suspected, and they spent their time not in London, as his wife had hoped, but partly in Jersey, partly on Edward Langtry's yacht and partly at their home on the Southampton Water coast .
It was only after Langtry fell ill with typhus in Southampton that she was able to persuade her husband to move to London with her. In early 1876, they settled in an apartment on Eaton Place . However, the change of location did not go hand in hand with joining the London society. Only after a year did a chance encounter with Lord Ranelagh, whom Langtry knew from her time in Jersey, lead to an invitation to an evening reception at Lady Olivia Sebright's. Lady Sebright was a host who made a point of inviting London's cultural elite to her receptions. Henry Irving , John Everett Millais , James McNeill Whistler , George Francis Miles and Abraham Hayward were invited on the evening Lillie Langtry was invited.
For Lillie Langtry, the evening turned out to be the crucial point in her career. Due to her financial situation, she only wore a simple black dress that evening, made on jersey by a seamstress, had renounced any jewelry or ornaments and only wore her hair in a loose knot at the nape of the neck. She was very different from the other ladies of the evening party, who had appeared in elaborate Victorian evening wear, with elaborate hairstyles and plenty of jewelry. Impressed by her beauty, John Everett asked Millais that evening if Lillie Langtry would be ready to model him. Millais used her as a model for his painting Effie Deans , which depicts a scene from Walter Scott's novel The Heart of Midlothian . A little later the portrait was created, which shows Langtry in a simple black dress, the neckline is trimmed with lace. She carries a reddish Guernsey lily in her hands , and Millais appropriately named the painting A Jersey Lily (Eng. A lily of Jersey ). It was exhibited by Millais at the Royal Academy Exhibition in 1878 and was a major contributor to Lillie Langtry's growing fame. "Jersey Lily" was the name by which she was frequently referred to. Langtry had already been showered with invitations in the months immediately after the evening reception at Lady Sebright's.
Victorian society's ideal of beauty
Theo Aronson points out in his Tale of the Mistresses of Edward VII that by the time Langtry had her great success at Lady Sebright's dinner party, British society was in a state of upheaval. The English nobility was increasingly no longer an exclusive group, whose members only socialized with one another. Part of this development can be directly traced back to the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. Not only a title of nobility, but also business skills, wealth, beauty and occasionally also intellect could lead to someone being accepted into the circle of people with whom the Prince of Wales associated. At the same time, heirs of great English nobility titles increasingly married the daughters of social climbers, provided that they only brought enough money with them to finance the usual standard of living. Lillie Langtry was only partially an outsider in these circles. By Victorian standards, due to her family background, she was a lady, her husband a gentleman who did not have to finance his living by work, but lived on inherited money, even if this was not enough for a country house or his own carriage.
Edward Langtry felt uncomfortable at the many social occasions to which he now had to accompany his wife, but at least at the beginning of his duty as a husband he fulfilled his duty to accompany his wife to these events. Lillie Langtry continued to appear at the evening events she was invited to in her simple black evening dress. Lord Randolph Churchill met Lillie Langtry as she was beginning her social rise and shortly thereafter wrote to his wife Jenny:
"I went to Lord Wharncliffe's dinner yesterday and accompanied a Mrs. Langtry to the table, a very extraordinarily beautiful creature, completely unknown, very poor and they say that she only had this one black evening dress."
Lillie Langtry was not only distinguished by looking very good, but her appearance also corresponded to the beauty image of the avant-garde of the time. Aronson describes Langtry as the personified Pre-Raphaelite woman: with her elegant but strong neck, her angular chin and straight nose, her well-defined lips and slate-blue eyes, her light skin color and even her hair loosely looped at the nape of her neck, she corresponded to an ideal of feminine beauty which, in its clarity and rigor, became increasingly popular in the mid-19th century. This also explains why such a large number of well-known and successful British painters portrayed or - like the leading Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones - chose Langtry as models for figures in their paintings.
The art critic George Smalley met her when she modeled James McNeill Whistler in his studio and noted:
“An unforgettable appearance, its colors brilliant and delicate at the same time, the graceful demeanor. There was harmony and contrast at the same time. A harmony that Whistler loved and a contrast that her creator had given her. Softness and severity, the soft, flowing lines of a well-grown woman's body and at the same time an impression of vital strength. "
Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick , who would later replace Langtry as mistress of the Prince of Wales, also commented on this expression of liveliness :
"How can words convey the vitality, the shine, the amazing charm that made this fascinating woman the focus of every group?"
The Prince of Wales
Sir Allen Young, a wealthy and discreet bachelor best known for his unsuccessful attempt to find the Northwest Passage, was in the circle of the Prince of Wales and ensured that the Prince and Lillie Langtry met in May 1877 met at a small dinner at Young's house on Stratford Place.
The prince was known for his numerous extramarital affairs. His wife, Princess Alexandra , deliberately overlooked most of these infidelities. The majority of the women with whom the prince had affairs were married wives, most of whom came from the aristocratic upper class. Unlike an affair with a prostitute or one of the dancers from the London theaters, such affairs put him less at risk of blackmail attempts. Knowledge of the affair was mostly limited to a relatively small group of people. When having an affair with a woman from this class, it was usually not necessary to rent a second apartment as a “love nest”. The affairs could usually be handled within the framework of normal social interaction. Even fashion developed accordingly: the tea dress appeared, a light housedress in which a lady of society could receive in her house in the afternoon and which did not make an affair unnecessarily difficult with laces or corsets.
In aristocratic circles there had always been affairs between otherwise married spouses. In the decades that Edward VII set the tone of London society as Crown Prince, they became increasingly less noteworthy. Once a young woman had given birth to an heir, she was considered fair game. Social conventions even developed on how such affairs are conducted. A gentleman would visit the lady of his choice in the afternoon and leave his hat, gloves and cane randomly on a chair in the lobby, signaling his presence. Most of the husbands were out of the house by this time, mostly they were in their club at that time. It is not known exactly how the affair between the Prince of Wales and Lillie Langtry began in 1877 - but it would have been common practice for him to have a letter sent to her in the days after they met, asking her for one of the coming In the afternoons announced his visit.
Unlike other affairs, the Prince of Wales also began showing himself publicly with Lillie Langtry. Hostesses quickly realized that if Langtry was invited, their chances of the Prince of Wales appearing at their balls or dinner parties increased. Langtry is considered to be the first official mistress of the Prince of Wales because of this comparatively open approach. The other two women who were given this role in later years are Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick and Alice Keppel , both also married women.
Further life
After three years, the affair with the Prince of Wales was over, Lillie fell in love with his cousin (second degree) Prince Louis von Battenberg (1854-1921), Admiral of the Royal Navy . Lillie became pregnant by him and gave birth to their only daughter, Jeanne-Marie († 1964) in Paris on March 8, 1881 . The birth remained a secret, as usual these days, the child grew up partly on Jersey, her mother was her "aunt"; only later did she learn the truth about her birth, which led to the break with her aunt or mother.
After the birth of her child, Lillie had to pay for her own support, she could not expect anything from her husband, and he did not want a divorce either. So she went back to the stage. In December 1881 debuted "Jersey Lily," said her pet name, in the Haymarket Theater with the play She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith . The audience came to see the prince's (former) mistress, and so her career began. With her natural beauty, charm and talent, she conquered society. In the fall of 1882 she went on tour of America; with the pieces As You Like It (Original title: As You Like It ) and The Lady of Lyons (original title: Lady of Lyons ), she was enthusiastic about the theater critics celebrated. Artists such as Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896) and George Frank Miles (1852-1891) painted her, and Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) lay at her feet and later supported her in her theater career.
Hairstyles, dresses, and bath products were named after her, and she made extra money from advertising. In America she had a vineyard, a winery and a racing stable. She was the first woman in a jockey club, with a little ruse, of course. She invented a man's name under which her horses ran. In the United States, she divorced her husband in 1897 and married Sir Hugo de Bathe a year later in California and became Lady de Bathe. In 1929 Lillie died in Monte Carlo; her urn was buried in the family grave in the St. Savior Cemetery on the Channel Island of Jersey .
Others
- Her granddaughter, Lady Helen Mary Malcolm (1918-2010), became one of the first BBC radio announcers.
- Lillie Langtry also appears more frequently in feature films. She was played in Der Westerner ( The Westerner , 1940) by Lilian Bond , in Der Mann mit der Grüne Nelke ( The Trials of Oscar Wilde , 1960) by Naomi Chance and in Das war Roy Bean ( The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean , 1972) by Ava Gardner . Roy Bean was a great admirer of the actress and named his town Langtry , founded in the 1880s .
- The BBC made a 13-part series about Lillie Langtry's life in the 1970s.
- Her nickname "Jersey Lillie" was derived from an amaryllis , which is a symbol of the island of Jersey.
- The single Pictures of Lily from British group The Who , written by Pete Townshend in 1967, is dedicated to actress Lillie Langtry. David Bowie later copied the song.
- In 1887, she took on the US citizenship in order to divorce her husband.
literature
- Autobiography
- Lillie Langtry: The Days I Knew . Redberry Press, Jersey 1999, ISBN 1-870544-02-1 (reprinted from London 1925 edition).
- Fiction
- Pierre Sichel: The Jersey Lily. A novel based on the life of Lillie Langtry . Allen, London 1958.
- Non-fiction
- Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. Thistle Publishing, London 2014, 1-91019-809-9.
- Laura Beatty: Lillie Langtry. Manners Masks and Morals . Chattoo & Windus, London 1999, ISBN 1-85619-513-9 .
- Jeremy Birkett, John Richardson: Lillie Langtry. Her life in words and pictures . Blanford Press, Poole 1979, ISBN 0-7137-1073-X .
- James Brough: The Prince and the Lillie . Hodder & Stoughton, London 1975.
- Sonia Hillsdon: The Jersey Lily. The life and times of Lillie Langtry . Seaflower Books, Jersey 1993, ISBN 0-948578-55-6 .
Web links
- Lillie Langtry in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Biography, literature & sources for Lillie Langtry FemBio from the Institute for Women's Biography Research
- Lillie Langtry - Museum on the Internet (English)
- Biography - The Jersey Lily (English)
- History of the Langtry Manor (English)
- Lillie Langtry (English)
Remarks
- ↑ Lillie Langtry was the model for two paintings by Edward Burne-Jones: In his famous painting The Golden Star , Langtry is shown once in profile and once with a face turned towards the viewer. In The Wheel of Fortune , Langtry is Fortuna dressed in a gray robe.
Individual evidence
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 40.
- ↑ a b c d Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 41.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 39.
- ↑ http://www.lillielangtry.com/jersey_1853.htm The time in Jersey
- ↑ a b Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 48.
- ↑ a b Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 43.
- ^ First marriage, 1874
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 44.
- ↑ a b Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 35.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 49.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 45.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 46.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 51. The original quote is: “ I dined with Lord Wharncliffe last nicht and took in to dinner a Mrs. Langtry, a most beautiful creature, quite unknown, very poor, and they say has but one black dress. ”
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 34.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 69. In the original the quote is: “ A vision never to be forgotten, the coloring brilliant and delicate at the same time; the attitude all grace. There was a harmony and a contrast all in one: the harmony such as Whistler loved; the contrast such as it please her Maker to arrange; between softness and strenght; the lines of the woman's full body flowing gently into each other, but the whole impression was one of vital force. ”
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 33. In the original the quote is: “ How can words convey the vitality, the glomm, the amazinig charm, that made this fascinating woman the center of any group that she entered? ”
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 55.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 58.
- ↑ a b c Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 61.
- ^ Theo Aronson: The King in Love - Edward VII's Mistresses. P. 60.
- ^ Project Gutenberg - She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith
- ↑ London, 1876
- ^ Horse racing
- ↑ Death of Lillie Langtry
- ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Lillie Langtry
- ↑ 13-part BBC series ( Memento of the original from April 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ https://books.google.de/books?id=ZNJmAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT125&lpg=PT125&dq=lily+langtry+who+i+am+pete+townshend&source=bl&ots=9z1wTGxe1F&sig=ACfU3U2jZyJmsVG-f7N93uXDMs7J9v-Afg&hl=de&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiEt5zptJ_hAhVBYlAKHZqJCmQQ6AEwDXoECAQQAQ # v = onepage & q = lily% 20langtry% 20who% 20i% 20am% 20pete% 20townshend & f = false
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Langtry, Lillie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Le Breton, Emilie Charlotte (maiden name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British actress, courtesan and mistress of King Edward VII of Great Britain |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 13, 1853 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | jersey |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 12, 1929 |
| Place of death | Monte Carlo |