In the winter of 1881, a woman who had become the most talked-about beauty in London stepped onto a professional stage for the first time. She was no ordinary actress. Lillie Langtry had dined with princes, posed for the most celebrated painters of the age, and carried the nickname of a flower. The public adored her, and the box office roared to life wherever she appeared.
That she was criticized for leaping into acting without paying her dues in the lower ranks of the theater mattered little to the crowds who came to see her. She was already a sensation, and she intended to remain one. She had been born Emily Charlotte Le Breton on the thirteenth of October 1853 in Jersey, an island off the coast of Normandy. Her father, William Corbett Le Breton, served as the Dean of Jersey, the leader of the Church of England on the island.
Her mother, Emily Davis Martin, was known for her beauty and called by some the Duchess. Lillie, as she was known from childhood, was the second youngest of seven children, and all of her siblings were boys. She grew up climbing trees, swimming, fishing, and riding horses in the hills near her home, often playing practical jokes on neighbors with her brothers. A French governess first taught her, but the young girl proved too difficult to manage, so she was soon educated by her brother’s tutor instead.
There was a significant shadow over the family home. Despite his respectable position, William Le Breton was known as a ladies’ man, frequently unfaithful to his wife and fathering many illegitimate children. Eventually, his reputation began to suffer for it. His wife endured the humiliation for years before finally leaving him in 1880.
By the time she was fifteen, Lillie had already turned down several marriage proposals. That year she visited London and fell in love with the city, hoping one day to become part of its glittering society. A few years later, an Irish landowner six years her senior named Edward Langtry courted her for four months. On the ninth of March 1874, they married.
She was twenty, he was twenty-six. Edward wanted only an obedient wife who would enjoy a quiet life in the countryside. That was not the life Lillie wanted, and it took her years to convince him to move to London, where they settled in an apartment in Eaton Place, Belgravia. In 1877, through a friend of her father, Lillie was invited to a high society reception.
It was her first such event, and she immediately drew attention for her beauty and wit. The artist Frank Miles, though not yet introduced to her, was so taken by her appearance that he made sketches of her, sketches that would later become popular on postcards. He told everyone he knew about the beauty he had seen until one of his friends finally met her and arranged an introduction. Miles then begged her to sit for a portrait.
When it was finished, he sold it to Prince Leopold, and from that moment Lillie was invited everywhere, received by many members of the royal family and nobility. On the twenty-fourth of May 1877, she attended another society event, a dinner party where she was seated next to the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, while her husband sat at the other end of the table. The Prince was a married man with six children and a known philanderer. After that dinner, he set his sights on Lillie.
Before long, he was infatuated with her, and she became his mistress. Princess Alexandra, though forced to tolerate her husband’s behavior, made a point of showing no jealousy and in a way accepted Lillie as her husband’s lover. As Lillie became further integrated into high society, she and her husband moved to a house at 70 Norfolk Street, off Park Lane. By then she was a noted beauty, admired and envied for her wasp waist, her height, and her elegant nature.
In 1878, Sir John Everett Millais painted her portrait, titling it A Jersey Lily, a name that became her nickname. When the painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, huge crowds rushed to see it. Other artists painted her as well, including Edward Poynter and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. While posing at Millais’s studio, she met the prominent politician William Ewart Gladstone, who would go on to become Prime Minister of Britain four times.
They became close friends, and he served as a mentor to her, once advising that in her professional career she would receive attacks, both personal and critical, and that she should bear them, never reply, and above all never rush into print to explain or defend herself. In the summer of 1879, Lillie began an affair with the Earl of Shrewsbury. The two were so passionate about each other that they planned to run away together in January 1880. Those plans were destroyed by a scandal created by the journalist Adolphus Rosenberg in the autumn of 1879, who wrote rumors that Edward Langtry would divorce Lillie for infidelity, citing various men as co-respondents, including the Prince of Wales.
Lillie’s liaison with the Prince lasted nearly three years, ending in June 1880 when she became pregnant. During that time she had even been presented to Queen Victoria. After the affair ended, she and the Prince remained friends to a degree and saw little of each other, though he stayed fond of her and always spoke well of her. He gave her money when she became pregnant and later used his influence to aid her career.
Around the same time, Lillie had a short affair with Prince Louis of Battenberg, and she also maintained an ongoing relationship with a childhood friend, Arthur Clarence Jones, the brother of her sister-in-law. The father of her child was uncertain, but it was definitely not her husband. Lillie told Prince Louis that she was pregnant, leading him to believe the child was his. After that, the Prince told his parents and was immediately assigned to the warship HMS Inconstant.
It is widely thought that Arthur Jones was actually the father, based on the passionate letters they exchanged, and Jones accompanied Lillie to Paris when her daughter, Jeanne Marie, was born in March 1881. By that time, Lillie’s marriage had turned hostile. She had lost all love and respect for her husband within the first few years. He had few hobbies and spent most evenings drinking bottles of whiskey before stumbling off to bed drunk.
The couple could not afford the high society lifestyle they displayed, and their debts piled up. Without the backing of the Prince of Wales, creditors closed in, and Lillie sold many of her possessions to pay off what she owed and prevent her husband’s bankruptcy. After the birth of her daughter, her friend Oscar Wilde introduced her to the idea of acting. She began with an amateur production in mid-November, then improved her skills under the former professional actress Henrietta Labouchere.
Her professional debut took place at the Haymarket in December 1881. Though critics objected to a socialite starting at the top, the public loved her, and box office earnings were enormous. Her husband offered no support for her career, though with his own earnings reduced, he was in no position to object. Lillie’s mother stepped in to help raise the child.
Early in 1882, Lillie started her own company under the tutelage of Labouchere and toured England performing many plays. In October of that year, she made her first tour of the United States. The opening show was postponed after the theater they were to perform in burned down the night before, but the show was moved to another venue and was extremely successful. By May 1883 the tour was finished, and Lillie and her company had made huge profits.
She continued acting throughout her life, playing Lady Macbeth in 1889, starring in The Crossways in America in 1903, touring the United States again in 1906 and 1912, and starring in a 1913 film called His Neighbor’s Wife. She retired from the stage in 1917 with a final appearance in a London theater. While touring America, she began a relationship with a wealthy young man named Frederick Gebhard, a sportsman and horse owner who had inherited his grandparents’ fortune. He was only twenty-two, seven years her junior, but Lillie fell deeply in love and devoted herself to him entirely.
Together they bought adjoining ranches in Lake County, California. On her 4,200-acre ranch she produced red wine, and the vineyard still operates to this day. Lillie wished to marry him, so in June 1887 she applied for American citizenship and filed for divorce. Her husband Edward refused to comply, and would not budge even when she bribed or threatened him.
It was through Frederick that Lillie developed a passion for horse racing. They bought and transported a stable of American horses to England. On the thirteenth of August 1888, disaster struck. The rail car carrying their sixteen race horses derailed at Shohola, Pennsylvania.
The car rolled down an eighty-foot embankment and burst into flames. One person was killed, and eleven horses died, including their champion runner, Eole. Frederick was devastated, and the relationship changed. They began to argue more often, and Frederick realized that as long as Edward Langtry lived, Lillie would never truly be free.
They grew apart and broke up in 1891. In 1889, while placing a bet on a horse, Lillie met a young man who offered her advice and stake money. He was George Alexander Baird, an eccentric young bachelor with vast estates in Scotland, a large breeding stud, a racing stable, and more money than he knew what to do with, all inherited from his family. He was known as an angry young man who spent his days drinking and his nights gambling, brawling, and mixing with women of low repute.
Lillie’s friends despised him, and it was said he mistreated her, but after her relationship with Frederick ended, she began a liaison with him. Baird gifted her a two-year-old horse named Milford, which went on to win several races and have a great career. Through Baird, Lillie developed a stronger passion for breeding, horse racing, and horse ownership, starting a new career she grew to love. Baird died in March 1893, ending the relationship.
Lillie continued to purchase race horses and moved her training to Sam Pickering’s stables at Kentford House. She also moved into Regal Lodge in the village of Kentford, near Newmarket, where she found great success over the years, with many of her horses winning numerous cups. Over the twenty-three years Regal Lodge was her home, hundreds of celebrities and esteemed guests were received there. In 1919, she sold Regal Lodge and everything she still owned relating to horse racing, and took up residence in Monaco.
Lillie became an American citizen in 1897, and in May of that same year she finally divorced Edward Langtry in California. The following month, Edward’s statement regarding the divorce was published in the New York Journal. Soon after, he began to go slightly mad, possibly from a fall he suffered on a train, and he died a few months later in an asylum, most likely from a brain hemorrhage. In July 1899, Lillie married twenty-eight-year-old Hugo Gerald de Bathe.
She was forty-six. The wedding took place in Jersey with only her daughter Jeanne and church officials present. When Hugo’s father died in 1907, Hugo inherited the title of fifth baronet, along with many estates and properties in Sussex, Devon, and Ireland. The couple’s fortune grew even larger, and Lillie became Lady de Bathe.
Those properties were all sold in 1919 before she moved to Monaco. From 1919 until her death, Lillie lived in Monaco while her husband lived in Vence in the Alpes-Maritimes. The couple did not see each other often, mostly at social events and private encounters. She remained active in her final years, frequently traveling to Paris and London to visit her daughter and grandchildren, and enjoying gardening, gambling, visiting race tracks, and seeing her brother.
In 1925, she published her memoirs, The Days I Knew. Her closest friend in Monaco was a woman named Mathilde Marie Peat. Lillie Langtry died in Monte Carlo on the twelfth of February 1929, of pneumonia. She was seventy-five years old.
She was buried in Saint Saviour’s Church in Jersey, alongside her parents. Mathilde Peat, who had been with her until the end, inherited ten thousand pounds, Lillie’s Monaco property, and her car.