Edwardian Promenade

In celebration of receiving over 200,000 visitors (thank you all!) I am running a special contest for my readers.

The prize? A copy of Anita Leslie’s The Marlborough House Set.

The rules of the game? Find the answer to the following twenty questions, many of which may be found on this website (the names Bertie, Prince of Wales, and Edward VII are used interchangeably).

1. At what time and location was the Prince of Wales born?
2. Name his known mistresses in the order in which they conducted their liaisons with Bertie.
3. What was the first scandal to bring attention to the wild ways of the Marlborough House Set?
4. Who was known as the “Double Duchess” and to which dukes did she marry?
5. Harry Cust’s love affairs garnered infamy when which current lover humiliated which past lover? Which famous late Edwardian child did he sire?
6. Fill in the blank: The members of the “Fourth Party” were ____, ____, _____, and _____.
7. What events marked the beginning and the end of the London Season?
8. To whom is attributed the quote: “You all sit around discussing one another’s souls. I shall call you ‘The Souls’.”
9. What year did the Prince of Wales’ horse win the Derby, and what was the horse’s name?
10. Name the relatives which garnered Edward VII the name “Uncle of Europe” and how he was related to them.
11. In which royal house did Edward VII prefer to spend his time?
12. What hotel did Rosa Lewis make famous? What was the king’s favorite dish?
13. What are the names of Daisy, Countess of Warwick’s youngest two children and who was their father rumored to be?
14. What are professional beauties?
15. List the garments, in order, which Edwardian ladies had to put on before their gowns.
16. When did MP’s obtain a salary, and how much was it?
17. Joseph Chamberlain rose to prominence from which northern city, what party did he lead, and what was his pet reform?
18. What 1907 novel by Elinor Glyn shocked society? What doggerel was composed for it?
19. Jennie Jerome married three times–who were her husbands and what was uncommon about each marriage?
20. Name the Edwardian era’s wealthiest American heiresses and their dowries.

The first three contestants to email the correct answers to edwa...@gmail.com shall be put in a drawing for the Leslie book and the runner’s up shall win two Shire books of their choice and a special Edwardian treat.

The contest ends March 22nd, so get your Google skills ready!

(hat tip to weHeartit)

Ladies began to carve out a separate, independent life of their own by the late 1890s, and there came to London a proliferation of clubs catering specifically to gentlewomen of rank and means. Inside, the clubs mirrored that of their more famous counterparts like White’s or the Marlborough Club, as centers of leisure and relaxation, as well as providing a London address for women who primarily resided in the country.

The Albermarle Club, founded in 1874, is marked at the first ladies’ club, but it admitted both gentlemen and ladies–a shocking development in and of itself. The first women’s club was the Somerville Club, founded in 1879, for graduates of the college and those of a strong intellectual and philanthropic bent, but the first ladies’s club was the Alexandra, which was founded in 1884 and required its prospective members maintain eligibility to attend Court Drawing Rooms. The other ultra-exclusive club was the Victoria (1894), and both possessed dining rooms, reading rooms, drawing rooms, and bed chambers for its members, the last of which accommodated ladies for a fortnight’s lodging. Other clubs of note were the University Club (1887), which counted among its members university graduates, licensed physicians, and students or lecturers who had been in residence for at least three terms in Girton or Newnham, Cambridge, or Lady Margaret or Somerville, Oxford; the Pioneer Club (1892), founded by Mrs. Massingberd for ladies of rank and professional women, its aim being that of promoting democracy and abolishing class lines within its handsome residence; and the Writers’ Club (1892), which strove to provide opportunities for English lady journalists.

By 1899, London saw nearly twenty-five clubs catering specifically to the needs of London’s aristocratic and middle class women–and that number did not include the growing number of clubs and societies formed for the benefit of working-class women. Soon, not only did other British cities follow the lead with such clubs as Edinburgh’s Queen’s Club (1897) and Manchester’s The Ladies’s Club, but American cities, with New York’s The Colony Club being the most opulent and aristocratic club of its kind. Though they were primarily socialable in focus, the clubs could be a hotbed of political activism, with many suffragists taking prominent positions in the multitude of clubs which sprang up since 1899, and social change.

It took a lot of gumption and even more courage for women of the Victorian and Edwardian eras to pack their trunks and set off for parts unknown. Despite the sharp edge of colonialism’s knife for the oppressed, the movement of European and American powers into Asia, Africa, South America, and the islands dotting the Pacific Ocean created opportunities for both men and women, but for women, it served to push them beyond the typical spheres of the domestic hearth and home and equally challenged notions of femininity. Though a few women penned their observations of non-European societies prior to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (most notably Lady Wortley Montagu), this new wave of lady explorers traveled globe not as mere appendages to their male kinfolk, but as scholars in their own right. They purposefully observed the customs and people of foreign lands with the eye of an early anthropologist, took note of the land and foliage like a botanist, and detailed the past inhabitants of the land like archaeologists. Far from adhering to the long-held horror of a woman publishing under her own name, these brave and intelligent lady explorers knocked at the doors of the overwhelmingly masculine Geographical societies to demand their findings be presented and taken just as seriously as a Livingstone or Burton.

Further Reading:
Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers by Dea Birkett
Victorian Lady Travellers by Dorothy Middleton
Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers by Jane Robinson
Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers by Larry O’Connor
Women Travelers: A Century of Trailblazing Adventures 1850-1950 by Christel Mouchard