TWO MAJOR paintings by Irish artist Sir William Orpen are to be auctioned at Sotheby’s in London in May. The portraits of a Co Meath aristocrat and his glamorous music-hall wife – whose marriage scandalised and enthralled Edwardian society – have never before appeared at auction. Portrait of Rosie, Fourth Marchioness of Headfort and Portrait of Geoffrey, Fourth Marquis of Headfort go under the hammer on May 10th.

In monetary terms, the lady wins hands down. Her portrait is estimated at £300,000-£500,000 and his at £60,000-£80,000.

The commissioned portraits were first exhibited at the Royal Academy’s 1915 Summer Exhibition in London, and are being sold by a family descendent.

…Rose Boote (1878-1958) was, according to Sotheby’s, “the daughter of a comedian from Nottingham and a straw hat sewer” although a report in The Irish Times at the time of her death claimed she was “Irish and was educated in the Ursuline Convent, Thurles”.

Using the stage name of Rosie, she achieved great fame as one of the Gaiety Girls – not of Dublin’s South King Street variety – but rather the chorus-line girls who sang in musical comedy spectacles at the Gaiety Theatre on the Strand, London. The girls attracted the attention of aristocratic young men – known as “Stage Door Johnnies” – and, in 1900, Rosie’s performance in a hit musical The Messenger Boy apparently charmed the eminently eligible young Irish aristocrat, the 4th Marquis of Headfort, Geoffrey Thomas Taylour (1878-1943). She quit the theatre and they married on April 11th, 1901.

The wedding created a sensation in Edwardian London. He was a member of one of the most prominent Protestant families in Ireland with estates of some 22,000 acres in Cavan and Meath while Rose, apart from being on the stage, was a Catholic. They lived in Headfort House, Kells, Co Meath and a London townhouse and had three children.

He had succeeded to the title 4th Marquis of Headfort on the death of his father in 1894 and moved in the highest echelons of British society. He was a lieutenant in the 1st Life Guards and later fought in the first World War. He subsequently served as a senator in the Irish Free State – from 1922-1928. Although a marquess, the family preferred the spelling marquis.

Rose lived until 1958 when she died aged 80. She was one of the very few people who had attended three coronations in Westminster Abbey (Edward VII, George V and George VI). The Irish Times reported that after “lying in state” at Headfort House, her grandson Lord Bective and employees of the estate carried her coffin to an island in the grounds of the house where she was buried alongside her husband.

[Source]

Photos from Arab Women Now

The Making Of A Marchioness: Rose Boote, Marchioness Of Headfort – The Esoteric Curiosa

Gaiety Girls’ Reunion 1946 with Lily Elsie, Edna May and Rosie Boote etc

Outside of a financial panic or murder, the only thing that struck fear into the hearts and minds of Gilded Age society was Town Topics. This elegant weekly, which recorded the exploits of society, published promising literature, sporting news, and even offered financial advice, was published by Colonel William d’Alton Mann, a Civil War veteran and businessman, who developed a railroad sleeping car before selling it to Nagelmackers (of Orient Express fame) in 1883. Between this time and his acquisition of Town Topics, Mann had made and lost a fortune warring with George Pullman, but through his various failures he quickly realized the fortune to be made in society gossip.

Town Topics began its life as The American Queen, and under editor Louise Keller (founder of the Social Register), it was a genteel periodical dedicated to “art, music, literature, and society.” The failing magazine was purchased by E. D. Mann, the Colonel’s brother, who renamed it Town Topics and began to change the tone from one of polite obsequiousness to fit the new era of celebrity culture ushered in by social climbing swells like the Vanderbilts. E.D. Mann handed control of Town Topics to the restless Colonel Mann, who pushed the magazine into infamy.

The Colonel, whom acquaintances described as “a kindly looking gentleman,” soon gathered a network of paid spies drawn from servants, telegraph operators, hotel employees, seamstresses, grocers, and vengeful socialites to supply the magazine with gossip. He created a column for these juicy scandals entitled “Saunterings,” where he planted them between seemingly innocuous descriptions of the latest social events in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Anonymous gossip was nothing new to society journalism, but Colonel Mann turned the tables with “Saunterings” by scattering clues about the subject of his “blind items” throughout the harmless society news. And sometimes, he was bold enough to state the persons involved in the scandal outright.

An example after the jump:

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When we look at portraits of doughty Edwardians, read etiquette books from the period, and watch period films, it is easy to believe society of one hundred years ago was more genteel, more moral, and better behaved than today’s world. However, high society of the Edwardian era functioned because it presented the outward appearance of propriety and correctness to which the “lower orders” aspired. However, within certain social circles there existed many adages; among them numbered “Thou Shalt Not Tell” and “Never comment on a likeness”, as well as Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s famous quote, “Does it really matter what these affectionate people do — so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!”. Seeing that Mrs. Pat carried on an affair with the much younger George Cornwallis-West, the much younger husband of Lady Randolph Churchill (née Jennie Jerome), whilst starring in Lady Randolph’s play, His Borrowed Plumes, her advice definitely came from personal experience. This is not to assume all fashionable Edwardians cast all morals to the winds, but they were in a better position socially and financially to indulge in their desires, and woe to anyone who broke the rules of society by exposing their affairs to the public gaze.

The Marlborough House Set, and to a lesser extent, The Souls, largely set the tone of aristocratic Edwardian society—though sticklers such as the Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury (who never followed the common practice of inviting Alice Keppel to a house party with the King) did not approve of their hi-jinks. Based on those aforementioned adages, husbands and wives were permitted to take lovers after filling their nursery with legitimate children, and society respected these extramarital bonds just as much, if not more so in some cases, as they did the couples’ legitimate marriages. The Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII, known as Bertie to intimates), however, was permitted much more freedom for dalliance than his subjects, and everyone knew just whom a certain lady entertained when a particular carriage dawdled at her front steps during afternoon tea (the prescribed hour for affaires d’amour).

But our Edwardian gentlemen and ladies did not enter into affairs lightly. In fact, casual affairs were quite rare, if only because of their impossibility. Not only because of the cumbersome clothing ladies wore, but because they lived under the constant surveillance of servants. They were awakened and dressed by maids, servants were constantly cleaning or attending to the family, and they played their social roles in public—riding in Rotten Row, attending dinners, dancing at balls, paying calls, etc etc—all under the eye of servants and the general public. As a result, a lady and her erstwhile lover could spend months exchanging sighs, heated glances and brief embraces, and scribbling loving letters to one another, before they could arrange a schedule for their assignations. This all appears so bloodless and correct, but human nature doesn’t respect rules, and it wasn’t uncommon for even the most circumspect people to lose themselves in a blaze of passion.

And in stepped scandal.

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Marguerite Steinheil

When Madame Marguerite Steinheil paid an illicit call on President Félix Faure at the Palais de l’Élysée, no one could have predicted a scandal–and a farce–beyond imagination. Had Mme. Steinheil been your average concerned French citizen, the afternoon appointment with the portly statesman would have aroused little attention save a mention of the woman’s attractiveness. But it was not to be, for within moments of Madame Steinheil’s entrance into President Faure’s office, the bell was rung for his servants, who quickly gathered around the dead body of their master and ruler while the fatale Madame Steinheil adjusted her clothing.

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May Yohe

Perhaps it was the possession of the ill-fated and cursed Hope Diamond which destined Mary Augusta Yohé to a life of infamy and ruin. Nonetheless, you must say that her fate was that of a series of missteps and foolish actions–rather in the vein of Lily Bart–with which the ebullient American musical actress chose to guide her life.

Mary Augusta, known henceforth as “May,” was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on April 6, 1866 to William W. Yohé, a former officer of a Pennsylvania Regiment during the Civil War, and Lizzie Batcheller, the daughter of a hotel proprietor. The two separated sometime during May’s childhood, and Lizzie supported the two with a successful business (of which has yet to be revealed) in Philadelphia. May’s father, William, was known for his dark good looks and musical talents, and Lizzie spent her free time singing in church choirs. Lizzie had apparently acquired enough money and success to send twelve year old May abroad for her education, and three years later she returned home, pretty, polished, and poised. However, May wanted to go on stage. She went in as chorus girl, and within a few years she emerged as a star after a well received turn as “Prince Prettywitz” in the Crystal Slipper at the Chicago Opera House in the summer of 1887. From then on, May’s career was a dazzling success, a success which baffled her critics, who found her “an indifferent actress [who] does not possess good stage presence, and has a figure by no means striking.” But perhaps that was what audiences desired: a beautiful woman who was on stage to have fun.

By the early 1890s, May was famous for another reason: her rumored elopement with Lord Francis Hope, the younger brother and heir presumptive to the Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, who was owner of a half-dissipated estate. Lord Francis himself, who acquired the surname “Hope” and the legendary Hope Diamond from a grandmother’s bequest, was in dire financial straits, and after his quiet 1894 marriage to May, he and she continued their extravagant ways. Not even a year later, the two had frittered away his entire inheritance–the land, the estates, the pictures, the heirlooms, and the Hope Diamond. But as a future Duke and Duchess, Lord and Lady Francis Hope could beg or borrow on their expectations, which they did, further increasing their exorbitant debts.

In 1900, flush with ill-gotten wealth, Francis and May undertook a world tour. On their way home, they acquired an acquaintance, the dashing Captain Putnam Bradlee Strong, who was one of the most popular officers in the US Army and a particular favorite of President McKinley. May took one look at Captain Strong and fell head over heels in love. Rather than continue on to England with Lord Francis and, in the manner of the well-born Englishwoman of the day, keep Captain Strong as a lover, May deserted her husband for her darling Bradlee (American women were much too sentimental and conventional to English eyes). May became Mrs Strong in San Francisco, but within two years, their quarrels and relative poverty tore apart the marriage, and she charged that Captain Strong made off with £20,000 worth of jewelry. Strong appeared in London soon after to denounce this claim, and May followed him, where a reconciliation was had.

May and Bradlee, both penniless but flush with publicity, decamped for America where May returned to the stage in an act created for the two. Unfortunately, May’s theatrical success had been forgotten and Captain Strong had no acting talents whatsoever. Rather than remain shackled to a waning star, the captain filed for bankruptcy and divorce in 1905. After this, May sunk into obscurity, and years of poverty followed, whereupon she took positions as a scrubwoman, a housekeeper, and a janitor. In 1914, she wed Captain John A. Smuts, and remained married to him for quite some time. When in early 1938, LIFE Magazine featured her in a short article, it was only because of her tenuous connection with the Hope Diamond, which by then was in the possession of Washington D.C. socialite Evalyn Walsh McLean, and the novelty of a former owner working for the WPA as a statistics research clerk for $16.50 a week. A few months after this feature, the tempestuous May died at age 72 of “arterial sclerotic heart disease and chronic vascular nephritis.”