I discovered this book earlier this year during one of my haphazard click-throughs on the New York Times website, and was very intrigued that it has survived for over 100 years (who purchased the book? Who preserved it?). Alison Leigh Cowan of the NYT blog, City Room describes it:

Only this palm-sized book, published in 1870 and long hidden away at the New-York Historical Society, did not confine its anonymous critique to the quality of wines or the ambience of the 150 establishments listed between its covers. Rather, it defined its role as delivering “insight into the character and doings of people whose deeds are carefully screened from public view.”

…Readers of the book, “The Gentleman’s Directory,” learned that “an hour cannot be spent more pleasantly” than at Harry Hill’s place on 25 East Houston Street. And they learned that Ada Blashfield of 55 West Houston Street had “8 to 10 boarders both blondes and brunettes,” playing host to “some of our first citizens.” The book also divulged that Mrs. Wright’s place at 61 Elizabeth Street had “everything that makes time pass agreeably,” and that Miss Jennie Creagh had spared “neither expense nor labor” at 17 Amity Street, a onetime Manhattan address, to conjure a “palace of beauty forever” out of French mirrors, rosewood furniture and fine bedding.

The three most notorious courtesans of the age–known as the Les Grandes Trois–were Emilienne d’Alençon, Liane de Pougy, and Caroline Otero, called “La Belle Otero.” Like many other top courtesans and middling prostitutes, the three women earned the bulk of their infamy as actresses in such places as the Folies Bergère. Ironically, while this gave them a measure of respectability, it also reinforced the idea that all actresses were prostitutes!

Liane de Pougy was the trio’s undisputed star, and her cool beauty and faultless manners earned her the moniker “Notre courtisane nationale.” Like many courtesans, her origins were humble (father was an army officer), and an early and unwanted marriage lingered in her past. A divorcee by the age of nineteen, young Liane (then Anne-Marie Pourpe) supported herself by giving piano and English lessons until she realized life was more glamorous and lucrative as a prostitute. She snatched the public’s attention when she watched the Grand Prix with the Marquis MacMahon by her side, but she solidified her career when, on her first night at the Folies Bergère, she sent a note to the visiting Prince of Wales to watch her make her Paris debut. He did, and his approval made her an overnight sensation with the Jockey Club set. Jewels, carriages, homes, and art came pouring in, and the new era of the courtesan began.

Liane’s bitterest rival was Caroline Otero, a Spanish dancer who was known to “jump up on a table at Maxim’s and go into a writhing fandango so sensual that every man in the room felt she was making love to him.” La Belle Otero, the illegitimate child of a Greek nobleman and a Cadiz gypsy, began her career as a dancer at age twelve, and her career as a prostitute at fourteen. By fifteen, she juggled three Andalusian grandees and an Italian husband who was, in Caroline’s words, “as handsome as Bizet’s Toreador.” However, she soon abandoned this handsome husband and began performing in Marseilles caf-concs before making her way to Monte Carlo. She won a small fortune at the tables and quickly set herself up in style in Paris. La Belle Otero also made her way to the Folies Bergère in the 1890s, where she blazed a sensuous path to stardom.

Emilienne d’Alençon’s career was much quieter, but also much more lucrative, being the object of obsession for King Leopold II of the Belgians and Jacques d’Uzès, son of the Duchesse d’Uzès, heiress to the Veuve Clicquot fortune. So besotted was the King, he invited her to accompany him on his royal visits and introduced her to Edward VII as the Countess Songeon. So besotted was young Jacques, he gave her the Uzès family jewels. The latter liaison ended when the Duchesse packed her son off to the Congo, where he died in 1893. Emilienne, born Émilie André, began her career at fifteen when she ran away from home with a gypsy violinist. She managed to enter the Paris Conservatory with aspirations to be an actress, but left after a year, later appearing at the Circus d’Ete in an act with trained rabbits. This act earned her a place at the Folies Bergère, where her rabbits were tinted bright pink and wore paper ruffs. She of course became more than a mere rabbit tamer, embarking upon her career with the aforementioned gentlemen. Incidentally, she was also the lover of Etienne Balsan when the dashing sportsman met a young Gabrielle Chanel in the mid-1900s.

The most important element of a courtesan’s reputation was her jewelry, and they owned a lot of it. During the duration of their time at the top, a courtesan could expect to collect millions, if not tens of millions of francs, worth of diamonds, pearls, sapphires, gold, rubies, and emeralds. They were mounted in the typical settings of the day–dog collars, stomachers, tiaras, bracelets, necklaces, parures, earrings, etc–but obviously much more ostentatious than that worn by a duchess or a princess. The most startling display of wealth was a showdown in Maxim’s between Liane de Pougy and Caroline Otero. This restaurant was a courtesan’s domain, where no respectable woman was allowed or would even admit to acknowledging its existence, and the right entrance signaled one’s place in the hierarchy. One night, La Belle Otero entered Maxim’s  in an evening gown with a plunging neckline and her entire collection of jewels. They blazed at her neck and ears, in her hair, on her bosom, her arm, hands and waist, and one or two sparkled on her ankles. The crowd was stunned, but they were even more stunned with Liane–tipped off by a friend–entered a few minutes later in simple white evening gown. In her wake was her lady’s maid who carried a velvet cushion weighted with jewels. She won that round.

Despite the glamor and mystique that surrounded the courtesan, her life was not easy. Many aspired to the rank, but ended up in bitter poverty, and even those who reached the pinnacle of this career could find themselves cast off at the whim of their lover, or worse, bankrupt by a spendthrift protector. Nevertheless, this class of women were able to live a public life of luxury and notoriety for however long they captured the public’s attention, and for many women, this was preferable to a gray, dull life of toil and obscurity.

Further Reading:

Grandes Horizontales: The Lives and Legends of Four Nineteenth-Century Courtesans by Virginia Rounding

The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues by Susan Griffin

Elegant wits and grand horizontals: a sparkling panorama of “la belle epoque,” its gilded society, irrepressible wits and splendid courtesans by Cornelia Otis Skinner

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.

The death of President Faure at the, um, hands of Madame Steinheil came at a critical juncture in French history. Faure’s last years were mired in the Dreyfus Affair, anarchists bombings in Paris, the Fashoda Affair, and a Franco-Russian alliance. With this sort of stress, it is no wonder he found comfort in the arms of Marguerite, but she was even more complicated than diplomatic and domestic contretemps–and this was not the end of her scandalous and deadly reputation. Considering the course of Marguerite Steinheil’s life, it seems a bit ironic that she was born in Alsace two years before the Treaty of Frankfurt ripped it and Lorraine from French hands (these two departments were a source of much bitterness between France and Germany from 1871 until the end of WWII). From birth Marguerite, or Meg, as she was known, was headstrong and independent. Her family hoped she would settle down to become a proper French wife and mother when she married the much-older painter Adolphe Steinheil in 1890, but it was not to be. Meg reveled in her new freedom and began a salon in Paris.

From the start, Meg favored politicians and financiers, gathering around her such luminaries as Gounod, Ferdinand de Lesseps, Jules Massenet, François Coppée, Émile Zola, and Pierre Loti, and fancying herself a modern-day Madame de Pompadour in terms of influence. With this goal in mind she was determined to meet President Faure. Opportunity came knocking when her husband, whose talents were small, yet prolific, was given a contract by Faure in 1897. This of course gave the now-smitten President an excuse to pay her frequent visits. Meg was soon installed as Faure’s maitress-en-tete, but she held little real influence or power save what she thought in her head. After Faure’s sensational death, Meg moved on to other wealthy and powerful men, who, per her Memoirs, entrusted her with state secrets. Her most important lover was the powerful industrialist Borderel, whom she met in 1908.

But Meg’s bid for infamy was not over.

In May of that year, Meg’s husband and stepmother were found suffocated in their beds and Meg herself was bound and gagged to her bed. She claimed to have been tied up by four hooded strangers, and the public speculated (with her instigation no doubt) that her family had been murdered in an attempt to search the house for sensitive papers Faure had left in her care. From the start, the police just didn’t find the story believable. However, since they had no evidence with which to charge Meg, the case was dropped. Oddly enough, Meg would not let the case go and her attempt to frame two of her servants caused the police to arrest her for the murders.

The court case caused a sensation that rippled through Paris. Men thought Marguerite innocent, while the women thought her absolutely guilty. The prosecutors brought forth witnesses from her childhood to the present to recount every sin she’d ever committed, including the names of her numerous admirers. The courtroom was packed on every day of the trial and when Meg took the stand, the obsession with her case reached a fever pitch. Marguerite was a consummate actress, weeping, gnashing her teeth, and wailing about her innocence and her grief over the tragedy. No matter what angle the chief prosecutor came from, she stuck to her story, and after a strange man dressed in a red wig and black cloak made an appearance in court to testify breaking into the Steinheil home, the case was ruined. The jury deliberated for 2 1/2 hours and although the judge called her stories “tissues of lies”, they announced Marguerite’s acquittal on November 14, 1909. She promptly quit France for England, where she “wrote” My Memoirs (1912) and later wed the 6th Baron Abinger. Marguerite was widowed in 1927 and lived in England for the remainder of her life, dying in a Hove nursing home in 1954.

La Chabanais was founded in 1878 by the Irish Madame Kelly, and operated near the Louvre at 12 rue Chabanais. Madame Kelly was shrewd, aligning her brothel with the Jockey-Club de Paris and selling shares of the incredibly profitable business to wealthy, but anonymous investors. The interior was lavish, each bedroom styled in its own theme–Hindu, Pompeii, Japanese, Moorish, Louis XVI–at a cost rumored to be 1.7 million francs. Bertie was a frequent visitor during the 1880s and 1890s and was allotted his own chamber, decorated with his coat of arms. The most interesting features of the bed room were the copper tub decorated with a half-swan-half-woman, in which Bertie liked to bathe with a prostitute or two in champagne, and a chair, a siège d’amour (love seat) actually, in which the overweight Prince of Wales could do…well…whatever he wished with the cocotte of his choice.

The photo is of a replica chair located in a sex museum in Prague, but Sean Thomas of The First Post did some investigating, and the original chair used by Bertie himself is apparently still in use.

In 1885 Karl Pearson was twenty-eight, and an ardent eugenicist who believed that women were the key to national progress. In the club’s inaugural paper, “The Woman’s Question,” he reflected on what changes would occur should women gain access to education, professions and political representation. His treatise was ironically reflected in the make-up of the club, for many of the women felt themselves to be intellectually inferior to the men, who were of Pearson’s background: “radical liberal or socialist in their politics, and employed as lawyers, doctors, or university lecturers. They shared similar public school and Oxbridge backgrounds and were further linked through membership of the same West End men’s clubs: the Saville, the National Liberal Club, the Athenaeum.” Although a number of the female members were economically independent as teachers, writers or journalists, only one had been to university, and all but two were single.

The club’s constitution declared that it would meet monthly, consist of no more than twenty members, and be composed of equal numbers of men and women. They met in each others’ homes, although generally at the house of a male member, with half of the club’s thirty-six meetings taking place at the house of club’s President, Robert Parker, a barrister living in Brunswick Gardens, Kensington, the heart of respectable London. Once at the meetings, the men and women found it difficult to reconcile their gender privileges and marginalization, particularly on the subjects of the role of religion, emotion, and a woman’s individual rights and social obligations.

The club’s most famous female member was Olive Schreiner, a missionary’s daughter whose fictionalized account of her life in South Africa, The Story of an African Farm, made her a celebrity overnight. Schreiner was vocal in her challenge of commonly-held conceptions of female sexuality. Her belief that women experienced sexual pleasure intrigued the male members and horrified the female members. Pearson did propose that sex, even among animals, was never solely for procreation, but was also a “physical pleasure like climbing a mountain, but his support of uninhibited female sexuality fell short: like most “New Men,” who criticized and heralded the end of the patriarchal era but looked with fear towards the new feminist order, and was terrified and disoriented by any signs of female sexual agency in the flesh. Another bone of contention between the men and women was the former’s avoidance of taking responsibility for male sexuality vs the women’s attempt to encourage accountability. Not surprisingly, club members were not sexually adventurous and showed little enthusiasm for free-love doctrines.

The Men and Women’s Club disbanded in 1889, mainly due to the dissatisfaction of the men in the women members. In the eyes of Pearson and his peers, the women proved incapable of the level of scientific work the men demanded, they were serious but did not go very deep, and they were frustrating adversaries. By the end of the club’s existence, club meetings became increasingly deadlocked and stalemated, and neither side found satisfaction in the tone and objective of discussions. While most of the group drifted apart, crossing paths due only to their common social and political circles, Pearson went on to become the premiere voice on the “Woman Question” during the 1890s. His writings were read in Britain and America, and feminists on both sides of the Atlantic viewed him with much respect, using much of his rhetoric to push for legislative reform for women. Despite the short-lived club, its very existence was radical and startling, and very much a product of the late nineteenth century, a time when long-held assumptions and social norms were being challenged by men and women of all walks of life. The topic of female sexuality and gender roles remain today, but for this time, it was extraordinary that a small group of men and women could come together for four years to shatter norms.

Further Reading:
Science, feminism and romance: The Men and Women’s Club 1885-1889 by Judith R. Walkowitz
The real facts of life: feminism and the politics of sexuality, c1850-1940 by Margaret Jackson
City of dreadful delight: narratives of sexual danger in late-Victorian London by Judith R. Walkowitz
Banishing the beast: feminism, sex and morality by Lucy Bland
The facts of life: the creation of sexual knowledge in Britain, 1650-1950 by Roy Porter & Lesley A. Hall
Scandalous Lovers by Robin Schone

The daughter of Boston aristocrats Edward Parker Deacon and Florence Baldwin Deacon, Gladys and her three younger sisters, Audrey, Edith and Dorothy gained notoriety at a tender age when their parents became embroiled in a homicide/divorce case that nearly caused an international contretemps between France and the United States.

Though Edward received custody of his three young daughters (Dorothy remained with Florence), the divorce and subsequent custody battle had sapped him of strength and he was committed to a mental health institute in 1897. Gladys, Audrey and Edith trooped dutifully back to their mother, who had reverted to her maiden name of Baldwin. Gladys spent the remainder of her adolescence in Europe, which allowed her to make an easier transition from girl to worldly debutante than most American girls brought over to marry a title. For one thing, Gladys had no incentive to marry. She was wealthy, well-fixed regarding social status despite her parents’ wretched divorce, and her mother was preoccupied with keeping her new lover happy, all of which permitted her an independence from meddling matchmaking many of her contemporaries would envy.

She was also dazzlingly beautiful, charming and erudite. By age twenty-one, Gladys had conquered London and captured the attention of the most sought-after bachelors in society–including the Crown Prince of Germany, whose gift to Gladys of a royal antique nearly caused a diplomatic scandal. Perhaps it was the challenge of the unattainable, the lingering childhood fantasy (on the day of Consuelo’s wedding, her diary notes her lamentation at being too young to catch Sunny), or maybe the friendship began innocently enough, but within months, Gladys had become an integral part of the Marlborough marriage–a shoulder for Consuelo to lean on when Sunny’s beastly behavior became too much, and an attentive, awed listener to Sunny’s overweening pride in Blenheim and his illustrious heritage.

Of this point in her life, Consuelo’s memoirs are frustratingly opaque, noting only “I was soon subjugated by the charm of her companionship and we began a friendship which only ended years later,” calling her “beautiful and alluring.” Judging by the copious accounts of her doings, Gladys was beautiful and alluring, but she was also a vain perfectionist, obsessed with the “kink” in her nose that kept her from possessing a perfect Grecian profile–an obsession that led to the ruination of her beauty before she was yet forty. No proof of a physical relationship between Sunny and Gladys exists, but before long, the combination of their inseparability and the continuing warm relations between Consuelo and Gladys both baffled and fed the gossip mill. This triangle waltzed on for many years until 1906, when Consuelo began to take the necessary steps for divorce.

This was a bold action for the time, as divorce was very difficult to achieve under English law, and it would be socially devastating. Pressure against the divorce was placed on Consuelo and Sunny from all avenues–the King, Consuelo’s father, Winston Churchill and his mother Jennie–but both were adamant: they hated the sight of one another and the thought of being yoked forever was repugnant. Because of their difficulties in obtaining a divorce, the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough decided on a formal separation and joint custody of their sons. Not surprisingly, Gladys’ name was conspicuous by its absence in the press, as well as gossip concerning Consuelo’s aborted elopement with Viscount Castlereagh.

The post-war years witnessed a mellowing reaction to divorce, and a woman could now sue her husband on the grounds of desertion, provided she could also prove he spent a night at a hotel with another woman. To comply with the law regarding the divorce of a separated couple, Sunny and Consuelo went through the farce of moving in together for a few days and he then repudiating her desire for conjugal rights in paper. Consuelo and Sunny officially divorced in 1921, and after obtaining an annulment from the Pope (as Sunny had converted to Catholicism and the Balsan family viewed the marriage between Consuelo and Jacques as unsanctioned due to her divorce), Gladys finally became the (2nd) 9th Duchess of Marlborough at age 40. Ironically, after a clandestine relationship of nearly 20 years, their marriage deteriorated soon after the wedding, and relations between the two were so strained, supper was eaten with a loaded pistol at her plate.

Gladys became increasingly eccentric with the passing years. She bred Blenheim spaniels and allowed them to defecate all over the palace. The injection of wax in the bridge of her nose ruined her beauty as it slid down her face to rest in her chin, which aged her prematurely with discolored jowls, and she refused mirrors in the house. Dissatisfied, angry, and unhappy, Sunny took refuge in the cold cruelty he used as a shield all his life and abandoned Blenheim to Gladys, avenging himself by cutting first her funds, and then the electricity, sparking newspaper cartoons portraying the Duchess of Marlborough cooking over candlelight. Sunny died of cancer in 1934, and Gladys was no longer chatelaine of Blenheim Palace. It was said she left the estate with as much glee as Consuelo during her own departure, but by that time, Gladys had become a true eccentric, living in a haphazard manner until her death in 1977. As for Consuelo, she lived through equally tumultuous, though less tragic times, escaping Nazi-occupied France with her husband and settling in America. She was widowed in 1956, and when she died in 1964, she shocked her family to its toes by requesting to be buried in Bladon, near Blenheim Palace.

Further Reading:
The Glitter and the Gold by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan
Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart
The face on the sphinx: A portrait of Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough by Daphne Fielding
Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough by Hugo Vickers
Gladys, Duchess of Marlborough: the aristocrat with attitude – The Telegraph

Along with the word lingerie used in place of undergarments, other terms changed to reflect the emphasis on seduction; the shift was first called a camisole and then simply known as a “slip” by this period, drawers turning into knickers and petticoats into “frillies“. This was the age of frou-frou, that exciting sound of chiffon and taffeta undergarments that whispered as a woman walked (though by the middle of the era, the sound of a swishing petticoat was deemed vulgar). For the wealthy lady, the proper layer of lingerie was important and the corsetier and couturier one purchased one’s lingerie from was a status symbol, its purchase acknowledging that the lady had a special someone for whom she flaunted her undergarments.

The fashionable woman was poured into at least seven layers of underclothing before she even dressed for the hour! Since they changed clothing five to six times a day, with even more if one was on vacation or at a Saturday-to-Monday, it was imperative that underclothing was both attractive and sturdy. When the lady awoke, her first layer of undergarment were the combinations, a kind of pant and vest in one piece which gained popularity in the 1870s with the introduction of the “Princess style” dress and greatly reduced the bulk that would have accompanied a separate chemise and pantaloons. Generally made of wool or a mixture of wool and silk, they came in a number of styles: strapless for evening wear, or with a skirt in the back to hide the slit in the pants.

Over this was laced the corset. The late Victorian corset fitted over the bosom and hips with curved busks that compressed the stomach and supported the spine, while the S-bend corset of the early Edwardian era, called thus due to the peculiar arch of the back this corset produced,caused women to thrust their bosom forward and their hips backwards to give them the hourglass shape then popular. When skirts and bodices narrowed after 1908, the emphasis was now placed on an overall slimness, and corsets were designed to compress the waist and hips and no longer covered the bosom. They were also quite long, ending at mid-thigh, causing a slight difficulty in sitting and standing.

Next layer, the camisole. A kind of under-blouse that buttoned down the front, it gathered at the waist and was trimmed with lace around the neck and puffed sleeves. This was very fitted, with darts and seaming, and decorated with lace and trimming during the 1880-1908 period, and after, it was made quite plain,often with a square neckline. Over this, a pair of frilly knickers, which sometimes buttoned at the waist or tied with tapes. The last undergarment essential to a lady was the waist-petticoat, made of lawn or rustling silk. It was laid upon the floor in a circle and the lady stepped into the center, the maid lifting the petticoat up and tying it around the waist. Tightly-laced, secured and buttoned up, the lady was then ready to be attired for whatever occasion of her day or night.

For men, the union suit, a long-time staple of both men (and women until the mid-19th century), was de rigueur. Made of a knitted material,they possessed a flap in the front and the back for necessary needs. The jock-strap was invented in 1874 by a Chicagoan named C.F. Bennett to provide protection when gentlemen rode bicycles. By the end of the 1910s, the union suit was split into upper and lower parts, inventing the undershirt and drawers for men. Soldiers in WWI were issued underwear somewhat similar to the modern-day boxer shorts and due to its popularity, they supplanted the union suit as the mode of men’s underwear.

Everything and every room were subject to the new tastes in fashion, with housewives frequently gutting their boudoirs, parlors and drawing rooms to redecorate–nothing was sacrosanct when it came to fashion. But one change did come, a change that rocked the foundations of society and sent clergymen flocking to their pulpits to condemn the new development: the twin bedstead.

When interior decorators made twin beds popular in the 1890′s, some commentators called them a social menace, while others saw them as therapy for an insomniac age. Many were outraged that the firms hired to furbish the homes of the fashionable had dared to breach the bedroom, and proposed to abolish the sacramental double bed and replace it with the new “twin beds” which manufacturers were beginning to introduce. Clergymen and family physicians were drawn into the rapidly bitter domestic controversy, many of the former predicting the breakdown of the holy bonds of marriage by the separation of husband and wife.

However, some physicians asserted that the old-fashioned double bed was unsanitary, and medical journals condemned them vociferously, one writer claiming that injury to one or the other of two people sleeping in this way was sure to result in time: “By the use of the twin bed a married couple could occupy the same room and sleep side by side without harm to either.” The younger generation couldn’t understand the fuss and quickly adopted the new bed, surmising that two steps across the carpeted floor needn’t be an obstacle to bliss.

The twin bed was so designed that when placed side by side, the effect was that of one wide bedstead, with separate spring mattress and bed clothing provided for each one. Many of them were made of costly woods, rich with carving, though a few simpler versions were provided in brass. So ubiquitous was the twin bed, it inspired a number of theatrical and literary farces, and the controversial piece of furniture was soon to be found in college dormitories across the nations. Because of the relative comfort of the bed, and its convenient size, social reformers soon pleaded for employers to grant their servants the use of twin beds; in one home, five servants were all obliged to sleep in one large room in the basement. By the use of single beds two members of the family who occupied separate rooms could be moved into in one, thus providing an extra room to be given up to the servants.

The twin bed found its place in the Code Era of Hollywood, where the Production Code of the 1930s required married couples to sleep in separate beds to uphold the moral codes of the time. Directors got around this with the “one foot” loophole: both stars had to be dressed, and one character had to keep one foot on the floor (check out the bedroom scene in the first Hepburn/Tracy vehicle, Woman of the Year). Ironically, even though people today consider separate beds to be old-fashioned, when physicians recently promoted the benefits of them, it caused just as much furor and controversy as the topic did in the 1890s!

The motorcar was here to stay despite protestations from the rural districts, coachmen and other citizens alarmed by the emergence of the horse-powered vehicle over the horse, but many automobile manufacturers and enthusiasts found it prudent to capture the support of lawmakers, preferably the highest in the land–Parliament. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu was a powerful ally. Friend of the King, and founder and editor of The Car Illustrated magazine, his support, among others, of the 1903 Motor Car Bill raised the speed limit to 20 mph and implemented the registration of all motorcars and motorists. Lord Montagu raised the profile of motoring by introducing King Edward to the sport, appearing at many of the first motor rallies and raised the profile of the Rolls Royce when the mascot he commissioned was presented by its sculptor to the company–the Spirit of Ecstasy.

The early motor car featured a radiator cap on its hood/bonnet, but by 1910, the hood ornament/car mascot became fashionable. Responding to customers who felt a firm as prestigious as Rolls Royce should feature its own luxurious mascot, and concerned their customers were affixing inappropriate ornaments to their cars in its absence, Claude Johnson, the managing director of Rolls-Royce, was asked to commission something suitably dignified and graceful. He turned to sculptor Charles Sykes, asking him to produce a mascot which embodied “the spirit of the Rolls-Royce, namely, speed with silence, absence of vibration, the mysterious harnessing of great energy and a beautiful living organism of superb grace…” Years previously, Sykes had been asked to create a mascot for Lord Montagu’s Silver Ghost, and he submitted a modified version of it to Rolls-Royce in February of 1911.

What was listed initially listed as an optional extra, only to become a standard fitting in the early 1920′s, was no ordinary car mascot; the silver sculpture of a flying lady had a past. Lord Montagu of Beaulieu had commissioned this mascot as an emblem not of wealth and luxury, but of love. The subject, Eleanor Velasco Thornton, was a young woman hired as his secretary in 1902, and the two fell quickly in love. But the baron was married and Miss Thornton was barred from being his partner not only because of his matrimonial bonds but also by her much lower social status. The two nonetheless were inseparable for the next decade, Eleanor bearing his child and continuing her work with him on The Car Illustrated. To commemorate their secret love, Eleanor modeled for Montagu’s personal hood ornament, and Sykes crafted a figurine of her in fluttering robes, pressing a finger against her lips – to symbolize the secrets of their love. The figurine was christened The Whisper.

Tragedy struck in 1915 when their voyage aboard the SS Persia, on which they were traveling through the Mediterranean on the way to India, was torpedoed by a German U-boat. There was no time to get to a lifeboat and as they made for the decks on the listing ship, “Montagu had Eleanor in his arms, the next they were hit by a wall of water and she was gone.” He survived and made his way home to read his own obituary in the Times. The baron passed away fourteen years later and with him, the secret story behind Rolls-Royce’s iconic emblem.

Happily, the tale of the star-crossed lovers lives on today, as it has been announced that Batman Begins actor Christian Bale has been tapped to star in The Silver Ghost, which will tell the story of the thirteen year affair between John Montagu, who later became Lord Montagu of Beaulieu, and Eleanor Thornton, his secretary.

Further Reading:
Agony and the Ecstasy: The great Rolls-Royce love story
Wings of Desire: the secret love affair that inspired Rolls-Royce’s flying lady