The sexual appetites of King Edward VII are well known: from the scandal of Nellie Cliffden, which Victoria blamed for her beloved Albert’s death, to the perfumed bosoms of aristocratic French ladies and courtesans, to Sarah Bernhardt and Lillie Langtry, to his long-time mistresses, Daisy Warwick and Alice Keppel, Bertie was very much a ladies’ man. His reputation and exploits not only opened the doors for the sophisticated spouse-swapping of the Marlborough House Set, but were so notorious, women openly propositioned him when he traveled to Europe to visit heads-of-state and to take the waters at Homburg or Marienbad. However renowned was his appetite or his mistresses, His Royal Highness preferred to take his pleasures in the exclusive Parisian brothels, particularly La Chabanais, the most exclusive of them all.

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.

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In the summer of 1885, Karl Pearson founded The Men and Women’s Club with the aim to discuss “all matters…connected with the mutual position and relation of men and women.” Pearson drew his members from middle-class liberals, socialists, and feminists, and over the lifespan of the club (1885-1889), discussions ranged from sexual relations in Periclean Athens to the position of Buddhist nuns, to sexuality and its relation to marriage, prostitution, and friendship. In essence, The Men and Women’s Club existed to challenge the long-held norms for male and female interaction as well as notions of “proper” sexuality. In late Victorian England, where sexuality was seen by many as “base” and “animal” and ignorance of women’s bodies and all things concerning sex was widespread, discussion of such issues was indeed radical.

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

At the turn of the century, Sunny and Consuelo had yet to reach the pinnacle of their loathing for one another, but their marriage had grown uncomfortable enough for society to notice the mounting tension between them. An outlet was necessary to relieve tension, and this opened the door for the dramatic entrance of fellow American heiress Gladys Marie Deacon (pronounced Glay-dus).

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