Kings and princes have had their mistresses since the dawn of time – women deemed desirable enough to share a royal pillow, but not posh enough to become a wife. Some, like King Charles II’s bedfellow Nell Gwyn, ended up as duchesses, while others like William IV’s Mrs Jordan ended their lives penniless and destitute.
By its very nature being a royal squeeze is only a temporary assignment, not a job for life. And by the 20th century the British royal family reckoned it had devised a foolproof plan to get rid of their discarded lovelies.
Put simply, it was to pay them to shut up and go away.
Depending on the woman, this strategy was the gateway to fame and fortune – or the road to perdition.
Take Beryl Markham, for instance, the flexible mistress who took two royal brothers – King Edward VIII and Harry, Duke of Gloucester – to bed. The tall, angular daughter of a horse-breeder, she was part of Kenya’s Happy Valley set, and landed her royal double when the brothers came to Africa on tour in the 1920s.
In one glorious season she alternated between both men before settling on the dimwitted, gullible Harry Gloucester who, back in England, set her up in a hotel outside the back gate of Buckingham Palace.
Soon she was telling Harry that he was to be the father of her child, and the royal machine was set in motion – Harry, desperately in love, was separated from her and packed off on a tour of Japan. Beryl gave birth to a son, and Harry’s mother Queen Mary arranged for Beryl to be summarily paid off and sent away.
Harsh treatment? Not necessarily.
King Charles II’s bedfellow Nell Gwyn, who ended up as a duchess
King Charles II was called The Merry Monarch and came to the throne in 1649 after his father Charles I had been executed following the English Civil War
Nell Gwyn selling ballards to Charles II and the Dukes of Buckingham and Rochester
Beryl not only secured a lifetime’s pay-check from the Palace for her entanglement with Harry, she had the last laugh too. The child wasn’t Harry’s at all, and if he’d bothered to count the months from one to nine, he would have realised it couldn’t be.
But off the back of these strenouous bedtime activities, Beryl became rich and – later as a pioneer aviatrix – famous.
Decidedly less fortunate was Kiki Preston, glamorous scion of the super-rich Vanderbilt family who lived in Paris and snared the oversexed George, Duke of Kent on his first visit to the city of love.
Kiki was mad, bad and dangerous to know, introducing the Duke not only to her bed but to addictive substances such as cocaine and morphine. George became addicted to both the woman and her drugs.
When he returned to London Kiki followed, but emissaries of the duke’s father King George V knocked on her door and told her to go away.
She did.
Legend has it that Kiki took away not only royal money but the prince’s child. For years it was whispered that ‘Kiki had borne George a son’, and then given the child away. But for once the rumour mill was wrong – a royal bastard was indeed born in 1926, but he wasn’t George’s child – or Kiki’s.
Prince Harry, Duke of Gloucester standing behind his mother, Queen Mary and Prince Edward, Prince of Wales
Beryl Markham, with adhesive tape covering the slight cut she received in setting her plane down in Nova Scotia Bog, speaking to the press on her arrival at Floyd Bennett Field in New York City
Kiki Preston, glamorous scion of the super-rich Vanderbilt family who lived in Paris and snared the oversexed George, Duke of Kent
Kiki introduced George not only to her bed but to addictive substances such as cocaine and morphine
The father was, once again, the dimwit Harry, Duke of Gloucester and the mother Violet Evans, daughter of a Canadian coal magnate who came to London and, with her money and good looks, had been swept into the royal circle.
In this case, responsibility for the child was shuffled off onto a fellow cavalry officer, Ian Karslake, who married Violet and took her to Switzerland where the baby was born before being given away to an adoption agency.
The Karslake marriage soon foundered and, overcome with remorse at the loss of her only child, Violet committed suicide in 1951, gassing herself in her bedroom. By an eery and tragic coincidence, Kiki Preston had led the way by throwing herself off a New York hotel balcony five years earlier.
But by far the most bizarre royal mistress tale comes from Marjory Haddon, an electrifying brunette who bedded a prince – then got paid just £5 to go away.
Marjory was the wife of an Indian Army officer who was part of the royal entourage accompanying the future king Prince Albert Victor, known as Eddy, as he made a three-month tour of the Indian sub-continent in 1890.
That the sex-mad prince had an affair with Marjory is beyond question – lawyers for the royal family later bought back the steamy love letters he’d sent her in a desperate attempt to damp down publicity over the affair.
But for Marjory, that wasn’t enough. She came to London – abandoning her husband and three other children – claiming that her newborn son Clarence was Prince Eddy’s.
He wasn’t. But what followed was a mad, confused and dizzying tale worthy of a Hollywood movie.
Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, eldest child of the Prince of Wales later King Edward VII
Marjory met Prince Albert Victor, known as Eddy, as he made a three-month tour of the Indian subcontinent in 1890
King George V received letters demanding money with menaces, as Clarence Guy Gordon Haddon said he wouldn’t settle for less than the equivalent of £3,000 a year as the price of his silence
Haddon with a friend at court. His mother Margery claimed he was the son of Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale. He was bound over on charges of demanding money from the King by menaces
Marjory ended up in a Paddington guest house with the probable father of her child, an officer in the Kings Own Scottish Borderers, before locking horns with royal officials and demanding money and recognition.
But her royal lover Prince Eddy was already dead, whisked away at the age of 28 by influenza. Having negotiated the return of his letters, courtiers felt confident enough to order Marjory out of the country – buying her a one-way ticket back to India with just £5 spending money.
It set the beautiful temptress off on a spiral path, changing her name from Marjory to Mary to Maria – and her husbands just as often. Her husband ended the marriage, whereupon she became entangled with a local doctor which ended up with a notorious divorce case back in 1898.
Her slide down the social ladder had begun. She married another soldier – this time a non-commissioned officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment – and when that failed, a man called Gorbold who’d worked in the boot trade who took her to Australia. To ensnare him she’d chopped ten years off her age and lied about her parentage.
But soon Gorbold died and she returned to London, where in 1912 – now an alcoholic and beset by mental problems – she was arrested outside Buckingham Palace with two loaded pistols in her possession.
She said she wanted the royal family to buy two properties she owned. The one-time love of a future king had clearly lost all reason and was bundled away, never to be seen again.
That wasn’t the end of it. Marjory had convinced her son that he was a royal love-child. Born Gordon Guy Haddon, she’d added Clarence as a first name – Prince Eddy’s title was Duke of Clarence and Avondale – and as Clarence Haddon he was to cause the royal family more woe when he published a book titled ‘King George, My Uncle’, laying claim to his royal bloodline.
The madness which had infected his mother had passed to him, and after sending King George V letters demanding money with menaces, Haddon said he wouldn’t settle for less than the equivalent of £3,000 a year as the price of his silence.
‘Clarence’ threatened to walk the streets of London wearing billboards naming the King as his uncle, and was followed by Special Branch police and finally arrested. Let off with a warning, he repeated the allegations and was jailed.
He died, still believing the lies his mother had told him – that he was a royal love child – at the age of 52 in 1943.
It was time for the royal family to come up with a new strategy for dealing with abandoned mistresses.
