It I didn't know a lot about Langtry coming into this book. It is FAR too reliant on a cache of secret love letters found discovered still in their original case in , forgotten in an attic, years after her romance with the recipient. This of course is a trove, since almost all her letters were destroyed and she had released a very sanitized autobiography at the twilight of her career. But I think the author puts far too much importance on these and to the man which they were sent--a family friend who may have been the father of her daughter.
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Though in reading this book, well there were lots of candidates for a Maury Povich like DNA test, since she wasn't sure who of the at least 5 men potentially were the father. Who knows who the love of her life was? Or if that is even the right question to be asking about Lillie, who was only really constant in her inconsistency in personal relationships. I didn't really see the tragedy at all and I am sure Lillie's response would have been her catchphrase "Let us not fuss, please.
The last 30 or so years of her life get rushed through in almost a chapter--the bitch daughter who finds out who her father might have been potentially Lord Mountbatten's father on her wedding day and cuts her mother off. Langtry rejecting Oscar Wilde after his scandalous downfall though in looking up the timeline, she was in US touring during that time, so unsure just what help she could have given him --later the author mentions how she always set an empty place for him at her table, even as an old lady.
In the s, one guest scolded her for this, reminding her that Wilde was gay like she didn't know , with her rejoinder of "You fool, you don't understand. Oscar was a very versatile man. The book doesn't even mention Roy Bean anywhere, which in googling, I guess makes sense, since she never did meet the man who named Langtry, Texas after her--but she did visit the namesake town later on.
Where Beatty sees a sad story of washed up old woman, I saw a vindication of WILL and the nascent power of celebrity, since Lillie Langtry was one of the first super stars really. She even has a Lana Turner-esque discovery story, but instead of found sipping a soda at the counter, she was wearing a black dress her only dress in the park and literally stopped traffic with her looks another one with violet eyes.
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The poor daughter of a dissolute Jersey preacher, married to a drunken idler "fat and uninteresting" was everyone's summation of her husband , she caught the eye of famous artists in that black dress, becoming the muse of Whistler, all of the pre-Raphaelites, which led to her being assiduously courted by socialites and nobility for their dinner parties. I guess she lived in the perfect age for herself. All the bed hopping at those insanely fancy parties held in honor for the future King, all the decadence of the gay 90s, the wasp waists, the intrigues and status climbing--when it did collapse for her--pregnant the only one NOT in running for father was the increasingly drunken lout of a husband , owing vast sums of money, her reputation in tatters--others were destroyed by it.
But not Lillie and I have to say King Edward comes off well here--he always had her back and supported her in her low points--and not just him--when scandalmongers were giving her trouble, Princess Alexandra showed up to ride in the park with her, as a show of solidarity, which is pretty nice of a wife who not really supportive of her husband's cheating to do for a mistress. Sure, that could have been done to cover up problems in her own marriage, but it does seem like Alexandra genuinely liked her she had her over privately after his death and gave his dog to her and she had to be one of the few mistresses to meet Victoria as well.
But when the parties were over, no money, no husband, pregnant, she looked around and saw that the only job that paid a ton of money at the time for women was acting. She got tips from Bernhardt who told her just how much money she had made on her tour to US and coaching from Ellen Terry and became an actress.
It appears she was never one of the GREAT thespians, but her fame at that point ensured thousands lining up to see her world over, and it turns out she was great at making money and besides her famous looks, her other quality was being able to take criticism and constantly worked to become better at her craft. Her tours were so successful, she learned what Bernhardt did before her--at a certain level of notoriety, it doesn't matter and in fact just makes people even more eager to line up for tickets.
The biographer of this book is not removed at all. And I'll quote one passage among several I found problematic: They are, all of them, successes and failures alike, just the dirt that stuck to her chariot wheels as she passed. They neither reflect her inner self, nor change it. They are acted out at one remove, by an adopted self. For Lillie was set on her course. Her decisions were made and there was no going back. The events of the latter part of her life, though superficially dazzling, are the currency of her terrible exchange: As such, they are almost irrelevant.
But no, that's far too "masculine" and the latter part of the book is ruined with all sorts of extremely sexist comparisons. She got into horse training and races and was the only woman to own her own stables and was the only woman allowed into the all male Jockey Club rule got around by giving her membership as "Mr. Is professionalism a male only attribute? And I guess we'll ignore that at the beginning at least, all the support and help she received from women in training for the stage and the example they set for her.
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So naturally field day with the press at that juxtaposition and author too alas her "masculine" ways! Isn't he the tragedy? But again, maybe living life on the rails was his dream too, who knows? Apr 12, Dvora rated it really liked it Shelves: I'm glad I chose this biography over her own memoir, as it seems that she portrayed her life as she wanted it seen, and not as close to reality as I would have liked, having left out of it the love of her life, her affair with the Prince of Wales, and many other people and events that are important to know if one wants to get a good idea of what her life was like and what kin I was inspired by the BBC drama series Lillie Langtry starring Francesca Annis to read about this most interesting woman.
I'm glad I chose this biography over her own memoir, as it seems that she portrayed her life as she wanted it seen, and not as close to reality as I would have liked, having left out of it the love of her life, her affair with the Prince of Wales, and many other people and events that are important to know if one wants to get a good idea of what her life was like and what kind of person she was.
I thought the Beatty book was excellent and enjoyed reading it. The story of Lillie Langtry's life reads much like a novel! Aug 09, Helen Carolan rated it did not like it. Well this is a couple of days of my life I'll never get back. Love biographies but not this one.
Lillie Langtry: Manners, Masks, and Morals by Laura Beatty (1999, Book, Illustrated)
When it's so boring that it leaves you indifferent to the subject, you know you're reading a stinker. Feb 26, Starry rated it liked it Shelves: I don't normally read biographies and had never heard of Lillie Langtry. So I have no idea what made me buy this book several years ago. But I rediscovered it on my bookshelves and gave it a read. It's interesting but sad to hear about the rougher edges of the upper crust Victorian society.
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And Lillie's life certainly displays the folly and muck along with the gilded living of the gentry and exciting times in the artistic community. But Lillie's meteoric rise based on her charm and beauty and I don't normally read biographies and had never heard of Lillie Langtry. But Lillie's meteoric rise based on her charm and beauty and her sordid descent make for a depressing read. Mar 17, Sarah Crawford rated it really liked it. This is a well done biography.
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It goes into her entire life and the people that she met and interacted with. Arthur Jones may or may not have been the father of her secret child; it was just as likely that Jeanne was the daughter of the Prince of Wales or Louis Battenberg. But he accepted the role, from something of a distance, and while she hid in Jersey she wrote the letters that suggest to Beatty that he was the real love of her life. Please promise not to. You are very unkind not to write to me The sea is dreadfully rough.
You must try to get back to help me more To care for me whatever happens. Given the circumstances the Prince of Wales supplied money and kept the bamboozled husband out of the way, but he was not going to admit paternity; Battenberg was sent overseas for a year by his alarmed family , it could as well have been that she was desperate to keep him standing by her and the baby. In the end, however, she knew from her experience of going home to find the bailiffs sitting in the hallway and Ned dead drunk upstairs, that someone had to earn a living, and if it was to be her it would be at the expense of romantic love.
Jones was no better a bet than her other lovers — she had execrable taste in men or had the misfortune to be the taste of execrable men — gambling and drinking and making vague promises of his presence while she begged him to visit her in her seclusion and depression and take charge of her life. So Jones faded out and Lillie pulled herself together. It was, you might think, no more than survival, what anyone must do when there is no one and nothing to fall back on. When her social and artistic triumph waned, she took acting lessons from Ellen Terry, knowing herself to be no natural on stage, but marketing her beauty and notoriety as she had to.
She took off for and stormed America and its cattle and railroad millionaires and when that palled, she returned home, adjusted to reality yet again and played the music halls.
Lillie Langtry : manners, masks and morals / Laura Beatty - Details - Trove
Finally, in her fifties, exchanging a fading mask of beauty for a mask of masculinity, she took up a life of racing. Since the Jockey Club only admitted men, she became Mr Jersey in order to race her stable of horses. Beatty, positively smacking her lips, sees some form of nemesis in this: She towers, inappropriately in white lace, over slight young men at Goodwood, or stamps down the London pavements military style, lantern-jawed, heavily upholstered, arms swinging, toes turned out. Gone are the soft smile, the curves and the sleepily sensuous eyes. Now she is angry and huge and male.
Proof perhaps that devotion of the heart is good for the complexion. This optics-defying arrangement sustained them at a time and in a place when little else did; it was the first in what was to be a repertoire of deceptive techniques, for which the couple had only begun their magic act. Thereafter for more than fifty years she earned money, typed, edited, corrected, corresponded for, drove, agented, protected, cleared snow from the car, and whole-heartedly agreed about everything with the man of whom she made her life.
Their son, Dmitri, was given residential rights, though he must have felt an exile of another kind. They never settled anywhere their final 30 years in a hotel in Montreux was to both of them provisional except with each other.
When a friend suggested she needed a rest she responded: She conducted his life with the world at large; sometimes she signed his name to letters she wrote, at others it was V. Those in the know addressed themselves to the complete set: Unlike her husband, she was a double exile: She lost no opportunity to remind the Gentile world that she was Jewish. We pay no attention to such things.
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Who told you we did? I am very proud of my ancestry which actually is Jewish. I must admit that if M. Please answer this question frankly. It is a very important one for me.