More Langtry

With BH continuing, off and on, to read reference 1, and our watching, perhaps for the third time, but also off and on, the television series of reference 2, I happened to wonder whether Osbert Sitwell, the writer of a  long autobiography, long on society and arty gossip, gave Mrs. Langtry air time.

The answer seems to be no, probably because she was rather before his time. But Bertie gets a few mentions in the first three volumes, going missing for the fourth. While Oscar Wilde gets two, first as the creator of a nasty remark about a society lady and second as the author of a poem - Salome - that Sitwell greatly admired as an adolescent. Text plus Pacino visuals now on the way from Amazon.

The painter Whistler was known to both Sitwell and Langtry, while Sargent, almost an exact contemporary of Langtry, does not seem to have done her - although he did do a rather curious family group for the Sitwells. Perhaps he didn't think that she was proper society - might put off his bread and butter clientèle - or perhaps she didn't care to have to pay. While Sitwell's money was practically old money, being rooted in coal from under the family estates from the 18th century.

Which was perhaps why he seems a bit snooty about the vulgar displays of wealth in the years between the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 and the start of the First World War something over a decade later. With all the overdressed (or underdressed) new money fawning on the owners of fancy titles who had gone through all their old money years before. Maybe vulgar but also symbiotic.

Maybe another ingredient in the mix was Sitwell's father being decidedly odd and keeping him on rather shorter rations than he thought he deserved. Which meant that he was not a fully paid up member of society at all.

PS: Bing turned up this 1884 snap from Mrs. Langtry's days on Broadway. Which does nothing to shake my belief that she might have been a society beauty in her day - but that tastes have changed since then. I do not find many photographs of her attractive at all. With thanks to the National Portrait Gallery for use of this one. I wonder if it is open again after its refurbishment? A place I used to visit from time to time after buying cheese at Seven Dials next door. This last being another den of iniquity in its day, getting, as I recall, a mention in at least one of John Buchan's novels.

References

Reference 1: The Prince and the Lily: The story of Edward VII and Lillie Langtry – James Brough – 1975.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie_(TV_series).

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osbert_Sitwell. 1892-1969. Four volume autobiography published 1943-1949.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie_Langtry. 1853-1929. No longer the reigning beauty, rather the proprietress of a racing stable while Osbert was growing up.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde. 1854-1900.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VII. 1841-1910. Bertie.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_V. 1865-1936. Bertie's second son. Married his elder brother's fiancee, after the former's early death from pneumonia (amongst other failings).

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Abbott_McNeill_Whistler. 1834-1903. Moderately successful as a society portrait painter.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Singer_Sargent. 1856-1925. Another expatriate from the US. Rather more successful as a society portrait painter.