The official website for BBC History Magazine
Did Queen Victoria and John Brown have a SECRET child?
A clandestine royal marriage and a secret baby smuggled to distant shores: is this the true story of the relationship behind Queen Victoria and her Highland servant, John Brown?
In conversation with HistoryExtra’s Ellie Cawthorne, historian Dr Fern Riddell presents her groundbreaking research into one of the most tantalising royal rumours in British history. In this video, Riddell explores decades of speculation and overlooked evidence, sharing how she went in pursuit of the truth when writing her new book Victoria’s Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen (Ebury, 2025). The official line has long cast Brown as merely a devoted servant and friend, but new sources – including intimate letters, photographs, and a forgotten family archive – paint a far more romantic (and possibly scandalous) picture. Even more striking are the signs of a child curiously unmentioned in the royal record but treated with unusual importance by the Queen. Was this child hers? Riddell weighs up newly uncovered documents and historical context that offers a compelling challenge to the long-held narrative of Queen Victoria’s widowhood – and opens the door to one of the most explosive theories in royal history. View Green Video on the source website
Tudor love and sex: inside the 16th-century bedroom
In the final episode of her Tudor Life series, Ruth Goodman explores love, sex and marriage in Tudor England
When it came to sex, the Tudors had plenty to say — about what was acceptable, what wasn’t, and how it should be controlled. In the final episode of Tudor Life, Ruth Goodman explores relationships in the 16th century View Green Video on the source website Enjoyed this video? Ruth is hosting a live Q&A for HistoryExtra members on 19 November 2025 at 7pm (GMT). Find out more here Want more from Ruth? Find more episodes of Tudor life here Ruth Goodman is a historian of the social and domestic life of Britain. She has advised the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Globe Theatre and presented a number of BBC television series, including Victorian Farm
What did the Tudors think was ‘good’ sex? These tips and tricks were key to relationships in the 16th century
From the importance of female pleasure to why you might need ribbons in the bedroom, historian Ruth Goodman explores the world of Tudor sex
Is there any better way to understand the deadly politics and high drama of the Tudor era than through the lens of their audacious romantic entanglements? After all, King Henry VIII had six wives, instigating the Reformation in the name of love (and presumably lust, too), meanwhile Queen Elizabeth I grew a cult of personality around her virginity, developing it into a sharp instrument of power and control. Sex, or lack thereof, was clearly important to the Tudor royals. But away from the courts of kings and queens, what role did intimate romance play in the lives of ordinary Tudors; the people who were farmers, millers, bakers and blacksmiths? What did they get up to in the bedroom, and what was the role of sex in their lives? Good vs bad sex “[Sex] was seriously important to people in Tudor Britain,” says Ruth Goodman, speaking in her newest HistoryExtra Academy course, Tudor Life, “it marked the moment of adulthood. A single person [as opposed to someone who was married] wasn’t considered to be fully adult”. Watch now | Ruth Goodman on Tudor life As a watershed moment in a person’s life, sex was incredibly important, both practically and symbolically. However, it wasn’t necessarily straightforward – there were social norms that dictated how people should be having sex. Sex was only considered ‘good’ if it took place within marriage and, as Goodman explains, “so long as it fulfilled one of two purposes: one was to bond a couple together, and the other was procreation”. No matter what sort of sex it was, if it happened outside of the marital bed, it was immoral. Anything that fell outside of the “traditional marriage picture of a man and a woman creating babies” was a transgression and ‘bad’ sex. But that didn’t mean that the Tudors discouraged pleasure. The importance of pleasure One of the main Tudor beliefs about sex was that a woman could only conceive if she was enjoying the act, and this would ideally include a female orgasm. “Just as a man needed to be interested in order to produce seed, a woman needed to be interested in order for that union to occur”, explains Goodman. It may seem surprising that there was such a focus on women’s pleasure in what was a largely patriarchal society. But, while some good husbands may have used this belief to ensure their wives had a good time, there were some more sinister repercussions to this too. “The bad side of [this belief] is that if a woman is forced [to have sex] and she conceives, then nobody in society believes she was raped; they think she must have been enjoying it,” explains Goodman. So, while female pleasure was considered to be a crucial part of sex, and essential to procreation, it was a double-edged sword that had inadvertent negative consequences too. Getting the position right But pleasure wasn’t the only thing needed for procreation, according to Tudor ideas about sex. There was some biological backing to their understanding of reproduction too. “It’s thought in the Tudor period that a woman’s reproductive organs are a mirror image of a man’s … if you want to have children, you should [be positioned in] a nice straight line to allow the seed to get where it needs to go”, says Goodman. Read more | The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love This meant that the ultimate position to optimise conception was the missionary position. The idea was that the straighter the couple’s bodies were lined up, the more likely they were to conceive. “Any [position] in which the bodies were bent, particularly a woman’s body, which might prohibit the movement of the seed [was] not so good,” notes Goodman. It wasn’t just the position of the couple that mattered, though. The Tudors had detailed notions about how the testicles affected the success of conception and the gender of the baby. Tudor understandings of the body proposed that the right-hand side of the heart carried fresh, more vigorous blood around the body, so the right side had more energy than the left. It followed that the more ‘powerful’ right testicle would therefore be responsible for creating male children – and the left, female. As we know from Henry VIII’s succession crisis, having male babies was of great importance. So, what did Tudor men do if they wanted to ensure a male heir? Well, as Goodman reveals, “if you wanted to be sure of having a boy, it was a really good idea to tie a ribbon around the left-hand testicle, just to ensure that the correct seed made the journey”. Although we now know that this would not have had any impact on a baby’s sex, it’s intriguing to think that men in the 16th century – including King Henry VIII himself – may have been tying ribbons around their genitals in an attempt to conceive a much-wanted boy. What did Tudors think was sexy? While the main reason for sex in the 16th century was to conceive a child, that doesn’t mean people were only having sex to procreate. Many couples were simply in love and just wanted to have fun. To do that, they had to be attracted to each other. But what was considered sexy in the Tudor period? According to Ruth, linen was considered a very sexy material because it was the “layer that sits next to the skin, [highlighting] that intimacy between you and your clothes”. Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn't know about Tudor fashion The same principle applied to a woman’s hair. As something that would usually be either covered or pinned back in polite society, a woman unveiling her hair to a man was considered a great honour and an intense act of intimacy. “A woman’s hair is her crowning glory and her husband’s delight”, says Goodman. “It is a private sexual pleasure, not something to be shown to [just anyone]”. For Tudor women, they might be drawn to a man’s legs. Those tight stockings that are a familiar image of the Tudor period were a way for men to show off the shape of their “nicely turned calf”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/10/HM0CN5CALF-ee388bc.jpg" width="1552" height="1610" alt="A painting showing a man dressed in white stockings and a dark brown doublet and cape. He has an orange beard. He is standing in a marble arch, surrounded by marble statues and two red and blue shields" title="A 1546 portrait of Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard, sporting the characteristic tight Tudor stockings (Image by Alamy)" /> The Tudors had rules – but they weren’t prudes With all these rules and expectations, and the notion that hair and calves were sexy, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Tudors were prudes. In reality, they were quite open about sex. Tudor society had its deep-rooted beliefs about what sex was for, who could have it and how they should do it, but they weren’t shy about it. As Goodman explains, “The Tudor world was not particularly prissy. There was an awful lot of talk, and quite open talk, about relations between men and women, about attractiveness and sexiness”. Want to step even further into the world of the Tudors? In her brand-new HistoryExtra Academy series, Ruth Goodman takes you inside everyday life in the 16th century — from food and fashion to faith, work, and even love and marriage. The first three episodes are available now on the HistoryExtra app, with more to come soon. Start watching today Want to ask Ruth a question? Join our live virtual Q&A on 19 November. Find out more here
His diaries are revered for their kaleidoscopic evocation of Restoration England. Yet a fresh analysis of Pepys’ world-famous journals – carried out by Guy de la Bédoyère – reveals a man with a proclivity for coercion and sexual violence
Samuel Pepys is England’s most celebrated diarist. Between 1 January 1660 and 31 May 1669, he recorded his day-to-day life in fascinating and illuminating detail. He wrote about his relationship with his wife, Elizabeth, and the frustrations of managing his household and the servants. He left first-hand accounts of the plague epidemic that likely claimed around 100,000 lives in the capital in 1665–66, and of the Great Fire of London that followed. He has come down through the years as one of the key primary sources for anyone trying to understand the early Restoration era. But there was a dark side to Pepys’ writings, which was never intended to be made public. He described a sordid litany of sexual encounters ranging from his relationships with long-term mistresses to his assaults on maids, including members of his own staff. In an era when corruption was commonplace, Pepys also wrote about using his position as a civilian naval official to coerce sexual services from women seeking promotion for their husbands or payment of unpaid wages. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-660416773webready-b8ec9d0.jpg" width="3680" height="2453" alt="London blazes in a colourised woodcut depicting the Great Fire of 1666, published the following year. Pepys’ diaries include valuable first-hand accounts of such events – but also explicit details of his often troubling personal activities (Image by Getty Images)" title="London blazes in a colourised woodcut depicting the Great Fire of 1666, published the following year. Pepys’ diaries include valuable first-hand accounts of such events – but also explicit details of his often troubling personal activities (Image by Getty Images)" /> Take the events of 18 February 1667, a day when Pepys met in his office with Elizabeth Burrows, who was around 30 years old and the widow of a naval lieutenant killed in action in 1665. Pepys had promised her financial assistance. His diary entry – tellingly, one omitted from editions published in the 19th century, and which appeared without its meaning explained in the 1970s edition – describes what happened. “Yo had Mrs Burrows all sola a my closet and did there besar and tocar su mamelles as much as yo quisere hasta a hazer me hazer, but ella would not suffer that yo should poner mi mano abaxo ses jupes which yo endeavoured. [I had Mrs Burrows all alone in my closet and did there kiss and touch her breasts as much as I wanted until making myself do, but she would not suffer that I should put my hand below her skirts which I endeavoured.] Thence away, and with my wife by coach to the Duke of York’s playhouse.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/GettyImages-526930024webready-ba9bbfe.jpg" width="1500" height="1977" alt="A black and white image of a young woman with curly hair tied back. She is wearing a low cut dress and has her arm across her lap, holding a plant stalk" title="Elizabeth Pepys, depicted in an engraving of a contemporary portrait. She died aged just 29, after nearly 14 years of marriage (Image by Getty Images)" /> The description is typically offhand. That Pepys went to collect his wife, also Elizabeth, immediately afterwards is astonishing. The mix of English and foreign words was a deliberate tactic, as we will see. Pepys tended to avoid specifics in his writing, and often used indirect references to sexual details, but the meaning of “making myself do” is obvious. Ignoring infidelities Why isn’t this unpleasant side of Pepys’ character better known? It helps to understand that, in the past, diary transcribers and some biographers often depicted these activities as recreational capers – or simply ignored them altogether. The full extent and implications of Pepys’ self-confessed adulterous activities, including the coercion and sexual violence, were often glossed over and evaded. It’s a story further complicated by the history behind the publication of the diary text, sections of which first appeared in print in 1825. Pepys wrote the diary in Tachygraphy, a commercial form of shorthand devised by Thomas Shelton in the early 17th century – a time when such abbreviated forms of writing were extremely popular. Shelton’s system uses symbols for consonants, prefixes and suffixes, and arbitrary symbols to represent specific words. Medial (middle) vowels were not normally written, but instead were indicated by the positioning of later consonants in a word. (I have been using Tachygraphy for more than 20 years in my everyday life.) Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about Samuel Pepys Pepys’ diary was not strictly ‘secret’ – but, when it came to his adulterous activities, he was worried that someone might realise what he had written about. In 1664, when his recorded infidelities become more frequent, Pepys resorted to writing parts of the key sentences in French. But he soon found that Shelton’s shorthand was unsuited to French – unlike Spanish, which has fewer vowel sounds. He therefore began to use a mixture of foreign languages: French and Spanish were preferred, but words from Italian, Portuguese, Latin and Greek also crop up in his entries. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/6-volumes-of-diarywebready-07b7f70.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="Five dark brown books with gold insignia on the front, with one open book, covered in writing" title="Pepys wrote his diaries (above) in a form of shorthand called Tachygraphy, incorporating words from other languages to further obscure his meaning (Image by Pepys Library, Magdalene College)" /> Pepys’ graphic accounts of his sexual activities horrified previous transcribers and editors of the diary. The 19th-century editions generally omitted such material, although the editors alluded to the excised filth in their introductions, so readers were left titillated but none the wiser. “Have faith in the judgment of the editor,” pleaded Henry Wheatley, whose 1890s edition of the 1870s transcription by the Reverend Mynors Bright remained in print for decades. By the late 1950s, plans were afoot to publish the whole, unexpurgated diary text in a transcription by Robert Latham and William Matthews, but legislation around obscene publications presented an obstacle. Then, in 1960, Penguin published the first unexpurgated UK edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence. In the landmark court case that followed, lawyers successfully argued that a provision in the Obscene Publications Act 1959 allowed publishers a defence for works of literary merit, and Penguin was acquitted. That verdict opened the way for Pepys’ full diaries to be made public. Even then, lawyers urged restraint. In the event, Latham and Matthews decided to publish the whole text but not to analyse or translate any of Pepys’ polyglot. Nor would they flag up which passages were previously unpublished. Their edition, appearing throughout the 1970s and the early 1980s, has always been regarded as the definitive text – which, to a large extent, it is. Out of kilter When I embarked on a project to analyse and translate the controversial passages in 2024, I realised that avoiding doing so in the 1970s edition had resulted in some dubious readings of the polyglot being printed. Unlike my predecessors, I was able to magnify scans of the diary and scrutinise them in unprecedented detail. In doing so, I found that the correct readings were largely obvious and could be tracked easily to contemporary French or Spanish dictionaries that Pepys owned. Using such methods, I made my own fresh transcriptions from the original shorthand and translated them. This was laborious but revelatory, and led me to discover other ways in which Pepys disguised his meanings. In May 1667, while writing in the shorthand, he started adding what previous transcribers called “dummy letters” or “extraneous consonants” to certain English words, though very rarely applying this to the polyglot. One of the best examples is maladimen hered, which Pepys wrote (in shorthand) to represent ‘maidenhead’. Not one of the earlier transcribers realised that this method had been devised by the polymath clergyman John Wilkins (1614–72) and explained in his Mercury, or The Secret and Swift Messenger (1641). A copy of this book that belonged to Pepys is shelved near the diary volumes in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Pepys had several other books by Wilkins, and greatly admired him. As I worked through Pepys’ diary, transcribing and translating these controversial passages, I realised that these were the private revelations of a man who had what seemed to be a neuro-psychological form of addiction. When he was in what he called his “hot humour”, by his own admission he sought out any woman he could find. And on at least two occasions he raped one of them. Elizabeth Bagwell was the wife of William, a naval carpenter whose father, Owen, was yard foreman at Deptford royal dockyard. Conducting official business, Pepys frequently visited that site, where he spotted Elizabeth – and the Bagwells spotted Pepys, too. They wanted to secure positions for William, and used Elizabeth as a honeytrap. Was she willing to play the part? We can’t know – but father and son both pushed the young Mrs Bagwell on Pepys, who admired what he thought was her virtue while at the same time being determined to wear her down. Read more | Alternate history: what if the Great Fire of London never happened? Pepys understood the transactional nature of this relationship. He found William jobs in Charles II’s navy – but, in return, he wanted Mrs Bagwell’s services. Whether she realised the risks of what she was being forced to do is impossible to know. But then came a day when Pepys could restrain himself no longer. On 20 December 1664, he wrote, he “walked to Deptford where after doing something at the yard I walked, without being observed, with Bagwell home to his house and there was very kindly used, and the poor people did get a dinner for me in their fashion. Of which I also eat very well. After dinner I found occasion of sending him abroad, and then alone avec elle je tentoy à ferer ce que je vodre et contre sa force je le fesoy, bien que pas à mon contentement [alone with her, I tried to do what I would like and against her resistance I did it, although not to my full satisfaction].” Pepys had clearly raped Elizabeth Bagwell. On the evening of 20 February 1665, he again headed to Deptford and “it being dark did privately entrer en la maison de la femme de Bagwell [enter the house of Bagwell’s wife], and there had sa company, though with a great deal of difficulty, néanmoins enfin j’avais ma volonté d’elle [nevertheless, in the end I had my will of her].” The following day, Pepys nursed an injured finger: it seems he’d used force on Mrs Bagwell, who had clearly done everything possible to fight back. Controlling behaviour These horrifying episodes were conducted during the course of Pepys’ professional duties, and while he was married. He loved his wife, Elizabeth, passionately but also gaslit her, often denying her money and controlling her behaviour. She was so unhappy that she wrote down her concerns, only for Pepys to destroy her papers on 9 January 1663. On 19 December 1664, he became enraged by her challenges to his authority, and hit her so hard that she was left with a visible injury over one eye. Elizabeth Pepys, who was half-French, died in November 1669, aged just 29, having contracted a fever – probably typhoid while on a trip to Paris and the Low Countries with Samuel. This followed a debacle the previous autumn when Elizabeth had caught him touching the genitals of her 18-year-old companion, Deb Willet, with whom Pepys had been obsessed ever since she came to work for them in 1667. It sent Elizabeth into a paroxysm of rage that lasted months. Pepys was contrite, but continued to seek out Deb, who had fled. Having found her, he forced himself upon her again. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/gr0099194webreadyH-2-1ea86dd.jpg" width="3109" height="2073" alt="Pepys with his wife, Elizabeth, depicted at home in a 19th-century coloured engraving. Their relationship was often fraught: Pepys reacted violently to what he saw as her challenges to his authority, on one occasion leaving her with a visible injury above her eye (Image by TopFoto)" title="Pepys with his wife, Elizabeth, depicted at home in a 19th-century coloured engraving. Their relationship was often fraught: Pepys reacted violently to what he saw as her challenges to his authority, on one occasion leaving her with a visible injury above her eye (Image by TopFoto)" /> He also returned to his other mistresses, among them Betty Martin and her younger sister, Doll, milliners who worked at Westminster. Betty, nearly 24 when Pepys first mentioned her at the beginning of the diary, had long been his most regular mistress, and seems to have been willing and pragmatic. By the early 1660s, though, he was encouraging her to marry. When she did wed one Samuel Martin, she worked on Pepys to give her husband a position as a naval purser. He obliged, and was even godfather to one of her children. Despite the abuse and exploitation to which she had been subjected, Deb Willet married a client of Pepys called Jeremiah Wells, had two daughters, and lived near Pepys in London until her premature death in 1678. Pepys helped Jeremiah, who died in 1679, with his career in the church. Did Pepys’ pursuit continue during the marriage? Certainly, Deb had been confronted with a dilemma that so many women faced during this era: her security was tied up with her husband’s employment. We will never know if Pepys pursued the relationship, because he had ceased writing his diary on 31 May 1669. By extracting all of these entries in sequence, the patterns of Pepys’ sex life have become easier to follow. He loved women, but also treated them as chattels. He revelled in the exuberant company of the actress Elizabeth Knepp: “I… got her upon my knee (the coach being full) and played with her breasts and sung, and at last set her at her house and so good night.” He routinely did the same to his maids and other people’s servants. One mistake easily made is to assume that the diary is a comprehensive record of Pepys’ activities. He once referred to his antics with Betty Martin’s sister Doll, a decade her junior, and that he had been with her “100 times”. Though that was obviously metaphorical, it and other comments suggest that the diary records only a fraction of his philandering. Read more | Agony and adventure: the hidden histories inside women's diaries Pepys was so over-sexed that he masturbated in public places. At the Queen’s Chapel on Christmas Eve 1667, “I did make myself to do la cosa [the thing] by mere imagination mirando a jolie móça [looking on a pretty wench] and with my eyes open which I never did before. And God forgive me for it, it being in the chapel.” Read those two lines back out loud and you will spot another aspect of the diary that has escaped comment. Pepys used alliteration, metre and rhymes often in these controversial passages, suggesting that he took a perverse pleasure in composing them. Alliteration is so conspicuous in the polyglot sexual passages that it’s amazing it has gone unnoticed hitherto. Lost voices The tragedy is that nothing written down by any of the women in his life – even by his humiliated and angry wife – has survived. However, modern online genealogical resources (such as ancestry.co.uk and familysearch.org) unavailable to previous editors have made it possible to trace some new details. These women were trapped in a society where their autonomy was limited. They were treated – and expected to be treated – as commodities. Mrs Bagwell was still visiting Pepys’ office when she was in her forties, two decades after their initial encounter, seeking positions for her husband. Pepys, then Secretary of the Admiralty, wrote her husband a letter telling him to stop his wife. Even so, Pepys helped William Bagwell throughout the rest of his career; the latter died as a master shipwright in 1697, and Mrs Bagwell passed away in 1702, a well-to-do widow. Was that really any consolation to her? We shall never know. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/09/AKG7770684webready-e35e02b.jpg" width="1500" height="1837" alt="A painting of a man in a brown shirt with white scarf and cuffs. He is looking directly at the viewer and is holding a piece of music in his left hand" title="John Hayls’ 1666 portrait of Pepys. The diarist’s “graphic honesty made him a man of disturbing contradictions”, writes Guy de la Bédoyère (Image by AKG)" /> It’s clear that Pepys was a bully, a vain and philandering hypocrite, and a domineering and mean-minded husband. He was capable of sexual violence as well as being coercive, deceitful and manipulative. He groomed his female targets into submission, and disregarded their feelings. He was easily manipulated by others who spotted his inclinations. He also routinely beat his servants. Yet he was equally capable of generosity, compassion and love. His enduring loyalty was one of his most edifying characteristics. He was meticulous, exceptionally well organised and a superb administrator. He had an overwhelming, if credulous, curiosity about life, and a well-developed appreciation of art and music. He was an invigorating individual and was manifestly held in great esteem by many of his contemporaries. Pepys’ graphic honesty made him a man of disturbing contradictions. Yet the treatment of that diary in previous editions, all to a greater or lesser extent suppressing his least edifying characteristics, has created an image of Pepys that has falsified his own witnessing of his life. Now, with this side of his life laid bare as he wrote it himself, at last we have a fuller picture of the truth. Pepys died in 1703, highly esteemed by many other luminaries of the period, none apparently aware of his controversial private life as a younger man. Had his secrets emerged, his reputation and career could have been destroyed. He had hidden in plain sight – but left a record of the truth without parallel. Guy de la Bédoyère is a historian and writer. His latest book is The Confessions of Samuel Pepys: His Private Revelations (Abacus, 2025) This article was first published in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
How I uncovered Victoria's secret love: Historian Fern Riddell explains all
There have long been whispers of a romance between the queen and her Scottish servant John Brown, but nothing concrete to support them. Now Fern Riddell, author of an explosive new book, reveals how she turned sleuth to track down evidence of their secret passion
The story that’s consumed my life for much of the past few years has it all: family dysfunction, political intrigue, royalty, the rewriting of our national history. A secret hidden for generations. These are the sort of things historians can get carried away by. When we’re undertaking historical research, it often becomes clear that the relationship between fact and fiction can be a murky one. There’s often a gap between what we want the truth to be and the reality of the lives that have been lived. So it was with my latest project. After four months of research, I couldn’t quite believe what I’d uncovered. I’d been tracing the footsteps of both historians and historical people, and I was finally convinced that what I’d found came close to representing irrefutable proof of a remarkable secret – one offering an answer to a 160-year-old question. But making the breakthrough didn’t come without risk – one faced by nearly every historian who had got so far before me, and who turned back at the final hurdle, unable to bring their research to light. WATCH | Fern Riddell on her quest to discover the secrets of Victoria's later love life View Green Video on the source website So, before I pushed ahead, I called a trusted friend and mentor to discuss what I thought I’d discovered. “I’ve found it,” I exclaimed. “I’ve found the lost archive of Queen Victoria and John Brown.” Royal inspiration Towards the end of 2021, my agent, Kirsty McLachlan, had set me a challenge. “You need a new project,” she declared. “What can you say about Queen Victoria?” “I don’t do the royals,” I retorted, instantly rejecting the suggestion. “Anyway, most royal historians face censorship the moment they find anything interesting.” My focus has always been on the stories of ordinary people – what we call ‘history from below’. These are the lives that fascinate me, not those of the wealthy and powerful. Victoria felt like a lost cause. After all, what could be left to discover about one of history’s most famous women? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/TOPFOTO-hip2652872-2webready-c8032de.jpg" width="1500" height="916" alt="A painting shows Queen Victoria dressed all in black on top of a black horse. To the left, John Brown, dressed in black with a kilt, stands holding the horse's reign. By him, two dogs lay on the ground. On the far left, two women, dressed in blue and beige are seated on a bench. In the background, there is a large yellow manor house" title="A painting of Victoria and John Brown at Osborne House, her private family home on the Isle of Wight, in 1865. Brown began accompanying the queen more frequently after Albert’s death, first joining her at Osborne in 1864 (Image by TopFoto)" /> But there has always been something fascinating about Queen Victoria. She is an enigma: a woman who became the cornerstone of an empire, a queen, a wife, a mother and an icon of an entire age. Her life with her husband, Prince Albert, has been the subject of multiple dramas and documentaries, as has her grief-stricken widowhood after his death in 1861, aged only 42. But what this passionate mother of nine did for her own comfort in the lonely decades that followed has only been whispered about, until now. There have long been rumours surrounding Queen Victoria’s relationship with her Scottish Highland servant, John Brown. Were they lovers? Did they marry in secret? Did they even have a child together? However, no one had been able to establish the truth. This, I decided, was something that piqued my curiosity – a thread to pull and see where it led. John Brown is often relegated to a footnote in Victoria’s history, glossed over as a servant, or awkwardly portrayed as ‘just a friend’. Yet for almost 20 years he stood at Victoria’s side as her “strong right arm”, her “best friend” – and, as I discovered, her “beloved John” and her “true and devoted one”. But as I carefully set out on my research, I had little comprehension of the journey I was about to take, nor the astonishing secret it would reveal. Read more | “There was a general perception that Queen Victoria’s mourning was neither normal nor acceptable” Searching for sources With the thought of perhaps writing about Victoria’s mid-life, I ordered every book ever written about John Brown. Modern historians have long believed this to be a pointless effort, knowing that most of John’s original documents – his diaries, letters and more – were destroyed by members of Victoria’s court after his death in 1883. But I felt sure that something must remain somewhere. I started with Queen Victoria’s John Brown by EEP Tisdall, which was published in 1938. It’s gossipy and fun, but entirely devoid of references or sources – useless for my purposes, except for insights into how John was seen 50 years after his death. Next up was Tom Cullen’s The Empress Brown: The Story of a Royal Friendship, released some three decades later. This turned out to be a goldmine. In its pages are a series of letter facsimiles from Victoria, the original documents faithfully reproduced for readers. They showcase such a tenderness between Victoria and John, as well as his family, and I felt an itch – a historian’s twitch – that there was much more to this history than I had been aware of before. While combing Cullen’s acknowledgements, I saw a reference to John’s descendants, and a brief mention that they held a family archive. This is also hinted at by Raymond Lamont-Brown, author of John Brown: Queen Victoria’s Highland Servant (2000). <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-514896440webready-5a9d214.jpg" width="1500" height="1000" alt="A black and white photograph of Victoria and Albert. He sits on the left, dressed in a black suit and bow tie, with one arm leaning on the back of the seat and the other holding a scroll. Victoria, dressed in a long white dress, sits on the right, looking slightly away from Albert and the camera" title="Victoria and Albert in 1854, some 14 years after the queen married her first cousin. By the time this photograph was taken, she had already borne eight of the nine children they would have together (Image by Getty Images)" /> That was when things started to become interesting. Although rumours of a family archive, kept safe by John’s surviving relatives, have long swirled, no one would say where it was held or if it still existed. This felt like a mystery I wanted to solve. These letters must be real, I thought – more than one person claimed to have seen them – yet only Cullen provided evidence. No historian since had been able to bring them into the public eye. Had they been destroyed? Lost? Or were they still out there, waiting to be found? I started by tracing John’s surviving family: the descendants of his brothers James, Donald, William, Hugh and Archie. Hugh and Hilda Lamond, grandchildren of John’s second-youngest brother Hugh, appear in historians’ acknowledgements more than once, and I became convinced that they must have been the guardians of the family archive. But their own descendants emigrated to the US in the 1970s, and I had no idea how to contact them. I reminded myself that modern historians need to be able to utilise many different tools and skill sets for our research. One of the most powerful resources we have today is the internet, providing access to digitised records. In the space of a single afternoon, using the gigantic global databases available via Ancestry and Scotland’s People, I mapped out John Brown’s entire family – including his brothers and cousins – through births, marriages, deaths and census records. This led me to Minnesota, and a burning question: did John Brown’s great-great-great-nieces still hold on to their family’s precious collection, packed carefully in moving crates, carried down the generations and now possibly on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean? Long shot At that point, the pandemic continued to hold the world in its grip. How was I to get in touch with Brown’s relatives some 4,000 miles away in the US? Genealogy can get you only so far, and I had no up-to-date contact information. And yet… might they be on Facebook? It seemed like the longest of shots but, as I typed their names into the search bar, a result flashed up instantly. A connection to the descendants of Hugh Brown – the only people who might, just possibly, hold the keys to the John Brown family archive – was right in front of me. I opened up Facebook’s messenger app and began to type, unsure if I would get a response. Eventually I hit send – and sat back to wait. Days and weeks went by, with no response from Minnesota. So I returned to the documents I could access – those letters uncovered by Cullen more than 50 years ago – for hints that some of John Brown’s papers must have survived somewhere. On a whim, I typed lines from the letters into Google – and, to my shock, a link to an archive in Aberdeen appeared. Suddenly, there it was in high definition, staring back at me: an original letter, kept safe by Aberdeen City Archives. As I gazed at the screen, the realisation slowly dawned on me that I could confirm for the first time the existence of part of the John Brown family archive. Surely it couldn’t be simply sitting there, waiting to be discovered? But I learned a long time ago that, with a history and a nation as diverse as ours, and with correspondingly bulging archives, answers are often to be found sitting in plain sight. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn't know about Victorian Britain Within an hour I found two more letters in the archives, digitised and perfunctorily labelled. There was nothing to give away their significance, no indication of their importance. But if I could confirm that at least some of the archive had survived, then might that prove there was more out there to find? And why, after John Brown’s family had kept this secret for so long, was some of it now available in a public archive with little information and no fanfare? I booked a research trip to Aberdeen. Meanwhile, I began the forensic work of raking through the city’s entire online library, collections and archives. I realised that references to John Brown, both artefacts and letters, are scattered across Aberdeen’s new Treasure Hub, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Town House archive. On my first research trip to the city, I held the original letters in my hands, reading in Victoria’s own handwriting her memories of John: “So often I told him no one loved him more than I did… and he answered, ‘nor you than me, no-one loves you more’.” I was awestruck by this powerful declaration between Victoria and John. In Town House, the team allowed me to rifle through the collection of the writer, artist and historian Fenton Wyness. I’d found a passing reference that this included some material on Brown, but what I found there astonished me. At some point in the 1950s or 1960s, Wyness – a local Aberdeenshire historian – decided to write about John Brown. Like Tom Cullen, he was given access to the John Brown family archive, which he then proceeded to photograph in its entirety. Now, in the archive in Aberdeen, I realised that a record of the letters, documents, cards and gifts from Victoria to John and his family was sitting in boxes all around me. It’s an incredible resource to study – a reference collection that is utterly unmatched. Pieces of the puzzle Over the three years that followed, as I travelled to Aberdeen and to other archives and private collections across the country, Victoria and John’s life together began to unfold. And the story is vastly different to the one we have been told before – as I reveal in my new book, Victoria’s Secret: The Private Passion of a Queen. The documents I unearthed and studied provide undeniable proof of an intense love affair and, I believe, evidence that John Brown and Victoria did indeed marry – as well as of a determined and ongoing campaign to eradicate him from her history after their deaths. The language Victoria used in her letters to describe her relationship with John deepened as the years went by. She called him her “darling one”, “faithful and devoted”, while describing herself as his “true and devoted one”. Cards she sent him, recorded in the John Brown family archive, are printed with the words “I have loved thee with an everlasting love” and poems such as “I send my sewing maiden / with new year’s letter laden, / its words will prove / my faith and love, / to you my heart’s best treasure, / then smile on her and smile on me, / and let your answer loving be / and give me pleasure.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/08/Alamy-3BJNGW8webready-262dc4c.jpg" width="1500" height="1911" alt="A man sits facing the left. He has a thick beard and brown hair and has a blue collared jacket" title="Norman Macleod, Victoria’s Scottish chaplain, portrayed in a posthumous painting. He reportedly confessed on his deathbed to marrying the queen and John Brown (Image by Alamy)" /> Also revealed in Victoria’s Secret is the possibility that Victoria and John had an ‘irregular marriage’, a legal marriage under Scottish law that involved an exchange of vows and potentially rings, the evidence of which sits in portraits and photographs of John from 1873 onwards. Add to this the fact that Victoria’s Scottish chaplain, Norman Macleod, confessed on his deathbed to marrying them, and that Victoria went to her grave wearing John’s mother’s wedding ring – a point that was hidden from her children at the time – and it feels to me like solid, irrefutable evidence of their relationship. Floored by photos Although I tried to remain clinical and dispassionate as I weighed the material that I was collecting, a couple of objects floored me. In Treasure Hub sits a photographic album Victoria dedicated and gifted to John’s mother, Margaret Leys. It is bursting with pictures of both Brown’s family and her own, side by side – a record of all of the people who mattered to them. But nothing prepared me for the revelation that, in the week after John’s death, Victoria had his hand cast and then carved in stone. The photograph of this object in Fenton Wyness’s collection – the tender placement of John’s hand on a pillow, the importance given to a signet ring that he wore every day from 1873 onwards – felt like a gut punch. Finally, there is a pair of four-leafed clovers that Victoria and John collected, and which he dried and taped into a scrapbook, their stems crossed over one another for eternity. In the Victorian language of flowers, this has a singular meaning: Be Mine. I still had unanswered questions, though – and the only people who might have been able to help answer them were thousands of miles away in America. Fortunately, at that stage Angela, one of Hugh Brown’s descendants whom I’d attempted to contact via Facebook, got in touch. She is bubbly and forthright – and, with the agreement of her family, was happy to discuss their history and the stories she had heard while growing up. Read more | Queen of spies? Inside Queen Victoria’s secret intelligence network Over a series of calls, emails and texts, she slowly began to trust me with a secret her family had kept for a very long time. Not only do they have the final remnants of the John Brown family archive, including original documents, such as Victoria’s own investigation into John’s family history, but they also guard a story that is fantastical and amazing. Angela was sanguine, telling me that “it’s just what I’ve always been told – I don’t know if it’s true”. Even so, I couldn’t help but wonder: could this be the final missing piece of the puzzle for which I’d been searching so long? Throughout my research, and across John’s life, one of his siblings featured more prominently than all of the others: Hugh, whose family became the guardians of John and Victoria’s legacy. As I was writing and researching, it became increasingly clear that, though all of John’s brothers and their families mattered to Victoria, Hugh and his wife, Jessie, were most dear to the queen. Unusually among John’s extensive clan, they had only one child – a daughter, Mary Ann, Angela’s great-grandmother. According to Angela, Mary Ann was the secret child of John Brown and Queen Victoria. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/GettyImages-1450268872webready-5502a62-e1753974720717.jpg" width="1488" height="1010" alt="Victoria pictured with her children and a bust of Prince Albert, 1863. Beatrice was the last of her babies officially recorded – but did the queen later give birth to another daughter, fathered by John Brown? (Image by Getty Images)" title="Victoria pictured with her children and a bust of Prince Albert, 1863. Beatrice was the last of her babies officially recorded – but did the queen later give birth to another daughter, fathered by John Brown? (Image by Getty Images)" /> Whispers of a love child have swirled since the 1860s, but historians have always been quick to dismiss such rumours. They claim that Victoria was unable to have more children after the birth of her last acknowledged daughter, Princess Beatrice, in 1857, as she suffered from a prolapsed uterus. However, this condition was only discovered after the queen’s death in 1901. None of Victoria’s doctors reported any evidence that she suffered it in the aftermath of Beatrice’s birth. As a prolapsed uterus is common – nearly half of women over 50 will experience some form of pelvic organ prolapse during their lifetime – I believe this ‘fact’ has become historical misinformation, used to discredit any chance of a child between Victoria and John. Moreover, as I discovered during my research, although Victoria was advised not to have more children after Beatrice, it had no connection to her physical health. After her repeated battles with severe post-partum depression, including hallucinations and possibly even psychosis, Victoria’s doctors were terrified that another pregnancy would send her mad. This was the reason why she was advised against having any further children. But there is even evidence to suggest that she was planning to have another baby before Prince Albert died in 1861. “Mama so longed for another child,” her eldest daughter, ‘Vicky’ (Victoria), wrote after Albert’s death. So it is perfectly possible that Victoria could have had a child with John in 1865, the year of Mary Ann’s birth. The queen was healthy, fertile and only 45. Many of John’s female relatives – indeed, Victorian women more generally – had children into their mid- to late forties. Journey of discovery It was not the end of the story, of course. But that discovery set me on a long journey to try to separate family memory from historical fact. My research took me from the glorious glens of the Scottish Highlands to the wildness of 1860s Otago in New Zealand’s South Island, and back again. The reality of Victoria’s secret was long buried by panicking politicians, government campaigns, cowardly courtiers and family rebellion. Without DNA evidence, we may never know the truth – but, every time I speak to Angela, I find myself surreptitiously looking for any resemblance to Victoria in her face. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/10508806webready-4fb264a-e1753974815126.jpg" width="1498" height="1000" alt="A statue showing an man with white hair, dressed in a jacket and kilt" title="A statue of John Brown at Balmoral. “The revelation that the queen chose the son of a Scottish crofter as her second husband, and potentially had a child with him, would have rocked Victorian society like a nuclear explosion,” writes Fern Riddell (Image by Mary Evans)" /> The revelation that the queen chose the son of a Scottish crofter as her second husband, and potentially had a child with him, would have rocked Victorian society like a nuclear explosion. Her world did not believe that a common man could look at a king as an equal, let alone marry a queen. Yet, based on the evidence I’ve found, I believe that this is exactly what Victoria did. Far from remaining the grieving widow for the rest of her days, she spent her passionate mid-life privately joined to a man who saw her as “his only object in life”. Now it is time for John and his family to take their rightful place in history once again. Dr Fern Riddell’s new book, Victoria’s Secret (Ebury Press), is out now in hardback. The book has inspired a Channel 4 documentary, Queen Victoria: Secret Marriage, Secret Child?, which is available to stream now This article is in the September 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Paint your own pot, like an ancient Etruscan
Silence your inner critic and forget about perfectionism. That's the life lesson we should learn from the Etruscans and their artistic habits, Dr Lucy Shipley tells Dr David Musgrove
There’s a place I used to go to with my children where you could unleash your creative zing by painting a pot. You picked your pot, you painted your pot, and then they fired it for you and you came back and retrieved your handiwork a few days later. I’m no artist, so my pot designs were always distinctly average. But I enjoyed it, and so did my kids, and in that, we were unwittingly drawing on the mindset of the ancient Etruscans. Dr Lucy Shipley is an expert on this overlooked people, and her life lesson that we should draw from them is simple: paint your own pot. The overlooked Etruscans Before we go into that, let’s have a quick recap of who the Etruscans were. They are the people who lived in parts of what is now Italy, particularly in Tuscany and Umbria, in the period before the rise of ancient Rome, in the first millennium BC. They were neighbours and rivals of the Romans and the Greeks. They lived in cities spread across the region, and from their ports they traded widely across the Mediterranean. The Etruscans pop up in ancient sources quite often, but we only ever have accounts of them from an outside perspective, because their own texts do not survive beyond short inscriptions and one religious text. We have to rely on those accounts, along with archaeology, to get to grips with who they were and how they lived. Most of their cities are hard to excavate as they sit under modern settlements, but new excavations are revealing more of their world. Read more | The history of Florence: Italy's Renaissance powerhouse Etruscan tombs also provide a fascinating insight into Etruscan culture, and some feature remarkable wall paintings. These paintings show scenes from everyday life, religion and myth, but also some graphic sexual acts, which has surprised modern eyes (I’ll come back to that). Though Etruria was eventually subsumed into the Roman empire in the fourth and third centuries BC, echoes of their culture persisted. According to Shipley, there is something about the ancient Etruscans that speaks of a people who weren’t afraid to make mistakes, nor who were intimidated by the people around them. They painted their own pots in an inimitable style, and that is something we can draw on today. Painters, potters and perfectionism Aside from the wall paintings, in Etruscan tombs archaeologists have found great quantities of red- and black-figure pottery (when the background is black and the details are left in the colour of the clay). This is the sort of material you’ll be familiar with if you’ve ever looked at ancient Greek vases in a museum. It was originally made in Greece, but inspired Etruscan potters to make their own versions. Some of it was good, but some of it was, well, I’ll leave it to Shipley’s assessment: “They are churning these things out. There is a market for these things, but some of them are terrible. I try not to have value judgments about artefacts, but some of this material looks like somebody has made it with an atrocious red-wine hangover.” There is one particular example that Shipley highlights, of a red-figure vase with a depiction of a hippocamp, or sea beast, which you would have to be very generous to describe as well-executed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/KC773G-e03f9e9.jpg" width="2850" height="3800" alt="A black terracotta pot with two large handles (one on each side) sits on a white column, against a grey background. On the pot, there is an orange drawing of a dragon" title="It would be hard to describe this sea dragon, painted on a fourth-century BC terracotta drinking cup, as well-executed, suggests Shipley (Image by Alamy)" /> “I love Etruscan archaeology. I’m really passionate about it, but even I am almost laughing at some of this Etruscan red-figure material. Yet it seems they were perfectly happy with it. It’s just that way of being able to express yourself. Do what you’re going to do – you paint that bad dragon. “Sometimes the human forms are a bit blobby. They’re not as neat and precise as the ones that you see imported from Greece, but that’s okay. Someone was very happy with that, and I think that’s a really important lesson. I’m a bit of a perfectionist. But sometimes it’s time to tell your internal critic to shut up and accept that actually what you’ve done is totally fine.” WATCH | Dr Lucy Shipley on letting go of perfectionism View Green Video on the source website Everyone’s an artist That’s a good sentiment, but can we really read that broader sense of a cultural carefree spirit among the Etruscans from some sub-par pottery? According to Shipley, there’s ample evidence of this mindset when you look for it. She recalls an archaeological site that she worked at just outside Siena. “Back when Poggio Civitate was a flourishing Etruscan site, this was home to one of the largest buildings of the ancient world, and it was a craft centre. It burnt down in an accidental fire. You can see that people just literally dropped what they were working on and got out before the flames came. “The result is that you have incredible preservation of the material they were working on. Some of it’s really beautiful, high-quality carving, and terracotta tiles and all sorts of other things. And some of it is really not so much. There’s a whole spectrum of what people were working on, all these different individuals working together in this place. “Everybody’s doing their best and that’s enough. After that fire, they rebuild in an adjacent area. They build this incredible complex, which has terracotta statues on the roof. If you are looking at, say, the Parthenon marbles, you are going to think that these architectural terracottas are a little bit rustic. They’re quite big and chunky and they don’t have that ‘classical refinement’. But they’re so alive and they’re really enchanting – the famous one is a cowboy figure with a huge hat, and he’s seated on a throne on the roof.” Standing out from the crowd Shipley sees similar confidence in Etruscan tomb painting, which some early art historians have described as quite coarse, but which she sees as being alive and full of natural detail. From all this, we can perhaps take the ‘paint your pot’ idea a little further and infer that these people in ancient Etruria were not only content to produce work on their own terms and to their own standards, but also happy to stand out from the crowd, be a little different, and not be worried about unfavourable comparisons with other people, or indeed other cultures. Shipley adds that while Etruscan depictions of Greek myths are often described as being wrong, they’re not – they’re just an Etruscan version and absolutely right to the person telling that story. Read more | Meet the people the ancient Romans and Greeks desperately tried to hide “I'm going to stick my neck out here,” says Shipley, “and this could be my bias because I’m enchanted by the Etruscans, but I think if we look at their actions, we can see that these are confident, capable people who are absolutely viewing themselves as equal with the Greek people that they’re trading with and other trading partners.” So, in Shipley’s assessment, the Etruscans were a people comfortable in their own skins, not overawed by others, and content with creating the things they wanted to create. That sounds like a good place to be – you might express those sorts of characteristics if you were trying to describe a positive, resilient outlook today. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/B21ANR-2f8a341.jpg" width="5291" height="3514" alt="A painted sarcophagus shows a woman dressed in a white gown and headscarf, reclining on her left side, holding something in her hand, while the other hand holds her scarf back from her face" title="A painted terracotta sarcophagus, 150–130 BC, of an Etruscan noblewoman, Seianti Hanunia Tienasa, was found in Poggio Cantarello near Chiusi in Italy (Image by Alamy)" /> There’s one more example that typifies this sentiment. It’s a funeral urn from Chiusi, which you can see in the British Museum today, and it shows the woman whose skeleton is buried in the tomb beneath. “She is represented in a very realistic way. Her face is quite youthful, and they’ve done analysis on her skeleton, so we know she died in her early fifties, but she’s not an idealised form. They’ve done facial reconstruction of her, and it’s recognisably her,” says Shipley. “She’s happy to be depicted in the afterlife as yes, her best self, but as herself. So there’s that idea of being yourself – and unashamedly yourself. And also of not being intimidated by what other people are doing elsewhere and continuing to do the things that have been valuable to your community for a really long time. It’s all wrapped up in that one artefact.” We shouldn’t be rose-tinted about Etruscan society. It wasn’t some utopian land of creative free choice for all its people. As Shipley admits, not everyone would have been able to model this sort of confident, empowered life. “Etruscan society seems to be highly stratified, with people very much divided by access to wealth and luxury goods. While women seem to have had more independence and recognition than in Greece or Rome, this is a long way from being an egalitarian society, and we can’t assume everyone had equality of opportunity or the chance to make their own choices.” But from those who held agency, we can take some life lessons today: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Enjoy being yourself, painting your own pot in whatever milieu you are doing it and just own it. Be proud of what you can do rather than constantly comparing yourself to somebody else.” Sex, death and the meaning of life I love the fact that Shipley’s interpretation casts us back into the minds of these people so vividly, and I definitely subscribe to the pragmatism over perfectionism approach to life. But what about sex? We can’t leave the Etruscans without seeing if they can help us with our sex lives. Let’s go back to those sexy tomb paintings that I mentioned at the start of this essay, which to modern viewers, can be disarming: “It’s quite shocking to walk into a tomb and see an image of a threesome on the wall. You’re not necessarily expecting that”. What’s going on here? Why were graphic sexual scenes painted on the walls of tombs? It’s been much discussed, but Shipley’s view is that it could be reflecting the generational long-view of the rich and important families that were entombed. Sex leads to children, and thus the continuance of the family line, and the passing down of power and wealth. On that basis, why wouldn’t you want to show your legacy literally being ensured through sexual acts in your place of eternal rest? Read more | Are you healthier than a Roman? These ancient secrets for longevity are still shockingly relevant They’ve been interpreted as great sexual libertines because of these graphic paintings on their tombs and their vases, but that’s not necessarily the case if you follow Shipley’s argument. I don’t think I’m going to convince anyone to start adding pornography to their gravestones now, but I think we can assume that the Etruscans were comfortable with sex and sexuality, and also placed great value on it. We tend to be pretty buttoned-up about talking about sex, and about death, in western culture today, so maybe there’s something else we can draw from them too. To conclude, let’s step back from sex and death, and review Dr Shipley’s wider lessons from the ancient Etruscans: be your authentic self, take risks, don’t be afraid of making mistakes, and don’t let perfectionism stop you from getting things done. As I read them back, I could be chanting the mantra of a modern business, facing up to the hurtling head-rush of the 21st century. Those are the same sentiments that we need today to cope with a world that’s changing before our very eyes. Maybe the people of the Italian peninsula in the first millennium BC felt the same sort of pressures, and maybe we can take a bit of solace and guidance from that. Paint your own pots, people, paint your own pots. This article is part of HistoryExtra's new Life Lessons from History Substack newsletter. Subscribe to the newsletter for more articles and podcasts exploring the ways in which history can help us live better, happier, healthier or more productive lives.
The Virgin Queen? Elizabeth I's forbidden love
In 1579, the queen embarked on a romance with a French duke she affectionately dubbed her “frog”. The pair seemed destined for marriage. Yet, writes Elizabeth Tunstall, the people of England had other ideas…
On 17 August 1579, a ship sailed up the Thames and dropped anchor in Greenwich. Moments later a duke emerged, dressed in the finest clothes that money could buy, and conversing with his entourage in French. The prince’s nationality might have provoked the suspicion – if not the outright hostility – of many residents of Tudor London. Yet this Frenchman was about to be welcomed into the heart of Richmond Palace. There he would be entertained lavishly, wined and dined at parties and balls. And all with good reason. For this Frenchman was being lined up to marry Queen Elizabeth I. Over the centuries, Elizabeth’s romantic travails have become one of the great soap operas of English history. When Elizabeth ascended the English throne in 1558 as a 25-year-old, it was widely expected that she would find herself a husband and produce an heir to carry on the Tudor dynasty for another generation. However, while the queen had several suitors over the years, each proposed match hit the rocks before she could be tempted to offer her hand in marriage. From English earls to Scandinavian kings, none quite fitted the bill. And so, by the time the party of Frenchmen disembarked in Greenwich in the summer of 1579, Elizabeth was well on her way to securing her place in the history books as the ‘Virgin Queen’: the woman who would, so we’re told, sacrifice her heart for the good of the nation. Yet she wasn’t done with trying just yet. As her 46th birthday closed in, Elizabeth would embark on one final bid to find a husband. And this one would take her closer to marriage than perhaps any courtship yet. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/FFWM82-cmyk-WL-0294cdd.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A cow stands in the middle of the image, being ridden by a man in a dark cloak and hat. Behind the cow, a man wearing light pink holds its tail, while another man milks the cow. In front of the cow stands Elizabeth I, dressed in white and another man dressed all in black" title="his painting, dating to the 1580s, depicts the fraught diplomatic backdrop to Elizabeth I’s courtship with the Duke of Anjou. The queen feeds a cow (representing the Dutch Provinces), which defecates on the duke (left). Philip II of Spain attempts, in vain, to ride the cow away, while Dutch leader William of Orange holds the animal steady by its horns (Image by Alamy)" /> So who was the Frenchman who almost changed the course of English history? And why – as she entered the embrace of middle age – was the queen considering marrying him now? The suitor’s name was François de Valois, Duke of Anjou, fourth son of King Henri II of France and Catherine de’ Medici. Anjou had begun life as a royal also-ran, with little prospect of ascending the French throne. Yet, by the early 1570s, he found himself heir to his childless brother, Henri III. The duke was now odds-on to succeed his sibling as King of France. That made him a figure of immense importance. Read more | Elizabeth I's accession day celebrations Anjou was also eager to make his mark on Europe by campaigning against Spanish forces in the Netherlands. And it’s this last fact that brought him into Elizabeth’s orbit in the late 1570s. With England becoming increasingly isolated from Europe – and relations with Spain deteriorating fast – Elizabeth’s advisors were desperate to forge enduring ties with allies across the channel. What better way to achieve exactly that than by suggesting a match between Elizabeth and the French duke? The union had been proposed as early as 1572, but it wasn’t until 1579 that Elizabeth herself fully committed to the courtship. At the outset, the queen’s interest in Anjou was purely the product of political necessity, for a marriage alliance with France would help stave off the growing military threat presented by Spain. But, as the two got to know one another in August 1579, the relationship became personal, the first courtship to do so since the queen’s flirtation with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester two decades earlier. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/BAL106934cmyk-WL-17415c0.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A portrait of Elizabeth I in c1575–80. The middle-aged queen was 21 years older than her French suitor (Image by Bridgeman Images)" title="A portrait of Elizabeth I in c1575–80. The middle-aged queen was 21 years older than her French suitor (Image by Bridgeman Images)" /> French connections While Anjou was not a physically impressive figure – possessing bandy legs and a scarred face from a bout of smallpox – Elizabeth undoubtedly grew fond of him, calling him her “frog” on account of his appearance and his gravelly voice. He was highly attentive, which she very much enjoyed. The two conversed in French, as it was the only language they shared. And, despite the fact that Anjou was 21 years younger than the queen, they found plenty to talk about. Also playing to the duke’s advantage was the fact that he had made the journey to England at all. Throughout her many courtships, Elizabeth had stuck to the firm position that she “would never marry with any person whom she should not first herself see”. Her demand to meet a potential husband before committing herself to marriage was viewed at the time with astonishment. Royal courtships were long-distance affairs in the 16th century – to such an extent that even the marriage itself could be carried out with ambassadors standing in as proxies for the bride. Through each courtship Elizabeth had held her ground, yet no suitor had chosen to make the journey to her court. All that changed with Anjou. Read more | Anne Boleyn's youth: how her years on the continent made her a match for Henry VIII Violent opposition The duke could not stay in England for long and, on 29 August, sailed back to France. His visit had, to all intents and purposes, been a diplomatic and personal success. Yet there was a catch. And it was a major one. This had been a trip that the English government had attempted to keep secret. Anjou had travelled to London under a pseudonym: Seigneur du Pont de Sé. However, it didn’t take long for the true identity of the queen’s guest to seep beyond the confines of the court – and, once it did, it triggered a firestorm of opposition. But why? In short, Elizabeth was a Protestant; Anjou was a Catholic. And in a Europe riven by the Reformation and religious war, marriage between two people of differing beliefs was, to most, simply unthinkable. Within one week of Anjou’s visit, England was awash with a public outcry against the match. London preachers decried the marriage from their pulpits. Popular ballads made their rounds. Anonymous verses and pamphlets lampooned the match. Threats to meet French attention with violence began to appear in public spaces. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/J2WF3A-WL-ce28264.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The English court laid on lavish dinners and balls at Richmond Palace (shown in an engraving) to impress the duke during his 1579 visit (Image by Alamy)" title="The English court laid on lavish dinners and balls at Richmond Palace (shown in an engraving) to impress the duke during his 1579 visit (Image by Alamy)" /> It was into this tumult that John Stubbs, a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn, published a pamphlet with the catchy title ‘The discovery of a gaping gulf whereinto England is like to be swallowed by another French marriage, if the Lord forbid not the banes, by letting her Majesty see the sin and punishment thereof’. Stubbs’ work argued that the clandestine nature of Anjou’s visit demonstrated a “very strange this unmanlike, unprincelike, secret, fearful, suspicious, disdainful, needy French kind of wooing in monsieur”. It wasn’t only the French duke who Stubbs pursued in his work. He also questioned why Elizabeth would consent to marry “an imp of the crown of France”. In his view, and many others, at Elizabeth’s age any pregnancy would likely result in her death. If a child was born it was feared that it would result in England becoming a vassal state to France rather than securing an independent future for the Protestant realm. Upon learning of Stubbs’ pamphlet, Elizabeth was furious. For her, the matter of her marriage was deeply personal and a matter of royal prerogative. And it didn’t escape her notice that Stubbs’ arguments mirrored those that had also been raised against the Anjou match within her Privy Council. Could her own councillors have leaked information to the wayward lawyer? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/HIP2806978WL-d5e2fa6.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A man with a ruff collar and wearing a black hat with a feathered embellishment on the left of it stands against a black background" title="A portrait of the future Duke of Anjou from 1572. The prospect of Elizabeth I marrying a Catholic Frenchman triggered a firestorm of hostility across England (Image by TopFoto)" /> It wasn’t long before the authorities attempted to suppress public opposition to the match. Stubbs was tried for seditious writing and taken to the public scaffold in the marketplace of Westminster on 3 November. There his right hand was removed with a cleaver before an unusually silent crowd. It was not only the wider public that challenged Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to Anjou. Sir Philip Sydney, the courtier and poet, wrote a letter to his queen that circulated in the court, and though he did not face the same punishment as Stubbs, he shared much of the same fears over the match. He argued that, should Elizabeth marry Anjou, her people’s “hearts will be galled, if not alienated, when they shall see you take to husband a Frenchman, a papist, in whom, howsoever fine wits may find further dangers or painted excuses, the very common people well know this: that he is the son of the Jezebel of our age”. To Sydney, Anjou represented the worst possible suitor, a Catholic Frenchman who would only lead Protestant England to ruin. A name but no power Despite the ferocity of these objections, the marriage negotiations continued. In late November, a delegation of Elizabeth’s Privy Council, led by William Cecil, Lord Burghley, worked with Anjou’s representative, Jean de Simier, to create a draft marriage contract. This document was based on the union of Elizabeth’s sister, Mary I, with Philip II of Spain, and would see Anjou granted the title of king but little real power in England. But it did have one new clause: it gave Elizabeth the right to withdraw within two months of signing the contract. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/RCXA6Xcmyk-WL-c6aab09.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A painting shows Elizabeth I being carried through the streets, surrounded by a large crowd of courtiers" title="Elizabeth I surrounded by her courtiers. The queen’s Privy Council ploughed on with marriage negotiations, even when it was clear that the public despised the idea (Image by Alamy)" /> And sign the contract is exactly what Elizabeth did. Now, with 1579 drawing to a close, the queen was further along the road to marriage than she would be at any point in her reign. Yet she wasn’t married yet. And such was the continuing strength of the hostility towards the match that within a few short weeks she felt she had no choice but to turn back. She wrote to Anjou that “I do not want this negotiation to trouble you thus any more”, but still hoped “that we may remain faithful friends and assured in all out actions”. Her contractual get-out clause was duly activated. Elizabeth’s change of heart would, you might think, signal the end of her courtship with Anjou. But it was revived on one more occasion. In April 1581 a French delegation arrived in England to discuss once more the prospects of a marriage alliance between the two kingdoms. Elizabeth herself had turned away from the courtship, but – with Spain still threatening English security – she allowed the negotiations to recommence. Those negotiations reached an impasse and would have faded away – but for the return of Anjou to England. Read more | “Elizabeth I was in charge of her fate. Perhaps that’s why Catherine de Medici despised her” On 31 October 1581, the duke arrived at Rye and then travelled onwards to Richmond Palace. In contrast with his first visit, he moved openly and spoke more of alliance than marriage. Both the duke and queen were fully preoccupied by the issues of their nations’ finances and conflict with Spain, but the question of marriage had not disappeared entirely. Three weeks after his arrival, as Elizabeth and Anjou walked along a gallery, they were approached by the French ambassador. The ambassador asked the queen what he could tell his king about the chances of her marrying. In response Elizabeth smiled and replied: “You may write this to the king: that the Duke of Anjou shall be my husband.” She then proceeded to give Anjou a ring from her finger, accompanied by a kiss. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/07/T1ME64cmyk-WL-72572d1.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A man and a woman sit opposite each other, both dresses in orange and black. They are on a black and orange checkered floor with an orange wall behind them" title="Like Philip II (shown with Mary I), Anjou would have been called ‘king’, but given little power in England (Image by Alamy)" /> Elizabeth’s response to the ambassador sent her court into uproar. That night her ladies expressed their shock. The next morning saw members of her council advising strongly against the match, as it would undermine her relationship with her people. With doubts playing on her mind in the cold light of day, Elizabeth performed yet another volte face, withdrawing her offer to Anjou and telling him that she would be a better friend than a wife. Anjou left London for the Netherlands on 1 February 1582. However, he did not travel the whole way alone. Elizabeth accompanied him as far as Canterbury where she said her farewell to her final suitor. As the duke sailed away from England, he took with him the queen’s last chance at marriage. Anjou’s departure also closed the door on the queen’s youth: at 48-years-old, the games of courtship were no longer hers, and her unmarried state would now define her reign. Today, more than 400 years after these events, it’s tempting to assume that Elizabeth was always destined to be the Virgin Queen – and it was a role in which she revelled. But in the first half of her reign, she engaged in numerous courtships and came close to marrying twice. These two men – the Earl of Leicester and Duke of Anjou – found a special place in the queen’s heart, even when it was unwise for her to allow them that space. On each occasion it was the resistance of her people that prevented her from taking that final step towards matrimony. Elizabeth understood that without the support of her subjects, she risked deposition and civil war. It was this cold, hard reality that prevented her from taking a husband. So maybe it’s time to look upon the Virgin Queen in a new light: as the creation of the people rather than the queen herself. The image of an untouchable woman who preserved the state through her own person was crafted, it seems, not by an individual but a nation. It was a role Elizabeth committed to as she bid Anjou farewell. And it was one that she would play until her final days. Romancing the throne Three other men who were in the frame to marry the Virgin Queen The dashing favourite When Elizabeth took the throne there was some support for the queen to marry an Englishman. But while most looked to the peers of the realm, it was Robert Dudley who had caught both her eye and her heart. Indeed, she once commented that “she thought she could find no person with better qualities”. Dudley was made Master of the Horse shortly after Elizabeth’s accession to the throne, a position that allowed him frequent access to his queen. After Dudley’s wife, Amy, died in September 1560 it appeared that Elizabeth might marry her dashing favourite. However, the suspicious circumstances of Amy’s death made the marriage impossible. While their chance was lost, the two would remain close friends until Leicester’s death in 1588. The controversial Catholic After closing the door on marriage with Leicester, Elizabeth consented to the opening of a courtship with Archduke Charles of Austria, the third surviving son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I. For the English, the archduke was seen as a means of easing the escalating tensions with Spain (based on his family ties with the king of Spain), while providing some safety from France. This idea of the match was first raised in 1559 but was only seriously explored from 1563. As with so many of Elizabeth’s foreign courtships, the question of religion proved unresolvable. The potential marriage of Elizabeth to a Catholic caused unrest, leading her to observe that “two persons of different faiths could not live peaceably in one house”, even if that house was England itself. At the end of 1567 she turned Charles down. The eager Swede Elizabeth was first approached by Swedish ambassadors about a courtship with Erik XIV of Sweden in 1558 while still a princess. Erik presented fewer difficulties than many of her other suitors, being a Protestant – and wealthy. This courtship was also elevated by its timing, as leading members of Elizabeth’s Privy Council sought to use his suit to counter that of Dudley. Erik was highly persistent and offered to travel to England to meet Elizabeth in person. Upon hearing of Erik’s intentions, Elizabeth wrote to him, asking “that you be pleased to set a limit to your love, that it advance not beyond the laws of friendship”. Elizabeth was thoroughly unconvinced by the arguments in favour of the match, and it all came to an end in 1562. Elizabeth Tunstall is a visiting research fellow at the University of Adelaide This article was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Are Bertha and George Russell real? Inside the real Vanderbilt divorces that rocked the Gilded Age
Julian Fellowes, the creator behind HBO’s The Gilded Age, has taken plenty of cues from real history for the characters of Bertha and George Russell, seemingly turning to the lives of Alva and William K Vanderbilt in plotting much of their story. Discover the real history, and what this could mean for everyone’s favourite power couple in series three
Bertha Russell is the undisputed queen of Julian Fellowes’s drama The Gilded Age. In the story so far, glamorous ‘new money’ socialite Bertha (played by Carrie Coon) has conquered New York society through means both fair and foul, and risen to the top of the so-called ‘Four Hundred’. And she’s done it all while holding the steady hand of her husband, ruthless ‘robber-baron-with-a-conscience’ George (played by Morgan Spector). To date, her plot has mirrored many key moments in the life of a real historical figure in New York’s Gilded Age history: Alva Vanderbilt. In the show, Bertha has befriended Ward McAllister (who was a real contemporary of Alva); thrown a grand ball in her Fifth Avenue mansion to signal to Mrs Caroline Astor and the Four Hundred that she means business (as Alva did in 1883); and she has triumphed in the War of the Operas (as Alva claimed victory too). For Bertha, life is perfect, right? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2023/12/0750TheGildedAgeS02-1-3c0deb0-e1702915513531.jpg" width="620" height="412" alt="Taissa Farmiga as Gladys Russell & Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell. Bertha is thought to be based on Alva Vanderbilt, who secured the marriage of her daughter, Consuelo, to the 9th Duke of Marlborough." title="Taissa Farmiga as Gladys Russell & Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell. Bertha is thought to be based on Alva Vanderbilt, who secured the marriage of her daughter, Consuelo, to the 9th Duke of Marlborough." /> Far from it. When we left the Russells in season two, Bertha had successfully courted the Duke of Buckingham, a British aristocrat visiting New York, and welcomed him publicly as her guest to the opera, evidence that she had finally been accepted by the highest echelons of society. But beneath the surface, all is not well, with others speculating over the lengths to which she had gone in securing the Duke’s alliance. Meanwhile, she and George were at loggerheads over the marital prospects of their daughter Gladys. If show creator Julian Fellowes means to trace real history further in The Gilded Age drama, here’s what that means for Bertha, George, and the rest of the Russell family… Who was Alva Vanderbilt, the inspiration for Bertha Russell? Alva Vanderbilt (née Alva Erskine Smith) was born in January 1853, in Mobile, Alabama, into a wealthy Southern family. Their fortune came from cotton – and as such, their riches were inextricably tied to the trade of enslaved people. When victory for the Union in the American Civil War in 1865 brought about the end of slavery as an economic institution, the Smith family relocated permanently to New York City. Here, Alva soon realised that admittance into the entrenched social circles of Manhattan’s elite would be more difficult than anticipated. She had spent much of her early life in Paris and New York, receiving an education that emphasised language, arts and European manners, but even such a prestigious background would not be enough. Ambitious and socially strategic, Alva sought to change that. In 1875, at 22 years old, she married William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt. As evidence of the family’s vast wealth, when Cornelius died in 1877, William Henry – William K’s father – became the richest American. Though William K (or ‘Willie’ as he was known) is described in many sources as personally shy and somewhat passive, particularly in contrast to the manoeuvrings of Alva, he was immensely wealthy – in 1885, he in turn inherited $55m from his father. Read more | Who were the tycoons of the Gilded Age? Meet the ruthless 'robber barons' who made millions Willie and Alva’s union was seen as mutually advantageous: Alva brought charm, social intelligence, and aspirations to elevate the Vanderbilt name into the old-money elite, while William offered vast fortune and access to society’s upper echelons. Amid Alva’s ruthless mission to engineer the Vanderbilts’ social ascent, the legendary 1883 costume ball at the newly completed Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue is regarded by many as her crowning achievement. The ball, attended by over 1,000 guests, effectively forced Mrs Caroline Astor, gatekeeper of New York’s elite, to formally acknowledge the Vanderbilts as ‘society’. By the 1880s, despite her Southern roots, Alva had positioned herself as a major figure in the social scene of the Gilded Age. Today, physical evidence of her social triumph survives in the form of the Marble House, an opulent mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, gifted by Willie to his wife on her 39th birthday. The Vanderbilt couple commissioned society architect Richard Morris Hunt (who had also designed their Fifth Avenue mansion) to create a ‘summer cottage’ on the coast. Though the name evoked the modest wooden houses that had edged the Rhode Island clifftops years before, the new stretch of mansions on Bellevue Avenue that included the Marble House were modelled more closely on the Palace of Versailles. The Vanderbilts’ summer retreat featured rooms gilded with 22 carat gold, with marble balconies, electric interior lights and hand-carved detail throughout. It survives amid other palaces on the coast, including The Breakers (owned by William K’s brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II) and Beechwood (which belonged to the Astors). When and why did the Vanderbilts divorce? “I always do everything first,” Alva reportedly once boasted. “I blaze the trail for the rest to walk in.” Blaze a new trail Alva did. At a time when divorce among the American elite was still rare and highly stigmatised, Alva, increasingly frustrated with Willie’s infidelity and detachment, sought a legal separation from her husband in 1895. “I was the first girl of my ‘set’ to marry a Vanderbilt,” Alva proclaimed. “Then I was the first society woman to ask for a divorce, and within a year ever so many others had followed my example. They had been wanting divorce all the time, but they had not dared to do it until I showed them the way.” Alva’s case was that Willie had reportedly spent increasing amounts of time away from her, often travelling in Europe and maintaining romantic liaisons with other women. Alva tolerated his behaviour for years, in part because divorce was considered socially damaging, particularly for women. However, by the early 1890s, their marriage had grown cold and emotionally estranged. Alva is reported to have said that she was unwilling to continue living with a man who flaunted his disinterest and infidelity so openly. The couple formally divorced in March 1895, with Alva citing adultery, which was at the time one of the few legally permissible grounds for divorce in New York. Watch | The Gilded Age: Everything you wanted to know View Green Video on the source website The proceedings were handled discreetly, but the implications were significant. Alva retained custody of their three children, including their daughter, Consuelo, and received a settlement reportedly worth $10m (equivalent to around $380m, today). Concerning such high-profile individuals, their divorce was a prominent example of the shifting norms of the Gilded Age, especially regarding women’s agency within marriage. Alva’s radical decision to pursue divorce, despite the potential social backlash, is evidence of both the changing social mores of the time, and Alva’s own indomitable pride and ambition. Consuelo Vanderbilt: the real Gladys Russell? If The Gilded Age's Bertha and George are inspired by Alva and Willie, the latter couple’s daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt is surely the real historical parallel for the character Gladys Russell (played by Taissa Farmiga). Throughout The Gilded Age so far, Gladys has suffered the strict attentions of her mother, in turn restrained or deployed as society currency to assist Bertha’s ambitions. But while Bertha is portrayed as domineering though ultimately acting out of love in the series, the real treatment of Alva’s own daughter is much more severe, to say the least. Born to Alva and Willie in 1877, Consuelo was named after Alva’s close friend, Consuelo Yznaga (a Cuban-American heiress who later became the Duchess of Manchester), which many have interpreted as a signal of Alva’s aim from the beginning: that nothing but the highest status, security and power would do for the Vanderbilt daughter. Consuelo Vanderbilt’s early life was ruled by her mother’s aspirations. There are reports of Alva forcing her young daughter to sit with iron rods inside her corset while she was studying, to encourage good posture, and she was drilled by multiple governesses in etiquette lessons, French and German from an early age. Some sources even have Alva whipping Consuelo with a riding crop when she was disobedient. As Consuelo grew up, she was forced to abide by Alva’s every rule. She was reportedly once told by her mother: “I don’t ask you to think, I do the thinking, you do as you are told.” To Consuelo, summers in Alva’s opulent Marble House felt like a prison. Read more | The Gilded Age: “Entry into a world that really hasn't been covered on television before” Meanwhile, in Gilded Age society a curious pattern was emerging: that of the ‘Dollar Princess’. The somewhat cruel nickname was given to daughters of nouveau riche American families who had wealth and were schooled in social graces – but crucially, had no titles. Many such women were targeted and courted by British aristocrats who needed money to shore up their vast but crumbling estates. Amid this phenomenon, Consuelo was the ultimate prize. By the time she was of an age to marry, the Vanderbilt daughter was one of the most sought-after heiresses of the time. Regarded as delicately pretty and famed for her long, swan-like neck, she also promised access to a vast Vanderbilt fortune (and was worth an estimated $4bn in today’s currency). Alva matched her daughter to Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough (cousin of Winston Churchill) – but Consuleo’s affections were already engaged elsewhere. She was in love with an American called Winthrop Rutherfurd. Alva shut down the relationship, resorting to emotional blackmail of her daughter – she claimed Consuelo’s defiance had caused her to suffer a near-fatal heart attack – and she even reportedly threatened to shoot Rutherfurd if Consuelo married him. Consuelo later recorded one of her mother’s attempts at diplomacy: “Of course, I’m not forcing you to marry the Duke of Marlborough. You have alternatives, you can marry his cousin, the Duke of Roxburghe instead.” Consuelo Vanderbilt’s wedding: an unhappy match The 18-year-old Consuelo was married to the 9th Duke of Marlborough on 6 November 1895, in St Thomas's Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan. The wedding was a spectacle that attracted thousands who gathered to witness the prestigious match. But contemporary accounts of the wedding commented not on what the bride was wearing – a cream satin gown with a five-foot long train trimmed with lace, and a wreath of orange blossoms – but her red-rimmed eyes beneath her veil. By some accounts, the duke told Consuelo shortly after the ceremony that he was in love with another woman, and that he “despised anything that was not British”. He had also negotiated $2.5m in railroad stock from the Vanderbilts, plus an annual allowance of $100,000. Alva had secured a socially successful match for her daughter – at a price. Despite the poor match, Consuelo went on to have great success in her British life, acquitting herself well enough in social circles across the Atlantic that she was chosen in 1902 as one of four duchesses to bear the canopy of Queen Alexandra at the coronation of Edward VII. Blenheim Palace, the duke’s country estate in Oxfordshire, was also transformed by both Consuelo’s dowry and sense of style, undergoing a combination of modernisation and renovation at the turn of the 20th century that is often credited with securing its survival into the present day. Consuelo and her family – she and the duke had two sons – were also painted by famed artist John Singer Sargent in 1905, further enshrining their status among the pantheon of 1900s fashionable society. But the couple continued to live largely separate lives, with extramarital affairs on both sides, and by 1906, when Consuelo was 29 years old, the Marlboroughs had separated. They formally divorced in 1921, and later the same year Consuelo married French aviator Jacques Balsan (whom she had first met more than 25 years earlier at her debutante ball). Though she found happiness in her later years, Consuelo wrote poignantly in her 1952 memoir The Glitter and the Gold of the long shadows cast by her earliest years. “It is a melancholy fact that childhood, so short when compared with the average span of life, should exert such a strong and permanent influence on character that no amount of self-training afterwards can ever completely counter it.” What will happen in The Gilded Age season three? While the real Alva and Willie K were separated by March 1895, half a year before their daughter Consuelo’s marriage to the Duke of Marlborough, in The Gilded Age on screen, George and Bertha have yet to mirror their historical counterparts in ending their marriage. Meanwhile, as per the cliffhanger of season two, it seems that Gladys has been unknowingly promised by her mother to the Duke of Buckingham – and viewers will find out in season 3 if she is forced to go through with the union. In real history, Willie remarried in 1903 to heiress Anne Harriman, and established a base in France from where he bred racehorses. He was frequently seen at French race days accompanied by his daughter Consuelo. He died in Paris in 1920. Alva too married quickly after her divorce, to family friend Oliver Belmont in 1896. Belmont died in 1908, and it was around that time that Alva forged a more political path. She became a prominent figure in the fight for women’s suffrage in the USA, gifting both money and prestige to the movement. Turning her indomitable nature towards the political fight, she opened the Marble House for symposiums and charitable events, and in 1912, she led the Political Equality division of the Women’s Vote Parade in New York City. Alva relocated to France from the early 1920s onwards to be closer to Consuelo, and offered some small recompense when the Duke of Marlborough later sought a Catholic annulment from Consuelo, in order to convert to Catholicism. Alva gave testimony in 1926 accepting some culpability (if not regret) for her daughter’s unhappy marriage: “I forced my daughter to marry the Duke. I have always had absolute power over my daughter. When I issued an order nobody discussed it. I therefore did not beg, but ordered her to marry the Duke.” Alva’s funeral in 1933 took place in St Thomas’s Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue, Manhattan (the same church where her daughter had begun her unhappy union nearly 40 years earlier) and the occasion was a rallying moment for the women’s suffrage cause. Female pallbearers carried her casket, and a banner featuring an embroidered quote from women’s rights activist Susan B Anthony – “Failure is Impossible” – was draped on it. Despite no shortage of wounds inflicted and grudges spawned along the way, Alva had certainly proved anything but a failure in all the goals she had set for herself. Alva is buried with Oliver Belmont at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx. Who knows where Julian Fellowes’ drama will take Bertha, George, and the wider Russell family tree next. But one thing’s for sure, if their story continues to trace the same tracks as the real Vanderbilts, it’s a rocky road ahead…
A timeless love story? Abélard and Héloïse’s passionate affair
Abélard and Héloïse’s passionate affair in 12th-century Paris captured imaginations in France and far beyond. Yet, writes Yvonne Seale, there was a dark side to this true-life tale of forbidden love
Many millions of visitors have streamed through the gates of the sprawling Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris since they first opened in the early 19th century. Some come to pay their respects to the many modern cultural icons buried here, leaving flowers on the grave of the singer Édith Piaf or lipstick kisses on the monument to Oscar Wilde. Some, though, are drawn to a memorial tucked away in a corner just to the right of the cemetery’s main entrance. This tomb supposedly houses the remains of two people who had already acquired semi-legendary status many centuries before the first grave was dug at Père Lachaise. It is the reputed resting place of the 12th-century abbess Héloïse of Argenteuil and her husband, philosopher Pierre Abélard. The neo-Gothic tomb, with its effigies of the couple reclining peacefully, is a picturesque stone monument to love’s persistence. For that reason, it became something of a pilgrimage site in the 19th century. The writer Mark Twain rolled his eyes at the crowds of “memento-cabbaging vandals” who travelled to the tomb from all over France “to weep and wail and ‘grit’ their teeth over their heavy sorrows” and hope for beyond-the-grave intervention in their own unhappy love lives. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/OF-TOL-25004905-cmyk-22bdaa1.jpg" width="3446" height="2295" alt="A 15th-century illustration shows a couple, one dressed in brown, the other dressed in blue, having a conversation. They are sitting on an orange bench against a red background" title="The love-struck couple shown in a 15th-century manuscript illustration. Abélard’s targeting of such a young woman seems troubling today (Image by BNF)" /> The story that draws so many visitors even today is a tale of a doomed clandestine medieval romance – that of Abélard, the rising academic star who fell for his most gifted student, Héloïse. It involves a forbidden love, a hidden pregnancy, a secret marriage, an escape in the guise of a nun, a castration, and a lengthy and final separation. If that precis reads like the plot of a television melodrama miniseries, it seemed no less sensational to people in the Middle Ages. The story has captured the imaginations and empathy of countless people over the centuries, and been retold and depicted in numerous works of art and literature. But how accurately do these portrayals reflect the experiences of the historical Héloïse and Abélard? Was their relationship really a timeless love story – or has the reality become obscured by simplified myth-making? Affair of the heart Paris in the early 12th century was a vibrant, burgeoning place. Its streets were thronged with merchants and craftspeople, redolent with the aromas of fresh-baked bread, horse manure and woodsmoke, and lined by parish churches, shopfronts and a steadily increasing number of half-timbered houses. At its heart lay the small island known as the Île de la Cité. Here Héloïse spent much of her adolescence living in her uncle Fulbert’s household. He was part of the community of canons who served the basilica of Saint-Étienne, the now-vanished precursor to the cathedral of Notre-Dame. Héloïse was highly intelligent, mastering not only Latin but also Greek and Hebrew – rare accomplishments for anyone in western Europe then, let alone a woman. A man with Héloïse’s intellectual talents would have easily gained admission to the renowned cathedral school of Paris. However, the only way for a woman to acquire a higher-level education in that period was to employ a private tutor, so around 1115 or slightly later – when Héloïse was in her mid-teens – Fulbert hired the charismatic cleric Pierre Abélard to be her tutor. Born in 1079, Abélard was the eldest son of a minor noble family in Brittany, but had renounced his inheritance to pursue life as a scholar. During his career, he acquired a reputation for both brilliance and arrogance, thanks to challenging, unconventional writings such as his Theologia, Sic et Non (Yes and No) and Scito te Ipsum (Know Yourself). Read more | Doctors, playwrights and feminists: meet 6 trailblazing medieval women Having heard tell of Héloïse’s beauty and intelligence, Abélard decided – before he had even met her – that “she was the one to bring to [his] bed”. He was not given to praising others’ intelligence lightly, but he wrote that “for her wealth in letters, she was supreme” and that her intellect “made her highly praised throughout the entire realm”. Despite their age gap – roughly two decades – and the fact that he was her teacher, they quickly entered into a sexual relationship. They tried their best to keep this a secret but, once Héloïse became pregnant, that was no longer possible. She slipped out of the city disguised as a nun, and travelled to stay with Abélard’s family in Brittany. There she gave birth to a son, giving him the distinctive name Astrolabe, and the pair married in secret. Héloïse then hid at the convent of Argenteuil, just a little north-west of Paris, hoping to avoid her uncle’s anger at her behaviour – which was considered incredibly scandalous at the time. This plan backfired spectacularly. Héloïse’s relatives assumed that she had gone to the convent because Abélard had abandoned her, unmarried – and took their revenge at that perceived outrage by having Abélard attacked and castrated. This shocking outburst of violence had a number of consequences. With Abélard’s marriage now public knowledge at a time when the church was increasingly enforcing the requirement for clerical celibacy, he knew that he would not be able to continue his chosen career. His reputation, already precarious, was badly damaged. His former teacher Roscelin of Compiègne called Abélard “contemptuous” and guilty of “the filthiest violation of virginal modesty”. The couple could not now remedy the situation by setting up a household together. Following the brutal attack and his castration, Abélard was no longer able to perform the act that was thought in the Middle Ages to be one of the defining aspects of a husband’s marital role. He later wrote that he “felt the shame more than the dismemberment” and “fell into such a state of despair that I thought of quitting the realm of Christendom and going over to the heathen” – a strong statement indeed from a devout Christian. In the event, Abélard became a monk at the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, just north of Paris, and urged Héloïse to take the veil herself. She was initially reluctant to do so, feeling “no calling for the monastic profession, nor any religious devotion”, but she was unshakeably loyal to her husband and eventually gave in. She joined the Benedictine monastery at Argenteuil before moving to the Abbey of the Paraclete in Ferreux-Quincey, about 60 miles south-east of Paris. There she served as abbess and, according to the Paraclete’s surviving sources, was a capable administrator who ensured that the establishment stayed on a firm financial and reputational footing. This was despite the fact that Héloïse never developed any sense of religious calling, and felt that she would receive no heavenly reward for her labours at the Paraclete because “it is certain that I have done nothing as yet for love of [God]”. After the exposure of his affair with Héloïse, Abélard retreated into religious life – but not from intellectual debate. He continued to quarrel with figures such as Bernard of Clairvaux, possibly the most influential theologian of the era, and his work was twice condemned as heretical by church councils. He was so unpopular in his role as the abbot of the monastery of St-Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany that he had to flee following an attempt on his life. He moved to the great monastery of Cluny in Burgundy and then finally retired, by then a sick, elderly man, to the priory of St Marcel, near Chalon-sur-Saône, where he died in 1142. His remains were taken discreetly to the Abbey of the Paraclete where Héloïse was abbess; on her death in 1164, she was interred alongside him. Their remains were reputedly transferred to Père Lachaise in 1817, though some dispute whether the bones of either of them actually lie there. Love letters Even while separated by their monastic vows and living many miles apart, Abélard and Héloïse kept in touch. In the 1130s, Abélard wrote a kind of memoir, the Historia Calamitatum (History of Misfortunes), which provides an intimate portrait of his life and their story. After reading this text, Héloïse initiated an exchange of letters with Abélard that reveal the complexity and challenges of their relationship. These missives document Héloïse’s continued desire for Abélard, in language that seems startling when used by a consecrated nun. People looking at her mode of dress and way of life might think her chaste, she wrote, but “they do not know the hypocrite I am”. Héloïse stated that, even when attending Mass, “lewd visions” of the sex she had enjoyed with Abélard “take such a hold on my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness instead of on prayers”. Such passages have captured countless readers’ imaginations and empathy over the centuries, beginning almost immediately. The 12th-century historian Otto of Freising alludes to Abélard’s castration in his Deeds of Barbarossa, so the story must have made it at least as far as Germany. The lovers’ fame waxed and waned through the later Middle Ages; they weren’t mentioned in Dante’s c1321 discussion of sinful lovers, but Chaucer included a passing reference to Héloïse in the Wife of Bath’s Prologue in the Canterbury Tales (written 1387–1400). His near contemporary Petrarch appears to have owned, read and annotated a copy of the couple’s letters and Abélard’s Historia Calamitatum. Resurgent fascination The popularity of their story then surged again in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1717, English poet Alexander Pope published Eloisa to Abelard, recounting the story from Héloïse’s perspective. That poem’s passionate emotions – in it, Héloïse declares herself “the slave of love and man” – struck a chord with the reading public, and it was translated into several languages. Read more | Love and marriage in medieval England The French painter Bernard d’Agesci’s Lady Reading the Letters of Heloise and Abelard (c1780) shows a young woman swooning, breasts part-bared, at the romance of that correspondence. D’Agesci’s Swiss contemporary Angelica Kauffmann painted the moment of the ill-fated couple’s parting, both dressed rather anachronistically in the height of Renaissance fashion. And the tale continues to inspire creators today: Héloïse and Abélard are referenced in an episode of The Sopranos, and appear as lustful marionettes in the 1999 film Being John Malkovich. Today, a quick online search yields references to their tale being “one of history’s most passionate and romantic true love stories” and one of the “top 10 most torrid love affairs ever” – a “high-stakes romance” full of “grandeur”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/GettyImages-545675069big-a586fa4.jpg" width="2480" height="1652" alt="A stone tomb shows Heloise and Abelard lying side by side with their hands in prayer" title="Effigies of Abélard and Héloïse lie on the monument that purportedly houses their remains in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris. Even today, nine centuries after they met, countless visitors flock to their supposed tomb" /> But should we have reservations about this kind of framing? We should certainly be wary about presenting the story as a simple romance. Rather, it’s a complex tale that raises many questions about how different kinds of relationships – romantic, sexual, familial, intellectual – worked in the Middle Ages. It is true that most people who have been in love might empathise with Abélard’s description of how, when alone with Héloïse, “more words of love than of our reading passed between us, and more kissing than ideas”. He relished each moment he spent with her, and was irritated by every duty that took him away from her. But most people would surely struggle to understand how such a lover could, as he professed, sometimes beat Héloïse so that no one would suspect him of being attracted to her. He later wrote that his “blows were the marks not of anger but of the tender affection that is sweeter than any perfume”. Medieval European attitudes to relationships were in many ways quite different to those held today. There was no legal concept of domestic violence or spousal rape, and it is possible that no contemporary batted an eye at Abélard’s description of beating his future wife until she was visibly bruised – not even Héloïse herself. She does not seem to have viewed the relationship as abusive, even after years had passed and she was a powerful abbess with social standing of her own. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/FF8AHRcmyk-09d6f8a.jpg" width="3240" height="2369" alt="A bustling city scene; two boats with are sailing on the river alongside a large pink building. On the left, a man in red rides a horse and on the right, two men appear to be making a sale of goods" title="Traffic and trade in the bustling streets and waterways of Paris are depicted in this early 14th-century illustration. It was at her uncle’s home in the centre of the city that Héloïse demonstrated her intelligence – and met Abélard" /> We do Héloïse a disservice if we see her only as a passive victim; her intelligence and leadership abilities make her a significant historical figure in her own right. She never claimed to be a feminist role model – she only ever claimed to be a woman in love. Equally, we cannot ignore that Héloïse was raised in a society that encouraged her to think of women as subservient, just as Abélard was raised in one that shrugged at the beating of women. Look at the language she uses in her letters to Abélard: he is her husband, her father, her master; she is his wife, his daughter, his slave. In one famous punning line, she writes that she would rather be his whore (meretrix) than an empress (imperatrix). (Abélard, in contrast, staidly addresses his letters to his “dearly beloved sister in Christ”.) Troubling tension There is an unavoidable tension inherent in telling this story in the 21st century. From one angle, Héloïse is a woman who defies societal convention for the man she loves. She writes that she prefers “love to wedlock and freedom to chains” – a very uncommon assertion from a woman in the 12th century. She rejects the idea that their relationship was sinful. “Wholly guilty though I am,”she writes, “I am also… wholly innocent” because “it is not the deed but the intention of the doer which makes the crime.” Héloïse compares marriage to sex work, and says that any woman who marries for economic security “would be ready to prostitute herself to a richer man, if she could”. In some ways, she sounds more like the second-wave feminists of the 1960s than her contemporaries. Should we praise the couple’s relationship as a testament to how people can choose love, affection and passion in a society not structured to allow for it? Seen from another angle, though, Héloïse continually defined herself in relationship to Abélard and his wants, and always put herself in the lesser position. If a friend today told us that their partner alone had “the power to make me sad, to bring me happiness or comfort”, or said that they were “the sole possessor of my body and my will alike”, might we find such attitudes unhealthily codependent? Let us return to Père Lachaise for one last glimpse at Abélard and Héloïse’s monument with these issues in mind. In an earlier age, devotees sought mementoes more intimate and more grotesque than the modern celebrity autograph or selfie. Alexandre Lenoir, the archaeologist who spearheaded the removal of the couple’s remains to Paris in the 1810s, was happy to parcel out fragments of their skeletons to those whose favour he sought. One was given part of Abélard’s jaw; another received a tooth and a finger from Héloïse’s skeleton. There has always been an appetite for a piece of the past, especially of the doomed-but-devoted-love variety. Perhaps today, though, admirers of these star-crossed lovers might be willing to take something less tangible but more important: an understanding that history teaches us the enduring complexity of human relationships and the paradoxical nature of love. Yvonne Seale is associate professor of history at the State University of New York at Geneseo. This article was first published in the May 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Rich men, reckless affairs and ruined reputations: the scandalous lives of London's 18th-century courtesans
In the 18th century, some sex workers elevated their status to that of a courtesan, servicing an upper-class clientele and becoming celebrities of their day. Historian Julie Peakman examines the lives of four of these women
Sexy, flirtatious, witty and beautiful, the best-known female courtesans in the 18th century made a name for themselves by having numerous affairs with wealthy or titled men. Unlike their sisters selling sex on the streets or in common brothels, these women often lived in luxurious apartments with maids and liveried servants. They were the pin-ups of their day and set many fashionable tends around London. Many courtesans became famous as a result of a new cult of celebrity in the 18th century. Changes in technology allowed for mass printing and the circulation of news about these social butterflies, leading the public to clamour for information on courtesans’ love affairs and their scandalous behaviour. Famous painters such as George Romney and Sir Joshua Reynolds even made portraits of celebrated courtesans, which became available in cheap prints. But who, among all the courtesans of 18th century London, was the most famous? Read more | The real Harlots: Hallie Rubenhold on Covent Garden's courtesans Kitty Fisher: London’s golden girl Her shocking escapades drew the attention of elite men around Europe – including Cassanova himself <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/GettyImages-77944601-9bcdfa2.jpg" width="855" height="1024" alt="A portrait of Kitty Fisher by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted between 1723 and 1792 is pictured at Sothebys auction house, in London, 16 November 2007. The painting is expected to fetch between 2,000,000 and 3,000,000 pounds (2,793,496.24 and 4,190,362.13 Euros). AFP PHOTO / CARL DE SOUZA (Photo credit should read CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Kitty Fisher by Sir Joshua" /> Sought after by some of the wealthiest men in Europe, the courtesan Kitty Fisher was at the top of her game. Such was her fame that poems were written about her (such as Kitty’s Stream and A Sketch of the Present Times); satirical prints were made of her (like The Merry Accident, which depicted her fall from a horse displaying her bare legs); and a mezzotint of her face based on a painting by Joshua Reynolds was available in print shops all over London. Born in Soho, London around 1741, Fisher’s full name was Catherine Maria Fischer. According to The Uncommon Adventures of Miss Kitty F****r (1759), she came from a poor background and lived in Paddington with her younger brother and two sisters. She rose to notoriety while working in a milliner’s shop (an outlet frequently connected to prostitution) before she was allegedly seduced – and subsequently deserted – by a military officer, Ensign Anthony George Martin. Others claim it was Captain Augustus Keppel who first debauched Fisher, whereas the 18th-century satirical poet, Edward Thompson, suggested that there were too many men from which to choose in his work The Meretriciad. For five years from 1758, Fisher was one of the most toasted women in London. She had liaisons with politicians and noblemen, among them Baron Anson of Soberton, Baron Montfort, the Earl of Sandwich and Earl of Harrington. The second Earl Poulett was rumoured to have wanted to marry her, as did Henry Herbert – earl of Pembroke – who provided Fisher with £1,000 per year, and £1,000 for ‘present decorations’. Even the infamous Italian adventurer and ladies’ man Giacomo Casanova is thought to have met Fisher while he was in London. He recounted in his memoirs; “Mrs Walls [a famous bawd] told us that one day this Fisher swallowed a thousand pound bank-note on a slice of bread-and-butter. The note had just been given her by Atkins, brother of the beautiful Mrs. Pitt.” It was also alleged that Prince Edward was told he was no longer welcome at Kitty’s house in New Norfolk Street after leaving her ‘only £50’ after being admitted for tea. Fisher ultimately married John Norris – the MP for Rye – at Trinity church in Haddington, Scotland in 1766. While still only in her late twenties, she became ill with consumption and died at the Three Tuns in Stall Street, Bath, in March 1767, though there is contention about the place and date of her death. Listen on the podcast | Casanova: more than a serial seducer Sally Salisbury: the criminal courtesan The fiery temptress rose to fame and fortune – but fell from grace when she stabbed her lover with a bread knife Like Kitty Fisher, Sally Salisbury was a courtesan who worked her way up from a lowly background in 18th century London. At first, she worked as a prostitute for the well-known bawd, Mother Wisebourne. By the time she left Wisebourne’s establishment, Salisbury’s status had risen and her finances were good enough for her to establish herself in a select house where she employed a full entourage of servants, including a cook, a chambermaid and a housemaid. The Original Weekly Journal reported in 1719, “We hear that Salisbury Sally, a noted Lady of Pleasure, is setting up a Chariot and has hired a Coachman and two Footmen.” As a fully-fledged courtesan, she was now able to entertain rich noblemen. Salisbury became so famous that a flurry of pamphlets was issued to celebrate her life story. Her followers could read about her in The Genuine History of Mrs. Sarah Prydden, which was sold at pamphlet shops during 1723 for a shilling a copy, and Authentick Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of the Celebrated Sally Salisbury, which sold for 2s 6d. She even had songs named after her, such as ‘Sally in our Alley’ and ‘four new songs’ printed in Sally Slisbury’s [sic] Garland. You might also like | From murder bottles to arsenic wallpaper: 5 hidden killers in Victorian Britain Salisbury’s downfall came at the peak of her career when, in a fit of fury she stabbed one of her lovers – John Finch, third son of the 2nd Earl of Nottingham – with a bread knife at a tavern in Covent Garden. Though Finch desperately tried to have the charges against her dropped, Salisbury was indicted in February 1723 for assaulting and wounding with intent to murder. She was sent to Newgate prison, where she caught jail fever – likely typhus – and died. The London Journal for 15 February 1724 described Salisbury’s rise and fall as being “like a Comet, her Blaze was bright but of no consequence; Scarce had she appear’d like the Sun, before she disappears like a Meteor.” Harriet Mellon: from rags to riches The young actress enchanted an elderly banker – and became one of the wealthiest women in London <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/2RAA3A9-867d797.jpg" width="4326" height="4893" alt="Though from a poor background, Harriet Mellon came into great wealth and a title through her marriage to Thomas Coutts. (Photo by Alamy)" title="Though from a poor background, Harriet Mellon came into great wealth and a title through her marriage to Thomas Coutts. (Photo by Alamy)" /> Though from a poor background, Harriet Mellon came into great wealth and a title, making her one of the most fortunate 18th-century courtesans. Born to a dresser and wardrobe mistress in the theatre in 1777, Mellon began her career as a child actress in a theatre barn in Ulverstone, Cumbria. She later joined Stanton’s theatre company in the Midlands, where she was spotted by the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He engaged Mellon for his production of The Rivals on 31 January 1795 at the Drury Lane Theatre in London, where she played Lydia Languish. In 1805 she caught the eye of the elderly married banker Thomas Coutts (1735–1822), who quickly fell in love with her. Mellon’s affair with Coutts lasted ten years, during which time she continued to perform a wide variety of roles. While Mellon never gained great accolades in the acting world, she was competent enough and was praised for how she looked; her figure was said to surpass even that of the renowned actress ‘Mrs Jordan’ (stage name of Dorothy Bland). With Coutts, Mellon felt secure enough to give up acting, and her final performance was on 7 February 1815 as Audrey in As You Like It. After his first wife died, Coutts married Mellon at St Pancras church on 12 April 1815. He was now 79 years old, while Mellon was 37. The marriage was a fairly short one, and after almost seven years together, Coutts died on 24 February 1822, leaving his whole fortune to his wife, including his partnership in Coutts Bank. You might also like | 'Arib al-Ma’muniyya: the enslaved medieval woman who sang her way to wealth Mellon was now a very wealthy woman and attracted other suitors while throwing luxurious parties at her town house in the Kings Road in Brighton – but proved herself an astute businesswoman with an ability to make wise investments. She was generous to Coutts’s three daughters, and provided them with £10,000 a year each. At 49, Mellon married the Duke of St Albans, a man 23 years her junior. She died on 6 August 1837 at her home in London, leaving most of her vast fortune to Coutts’ granddaughter, Angela, thereby giving another young woman her freedom and independence. Nancy Dawson – the prince’s favourite? The London dancer was a celebrity of her day – captivating actors, soldiers, and even royalty <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/04/2E37D74-28e5514.jpg" width="3178" height="4404" alt="London dancer Nancy Dawson edged her way up in life as an actress and courtesan, only to later fall back on hard times. (Photo by Alamy)" title="London dancer Nancy Dawson edged her way up in life as an actress and courtesan, only to later fall back on hard times. (Photo by Alamy)" /> Nancy Dawson’s life oscillated between poverty and riches. She edged her way up in life as an actress and courtesan, only to later fall back on hard times. Her lovers included captains, soldiers, peers of the realm and royalty, supposedly among them Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland and Strathearn. Music was composed for her; songs were sung about her; even rude poems were made up about her, such as: “Nancy Dawson was a whore/And in the town was many more/And when the sailors went on shore/Law, they ask’d for Nancy Dawson!” A scurrilous memoir slated her reputation in The Genuine Memoirs of the Celebrated Miss Nancy Dawson, published in 1760. You might also like | Singer, dancer, Nazi-fighter: how Josephine Baker became a WW2 heroine The daughter of a staymaker (corset maker), Nancy Dawson was baptised as Ann Newton in 1728. At some point she married a mariner, James Dawson, who soon disappeared from her life. She later evoked a scandal with her affair with comic actor Edward Shuter. Though she spent seven years dancing in London theatres, Dawson was never offered a role as leading lady. She came to public attention when she danced the hornpipe in the John Gay’s The Beggars Opera in 1759, and was forever after associated with that dance, her name puffed up in bills “as sure bait to fill the house”. She played pantomime in The Rites of Hecate during December 1763 but retired soon after. Little is known about her from then until her death on 9 June 1767 in Hampstead, Middlesex except that she was buried in a Bloomsbury’s St George the Martyr graveyard. Julie Peakman is an author and historian in 18th-century culture and history of sexuality