Lillie Langtry Totally Explained

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ť This article refers to Lillie Langtry. For other uses, see Langtry (disambiguation).

Lillie Langtry (née Emilie Charlotte Le Breton, nicknamed the Jersey Lily) (13 October 1853 – 12 February 1929) was a British actress born on the island of Jersey in 1853.
Emilie Le Breton was the only daughter of the Dean of Jersey, Rev. William Corbet le Breton, having six brothers. She was educated by a French governess, her brothers' tutor.

Marriage

In 1874, Emilie married Irish landowner Edward Langtry. One of his attractions was that he possessed a yacht, and she insisted that he take her away from the Channel Islands. Eventually they set up home in London. She didn't begin her stage career until several years later, after her husband became bankrupt. Her début before the London public (December, 1881) was at the Haymarket Theatre in She Stoops to Conquer.The following autumn she made her first appearance in America, with a popular success which she repeated subsequently, though the critics generally condemned her interpretations of rôles such as Pauline in the Lady of Lyons or Rosalind in As You Like It. For some time he didn't even see her. Nevertheless he remained fond of her and spoke well of her as a theatre actress. He later (possibly to rid himself of the affair) encouraged Prince Louis of Battenberg to replace him as Langtry's lover. Bertie once complained to her, "I've spent enough on you to build a battleship," whereupon she tartly replied, "And you've spent enough in me to float one."
In 1881 she gave birth to a daughter, Jeanne Marie Langtry. This child's father was definitely not Lillie's husband, and was reportedly her lover at the time, Prince Louis of Battenberg. When Prince Louis confessed to his parents he was the father of Lillie's baby, he was assigned to the warship HMS Inconstant, and Lillie, after receiving some money, retired to the country. A recent biography of Langtry suggests that another of her extramarital lovers, Arthur Jones, may have been Jeanne Marie's father, although Prince Louis's son, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, always maintained that it in fact was his father.

Other lovers included wealthy Britons Robert Peel and George Baird. Among her friends were the Irish writer Oscar Wilde and the American artist James McNeill Whistler. She was for a time the manager of the Imperial Theatre and also produced red wine at her winery in Lake County, California, which she purchased in 1888 and sold in 1906.

American citizenship and after

In 1887, Langtry became an American citizen, and divorced her husband the same year in California. A letter of condolence written by her to a widow reads in part: "I too have lost a husband, but alas! it was no great loss", In 1899, she married the much younger Hugo Gerald de Bathe, who would inherit a baronetcy, and became a leading owner in the horse-racing world, before retiring to Monte Carlo. Her last years of acting were performed in vaudeville.
She resided during her final years in a home in Monaco, with her husband living separate from her a short distance away. During this period the two saw one another only when she called on him for social gatherings, or in brief private encounters. Her constant companion during this time was her close friend, Mathilda Peat, the widow of Lillie's deceased butler. Langtry died in Monaco in 1929, and was buried in the graveyard of St. Saviour's Church in Jersey – the church of which her father had been rector.

Cultural influence

Langtry's nickname, "The Jersey Lily", was taken from the Jersey lily flower (Amaryllis belladonna) – a symbol of Jersey. The nickname was popularised by a portrait entitled A Jersey Lily, painted by Sir John Everett Millais, a fellow-countryman. (According to tradition, they spoke Jèrriais to each other during the sittings.) The painting caused great interest when exhibited at the Royal Academy, but Lillie is holding a Guernsey lily (Nerine sarniensis) in the painting rather than a Jersey lily, as no Jersey lilies were available at Covent Garden during the sittings.
   Besides sitting for Millais, Frank Miles and Sir Edward Poynter, she's also depicted in works by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
   She used her high public profile to endorse commercial products such as cosmetics and soap, becoming an early example of celebrity endorsement.
   Langtry's story was dramatised by London Weekend Television in 1978 as Lillie, with Francesca Annis in the title role. Annis had previously played Langtry in two episodes of ATV's Edward the Seventh. She was also portrayed on film by Lillian Bond in The Westerner, and by Ava Gardner in the 1972 movie The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean. In the latter movie, the title character, played by Paul Newman, has a life-long obsession with Langtry.
   A heavily fictionalized incarnation of Langtry was performed by Stacy Haiduk in the 1996 television series . In the series, Langtry is the immortal leader of a sect of vampires living in the present day.
   Langtry is also a featured character in the tongue-in-cheek western novel, Slocum and the Jersey Lily by Jake Logan. She figures prominently in "Death at Epsom Downs" by Robin Paige, the pseudonym of Bill and Susan Wittig Albert who write a series of Victorian novels featuring actual people.
   In the 1940 film The Westerner, Walter Brennan plays Judge Roy Bean who is obsessed with Langtry. He spares Gary Cooper's character from hanging after he claims to know Langtry. Jenny Seagrove played her in Incident at Victoria Falls .
   The song "Pictures of Lily", written in 1966 by Pete Townshend and performed by The Who, is about a young man who has his childhood's problems resolved by "Pictures of Lily" put in his bedroom by his father to help him to sleep at night.
   The fictitious character Irene Adler, who bested Sherlock Holmes when he sought an incriminating photograph of her and a European monarch, is thought to have been based upon Langtry.

Places connected with Lillie Langtry

The Red House (now Langtry Manor Hotel) in Bournemouth, Dorset was built in 1877 as a romantic retreat for Lillie and the Prince of Wales, Edward VII. Lillie Langtry lived at 21 Pont Street, London from 1892 to 1897. Although from 1895 the building was actually the Cadogan Hotel, she'd stay in her old bedroom there. A blue plaque on the hotel commemorates this, and the hotel's restaurant is named Langtry's in her honour.
   Lillie lived for a time at 42 Wickham Rd Brockley in SE London.
   Lillie also lived in the Southern area of Northern California. She owned a winery and 8,000 acre estate from 1888 to 1906. The winery and vineyard are still in operation.
   Merman Cottage in Saint Brelade, Jersey, was purported to be owned and occupied by Lillie Langtry (Merman was also the name of one of her racehorses). However there's no record in the Public Registry of Jersey of any transactions by Emilie Charlotte Le Breton or that she ever owned property in Jersey.
   In the Golden Triangle area of Norwich, England, there's a public house named the Lillie Langtry, which is decorated in the Edwardian theatre style and has articles from newspapers of the time and old documents celebrating the talent of Lillie Langtry.
   There is also a public house named the "Lillie Langtry" on Lillie Road in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham.
   Lillie Langtry stayed at Teddy's Nook.
   The town of Langtry, Texas, wasn't named for her, although its most illustrious inhabitant, Judge Roy Bean, was an ardent admirer, naming the saloon where he held court "The Jersey Lily". Bean himself spread the rumor about the town's name. He also built an opera house in anticipation of a visit, and Mrs. Langtry appeared there after Bean's death. (The town was named for railroad supervisor George Langtry.)
   The Jersey Lily Public House can also be found at the top of Black Boy Hill in Bristol.

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