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1861-1938
A 1905 oil painting by John Singer Sargent of
FRANCES EVELYN MAYNARD
who became DAISY GREVILLE - COUNTESS OF WARWICK
with her son who was fathered by Joseph Laycock, Maynard Greville.
Daisy had five children, only one who was fathered by her husband.
Image from Wikimedia public domain
The closest friends of Prince Edward Albert, the son of Queen Victoria, were called the Marlborough Set. These were rich people - upper class members of society in Britain - who often married for reasons beyond love, such as the preservation of estates and keeping the bloodlines within a small group of high-born people for the purposes of breeding. Often, once a wife had provided an heir or heirs, she was free to pursue affairs, so long as she was discreet. Everyone who played understood these rules. Generally, once married, any children a woman gave birth to were considered her husband's and he was to financially support those children. Therefore, today's DNA tests might prove that there were many a child not related to both its legal parents.
Queen Victoria was at her wits end with Edward Albert, her eldest son due to become King, and even blamed the stress he caused with his pleasure-seeking lifestyle for the early death of her beloved husband, Albert.
Prince Edward was 59 before he became King and, though he attended to duty while in wait for the throne, what he really loved was seeking pleasure - wine, women, song, and the horses - the races and betting. Fun for Edward as a youth included mock duels with soda siphons, party games and high-jinks. It has been said, in general, that he may have been taken to Paris and introduced to sexuality at fourteen in a brothel. His parents were aware of his doings - at least enough to be scandalized. His mother thought that getting him married young would resolve the problem of Edward's promiscuity.
Known for arranging good marriages for her many children, Queen Victoria was instrumental in attracting Princess Alexandra of Denmark, known as "Alix," to marry Edward. Alix was 16 when the agreement was reached and they married in 1863 at Saint George's Chapel in Windsor. He was 21 and she was about eighteen. Though the couple had a "honeymoon period," Alix experienced one pregnancy after another. From the time she married until she was 26, when she stopped, the woman had six children. The Princess who would eventually became Queen had certainly done her duty. She was thought of as a 'long suffering" wife who knew her husband could never be faithful to her.
If the Queen and the Royals knew or not, history has brought us the names of some of the women that the Prince who would become King Edward VII had as lovers and mistresses. Before he married, he had low-born English mistress and early in his marital years he had low-born French mistress. Among the more famous, he saw Cora Pearl, Catherine "Skittles" Walters, Giula "La Barucci" Beneni, Lady Susan Vane Tempest, Jennie Jerome Churchill, Sarah Bernhardt, and many other married society ladies. Having a mistress or having an affair did not mean that the Prince was momentarily loyal or faithful. He was not a serial monogamist. He could be married, have mistresses, have affairs, and visit prostitutes too. As I see it, he was a Royal sex addict.
Edward was sometimes in danger of being named in rare but extremely scandalous divorce threats and proceedings and was known to try to intervene between wives, husbands, and lawyers. When it comes to Daisy Greville, Countess of Warwick, this would be the case.
Daisy's story will continue here in the next posts but, for now, let me say that the woman who started out life as Frances Evelyn Maynard in 1861 had many brothers to have adventures with. Her love of the outdoors where she could run wild and own a variety of animals including horses considered, she was thought to be a tomboy. Her mother had married Charles Maynard, the son of Henry Maynard, 3rd Viscount, who was quite athletic and spirited but also twenty years older.
Still, when I began to read Catharine Arnold's account of how Daisy had sought out a extra-marital romance and fallen in love with a man other than her husband, I thought that her life might have all gone a different way. It seems that Prince Edward took full advantage of the fact that he had interceded with her on an earlier romantic dilemma to establish a relationship with her, expecting her gratitude...
Her father had died three years after she was born, leaving their mother single with two daughters to raise. It was a shock to her mother to learn that her husband and willed his entire estate to daughter Daisy! Daisy was a beautiful rich girl who was sought as a wife and had the expectation to marry up. Queen Victoria summoned her and wished to matchmake her with her youngest son, Leopold, but she got out of it with the help of Leopold. She married Francis Greville, Lord Brooke (later the 5th Earl of Warwick) in 1881 at Westminster Abbey. The Queen and Royals attended the wedding. But it seems Daisy was soon enough disappointed that her husband, and the life he provided her, while substantial, was too predictable and dull.
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Once married, the Countess of Warwick, Daisy Greville, who bore three children with her husband - the paternity is controversial - became a playing member of the Marlborough set. She also threw dazzling parties - for which she spent lavishly on gowns, jewelry, and all the rest.. Yet, she famously changed her point of view about life and began to help the poor, becoming a controversial socialist and personally going broke!
C 2026 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights.
You may be interested in reading posts about some of the women mentioned in this opening post. I'll be including a bit about Lillie Langtry in this month's posts.
February 2025
LILLIE LANGTRY : THREE YEARS AS THE MISTRESS OF SEX ADDICT EDWARD ALBERT, PRINCE OF WALES IN THE 1870'S : SHE FOUND HER WAY FORWARD IN MODELING AND ACTING
July 2012
CORA PEARL
BROUGHT OUT NAKED ON A SILVER DISH, LINED WITH VIOLETS
August 2024
CATHERINE WALTERS : IRISH-ENGLISH HORSEWOMAN WHO EVEN IMPRESSED THE FRENCH and RETIRED WELL
November 2025
SARAH BERNHARDT : DAUGHTER OF COURTESAN YOULE VAN HARD : TRANSFORMED HERSELF INTO A WORLD FAMOUS ACTRESS AND A NATIONAL ICON OF FRANCE KNOWN FOR HER OWN "SCANDALOUS" LIFE
