The Glamorous Lives of the Edwardians
Discover how the future King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra sparked a new royal era of glamour, art and opulence.
By Kathryn Jones, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts
Reading time: 6 minutes
The marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (the future Edward VII) to the glamorous Danish princess, Alexandra, in 1863, saw a new sociable court emerge based around the young couple’s London home, Marlborough House. By this date, Queen Victoria was in mourning for her husband Prince Albert and kept herself away from the public eye. On behalf of his mother, Edward took on responsibility for many of the formal court events such as levees (receptions) and investitures.
The Marlborough House Set
One of the earliest royal garden parties took place at Buckingham Palace in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. They quickly became part of the royal calendar. While retaining elements of formality and strict dress codes, these events were sociable occasions. The Prince and Princess of Wales were popular, and surrounded themselves with fashionable society figures, including actors, artists, musicians, politicians and influential bankers. The group became known as ‘the Marlborough House set'.
Fashionable society portraits
A group of artists became associated with portraying members of the set. Philip de László was renowned for his effortlessly glamorous and natural portraits. In this painting of Princess Andrew of Greece and Denmark (born Alice of Battenberg), a distant cousin of George V, he depicts the Princess in a relaxed pose, elegantly capturing the folds of her evening dress.
Among the highlights of 20th-century royal portraiture is this striking painting of Queen Alexandra by François Flameng, which exudes sophistication and grace. Alexandra, then in her mid-60s, is presented as a leader of fashion. Vogue magazine named her
the legitimate head of fashion throughout the British dominions
Throughout her life, Alexandra popularised the choker-style necklace, first worn to cover a scar on her neck. In Flameng’s portrait, she wears the Collier Résille necklace made by Cartier in 1904.
Perhaps the best-known society portraitist of the period was John Singer Sargent. He painted Edward’s younger brother Arthur, Duke of Connaught and his wife Louise. This is one of the last painting commissions Sargent would undertake. The couple’s daughter, Margaret, wrote to her mother
I don’t suppose that you are so easy to paint. You must have a lovely dress specially made for it
With characteristic ease, Sargent depicted the swathes of dark silk and translucent chiffon sleeves of the Duchess’s dress.
The social season
The ritzy lifestyle of Edward and Alexandra away from the official occasions at court was characterised by the ‘London season’ of large dinners, sporting events, balls and parties, and attendance at exhibitions, the theatre and charitable events. These activities were interspersed with country house weekends, often involving hunting and shooting.
Costume balls
A series of well recorded costume balls were held towards the end of the 19th century. In 1871, the Waverley ball commemorated the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Romantic author Sir Walter Scott and raised funds for the Scott Memorial in Edinburgh. Guests were dressed in costumes inspired by Scott’s Waverley novels and poems.
Edward wore the costume of the Lord of Isles, the titular character of an 1815 poem, while Alexandra dressed as Mary, Queen of Scots who appeared in the novel The Abbot. Her costume included a feather fan, of a type carried by a number of the guests and made in Brazil. Pedro II of Brazil also attended the ball and may have presented the fan as a gift.
A few years later, Edward and Alexandra hosted a ‘fancy ball’ at Marlborough House. The illustrator Godefroy Durand made a watercolour of the event, which shows Edward in fancy dress as Charles I with Alexandra in a Venetian costume.
Perhaps the most spectacular of these parties was the Devonshire House ball of 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. More than 700 invitations were issued, and photographer James Lafayette captured portraits of the guests. Edward was dressed as a Knight of Malta, while Alexandra attended as the 16th-century French queen Marguerite de Valois. Their daughters, Victoria and Maud, together with Maud’s husband, Prince Charles of Denmark, wore the costumes of her courtiers.
Sporting events
The social season also included sporting events, such as horseracing during Royal Ascot week in June and yacht racing at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. The royal stables produced several important racehorses in the 1890s, including the famed Persimmon, who won the Epsom Derby and the Ascot Gold Cup, as well as Minoru and Diamond Jubilee. Jewellery was designed in the royal racing colours (red and blue) often around the names of the horses.
Edward and his son George (the future King George V) owned racing yachts and won numerous races with Aline and Britannia. A small seal, enamelled in royal racing colours, marks the especially successful year of 1896 when Persimmon won the Epsom Derby and HMY Britannia won 14 yacht races.
Music and theatre
Edward and Alexandra were keen theatre goers and numbered actors and musicians among their social set. An unusual bronze inkwell - a self-portrait by the actress Sarah Bernhardt casting herself as a mythical chimera - was among the objects in Edward’s study at Marlborough House. Alexandra was especially musical (a skilled pianist and mandolin player) and Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West of 1910 was dedicated to her.
The end of an era
For the royal family, the age of glitz and glamour was brought to an abrupt end by the First World War. By this time, Edward and Alexandra’s son, King George V, was on the throne. Both George and his wife Queen Mary visited the battlefields of Northern Europe to meet troops and boost morale – the first time a monarch had visited a warzone in over a century.
The art collected by the royal family in this wartime period reflects a sense of solemn purpose. George V collected military ephemera and images of the Western Front, including the bleak landscapes by photographer Olive Edis, Britain’s first female war photographer. Edis recorded the devastation caused by bombing and artillery fire to the landscape and buildings of Northern France and Flanders (Belgium).
The monarchy which emerged after the end of the First World War in 1918 was characterised by a strong sense of duty. This change is perhaps best seen in Frank O. Salisbury's image of the first ceremony at the Whitehall Cenotaph on 11 November 1920, where King George V brought the nation together in collective mourning.
