The Riviera Set Read online

  As the couple entertained lavishly, Maxine watched and learned from her guests; abandoning dramatic colours she began to dress in filmy pastel gowns. Initially it was mainly big theatrical names who accepted the enjoyable ‘Saturday to Monday’ invitations. These included Sir Henry Irving, Max Beerbohm, W.S. Gilbert, Nellie Melba and visiting Americans such as Ethel Barrymore and Elsie de Wolfe. Nat and Maxine also accepted invitations, and before they returned to America in the autumn of 1898 Maxine had seen enough to realise that if she were to be accepted into English society, Jackwood was not the right setting. It was too new.

  In 1899 Nat and Maxine were among the top ten theatrical performers in the USA. As nationally recognised personalities they appeared in advertisements, their opinions were canvassed, their names on a billboard guaranteed packed houses and curtain calls of up to thirty were noted in reviews. Newspapers regularly carried stories about their progress and revealed the minutiae of their personal lives. Nat relished the notoriety; Maxine was less enchanted but recognised it was necessary. By now she was active in selecting the new productions and she also recruited cast members. Nat had branched out into occasional straight dramatic roles with notable success, and Maxine could play anything from Shakespeare to farce to emotional drama. It was probably an initiative of Maxine’s to take their company to London after their production of Nathan Hale‡ was a smash hit in New York. They added The Cowboy and the Lady and An American Citizen to their repertoire as a deliberate policy not to try to compete with English drawing-room plays.

  Their reviews in London were mixed for the first two productions were simply too American for British tastes; however, they fared better with An American Citizen. But it was a busy, fulfilling season and they made some useful contacts. Maxine was thrilled when Gertrude was courted by William Montagu, the twenty-two-year-old 9th Duke of Manchester, and she promoted the relationship with alacrity. Although people who knew her well later in life would never know it, Maxine never forgot those hard years of cheap boarding houses and scrimping, making her own clothes, sleeping upright on trains while she travelled across America, and just how difficult life was without money. It is tempting to wonder whether, had she not been married to Nat, Maxine would have set her own cap at the young duke. However, she had not far to look in the duke’s family to know that if Gertrude married him her younger sister would never want for anything, so she pushed the relationship whenever possible. Duke William’s own mother was the Cuban-American beauty Consuelo Iznaga. His father, the 8th Duke, had married her in 1876 and, unwittingly, had begun an avalanche of marriages among land-rich, cash-poor members of the British aristocracy to American heiresses and beauties, including Jennie Churchill, who was unfailingly kind to Maxine.§

  As they were about to leave for New York Gertrude was offered a good part, as a beautiful young princess, in a new production called The Royal Family. It was agreed that Gertrude could not afford to turn down the offer of a lead role and so – suitably chaperoned – she remained in England to further her career. It was a great shock to Maxine when, a few months later, a letter from Gertrude advised that she had married Johnston Forbes-Robertson, who had stepped into the shoes of Sir Henry Irving to play the lead in the latest production of Hamlet, to rave reviews. He was twenty years older than Gertrude.

  Having set her heart on Gertrude becoming a duchess, Maxine was truly hurt because the marriage to ‘Forbie’ had happened behind her back, but she was also furious at what she saw as Gertrude’s betrayal. She took her anger out on Nat and on other members of the cast, acting like a diva, and the marriage began to suffer as a result. Nat wrote that a cruel and hard look appeared in the eyes that had previously been warm and dreaming. He reacted by seeing other women and drinking heavily, which by some miracle was not picked up by newspapers. Maxine decided to ignore his behaviour, at least in public, even though on one occasion Nat was so drunk he could not perform and the audience had to be refunded $1400. It was a significant sum and a story was concocted that he had mistakenly taken an overdose of the medication he used for first-night nerves.

  More and more Maxine found that the people Nat invited home for drinks were those she would rather not meet – horse-racing acquaintances and gambling men. For the sake of publicity she pretended deep concern for her ‘sick’ husband, but in fact she was growing further away from Nat and had already started to imagine a life in England without him. She now regarded him as holding her back and when they quarrelled she told him that his friends were vulgar.

  Despite the difficulties in their personal life, the couple’s professional life was phenomenally successful. They toured in The Merchant of Venice with Nat playing Shylock and Maxine as Portia. It was not well reviewed in New York but played to good, profitable houses across the country as they travelled back and forth in their luxurious private railcar. They did not take the production to England, but spent the summer at Jackwood. Other triumphant tours followed throughout 1900 and 1901 and Maxine invariably banked her share of the takings. A good manager of her money (unlike Nat, who spent open-handedly), Maxine was quietly building a substantial fortune.

  They were in England in October 1901 for the birth of Gertrude’s baby, with Maxine still behaving more like a bossy mother than an elder sister. While Forbie was performing in Scotland, Maxine ignored the well-laid plans that he had made at his London family home for the birth of his child. Instead, she whisked Gertrude to Jackwood and it was there that the first of Maxine’s much-beloved nieces, Maxine Frances Mary – but always called Blossom – was born.

  Early that summer a well-placed friend¶ to whom Maxine had confided about Nat’s transgressions introduced Maxine to a man of the ‘right sort’ with the aim of cheering her up, and making her life more bearable. The person selected to bridge the chasm between Maxine’s life as a popular American actress and her emerging social aspirations in England was George Keppel.

  The Honourable George Keppel, youngest son of the 7th Earl of Albemarle, was a personal friend of the new king, Edward VII. He lived at the heart of the royal set and was not only physically handsome, but a man of impeccable charm and good manners; indeed, his only problem in life was a scarcity of money. It was in June 1901 that Maxine received a note from him asking if he might call on her. She knew perfectly well who he was – few people who cared about such things did not. His wife Alice, who was the same age as Maxine, was not only the foremost hostess in England but the favourite mistress of the King. ‘I do not mind what she does,’ George Keppel famously remarked, ‘as long as she comes back to me in the end.’ It is safe to say that the Keppel marriage was an open one, and each behaved with discretion.

  Maxine was well aware how such matters were conducted back home, where, if a married man belonging to the Four Hundred# called on a beautiful actress without a chaperone, there was only one outcome. Furthermore, an actress who became the mistress of such a man expected to be treated liberally, but this did not include being received in the same social circles as his wife. Yet Maxine recognised that if she handled the matter carefully, here was a man who could give her an entrée into the brilliant English society she had glimpsed during her first visit with the Daly Company six years earlier, and which had since eluded her. She needed to convince him that she was more than just a pretty actress.

  She received him alone and George was bowled over by Maxine’s beauty, decorous charm and witty conversation. His reaction was that this woman would be a considerable asset to his wife’s house parties, at which one of the prime responsibilities was to amuse the King. The next time they met, Maxine went on his arm to meet Mrs Keppel, who agreed with her husband that Miss Elliott was a find. Maxine was invited to call on Mrs Keppel at her next At Home.

  It was at the Keppels’ home in Portman Square that Maxine began to meet some of the personalities who peopled her later life: Lady Colebrooke; Mrs Ronnie Greville; Lord and Lady Alington; the fabulously rich, widowed 5th Earl of Rosebery; and Muriel Wilson, who had a loose understanding w
ith young Winston Churchill, penniless but recently elected as Member of Parliament for Oldham and at the very beginning of his political career. Earlier that year Winston’s first love, Pamela Plowden, had broken off their engagement and married Lord Lytton. Since then Winston had courted other eligible young women; Muriel Wilson was one of two to whom he proposed a lasting relationship, the other was the actress Ethel Barrymore, an acquaintance of Maxine’s in New York. Both women turned Winston down, Muriel because she thought Winston would never amount to anything.

  Invitations began to flood in for the vivacious and beautiful Miss Elliott, now viewed as an asset at any party, but she reached the summit of her present ambitions when she called on Mrs Keppel before sailing for New York. Mrs Keppel appeared, explained that the King was paying an unexpected visit, and on hearing of Maxine’s arrival had expressed a wish to meet her. This was a woman whom he had heard was as beautiful as Helen of Troy; small wonder, then, that this serial womaniser wanted to meet her – and as she was an actress that it was perhaps better done in private. Mrs Keppel did not need to blush for Maxine: she already knew that; and, down to her perfect curtsey, Maxine played the part of a duchess again. The King was captivated, and when bidding her goodbye said he would make sure not to miss her next London show.

  In the USA again, Maxine secretly initiated plans to separate her life from that of Nat. She arranged with a leading playwright** to have a play written for her, with no part in it for her husband. News had leaked out (she blamed Nat) of Maxine’s meeting with the King and she was badgered by reporters. Knowing only too well that her campaign for acceptance by the British upper classes required absolute discretion, Maxine resolutely played down the incident, merely confirming that she had met the King at the home of a friend, whom she refused to name. But Nat would not let a good opportunity go and the result was a flush of stories that Maxine had been to the palace for lunch in the presence of Queen Alexandra, and would be attending the forthcoming coronation. Despite Maxine’s annoyance about this, she continued to appear with her husband in stock productions. They were always well received by theatre audiences, who adored seeing this romantic golden pair on stage together, but perhaps their very best acting was reserved for convincing their fans that they were still the couple who had everything, including a happy marriage.

  The summer of 1903 was a difficult time for the Goodwins. Back in England, Maxine was invited everywhere and as a consequence was never available to host parties for Nat’s theatre friends. He accompanied her to a house party on only one occasion and immediately realised that he was out of his depth: in his autobiography he stated that he felt he had more in common with the butler, and while walking past an open window had overheard a guest ask Maxine how she came to marry such a vulgar little man. Such rudeness to Maxine seems unlikely, and the truth of the episode doubtful, but Nat railed against the high living and low morals he claims to have witnessed. He did not name names, but gave sufficient hints to identify some of those present.

  One was patently Archibald Primrose, the 5th Earl of Rosebery. Later that summer, somewhat astonishingly, Rosebery suggested to Maxine that she divorce Nat and marry him, evidence of which was found among Maxine’s papers.3 More than twenty years earlier Rosebery had fallen in love with and married the highly intelligent, though plain, Hannah Rothschild, the wealthiest heiress in Britain. At Oxford, the young and handsome student, already land-rich in his own right, openly declared three ambitions: to marry an heiress, to win the Derby and to become Prime Minister.†† He was introduced to Hannah by Benjamin Disraeli (by now Earl of Beaconsfield) and his wife, and while Rosebery’s subsequent pursuit of Hannah was regarded as a solecism by a largely antiSemitic society (indeed, both families heartily disapproved), it was a genuine love match and the couple’s wish to marry overcame all obstacles. Disraeli himself gave Hannah away at their wedding in 1878 and the London home of the newlyweds was the palatial Lansdowne House on the corner of Curzon Street near Berkeley Square, while incomparable Mentmore in Buckinghamshire was their country residence. There were four children from the marriage, and Hannah, an indefatigable hostess, proved to be a tremendous asset to Rosebery. When she died at the early age of thirty-nine, he was truly heartbroken and retired from society and politics for almost a decade. By the time he met Maxine he had been a widower for more than nine years and it was said that he had never looked at another woman in that time. It is fair to say he was astonished when Maxine turned him down, and one has to wonder why she did so when she had been so anxious for her sister to marry the Duke of Manchester. She hankered after Rosebery’s lifestyle and position in society, but it seems she had decided that she wished to keep her independence and make her entry into society on her own terms.

  Soon after the Goodwins returned to America in 1903 they agreed to an amicable separation, each settling by contract to share a percentage from the other’s future works. To the press they stated that the split was a professional one only, and indeed Nat remained part of Maxine’s life for some years, although he was generally kept busy with his own productions.

  The play Maxine had commissioned from Dillingham was aptly named In Her Own Way. She lived in the New York house she had shared with Nat at 326 West End Avenue while she started rehearsals and coped with costume fittings and photography sessions for publicity shots. Having slimmed down to her lowest weight, and with a new wardrobe from Paris, Maxine was, at the age of thirty-five, at the very height of her luscious beauty. When she appeared in drawing-room scenes there was little play-acting needed – she knew how a great society lady really behaved and she played the part subtly, with authority, with dignity, but also with a true glamour. She made every woman want to imitate her hairstyle, her dress, even the way she used her eyes. Theatre critics were stunned and she carried the show almost alone; it was the greatest hit of her career. Previously she had been the other half of the Nat Goodwin duo, but from this point Maxine Elliott was a solo star. Her dressing room was filled nightly with roses from admirers, babies were named after her, she was mobbed after every performance by autograph hunters and press photographers, hundreds of letters and packages from well-wishers arrived at her home daily, and she could have lived comfortably just off the income from products she endorsed in the papers. She was, in a word, bankable to those who invest in theatre productions.

  Dillingham claimed to have earned a hundred thousand dollars in his percentage of returns from In Her Own so Maxine’s take was probably three times that amount in the two-year run, which included a hugely successful national tour. No one in the theatre worked harder than Maxine, and there was hardly a city in which she did not perform. The price she paid was a loss of enjoyment in her work. In later life she would inform her niece’s husband that after she had said ‘I love you' at precisely 10.28 every evening – plus matinees, she found nothing very interesting in the theatre.4 Her ambition now was to acquire and accumulate money. She began investing her savings, and it has long been accepted that her legendary knowledge of the stock market stemmed from a friendship, which was rather more than platonic, with the financier John Pierpont ‘J.P.’ Morgan. Be that as it may, from this point in her life Maxine seldom made an investment that did not pay off.‡‡

  In summer 1905 she decided to take In Her Own Way to London, where the King fulfilled his promise and not only attended a performance, but ostentatiously stood to lead the applause. Following this triumph Maxine was lionised: her surviving appointments diary reveals what her life was like. Among the invitations (and return invitations) for tea, dinner, Saturday-to-Monday house parties,₧₧ boxes at the races, Henley, drives in Rotten Row with existing acquaintances such as Mrs Keppel, Mrs Ronnie Greville, Mrs George Cornwallis-West (formerly Jennie Churchill) and Lady Alington, one also finds the names of other leading members of society such as Lord Sandwich, Lady Caernarvon of Highclere Castle,₶₶ Lady Gordon-Lennox, Lady Jersey, Lady Daisy Warwick, Baroness D’Erlanger, the Paget sisters, Lady Molesworth, Prince Francis of Teck
(brother to Princess Mary – who would become Queen Mary), the Marquess of Granby (later Duke of Rutland), Sir Ernest Cassell and Alfred de Rothschild. She went cruising with J.P. Morgan on his yacht in the Mediterranean, during which trip she was introduced to the Kaiser. Winston Churchill often took her to tea at the House of Commons and they sometimes played golf together, making up a foursome with Winston’s brother John and his wife Gwendoline. Considering that this strata of society was notably a closed shop’, it is extraordinary that Maxine was able to infiltrate it in the way she did.

  But it was not only society that drew Maxine to England; Gertrude and Forbie now had a second daughter and this little family had pride of place in Maxine’s heart. They were her family, and though they had busy and very successful careers of their own as Shakespearean actors, Maxine tried to see them whenever possible. She was such a powerful force that only Forbie’s strength of character prevented Maxine from taking them over, and it became a family joke with Maxine’s nieces that of Captain Thomas Dermot’s six children, Maxine was the best son he had.