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| Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) |
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In Press and Literature |
(Daily North Western, Oshkosh, 13th December, 1899)
WILL SELL HER STABLE
Mrs. Lily Langtry, known in racing circles as "Mr. Jersey," under which name her horses are nominated in English stakes, is about to dispose of her racing stable and to wash her hands forever of the turf. She will do this at the expressed wish of her husband, Mr. Hugo Gerald de Bathe, who does not think It Is a woman's province to own a Race horse.
In 1895, Mrs. Langtry's racing stable was known as Regal lodge, Newmarket. Her trainer was Sam Pickering, and she employed two jockeys, Trundley and Feakes. When not otherwise engaged Mrs. Langtry spent much of her time at Regal lodge, paying all attention to her horses. At four o'clock in the morning she would be on the heath watching the morning gallops on the private track connected with the lodge. She then had seventeen horses in training. During that season Regal lodge was credited with some big winnings, nearly every horse in the stable earning winning brackets in stakes and purses.
In 1887, Fred Webb was trained at Regal lodge. It was he who fitted the Australian-bred horse, Merman, for the Cesarewitch. It was a great day in Mrs. Langtry's history. The crowd cheered, and she was queen of the meeting.
Cesarewitch day in 1897 was made more notable by the fact that the Prince of Wales escorted Mrs. Langtry into the inclosure and mixed with the Jockey club society.
On Merman's victory it is estimated that Mrs. Langtry won anywhere between $100,000 and $200,000. She led Merman to the post a 100-to-7 outsider besides having wagered considerable money in the future books. It was in this race that Tod Sloane rode St. Cloud for Mr. James R. Keene. Mr. A Belmont's Kenan also started in the race, but, like St. Cloud, finished among the trailers.
Up to the fall of the present year "Mr. Jersey's" colors were not very prominent, the stable having in racing parlance, "gone off," but she was the goddess of Greenwood, as the sterling horse Merman won the Goodwood stakes and the Goodwood cup. He was then sent to Birmingham, where he took the Birmingham handicap. At Lewes, Uniform carried Mrs. Langtry's colors in the handicap, and another horse from her stable, Maluma, won the Prince Edward handicap at Windsor, worth $10,000. Gazeteer also won two smaller stakes at "Windsor.
All told, Mrs. Langtry's career on the English turf has been prosperous. She spent thousands to retain a good string of horses, and won many thousands. Fortune smiled and frowned at intervals, but the smiles were more frequent.
(From Oscar Wilde - Shorter Prose Pieces)
MRS. LANGTRY AS HESTER GRAZEBROOK
It is only in the best Greek gems, on the silver coins of Syracuse, or among the marble figures of the Parthenon frieze, that one can find the ideal representation of the marvellous beauty of that face which laughed through the leaves last night as Hester Grazebrook.
Pure Greek it is, with the grave low forehead, the exquisitely arched brow; the noble chiselling of the mouth, shaped as if it were the mouthpiece of an instrument of music; the supreme and splendid curve of the cheek; the augustly pillared throat which bears it all: it is Greek, because the lines which compose it are so definite and so strong, and yet so exquisitely harmonized that the effect is one of simple loveliness purely: Greek, because its essence and its quality, as is the quality of music and of architecture, is that of beauty based on absolutely mathematical laws.
But while art remains dumb and immobile in its passionless serenity, with the beauty of this face it is different: the grey eyes lighten into blue or deepen into violet as fancy succeeds fancy; the lips become flower-like in laughter or, tremulous as a bird's wing, mould themselves at last into the strong and bitter moulds of pain or scorn. And then motion comes, and the statue wakes into life. But the life is not the ordinary life of common days; it is life with a new value given to it, the value of art: and the charm to me of Hester Grazebrook's acting in the first scene of the play last night was that mingling of classic grace with absolute reality which is the secret of all beautiful art, of the plastic work of the Greeks and of the pictures of Jean Francois Millet equally.
I do not think that the sovereignty and empire of women's beauty has at all passed away, though we may no longer go to war for them as the Greeks did for the daughter of Leda. The greatest empire still remains for them--the empire of art. And, indeed, this wonderful face, seen last night for the first time in America, has filled and permeated with the pervading image of its type the whole of our modern art in England. Last century it was the romantic type which dominated in art, the type loved by Reynolds and Gainsborough, of wonderful contrasts of colour, of exquisite and varying charm of expression, but without that definite plastic feeling which divides classic from romantic work. This type degenerated into mere facile prettiness in the hands of lesser masters, and, in protest against it, was created by the hands of the Pre-Raphaelites a new type, with its rare combination of Greek form with Florentine mysticism. But this mysticism becomes overstrained and a burden, rather than an aid to expression, and a desire for the pure Hellenic joy and serenity came in its place; and in all our modern work, in the paintings of such men as Albert Moore and Leighton and Whistler, we can trace the influence of this single face giving fresh life and inspiration in the form of a new artistic ideal.