Henry Cyril Paget: the dancing marquess of Anglesey

Greg Jenner is joined by Professor Viv Gardner and comedian Morgan Rees in 19th-century Wales to learn about the fabulous, theatrical life of Henry Cyril Paget. Born into an important aristocratic family – his ancestor had been Wellington’s second-in-command at Waterloo – Henry had a very different approach to his wealth and social status. After a childhood spent in Paris, he moved to Anglesey, and after inheriting his title and fortune, set about spending it on his passions: jewels, clothes and the theatre. He remodelled the family home, Plas Newydd, renaming it Anglesey Castle and making it the home of his theatre troupe. But after just a few years he was bankrupt, and forced to auction off many of his extravagant possessions. This episode explores his fabulous life, taking in his difficult relationship with his father, his brief marriage and questions about his sexuality, and just what he blew his enormous fortune on, before his tragic early death. If you’re a fan of fabulous theatrical performances, forgotten queer figures from history, and past gossip and scandals, you’ll love our episode on Henry Paget, the dancing marquess of Anglesey. If you want more performers from history, we’ve got episodes on Sarah Bernhardt and Josephine Baker. And for more LGBTQ biographies, check out our episode on Philippe, duc D’Orleans. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Lily Tidman Written by: Lily Tidman, Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jenner?

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• 1:39Greg Jenner?

  Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me. We are the radio for comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name's Greg Jenner, I'm a public historian, author and broadcaster. And today, we are donning our sable coats, grasping our bejeweled walking sticks and boarding our train-shaped car, all the way back to the 19th century to Wales, to learn all about Henry Cyril Paget, the fifth Marquess of Anglesey. And to help us unravel fact from fiction in a very glamorous way, we have two very fabulous guests. In history corner, she's emeritus professor of drama at University of Manchester, where her research focuses on gender, sexuality and performance in the late 19th and early 20th century. She's acted as historical consultant on a variety of stage shows about Henry Paget's

• 2:21Greg Jenner?

  life and is currently writing his biography, titled The Dancing Marquess. It is Professor Viv Gardner, welcome Viv.

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Hello Greg and hello Morgan. I'm really pleased to be here, talking about my favourite man.

• 2:33Greg Jenner?

  And in comedy corner, he's a comedian, writer and a rising star on the UK comedy circuit. He's written for loads of TV and radio shows, including Eight Out of Ten Cats, Mock the Week, News Jack. Maybe you've seen one of his hilarious stand-up shows, By and Large, or Turning Thirsty, or listened to one of his podcasts, you've got Chating with Cherubs and My Bad. It's Morgan Rees, welcome Morgan.

• 2:53Speaker 05

  Hello, thank you so much for having me, everyone.

• 2:56Greg Jenner?

  Delighted to have you in. This is her first time on the pod.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, I know, I'm over the moon.

• 3:01Greg Jenner?

  So contractually, I have to ask, do you like history?

• 3:04Speaker 05

  Love a bit of history.

• 3:06Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 3:06Speaker 05

  Love, just, I just wish I remembered it. It's just, I think everyone's brain is adhesive to a certain topic.

• 3:13Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 3:14Speaker 05

  You can just hear it once and it'll stick forever.

• 3:16Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 3:16Speaker 05

  Unfortunately, mine's jokes and I wish it was history.

• 3:19Greg Jenner?

  Well, jokes and mathematics, you were telling us before, you're a mathematician.

• 3:22Speaker 05

  Yes, before I did this, I was a mathematician.

• 3:25Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 3:25Speaker 05

  And so I go like, music and drama and theatre, I had the reverse Billy Elliot experience when I went. My parents were like, go and do music and drama, don't do music. I was like, no, I gotta do maths, mum, there's no...

• 3:39Speaker 05

  I had a proper reverse.

• 3:41Greg Jenner?

  That's great. And you grew up in South Wales.

• 3:44Speaker 05

  South Wales, just Merford, Tidfield.

• 3:46Greg Jenner?

  Okay, and today we're talking about a North Wales icon.

• 3:49Speaker 05

  Am I allowed to storm out?

• 3:50Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. It's there's some beef.

• 3:52Speaker 05

  No, there's no beef at all.

• 3:54Greg Jenner?

  Do you know anything about Henry Cyril Paget, sometimes just known as Henry Paget?

• 3:57Speaker 05

  Other than the top-level stuff of being a flamboyant Welsh person, that's all I know.

• 4:04Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 4:04Speaker 05

  A little peek behind the curtain, when I got the email about doing this wonderful show, it was advised, you quite like it when the comedian doesn't do any research.

• 4:12Greg Jenner?

  That's right.

• 4:12Speaker 05

  And I was like, I can do that.

• 4:15Greg Jenner?

  Thank you for your effort.

• 4:19Greg Jenner?

  So, what do you know?

• 4:25Greg Jenner?

  This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener or viewer, hello, what you might know about today's subject. And maybe like Morgan, there may be a bit of name recognition here, but not lots. You might have seen the recent film Mad Fabulous, starring Rupert Everett and It's a Sin's Callum Scott Howells. You may have seen the exhibit of the film's costumes, which are at the Asna Cinema. Maybe you saw Cyril Davis's musical, inspired by Paget's life, How to Win Against History. And those of you familiar with North Wales might have visited Henry Paget's actual home, the lovely Plasneweth, which is now a National Trust property. It's a lovely day out.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  And it's got an exhibition on at the moment, centred around the costumes and his clothes.

• 5:06Greg Jenner?

  Well, there we go.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Brilliant.

• 5:07Greg Jenner?

  But how much did the film and play get right about this man? How did Henry Paget become known as the Dancing Marquess? What a name. And how many pairs of gloves can one man own? Let's find out. Right, we'll start before Henry Cyril Paget's birth. Morgan, we've said he's the fifth Marquess of Anglesey. What do you think his family did to earn their title? How do you think the first Marquess got the gig?

• 5:35Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. I'm gonna say, and I'm gonna sound immensely Welsh, is it coal?

• 5:44Speaker 05

  Is it something to do with one of the three things we did?

• 5:46Greg Jenner?

  I think we can say more military?

• 5:49Speaker 04

  No, yes and no, because their main house, this family seat, was in Bodasair, which is on Cannock Chase, and most of their money came from the coal. That was underneath. I don't think they did any digging or anything remotely like investing in it, they just took the money.

• 6:09Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 6:10Speaker 04

  But the first Marquess of Anglesey was, they were already aristocratic, they'd already got titles, but he was the hero of Waterloo and he was granted the Marquessate, which is number two down in the ranking of British hierarchy. So he was pushed up to Marquess when he led a charge at the Battle of Waterloo and he lost his leg. Famously, he said something like, oh my goodness, I've lost my leg. And Wellington said, by God, sir, so you have. But that may not be the problem. But he's actually, it's very interesting, he became one of the first owners of prosthetic leg.

• 6:53Speaker 04

  And you can see his prosthetic legs in Plasneweth now, and they are amazing. Polished wooden legs with full articulation.

• 7:02Greg Jenner?

  They're called Anglesey legs, aren't they?

• 7:03Speaker 04

  They're called Anglesey legs.

• 7:05Speaker 05

  Are they really?

• 7:05Greg Jenner?

  They are.

• 7:06Speaker 05

  Wow. I've heard of Welshman's thigh, but I've never heard of Anglesey legs.

• 7:11Speaker 04

  No. But I have to say that subsequent Marquesses, the second, third and fourth, were something less heroic and something less hero... They had to do what you have to do if you're a Marquess. You have to be the commander-in-chief of the Staffordshire Light Infantry or something like that. But they weren't very military and they had a certain reputation, particularly the fourth Marquess, for stealing other men's wives.

• 7:40Greg Jenner?

  Ah.

• 7:41Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 7:41Speaker 04

  So there's a lot of, there's actually a remarkable number of divorce cases. So after the first Marquess, the military genius becomes less and less evident.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Henry Cyril's father was living the life of old Riley as a younger son, so he gets an income from the estate, but he does no responsibilities. He's living in Paris, where what he seems to do is horse racing, possibly a bit of gambling and eating in restaurants. He has absolutely no connection with the French, as far as we can see, because he didn't actually speak any French, he didn't like talking to French people, nor did he like going to the theatre or to art galleries or anything like that. His second wife was Blanche Boyd, who was the daughter of Australian, Scottish Australian entrepreneurs who'd made their, he'd made their fortune in Australia, in the gold mines and various other enterprises.

• 8:41Speaker 04

  Come back to Europe, bringing your family with you so that they could get culture and stuff like that. And they settled in Paris on the Champs-Elysées and they married in 1873. Henry Cyril was born in 1875, but in London. The marriage lasted a very short time after that. They appeared to have separated sometime shortly after the birth. And Blanche died when Henry Cyril was two, probably from suicide. And Henry Cyril's father inherited the title rather unexpectedly in 1880 and became the fourth Marquess of Anglesey.

• 9:25Greg Jenner?

  So it's quite a lot for young Henry Cyril Paget to live up to. Before he's even born, his sort of ancestor is a kind of hero of battle.

• 9:33Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:33Greg Jenner?

  And then his dad and grandad are not heroes.

• 9:37Speaker 05

  No, by the sounds of things, it sounds like they're invading other people's marriages.

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Rather than foreign countries, yeah.

• 9:46Greg Jenner?

  Yes, charging headlong into someone else's bed.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Okay, so it's quite an interesting start to life for our little Henry, Henry Cyril? Are we calling him Henry Cyril, Watson?

• 9:56Speaker 04

  It makes it easier because absolutely all of them were called Henry.

• 9:59Greg Jenner?

  Of course they are.

• 10:00Speaker 04

  Most of them were called Henry William.

• 10:02Greg Jenner?

  Right, so there's quite a lot of sadness and instability here in our little boy's life already because dad's a player.

• 10:09Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 10:10Greg Jenner?

  Clearly, dating various women, and then unfortunately little Henry loses his mother. So what do you imagine the childhood's like in that situation for little Henry Cyril with his dad?

• 10:20Speaker 05

  Oh my god, I was, to be honest, the overtones and the undertones are tragic, isn't it? There's no stability there, there's, and I bet, then growing up with no matriarchal figure as well. Oh.

• 10:33Speaker 04

  He did have a matriarchal figure in his life, no, he, it, she's actually written out of almost all the histories. She was Blanche's sister, her older sister, Edith, and she took care of the boy from the age of two when Blanche died, and took him into the household where she lived with his grandparents in Paris, on the Champs-Elysees. So we're talking centre of Paris, centre of the social circle. So for at least that beginning, he was raised in a house where he had a maternal, a maternal figure, and she was, she's with him throughout his life.

• 11:15Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  She's there for him, and she's there at his death.

• 11:19Greg Jenner?

  And he grows up speaking French, English and Russian?

• 11:22Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. I, I, I know people must say this all the time, but I can just get my head around English, isn't it? Have you ever heard when someone speaks English as a second language and you just go like, you know way more about grammar, you know way more about sentence, I've just been copying my parents.

• 11:44Greg Jenner?

  So he speaks French, English and Russian, and when he gets to Anglesey, what do you think he learns next?

• 11:51Speaker 05

  Please say Welsh.

• 11:52Greg Jenner?

  It is?

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Yes, thank you. Oh, good on him.

• 11:55Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, so he's multilingual, he's learning Welsh.

• 11:58Speaker 04

  Yes, apparently he learnt Welsh from a childhood, apparently this was an idea that came from his father, though. Yes, and but what level of Welsh he spoke, I don't know, you know, but he certainly had a reputation as having enough Welsh.

• 12:12Greg Jenner?

  Is he having formal Welsh lessons, or is he down the pub learning it from, you know, minors and from?

• 12:18Speaker 05

  It could be.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  It's a long way to the nearest pub from a class newer. There's a cellar full of wine, Mark, you say.

• 12:25Speaker 05

  I've got a tiny minute of a story, and I'll keep this as Radio 4 appropriate as possible.

• 12:32Greg Jenner?

  Go for it.

• 12:32Speaker 05

  I'm learning Hindi for my partner's Indian, and I learnt a bit of Hindi from his dad, but I thought it was his mum goes down every morning and does, does a prayer, that bides her shine, she says, "Jai Krishna" and all that sort of stuff, and her father does another thing where he puts an offering in a jar and says, presumably another little prayer. I don't know anything about Hinduism. So I guess that's what the women do and that's what the men do. So I sort of put, I put an offering in the jar and I said what he said. I didn't realise it was a swear jar.

• 13:07Speaker 05

  It was something he did when he got angry. So I inadvertently learnt to swear in Hindi.

• 13:14Greg Jenner?

  That's the best way, isn't it? Fantastic.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  So I don't know whether, I didn't know whether Henry did something similar down the pub.

• 13:20Greg Jenner?

  He might be, he might be picking up some choice language from the locals, who knows? So he goes to private school in England, he then goes to Eton for a bit.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Yes, I mean, the, the private school appears to have been very, a short period, and Eton was probably even shorter, it was a couple of terms.

• 13:38Greg Jenner?

  Wow.

• 13:39Speaker 04

  And he, he, he obviously had health problems right from the word go, but he couldn't hack it at Eton, which was actually very sporty then.

• 13:49Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 13:49Speaker 04

  It was run by a sporty-headed.

• 13:52Greg Jenner?

  You're trying to sort of create the future leaders of the empire, it's all about, you know, muscular Christianity.

• 13:57Speaker 04

  So he managed a couple of terms.

• 13:59Greg Jenner?

  He does go back to Anglesey, this sort of Parisian theatre kid, what does he do next? What's the next step on the ladder?

• 14:07Speaker 05

  I'm just gonna try and project me, that's when I was, when I was just finishing term, I had to go back home while I was kicking and screaming, if I was honest with you. But if I, I wanna, did he, did he join a local Andram?

• 14:25Greg Jenner?

  Oh, lovely. He did this sort of opposite, although there is some makeup, I suppose, in that you put camo on. He joined the army.

• 14:32Speaker 05

  I did, yes.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Sort of army.

• 14:35Greg Jenner?

  Well, we say he joined the army.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  The Royal Welsh Fusiliers, which is a volunteer, and it's, I mean, it's actually a very big one, apparently. And it's, it's pretty prestigious, and it obviously had a lot of volunteers from all classes. But the only evidence you have any activity whilst Henry Cyril was in it is the theatricals that he did with various other people, and there are accounts of, you know, some of them were for charity, but he, he did, for example, a sketch with a man called Rowcroft, and I think we'll come to Rowcroft later on, who was his tutor, in which Rowcroft played King Lear. This is obviously a, you know, a satire of some sort,

• 15:18Speaker 04

  a comic sketch that you might appeal to you. So Rowcroft plays King Lear and an eighteen-year-old Henry Cyril is playing Cordelia.

• 15:29Speaker 05

  Oh, there we go.

• 15:31Greg Jenner?

  Wow, so he's in the army and he's doing drag straight away.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, good on him, go, go.

• 15:36Speaker 04

  You know, and there's quite a lot of, you know, examples of these sort of sketches, which they're doing in local halls and stuff like that. And that's the only evidence of any activity within the Royal Welsh Fusiliers, except that he quite liked uniforms, and there's a picture of him in a uniform, which may or may not be the Fusiliers, but he's got these wonderful pointy fingernails.

• 15:58Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 15:59Greg Jenner?

  I mean, would the military life appeal to you if you could design your own uniform and have the nails, I don't know?

• 16:05Speaker 05

  I wish I could have the nails, there was a weapon in the way, I forgot my bayonet, just.

• 16:12Speaker 05

  But did, I tell you what, sometimes I do, like, do you ever go like, oh god, choosing, choosing dinner, choosing lunch, choosing this, what's a where, god, I wish someone could choose that for me. Wait a minute, the army. I have to make no decisions, it's scrambled egg for breakfast, it's mute, whatever, whatever they have for lunch, but would I appeal to being in the army? I don't know.

• 16:34Greg Jenner?

  I mean, the theatricals division sounds good, they'd love his brigade.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was cool.

• 16:39Greg Jenner?

  That's what I'm calling it, I don't know what they call it.

• 16:41Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, yeah.

• 16:42Greg Jenner?

  And then in eighteen ninety-eight, I suppose he does the thing that you have to do as a young man in the aristocracy, he gets married.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Oh, okay.

• 16:49Greg Jenner?

  Now, who's he marrying, Morgan?

• 16:51Speaker 05

  Oh, well, he's gonna choose a proper local Welsh girl.

• 16:55Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay.

• 16:56Speaker 05

  He's gonna try and, no doubt, no?

• 17:00Greg Jenner?

  Well, you think he's just popped down to the local social club and just picked out a lovely looking young lass?

• 17:05Speaker 05

  Yeah, he's gonna, no, he's probably gonna be like a arranged marriage of some sort, is it?

• 17:10Greg Jenner?

  Yes, yes, and more than a arranged marriage, it's a cousin, right?

• 17:14Speaker 04

  It's a cousin, but that was very common because you keep it all in the family that way, you know, any property, anything. They had the Chetwins, her name was Lillian Chetwin, and that family was short of money and didn't have the same range of property, so you marry into an aristocracy which has everything that you want. And it was a fabulous society wedding, massively reported in the Tatler and everywhere else. And he gave her vast quantities of jewels, I mean, they're, they're sort of listed in the newspapers. I mean, excessive number of jewels, and he, his going-away outfit was in green, which is interesting.

• 17:58Greg Jenner?

  Lovely.

• 17:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 17:59Greg Jenner?

  Do we know what fabric?

• 18:00Speaker 04

  Probably silk, probably silk, I mean, most of his stuff was silk.

• 18:04Greg Jenner?

  Lovely, absolutely.

• 18:06Speaker 04

  And probably designed and made in Paris.

• 18:08Greg Jenner?

  So you say cousin, so her mum, Lillian's mum, was Henry Cyril's dad's half-sister.

• 18:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 18:14Speaker 05

  Oh, okay. I guess when you marry a cousin, it sort of saves you having to do the whole getting to know you thing, doesn't it?

• 18:21Greg Jenner?

  Sure. Have you met, oh, you have met, oh, great.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  You may not have met, actually, because the, I mean, the family tree is so spread and so complicated that they may never have met.

• 18:33Speaker 05

  I've got, I've got cousins in my family that married, and there's a little peek behind the curtain, and they won't be listening to this, it's too academic, but when they got married, they didn't, they couldn't have it in a church. Why couldn't they have it in a church?

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Because you can't marry cousins under church law?

• 18:51Speaker 05

  No, because there's, there's, there's an aisle, and obviously you know both of them.

• 18:56Greg Jenner?

  Oh, sick.

• 18:59Greg Jenner?

  Which side of the aisle you want?

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Both aisles. We can't all stand in the middle.

• 19:03Speaker 04

  One of the other things is that Lillian was, Lillian was a Catholic, that's, so it's Catholics marrying Protestants.

• 19:09Greg Jenner?

  Yes, that's quite untraditional, isn't it?

• 19:10Speaker 04

  That's untraditional.

• 19:11Greg Jenner?

  So this is eighteen ninety-eight, so right at the end of the century, and you said about the jewels, just to say, I mean, the Litchfield Mercury newspaper had a souvenir edition, there are fifty-three lines of text describing the jewels.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 19:24Greg Jenner?

  There's some serious bling that she's getting.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 19:28Greg Jenner?

  Rumour spreads that the wedding night involves these jewels in a way that is not sordid, but not traditional.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  Not traditional. He's supposed to have covered her body with jewels and then just looked. I have to say, this comes as a story from a family member, a descendant, who says in one part of his book, "My grandmother did not talk at all about her marriage to Henry Cyril", and then you have this story, a very explicit story about a wedding night, and you think, isn't there some contradiction there? So it, who, who knows whether, what truth it was. But they were also supposed, and this is probably much more like, they honeymooned in Paris, and in the window of this top-end, high-end jewellers, she was admiring, you know, one piece.

• 20:21Speaker 04

  So the story goes that he bought the lot and gave it to her, and those are the jewels that he is supposed to have laid out on her body.

• 20:28Greg Jenner?

  I mean, he's a generous lover.

• 20:29Speaker 05

  I know, my partner can never, ever listen to this.

• 20:35Speaker 05

  I don't want them getting any ideas.

• 20:38Greg Jenner?

  I mean sadly, or perhaps not sadly, I don't know how to feel about it, the marriage does not last.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:43Greg Jenner?

  Perhaps the clue is in the wedding night, sort of, you know, that maybe there isn't the.

• 20:47Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think they went down to the south of France and his behaviour was, I think, an embarrassment. One of the memoirs that talks about it, it says. And she left it, there was, there was a ball they were at and something went on. We don't know what, but she left and shortly after that, I think she returned to England. So, yes, give it six months.

• 21:13Greg Jenner?

  Right, and the marriage was annulled, so it's not a divorce, it's an annulment?

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's, she applied for an annulment in nineteen hundred.

• 21:25Speaker 04

  An annulment is, because all divorce proceedings are held in private, especially because it involves aristocracy. So you don't want any black sheet, dirty, dirty linen. However, the announcement that there is an annulment means that everybody knows that the only grounds for annulment is if it hasn't been consummated.

• 21:46Greg Jenner?

  Ah, yeah.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  And she went to the doctor to prove that she was virgo intacta. He refused to go to the doctor to sort out whether it was a dysfunction of his organs of regeneration.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  So I'm just gonna write that one down, that's not even for the notes at the end.

• 22:03Greg Jenner?

  Incredible.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  The divorce papers are brilliant reading. Divorce papers are wonderful reading.

• 22:08Greg Jenner?

  Dysfunction of the organs of reproduction.

• 22:10Speaker 05

  I, how, I mean, I know we shouldn't, but how brilliant would it be if we still had the divorce section in the papers, I think it still would be.

• 22:19Speaker 04

  How, what happens when you go to the doctor to prove or not?

• 22:23Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely.

• 22:24Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 22:25Speaker 04

  The functioning of your organs of reproduction.

• 22:27Greg Jenner?

  I mean, medieval times, they made that sort of public, like you had to demonstrate that everything was working, yeah, so.

• 22:33Speaker 05

  They had to demonstrate.

• 22:34Greg Jenner?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, medieval times, they'd like, they'd test.

• 22:37Speaker 05

  But is it like a public gallery?

• 22:38Greg Jenner?

  Well, they'd, they'd bring in a, they'd bring in someone to check, is it all working downstairs? Now, this is obviously the late nineteenth century, this is nineteen hundred, isn't it?

• 22:46Speaker 04

  But it is, I mean, in a sense, there's something, it is, it therefore becomes public knowledge stroke gossip.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 04

  Because an annulment means non-consummation.

• 22:56Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Speaker 04

  You know.

• 22:56Greg Jenner?

  Which hints towards, hints towards sexuality, you know, that is, at this point, is deeply scandalous and illegal. Or at least bordering on.

• 23:06Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 23:06Greg Jenner?

  This is an era of, I mean, there's the scandal of Oscar Wilde. So do we find Henry getting caught up in that scandal, in that danger?

• 23:14Speaker 04

  In the few months before Oscar Wilde sued the Marquess of Queensbury, when the Marquess of Queensbury left a note at Wilde's club accusing of being a sodomite, and Wilde sued him for libel. This had happened with the Marquess of Anglesey and Henry Cyril's tutor, a man called Roecroft, about three months before. So Roecroft sued the Marquess of Anglesey for libel for having accused him of gross immorality. That's a variation on gross indecency, which is the legal term. And it goes as far as court, and then in the anteroom to the court, an arrangement is come to.

• 24:00Speaker 04

  And the Marquess of Anglesey has to give in and pays Roecroft off. But Roecroft disappears at this point, and so does the Marquess, the Marquess's son, so does Henry Cyril. He goes off to France. So obviously some sort of crisis happened around an accusation of homosexuality in eighteen ninety-five. There's some sort of split between the father and the son at that point that was not reconciled before his death.

• 24:28Greg Jenner?

  Right, so the marriage doesn't survive, and in fairness, his dad's marriages hadn't survived, so maybe he's just carrying the family tradition.

• 24:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:35Greg Jenner?

  You know.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  He hadn't got any good role models.

• 24:37Greg Jenner?

  Exactly, right, you're just, you know, you copy what you see. There's also, historically, we tend to read this, we tend to read sexuality as, as gay, but there might be a love child.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Yes, he was, he was very fond of China, he adopted a child, he adopted a young girl, a toddler. But there is a rumor that only emerged in the last four, five years about a possible love child with one of the, the actress who had been his co-star, yummy yum to his Prince Pico. Timing is very accurate and there's a lot of suggestion that he, this might very well be his love child and the descendants who are now in Canada.

• 25:29Greg Jenner?

  So maybe a bi icon, a bi icon?

• 25:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, possibly. We're gonna, is this gonna be revealed and it's me?

• 25:36Speaker 05

  Am I a descendant? Is this what's gonna happen?

• 25:38Greg Jenner?

  You're actually the sixth Marquess of Anglesey, congratulations.

• 25:40Speaker 05

  Okay, I can't wait.

• 25:41Greg Jenner?

  It's yours, yeah.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  It's all yours. Take it back off the natural throne.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  I mean, I feel such an affinity to this character, if it turns out I'm, I'm a descendant, then I can't wait to wear those jewels and play my birthright.

• 25:55Greg Jenner?

  Absolutely, so the dad does die, the, the fourth Marquess died, which meant that our Henry Cyril becomes the fifth Marquess. He actually gets three more titles on top of that. So upon the death of his dad, he inherits four titles, one of whom is, is Marquess, that's, that's number two in the ranking. What are the other three? You can have a little guess it, I mean, you won't get them, but have a go.

• 26:15Speaker 05

  Oh, what do I know about titles?

• 26:17Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, go on, if I say Duke is top of the tree.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  Duke, yeah.

• 26:21Greg Jenner?

  So he's not, he's not a Duke, because the highest is Marquess, so go lower than Marquess. What else do you know about the aristocracy of Britain?

• 26:28Speaker 05

  Oh, zero.

• 26:32Speaker 05

  This is one a little bit of research, one of them great. Does he become an Earl?

• 26:37Greg Jenner?

  He does, very good, so he's the Earl of Uxbridge, he's got two more.

• 26:42Speaker 05

  I wasn't saying Yar, but I think that's Vikings, isn't it?

• 26:45Greg Jenner?

  Yar is Anglo-Saxon, excellent, very good, yes, he's not a Yar, no, that.

• 26:51Speaker 05

  Okay, third one, do they become a general?

• 26:54Greg Jenner?

  Oh, very good, no, it's not, but I love the idea of him being instantly promoted.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Instantly promoted.

• 26:58Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, bric-a-deux general, no, he's, he's a baronet and a baron.

• 27:01Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 27:01Greg Jenner?

  Which makes him sound like a villain in a Gothic novel. But, so he inherits all these titles simultaneously, which brings wealth and power and prestige and significance. He is a very significant man now in the British aristocracy.

• 27:14Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, and he does not engage in any way at all with the duties associated with being a member of the aristocracy. So he's no political interest, no, like his father, you know.

• 27:31Speaker 05

  What would those duties be? Because I think.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Oh, attending the House of Lords. I mean, there's no record of either his father or him ever, ever having gone to, you know, to London, attending the House of Lords, voting, doing, doing anything for the state, or you could become part of the royal household.

• 27:46Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 27:46Speaker 04

  You know, but nothing, no, none of that.

• 27:49Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 27:50Greg Jenner?

  What would you, if you inherited that level of status, would you, you know, take it, take this seriously or?

• 27:55Speaker 05

  Oh, I would, but I'm such a rule follower, I think I would love to go.

• 28:00Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so you take it seriously, are Henry the Cyril, the, the Marquess, doesn't really take it seriously? What does he do with his extraordinary wealth?

• 28:08Speaker 04

  Okay, well, the first thing he did was to sell his father's Gascoigne hunting hounds.

• 28:19Greg Jenner?

  Oh.

• 28:20Speaker 04

  Obviously, hunting dogs were not his thing.

• 28:22Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 28:23Speaker 04

  He was more into chihuahuas and bozoys and pretty dogs. He set about, well, I mean, he continued, but on a larger and larger scale, to indulge his passions for jewellery, for new technologies. He had every gramophone plus all the rep discs that you could have.

• 28:43Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Pianolas, all of that sort of thing, and obviously theatricals. You know, he put, he put money into his performances.

• 28:54Greg Jenner?

  Which is lovely and nice, nice if you got it. So he sells his dad's dogs.

• 28:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:58Greg Jenner?

  Which feels like, I don't know, it feels like some sort of message to the cosmos, it's like, I don't need these.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  Yes, a bit of a slap in the face, isn't it?

• 29:09Speaker 05

  Like, I'm gonna take, because they say like dogs are a man's best friend, and he's just going, I'm sad that my dad's best friend.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Yep, absolutely, and I'm replacing them with a chihuahua.

• 29:19Greg Jenner?

  And he's also got a French bulldog, hasn't he, as well?

• 29:21Speaker 04

  He has a French bulldog, which he brings over from America. But he hasn't bothered with the licence or anything like that, so he gets fined, but fine to him is obviously nothing.

• 29:31Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, he's fined twenty quid, which at the time is a lot of money, to him is like pennies, because he's a Marquess. Okay, so he's got all this money, he's gonna spend it, as you said, on theatricals, on jewels, on clothes. It's, in modern money, what are we talking, millions?

• 29:46Speaker 04

  Millions, millions, tens of millions. His income was a hundred and ten thousand pounds a year.

• 29:52Greg Jenner?

  Wow, okay.

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Which is like, I think it's between twelve and fifteen million.

• 29:56Greg Jenner?

  We typically multiply it by ten to fifteen, don't we, for a century ago, so, I mean, yeah. Fifteen million quid a year is his sort of.

• 30:03Speaker 04

  So that's his income. That's his income.

• 30:05Speaker 05

  To their credit, though, at least they're spending the money.

• 30:08Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Speaker 05

  You know, some people just sit on it and that money just gets out the system. But they're like, have it, have it, have it. I bet the people around him were loving it.

• 30:16Greg Jenner?

  I was going to ask, what do you think the local community makes of him?

• 30:19Speaker 05

  I bet they think he's an eccentric, but at least he's spending money.

• 30:27Greg Jenner?

  I think you're right. He does sort of patronize local businesses.

• 30:30Speaker 04

  Yes, he patronized local businesses as well as, you know, all the great jewelers across Europe, mainly in Paris. You know, so he engages with the local community in a way that produces a lot of genuine affection for him.

• 30:45Greg Jenner?

  Oh, good for him. Okay, well, that's nice. And he pops on, do you know what a tableau vivant is? Have you ever heard of a tableau vivant?

• 30:51Speaker 05

  Tableau vivant? No, no at all.

• 30:53Greg Jenner?

  I mean, how would we describe it for listeners?

• 30:56Speaker 04

  You create a very elaborate reproduction of, say, a famous painting.

• 31:03Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  And lights out, lights up, and there's this precise reproduction of the painting. And that then music is played underneath it. And the test is actually to be able to hold absolutely frozen. And then the lights out and you do a sequence of them. And they did, you know, they did things, you know, famous paintings, but they also did Bird's Custard Powder, which was a new thing. And it's two figure, you know, the advertising campaign was two chefs. One who was the classic, who made it from custard from eggs. And the other one was the newbie who made it from Bird's Custard Powder.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  And they did, they did, apparently, they did a tableau vivant of the Bird's Custard Powder.

• 31:53Greg Jenner?

  So you and your mates, the lights come up and you all hold the pose.

• 31:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:57Greg Jenner?

  Sort of perfect reconstruction of a painting. Lights go down, lights come up, and you've got a whole new painting.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  You do a new.

• 32:02Greg Jenner?

  You've done a whole new bird. He goes on tour with his money. He doesn't go back to Paris.

• 32:07Speaker 04

  No.

• 32:07Greg Jenner?

  He goes to the new party city of Dresden.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Dresden, yeah.

• 32:11Greg Jenner?

  In Germany.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  He didn't actually go on tour.

• 32:12Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  He didn't go, no, he didn't go on tour. He just took himself there.

• 32:16Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 32:16Speaker 04

  Had a long, spent a long time in Dresden. And he then paid the local theater owner, new theater just opened. He paid a man called Herbert Maul to allow him to appear on the stage and perform to do one of the new sort of skirt dances that were, had grown through the 1890s, where he's wearing a white silk tunic. And he's, he moves, you don't, you don't actually move your feet, but you move the upper part of your body. And projecting onto this were pictures of the German royal family.

• 32:58Greg Jenner?

  Onto his skirt.

• 32:59Speaker 04

  Onto his, onto this skirt, which you wave around. And, you know, these images, you fold out, fold out, and a new image comes on. And he also paid for his friends to come to the theater and to sit in the boxes and things like that and present him with flowers at.

• 33:22Greg Jenner?

  I mean, if you had, if you had that money, would you plant your friends in all your gigs and just have them throwing roses at you?

• 33:27Speaker 05

  Of course I would. Are you kidding? I never have to win anyone over again.

• 33:32Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, exactly. Every room is just a warm, lovely, welcoming room. Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 04

  The problem was that he never got asked back.

• 33:38Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 33:39Speaker 04

  I think the German audiences were, I think, in one sense, very bemused by what this was all about.

• 33:45Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 33:46Speaker 04

  And there's some really wonderful commentaries in the German newspapers about this. The English ones were quite, you know, said, oh, wasn't it wonderful, Santoy, which is what he called himself, was great.

• 33:57Greg Jenner?

  That's his stage name, Santoy.

• 33:59Speaker 04

  Santoy. At this stage, it was.

• 34:00Greg Jenner?

  So he's got a stage name?

• 34:01Speaker 05

  Oh, he's got a stage name, yeah.

• 34:03Greg Jenner?

  He's not the Marcus, he's Santoy.

• 34:04Speaker 05

  Santoy.

• 34:05Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. I mean, some of the clothes and outfits that he is wearing, Henry Cyril, he is wearing, he's got a pale pink suit, he's got stripy underpants, he's got silk ping pong uniform.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. I mean, when you see the photographs of him outside, he's wearing what we would see as dandy dress, beautiful tailored suits. Apparently, one of these was pink, but there's no real sense that he wore those in public. But he's always immaculately dressed. But he does have, when they have to sell everything that he owned, he does have, the lists are endless. He had, I think it's 56, what they called smoking suits, which were silk suits, which you just wore in, you know, your, your domestic, you know, when you're at home at leisure. And they are brilliant, they, they call, they're in every single color in the world.

• 35:01Speaker 04

  And the purple underpants are on display in the National Museum of Scotland. They're striped and they're made in Paris and they're silk and they're rather wonderful.

• 35:11Greg Jenner?

  I mean, who wouldn't want purple underpants?

• 35:13Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 35:14Greg Jenner?

  I'm wearing purple underpants right now.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  It's completely purple.

• 35:17Greg Jenner?

  I am, I am. So, I mean, these are extraordinary looks. I mean, could you get away with that, walking down Mertetifal High Street?

• 35:24Speaker 05

  Oh, everything goes in Mertetifal High Street. I know what that's, it's a lot more inclusive than you think. Because if you start being exclusive, no one's allowed there. It was a wonderful place. I love the idea of, I've always liked the idea of smoking suits. Because it just makes you think of if we had that today, is there vaping suits?

• 35:43Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Vaping suits, yes.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  And what would they be?

• 35:46Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, vaping pajamas or something, yeah.

• 35:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:48Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, amazing.

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• 37:59Greg Jenner?

  And so Anglesey Castle becomes a kind of locus for the community to come and hang out. I mean, he sort of opens the castle up.

• 38:06Speaker 04

  He invited them not into the castle itself, but he had.

• 38:10Greg Jenner?

  That's for me.

• 38:10Speaker 04

  Sport stays, he had fancy dress parties where you would, you know. So they have competitions, cycling competitions, where they have to light a cigarette, cycle all the way across the estate and then have the cigarette lit at the end. That's the winner.

• 38:27Speaker 05

  I wish we did more things like that, rather than the fastest, quickest 400 meters. Imagine that if it was a Olympic event. Oh my God, we're doing, we're doing the 20 mile breast sprint.

• 38:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 38:42Greg Jenner?

  Famously, he had lots of cars. Of course he does. Cars are kind of brand new, so he's got plenty. What flavour does he perfume the exhaust pipe?

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Oh, I tell you what, I don't know anything about titles, don't know much about scents either. I don't have a sense of smell. It's a bit of a Looney Tune. I got hit on the head as a kid and I lost it. So I'm gonna have to go with, what's my partner love? Lavender.

• 39:10Greg Jenner?

  It is lavender.

• 39:11Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 39:12Speaker 04

  I see, I don't think it is lavender. I think that's just a story. I think, because lavender is too earthy and beautiful and nice, soft. Patchouli, because Patchouli, he had apparently Patchouli-scented programmes for his shows.

• 39:28Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  And Patchouli's got that sort of exotic, and we know he had bottles of the latest in male perfumes. And I think it's much more likely to be Patchouli, but you can't put scent in an exhaust. I've checked with...

• 39:42Greg Jenner?

  Have you tried?

• 39:43Speaker 04

  I've checked with Julie and they sounded a little confused at my question. But they said, no, of course you can't. But of course, he probably sprayed the inside of his cars, particularly that Pullman Morse that he had, which is built like a railway carriage.

• 39:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:59Greg Jenner?

  Hence my opening joke about him driving a kind of railway-shaped car, right? So the rumour is lavender, you think Patchouli, but it's fragrant driving. You know, it's delicious, it's, you know...

• 40:09Speaker 05

  That's a challenge in the countryside at the best of times.

• 40:11Greg Jenner?

  Well, I was gonna say, if you drive, you know, through parts of Wales, sometimes the fragrance is slightly more animal.

• 40:18Speaker 05

  I've just been driving through Wales, literally this weekend. I always thought when you're driving with another person in the countryside, there's always that awkward moment, you've got to go, it's the fields.

• 40:28Greg Jenner?

  It's not me, it's the cattle, it's the manure. He sets up his own theatre at the Anglesey Castle, as he's renamed it, and he steals a theatre company.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  He steals a theatre company, yeah, yes. There's this sort of, probably third-rate, they were not making their money, theatre company touring with a production called The Music Hall Girl. And the actresses in one place had had to pawn their jewels in order to pay for the cost of the theatre. They rock up to Llandudno and are playing there. And he does what many aristocrats do, which is invite them to perform in the Gayety Theatre, which is his refurbished theatre, which he has put, brought electricity in and all sorts of wonderful things. And it's the most beautiful, bijou little 150-seater theatre. There are images of it that are fabulous.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  So this company come and do The Music Hall Girl there. And he decides that he will offer Alex Keith, who is the manager, and Julie Kent, who is the star, an inordinate amount of money in order to come and be his theatre company.

• 41:38Greg Jenner?

  Great, isn't it?

• 41:39Speaker 05

  It's a personal theatre company.

• 41:42Greg Jenner?

  What would you have them perform for you?

• 41:44Speaker 05

  Ooh, I'd give them difficult stuff. I'd do like Breaking Bad.

• 41:48Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay. Entire HBO shows, yeah.

• 41:53Speaker 05

  I think they'd love the challenge of that. And I'd love to go like, oh, you played a Mexican gangster last week, now you're Skyler.

• 42:03Greg Jenner?

  And would you play Walter White? Would you be the lead?

• 42:05Speaker 05

  No, I'm, I tell you what, as a performer, I'm, it's gonna sound a bit egotistical. I've worked really hard at being a good performer. I'm, I think I'm a great performer. I'm a blinking, amazing punter. I am such a good audience member. I can sit back and enjoy it all.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  Complete reverse of the Marquess, I'm afraid. I don't actually think, I mean, Alex Keith, when he died, called him a perfectly good actor, which is some sort of understatement.

• 42:36Greg Jenner?

  That's sort of damning with faint praise, isn't it?

• 42:38Speaker 04

  Damning with faint praise. And he, there's no record of him actually being in an audience.

• 42:46Greg Jenner?

  So he's stolen a theatre company, but he wants to be the star.

• 42:49Speaker 04

  He wants to be the star.

• 42:49Greg Jenner?

  Okay, all right. It reminds me of that 90s anti-piracy advert. You wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a car, you wouldn't steal an itinerant theatre troupe.

• 42:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, completely.

• 42:58Greg Jenner?

  Sort of great, isn't it?

• 43:00Speaker 05

  Because that advert never made sense, did it? You wouldn't steal a handbag, you wouldn't steal a car. You're just like, yeah, if you wanted a handbag or a car...

• 43:05Greg Jenner?

  I think it led to more piracy.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  And you knew how to do it, yeah.

• 43:08Greg Jenner?

  So he's got his theatre trump company there. He also does, he goes on tour a bit with them too, doesn't he? He plays in Lichfield, he plays in Leamington Spa, he plays in Llandudno.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  He does, to a very limited extent. He's a 150-seater theatre, so he can go to Llandudno. And he plays in a hall there. He doesn't play in a theatre theatre. Lichfield, he plays, again, in a hall. And it's only right with the last production that he did, which was of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, that it went on tour properly. And that was playing proper theatres, i.e. you know, 2,000 and 3,000-seat theatres. And I think he managed four places. Basically, you know, you move from 150-seater, local audience that loves you,

• 43:57Speaker 04

  and you go to Boscombe, 3,000-seat theatre, and maybe your voice isn't up to it. Maybe the audience doesn't love you in exactly the same way.

• 44:08Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so he's playing 150-seater venues, which is cute.

• 44:12Speaker 04

  Cute, yeah.

• 44:13Greg Jenner?

  But maybe he's not quite cut out for it.

• 44:14Speaker 04

  You open Patchouli Town Hall.

• 44:16Greg Jenner?

  Yes.

• 44:17Speaker 04

  A new town hall. He does, he takes a little version of a lad in there.

• 44:21Greg Jenner?

  And he has an iconic, he has an iconic dance as well that he does called the butterfly dance. Would you like to demonstrate for us what you think that should look like?

• 44:28Speaker 05

  Okay, for the listeners, this is gonna be atrocious. It's gonna be an awkward, I'm gonna do it for half hour, by the way, for the camera crew. So the butterfly, I'm assuming, is grand, I'm trying not to hit all the things on the side. Up and down, I'm swinging, I'm up, I'm swinging.

• 44:44Greg Jenner?

  So he's got fabric, fabric on the wrists?

• 44:45Speaker 05

  Fabric on the wrists, I think it's swirling up, swirling down. I think he's not doing anything with his face. It's their version of voguing, I hear.

• 44:52Greg Jenner?

  Yes, exactly.

• 44:53Speaker 05

  So it's just big flaying arms, head straight on.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  It's not far off. He had ones that extended so that you make your wings even greater.

• 45:03Greg Jenner?

  Oh, he's even bigger than that.

• 45:04Speaker 04

  The big thing is that you, that you project colours on it. So you have limelight and two limelight men to project. And he also had, I don't know quite how it worked, because the stage was very small, a glass floor, this is from Lowy Fuller, the great innovative dance, Lowy Fuller, glass floor which you project light from underneath as well. So as you're moving around your arms and waving them around and the silk, it catches the light and the changing lights. And he also had, we know, he did a dance, the electric dance, where he had probably little light bulbs all over him. And, you know, all sorts of dances to do with nature.

• 45:47Speaker 04

  The Fish King dance, not quite sure what that one's about.

• 45:51Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so that's why he's called the dancing Marquess.

• 45:53Speaker 04

  That's why he's called the dancing Marquess.

• 45:54Greg Jenner?

  He's a dancing Marquess.

• 45:55Speaker 04

  Every performance he would do.

• 45:57Greg Jenner?

  Clues in the name.

• 45:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, that does sound a bit, because I'm in the, I'm writing a show at the moment, I'm on tour this autumn. And it's kind of really admirable's the wrong way. It's inspiring to know, even just back then, someone is trying to bring something different to... Right, it's at the moment where we just do shows, it's lights up, lights down. This person is incorporating different lights. How can I incorporate different feelings with these lights? We don't even do that now for a lot of performances.

• 46:23Greg Jenner?

  This is brand new technology. He's really innovating, you know. And he's got his silky ping-pong uniform, he's got his purple underpants, and he's got his butterfly costume. You know, he's, he's a sort of one-man industry, isn't he? He's sort of keeping tailors in, you know, in all sorts of...

• 46:36Speaker 04

  What, keeping tailors, except he's not paying them?

• 46:37Greg Jenner?

  Ah, right. That's next to my script, actually. We basically, he runs out of money. The man on 15 million quid a year runs out of money in 1904. And we get the Anglesey Great Sales, where he has to start selling some stuff to pay the bills. Just, you know, tell us...

• 46:55Speaker 04

  Well, basically, he is insolvent, because aristocrats don't go bankrupt, because that involves selling the entailed property, i.e. the family property. That's not classy, and they have a way of protecting themselves. So everything that he owned, and that included all the things in the house, including the cooking pots and stuff like that, and his whole wardrobe and his cars, had to be sold. And the sales lasted from July 1904 through to December 1904. So the theatre is dismantled and sold. And there's this wonderful scene where there's a marquee outside,

• 47:35Speaker 04

  and they are parcelling through the windows of the house and taking them, taking them, stuff to the marquee, all of his clothing. And there's descriptions of the, these were the most popular of the sales. And people came for the spectacle as much as they came to buy anything.

• 47:55Greg Jenner?

  I've got a list here of the things that are on sale. I don't know if any of these appeal to you, Morgan, okay? So he's selling his parrot, Jaco, who is a multilingual parrot, speaks French, Welsh, English and Russian.

• 48:05Speaker 05

  Oh, that's amazing.

• 48:06Speaker 04

  And apparently swears in them. That's the other story.

• 48:09Speaker 05

  We had, I know this sounds like I'm trying to, we had a swear, we had a swear in parrot. Yeah, I can literally show you on my phone, my nan's called Nanny Parrot.

• 48:18Speaker 05

  And she used to, I remember she always used to go, oh, she's listening to, oh, why can't the parrot swear? She goes, oh, listens to the radio. I was like, what are you listening to?

• 48:25Greg Jenner?

  Amazing. You've got to have a sweary parrot. So he's, he's selling his sweary parrot. He's selling his silky ping pong uniform. He's selling his bejeweled walking sticks, furniture, ice skates, mink coat with 20 heads, various pianos and pianolas, various little dogs in their beautiful jackets with Henry's insignia sewn into the jackets, 500 pairs of gloves, four cannons, obviously, 1,000 photos of himself and his friends. And the auctioneer's assistant, Gerry, modeled all of the clothes so people could see what they looked like. So what would you buy at that auction?

• 48:58Speaker 05

  Oh, I mean, the thousand photos of yourself, I mean, it was well ahead of his time. That's everyone nowadays.

• 49:06Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, it is. That's, that's our kind of camera reels, isn't it? A thousand photos of us in all our outfits.

• 49:10Speaker 05

  He pretty much just had his, um, he had his Instagram printed out, didn't he?

• 49:14Greg Jenner?

  He did. It is. I would buy, I mean, personally, I would buy the silky ping pong uniform.

• 49:21Speaker 05

  I would buy the little dog outfit.

• 49:23Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 49:24Speaker 05

  I look after a little toy poodle and I think my partner would melt into a puddle.

• 49:29Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Viv, what would you buy?

• 49:30Speaker 04

  I would buy the cooking pots.

• 49:34Greg Jenner?

  Very practical.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, I'm very practical.

• 49:36Greg Jenner?

  That's fine, that's fine, yes. They're probably workable.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  I'm not interested in the, um, the walking sticks and the, and the waistcoats and things like that.

• 49:43Greg Jenner?

  And obviously.

• 49:44Speaker 04

  The cooking pots.

• 49:45Greg Jenner?

  And obviously.

• 49:45Speaker 04

  And the chocolate. There was a lot of chocolate.

• 49:48Greg Jenner?

  Oh, of course there was, for breakfast, of course. His breakfast chocolate. Of course, a parrot, you could teach it to podcast. I wouldn't need to do this gig. I'd just get the, Jacko the parrot in, just get it to do my lines for me.

• 49:57Speaker 05

  He'd be all in Russian, but other than that.

• 49:59Greg Jenner?

  Yeah. Welcome to your destiny, you know, it'd be great. Um, so, uh, the insolvency sales, do they turn Henry's fortunes around? Does he clear his debts and?

• 50:09Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 50:10Greg Jenner?

  So he's, he's.

• 50:10Speaker 04

  No, because I mean, a lot of things sell for underpriced, you know, the, the, the amount that he got for that Pullman car, the Morse, was derisory compared to how much it had cost. And then the man gave it back because it didn't do quite the mileage that he thought it would.

• 50:27Greg Jenner?

  Because there's lavender in the engine.

• 50:29Speaker 04

  Because there's lavender in the engine, yeah. Um, so, no. And they calculated that if the Marquess lived till 1911, he would, the debts would be paid off. But they weren't through the sales because of the income was, his annual income was going to pay off debts as well. But the sales didn't.

• 50:52Greg Jenner?

  And he doesn't live to 1911. The tragedy here is he dies in 1905.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:57Greg Jenner?

  Age 29.

• 50:58Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 50:59Greg Jenner?

  It's really young.

• 51:00Speaker 05

  That is really young.

• 51:01Greg Jenner?

  It's such a young, it's extraordinarily young, but also it's just, it's so tragic, isn't it? Because this is clearly someone who's living his life to his full.

• 51:10Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah, completely. It doesn't sound like someone that was done.

• 51:12Greg Jenner?

  No.

• 51:13Speaker 05

  It's, um, 29, I didn't even know who I was at 29.

• 51:16Greg Jenner?

  I know, exactly, yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 05

  He didn't have a chance to have his 30 year, 30s midlife crisis.

• 51:21Greg Jenner?

  Can you imagine his 30th birthday, the bash?

• 51:23Speaker 04

  He'd had his life crisis when his income was reduced from £110,000 a year to £3,000.

• 51:29Greg Jenner?

  Oof, oh, that's, okay, that's tight.

• 51:31Speaker 04

  And so he was reduced to, basically, I think he had one personal servant and the nanny for his little girl that he'd adopted. Um, and basically that was it. You know, and his private secretary, of course.

• 51:46Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So what happened to the family then? Viv, what happened to the castle? What happened to all his stuff that, you know, he's dead?

• 51:52Speaker 04

  His stuff is, his stuff is gone.

• 51:54Greg Jenner?

  Right.

• 51:54Speaker 04

  Um, and the title is inherited by his cousin, who is, I think, 19 at this point, and is at Sandhurst, training to be a soldier.

• 52:04Greg Jenner?

  Okay, so a proper, fine, a last, a proper.

• 52:07Speaker 04

  Uh, yeah, I know, but he only, I think he did a year more. I think, I think probably, you know, and there's plenty of stories about the sixth Marquess.

• 52:15Greg Jenner?

  Okay.

• 52:15Speaker 04

  Um, so, yes, but they, the house was dismantled anyway. There's some very, very poignant descriptions of the empty house.

• 52:24Greg Jenner?

  Yeah.

• 52:25Speaker 04

  They may or may not have destroyed all of his papers, but I, myself, I think probably the papers had gone. But certainly the, the good story is that, um, the sixth Marquess's mother walked in and destroyed everything that was left. So we have no personal papers. There's a journal turned up in 1906, which is of his last year and was reproduced in part in the newspapers, which is, which is actually really poignant. But no, so there is a relic and he's, the chapel, um, the theatre, which had been built into the chapel originally, right back in the 1890s, um, was returned to a chapel

• 53:09Speaker 04

  and an occasional schoolroom, as is appropriate. Um, at least that's the story.

• 53:14Greg Jenner?

  Okay. So it's quite a life. It's a sad end, but what do you make of Henry Cyril Paget?

• 53:22Speaker 05

  Well, I'm glad he just made the most of what he had, to be honest. And, and again, like this extravagance, you know, I, it's, it feels like it's a symptom of everything that this poor person was put through. At least they had fun doing it. And by the sounds of things, they weren't, other than not paying their tailors, it didn't sound like they were a particularly nasty person or, or, or left much damage behind. They just lived their life authentically.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  They left a lot of damage behind.

• 53:51Speaker 05

  I think that.

• 53:52Speaker 04

  They left a lot of damage behind. All but the very core servants lost their jobs.

• 53:58Greg Jenner?

  Right, okay.

• 53:58Speaker 04

  Lost their homes. The people, particularly the locals, the local shopkeepers and things like that, who didn't have vast resources, to be owed a smallish sum of money could mean bankruptcy for them, an end of their business. Uh, so there's this sort of very ambivalent feeling around his. Is that, that, yes, he was genuinely, there's a genuine affection there for him. But the debts that he had accrued, and he sent this extraordinary telegram when, during, uh, before the sales, when the estate manager wrote to him and said, please could you send us a cheque for two thou, two, £3,000, because the servants and the local shopkeepers

• 54:41Speaker 04

  have not been paid for three months. And he sent a telegram back saying, please do not bother me with such trifles.

• 54:48Greg Jenner?

  Oh, okay.

• 54:56Greg Jenner?

  It's time now for the nuance window. This is where Morgan and I sit silently backstage, bedazzling our costumes for two minutes, while Professor Viv takes to the stage to tell us something we need to know about Henry Paget, the fifth Marquess. So my stopwatch is ready.

• 55:10Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 55:11Greg Jenner?

  And take it away, Professor Gardner.

• 55:13Speaker 04

  Okay, right. So I'm interested in why people are interested so interested in him today and why he's in some sense a hero to them. And my answer to that is sort of, we all need heroes. And maybe in the 21st century, we need a queer hero in every single sense of the word. Someone who is an outsider and not the military hero who saved England at the Battle of Waterloo. And it helps if that hero is dead because we can then build our own fantasy around him. We can resurrect him in the image that we desire. And in the case of the fifth Marquess, he was also persecuted because he was written out of history

• 55:53Speaker 04

  and that makes it all the better. His family repudiated him, society repudiated him. So when he rises again from the ashes in the 21st century, he becomes the sort of George Michael. People want him to be George Michael. They want him to be David Bowie. Someone who was an outsider, who lived his life as he wanted it and a performer. And for the LGBTQ community, he was gender fluid in an era that prosecuted and martyred Oscar Wilde, whose play, of course, The Marquess did, and a period where Victorian binary notions, male and female, ruled. So he's radical in that sense.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  He stood in the hero category against his own class, but actually partly because they didn't want to have anything to do with him. Um, and he brought joy and pleasure into the lives of ordinary people, the servants, the shopkeepers, the postmistresses. Also because he was Welsh, even if he wasn't Welsh, he was more Parisian than he was Welsh, especially North Wales. And it's North Wales that have really embraced him, um, in, you know, for living and playing in North Wales, for making North Wales his utopia. And for learning Welsh, going, being there at the Isle of Stathford, um, spending all his money there,

• 57:19Speaker 04

  even if he actually didn't spend, you know, pay there. Um, and it's an era of growing Welsh nationalism. So he all does this in the most gloriously fabulous way, um, and all for free because he didn't charge people. And he also loved small dogs. And we know that anybody who loves small dogs is a good thing. Except, I argue, that the reality was much, much more complex than that. And not perhaps quite as altruistic as the term hero suggests. But actually, I don't want to spoil anybody's fantasy. I want them to have their stories and their versions of his life because we all create heroes for ourselves and for our moment because we need them.

• 58:02Greg Jenner?

  Amazing. Thank you so much.

• 58:04Speaker 05

  For me, what resonated with that amazing speech just then is that queerness in history, people talk about, so not gender non-binary stuff or gender fluidity, they, I think there's, is a bit of discussion where people talk about, oh, it's all new. It's like, it's not new at all. It's throughout history. You can look at it in different cultures. You can look at it in different races. You could look at it all over the world. It's there. And so to have this one, probably affinity to me to go, oh, it's up the road. This person in North Wales was doing this 100 years ago. That's really affirming.

• 58:47Greg Jenner?

  Well, it's time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Morgan to see how much you've learned. Let's see how we get on. I've got 10 questions for you, Morgan.

• 58:56Speaker 05

  Okay, I've got all my notes here. I didn't know this, that there was going to be a notes thing and a quiz, because you've told me not to look into the podcast.

• 59:04Greg Jenner?

  It's all right.

• 59:05Speaker 05

  And I'm so worried that I've not been really funny because I've been making notes.

• 59:09Greg Jenner?

  It's all right. You've been funny. And let's see if you've also been paying attention. We've got 10 questions. Here we go. Question one: What was Henry's nickname?

• 59:17Speaker 05

  Oh, the dancing Marcus.

• 59:21Greg Jenner?

  Yes, very good.

• 59:21Speaker 05

  I thought we were saying Marcus for ages.

• 59:24Greg Jenner?

  The daunting Marcus. Question two: Henry spoke at least three languages besides English. Can you name two of them?

• 59:33Speaker 05

  Oh, Russian and French.

• 59:35Greg Jenner?

  Very good. And also better Welsh. Question three: Do you remember the name of Henry's wife?

• 59:40Speaker 05

  Oh, Lillian.

• 59:42Greg Jenner?

  It was Lillian. Well done. Yes, his cousin. Question four: What important remodeling did Henry make to Plasneweth, which he renamed the castle when he was a Marcus? What did he add?

• 59:52Speaker 05

  Oh, didn't he add a theatre?

• 59:54Greg Jenner?

  He did. He built a gayety theatre. Very good. What was Henry's most famous dance performance called?

• 1:00:00Speaker 05

  Oh, the butterfly.

• 1:00:01Greg Jenner?

  It was the butterfly dance. Question six: Which floral scent did Henry Paget supposedly use to perfume his car?

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  Rumor that was, though, it was lavender.

• 1:00:11Greg Jenner?

  It was rumour. I do think patchouli, so one of those. Question seven: What was one of the sources of the Paget family's wealth?

• 1:00:19Speaker 05

  Oh, it was coal.

• 1:00:20Greg Jenner?

  It was coal. Good old coal. Question eight: During the Great Anglesey Sales, when he ran out of money, how were some of Henry's clothes displayed? Do you remember who modeled them?

• 1:00:31Speaker 05

  Oh, it was one of the servants, wasn't it? His personal servants.

• 1:00:34Greg Jenner?

  It was the auctioneer's assistant called Gerry, yeah. I'll let you have that because I think that's true.

• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Faithful Gerry.

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  Faithful Gerry.

• 1:00:41Greg Jenner?

  Question nine: Can you name two items that were sold off at the Great Anglesey Sales?

• 1:00:45Speaker 05

  Oh, well, we had four cannons. And we had a thousand self-portraits, isn't it?

• 1:00:50Greg Jenner?

  We had parrots, we had ice skates, we had mink coats, pianos, walking sticks and cannons, of course. Question 10, I think this is for, I'm going to give you nine and a half out of 10 if you get this, because you were pretty good with Gerry. How old was Henry when he died?

• 1:01:03Speaker 05

  Oh, he was 29.

• 1:01:04Greg Jenner?

  He was 29. Nine and a half out of 10. Well done. Really good. Excellent. You were paying attention and you were funny, so, you know, win-win.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  Thank you so much.

• 1:01:13Greg Jenner?

  Well done, Viv, as well. Thank you for sharing that with us.

• 1:01:15Speaker 04

  My pleasure.

• 1:01:16Greg Jenner?

  Fascinating life. I mean, he does feel joyous. He does feel beloved, but I understand that he left a lot of people in financial debt, and that's not fun. But, you know, we like our flamboyant heroes. And listener, for more flamboyant performers from history, check out our episodes on Josephine Baker, Sarah Bernhardt, or Sarah Bernhardt in French. And for more fabulous LGBTQ biographies, we've got a lovely episode on Philippe Dugdorlon, which is a good one, too. If you've enjoyed the podcast, please subscribe to You're Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to hear the show 28 days earlier than anywhere else. And if you're outside the UK, you can listen at bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests.

• 1:01:58Greg Jenner?

  In history corner, we have the fantastic Professor Viv Gardner from the University of Manchester. Thank you, Viv.

• 1:02:03Speaker 04

  Well, thank you, Greg, for inviting me. It's been a great pleasure to talk about it.

• 1:02:06Greg Jenner?

  Very fun. Thank you. And in comedy corner, we have the marvellous Morgan Rees. Thank you, Morgan.

• 1:02:10Speaker 05

  Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute delight learning more about this gentleman and getting to meet you two.

• 1:02:17Greg Jenner?

  And to you, lovely listener, join me next time as we stage our own tableau vivant of another long-lost historical topic. But for now, I'm off to commission a spangly lilac football kit. It'll go perfectly with my purple underpants. Bye.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

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• 1:02:48Greg Jenner?

  We effectively reprogram bacteria.

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• 1:02:52Greg Jenner?

  Yeah, my lab in Edinburgh called the Wallace Lab.

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  Wallace Lab. I bet the Gromit Lab does all the real work. Each week, a load of top doctors, scientists, experts and comedians try to convince me what's the best medicine. I'm a big believer in fighting. I think the best medicine is something called a free flap. Free flaps, not just my nickname in freshers week.

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• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  How do you build a career you're proud of? It's easy to get caught up in the impact you hope to have or the legacy you want to leave behind. But how much of that is actually within your control? Something that I believe is that legacy is totally out of your control. Like, legacy is something that other people determine. But what is in your control is contribution and your actions around that. I really grew up, you know, into my 20s, maybe even 30s, thinking that, that like if I didn't do something that meaningful and important, then like I hadn't done something worthwhile. Find out how to build a career you're proud of in this episode of my podcast, Work Life, featuring actress and director Bryce Dallas Howard. And don't worry, we'll get into the nepo baby conversation.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  I'm Molly Graham and you can find Work Life, a podcast from TED, wherever you listen.