Henry Cyril Paget: the dancing marquess of Anglesey

You're Dead to Me

This episode of 'You're Dead to Me' explores the flamboyant life of Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, a 19th-century Welsh aristocrat

Key takeaways

• Henry Cyril Paget inherited a title and fortune but spent lavishly on theatre, fashion, and art, leading to bankruptcy.
• He transformed his family home, Plas Newydd, into 'Anglesey Castle' and hosted a private theatrical troupe.

Main topics

• 19th-century aristocracy in Wales
• Theatre and performance culture in Victorian England

Notable quotes

"Oh my God, goodness, I've lost my leg." – First Marquess of Anglesey after Waterloo.

Conclusion

Henry Cyril Paget's life stands as a vivid example of how wealth and the

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 6 (0:36) in a world where swords were sharp. And Speaker 1 (0:39) hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Speaker 6 (0:44) Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Janaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme, subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (1:12) Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me. We are the Radio 4 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 Padgett, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey. And to help us unravel facts 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 Padgett's life and is currently writing his biography titled The Dancing Marquess. It is Professor Viv Gardner. Welcome, Viv. Speaker 3 (2:00) Hello, Craig and hello, Morgan. I'm really pleased to be here talking about my favourite man. Speaker 5 (2:06) 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 8 Out of 10 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 Chatting With Cherubs and My Bad. It's Morgan Rees. Welcome, Morgan. Speaker 4 (2:26) Hello. Thank you so much for having me, everyone. Speaker 5 (2:29) Delighted to have you in. This is her first time on the pod. Yeah, I know. I'm over the moon. So contractually, I have to ask, do you... Do you like history? Speaker 4 (2:37) Love a bit of history. I just wish I remembered it. It's just, I think everyone's brain is adhesive to a certain topic. You can just hear it once and it'll stick forever. Yes. Unfortunately, mine's jokes and I wish it was history. Speaker 5 (2:52) Well, jokes and mathematics, you were telling us before, you're a mathematician. Speaker 4 (2:55) Yes, before I did this, I was a mathematician. Right. And so I go, music and drama and theatre. I had the reverse Billy Elliot experience. My parents were like, go and do music and drama. I was like, no, I've got to do maths, mum. There's no... I had a proper reverse. That's great. And you grew up in South Wales. South Wales, just Merford, Tidfield. Speaker 5 (3:18) Okay, and today we're talking about a North Wales icon. Am I allowed to storm out? Speaker 4 (3:23) Is there some beef? Speaker 5 (3:24) No, there's no beef at all. Do you know anything about Henry Cyril Padgett, sometimes just known as Henry Padgett? Speaker 4 (3:30) Other than the top-level stuff, being a flamboyant Welsh person, that's all I know. And a little peek behind the curtain, when I got the email about doing this wonderful show, it was advised, you'd quite like it when the comedian doesn't do any research. And I was like, I can do that. Thank you for your effort. Speaker 5 (3:52) So what do you know? 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 Cyriel Davis's musical, inspired by Padgett's life, How to Win Against History. And those of you familiar with North Wales might have visited Henry Padgett's actual home, the lovely Plas Newydd, which is now a National Trust. property. It's a lovely day out. And Speaker 3 (4:34) it's got an exhibition on at the moment, centred around the costumes and his clothes. Speaker 5 (4:38) Well, there we go. Brilliant. But how much did the film and play get right about this man? How did Henry Padgett 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 Padgett's birth. Morgan, we've said he's the fifth Marcus of Anglesey. What do you think his family did to earn their title? How do you think the first Marcus got the gig? Speaker 4 (5:07) Oh, okay. I'm going to say, and I'm going to sound immensely Welsh, is it coal? Speaker 4 (5:17) Is it something to do with one of the three things we did? I think we can say Speaker 3 (5:20) more military. Yes and no, because their main house, this family seat, was in Beaudeserre, which is on Cannock Chase, and most of their money came from the coal. That Speaker 6 (5:33) was underneath. I Speaker 3 (5:35) don't think they did any digging or anything remotely like investing in it. They just took the money. Speaker 2 (5:42) But Speaker 3 (5:42) the first marks of Anglesey was they were already aristocratic. They'd already got titles, but he was the hero of Waterloo and he was granted the Marquis, which is number two down in the ranking of British hierarchy. So he was pushed up to Marquis when he led a charge at the Battle of Waterloo and he lost his leg. Famously, he said something like, oh my God. goodness, I've lost my leg. And Wellington said, by God, sir, so you have. Speaker 4 (6:18) But that may not be a problem. Speaker 3 (6:20) But he's actually, it's very interesting, he became one of the first owners of a prosthetic leg. And you can see his prosthetic legs in Plasnowydd now. And they are amazing. Polished wooden legs with full articulation. They're called Anglesey legs, aren't they? They're called Anglesey legs. Are they really? Wow. Speaker 4 (6:41) I've heard of Welshman's thigh, but I've never heard of Anglesey legs. No. Speaker 3 (6:45) But I have to say that subsequent... marquises, the 2nd, 3rd and 4th were something less heroic and something less heroic. They had to do what you have to do if you're a marquis. 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 4th Marquis, for stealing other men's wives. Speaker 5 (7:13) So there's Speaker 3 (7:14) 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. 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 has no responsibilities. He's living in Paris where there's... 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 Scottish-Australian entrepreneurs who'd made their fortune in Australia in the gold mines and various other enterprises. 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-Élysées. And they married in... In 1873, Henry Cyril was born in 1875, but in London. The marriage lasted a very short time after that. They appear 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. So Speaker 5 (8:58) 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. Yes. And then his dad Speaker 4 (9:07) and granddad are not heroes. No, by the sounds of things, it sounds like they're invading other people's marriages. Speaker 4 (9:16) Rather than foreign countries, Speaker 5 (9:18) but yeah. Yes, charging headlong into someone else's bed. Yeah. Okay, so it's quite an interesting start to life for our little Henry. Henry Cyril? Are we calling him Henry Cyril? It Speaker 3 (9:28) makes it easier because absolutely all of them were called Henry. Of course they were. Most of them were called Henry William. Speaker 5 (9:35) Right, so there's quite a lot of sadness and instability here in our little boy's life already because Dad's Speaker 4 (9:41) a Speaker 5 (9:41) player. Speaker 4 (9:42) Yes. Speaker 5 (9:43) 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? Speaker 4 (9:52) Oh my God, let's be honest, the overtones and the undertones are tragic, isn't it? There's no stability there. And then growing up with no matriarchal figure as well. Speaker 4 (10:05) Oh. He Speaker 3 (10:06) did have a matriarchal figure in his life. No, 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-Élysées. So, you know, 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 figure and she's with him throughout his life. Speaker 5 (10:48) Yeah. She's there Speaker 3 (10:49) for him and she's there at his death. Speaker 5 (10:51) And he grows up speaking French, English and Russian. Speaker 4 (10:55) Oh, wow. I... I know people must say this all the time, but I can just get my head around English. 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. Speaker 5 (11:16) So he speaks French, English and Russian. And when he gets to Anglesey, what do you think he learns next? Speaker 4 (11:24) Please say Welsh. It is. Yes, thank you. Speaker 5 (11:27) Oh, good on him. Yeah. So he's multilingual. He's learning Welsh. Yes, Speaker 3 (11:31) apparently he learned Welsh from a child. Apparently this was an idea that came from his father, though. Yes, but what level of Welsh he spoke, I don't know. But he certainly had a reputation as having enough Welsh. Is Speaker 5 (11:45) he having formal Welsh lessons? Or is he down the pub learning it from, you know, from miners? It Speaker 4 (11:51) could Speaker 5 (11:51) be. Speaker 3 (11:51) It's Speaker 4 (11:52) a Speaker 3 (11:52) long way to the nearest pub from the last nowhere. There's a cellar full of wine, Mark. Speaker 4 (11:58) I've got a tiny minute of a story and I'll keep this as Radio 4 appropriate as possible. Go for it. I'm learning Hindi for my partner's Indian and I learned a bit of Hindi from his dad. But I thought it was his mum goes down every morning and does... does a prayer that by to a shine she says jessie krishna and all that sort of stuff and her father does another thing where he puts an offering in a jar and says um presumably another little prayer i don't know anything about hinduism so i guess that's what um the women do and that's what the men do so i i sort of put i put an offering in the jar and i said what he said i didn't realize it was a swear jar it was something he did when he got angry Speaker 4 (12:43) So I inadvertently learnt a swear in Hindi. That's the best way, isn't it? Fantastic. So I don't know whether... I didn't know whether Henry did something similar down the pub. He might be Speaker 5 (12:53) picking up Speaker 1 (12:54) some Speaker 5 (12:55) choice language from the locals. Who knows? So he goes to private school in England. He then goes to Eton for a bit. Speaker 3 (13:01) Yes. I mean, the private school appears to have been a very short period and Eton was probably even shorter. It was a couple of terms. Speaker 5 (13:11) Wow. Speaker 3 (13:12) And he obviously had health problems right from the word go, but he couldn't hack it at Eton, which was actually very sporty then. Speaker 5 (13:22) Yeah. It was run by a sporty head teacher. You're trying to sort of create the future leaders of the empire. That's right. It's all about, you know, muscular Christianity. Speaker 3 (13:29) So he managed a couple of terms. Speaker 5 (13:31) 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? Speaker 4 (13:40) I'm just going to try and project me. 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 want to... Did he... Did he join a local amdram? Oh, lovely. He did the Speaker 5 (13:59) sort of opposite, although there is some make-up, I suppose, in that you put camo on. He joined the army. Did he? Yes. Speaker 3 (14:06) Sort of army. Well, we say he Speaker 5 (14:08) joined the army. The Royal Speaker 3 (14:11) Welsh Fusiliers, which is a volunteer. I mean, it's actually a very big one, apparently. And it's pretty prestigious and it obviously had a lot of volunteers from all classes. But the only evidence you have of 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 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. Yes. A comic sketch that you might appeal to. So, Roe Croft plays King Lear and an 18-year-old Henry Sidor is playing Cordelia. Oh, Speaker 5 (15:02) there we go. Wow. So, he's in the army and he's doing drag straight away. Yeah, good on him. Go, girl. You know, and there's Speaker 3 (15:10) 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. Speaker 5 (15:31) Oh, Speaker 4 (15:31) really? Speaker 5 (15:32) I mean, would the military life appeal to you if you could design your own uniform and have the nails? I don't know. Speaker 4 (15:38) I wish I could have the nails. There's also a weapon in the way. I forgot my bayonet. Speaker 4 (15:45) But I tell you what, sometimes I do like, do you ever go like, oh God, choosing dinner, choosing lunch, choosing this, what's a way? 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 whatever they have for lunch. But would I appeal to... being in the army? I don't know. I mean, the theatrical division sounds good. The Luffy's Brigade. Yeah. That's Speaker 5 (16:11) what Speaker 4 (16:11) I'm calling it. I don't know what they call it. Speaker 5 (16:14) Yes, yes. And then in 1898, I suppose he does the thing that you have to do as a young man in the aristocracy. He gets married. Speaker 4 (16:21) Oh, okay. Now, who's he Speaker 5 (16:22) marrying, Morgan? Speaker 4 (16:24) Oh, well, he's going to choose a proper local Welsh girl. Oh, okay. He's going to try and... No doubt. Speaker 5