A love seat fit for a king: The antique chair that gives an eye-popping insight into Edward VII's debauched youth



Among the bordellos of Victorian Paris, Le Chabanais was the most exquisite, and the most lavish. Over the years this ‘maison de tolerance’ — the word ‘brothel’ was considered too tawdry — saw visitors as illustrious as Humphrey Bogart, Mae West and Cary Grant.



But in the 1880s, one of its principal clients was the future King Edward VII, then known to everyone as ‘Bertie’, the playboy Prince of Wales.



Each of the establishment’s 30 rooms had its own theme, such as Moorish, Louis XIV and ancient Roman — but Bertie’s favourite was the Hindu room.



Second throne: The special chair made for the playboy Prince Bertie, the future Edward VII, to take his weight during lovemaking in a Parisian bordello

For there lived an extraordinary contraption, a testament to the Prince’s insatiable lust and to his immense corpulence.



Known romantically as a ‘siege d’amour’, or love-seat, this chair allowed the distinctly unathletic Bertie to have his way with two women simultaneously, all with the minimum of effort.

After years hidden away from public view, the love-seat now features in a BBC documentary about Edward VII’s life before he reached the throne.



It paints an absorbing portrait of this unsung King, a man of deep contradictions who can be credited for bringing the British monarchy into the modern age.



The royal duties we now take for granted — planting trees at inaugural ceremonies, greeting visiting dignitaries, undertaking overseas goodwill trips — were all

hallmarks of Edward’s reign. And like our present Prince of Wales, Bertie’s instincts appear to have been progressive for the day.



Royal biographer Kenneth Rose says that during his reign, Bertie is on record as having described the use of the word ‘n****r’ as ‘disgraceful’.



But he is destined to be remembered for his time as Prince of Wales — for he was 59 when he was finally crowned after his mother’s 64-year reign.



The decades of waiting in the wings took their toll on Bertie. He drifted, without

purpose — and turned to hedonistic pleasures to fill his time, much to the disappointment of his puritanical parents Victoria and Albert.



According to Matthew Sweet, author of Inventing The Victorians, one of Bertie’s favourite diversions at Le Chabanais was to carouse with a woman in a luxurious swan-necked bath, filled to the brim with champagne.



Debauched: Prince Bertie, pictured here in 1870, enjoyed the twin pleasures of women and excessive consumption during his long wait to be king

‘I guess they would both sit there and listen to the sound of Bertie’s father spinning in his grave,’ says Sweet.



Bertie’s twin loves of women and excessive consumption would earn him the nickname ‘Edward the Caresser’ among his contemporaries. He even had a special box set aside at his coronation for his various mistresses.



Women were a passion he had come to early. In 1861, Prince Albert, despairing of Bertie’s lack of application to academic studies, decided that a taste of Army life would be just the thing to knock him into shape. Bertie, then 19, was duly dispatched to

an Army camp in Ireland.



The ploy could not have backfired more spectacularly. Soon after his arrival, fellow officers arranged for an actress named Nellie Clifden to be smuggled into his quarters. In his diary for 1861, the young Prince made the following entries:



September 6, NC First time



September 9, NC Second time



September 10, NC Third time



When Bertie’s escapades came to the attention of his father, Prince Albert despairingly wrote to him: ‘I knew that you were thoughtless and weak — but I could not think you depraved!’



Weeks later, Albert was dead, officially due to typhoid fever, though Victoria believed Bertie’s dissipated lifestyle had broken her beloved husband’s heart. She never forgave her son.



Apparently unrepentant, the Prince threw himself into partying, and was a frequent visitor to Paris, becoming a regular face at racy venues such as the Café des

Anglais, the Moulin Rouge and, of course, Le Chabanais.



Edward’s many mistresses were tolerated with some irritation by his wife, the beautiful Princess Alexandra of Denmark. They famously included the actress

Lillie Langtry, Jenny Churchill (Winston’s mother) and Camilla Parker Bowles’s great-grandmother Alice Keppel, whom Alexandra permitted to join her at Bertie’s deathbed.



But the greatest love of his life is accepted to have been the society beauty Daisy Warwick, known for throwing fabulous tea parties at her mansion in Essex.



'The main purpose was to provide an environment in which adultery could flourish,’ says Daisy’s biographer Victoria Fishburn.



‘The crunch time was tea, when the men would come in from sport and the women would be dolled up in specially made “tea gowns” which were loosely fastened at the waist. These would be worn without a corset solely to allow “ease of passage”.



‘The guests would then pair up and retire to their rooms for their assignations.’



Another of Bertie’s favourite indulgences was food. His enormous appetite left him with a 48in girth — and little wonder. In his book, Edward VII, Christopher Hibbert describes a typical day’s eating for the king.



Breakfast was platefuls of bacon and eggs, haddock and chicken, and toast and butter. An hour or so of shooting gave him the appetite for turtle soup. A full lunch at half past two — beef and Yorkshire pudding was a firm favourite, as was roast lamb.



At teatime, he tucked away poached eggs, petit fours and preserved ginger as well as rolls and scones, hot cakes, cold cakes, sweet cakes and shortcake, of which he was especially fond.



Then came dinner at 8.30pm, which was usually a 12-course affair. Bertie would polish off several dozen oysters, plus bread and butter, caviar, plovers’ eggs, ortolans (a type of songbird), sole poached in Chablis, garnished with oysters and prawns, chicken and turkey in aspic, quails and pigeon pie, grouse, snipe, partridge,

pheasant and woodcock.



Historian Jane Ridley adds: ‘They used to have these lavish multi-course meals, but it was meant to be about display, not consumption. The problem for poor Bertie was that he would gobble the lot.’



All of which explains why the corpulent Prince found lovemaking rather more energetic

than he might wish — and why he resorted to using the siege d’amour to fulfil his lust.



The way in which Bertie used the chair has been lost in the mists of time. Now owned by the Soubrier furniture-making family, who originally custom-built the chair for Bertie, it has never been on public display.



But it stands as a reminder of the twin loves of this most pleasure-seeking of princes.



■ Edward VII, Prince Of Pleasure: A Timewatch Special is on tomorrow on BBC2 at 9pm.