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Lady Valerie Meux — once known as Valerie Reece — became entangled in the strange and tragic affair surrounding the death of an amateur jockey at the Sandown Spring meeting. There is, frustratingly, no definitive conclusion to the story. “Truthful Tommy,” a correspondent for the Sporting Gazette, later wrote that he had not seen Valerie since the meeting “when her expressed wish concerning the fate of a popular gentleman rider was so cruelly fulfilled.” What exactly was he hi

Lady Valerie Valerie was not a woman to shy away from a challenge. She enjoyed testing her friends, and a little wager was often enough to turn an idle amusement into a memorable adventure. In the 1890s, however, there were some challenges that demanded rather more nerve than others. For a respectable woman to appear in public wearing trousers was, by the standards of the day, nothing short of outrageous. It was against this backdrop that Valerie, while entertaining a female

In the 1890s, Lady Valerie Meux developed an unexpected fascination with the Russian occultist and spiritual teacher Madame Helena Blavatsky and the Theosophical Society. The society promoted the study of comparative religion, philosophy, and science, with a particular emphasis on the mystical and spiritual dimensions that connected Eastern and Western traditions. Its aim was nothing less than to bridge worlds. Valerie was seen attending meetings in St John’s Wood while Blava

Do the archives of the Hertfordshire Mercury newspaper hold a clue to the last known whereabouts of a lost painting of the 1901 Epsom Derby winner Volodyovski and his eccentric owner, the Victorian socialite Lady Valerie Susie Meux, who lived at Theobald’s Park, Waltham Cross, until her death in 1910? To celebrate her Derby victory, on Wednesday 5 June 1901, Lady Meux commissioned a painting of herself holding the reins of Volodyovski at Theobald’s Park. The artwork — apparen

Valerie Meux had fairly consistent relationships with her neighbours, whether in Wiltshire, Hertfordshire or London. They did not like her and she was happy to reciprocate the feeling. And at Dauntsey, near Royal Wootton Bassett, Wiltshire, where the Meuxs had a large country house, Valerie’s ire was directed at the parson of the village church, St. James The Great, which was built on Meux land, virtually next to the house. The quickest way from the village to the church was

I began researching and writing Spice of the Devil during the strange, suspended spring and summer of 2020 — months of glorious weather set against the dark, grim backdrop of the Covid‑19 lockdown. With the world closed and time suddenly abundant, it seemed the perfect moment to begin. But the roots of the book stretch back more than fifty years. My working life started as a reporter with the Hertfordshire Mercury and County Press, mainly on the Cheshunt and Waltham Mercury a

London 1878. It was in one of the private boxes at Evans’ Supper Rooms, 10 Covent Garden, that the woman known as Miss Val Reece (later Lady Valerie Meux) would hold court. Valerie was one of London’s best-known of the ‘feminine rulers of the golden youth’, a ‘fair-haired, black-eyed nymph’, surrounded by a circle of inane-looking admirers. She ruled with her ‘saucy ways and hard swearing’. She always wore many rings on her fingers, her prized possessions, the last items she

Entertainments at Lady Valerie Meux’s home were never ordinary. At Theobald’s Park in Waltham Cross, her amusements were often strange, theatrical — and sometimes disturbingly cruel. Portrait artist Leslie Ward, known in Vanity Fair as “Spy” and “Drawl”, witnessed one such spectacle. A curate whose living depended on the Meux estate was persuaded — “cruelly”, Ward said — to allow himself to be turned into a human firework display. Wrapped head‑to‑foot in a tarpaulin, he was

Lady Valerie Meux and her husband, Sir Henry, had no children, and therefore no direct descendants. I suspect this is why personal documents, letters and photographs of her are few and far between. They were all probably thrown away on her death in 1910. That does not mean she did not have relatives. She did. Research indicates she had three sisters and two brothers - and a step brother and step sister. And it is logical that these siblings had descendants and that some may w

Knock, knock. Who's there? Well for a fair amount of time, Lady Valerie Susie Bruce Meux. Behind this door knocker is her former seaside home in Eastern Terrace in the Kemptown area of Brighton, Sussex, on the south coast of England. It is truly fabulous. In 2021, the property came up for sale and the agents, Foster & Co Estate Agents promoted the property with a YouTube video which, luckily for us, is still available view (see below). And this is how they described the prope

In 1896, Lady Valerie Meux, of Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, decided to send copies of two privately printed books, sponsored and financed by her, to The Buffalo Historical Society, based in the city of Buffalo in the U.S. state of New York. Buffalo is in western New York on the eastern shore of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River on the Canada–United States border. She even sent a photograph of herself along with these apparently unsolicited gifts.

The face of Nes-Min. Image: The Rhode Island School of Design This is the face of Lady Valerie Meux's 'cursed' mummy, the high priest Nesmin. His mummy and coffin were the centrepiece of her collection of Egyptian antiquities once housed at Theobald's Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. His coffin design indicates that he lived at Akhmim in Middle-Egypt during the Ptolemaic period, some 2,300 years ago. Nesmin (his name was once translated as Nes-Amsu) was brought to England

Lady Valerie Meux's bedroom at Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. Source: Theobald's Park, Herts, Catalogue, May 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 23, 35, 26 1911, Waring & Gillow Ltd, Auctioneers Is this photograph evidence of an unknown and now probably lost portrait of Lady Valerie Meux, of Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire I would like to draw your attention to the painting hanging on the extreme left. It shows, I think, a woman lying in bed. Below is an enlargem

Here is the lowdown from the organisers: "Lady Meux will be opening the Dauntsey Feast next Friday in full Victorian regalia. A book was published last year about her extraordinary life and we have copies for sale and also as prizes. She has also been written about TODAY by the BBC as one of 7 most eccentric Brits, and she lived here in the village at Dauntsey Park House. Come to the Feast and listen to Lady Meux talking about her elephants and tigers, her cursed Egyptian mum

For many years Temple Bar, the ancient western gateway to the City of London, was re-built as the grand 'front gate' to Lady Valerie Meux's estate at Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. In June 1887, Sir Henry Meux had bought the monument, but Lady Valerie Meux was the driving force behind the purchase. On 25th November 1887, the removal of four hundred tons of stonework from London to Theobalds began. Early in the New Year, on 12th January 1888, Valerie laid the fo

Lady Valerie Susie Bruce Meux, of Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, has been nominated among the seven most eccentric Britons of all time. In fact, she comes in at a very creditable third place. What is this nonsense? I hear you splutter. Well, it is comes courtesy of BBC Countryfile online, promoting a book called Weird Guide Britain, by Dave Hamilton, published by Wild Things, £18.99. Here is Lady Meux's entry with my comments in brackets and bold: "Lady Meux (1847-1910) (She

Surya Hotels has announced the start of a £25 million restoration project for Theobalds Park, the Grade II listed Georgian mansion, which was once the home of Lady Valerie Meux until 1910. The house is set within 55 acres of Hertfordshire parkland and is just 10 miles north of Central London and minutes from the M25. The house was converted into a hotel in the 1990s and previously owned by the De Vere Group. The property was most recently operated by Birch, which closed the

Does art speak to you? If so, what does it say? And what would James McNeill Whistler’s 1881’s Harmony in Pink and Grey (Portrait of Lady Meux) say? Wonder no longer. In 1929, English-American journalist James Howard Bridge published Portraits and Personalities: Imaginary Conversations in the Frick Galleries (Aldine Book Company, 280 Maddison Avenue, New York). This was a fanciful account of the subjects of the paintings in the Frick coming to life, walking about the gallerie

The Stuyvesant Theatre, New York, 1909. Here was a special room. To some, it was an office or study, to others, a workshop. This was the lair of the famed American theatrical impresario David Belasco, a man sometimes known as The Bishop of Broadway, due to his peculiar habit of dressing in the clothes of a cleric, dog collar and all. He worked here twelve to fourteen hours a day. The room was full of stage relics: a spear, staffs, and mace used by Edwin Booth in Richard III;

A feud sparked by troublesome ghosts, non-payment of rent, and an international legal battle that ranged from London to Paris before ending with the exposure of paintings accepted as genuine by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael being exposed as fakes. Welcome once again to the mad word of Lady Valerie Meux. Lady Meux, of Theobalds Park, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, bought the nearby Whitewebbs Estate, Enfield, in March 1900. Whitewebbs, about fifteen miles from the centre of Lo