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Spice of the Devil: The Outrageous Life of Lady Valerie Meux delves into the fascinating and controversial world of this one-of-a-kind woman. From her humble beginnings as a butcher's daughter to her ascent as a wealthy socialite and owner of a major brewery, Lady Meux's life was a whirlwind of reinvention and audacious behaviour. Her eccentricity was legendary, known for her flamboyant dress, sharp wit, and penchant for shocking society. Spice of the Devil offers a glimpse i

It is a real thrill to see Spice of the Devil on sale at Lowewood Museum, Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire. My thanks to all the staff and volunteers. And they have ordered more copies. Fantastic! #SpiceOfTheDevil #LadyMeux #PaulBoughtonAuthor #WomenInHistory

Lady Valerie Meux owned many properties, including a country house 15 km south-east of Paris, a city she frequently visited. The property was the Château de Sucy-en-Brie, one of the finest surviving seventeenth-century country houses in the Paris region. It is closely associated with the architect François Le Vau, brother of the more famous Louis Le Vau, architect of parts of Versailles. These modern views show the château after its extensive restoration by the town of Sucy-e

This image was generated by AI. One of the most curious references to Valerie Meux appeared in the Sporting Times on 13 July 1878, just weeks after Britain took control of Cyprus. In a spoof "secret treaty" supposedly stolen from the government, the newspaper proposed: 🔹 The inhabitants of Cyprus should be replaced by "genuine Cyprians" from St John's Wood and South Belgravia. 🔹 "Val Reece" should be appointed Queen of the Cyprians. 🔹 Other notorious sporting and social ch

Fred Cripps, a close friend of Lady Valerie Meux in her later years, had a front‑row seat to her eccentricities. One of the strangest? Her fierce dislike of dragonflies. Fred recalled a day in the garden at Theobalds when Valerie spotted one. Outraged, she summoned the head gardener — or so she thought — and dismissed him on the spot. “Gibbons,” she said, “I have given you a gun and cartridges to shoot all the dragonflies here. You have not carried out my instructions; I have

New Year’s Eve, 1892. A winter crowd gathered at Waltham Cross, drawn by curiosity, tradition, and the presence of one of Hertfordshire’s most recognisable figures: Lady Valerie Meux. Standing on the steps of the newly restored Eleanor Cross, she revived a medieval custom that had not been seen for centuries, the distribution of alms in memory of Queen Eleanor of Castile, beloved wife of King Edward I. Fresh from the Mint, 360 shillings were handed out to the “aged and deserv

Valerie Meux never did anything by halves — not in London, not at Theobald’s Park, and certainly not in Dauntsey, Wiltshire. So when she found herself in a dispute with the Duke of Beaufort’s Hounds, she responded in a way only Lady Meux could: with spectacle, strategy, and an elephant. The quarrel began when the Beaufort Hunt wished to ride across Meux-owned land to pursue foxes. Valerie objected. The hunt would disturb her birds, and — more importantly — she was not a woman

In June 1891, London society found itself transfixed by an unlikely courtroom drama: Lady Valerie Meux, social lightning rod, collector of curiosities, and owner of one of the most formidable jewellery collections in Mayfair, stood before Mr Justice Hawkins in the Court of Queen’s Bench. The matter at hand? Pearls. Or rather, pearls that had vanished. A Victorian pearl mystery: the day Lady Meux took the stand. Reimagined by AI. Back in 1887, Valerie had sent two pieces of je

In 1881, Henry Meux commisioned American artist James McNeill Whistler to paint three full lenth paintings of his wife, Valerie Meux, for 1,500 guineas. A fourth portrait in riding habit was also discussed but never commissioned. The first portrait, An Arrangement in Black, now hanging in the Honolulu Museum of Art, Hawaii, depicted Valerie as a woman of sophistication. Dressed mainly in black, she emerges from a black background. Her velvet dress, black, low-necked, is trim

Temple Bar is the last surviving historic gateway to the City of London — a 350‑year‑old Portland‑stone arch designed by Sir Christopher Wren and completed in 1672. It once stood on Fleet Street, marking the ceremonial boundary where monarchs paused before entering the City. Today, it stands in Paternoster Square, beside St Paul’s Cathedral, and is rarely open to the public except during Open House London (officially Open House Festival), offering free access to hundreds of b

Did the real-life romance between brewery heir Henry Meux and former chorus girl Lady Valerie Meux help inspire the central love story in The Picture of Dorian Gray? Writer and historian Devon Cox has suggested the possibility — and once you look closely, the idea becomes surprisingly persuasive. This image has been created by AI using a photograph of Oscar Wilde, taken by Napoleon Sarony in 1882, and Arrangement in Black, No. 5 (Portrait of Lady Meux), James McNeill Whistler

Lady Valerie Meux spent money as if were water. What she spent on her lavish lifestyle was of little consequence. There was always more money. And the money came from the beer, particularly porter, dark, well‑hopped, and brewed with brown malt. The family-owned Meux Brewery was a licence to print money. Developed in early eighteenth‑century London, porter became the drink of choice for street and river porters, who gave the beer its name. At a time when the city’s water suppl

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