Paul Boughton

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 hinting at? He was...

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 friend at...

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 Blavatsky was still...