He had a lot of fun, but what about love?
Gyles Brandreth pays tribute to the late Marquess of Bath – Longleat’s famously lusty chatelain, and his unconventional friend
Ifirst met the late Marquess of Bath in May 1975, in the Cinderella Bar at the London Palladium. There was a referendum on, and I organised a gathering of so-called celebrities, all of them supporters of the “People for Europe” campaign. A motley crew turned up, ranging from a young Andrew Lloyd Webber through to the wonderfully eccentric artist and viscount, Alexander Weymouth, as he was known then. He wanted an independent Wessex within Europe, believing that it would be much better off as its own country, devolved from the rest of the UK.
Renowned for having been a true hippy in the Sixties, he arrived with his beautiful young wife, Anna, on his arm and we hit it off immediately. You couldn’t help but be charmed by Alexander: he was so gentle, so funny. Unconventional in the most delightful, unaffected way.
He came to supper with my wife and me soon after, but not with the beautiful Anna – rather, with a beautiful lady who had recently arrived from the Caribbean. She was delightful as well and we had a jolly evening. The next time he came he was accompanied by someone new.
Being a rather middle-of-the-road, middle-class boy, I’ll admit to being slightly mystified. He saw me looking puzzled and, on his way to the lavatory, explained quietly that this was one of his “wifelets”. I had not heard of the phenomenon, but would later be introduced to a Chinese artist, a 17-year-old Sri Lankan, and a Wessex housewife, among others. All charming, all important to Alexander in their own way.
A friendship developed between us, and we saw him often in London. Evenings with Lord Bath were no ordinary occasion. He was a wonderful storyteller – romantic, sentimental and nostalgic. About most matters, he was refreshingly open. He liked talking about sex, which is perhaps no surprise since, in many ways, it is his sex life that defined him. Polygyny is “catching on slowly”, he once told me, adding by way of explanation: “A polygamist has more than one wife; a polygynist has more than one mate.” At one time or other, he acknowledged a total of 73.
I shall never forget the time he hosted us at Longleat. We were shown to the famous erotic bedroom where we were to stay the night. It was the most extraordinary place. Meticulous murals inspired by the Kama Sutra covered every inch of the walls, the paint so thick that every image almost seemed 3D. We took it all in, marvelling at the artistry as well as the eye-wateringly graphic nature of the paintings.
We followed him to the kitchen to make lunch, climbing the narrow staircase which almost felt as if it might lead to Rapunzel’s tower. I stopped, realising the walls were lined with portraits of girls. I recognised a couple of them because they’d been to dinner at our house. “Ah,” I said, “these are your girlfriends”. “No,” he replied, reminding me. “These are my wifelets.”
Lunch was a delight, as it always was. The food eccentric, the wine good, the company lovely. I remember one particular meal when he had us hanging off his every word as he recalled his first erotic fantasy, inspired, naturally, by Charles Kingsley’s The Water Babies.
I can still conjure his husky, fluting voice as he described it. “Naked, Susan and I swam the high seas together, along with a string of other little girls, all of us trying to evade the nets of the adults who were fishing for us from above in boats,” he said, caught in reverie. “The adults, of course, wanted to eat us, but first they packed us into tins like sardines.
“Being the leader of the band, I swam at the head of the chain and the one immediately behind me was inevitably Susan, who grasped me between the legs by the most convenient handle. So linked, we swam together, idyllically, for days and nights on end.”
It sounds fanciful on the page but Alexander’s eccentricity was not studied. He said to me once that he had always felt he wanted to live his life his own way. As he saw it, that was the freedom the Sixties had afforded people. He was blessed in having inherited the 9,000-acre Longleat estate and never having money worries, and he knew that.
He lived a life unconstrained by the social rules and regulations that can come hand-in-hand with the aristocracy, while enjoying all its benefits. He was a fascinating paradox, at once enthralled by the notion of heritage and adamant that Longleat would be a success and survive for the next generation, but also a committed nonconformist. He wanted to be a Marquess, but also voted for the abolition of hereditary peers from the House of Lords. He liked having a wife but felt monogamy wasn’t for him. He was an aristocrat and a revolutionary.
That paradox was present in his character, too. He was charming, softly spoken and looked in his latter years rather like Raymond Briggs’s Father Christmas. But he could also be ruthless. I saw him soon after his father, the 6th Marquess, died in 1992. I knew his father a little. We shared a love of teddy bears and he once invited me to one of the teddy bears’ picnics he held at Longleat, giving me a bear for my collection.
It was clear then that the old Marquess didn’t have a comfortable relationship with Alexander. When he died, I offered my friend my condolences, which he accepted out of politeness, but when he spoke of his father he was cold.
It was clear that inside this mild man there was also a steeliness: his younger brother, Christopher, who had been running the estate, would be “out overnight”, he said – and indeed he was. When his own son, Ceawlin, grew up, there seemed to be a sore spot there, too, and when he married his lovely wife, Emma, Alexander didn’t turn up. I learnt not to bring up family matters as there was clearly some considerable pain there.
He was, in so many ways, a living contradiction. He knew that the world thought he was a cannabis-smoking hippy who dressed in funny clothes, was away with the fairies and had these “wifelets”. But he was eager to prove that in fact he knew what he was doing, and he was proud of having made a huge commercial success of Longleat, with the first drive-through safari park outside Africa.
He regretted calling the women wifelets, in the end, referring to them latterly as girlfriends or lady friends. He felt embarrassed about the moniker, I think. He never meant to be a figure of fun – the “Loins of Longleat”, as he was dubbed – this was his life, after all, and he lived it with great authenticity.
The last time I saw him was at a party a couple of years ago. He looked much as ever, with that distinctive sartorial style, wearing one of his many hats. As he got closer, I realised he wasn’t the same. He had aged and his hearing had gone. He was still smiling sweetly and had an amusing way with him. But he wasn’t quite as full of life, nor quite as happy as he had been.
He died on Saturday, at the age of 87, after being admitted to hospital with Covid-19.
He carried, I suspect, some regrets at the end. He had an awful lot of fun along the way (as well as the occasional visit to the clap clinic); and the girlfriends that I met all regarded him with affection (to them, he was both a vain old goat and a sweet old darling); but, I wonder, did he experience much love?
“What happens,” I once asked him, “when one of your girlfriends begins to fall in love with you?” His answer quite shocked me. “I don’t let it get that far,” he said. “I recognise the symptoms and nudge her carefully in a different direction.”
“Don’t you think you might have missed out on something in life?” I asked.
He stared into his goblet of wine, then looked me straight in the eye. “Have I missed out on the pairing with a soulmate?” He hesitated, then, with a wan smile and shining eyes: “Yes. Yes, I have. And, yes, since you ask, which I don’t think anyone has before, I do think it would have been nice to have had that experience. But I haven’t. And it’s too late now.”
His was a remarkable life, richer than most of us can ever dream of. But it was poorer, too. I’m so very glad I knew him.