One ancestor is immortalized with a statue atop a towering column, while another is represented by a few faded photos tacked to a bathroom wall.
It’s easy to assume which figure the family of that era preferred to remember. However, as a new musical highlighting the latter makes clear, sometimes the long game is the only game – a sentiment echoed in the show’s title, “How to Win Against History.”
The bathroom photos depict Henry Cyril Paget, the 5th Marquess of Anglesey, a man who famously squandered his family’s fortune and died young, far from home. His brief but flamboyant life was marked by extravagant, self-produced shows in Edwardian Britain, where he often appeared in drag, donning costumes reportedly adorned with real diamonds.
Now, 120 years after his death, a stage production and the film Madfabulous, both inspired by his life, are bringing him back into the spotlight. But how does the current generation of his family view the man once relegated to a toilet wall?
According to Alex, the 8th Marquess of Anglesey, Henry is now regarded with affection by his family. Evolving social attitudes and the passage of time have allowed for a more nuanced understanding of his unconventional life.
While Henry married his cousin, the marriage was reportedly never consummated, and his wife later sought an annulment. Was he gay? While definitive proof remains elusive, it’s difficult to deny his place somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum.
Alex recalls first encountering Henry through those very bathroom photos. “The one I particularly remember was him dressed up as Boadicea with big Edwardian moustaches.”
“[It was] a bit of a giggle. His existence wasn’t denied but he wasn’t a major part of the family heritage.”
“He was viewed as the black sheep of the family, this eccentric, weird bloke who we knew about and thought he sounded quite funny.”
“When I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, homosexuality was still illegal. He wasn’t necessarily gay actually, he was probably asexual, but that whole kind of thing of an alternative sexuality was certainly not generally in most circles accepted.”
“That personal sexual liberation of the 1960s, and then more recently of course with LGBTQ identities, he has become a bit of an icon, and attitudes towards him have definitely changed.”
Alex explains that the scarcity of reliable information about Henry – his diaries and letters were reportedly destroyed by the family after his death, leaving mostly sensationalized press reports – has allowed artists to fill in the gaps with their own interpretations.
Henry, an only child, lost his mother at a young age and spent his early years in Paris with relatives, exposing him to the theatrical world.
His father later brought him back to Plas Newydd on Anglesey, and his life followed the expected path of an Eton education and military affiliation.
Upon the death of the 4th Marquess in 1898, Henry inherited the title, lands, and wealth, and proceeded to live life on his own terms.
He renamed Plas Newydd “Anglesey Castle,” converted the chapel into a performance space called the Gaiety Theatre, and staged elaborate shows with extravagant costumes and sets, inviting both the elite and local residents to witness his grandeur free of charge.
He depleted a fortune estimated at around £60 million in today’s money, leaving behind a diminished inheritance. Estranged from his wife, he moved to Monte Carlo and died at the age of 29.
This is where Alex’s branch of the family enters the story. Alex acknowledges that he holds the title of 8th Marquess solely because Henry had no heirs, leading the title to pass to Henry’s cousin, Alex’s grandfather.
How does he view Henry from a 21st-century perspective? While acknowledging the lost fortune – “it’s a pity he spent all the money,” he jokes, clarifying that he didn’t quite spend it all.
“He wasn’t totally unique. He was part of a culture, although a minority culture, people like Oscar Wilde in this country and [Marcel] Proust in France, where he initially grew up.”
“That early 20th Century artistic, sexual liberation stuff was going on there in a minority world.”
“He wasn’t unique in that sense or even in the context of the English aristocracy – you know the empire-building, soldierly stuff wasn’t the only side of the aristocracy,” he says, referencing another Henry Paget, the 1st Marquess of Anglesey and veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar, who lost a leg fighting alongside the Duke of Wellington.
Noting that Henry’s father was a “playboy who certainly did not take any aristocratic responsibility, noblesse oblige stuff, very seriously at all,” Henry can perhaps be viewed as part of a long line of eccentric and hedonistic aristocrats, albeit one who pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable.
This sense of exclusion resonated with Seiriol Davies, the creator of “How to Win Against History,” when they first encountered photos of Henry during a childhood visit to Plas Newydd, which has been owned by the National Trust for half a century.
Amidst “marvelling at all the pomp,” the Anglesey-born playwright and actor was struck by the contrast between the glorification of the 1st Marquess and his heirs and “the little laminated photocopy of some pictures of [Henry] Blu-tacked on the wall next to the toilet.”
“It said he was a very silly man who wasted all the family’s money doing very silly plays.”
“A little bell of proto-queer indignation rang in my tummy, and because I believe in swift and decisive action, decided to make a musical about it 25 years later.”
They describe Henry as “mesmerising, fabulous, glamorous and totally out of his time, but also kind of lost.”
Alex agrees that, as an only child who lost his mother, Henry’s outlandish behavior could be interpreted as a search for connection. “Maybe this was one way of creating an identity, which he certainly did.”
“I do think he’s a fascinating character no doubt about it, and his whole persona does fit in with David Bowie and that sort of thing. There’s some truth in those kinds of connections and ‘he was the inventor of the selfie’ idea, which comes into the film or the musical.”
Seiriol calls their loose interpretation of Henry’s life “a screwball, riot comedy camp-o-rama but it has at its centre someone who doesn’t even have his internal life because it’s been eradicated.”
“In this fiction that we’re making about a character which is a bit like Henry in some ways – and this is not trying to be the truth about him – within our story he’s constantly trying to find connection, find acceptance; trying to get someone to see him as him.”
“I think probably my grandfather’s generation were pretty seriously embarrassed by him,” said Alex.
“His existence was not denied but it’s all summed up by the fact there were these photographs of him – but they were in the bathroom. They weren’t portraits in the main room.”
And now? “We’re happy to celebrate his rather weird, to some degree not happy, but to some degree rather extraordinary and marvellous life.”