Nellie Clifden

Nellie Clifden was an actress who engaged in a brief sexual relationship with the 19-year old Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, prior to his marriage to Alexandra of Denmark. She met him at a party in England and again when the Prince was spending ten weeks at Curragh Camp in Ireland with the Grenadier Guards in the late summer of 1861.

The Prince had previously been a sexual novice, so while they were at Cambridge Charles Carrington arranged for Nellie to bed him. Guards officers later brought her over to Ireland from England for the same purpose, and coded notes in the Prince's surviving appointment book refer to his trysts with "NC" on 6, 9, and 11 September 1861.^[1]

Information about the events reached the Prince's parents. His father Prince Albert later visited his son at Cambridge, where the Prince was a student, and they took a long walk in the rain, presumably to discuss the Prince's personal life. Albert died soon after, and Queen Victoria blamed her husband's death on his worry over his son's conduct. Albert had been "killed by that dreadful business", she said.^[2]

The Prince of Wales's affair with Nellie soon ended. He married Alexandra of Denmark in 1863, but continued to have affairs with other women.^[3]

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