Gorgeous and adored by men, Lillie Langtry turned to acting after her husband went bankrupt.  Though the critics panned her, the audience loved her and she became successful both on the London stage as well as in vaudeville in America.,

Thoroughbred racing

From 1882 to 1891, Langtry had a relationship with the New York City millionaire Frederic Gebhard. With him, she became involved in the sport of Thoroughbred horse racing. In 1885 she and Gebhard brought a stable of American horses to race in England.

On August 13, 1888 Langtry and Gebhard traveled in her private car attached to an Erie Railroad express train bound for Chicago. Another railcar was transporting seventeen of their horses when it derailed at Shohola, Pennsylvania at 1:40 in the morning. Rolling down an 80-foot embankment, it burst into flames.

One person died in the fire, along with Gebhard's champion runner Eole and fourteen racehorses belonging to him and Langtry. One of the two horses to survive the wreck was St. Saviour.

He was named for St. Saviour's Church in Jersey, where Langtry's father had been rector and where the actress chose to be buried after her death. In 1900, Langtry's horse Merman, ridden by American Tod Sloan, won the Ascot Gold Cup. 

[edit]American citizenship and after

In 1897, Langtry became an American citizen. She divorced her husband Edward Langtry the same year in Lakeport, California. Edward Langtry died a few months later following an accident.  A letter of condolence later written by Lillie to another widow reads in part, "I too have lost a husband, but alas! it was no great loss."

In 1888 Langtry purchased a winery with an area of 4,200 acres (17 km²) in Lake County, California, which produced red wine. She sold it in 1906. Bearing the Langtry name, the winery and vineyard are still in operation in Middletown, California.

Langtry was involved in a relationship with George Alexander Baird, millionaire amateur jockey and pugilist from April 1891 until his death at New Orleans in March 1893.

In 1899, she married the much younger Hugo Gerald de Bathe.

 

 He inherited a baronetcy and became a leading owner in the horse-racing world, before retiring to Monte Carlo. During her final years, Langtry resided in a home in Monaco, with her husband living a short distance away.

The two saw one another only when she called on him for social gatherings or in brief private encounters. Her constant companion during this time was her close friend, Mathilda Peat, the widow of her butler.

From 1900 to 1903, Langtry was the lessee and manager of London's Imperial Theatre.

Keen's Chop House in New York says that Langtry sued them in 1905 over their gentlemen's-only seating policy and won, then sailed in wearing a feather boa and ordered a mutton chop.^[25]

Langtry died in Monaco in 1929. She was buried in the graveyard of St. Saviour's Church in Jersey.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillie_Langtry