Mrs. Astor and The Gilded Age

2009-07-09T15:09:00.002-04:00

Prince Vlora

Helen Kelly Gould with her two daughters

Helen Kelly (1885 – 1952), daughter of Edward Kelly, Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, and granddaughter of financier Eugene Kelly, in 1902 married Frank Jay Gould, youngest son of railroad financier Jay Gould. They had two daughters, Helen and Dorothy (who were reared mainly by Frank Gould’s sister, Mrs. Finley Shepard). The girls wed Swiss Barons, Jean-Daniel de Montenach and de Graffenried de Villars.

Helen Kelly Gould married second, in July 1910, Ralph Thomas, wealthy treasurer of the Sugar Trust, forfeiting half her annual alimony from Gould. He died five years later at the age of 32 (supposedly leaving her $2 million although she denied it) and, in June of 1917, she married in Paris, the Albanian Prince Noureodin Vlora, whose father had been the Ottoman Prime Minister.

He was born in Constantinople but the family estate was in Valona, Albania. His father, Ferid Vlora Pasha, was Vizier of Turkey under Abdul Hamid. Prince Noureodin’s sister, Djellalleddin Pasha, was the wife of the ex-Khedive of Egypt. Helen and Noureodin met in Biarritz in December of 1916. Within months, she was pictured in American newspapers arriving on the S. S. Aquitania as "Princess Vlora of Albania" with accompanying press assertions that she "may sometime be Queen of Albania."

Vlora did not appear at their Paris divorce proceedings in 1922 but Helen evidently maintained a certain fondness for the prince. Some years later, when he was imprisoned along with twenty-three rebels who resisted a coup led by King Zog, Helen appealed to the American legation to intercede in his behalf. Consul Robert Murphy tried to comply but all communications had been cut off with the capital of Tirana, and Prince Vlora was eventually executed.

Helen married again in 1926 to soap manufacturer Oscar F. Burke. Among the guests at their reception were Mr. and Mrs. Kingdon Gould (he was the nephew of Helen’s first husband, Frank). The Burkes also divorced and Helen retook her maiden name and died a few years before Frank Gould, her first husband, on August 8th, 1952, in Barbizon, France.

At one time, the much-married Ziegfeld girl, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, announced her engagement to Prince Vlora but he was not among her six husbands. Peggy’s then-husband, millionaire lumberman James S. Joyce, charged in their 1921 divorce that his wife’s plan had been to secure one million dollars from him and then to wed Prince Noureodin Vlora.

2009-05-16T15:55:00.005-04:00

Pola Negri, born as Apolonia Chalupec on 31 December 1894 (or 1897) in Lipno, Poland, became one of Hollywood's most famous silent film stars. When she was a child her father was arrested by the Russian army and sent to a Siberian gulag. As a result her mother moved to Warsaw where Pola was accepted into the Imperial Ballet. Her promising career was cut short by tuberculosis and, with the help of her mother's childhood friend, she was accepted into the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts. She debuted as Hedwig in Ibsen's The Wild Duck and moved to the national theatre of Poland.

World War I interrupted her rise and she and her mother were again cast into poverty. She resumed acting after the war and was discovered by film director Ernst Lubitsch with whom she made many successful movies in Germany. Adolf Hitler was so mesmerized by her that he personally countermanded an order forbidding her to work in Germany because she was supposedly partly Jewish (she later won a 10,000 franc judgment against a French newspaper which claimed that she had an affair with Hitler).

Her film with Lubitsh, Madame du Barry, was released in the U.S. as Passion and it made them both immediate stars. They moved to Hollywood where she appeared in a string of successful movies and was known as a great rival to Gloria Swanson, who eventually married the Marquis Le Bailly de la Falaise de la Coudraye (1898-1972) (Swanson and Negri once had a cat fight with real cats).

Negri married and divorced a Polish nobleman, Count Eugene Dambski. She became the mistress and fiancee' of Charlie Chaplin but broke her relationship with him in a verbal spat which was assiduously reported. As she later claimed, "A great deal has been written about my relationship with Charlie Chaplin. Unfortunately, much of it has been written by Mr. Chaplin. Still less fortunately, what he wrote was largely untrue. Rather than say he behaved in less than a gentlemanly fashion, I would prefer to excuse him on the grounds that all clowns live in a world of fantasy."

At the death of her former lover Rudolph Valentino (who said of himself in 1923,“Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas on which women paint their dreams.”), Negri rushed out of a film location to throw herself, heavily veiled in black and supported by bodyguards, onto Valentino's coffin. She brought his body back to Los Angeles from New York City with train stops along the way for his fans to pay homage. The public was unimpressed and her popularity began to wane.

She was not forgiven when, in 1927, less than a year after Valentino's death, she married Prince Serge Mdivani (whose brother, David, married film star Mae Murray) and took him to live in her chateau in France. They divorced in a highly public proceeding at The Hague in November 1932 after she lost the bulk of her fortune which was estimated in 1929 to be $5 million. She claimed that his mishandling of her financial affairs ultimately ruined her.

Prince Serge then married wealthy opera singer Mary McCormic who was known as the "baby diva" and went through her money as well. Pola Negri returned to Europe for a while then back to the U.S. to make her talking-picture debut in A Woman Commands. When it was not successful, she returned to Europe and remained there until the increasing Nazi domination caused her to leave in 1940 for the U.S. where she finally retired from films in 1964.

She lived for a while in one room in a small hotel in New York City and was forced to sell her jewels in order to survive. She then recovered some of her European property and moved to San Antonio, Texas, in 1957. She lived forgotten there with a female companion, Margaret West, until her death. She wrote Memoirs of a Star in 1970, but never regained her position or her money and suffered a brain tumor which she declined to have treated. She lived two additional years and died of pneumonia at San Antonio's Baptist Hospital 2 August 1987 and was buried in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. She left most of her estate, including rare prints of her early films, to St. Mary’s University and her personal library to Trinity University, both in San Antonio.

2009-02-23T11:49:00.002-05:00

Gladys Virginia Steuart, born 18 July 1891, died 19 November 1947, was a daughter of John Henry Steuart (1831 – 1892), U. S. Consul at Antwerp, and Mary Virginia Ramsay Harding Steuart (1891 – 1947, later Mrs. de Strale d’Ekna), whose father was a Virginia millionaire. Gladys met in at the Austro-Hungarian Embassy in Paris in 1912 and married at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Geneva 29 July 1914, Count Gyula/Julius Apponyi de Nagy-Apponyi (1873 – 1924), son of Count Ludwig Apponyi, Grand Marshal of the Court of His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty of Hungary. Gladys' sisters, Muriel and Fanny, married respectively Count Seherr Thoss and Count Laszlo Karolyi.

Gladys and Gyula Apponyis’ daughter, Countess Geraldine Apponyi, was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 6 August 1915. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed, the family fled to Switzerland but returned to Hungary in 1921. At the death of Count Apponyi on 27 May 1924, his widow took her three daughters, Geraldine, Virginia (who later married Count de Baghy de Szechen), and Gyula, to live live near her widowed mother in Menton in the south of France. There Gladys married a French Army officer, Gontrand Girault, by whom she had more children, Guy, Sylviane, and Patricia Girault. Her Apponyi in-laws insisted that her children by the first marriage be returned to Hungary where they were enrolled at the Sacred Heart boarding school in Pressbaum near Vienna.

The young and beautiful Geraldine’s grandfather’s fortune had been depleted and she accepted work as a shorthand typist. She then sold postcards at the Budapest National Museum where one of her uncles was director. A photo of the then-17 year-old Geraldine, taken while leaving a ball at the Karolyi Palace in Budapest, was given several years later to a sister of King Zog of the Albanians who introduced the young woman to the King in December of 1937. He asked for her hand almost immediately and Geraldine, who became known as the “White Rose of Hungary,” was raised to royal status as Princess Geraldine of Albania.

On April 27, 1938, in Tirana, Albania, Geraldine married the King, who was 20 years her senior, in a civil ceremony witnessed by Count Ciano, Mussolini's envoy. She was Roman Catholic and he was Muslim and promised to build for her a Catholic chapel in their royal palace. King Zog I, Skanderbeg III of Albania (born Ahmet Zogolli, his name was later changed to Ahmet Zogu, born 8 October 1895), was King of Albania from 1928 to 1939. He was previously Prime Minister of Albania between 1922 and 1924 and President of Albania between 1925 and 1928. At 22, Geraldine was the second-youngest Queen in the world (after Egypt’s Queen Farida). The couple drove to their honeymoon in a scarlet open-top, Mercedes Benz, which was a present from Adolf Hitler (Hungary’s Regent Horthy sent a phaeton and four Lipizzaner stallions). Geraldine’s marriage made her mother, Gladys, the first American-born mother of a queen.

Geraldine’s only child, her son, Leka I, was born at the Royal Palace in Tirana, Albania, on 5 April 1939. Although Geraldine retained her Catholic faith, her son was Muslim and a godson of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. King Zog's rule was cut short with the invasion of Albania by fascist Italy in April 1939 and the family fled the country into exile only two days after the birth of their son. The puppet government passed the throne to Italy’s King Victor Emanuel III.

From 1946, Geraldine and Zog lived in Greece, Turkey, England, Egypt (where they lived until King Farouk was toppled in 1952), the United States (at Knollwood, their estate on Long Island), France, Rhodesia, Spain, and finally South Africa. Their son, Leka I, is the current claimant to the Albanian throne. When he married an Australian, Susan Cullen-Ward (1941 – 2004), Queen Elizabeth II sent a telegram of congratulations. They have a son, Crown Prince Leka, who was born in South Africa in 1982 (his maternity ward was supposedly declared temporary Albanian territory for one hour so that he would be born in Albania).

King Zog died in Hauts-de-Seine, France on 9 April 1961. It was said that he had survived 55 assassination attempts. Queen Geraldine, the first half-American queen, died in Albania on 22 October 2002, where she had been invited to return by 40 members of Parliament that same year. Their son’s activities have ensured that he will never assume his father’s throne. For years he was an arms dealer (sometimes referred to as “Rambo of the Balkans”) for which he was arrested in Thailand. In 1999 he was arrested in South Africa and his diplomatic privileges revoked when police found more than 70 weapons with 14,000 rounds of ammunition in his home. When his airplane landed in Gabon for refueling, troops who had been hired by the Albanian government to arrest him surrounded the plane. He appeared in the door with a rocket launcher and his would-be attackers fled. He re-entered Albania for the first time in 1993, greeted by 500 supporters, under a passport issued by the Royal Court-in-exile. Although the government refused to acknowledge the passport (which listed his occupation as “King”) he was allowed to visit, declaring that he would renounce the passport if a referendum on the monarchy failed. Leka returned again in 1997 when 2,000 supporters greeted him and his weeping mother. The promised monarchy referendum was held and only 1/3 of voters favored its restoration (Leka made accusations of voter fraud but they were largely disproven). He organized an armed insurrection and was sentenced in absentia to three years imprisonment for sedition, a conviction that was pardoned in 2002 when he re-entered the country to live. That same year he attempted to bring almost 90 pieces of arms, including hand grenades and rocket launchers, into Albania. His son, the Crown Prince, now lives in Tirana.

2009-01-30T14:31:00.002-05:00

Rita Hayworth (born Margarita Carmen Cansino), daughter of Eduardo Cansino and Volga Haworth Cansino, was born Brooklyn, NY, 17 October 1918. The daughter of a Spanish-born dancer and his partner, Hayworth became a professional dancer with her father's nightclub act at the age of 12 and appeared as Rita Cansino in several films beginning in 1935. She was billed as her father’s wife rather than his daughter and, during those years, she endured her father’s repeated sexual abuse.

She escaped her plight by marriage to a man 22 years older than she. On the advice of her first husband, Edward Judson (who became her manager; they were married 1937 - 1943), she changed her name and dyed her hair auburn, cultivating a sophisticated glamour that first registered in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Strawberry Blonde (1941), and Blood and Sand (1941). The musicals You'll Never Get Rich (1941) and You Were Never Lovelier (1942), both with Fred Astaire (who said in his memoirs that she was his favorite partner and “danced with trained perfection and individuality”), and Cover Girl (1944), with Gene Kelly, made her a star and a favorite pinup girl of American servicemen.

The sexual allure of Hayworth's performance rose to its peak in Gilda (1946), which caused censorship issues because of the so-called striptease in which she was filmed singing "Put the Blame on Mame" (the dubbed voice was not hers). Rita was called "The Great American Love Goddess" and was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1941. In that same year a photo of her in Life magazine became the most-requested G. I. pinup selling more than five million copies. In a reference to her status as a bombshell, Rita’s likeness was placed on the first atomic bomb to be tested after World War II at Bikini Atoll.

Her later films included The Lady from Shanghai (1948), directed by her second husband, Orson Welles (to whom she was married 1943 – 1948 and had a daughter, Rebecca), as well as Affair in Trinidad (1952), Salome (1953), Miss Sadie Thompson (1953), Pal Joey (1957), Separate Tables (1958), The Money Trap (1966), and The Wrath of God (1972).

Rita was in the south of France in 1948 when she was invited to a party she did not want to attend given by Elsa Maxwell in Cannes. She dressed all in white and arrived late and, from the moment Prince Aly Khan saw her, he was smitten although both were still married. His sexual appetite was voracious but selfish (Alastair Forbes said of him, “Aly's idea of premature ejaculation was about the same as Father Christmas's - i.e. one should only come once a year.”). Rita announced she was leaving films and married in France (she was visibly pregnant at the time) on 27 May 1949 (as his second wife) Prince Aly Aga Khan, born Turin, Italy, 13 June 1911, died France, 12 May 1960, son of Prince Sultan Mohammed, Aga Khan III, leader of the world’s Shia Ismaili Muslims, and his second wife, Theresa Magliano, an Italian ballet dancer. Through his father, Aly Khan was a direct descendant of the prophet Mohammed by his daughter, Fatima.

They had one child, Princess Yasmina Aga Khan, who was born 28 Dec 1949 in Lausanne, Switzerland. Aly Khan was expected to succeed his father despite his well-known tastes for fast cars and beautiful women. But when his father, the Aga Khan, died in 1957, his will designated Aly Khan’s eldest son, Karim, then a student at Harvard, to succeed him. Aly Khan was then named as head of Pakistan’s delegation to the United Nations despite criticism of his not being Pakistani.

Aly Khan was killed in an automobile accident 12 May 1960 in suburban Suresnes, France, when the Lancia he was driving was hit by an oncoming car as he was driving to the home of his half-brother, Prince Sadruddin, near the Saint-Cloud golfcourse. A former French model, known as Bettina, was seated next to him and was slightly injured. Aly Khan’s chauffeur, who was seated in the rear seat while his employer drove, escaped with minor injuries.

Rita’s marriage to Aly Khan failed in 1951 and they divorced in 1953. She returned from Europe to the States and resumed her film career, leaving the screen again during her marriage to singer Dick Haymes from 1953 – 1955. Her final marriage, to director James Hill, was from 1958 to 1961. She once said, “Men go to bed with Gilda but they wake up with me.”

For some 15 years before her death, Hayworth suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, assumed all responsibility for her mother and made public the fact that she was suffering from the disease – the first time many people were made aware of its ravages. Rita Hayworth died at her daughter’s apartment in Manhattan on 14 May 1987 and was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, CA. Since 1985, the Rita Hayworth Galas, chaired by her daughter, Princess Yasmin Aga Khan, have raised more than $44 million. One hundred percent of those funds go toward research and support programs for Alzheimer’s disease. Actor Joseph Cotton said of Hayworth, “"No matter how bad the film, when Rita danced it was like watching one of nature's wonders in motion."

2008-12-06T15:39:00.002-05:00

Martha "Sunny" Sharp Crawford, daughter of George W. Crawford and Annie Laurie Warmack Crawford, was born at Manassas, VA, 1 September 1931. Sunny’s father, who was the founder and chairman of the Columbia Gas and Electric Company, died when his only child was three, leaving a fortune of $75,000,000. Her mother purchased Tamberlane, an estate in Greenwich, CT, and a Fifth Avenue apartment.

Sunny graduated from Chapin School in New York City then was removed to Europe when she fell in love with a Russian translator from a noble but penniless family. Sunny’s mother remarried Russell Aitken in 1957 and they took Sunny with them to the Schloss Mittersell in the Austrian Alps where she met her future husband. She married as his first wife on 20 July 1957, Prince Alfred von Auersperg, born Salzburg 20 July 1936, died Salzburg 19 June 1992. The wedding was performed at Tamberlane, her family estate in Greenwich, CT, by a Catholic priest.

Sunny’s daughter, Annie-Laurie “Ala,” married as her second husband 9 June 1989, American banker Ralph Isham, born 17 Apr 1956. Sunny’s son, Prince Alexander “Alex,” married NYC 10 June 1995, American Nancy Louise Weinberg, born Norfolk, VA 10 May 1959. Prince Alfred and Sunny Crawford divorced and he married two more times and had an additional daughter by his third marriage.

Martha married second, in NYC 6 June 1966, Claus Borberg, born in Copenhagen 11 August 1926, who was adopted and used his mother’s name of Bulow altering it to “von Bulow.” He was an attorney in London and served as vice president of Getty Oil. The story of their marriage and her subsequent coma was told in the book and movie "Reversal of Fortune." Claus was charged with her attempted murder but subsequently acquitted after a lengthy, expensive, and well-publicized legal battle. Sunny and von Bulow had a daughter, Cosima, who sided with her father in his trials for the attempted murder of his wife. Sunny’s mother, whose estate was worth $90 million, had drawn her will so that her three grandchildren would share equally at her death. Mrs. Crawford rewrote her will excluding Cosima and dividing her $90 million equally between Sunny’s two children by Prince Alfred. Cosima and her father continue to live in Sunny’s homes and to draw income from her estate while Sunny was in a persistent vegetative state until December of 2008.

2008-11-04T09:46:00.002-05:00

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Anita Rhinelander Stewart, daughter of William Rhinelander Stewart and Annie Armstrong Stewart, was born at Elberon, NJ, on 7 August 1886, and died at Newport, RI, on 15 September 1977. Her father, although trained as an attorney, managed several trusts established by his old and socially prominent family. Mrs. Stewart’s sister was Mrs. Anthony J. Drexel whose daughter later married the 14th Earl of Winchilsea and Nottingham.

The Stewarts were divorced in 1906 and she married a few months later James Henry “Silent” Smith who had unexpectedly inherited fifty million dollars from an unmarried uncle, becoming overnight one of the wealthiest men in America. Silent Smith was then more than 50, had never been married, and lived in a modest apartment while working as a stockbroker. After his inheritance he was immediately taken up by the very social Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish. After he married Annie Armstrong Stewart he settled one million dollars on her beautiful daughter, Anita, as she entered the marriage market (Anita’s mother would add another one million dollars at her daughter’s wedding). Smith bought the palatial New York residence of the late William C. Whitney at the corner of Sixty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue, opposite Central Park. The $2,000,000 purchase price was considered a bargain.

Annie Armstrong Stewart preferred a high social profile to her first husband’s fondness for quiet evenings at home and she soon became one of Silent Smith’s favorite hostesses. Within a month of her divorce she and Anita sailed for Scotland where Annie married Silent Smith. The Smiths then took a world cruise honeymoon on the Drexel yacht accompanied by Anita as well as the Duke and Duchess of Manchester (she was the American-born Helena Zimmerman). The groom, who had been married only months, died of a heart attack in Kyoto, Japan, on 27 March 1907. Although he was required to leave the bulk of his estate to two nephews, his widow received what was reported to be as low as $3,000,000 and as high as $30,000,000 while her daughter, Anita, was given an additional half-million trust fund. Silent Smith’s sister, who was married to a baronet, Sir George Cooper, was left $3,000,000.

Anita met in Paris in April of 1909 Prince Miguel de Braganza whose father, the Duke of Braganza (usually referred to as the Pretender to the Portugese throne), was a son of the de facto King of Portugal from 1828-1834 and a grandson of Joao VI, King of Portugal and Emperor of Brazil. Miguel’s family lived in exile in Austria where Emperor Franz Joseph was generous to them. Only three months after their meeting, the engagement of Anita Stewart to Prince Miguel was announced at a concert dance in London where her mother had leased the Berkeley Square home of the Duchess of Somerset. From his summer home in Bar Harbour the bride’s father declined to comment about his daughter’s engagement. At first it was announced that the marriage would be morganatic but Anita refused to accept anything less than a title of princess.

On September 6th the generous Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph, announced that he had created Anita a Princess in her own right. The New York Times wrote, “It seems easier than we thought for an emperor to transform a plain American Miss into a Princess, when no principality goes with the title and no pecuniary endowment. Miss Stewart is buying her own principality, and is expected to endow rather than be endowed.” Then it was learned that the groom was to renounce his inheritance rights as Portugal’s then-King was unmarried as was his heir, his uncle the Duke of Oporto (who in 1917 would marry American Nevada Stoody). Again Anita refused to consent to the marriage on those terms. So, on the eve of the marriage, Anita’s mother paid all the groom’s substantial gambling debts in exchange for his not renouncing his succession rights and for Anita’s refusal to convert to the Catholic faith. The groom’s father then created his son the Duke of Vizeu.

After all the necessary negotiations, Anita Rhinelander Stewart married at a small Catholic church near Tulloch Castle (which her mother had leased for the season) outside Dingwall, Scotland, on 15 September 1909, Prince Miguel de Braganza, Duke of Vizeu (ad personam by his father 1909), born Reichenau 22 September 1878, died NYC 21 February 1923. Anita was given away by her brother who wore the Stewart tartan and the event was a high-profile social gathering for the American expatriate community, including the Bradley Martins who attended with a house full of guests (including their daughter, the Countess of Craven) from their nearby shooting estate. A Catholic bishop, who said daily mass for the visiting King and Queen of Spain when they were visiting in the area, pronounced the Pope’s personal blessing at the end of the ceremony.

The first stop on their honeymoon was to visit the generous Franz Joseph in Austria where Anita was formally presented to court. While they were away creditors searched the Prince’s home in an effort to confiscate anything that could be sold to settle his considerable debts. At the time it was reported that one-fifth of the dowry was to be committed to creditors. Anita had a daughter and two sons but the marriage was not happy. At the outbreak of war Prince Miguel joined the Kaiser’s army. Anita sailed with her children for New York City where she was met at the pier by her father whom she had not seen in eleven years (at his death he would leave the largest portion of an estate worth more than two million dollars to Anita).

A revolution in Portugal in 1910 ended that country’s monarchy and its King fled to England. In 1920 Prince Miguel, Duke of Vizeu, renounced his claims to the Portugese throne one week before his elderly father renounced his own rights in favor of his third son, Dom Duarte. Although Prince Miguel’s renouncement was supposedly a retroactive one that included his children, there has always been a question whether he could renounce his children’s rights. His American descendants have wisely never pressed the claim and have lived productive lives free of any royal intrigue. Dom Duarte’s son is the current Duke of Braganza and pretender to the Portugese throne.

After the war Prince Miguel joined his family in America where he became an insurance salesman in the firm of his brother-in-law in 1922. The next year Prince Miguel died of influenza at the age of 44. In 1926 Anita renounced her titles and regained her American citizenship. She opened a photographic studio in New York City and remained friendly with her husband’s family, announcing in 1934 the engagement of her sister-in-law, Princess Maria Antonia, to Ashley Chanler, nephew of the first husband of Amelie Rives, Princess Troubetskoy.

Anita married second, on 2 April 1946 (the same year in which her only daughter committed suicide), Lewis Gouverneur Morris of Newport, RI, scion of several early American colonial families. He had served five months in prison in 1921 as a result of the financial failure of his brokerage firm. He died in 1967. Anita’s mother married in 1915 a man who was younger than Anita, Jean H. E. St. Cyr, whose much older wife had died four months earlier leaving him one million dollars. At one time it was alleged that he had been born Jack Thompson and was a bellboy before adopting a French name in order to enter society.

When Anita’s mother died in 1925 at El Cerrito, her California home, her estate was said to be $40,000,000 and her young husband received one-third interest. At the time of her death it was disclosed that Prince Alexander von Thurn und Taxis, a cousin of Prince Miguel de Braganza, received almost one-quarter of a million dollars from the estate as payment for an outstanding debt. In 1914 Anita had assigned her future interest in that portion of her mother’s estate to satisfy a court-ordered judgment for her husband’s substantial debt to his cousin. Anita, formerly Duchess de Vizeu, died on 15 September 1977 at her home in Newport, RI. She was 91 and died on the 60th anniversary of her wedding to Prince Miguel de Braganza.

2008-10-10T11:15:00.001-04:00

Mattie Elizabeth Mitchell, born in Portland, Oregon, 28 August 1866, died in Paris 20 February 1933, was a daughter of U. S. Senator John H. Mitchell of Oregon. He was born John Hipple in Pennsylvania but left his wife and children there and moved to Oregon where he changed his name. In his first of three terms as U. S. Senator, his opponents tried to prevent his being seated, charging him with bigamy, desertion, and living under an assumed name. A Senate committee decided against a full investigation. After his third term as U. S. Senator, he was convicted of land fraud for having received fees for expediting land claims of clients. He died 9 December 1905 while awaiting appeal of his conviction and sentence of imprisonment.

Mattie met her future husband on the Riviera and they were engaged for several years. "This marriage is known to have been a love-match, as Miss Mitchell had no fortune whatever to offer as a dot," reported the newspapers at the time. She married in Paris on 11 February 1892, Francois, 5th Duc de la Rochefoucauld, Duc de Liancourt, Prince de Marcillac, Duc d'Anville, born 21 April 1853, died in Monaco 24 February 1925. The religious ceremony was held at the Church of St. Clothilde in Paris and the bride (whose father was not present) was escorted into the church by the American Ambassador, Whitelaw Reid. Guests included several Americans active in Paris society. After the wedding the bride’s mother remained in Paris for two months as a guest of artist George P. A. Healy who completed the bride’s formal portrait just prior to the wedding.

In 1902 Mattie was sued by the Countess Spottiswood-Mackin (American-born Sally Britton of St. Louis). The Duchess had leased a house from the Countess but left it without paying because it was not adequately heated. The Countess then filed a lien to attach the Duchess’ jewelry to satisfy the unpaid debt. The Countess sued for libel and the Duchess countersued for expenses and damages to her reputation. The court took five years to reach a divided decision which satisfied neither side.

The la Rochefoucaulds had one child, the Duc de Liancourt, born 28 June 1905, who died of meningitis on 11 March 1909 after an illness of six weeks. The Duke de la Rochefoucauld’s younger brother succeeded as the 6th Duke and his line continues. Mattie was buried in the Vault of La Rochefoucauld Castle near Paris.

2008-09-12T16:43:00.002-04:00

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Nevada Hayes Stoody was born 21 October 1885 (some sources say as early as 1870 which seems more likely) in Ohio, the second child of Jacob Walter Stoody (1846-1922) and Nancy Miranda McNeel Stoody (1848-1922) who married in 1867. She died 11 January 1941. Her origins were never clear, but she came from a small town in Ohio to New York City before 1906.

Her first husband, Lee Agnew, was New York representative of the old Record-Herald. They were divorced in Manhattan and he later invented a device for delivering folded newspapers from presses - an invention which made him very wealthy. When he died 31 January 1924, he left her the excess income from his estate over that which was necessary for the support of their son, Lee "David" Agnew, Jr. The excess was substantial. A day after her divorce from Lee Agnew, Sr., in 1906, she married William Henry Chapman who was then in his seventies. When he left her more than $8 million at his death one year later, the newspapers dubbed her "the $10 million widow."

She immediately went to Europe where it was reported that those vying for her hand included Lord Falconer (later the 10th Earl of Kintore who married American heiress Helen Zimmerman, formerly Duchess of Manchester), Count A. F. Chereff-Spiritovitch (a younger officer in the army of the Tsar), Prince Mohammed Ali Hassan, and Count Aubert de Sonies who came from Paris to New York on the same ship with the widow. While the Count was in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel waiting to present flowers and a proposal of marriage, she departed by a rear exit with Philip Van Valkenburgh, a prominent member of an old New York family. They were married in Connecticut on 23 November 1909 and were divorced after a short time amid protracted legal battles; she finally settled $200,000 upon him in 1910.

She immediately left for Europe where the press continued to report those seeking her hand in marriage. Nevada married morganatically in Rome 26 September and in Madrid 23 November 1917, Don Alfonso of Portugal, Prince of Braganza, Duke of Oporto, born Ajuda 1 July 1865, died Naples 21 February 1920, son of King Luis I. He forfeited his inheritance rights to the throne by his marriage and his financial allowance from the royal family was cut.

Nevada styled herself as the Crown Princess of Portugal. Her husband was the uncle of King Manuel of Portugal and only brother of King Manuel's father, the murdered King Carlos. King Victor Emanuel, a cousin of the Duke of Oporto, gave him asylum in the Royal Palace in Naples and a reported allowance of $10,000 per year. The Duke of Oporto died in Naples in 1920 having fled there after the Portugese Revolution. After the death of the King of Portugal Nevada petitioned the republican government – to no avail - to grant her all the royal family’s funds as she considered herself its senior member.

She sailed to the U. S. in 1921 to have made a silver casket on a bronze base (weighing half a ton) in which to convey her late husband’s body from Naples to Lisbon. There it would be displayed in the Pantheon before the Duke of Oporto was buried next to his murdered brother, the late King. In 1935 the Duchess of Oporto traveled on the Ile de France to New York where she reported that, having spent two months in Germany, she was "greatly impressed by Adolf Hitler."

She jealously guarded what she perceived as her rights as Crown Princess and once, on a trans-Atlantic cruise which also included the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, to ensure that she be seated on the Captain’s right at dinner rather than the Grand Duchess, she entered the dining room ahead of all other guests to take her seat. She died 11 January 1941 in Tampa, Florida, at St. Joseph's Hospital after an illness of 10 days. She had spent the winter in Tampa for the preceding 10 years. She left a son, David Agnew, of New York, and four sisters.

2008-08-26T11:26:00.002-04:00

Aimee Crocker (1863-1941), born Sacramento, CA, was an heiress to gold and railroad fortunes and a daughter of Judge Edwin B. Crocker (1818-1875), legal counsel for the Central Pacific Railroad, Justice of the California Supreme Court in 1865 and founder of the Crocker Art Museum, the longest continuously operating art museum in the West. Her father was a brother of Charles Crocker, one of the “big four” California railroad barons.

The family embarked on a grand European tour from 1869 to 1871 then returned to Sacramento to move into the mansion that had been built for them during their journey. Aimee (originally Amy) married five times beginning in 1887. She wrote of her family in her 1937 memoirs, Without Regret, “The Crocker family needs neither introduction nor comment. For those who never read the papers I might say that we were exceedingly wealthy.”

In her teens she was infatuated with several suitors in her first trip abroad. She became engaged to one, a German prince in uniform, after a relationship of one month. She broke the engagement and later wrote of the Prince, “I recall that he did not commit suicide.” She was retrieved from Europe by her mother after presentation at court in Dresden. Back at home, two friends, R. Porter Ashe and Harry Gillig, played a game of poker for her hand and Ashe won with four aces. She married him in 1887 and divorced him one year later. Aimee then chartered a yacht and sailed to Hawaii having met its King, David Kalakaua, in Europe. She remained there almost a year and the King gave her her own island where she was named Princess of its 300 inhabitants.

Returning to San Francisco, she then married Harry Gillig who had earlier lost her hand in the poker game. That marriage, too, ended in divorce. Traveling abroad years later with her daughter, Gladys Ashe, she met two brothers, Jackson and Powers Gouraud. She married Jackson Gouraud and he died several years later. Her daughter Gladys (born 21 November 1885) married his brother Powers Gouraud (thus becoming her mother's sister-in-law) and they also divorced.

On 11 June 1914 Aimee married Prince Alexandre Miskinoff, a Russian nobleman. They separated in 1915 and he divorced her the next year when she contested the suit. He alleged cruel and inhuman treatment as well as desertion and that her actions had made him ill. One of his written charges was that, although he "always behaved in a calm and respectful manner," toward his wife she made great scenes "and arrogantly claimed that her great fortune gave her the privilege to abuse her husband." Her reply was that her husband had become infatuated with a 15-year old girl in her family and that he had misled her prior to their marriage concerning his social standing. The strangest allegation in the suit was that a baby girl was born to the couple on 11 April 1915, a charge his wife denied. Miskinoff replied that he had a letter in his wife's own hand announcing the baby's birth but that his wife immediately left their home at the Hotel McAlpin with the baby because she did not want her daughter from an earlier marriage to know of the child. He alleged that his wife then kept the baby at the Hotel Endicott in the charge of nurses. He stated that he purchased a baby carriage for $80 and for several weeks proudly pushed his daughter around the sidewalks near the Hotel but his wife then became jealous of his attentions to their daughter. He asked for visitation rights to the child but his wife continued to deny her existence and the divorce was granted.

On 22 September 1925 in Paris Aimee married Prince Mstislav Galitzine, Count Ostermann of Russia, born Kiev 21 January 1899, died Paris 28 February 1966. They were divorced in 1927 in Paris when she charged infidelity. Opposing the suit Prince Galitzine said that their marriage “was purely a commercial one, animated by the American woman's desire to be a Princess,” adding that he “married for a financial settlement on condition that the union be one in name only." After their 1927 divorce he remarried a Frenchwoman and had a daughter and Aimee retained the name Princess Galitzine.

She later became very active socially in New York City and had her gowns designed in Paris. While in Java she "wore the native costume and lived in a native hut." During her stay in Japan she lived in a paper house. While there a young British officer reportedly stole for her a sacred Buddha from a temple and "the affair was hushed up." She died at 78 at the Hotel Savoy Plaza in NYC in 1941. Her daughter, Gladys C. Ashe, died in Santa Barbara in 1947 having lived in Beaumont, France, at her Chateau de Baudiment and left a son, Gerald Morgan Russell.

2008-08-19T08:40:00.002-04:00

Lucy Cotton, born in Houston, TX, approximately 1891, daughter of Adelaide Wisby Cotton and Warren Jefferson Cotton, was an actress who performed on Broadway and then in a series of early movies. In 1916-1917, her first stage appearance was in Turn to the Right! She was then given a starring role in Up in Mabel’s Room in 1919 and afterwards left the stage for good. The titles of her successive movies give a fair indication of the type of roles in which she was cast: Blind Love, The Devil, The Misleading Lady, Divorced, Life Without Soul, Roses and Thorns, and The Sin That Was His.

She married on 10 October 1924 in Paris Edward Russell Thomas, owner of the New York Morning Telegraph, a Yale graduate whose father, General Samuel Thomas, left a fortune of twenty million dollars enabling an annual trust fund of $180,000 for Edward. The son reportedly made two million dollars on his own by creating a corner in the cotton market. In the 1907 financial panic he was forced to sell his renowned racing stables but eventually recovered his fortune. In 1902 Thomas was the first driver in America to kill someone with an automobile when his Daimler, formerly owned by William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., struck a seven year-old child and dragged the body three blocks. Years later Thomas would be seriously injured in another auto accident from which he took months to recover and his daughter also died in the same manner.

Edward R. Thomas first married in Newport, RI, a 17 year-old Virginian, Linda Lee. After their divorce she took her sizable financial settlement and married the composer Cole Porter. The story of their highly-social relationship, largely financed by her funds, was told in the movie DeLovely. Edward R. Thomas’ second wife, by whom he had a son, Samuel Finley Thomas, was Elizabeth Finley.

Thomas and Lucy had a daughter, Lucetta Cotton Thomas, in May of 1925, the year before he died on 6 July 1926 at the age of 52. For a short while his widow assumed management of his profitable newspaper. His extensive estate included a $50,000 bequest to his sister’s husband, Rhode Island Governor Livingston Beeckman, and his second wife sued the estate to increase the amount left to his young son (who was eventually to become chief of neurology at New York’s St. Luke’s Hospital). Thomas’ infant daughter by Lucy received a trust fund of approximately two million dollars with the remaining amount, slightly over one million dollars, to his wife. She frequently entered into litigation with his estate over the succeeding years in an effort to receive some of her daughter’s income.

In 1934 Lucy gave a ninth birthday party for the girl at her fifteenth-floor apartment at the Hotel Pierre. The party lasted twelve hours and more than 500 guests paid $2.50 each to join the festivities with the proceeds going to a pianist who was a protégé of Lucy. Two singers from the Metropolitan Opera performed during the party and Lucetta was seen clutching a big doll before being led away to bed by a governess while the party continued for seven more hours.

Lucy Cotton Thomas married Lyton Grey Ament in 1927 and Charles Hann, Jr. in 1931. Both marriages were performed by the same minister in Towson, MD, and both ended in divorce. In 1933 she married William Magraw, president of Manhattan’s Underground Installations Company. Immediately after that marriage kidnappers demanded $150,000 in ransom not to abduct Lucy’s daughter, Lucetta. Lucy moved to south Florida where her late husband owned substantial property and, in 1934, she purchased the Deauville resort at Miami Beach consisting of a hotel, casino, swimming pool, and bathing beach. The sales price was said to be three million dollars. She ran it for two seasons before leasing the resort to the owner of True Confessions magazine. During World War II it was used by the Coast Guard for anti-invasion beach patrol, never recovered its glory days and was demolished in 1956.

On 3 May 1941 Lucy divorced William Magraw and, three hours later, in Key West, Florida, married Prince Vladimir Eristavi-Tchitcherine, born 19 October 1881 in Orel, Russia, who had been working in a jewelry store at the time of their meeting. The Tchitcherines were a Russian noble family with medieval roots, although not a royal one, while the Eristavis were a Georgian royal family, and Vladimir added the second name to his own after his first marriage before World War I to Clementine de Vere. She was divorced from her first husband and the father of her son, Herman Wirtheim, a tiger tamer and circus artist known as Herman Weedon. Prince Vladimir married second in March 1929, Diane Rockwood who was from Indianapolis, IN, and they were also divorced.

Lucy and Prince Vladimir were re-married in a religious ceremony on 15 June 1941 in New York City’s Russian Orthodox Cathedral officiated by the church’s dean. Afterwards a reception was held in the penthouse of the St. Regis Hotel. The couple lived in Miami and were divorced there on 12 October 1944. On 12 December 1948 her butler found her unconscious in her bed with an empty bottle that had held 100 sleeping pills. Lucy Cotton Thomas Ament Hann Magraw Eristavi-Tchitcherine was declared dead upon reaching the hospital. Prince Vladimir died in February of 1967 in New York City.

Lucy’s daughter, Lucetta Cotton Thomas, left home upon reaching her majority and had no further contact with her mother. Having been taunted for years by the nickname, “Miss Cotton Panties,” she changed her name to Mary Frances Thomas and married Kenneth Oscar Bailey. They lived in Luray, Virginia, where she died in an auto accident on 20 January 1980. She had no children and most of her estate went to charity.

2008-08-06T08:30:00.002-04:00

Clara Ward, born Detroit, MI, 17 June 1873, died Padua 9 December 1916, was a daughter of Captain Eber Brock Ward and his second wife, Catherine Lyons Ward. Manufacturer Eber Ward of Detroit, called “The King of the Lakes,” was reportedly the wealthiest man in Michigan. At his death in 1875, his property alone in Michigan was valued at more than $3 million and he served as the first president of the American Iron and Steel Association. He was largely responsible for having developed shipping lines across the Great Lakes and later built rolling mills in seven cities near Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

Clara met in Nice and was married by the Papal Nuncio at Paris 20 May 1890 Joseph de Riquet, 19th Prince de Chimay, Prince de Caraman, born Paris 4 July 1858 (he was 15 years her senior) died Chimay 25 July 1937, of a Franco-Belgian house. She was given a marriage settlement of $2.5 million by the estate of her father. Prince Joseph was a member of the Chamber of Representatives in Belgium.

Clara was supposedly bored by life in the little village of Chimay and was even reported to have thrown gold coins from the battlement of her castle to watch the villagers fight for them. He and Clara were divorced 19 January/20 June 1897 (annulled at St. Siege 28 June 1911) and she "enjoyed a gay and scandalous career which gossips compared to that of Lola Montez" according to the New York Times. They had a daughter, Countess Marie, born 1891, who married in 1918 Georges Albert Leon Decocq, and a son, Joseph, who would have succeeded his father but he died in 1920 at the age of 25 having never married. The father remarried in 1920 a French woman and had another son, Prince Joseph, born 1921, who succeeded his father as 20th Prince but renounced his titles upon becoming an American citizen when the titles passed to his next brother, Elie. Clara’s husband’s grandson is the current 22nd Prince de Chimay, Prince de Caraman.

Clara remarried in 1898 Rigo Janczi, a Hungarian violinist who referred to himself as a Gypsy prince. They became Hungary's beautiful couple in 1905, sometimes requiring police protection from the crowds who surrounded them. He told of their meeting by insisting that "the night I saw her first she turned from King Leopold to smile at me. Ten days later, like two gypsies, we stole from her palace in the dead of night" when he took her to his mother's hut in the mountains. To that mother Clara gave a pearl necklace with a diamond clasp which hung on a nail by the fire. Supposedly Clara then bought the mountain on which the hut sat and gave it to her new mother-in-law. They moved to Egypt and for her new husband she "built me a white marble palace on the Nile. An Italian architect designed the stables for the sixteen jet-black Arabian horses she bought for me. … She bought a menagerie of baby elephants, lions and tigers to amuse me. She gave me my $5,000 violin and caskets of jewels. Her allowance of $500 a month for me has not failed once since she started it twenty years ago." By the time he wrote that account Clara and Rigo had divorced and she pursued other loves.

As Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote of Paris in Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, “The midnight resort par excellence for the Horizontals was, of course, Maxim's….Few society ladies would have dared to be seen within the art nouveau interior of that naughty place, with some emancipated exceptions such as Princesse Caraman-Chimay, née Clara Ward from Detroit, Michigan, who eventually ran away with the violinist Rigo and appeared at the Folies Bergères in pink tights and a series of 'Plastic Poses.'” Clara was painted by Toulouse-Lautrec in “A Princely Idyl, Clara Ward,” now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

After her 1911 divorce another American woman, Mrs. Casper E. Emerson, Jr., left her husband for Rigo and he played the violin in the Little Hungary Restaurant, a small tea room opened by his new wife, before dying near destitution in 1927. Rigo was buried in the National Vaudeville Association plot at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County, NY. On a visit to Paris Clara deserted Rigo for a Spaniard. In the end, she married an Italian named Peppino Ricciardi who was a stationmaster on the Vesuvian Railway. She sued him for divorce after the court’s unsuccessful attempts to bring about their reconciliation.

In 1915 her mother, Catherine Lyons Ward Morrow, died leaving Clara only $1,000 of her own one million dollar estate. Clara, formerly Princess de Chimay, died at her villa in Padua 9 December 1916. Her estate of $1.2 million was divided into trust funds and left to her son, Joseph, her daughter, Marie, and her last husband (wth the corpus reverting to her children at his death), and a small bequest to a cousin in Chicago. There was a rumor that she died a pauper with nothing left except a few jewels, but the American Consul at Venice stated publicly that Clara “was in possession of a very large income and lived in a manner befitting its possessor. At the time of her death she occupied the best suite at the Hotel Stella d’Oro. During her sickness she had the assistance of expert physicians, and everything that money and medical science could do in her last illness was done. Her funeral was elaborate and costly.” Prince Joseph's brother, Prince Alexandre, married American Mathilde Lowenguth.

2008-07-29T11:01:00.004-04:00

This young woman was certainly proof that money does not buy happiness:

Alice Silverthorne was born in Buffalo, NY, on 28 September 1899, the daughter of wealthy shoe manufacturer William E. Silverthorne (1867 – 1941) and of Julia Belle Chapin, an heiress to the Armour meatpacking fortune (Julia’s mother, Marietta Armour, was a sister of Phillip Danforth Armour who founded the family company with another brother). When Alice was very young, the family moved to Chicago and her mother died of tuberculosis on 2 June 1907. Alice was also infected but remained a consumptive without symptoms for the remainder of her life. She was then raised by governesses and became known for her wild debutante years. Her father often took her to Europe where she became a regular on the social circuit. After an accident possibly caused by his alcoholism her father lost custody of Alice and she was made a ward of her uncle.

Alice moved to Paris when she was 21 and, while working in the model department of Jean Patou, she met Count Frederic de Janzé (1896-1933) who was not only a race-car driver in the Le Mans race but also a friend of Marcel Proust and Anna de Noailles. Their engagement was announced in July of 1921 and they were married on 21 September 1921 at Chicago’s Church of Our Lady of Carmel. Her matron of honor was her cousin, Lolita Ogden Armour, who had recently married John J. Mitchell, Jr., first cousin of the aesthete Sir Harold Acton (Acton’s mother was Chicago heiress Hortense Mitchell whose fortune purchased the Acton estate, La Pietra, near Florence; her parents were killed in a 1927 auto accident leaving an estate of $10 million). They were lent the J. Ogden Armour estate on Long Island for a two week honeymoon, then left to visit the groom’s family at Dinard near Paris before spending their first winter in Morocco.

Alice promptly gave birth to two daughters, Nolwen (born 11 months after her parents’ wedding) and Paola, born in 1924. They were reared almost entirely by nannies and by their father’s sister at the de Janzé chateau in Normandy. Alice exhibited what her husband termed as “unstable, suicidal” thoughts and he suggested that the two travel to the hedonistic community of British nationals living in Kenya. Termed the “Happy Valley” set, they were known for sexual excess, drugs and alcohol, and Alice was all too happy to join them. They moved next door to Josslyn Hay, Lord Kilmarnock (1901 – 1941), the future 22nd Earl of Erroll, and his twice-divorced wife, Idina. Lord Erroll was handsome and virile and immediately began to enjoy the attractions of Alice, who was described by her husband as having “full red lips, a body to desire.” Alice soon earned the nickname, “the wicked Madonna.”

In 1926 Alice began an affair with Raymond de Trafford (1900 – 1971), third son of inveterate gambler Sir Humphrey de Trafford, 3rd Baronet (who declared bankruptcy in 1907 despite an annual income of $240,000). The handsome young man was a friend of Evelyn Waugh. Although Alice’s husband was aware of the affair, he eventually recognized that this one was far more serious than those in her past. In his attempt to save the marriage, the de Janzés moved to Paris. When Alice returned to de Trafford in Kenya, her husband surrendered to the inevitable and began divorce proceedings. His elder daughter by Alice, Nolwen de Janzé, would eventually marry as her third husband the art historian Sir Kenneth Clark, Baron Clark of Saltwood, known principally for his role as host of television’s acclaimed series, Civilisation. Nolwen died in France in 1989, followed by her sister, Paola, in 2006.

Alice planned to marry de Trafford but his socially-prominent Catholic family was violently opposed to a union with a divorced seductress and threatened to disinherit him. On 25 March 1927, Alice was with de Trafford in Paris’ Gare du Nord where he intended to tell her goodbye before leaving for London on an Express boat train. He used the occasion to tell her that their relationship was ended. Alice pulled a revolver from her purse, shot him in the chest, then shot herself in the stomach. Both were critically injured – he was shot very near the heart - and rushed in the same ambulance to the hospital. They lay near death for days, were given surgeries, and his wounds were found to be worse than hers. The beautiful but caustic Lady Diana Cooper joked, “shot him, then herself, and missed both.”

Two weeks later Alice was charged with the shooting while still a hospital patient. She responded that she intended to commit suicide but, overcome in the heat of the moment, shot her lover as well. After his recovery de Trafford was flown to London, telling Paris authorities that he did not want to press charges against Alice who was held at the women’s prison at St. Lazare.

Her husband was granted a divorce on 23 December 1927, and the Paris tribunal made no mention of the shooting. Unsurprisingly, he was given custody of both daughters. Count Frederic de Janzé in 1930 married a wealthy American wife, Genevieve Willinger Ryan, widow of Thomas Jefferson Ryan. He wrote two books, Vertical Land and Tarred With the Same Brush, and died at Baltimore, MD, of septicemia on 24 December 1933.

Alice was tried in Paris on 23 December 1927. When de Trafford took the stand, he attempted to present his shooting as brought about by his own action when, “a movement on my part caused the weapon to be deflected…. The accident was due to my own imprudence.” Evidence was presented that Alice had attempted to commit suicide four times. As the New York Times reported of the trial, “The Countess told her story in French as simply and unemotionally as if reciting a tale which she had heard. Her imperturbability was more perhaps a matter of feature than of nerve, but such as it was, it rather shocked the Judge, who seemed to think the pretty young woman did not quite realize the nature of her offense.” She was found to have been temporarily deranged and was guilty only of possessing a gun without a license. Alice was given a suspended sentence of six months, fined four dollars, and less than two years later was given a full presidential pardon.

Alice returned to Kenya early in 1928 but was asked by the government to leave as “an undesirable alien.” Rumors surfaced that she and de Trafford were to be married but her attorney denied the published reports. But, on 22 February 1932, at Neuilly-sur-Seine, Alice de Janzé and Raymond de Trafford were married. Three weeks later they argued publicly in a restaurant and never saw one another again. Alice obtained a divorce in 1937, charging her husband was “an idler who associates with disreputable women.” One American newspaper headlined their reporting of the story, “She Loved Him, Shot Him, Married Him, Divorced Him” Alice was then re-admitted to Kenya where she settled again with the Happy Valley set. She spent most of her time attending to her animals and became heavily addicted to morphine.

Her former lover had succeeded to his title as Earl of Erroll in 1928 and pursued his voracious sexual appetite. Having divorced Idina, his second wife died of an overdose of alcohol, morphine and heroin. Lord Erroll began an affair with Diana, the beautiful young wife of Sir Jock Delves Broughton. On 24 January 1941, Lord Erroll was shot to death in his car outside Nairobi. Alice became an immediate suspect both because of the relationship they had shared years before as well as her own trial for shooting de Trafford. Alice appeared at the morgue where Lord Erroll’s body was resting. In front of witnesses, she lifted her dress, rubbed her hand between her legs, wiped her fingers on the corpse’s mouth, and said, “Now you are mine forever.”

Sir Jock Delves Broughton was arrested for the murder and evidence was presented of his wife’s affair with Lord Erroll. Alice regularly visited him in jail as he awaited trial where Broughton was acquitted because of a lack of evidence against him. Years later, author James Fox wrote of the incident in his book and movie White Mischief (Alice’s role was played by Sarah Miles) and asserted that Broughton eventually confessed to the killing before his own death of suicide on 5 December 1942.

Alice was diagnosed with uterine cancer in August of 1941. Soon after having a hysterectomy, she unsuccessfully attempted to take her life with poison but was rescued when a friend secured medical care. Finally, on 30 September 1941, Alice Silverthorne de Janzé de Trafford shot herself to death in her home in Kenya only two days after turning 42. One of her three suicide notes was to the daughters she had so rarely seen. Another asked that her friends throw a cocktail party on her grave. Her death was officially ruled a suicide in January of 1942.

2008-07-24T11:04:00.000-04:00

Eliza's husband

2008-07-24T10:47:00.001-04:00

Some of these women, while admittedly beautiful, were little more than demi-monde:

Eliza Blakeney was a daughter of Hannah Blakeney of Tappan in Rockland County, New York. By some accounts she was a waitress in a bar and some sources contend that she may have been married to a Mr. Parker. No one, however, contests the fact that she was uncommonly beautiful. She met and bedazzled musician and conductor Alfred Musard (1828-1881) whose French father, Philippe Musard (1793-1859), was known as “King of the Quadrille.” The father popularized outdoor concerts in New York City then did the same in England where he began the annual summer musical tradition now known as “the Proms.” He was also the first composer to use trombones to play the melody and even conducted for Queen Victoria. While the son was not as well-known as his father, he was far better looking. Alfred Musard and Eliza promptly left for Paris where they were married.

In Europe her beauty caught the attention at Baden of King William III of the Netherlands (1817-1890) who had married in 1839 his first cousin, Princess Sophie of Wurttemberg. Although the marriage produced three sons (all of whom pre-deceased their father), it was not happy. The King preferred a life of lasciviousness that led the New York Times to refer to him as “the greatest debauchee of the age.” Eliza Musard became his acknowledged mistress and was even given palace apartments. Queen Sophie, corresponding with a friend in 1867, wrote, “It is whispered his relation with that horrid woman, Musard, is breaking off … I find a dull court, scenes of intemperance, daily drunkenness.”

“The Belle Madame Musard,” as she was called, pressed the King to make her position more tenable, particularly as she was still married to her husband. One day King William took from his writing table a package of old mortgages to land in Pennsylvania and gave them to Eliza. She quickly realized their worth and foreclosed, immediately becoming the owner of some of the richest untapped petroleum fields. As a result, she became enormously wealthy. The King’s eldest son, the Prince of Orange, was said to be “green with rage” as he was heavily in debt and had to beg his father for what small allowances he was given.

Princess Caroline Murat wrote of Eliza, “She was exceedingly beautiful; her beauty was great enough to be resented by many who could not claim so large a share of that distinguishing quality at a time when to be beautiful was even more desirable than to be clever or wealthy. Those who envied Madame Musard, however, affected to console themselves with remembrance of her origin.”

Eliza’s fortune could not have come at a better time as she overplayed her hand. The King was negotiating to sell his Duchy of Luxembourg, of which he was Grand Duke, to the French. Eliza indiscreetly mentioned that fact to the famous courtesan Marquise de Paiva (born Esther Lachmann in a Russian ghetto) who told her lover (whom she later married), Count Guido Henckel von Donnersmarck. Once Germany knew of the King’s plans, war was threatened as Luxembourg was committed to neutrality. The sale of the Duchy was ended, as was the King’s relationship with Madame Musard.

Eliza moved to Paris with her ever-growing wealth and established a sumptuous hotel in the Champs Elysées where she built a palatial stable for her eighty horses. At a dinner she gave for the Prince de Chimay she wore a dress embroidered with three thousand pearls. Her frequent breakfast entertainments attracted writers and artists who were served alternate courses by “three coal-black negroes” and three white servants, all of whom wore “velvet knee breeches, white silk stockings, shoes with silver buckles, and powdered wigs.” The New York Tribune reported that, “Mme. Musard’s equipages were more magnificent than those of the Empress Eugénie.” One social observer of the day wrote of Madame Musard, “She pays as much for one horse as her husband gains by his music in a year.” She bought a country mansion at Villeguier outside Paris, and also purchased the palatial Villa Pizzo on Lake Como and added small bells to the roof because she liked the sound they made when stirred by the wind.

Such excess could not continue, however. Her long-suffering husband was sent to Algiers for his health and died there. Madame Musard was kicked in the face by one of her expensive horses and was permanently blinded and disfigured. She ended her days in an insane asylum and her vast wealth passed to her American family in New York who lived on it for many years. Her former lover, King William III, was widowed in 1877 and two years later married Princess Emma of Waldeck (his third choice), who was 41 years younger than he. She exerted a beneficial influence over his later years and they had one child, Wilhelmina, who would become the first of three successive reigning queens of the Netherlands.

2008-06-04T16:07:00.003-04:00

Paparazzi attention to "beautiful couples" is nothing new, but some newly-wealthy subjects were delighted to be the objects of attention:

Clara Ward, born Detroit, MI, 17 June 1873, died Padua 9 December 1916, was a daughter of Captain Eber Brock Ward and his second wife, Catherine Lyons Ward. Manufacturer Eber Ward of Detroit, called “The King of the Lakes,” was reportedly the wealthiest man in Michigan. At his death in 1875, his property alone in Michigan was valued at more than $3 million and he served as the first president of the American Iron and Steel Association. He was largely responsible for having developed shipping lines across the Great Lakes and later built rolling mills in seven cities near Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee.

Clara met in Nice and was married by the Papal Nuncio at Paris 20 May 1890 Joseph de Riquet, 19th Prince de Chimay, Prince de Caraman, born Paris 4 July 1858 (he was 15 years her senior) died Chimay 25 July 1937, of a Franco-Belgian house. She was given a marriage settlement of $2.5 million by the estate of her father. Prince Joseph was a member of the Chamber of Representatives in Belgium. Clara was supposedly bored by life in the little village of Chimay and was even reported to have thrown gold coins from the battlement of her castle to watch the villagers fight for them.

He and Clara were divorced 19 January/20 June 1897 (annulled at St. Siege 28 June 1911) and she "enjoyed a gay and scandalous career which gossips compared to that of Lola Montez" according to the New York Times. They had a daughter, Countess Marie, born 1891, who married in 1918 Georges Albert Leon Decocq, and a son, Joseph, who would have succeeded his father but he died in 1920 at the age of 25 having never married.

The father remarried in 1920 a French woman and had another son, Prince Joseph, born 1921, who succeeded his father as 20th Prince but renounced his titles upon becoming an American citizen when the titles passed to his next brother, Elie. Clara’s husband’s grandson is the current 22nd Prince de Chimay, Prince de Caraman.

Clara remarried in 1898 Rigo Janczi, a Hungarian violinist who referred to himself as a Gypsy prince. They became Hungary's beautiful couple in 1905, sometimes requiring police protection from the crowds who surrounded them. He told of their meeting by insisting that "the night I saw her first she turned from King Leopold to smile at me. Ten days later, like two gypsies, we stole from her palace in the dead of night" when he took her to his mother's hut in the mountains. To that mother Clara gave a pearl necklace with a diamond clasp which hung on a nail by the fire. Supposedly Clara then bought the mountain on which the hut sat and gave it to her new mother-in-law.

They moved to Egypt and for her new husband she "built me a white marble palace on the Nile. An Italian architect designed the stables for the sixteen jet-black Arabian horses she bought for me. … She bought a menagerie of baby elephants, lions and tigers to amuse me. She gave me my $5,000 violin and caskets of jewels. Her allowance of $500 a month for me has not failed once since she started it twenty years ago."

By the time he wrote that account Clara and Rigo had divorced and she pursued other loves. As Cornelia Otis Skinner wrote of Paris in Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals, “The midnight resort par excellence for the Horizontals was, of course, Maxim's….Few society ladies would have dared to be seen within the art nouveau interior of that naughty place, with some emancipated exceptions such as Princesse Caraman-Chimay, née Clara Ward from Detroit, Michigan, who eventually ran away with the violinist Rigo and appeared at the Folies Bergères in pink tights and a series of 'Plastic Poses.'” Clara was painted by Toulouse-Lautrec in “A Princely Idyl, Clara Ward,” now at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

After her 1911 divorce another American woman, Mrs. Casper E. Emerson, Jr., left her husband for Rigo and he played the violin in the Little Hungary Restaurant, a small tea room opened by his new wife, before dying near destitution in 1927. Rigo was buried in the National Vaudeville Association plot at Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County, NY. On a visit to Paris Clara deserted Rigo for a Spaniard. In the end, she married an Italian named Peppino Ricciardi who was a stationmaster on the Vesuvian Railway. She sued him for divorce after the court’s unsuccessful attempts to bring about their reconciliation.

In 1915 her mother, Catherine Lyons Ward Morrow, died leaving Clara only $1,000 of her own one million dollar estate. Clara, formerly Princess de Chimay, died at her villa in Padua 9 December 1916. Her estate of $1.2 million was divided into trust funds and left to her son, Joseph, her daughter, Marie, and her last husband (wth the corpus reverting to her children at his death), and a small bequest to a cousin in Chicago.

There was a rumor that she died a pauper with nothing left except a few jewels, but the American Consul at Venice stated publicly that Clara “was in possession of a very large income and lived in a manner befitting its possessor. At the time of her death she occupied the best suite at the Hotel Stella d’Oro. During her sickness she had the assistance of expert physicians, and everything that money and medical science could do in her last illness was done. Her funeral was elaborate and costly.” Prince Joseph's brother, Prince Alexandre, married American Mathilde Lowenguth.

2008-05-23T09:43:00.003-04:00

Huntington Hartford

With the death last week of Huntington Hartford, readers may be interested in a bit of history about his mother:

Henrietta Guerard Pollitzer’s mother was born a Guerard, a family of early Charleston, South Carolina colonists, while her father was an Austrian Jew who came to South Carolina in the 1860's. Their children were raised in the Episcopal Church but their patrimony prevented entry into Charleston society. Henrietta dropped her last name in favor of her mother's maiden name.

She met Edward V. Hartford, heir to the A & P fortune as well as an automobile inventor, on a ship from Palm Beach to New York. A & P was the first national grocery store chain, becoming number one in America by the 1930’s when it operated 16,000 stores with annual sales of more than one billion dollars. Henrietta and Hartford married in 1902 and had two children, including their son, Huntington Hartford, before her husband’s death in 1922. The estate was left entirely to his wife but the fortune was in a generation-skipping trust to benefit her late father-in-law's grandchildren (Edward Hartford's two brothers were childless). Thus Henrietta controlled millions of dollars through her two children.

Henrietta leased Chastellux, the Lorillard Spencer mansion in Newport, then King Cottage owned by Frederic Rhinelander King. Although her stock dividends totalled one million dollars per year, she petitioned the court in 1926 to increase her son's trust allowance from $100,000 to $150,000, as "I do not believe that he should come into his inheritance with desires ungratified and wishes thwarted." In 1927, she purchased Seaverge, the Newport home of Commodore Elbridge Gerry, on five acres adjoining the ocean next door to Doris Duke's home, Rough Point.

She met Prince Guido Pignatelli when he made an appointment to ask her to purchase corporate bonds from the New York firm for whom he then worked. She married at St. Vincent's Church in Reno, NV, 25 April 1937, Prince Guido Pignatelli, (and eventual Duke of Montecalvo, Marquess of Paglieta, Marquess of San Marco Locatola), born at San Paolo Belsito 23 June 1900, died at Palermo 5 February 1967, son of General Pompeo dei Duchi di Montecalvo and Princess Helene Pignatelli. Guido was created a Prince ad personam by royal decree on 14 June 1941. After her marriage to Prince Guido, the European society magazine Le Carnet Mondain pictured her on the cover although the caption incorrectly stated that she was born a Hartford - there was no inconvenient mention of her former marriage.

The couple left for a honeymoon boar-hunting in Czechoslovakia where they learned of legal actions filed by Prince Guido's American first wife, Constance Wilcox Pignatelli (whom he married in 28 August 1925; she copyrighted Egypt’s Eyes, a play she wrote as “Princess Pignatelli,” in 1924), daughter of George Augustus Wilcox and Mary Grenelle Wilcox, by whom he had a daughter, Marilena Pignatelli. At Guido's marriage to Henrietta, his Reno divorce from Constance was less than 24 hours old. Reno divorces were only in effect when both parties were represented and Constance was not. A trial was held in New York in 1938 where, on the stand, Constance testified of Guido's new wife, "All my friends called my attention to the fact that she was a grandmother. It annoyed me terribly." The judge found that the divorce was not legal in New York and Guido replied that it did not matter as he was a resident of Nevada and had no intention of returning to New York. He then received from the Archbishop of Los Angeles a document stating that his marriage to Constance was annulled but a subsequent court in Florence, Italy, refused to accept the finding. Finally, in July of 1939, the Italian Court of Cassation ruled that his divorce from Constance was valid and an appeals court in Perugia upheld the decision.

In 1941 the couple brought a legal action against his cousin, Prince Ludovic Pignatelli (whose wife was American Ruth Morgan Waters), who was convicted of attempting to extort money from them by contesting Guido's right to the title. Prince Ludovic later died destitute in a New York City rooming house in 1956 having been critically injured when he hit his head in a fall. Henrietta and Prince Guido lived at Wando Plantation, her 32-room plantation home and gardens designed by Olmsted, near Charleston, which was destroyed by fire in 1942, and in Washington, DC, where he was attached to the diplomatic corps. She was diagnosed with leukemia and retired to Melody Farm, her home in Wyckoff, New Jersey, where she died on 3 July 1948 and was buried in Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery.

Only months before her death she purchased the Joseph Manigault House in Charleston when it was being sold for back taxes and gave it to the Charleston Museum in memory of her mother. Her son received from her, separately from his large trust fund, more than $4 million in stocks as well as valuable property, while her widower was left $50,000 plus a living trust with an income of $10,000 per year - with the principal reverting to her son upon Guido's death. Her attorneys declared in court that "Her husband had virtually no property or income." That amount was not sufficient for Prince Guido, and, four months after his wife's death, Prince Guido married in Reno, NV, 14 October 1948, then in Palermo, socialite Barbara Eastman of New York City, a descendant of Massachusetts colonists.

Prince Guido's son by Barbara Eastman, Prince Paolo, born in Washington, DC, in 1949, is the current 14th Duke of Montecalvo, 15th Marquess of Paglieta, and Marquess of San Marco Locatola. Married to Margery Baker since 1981, he has a daughter but no son or brother and there are no males cousins in his line.

2008-05-12T10:22:00.002-04:00

Count and Countess Edward Zichy

By the beginning of the 20th century, any remaining standards had been ignored then trampled to death. Speaking of death, you may recall how did sordid affair ended:

Wayne and Patricia Lonergan

Elizabeth Helene Demarest, born in 1892, and Charlotte Gardner Demarest, born 9 June 1902, were daughters of Elizabeth Applegate Demarest and Warren Gardner Demarest of New York City and of Elberon, New Jersey. Their father was a wealthy automobile broker with the George W. Copley Company in New York and their highly-social mother spent much of her time at the family’s Chateau Bassaraba at Evian des Bain, France. Elizabeth Helene Demarest first married on 18 September 1911, John G. A. Leishman, Jr. (1887-1942), whose father, formerly president of the Carnegie Steel Company, was the U. S. Ambassador to Turkey (1906-1909), to Italy (1909-1911), then to Germany (1911-1913). Ambassador Leishman’s daughter, Marthe (1882-1944), married in 1904 Count Louis de Gontaut-Biron, while her sister, Nancy (1894-1983), married in 1913 Karl Rudolf, the 13th Duke of Croy, Duke of Arenberg, Duke of Meppen, Prince of Recklinghausen. Nancy later divorced the Duke (his second wife, Helene Lewis, was also American) then married Andreas d’Oldenberg, the Danish minister to France. Her son succeeded as 14th Duke of Croy.

Elizabeth Demarest and John G. A. Leishman, Jr., were divorced in 1917 and she married on 27 April 1918, Lord Alastair Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, born 24 January 1890, second son of the 4th Duke of Sutherland. He was a major in the Royal Horse Guards, was wounded twice in military service, and received the Military Cross. He and his bride met when he visited New York City with his father shortly before the War. He and Elizabeth had an only child, Elizabeth Millicent, born 30 March 1921. The month after the child’s birth Lord Alastair was on a big game expedition in Rhodesia when he contracted malaria and died on 28 April 1921 at the age of 31. His widow was said to be engaged to the Russian Count Ludos but that marriage did not materialize. Instead, she married on 14 June 1931, Baron George Osten Driesen, descendant of a Russian general who was a hero at the battle of Borodino. Only three months after her last marriage she died on 26 September 1931. Her only child, Elizabeth, became a ward of her uncle, the childless 5th Duke of Sutherland, and at his death succeeded in her own right as 24th Countess of Sutherland and Baroness of Strathnaver while a distant cousin, the Earl of Ellesmere, succeeded as Duke of Sutherland. She married on 5 January 1946 Charles Noel Jansen who served in the Welsh Guards and was taken prisoner in Germany for five years. She resumed her maiden name at her succession to her father’s earldom (which could be inherited by a female while the dukedom could not) in 1963. Her eldest son, Alastair, Lord Strathnaver, is heir to his mother.

The widowed Lady Alastair Sutherland-Leveson-Gower and her sister, Charlotte, were visiting Paris when the younger woman was introduced to the handsome Count Edward Zichy, born at Eastbourne-on-Sea, England, 19 August 1898, son of Count Bela Zichy and of his American-born wife, Mabel Wright (see her separate entry), formerly the wife of Fernando Yznaga (brother of Americans Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, and Lady Lister-Kaye). Charlotte Demarest returned to New York City where on 27 April 1922 her engagement was announced to George Burton (formerly Bernheimer), born 23 February 1892. His father, Max E. Bernheimer, amassed a fortune as a beer brewer in the firm Bernheimer and Schmid. After the 1889 death of his partner, Auguste Schmid, with whom he owned New York City’s Lion Brewery, Schmid’s widow, Josephine Kleiner Schmid (1862-1937), took his place in management and bought out Bernheimer in 1903 in a deal said to be worth six million dollars. Josephine would eventually wed in 1909 Giovanni-Battista, Prince del Drago, Marquess of Riofreddo.

When Max Berhnheimer died in 1913, he left substantial gifts to Jewish charities and established $250,000 trust funds for each of his sons, George and William, with the principal reverting to them on their twenty-first birthday. Additionally his four million dollar estate was to provide a life income for Bernheimer’s widow then be divided among their children at her death. Mrs. Bernheimer then married Frederick Housman, a wealthy broker and partner at A. A. Housman and Company. When young George Bernheimer reached his 21st birthday in 1915, he celebrated by giving himself an “Oriental coming-out party” at Delmonico’s. He and his brother, William, changed their name from Bernheimer to Burton after their father’s death and both enjoyed a high social profile.

Even before Charlotte Demarest’s engagement to George Burton was announced, the handsome young Count Edward Zichy arrived in New York City to try to win her hand. Burton moved into a suite at the Hotel Ambassador, only two blocks from Charlotte’s home, so that he could ensure that his fiancée remained faithful. Their wedding date was announced for 9 May 1922, earlier than originally planned, at the Demarest estate in Elberon, New Jersey.

On the morning of the wedding, Count Edward Zichy ran through his hotel lobby, calling to some friends that he was going to elope; they assumed he was joking. A few hours later he returned with a marriage license and quickly packed his belongings and departed. While George Burton and the assembled Demarest family waited patiently for the bride’s afternoon arrival for her wedding, Charlotte Demarest and Count Edward Zichy were married by the City Clerk in the Marriage Chapel at City Hall. They promptly departed for their honeymoon leaving to the Demarest family physician the difficult task of telephoning the news to Elberon. The bride’s mother was reported to have suffered “a nervous collapse.”

Newspaper reports immediately circulated word that both the intended groom and the Count were members of “the bright spirits of Broadway and the younger social set.” The “tall and handsome” Count was said to have “a remarkable personality” and “everybody was wild about his dancing.” In his marriage application he professed to be a writer but his friends said that he had recently been selling insurance. Prior to that job he sold used autos at a Manhattan dealership where he was reported to have sold “twelve expensive automobiles in less than three weeks.” Expensive gifts to Charlotte from George Burton were disclosed after her elopement but he was reported to have asked only for the return of a ring given to her by his mother and grandmother.

If the young couple thought their honeymoon would quell media interest, they were mistaken. One creditor who read newspaper accounts of their wedding secured the services of the Sheriff’s department to hand-deliver a demand for payment of more than $1,000. First told that the couple had asked not to be disturbed, the Deputy showed his official identification and was led to their suite. He was met by “the Countess in her kimono” who told him that her husband was asleep. When informed that the Deputy was there to collect the debt, Charlotte replied, “But Eddie has no money, and neither have I. His parents in Hungary have plenty but, of course, that isn’t here. I suppose I would have had a lot if I had married the other man I was engaged to.”

Within months the Zichys left their hotel for a “dancing engagement” at Atlantic City without paying their bill. Upon their return they moved in with her mother, Mrs. Demarest, where they were promptly served with a summons to pay the hotel more than $1,000. Countess Zichy responded, “We hoped that our dancing engagement in Atlantic City would enable us to pay our debts, but we realized only enough for our living expenses.” The pair had no children and Charlotte died on 1 May 1957, followed by her husband in London on 25 June 1958. Charlotte’s former fiancé, George Burton, was said to desire to remain friends with Charlotte. He died in Paris of a heart attack on 24 April 1924, only 32 years old.

He was to be greatly overshadowed in publicity by his brother, William O. Burton, an aspiring portrait painter who studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts, the Art Students League, and the School of Applied Arts. He married at Elberon on 25 September 1920 Lucile Wolfe and they had a daughter, Patricia Hartley Burton. William preferred life in Paris and his wife eventually divorced him for desertion in 1925. Supposedly an underage boy was named as one of the correspondents.

William Burton had a succession of male “protégées” and finally became besotted with a handsome young Canadian. Wayne Lonergan came to New York City in 1939 as a “chair boy” hired by wealthy patrons to push rickshaws through the New York World’s Fair. Lonergan met William Burton and soon there was no need for him to continue working. But the very next year, Burton died leaving a fortune of seven million dollars to his young daughter, Patricia, then a teenager. Lonergan transferred his affection to the daughter and in the winter of 1941 the two eloped against the wishes of the bride’s mother, who knew the nature of his relationship with her late husband.

The marriage was not happy but the pair produced a son before Lonergan returned to Canada to volunteer in the Royal Canadian Air Force. In October of 1943 he was home in New York City on a weekend pass when he spent much of the night in a succession of gay nightclubs. His 22 year-old wife was said to have spent the night also lost in a similar quest for alcohol and attractive men.

Both arriving at their home at 313 East 51st Street at approximately 7:00 a.m., they collapsed onto their marital bed and, amazingly, began passionate sex. Perhaps Patricia decided it was time to vent her frustration, or her husband may actually have taunted her with tales of his recent sexual encounters. For whatever reason, during fellatio she violently bit his penis (some reports insist that she bit off the end). Enraged and in pain, Lonergan picked up a candelabra from the nightstand, beat her about the head, and strangled her to death.

Lonergan then calmly dressed, taking care to use makeup to hide her scratch marks on his face. He cut up his bloody military uniform and threw it into the river (where it was never found) before taking a taxi to a weekend house party to which he had been invited. After his eventual arrest, his unorthodox alibi was that he could not have killed his wife as, at the time of the murder, he was having anonymous sex with a soldier he had picked up during the night. Lonergan also said the soldier had stolen his uniform.

The resulting media frenzy was inhibited only by what the newspapers could not say about the murder, other than an attempt by one to write that Lonergan was “in great pain” when he killed his wife. He eventually confessed but later tried to recant saying the confession was beaten out of him by Canadian police. The first attempt at justice was declared a mistrial before the jury was chosen, and in the second trial Lonergan was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 35 years to life in prison. Released in 1967, he was deported to Canada. While still in prison he attempted to gain his wife’s fortune but the courts ruled that he was “civilly dead” and thus could not inherit.

His son, who was only one at the time of his mother’s murder, changed his name to William Anthony Burton (he had been told he was an orphan) and in 1954 legally inherited his mother’s fortune. Lonergan sought a second trial in 1965 based upon his forced confession but was unsuccessful. He was paroled in 1967 on the condition that he remain in Canada. Wayne Lonergan died on 2 January 1986 in Toronto at the age of 67. He was reported to have spent his last years as a companion to an elderly actress.

2008-04-10T14:43:00.002-04:00

By the end of the 19th century, almost anyone with a little bit of money and a lot of nerve thought they could enter society. I would never have acknowledged them, and they certainly would never have crossed my threshold. Here is one flagrant example:

Mabelle Gilman, daughter of Charles H. Gilman and Jeannette Curtis Gilman, was born in San Francisco, CA, in 1880 and was educated at Mills College where she studied voice under Julie Rosenwald. She made her first stage appearance in September of 1896 at Daly’s Theatre in New York City in The Geisha, followed by The Circus Girl and The Runaway Girl. After several other productions she went to London in 1900 where she appeared in The Casino Girl for six months before returning to New York in 1902 for more starring roles. Mabelle rose to musical comedy stardom and in 1905 first met her future husband, William Ellis Corey (1866-1934), when he heard her sing in a Pittsburgh theatre in The Mocking Bird.
Corey started his steel career at the age of 16 and rose to succeed Charles M. Schwab in 1903 as president of United States Steel (at an unprecedented annual salary of $100,000) after having served as President of Carnegie Steel. He married early in life Laura Cook, the daughter of a steelworker, and they had a son, Alan. When a portrait was painted of Mabelle Gilman in a room prominently displaying an easel holding a portrait of William E. Corey, the public was first made aware of their relationship. In 1905 Andrew Carnegie gave a small dinner party at which he attempted to have the Coreys reconcile but he was unsuccessful. Soon afterwards Mrs. Charles M. Schwab, expressing the view of all of social Pittsburgh, was reported to have said to Corey, “If you divorce Mrs. Corey and marry that actress my doors will be closed to you forever.”
In 1906, intent upon marrying Mabelle, Corey settled as much as two million dollars on his wife in order to obtain a Reno divorce on 6 July 1906. One of his sisters testified at the hearing that he was unfit to be given custody of his sixteen year-old son, while another sister was in Paris helping Mabell prepare for her wedding (she and Mabell were both voice students of famous opera star Jean de Reszke). Corey was finally able to overcome the objections of his parents and sister after he gave his mother $250,000 in U.S. Steel stock as well as a farm outside Philadelphia where one of his sisters was also to live. Although there were persistent rumors that Corey would be forced to give up the presidency of U. S. Steel because of negative publicity, it was finally determined that he was too valuable to the company.
Mabelle Gilman arrived in New York City from Paris on the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse on 1 May 1914 and joined her mother and two sisters, Pearl and Eunice. Mabelle was married to William E. Corey on 14 May 1907 at the Hotel Gotham by a Congregationalist minister after they could not find a Catholic or Episcopal priest to perform the ceremony (he later returned the fee and asked his fellow ministers for forgiveness for having wed the couple). They first leased a mansion at 803 Fifth Avenue then purchased 991 Fifth Avenue, at the corner of 80th Street (now the home of the American Irish Historical Society). Corey gave his wife as a wedding present a beautiful chateau outside Paris, the Villa de Vilgenis, which had once belonged to Louis de Bourbon, the Prince de Condé, and was the site of the death of the youngest brother of Napoleon I, Jerome Bonaparte (whose first wife was a beautiful American heiress, Betsey Patterson of Baltimore). There were rumors that Mabelle was seen there riding naked on horseback as the sun was rising. The home was to remain in the Corey family until 1950 when it was expropriated by Air France. Corey was also reported to have given his new wife one million dollars as well as valuable jewels as a wedding present.
Armed with money and a high profile, Mabelle entertained lavishly. The English writer and actor Beverley Nichols noted in his diary, “Lunch at Claridge’s with Mabelle Corey, a rattling American who had collected the King of Greece, the Duke of Marlborough, Lord Elmleigh, Lady Birkenhead, Lady Alexander Haig and me.” In 1907 Mabelle announced her ambition to sing in grand opera and was the last student to be taught by Jean de Reszke for the season. The New York Times noted, “De Reszke … has high hopes of this particular pupil, who pays double prices.” When she visited her seriously ill mother in Massachusetts in 1908, her father attempted to book for her a vaudeville appearance in the local theatre but there were no open dates. That same year, after having hosted the Duke of Leuchtenberg at a luncheon at their chateau, the Coreys visited the upper peninsula of Michigan to hunt deer and security guards were hired to keep photographers well away from the preserve. In 1910 there was talk of her playing Katherine in The Taming of the Shrew to give her “a chance to prove her quality,” but nothing came of it. A 1911 dinner in Paris hosted by the Coreys included the Grand Duke Boris, Duke Alexander von Leuchtenberg, Baron Maurice de Rothschild, the Duchess de Morny, and several other titled guests.
On a 1912 Christmas visit to the U.S., she told waiting reporters at the New York pier, “I love this country, but I can never live here again because the noise would drive me mad. When I am here I cannot rest, I cannot think, and I know that I shall suffer while I am spending the holidays with Mr. Corey’s mother. Most of the time I shall spend at the opera, where the orchestra will drown out lesser and more discordant sounds.” She also took the opportunity to praise French husbands in comparison to their American counterparts, explaining, “the American gives all his time to his business, and when he kisses his wife it is likely that he is thinking of stocks and bonds or accounts receivable.” Perhaps it was a harbinger of things to come, as Mabelle divorced her husband in Paris in November of 1923 and retained her French chateau where she entertained wounded U. S. soldiers during the War.
For years Mabelle had been friendly with a notorious member of both the French and Spanish royal families, the Infante Luis Fernando de Borbon, born in Madrid on 5 November 1888. His mother, the Infanta Eulalia of Spain, was a daughter of Queen Isabella II and a sister of King Alfonso XII. His father, the Duke de Galliera, was a son of the Duke de Montpensier and a grandson of Louis Philippe, King of the French. The young man’s only brother, who succeeded their father of Duke de Galliera, was married to Princess Beatrice, a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. All those royal connections were all the more embarrassing as Luis was a flagrant homosexual who occasionally wore women’s clothes and carried on a long-standing affair with a Portuguese nobleman.
In October of 1924 Luis was expelled from France, purportedly for his involvement in the trade of illegal drugs although police had often observed him in questionable salacious activities with other men (there were reports of drug-induced orgies). He even hired a taxi while at the Riviera to take him to Paris and then had no money to pay for the service. In response his first cousin, King Alfonso XIII, deprived him of his privileges as an Infante of Spain. Unwelcome in both Spain and France, Luis moved to Lisbon and, in March of 1926, was arrested at the Portuguese-Spanish border disguised as a woman. Although he carried smuggled goods, no drugs were discovered.
A Venetian social hostess recounted of Luis, “I had two footmen, handsome negroes, but I have lost both of them. The first was taken from me by tuberculosis, the second by the Infante of Spain.” The same woman invited Luis and a friend to an elegant dinner party. On the day of the event she received an urgent telegram asking her to lend him seven thousand francs which he must have right away. Although the banks were already closed, she feared that he and his friend would not appear at her dinner if she did not send the funds. After borrowing from her servants, she was able to raise only half the sum and sent it to Luis. That evening all the guests were seated and the hostess nervously waited to see if he and his friend would appear. Finally the door opened and Luis entered, kissing his hostess’s hand and explaining, “Since you sent only half the money I have come alone!”
In her memoirs, the American-born Countess Nostitz referred to the Infante Luis as “a quaint looking little boy, very fair, and amusing to talk to.” She also noted that he had “been exiled from Paris once on account of his ‘queer’ proclivities. Recently he has had the same fate. But despite his strange life he is a likeable little man.” Luis’s mother, the popular Infanta Eulalia, was economical with the truth in her writings but even she, in her 1925 book, cautions against “the menace of degeneracy,” writing that World War I was “productive of an army of degenerates, male and female perverts, who indulged in nameless evils … Abnormal vice has existed since the earliest ages: it flourished in Greece and Rome; it has alternately languished and revived according to the spirit of the time. But never has the cult of degeneracy assumed such terrific proportions as it did during the War, and never has its hydra-head been so unashamedly raised as at the present time.” Drugs did not go unnoticed, either, as she continued, “cocaine, morphia, and lesser drugs are fatal enemies to the health and sanity of any race, just as much as the vices of Lesbos and Sodom are the worst foes of morality.”
What, then, was to be done with such an amusing but dangerous royal with no funds? Even Infante Luis’s mother had admitted in her writing that “many degenerates have a measure of worldly success; they are often amusing, witty, almost uncannily clever; they love colour, beauty and music; they are occasionally kind-hearted – but, notwithstanding these qualities, I would unhesitatingly blot out my nearest and dearest, were I once to discover that he or she had outraged the laws of honour and decency. For me, such a person would cease to live.” The Infanta Eulalia, however, was not without her own sins. A highly sexual woman, she had a longstanding affair with the unsavory George, Count Jamatel (1859-1944). In 1899 he had been married to Princess Marie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a cousin of England’s Queen Mary and sister of the Queen of Montenegro (Marie’s brother, the last Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, committed suicide in 1918). Marie had need of a husband after becoming pregnant by the married footman who lit the lamps in her bedroom. A family was quickly found to adopt the baby but Marie was estranged from her parents. Jamatel and his wife were divorced in 1908 shortly after he supposedly fatally wounded Princess Marie’s other brother in a duel (although other sources dispute that account).
Perhaps the incident hardened Eulalia’s own views, but she publicly approved when, in March of 1929, the long-expected engagement was announced of her son, Infante Luis, to Mabelle Gilman Corey.The groom’s mother, Infanta Eulalia, announced the engagement from Madrid in March. For her part, Mabelle would not confirm the announcement from her chateau outside Paris, but she did admit that the question of marriage with Luis “had been discussed” with his mother. Mabelle was said to be working on securing permission for Luis to re-enter France and her acceptance of the marriage was conditioned upon that right. In May at a formal tea reception at the Hotel Plaza in Paris, Eulalia formally announced that the wedding would take place in June at San Remo where she had purchased a home for her son. Attending the announcement were Grand Duke Alexander and Princess Bibesco, but the groom-to-be was still not allowed into France. According to the Infanta, “This will be a happy marriage because my son has been in love with Mabelle for twenty years and has always said he would never marry any one else.” Mabelle responded by declaring, “This twenty-year-old romance certainly shows I am not impulsive,” before announcing that she had just converted to the Roman Catholic faith with her baptism at Versailles. It was said that the Infanta withheld her consent until the ceremony could be performed in a Catholic church. The Infanta assured attendees that the French government would lift its ban on her son’s entry into the country after the wedding, asserting that Luis “will settle down and be a good boy after he marries.”
When a wedding still not taken place by early June, the London Daily Express announced that the Infanta Eulalia was spreading the rumor that the reason was Mabelle’s “unwillingness to take up the simple life Prince Luis has found to his liking at San Remo.” For her part, Mabelle was said to be securing additional documentation concerning her divorce decree before the wedding could take place. Within a week Luis was interviewed in San Remo where he seemed to seek more information than he gave. His only attributed quote about the wedding was, “At all events it will not be a society affair.” He was also unaware of where his fiancée might be at the time.
But on June 13th a friend of Luis’ in Paris received a letter from him saying that the marriage was off as the $1,000 per month Mabelle had offered him as “pocket money” in addition to a home was insufficient. It was also said that he had demanded a $200,000 cash dowry as well. His mother then announced it appeared that the entire wedding might never take place although Mabelle countered that it was only postponed because of the excessive heat in San Remo. One of the groom’s relatives stated that Mabelle had wished to marry Luis “in order to save him… but now it seems that Luis doesn’t care for redemption.”
As no permission had been granted by the French government for Luis to re-enter France, he would not have been able to live at Mabelle’s Chateau de Vilegins even had the marriage taken place. It was also reported that Princess Beatrice, youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, also objected to Luis’s living at San Remo because it was “a small place and it is difficult for two members of royalty to avoid meeting one another.”
It seems that Luis could not stay out of the limelight long, for the following July of 1930, the 42 year-old Infante Luis became engaged to the 73 year-old Princess Amedee de Broglie who possessed one of the largest fortunes in France (derived from sugar). Born Marie Charlotte Constance Say in 1857, she owned the magnificent Chateau de Chaumont-sur Loire and already had four children, all of whom were older than Luis. In 1913 Luis had given a ball on Grand Prix night and presented the top award in a tango competition to Marie. Her family fought to have her declared insane when she announced her intention to marry Luis and her only public response was, “I realize that many persons think my marriage with this much younger man ridiculous, but I want to spend a few happy years before I die.” The court ruled that the Princess de Broglie’s parents might have been able to object to her marriage but not her children and other descendants. In a civil ceremony in London (Luis was still not allowed in France) the Infante Luis married Marie Say, the widowed Princess Amedee de Broglie on 19 September 1930. They later added a religious ceremony at San Remo on 4 October 1930. Luis squandered her fortune and she was eventually forced to sell not only her chateau but her London mansion as well. During the War he would visit her to obtain much-loved sugar, which was rationed. When she could no longer provide the source of her income, Luis was said to have announced, “It isn’t worth marrying a Say to find you can’t even have any sugar!”
In 1935 Luis was again expelled from France after a vice squad raid. Marie died in a small apartment in 1943 at the age of 86 and Luis was finally brought back to Paris where he lay in a nursing home for two more years before his own death on 20 June 1945. Mabelle Gilman Corey later lived a much quieter life than was her custom. In 1942, she was seized by the Germans in Paris along with other American women, including the Duchess of Uzes (born Josephine Angela), as well as Princess Michel Murat (born Isabelle McMillin). She then retreated into obscurity and death.
Mabelle’s younger sister, Pearl, followed her into vaudeville but with only moderate success. She married two wealthy husbands in succession – candy maker Charles W. Alisky in 1912 then Theodore Arnreiter – then met and married within five days actor Eric Campbell who was the best friend and preferred co-star of Charlie Chaplin. The large Campbell often played the “heavy” role in Chaplin’s films and was lent to Mary Pickford at her request for one of her movies. When Campbell’s first wife died of a heart attack in 1917, their 16 year-old daughter went out to buy a mourning dress and was struck by a car and left in critical condition. Campbell moved into the Los Angeles Athletic Club to a room next door to Chaplin. While Campbell’s daughter was still ill he married Pearl Gilman who then sued him for divorce within two months. Shortly afterwards Campbell was returning intoxicated from a party when he lost control of his car and was killed. Because no one paid his funeral costs his ashes lay unclaimed in a mortuary until it closed in 1938 when they were sent to a different office. In 1952 an office worker buried the ashes but failed to record the location.

2008-03-26T13:49:00.001-04:00

These women are included in the book, Crowning Glory: American Wives of Princes and Dukes, with a preface by His Royal Highness Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark:

Dorothy Adriance
Estella Dolores Alexander
Josephine Angela
(Ava) Alice Muriel Astor
Margaret "Peggy" Wright Bedford
Eugenia "Jennie" Enfield Berry
Marian Berry
Florence Binney
Lida Lacey Bloodgood
(Caroline) Lee Bouvier
Suzanne “Susie” Bransford
Catherine Britton
Ethel Julia Bronson
Mary Gwendoline “Mamie” Caldwell
Eleanor Calhoun
Jane Allen Campbell
Marguerite Gibert Chapin
(Esther) Millicent Clarke
Margaret Clarke
Grace King Connelly
Hope Cooke
Lucy Cotton
Claire Coudert
Florence Crane
Martha "Sunny" Sharp Crawford
Aimee Crocker
Nina Crosby
Elisabeth Curtiss
Josephine Mary Curtiss
Mathilde Barclay Davis
Dorothy Evelyn Parker Deacon
Gladys Marie Deacon
Joan Douglas Dillon
Margaret Preston Draper
Audrey Emery
Elizabeth “Bessie” Hickson Field
Marie Elisabeth Forbes
Caroline Forster
Caroline Fraser
Margaret A. “Gogo” Geary
Alice Gibson
Maud Staples Ely-Goddard
Anna Gould
Julia Dent Grant
Stevens “Stevee” Anna Greeff
Alice Green
Eleanor Margaret “Peggy” Green
Lisa Halaby
Elizabeth Frances Hanan
Mildred Haseltine
Dorothy Haydel
Zefita Suzanne Hayward
Rita Hayworth
Florence Ellsworth Hazard
(Marie) Alice Heine
Elise Friedericke Hensler
Margaret Hirsch
Virginia “Ella” Hobart
Claire Huntington
Helen Husted
Barbara Woolworth Hutton
Evangeline Johnson
Eileen Johnston
Martina Potter Jones
Nancy Southgate Jones
Agnes Elisabeth Winona Leclercq Joy
(Margaret) Brooks Juett
Elise Cragin Kay
Grace Patricia Kelly
Helen Kelly
(Agnes) Raffaella Kennedy
Josephine Kleiner
Jacqueline (“Jackie”) Lane
Marguerite Lawler
Frances Alice Willing Lawrance
Mary Esther Lee
Amanda Leigh
Nancy Leishman
Bertha Emma Lewis
Helene Lewis
Anita Lihme
Mathilde Elizabeth Lowenguth
Virginia Woodbury Lowery
Evelyn “Eva” Bryant Mackay
(Helen) Isabelle McMillin
Vernon Marguerite Rogers Magoffin
Estelle Romaine Manville
Mary McCormic
Alexandra Miller
Nancy Ann Miller
Angela Mills
Prudencienne Milmo
Mattie Elizabeth Mitchell
Beatrice Molyneaux
(Mary) Elsie Moore
Helen Stuyvesant Morton
Helene Moulton
Julia Mullock
Mae Murray
Pola Negri
Lida Eleanor Nicolls
Valerie Norrie
Kathleen Norris
Natalie “Lily” Oelrichs
Sarah Elisabeth “Betka” Paine
Myra “Daria” Abigail Pankhurst
Evelyn “Eva” Florence Pardridge
May Amelia Parsons
Elizabeth “Betsey” Patterson
Jeanne Marie Beard Perkins
Frances Kathryn Peters
Virgilia Peterson
Romaine “Tootie” Dahlgren Pierce
Henrietta Guerard Pollitzer
Jamie Porter
Marian “Polly” Hubbard Powers
Elizabeth Bleeker Tibbits Pratt
Anne Hollingsworth Price
Lillian Warren Price
Katharine Quay
Marie Jennings Reid
Amelie Louise Rives
Elizabeth Reid Rogers
Helena Rubenstein
Margaret Stuyvesant Rutherfurd
Katherine “Kay” Linn Sage
Adele Livingston Sampson
Peggy Thompson Schulze
Laura Schwarz
Rosalie Dorothea Selfridge
Conchita Sepulveda
Helen Seton
Theodora Mary Shonts
Helen Karr Simpson
Virginia Sinclair
Hazel Singer
Isabelle Blanche Singer
Winnaretta Eugenie Singer
Marian Adair Snowden
Eleanor Lorillard Spencer
Elizabeth Helen Sperry
Helen Macdonald Stallo
Laura Macdonald Stallo
Gladys Virginia Steuart
Frances Simpson Stevens
Anita Rhinelander Stewart
Nonnie May “Nancy” Stewart
Nevada Hayes Stoody
Lucie Grundy Tate
Dorothy Cadwell Taylor
Emily Stuart Taylor
Mabel Taylor
Natividad Mercedes Terry
Allene Tew
Lucy Tew
Anne Huntington Tracy
Cecilia Ulman
Louise Astor Van Alen
Consuelo Vanderbilt
Rosalie Van Zandt
Medora Marie von Hoffmann
Elizabeth Ashfield Walker
Helena "Ella" Holbrook Walker
Clara Ward
(Bessie) Wallis Warfield
Ruth Morgan Waters
Margaret "Peggy" Carrington Watson
(Ethel) Margaret Whigham
Susan Whittier
Elaine Daniels Willcox
Thelma Jeanne Williams
Catherine Daingerfield Willis
Ada Winans
Beatrice Winans
(Elinor) Douglas Wise
Mildred Lucile Withstandley
Mary Augusta “May” Yohé
(Maria) Consuelo Yznaga
Helena Zimmerman

2008-03-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

You can read more about those who succeeded at entering my ballroom, as well as the majority who tried and failed, at: www.americanprincesses.com

2008-03-25T10:56:00.000-04:00

While it is true that I completely dominated New York society in the last quarter of the 19th century, I never purposely sought publicity. My Savannah-born friend, Ward McAllister, often beseeched me to invite newspaper owners to my salon but, with a very few exceptions such as George Smalley, I did not relent. When I tell you about a few of those who tried - without success - to cross my threshold, I think you will see the wisdom of my judgment.

Mrs. Astor

Cecilia Ulman, born NYC 6 July 1863, died Paris 9 April 1927, was the wife of Ferdinand Blumenthal, the senior member of the firm of F. Blumenthal & Co., leather merchants, who came to the U. S. from his native Frankfurt-am-Main around 1875. He established a New York City office of his family business which had been founded in 1715, and opened factories in Wilmington, DE, which were incorporated into his firm. He retired early and had a home at 19 Spruce St., NYC, and at 34 Avenue du Bois de Boulogne in Paris, which was referred to as a “showplace” containing “a famous collection of art.” He was a well-known collector of antiques and his Paris home was filled with paintings of the Barbizon school including a number of Corots. He was made a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his interest in French arts. Blumenthal died 20 October 1914 on board the steamship Patria on his way from Naples to NYC, leaving two sons by Cecilia, William and Cecil.

She then married as his second wife at Paris’ Church of St. Pierre du Groscallou (where she was escorted down the aisle by the American Ambassador, William G. Sharp) on 14 November 1917, Louis, 2nd Duc de Montmorency, Count de Perigord, born Paris 22 March 1867, son of 1st Duc de Montmorency, prominent figure at the court of Napoleon III, who was a son of the 3rd Duc de Valencay of the Princes de Sagan and Dukes de Talleyrand-Perigord. He succeeded his father 26 March 1915. His first wife had been a daughter of the Duc de Rohan. The Duke was 48 at the time of his second marriage and had no children by Cecila. After Cecilia’s death in 1927 he married again, in 1950, at the age of 83 and died the next year at Paris 26 September 1951 and the line is now extinct. After her marriage to the Duc de Montmorency, wags in Paris referred to the former Mrs. Blumenthal as the “Duchess of Montmorenthal.”

In May of 1919, Cecilia’s brother, J. Stevens Ulman of New York City, one of the first prominent Jewish members of society, announced the engagement of his nephew, “Cecil Charles Blunt,” who was a Vice President of F. Blumenthal Co. The bride was Donna Anna Laetitia Pecci (1885 – 1971), only daughter of Count and Countess Camillo Pecci of Rome (Pecci was a nephew of Pope Leo XIII, as his father was the Pope’s younger brother). The two were married in 1919 and adopted the name “Pecci-Blunt” after Cecil was created a Count by his wife’s great-uncle, the Pope. She became a great patron of the arts and owned an art gallery which featured the work of new and emerging artists. The world premiere of Ned Rorem’s “War Scenes” took place on 23 March 1955 at a private concert in the Countess Pecci-Blunt’s Roman palazzo. Many of the Blumenthal paintings were inherited by Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt and three Corots and one Delacroix are now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

The Pecci-Blunts had a daughter, Laetitia, who married Prince Don Alberto, Prince of Venosa (of the Boncompagni Ludovisi family). Both she and her father, Count Pecci-Blunt, retained their U. S. citizenship. Count Pecci-Blunt met a younger man, Cecil Everley, who was then serving behind the counter at the London department store, Lillywhite. He was formerly a footman to the 7th Earl of Beauchamp who was publicly disgraced in 1931 for homosexual offences (King George V is reported to have said at the time, “I thought men like that shot themselves.”). Count Pecci-Blunt and Everley began an intimate relationship and the Count gave him a house in California and another, La Rondine, on Cap d’Ail, in the south of France. Everley, who was known as good-looking but boring, once asked society hostess Daisy Fellowes, after her sale of the Sister Anne, “Do you miss your yacht?” (purchased with the substantial fortune inherited from her American grandmother, Isabelle Singer, Duchess Decazes) to which she replied, “Do you miss your tray?” Cecil Beaton’s diary referred to Cecil Everley as “a rather pathetic and silly chorus boy sissy.” Everley began painting in California in 1953 and his works eventually were in the collections of the Aga Khan, Princess Grace and Princess Caroline of Monaco, Greta Garbo, Greer Garson, and Estee’ Lauder. Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt divided his time between his life with his wife and children and that of his life with Cecil Everley. His long-suffering wife was referred to as “La Reine des Deux Ceciles.”