Loulou & Yves Read online

  PAMELA GIBSON We gave what we thought were splendid parties. A girl called Maxine Birley, the Comtesse de La Falaise as she became, was a great beauty and mad about France, and I remember her giving a party at which we all had to be very French. People would change partners quite a lot. We were rather contained in a way-out place and you could only travel if you managed to get transport, so there was a good deal of changing of partners.

  PETER BLOND [Mark Birley and I] first met … at Eton in 1944… One great Eton highlight was his sister Maxime’s visit… A breathtaking beauty, boys were literally hanging out of their windows to glimpse her, and an awful lot of people seemed to want to borrow a book that day.

  SARAH ST. GEORGE The war over, Maxime announced to her parents that she was moving home. They quickly bought her a ticket to America, one-way.

  1 Contributors’ biographical notes can be found on pages 435–458.

  2 Millicent Rogers (1902–1953), Standard Oil heiress.

  3 Oliver Messel (1904–1978), stage designer who, in his work and for the affections of the art collector Peter Watson, was a frenemy of Sir Cecil Beaton.

  4 Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887–1973), General Foods heiress.

  5 Gloria Guinness (1913–1980), fabled clotheshorse.

  6 Sir Osbert Lancaster (1908–1986), cartoonist who skewered the British upper classes.

  7 Derek Hill (1916–2000), painter of Irish landscapes.

  8 Opera festival near Charleston founded by Rhoda’s friend John Christie.

  9 Alice DeLamar (1895–1983), gold-mine heiress.

  10 Tanaquil Le Clercq (1929–2000), principal dancer with the New York City Ballet.

  11 Lydia Sokolova (1896–1974), Ballets Russes ballerina.

  12 Clarissa Eden, Countess of Avon, widow of British Prime Minister Anthony Eden and niece of Winston Churchill.

  13 Victor Warrender, 1st Baron Bruntisfield (1899–1993), Churchill’s wartime coalition admiralty secretary. A godson of Queen Victoria, Bruntisfield did eventually divorce and remarry, a blow to Rhoda.

  14 Sir James Goldsmith (1933–1997), billionaire financier who married Annabel in 1978.

  2

  A Tribe Called Falaise

  Maxime arrived in New York in 1945, breaking off her engagement to an American GI she’d met in England and working as a reader for the publisher Cass Canfield at what would become Harper & Row. The Birleys and Canfield would have been on the same cocktail-party circuit when Canfield worked in London in the twenties; Maxime was probably given his name so she could look him up in New York. Flitting on the margins of the book world, she met Alain de La Falaise, a divorced French translator and, he said, a count. They married the next year and moved to Paris. Alain’s bloodlines stretched back to fifteenth-century Normandy. There were other suffixes and prefixes he could have used, but he went only by “La Falaise,” after an estate in a locality hemmed by a falaise—a cliff—facing the Channel, fifteen miles north of Le Havre. The La Falaise clan had come within a blade’s breadth of extinction in the French Revolution, soldiering on afterward as land-rich cash-poor petite noblesse rurale locale. Their propects changed with Loulou’s alleged grandfather Gabriel, a three-time Olympic gold medal fencing champion who had successfully evaded the rules at cavalry school by living with a woman. In 1893, Gabriel wed Henriette Hennessy in the only church in Paris equal to marrying the heiress to a great cognac fortune: the Madeleine. Henriette was two times a Hennessy: Her parents, Martha and Richard, were first cousins. The La Falaises were unfamiliar with the kind of pungent scandal that trailed Martha: Through a second marriage, she was the sister-in-law of none other than the man who brought down Oscar Wilde, John Sholto Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde was arrested in London at the Cadogan Hotel on Pont Street, the same street where Loulou would live as a rapturously clueless nineteen-year-old bride. Martha Hennessy practiced motherhood to a yet lower standard than Rhoda, abandoning Henriette to relatives in France when she moved to London, caring so little that she did not even attend her wedding. Henriette and Gabriel were mal assorti from the start. Their first son, Henry, future Hollywood lady-killer, was born in 1898.

  EMMITA DE LA FALAISE [Henry had] an English governess, dry as an old olive, prickly as a bramble. He was six years old when one day the governess said: “Today’s your mother’s receiving day. You’ll go into the salon and greet everyone—and you had better stand up straight!” … Bundled up in a black velvet suit with a wide lace collar, Henry felt ridiculous… When his mother ordered, “Henry, go and greet the ladies,” he was so terrified he wet his pants. His mother saw what had happened, slapped him, then called the governess. “Since Henry behaves like a dog, put a collar and leash on him and tie him to a bench in the garden.” The governess did as she was told.

  GEOFFROY GUERRY The La Falaises were a traditional aristocratic family, plus royaliste que le roi. La Barre, their estate in the Vendée, a département in west-central France, was lined with portraits of all the French kings, the fireplace painted black in mourning for the royal family. Then starting with Loulou’s grandfather, they become progressively show biz. The glamour and money came from the Hennessys. They owned real estate all over Paris.

  After his first win in 1900, Gabriel began traveling for the Olympics. Cheating on Henriette was easy. She took comfort in the attentions of a young officer, Count Antoine Hocquart de Turtot. Loulou’s father, Alain, was born in 1903. Of stronger stuff than Henriette was rarely a woman made. She founded the first home for young unwed mothers in France. Women of Henriette’s class didn’t do this sort of thing. She silenced her critics by receiving the Legion of Honor. She was an original. Loulou gets a lot from her grandmother. All in one year, 1910, Henriette suffered the death of a daughter for the third time; gave birth to a third son, Richard, the future Resistance leader; and buried Gabriel, clearing the way for marriage to Hocquart.

  Gabriel had a country funeral at La Barre. A pillow at the foot of his casket displayed his decorations, the Order of the Lion and the Sun from the shah of Persia and the Military Cross from the king of Belgium. Henry, twelve, was a man now, his English uncle James told him. The cortège was made up of the wagon that carried the body, pulled by a victoria, followed by a file of broughams, six pairs of steers and the tenant farmers in black.

  Loulou’s great-grandmother, Martha Hennessy (later Lady Douglas, of Oscar Wilde infamy), founder of the Harwood Stud, Hampshire, pictured with Gainsborough. The Triple Crown winner made her the first woman to capture a Derby in her own colors, in 1918. © Carlos Pérez de Jáuregui Hennessy. Courtesy of the holder.

  Loulou’s alleged, “official” paternal grandfather, “Le Captain Comte [Gabriel] de La Falaise,” a three-time Olympic gold medal fencing champion, 1901. Despite the caption, he is almost certainly on the right.

  RICHARD DE LA FALAISE To understand our family, read At God’s Pleasure by Jean d’Ormesson, about an ancient clan of conservative blue bloods tied to the land. For me, Henry is our bedrock. Seventeen years old in the Great War. Wounded in the Somme. Dunkirk in ’40, then an escaped prisoner. The Croix de Guerre. Class but no capital. He lived honorably.

  Henry’s first job coming out of World War I was with Lloyd’s in Paris. Henriette held the purse strings and was not inclined to loosen them. By night, he squired Mistinguet and the Dolly Sisters, music-hall stars, waiting for his ship to come in. In 1924, Gloria Swanson arrived in France to film Madame Sans-Gêne. Henry Le Bailly de La Falaise, Marquis de La Coudraye, was presented to her as someone who could help with interpreting, a factotum. Henry’s title, baisemain, brilliantine, suede gloves, walking stick and the carnation in his lapel worked their magic. The only thing he lacked was an amber cigarette holder. Which Gloria bought him. Eighteen inches long.

  Henry married the world’s highest-paid actress in a Paris town hall wedding. As they were planning it, Gloria learned she was pregnant. She hid the news from Henry and booked an abortion. Through no fault of his own, he scheduled the wedd
ing for the day before the procedure. This was already Gloria’s second career-saving abortion. Whatever she may claim in her memoir, she seemed unfazed by it all, chatting with her new brother-in-law, Loulou’s father, at the wedding luncheon and spending the rest of the afternoon making the rounds of the couture houses. The abortion almost killed her. Henry only learned of it when Gloria was diagnosed with tetanus she’d contracted during the operation.

  GEOFFROY GUERRY The newspapers questioned Henry’s title, saying it was made up by Gloria’s studio. To settle the matter, Henry and a much-put-out Gloria held a press conference in their Paris hotel suite. The papers bought their story.

  In 1925, the year they married, The New York Times ran a story under the overheated headline MARQUIS DEFENDS RIGHT TO TITLE: “Gloria Swanson’s Husband Says It Was Conferred by Queen of Poland in 1707.” Henry laughed off the skeptics, claiming that his title was, in fact, Marquis de La Coudraye, bestowed on an ancestor, Baron de La Falaise, when he was ambassador to Rome by Marie Casimire, the widowed consort of John III Sobieski, king of Poland. In any case, there were dozens of estates whose names he might choose for his own, he said, but his patronymic was Le Bailly. Gloria played it like the great actress she was, as a theater piece, receiving reporters in a gold silk peignoir while professing to be “greatly pained” by an issue she wanted resolved “once for all.” As a matter of fact, she pointed out, she had never used the title for moneymaking ends: Hadn’t she forced movie houses to remove posters calling her a marquise?

  Henry’s charm offensive worked as smoothly on Hollywood as it had on Gloria. Lillian Gish would never get over the image of him in a bathing suit. Henry was a model war hero, she said. Never had she seen a man so cut up.

  GEOFFROY GUERRY Henry was on Gloria’s payroll until she caught the attention of Joe Kennedy, owner of Pathé studios. Kennedy took charge of Gloria’s crumbling finances—and of Gloria. To clear the field for their affair, Kennedy offered Henry, and Henry accepted, the job of running Pathé’s European operations in Paris.

  None of this stopped Joe and Rose Kennedy and Henry and Gloria from socializing as couples. Rose found Henry maah-velous. Gloria took her dress shopping at Lelong. It’s unclear who cuckolded whom first. Kennedy asked Henry to woo Constance Bennett and acquire her for Pathé, which he did—also acquiring her for himself. For a second time, Henry found himself married to Hollywood’s top-earning star, though Constance was never known as the Marquise de La Falaise. Henry and Gloria had botched their French divorce. The title was blocked. Gloria was delighted.

  Henry brought Alain to the States to work with him in the production company he’d formed with Constance. Before leaving Paris, Alain’s head had been turned. For a while, Bettina Shaw Jones, a wily and footloose Long Island socialite, couldn’t decide between him and Gaston Bergery. She married Bergery, the architect of Vichy France. In 1931, Alain took a bride, a twenty-three-year-old Philadelphia girl, Margot Webb. Margot married up. Before being crowned Miss Atlantic City 1927, she’d been clerking on the boardwalk. In New York, she was spotted by Jean Patou, who brought her to Paris to model for him, grumbling to the press when she deserted to wed Alain. Rating the chic of women two decades apart is usually a dead end, but moue for moue, Margot was Maxime’s equal. Until 1938, when Margot and Alain divorced, she appeared in Bergdorf Goodman ads, photographed by Horst, not as an anonymous model, but as “the Countess de La Falaise.” Alain was drawn to capricious, not to say flaky, women with a strong sense of entitlement. In 1941, Time reported that Margot was in night court after slapping the owner of La Rue restaurant in Manhattan because she was charged three dollars for a meal she said her bulldog Dukie was never served.

  Loulou bore a clear resemblance to her paternal grandmother, Henriette Hennessy (far left), photographed in France in the early 1900s with her siblings Alice; George, 1st Baron Windlesham; and Richard (standing, from right). © Carlos Pérez de Jáuregui Hennessy. Courtesy of the holder.

  Henry produced and directed two obscure films for Bennett Productions and appeared in one of them, the docudrama Kliou the Killer, about a Vietnamese village terrorized by a tiger. His performance did not lead to an acting career, so it was rich-wife-hunting season again when his marriage to Constance collapsed.

  GEOFFROY GUERRY Loulou told me Constance was “IN-FER-NALE,” that she made Henry’s life hellish. Gloria and Henry remained on very good terms after their divorce. Of her six husbands, she said Henry was the one.

  LOULOU When I was very young, my aunt, Gloria Swanson, took me to a Madame Grès catwalk show. Grès had some weird clothes for the day, but some exquisite evening dresses. I remember sitting on the gold chairs with Gloria. She was very old but adorable—tiny and elegant, with lashings of mascara.

  GABRIEL DE LA FALAISE Henry’s third and last wife was a coffee heiress, Emmita Rodriguez Maldonado. She had one goal: to become the Marquise de La Falaise. Henry wasn’t greatly in love with any of his wives. They were opportunities. Loulou knew Emmita.

  MARTINE DE LA FALAISE Henry depended on Emmita even for his pocket money. Her carte de visite read “Emmita Rodriquez Maldonado Le Bailly de La Falaise, Marquise de La Coudraye”—I don’t know where she found a card long enough! Emmita was ordinary. She had nothing. You put a couture dress on a monkey and the monkey is beautiful. She had the character of a pig. Gabriel was her nephew, and when he announced he was marrying me, the daughter of an industrialist, she hit the ceiling. Before I put a stop to them, we had a standing lunch date every Wednesday when my son, Richard, was a boy. She purposely made dishes she knew he didn’t like—what child likes pot-au-feu? It wasn’t just coffee money she had—we understood that under the plantation was an emerald mine, and it’s true Emmita did have a lot of beautiful emeralds. Her fortune was colossal. When she and Henry married in 1940, she and her sister were going through two million francs every day. Her family owned half of Bogotá. I shouldn’t laugh, but they lost it all, seized during the revolution.

  FRANCIS DORLéANS The Rodriguez Maldonados were part of that colony of South Americans that, emigrating in successive waves, had already brought to France the Yturbes, the Terry y Doricos, the Beisteguises… [Emmita] changed countries like she changed her blouse, and she changed her blouse like she changed her hair color. One day a redhead, one day a brunette, one day a blonde … Her sole ambition was to have a good time. She had the means… Since their marriage, the marquis, who’d never done anything much, did nothing at all.

  TAKI THEODORACOPULOS My wife, Alexandra, is the daughter of Emmita’s sister, Lyna, and Prince Peter Schöenburg-Hartenstein of Austria. In a funny way, without being related by blood, Loulou was exactly like Emmita, bubbly and laughing. Emmita and Lyna were two of the richest girls in the world. Emmita and Henry were exactly what you would expect, you know? Aristocrats who didn’t have to earn a living and were extremely well-mannered and spent their time giving parties. Henry was not a gigolo. All aristocrats did what he did in those days, marrying for money. The real gigolos were the English aristocracy. Henry had a title, land to take care of, he was a war hero: Why should he marry a poor woman?

  Emmita was the daughter of the chargé d’afffaires at the Colombian legation in Brussels. It became serious between her and Henry at the Café de Paris in London. She was in a group that included a rather pushy artist who said he was dying for her to pose for him, plus Noël Coward and “Jai,” the maharajah of Jaipur, in a jacket with diamond buttons. Henry was at another table and asked Emmita to dance. Did he know the tiresome man seated next to her who claimed to be a painter? He did. “The great Cecil Beaton, in person.”