by Paul Spicer
The salesman who sold the gun to Alice gave brief evidence, and so did Dr. Paul, the surgeon who had operated on both Alice and Raymund, saving their lives.
Alice’s attorneys delivered their pleas of mitigation. Monsieur Gandel was said to have pleaded “indulgently,” saying, “The accused is a sick woman for whom doctors have found extenuating circumstances. She has been an excellent wife and admirable mother, until she met the person responsible for the crime…. But one must not forget the other dignified man, who has forgotten and forgiven everything. I hope that they get back together again.” (He was referring, of course, to the count de Janzé.)
Finally, Monsieur Mettetal entered his plea on Alice’s behalf, his voice full of compassion and feeling, hinting to the tribunal that this had been a “crime passionnel.” It was a crime that the French understood very well: a crime committed for love. In the end, the tribunal was lenient and the judge ruled in Alice’s favor. She was ordered to serve six months but was “condamnée avec sursis” (given a suspended sentence), allowing her to leave the court on temporary probation. She was also ordered to pay a fine of one hundred francs (around four dollars), a pittance for a wealthy heiress like Alice and a fraction of what she would have paid under French law for shooting a deer out of season.
Alice was free to go. No sooner had she walked out of the Paris Police Correctionnelle court on December 23 than she began making plans to travel back to Kenya. In April 1929, President Gaston Doumergue fully pardoned her, but he was later criticized for having done so.
Six
Freedom and Exile
AFTER HER RELEASE, ALICE INFORMED FRÉDÉRIC that she was leaving Paris immediately for Africa. Again, there was no question of her daughters going with her. They would remain in Paris, in their father’s custody, as agreed to in the terms of the divorce. Alice did want to take the monkey and lion, but although Frédéric knew that she could easily arrange for Roderigo’s return from Parfondeval, he forbade her to remove Samson from the zoo. By now, the lion was almost fully grown, and besides, it was unlikely that the zookeepers would have given him up. The count appeased Alice by promising to visit Samson regularly to make sure that he was well cared for. Alice left Paris for Marseilles and sailed for Kenya, with her monkey in the hold.
She arrived in Mombasa in January 1928 and immediately caught the train to Nairobi, before motoring up to her house in Wanjohi. After surveying her empty animal cage and living quarters, she went to stay with Joss and Idina, perhaps reluctant to spend time in isolation after the ordeal of the trial. Joss was about to announce that he was marrying Mary Ramsay-Hill. Idina, meanwhile, had begun a new affair, this time with “Boy” Long, a good-looking rancher who had been invited to Kenya by Lord Delamere to manage his cattle at a place called Elementaita, in the Rift Valley. In other words, the happy dynamic formerly enjoyed by Joss, Idina, and Alice had shifted considerably. Each day, Alice went up to her house to visit her farm. Her servants had remained on during her yearlong absence, paid for by Geoffrey Buxton’s manager, and her old car was driven out of its garage and revitalized. There was much to do.
Alice’s return had coincided with the arrival of a giant plague of locusts in the region. No one had anticipated the invasion. Alice’s smallholdings of maize were devastated, along with most of the arable farmland in the area. David and Mary Leslie-Melville and Geoffrey Buxton, whose farms were both nearby, had been similarly affected. To each of these neighbors and her wider circle, Alice related the dramatic story of her yearlong absence and explained how sorry she was to have caused everyone so much embarrassment. In her time away from Kenya, Alice’s legend had grown. At the Muthaiga Club, the regulars had begun referring to her as “the fastest gun in the Gare du Nord,” a description that stuck. After her arrival, Alice’s movements were eagerly documented by the Parisian fashion and gossip magazine Le Boulevardier, which often included a newsletter from East Africa. The settlers were evidently a little proud of the notoriety that the glamorous countess had brought to the heady world of the white highlands. In general, Alice’s Kenyan friends were inclined to forgive her. They had always been suspicious of Raymund, never really accepting him into their circle, and may have privately suspected he had gotten what he deserved. Only two of Alice’s old allies were not so readily available. Lord Delamere, Alice’s loyal supporter after her arrival in Africa, was now preoccupied courting Lady Gwladys Markham, daughter of the Honorable Rupert Beckett. He would marry her in May 1928. Margaret Spicer, one of Alice’s closest friends in Africa, had returned to London to have a baby.
Alice was relieved to find herself welcomed back into the highlands circle for the most part. Her return was to be short-lived, however. In February 1928, less than a month after her arrival, Alice was contacted by an immigration officer and given notice that she must leave the country. Her passport was revoked and “prohibited immigrant” was written across it. She was given twenty-eight days to make arrangements for her departure. Alice was a divorcée, living alone without a new husband. As a general rule, single women were not admitted into Kenya at all. If a woman was engaged to someone living in the region, she arrived and went straight to Mombasa Cathedral to be married, before even embarking on the train to Nairobi. (Margaret Spicer went through this exact rigmarole in order to qualify for entry on her arrival in 1925.) It transpired that Alice had made a powerful enemy in Kenya during her last visit: the governor’s wife, Lady Joan Grigg. Lady Grigg, the colony’s self-appointed moral guardian, had never liked Alice, and now saw her opportunity to get rid of the countess altogether. After the incident at the Gare du Nord, it would have been easy for Lady Grigg to argue that Alice was a single, dangerous, and unstable character and should not be allowed to disturb the sanctity of other married families living in the area. Lady Grigg had her husband’s ear on this matter, and Alice had no other recourse than to obey orders. Lord Delamere was otherwise engaged, and she had no influential connections among the authorities to argue her case.
With enormous reluctance, she began to arrange for her passage and to pack her possessions. She saw her lawyers and authorized them to rent her house, in the hope that the tenants would keep the place in good order and employ her loyal servants. In the period prior to her departure, she was with Joss often, and there is plenty of evidence that she slept with him at this time, despite his new attachment to Mary. This pattern of frequent separations and intermittent sexual reunions between Joss and Alice would continue for years to come. Certainly the couple were seen together on the afternoon of February 28, 1928. On that day, Karen Blixen, the future author of Out of Africa—who had been living and farming in Kenya with her husband, Baron von Blixen-Finecke, since 1914—related in a letter to her mother that she had been visited by both Joss and Alice. Karen had been running errands in Nairobi when she met Joss, the newly titled Lord Erroll—he had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father that very month—and invited him home for tea. Joss asked if he might bring along Alice.
That same afternoon, Karen Blixen received some unexpected guests: Lady Lucie McMillan, the widow of American millionaire Sir William Northrup McMillan and the McMillans’ old friend Charles Bulpett, both longtime Kenya residents. With them were two American tourists who had just arrived in Nairobi by steamer. Karen gleefully describes the ladies in her letter to her mother as “really huge and corpulent.” They had been driving around the countryside, hoping to see a lion, so they could regale their fellow passengers on the ship later on. The Americans were also eager to talk about “all the dreadfully immoral people in Kenya, Americans too unfortunately.” The “worst one of all” was Alice de Janzé, whose exploits at the Gare du Nord had made headlines in the United States. Aware that the main subject of discussion was due to arrive at any moment, Karen let her guests continue with their tirade. When the infamous Alice arrived, Karen took mischievous delight in making the requisite introductions, to the extreme embarrassment of the American visitors. Karen told her mother, “I don’t think
that the Devil himself could have had a greater effect if he had walked in; it was undoubtedly better than the biggest lion, and has given them much more to talk to the fellow passengers about.”
Alice left Africa in April. Back in France, she took up residence in the apartment in rue Spontini. Hairdressers, manicurists, and masseurs were summoned to revitalize her. She visited her children, who were living with Frédéric. Along with the loss of Kenya, she had one more sadness with which to contend. Soon after she had left France, Frédéric had decided to visit the Jardin d’Acclimatation to see Samson. On his arrival, he was told that all the cats there had been transferred to a circus. Frédéric went to the circus immediately. There he found a magnificent black-maned Masai lion half-asleep in a cage at the back of a tent. In his account of the incident in his book Tarred with the Same Brush, Frédéric wrote, “At last he got up and my heart stood still with horror—down his right hind quarter ran a jagged scar, Z shaped. It couldn’t be Samson, but no two lions could have that same scar!” Frédéric called out to him. The lion cocked an ear and stalked over suspiciously. Frédéric put his hand through the bars. The attendant called out, “Vous êtes fou, monsieur, il est très dangereux!” The lion suddenly rolled over on his side, his back against the bars. Frédéric scratched him on the forehead; the lion put out his immense red tongue and licked Frédéric’s hand, purring gently, delighted to be petted in a way that was evidently so familiar to him. It was Samson. Frédéric went to see the lion every day for a week, determined to buy him back from the circus. On his last visit, he was happily scratching Samson’s brow when a female trainer, later described by Frédéric as a “fiend in pink tights,” arrived unexpectedly. She cracked her whip at Samson, ordering him to perform a new trick. The poor lion was driven, panting and crouching, into the corner of his cage. When the trainer turned her head for a second, Samson sprang at her, landing his massive paw along the side of her skull. A revolver shot rang out, then another. Frédéric wrote:
Somehow I found myself in the cage, my hand on Samson’s shoulder. I felt him shudder and he collapsed on my feet, knocking me over. I got up from under him and took his great head on my lap; a trickle of blood flowed from the side of his jaw onto me, then down to the floor; he tried one or two manful licks and snuggled his great shaggy head into my lap; he died in my arms—content, I hope, on the heart of a friend.
If Frédéric had permitted Alice to take Samson back to Kenya, the lion would have survived. We do not know if Alice reproached her former husband for his decision, but it is clear that she would have been deeply affected by the death of her beloved pet, especially as it coincided with her painful exile from Kenya.
On a happier note, it was during this time that Alice resumed her friendship with Paula de Casa Maury (née Gellibrand). Paula was in the process of separating from her husband, the marquis de Casa Maury, and by the end of 1928 they had parted ways (de Casa Maury went on to marry Freda Dudley Ward, formerly mistress of Edward, Prince of Wales). Alice and Paula, as two newly single women, now had even more in common than ever. They accompanied each other on various adventures during this time; the following year, they decided on the spur of the moment to go to South America on a cargo boat with only two private cabins. Alice maintained her title of countess and, like the marquise de Casa Maury, enjoyed playing the part of the beautiful, scandalous, titled divorcée. There is no doubt that the two women attracted a great deal of male interest wherever they went. In addition, they could share their passionate interest in fashion. Alice eagerly began wearing her skirts short above the knee, and décolleté evening gowns hung from thin straps over her shoulders. Paula had become a fashion icon in Paris and was beginning to create her own clothes. “It was a desire to have an occupation in life, instead of wandering from one tea party to another,” Paula later said of her designs, adding, “I am tired of the eternal complaint that English women do not know how to wear their clothes.”
Alice was evidently inspired by Paula’s new enterprise, because it was after her return to Paris that she decided to invest in the fashion business herself, buying a substantial shareholding in the designer Jean Patou’s Paris salon. Patou had opened his salon in 1919 and was making a name for himself as a haute couture designer, creating not only gowns but also sportswear for women, bathing suits in particular. He had already expanded into the American market, having dressed film stars such as Mary Pickford and Louise Brooks. On a visit to New York in 1925, he was so impressed by the long-legged American girls he encountered there that he auditioned five hundred young women, choosing six of them to accompany him back to Paris as models (a masterful publicity stunt). In 1928, however, he was still struggling, and Alice, along with her friend Idina, decided to help bail him out. Under the two women’s sponsorship, Patou could begin to develop his new perfumes and other sidelines to help subsidize his couture line, a business model that fashion designers continue to follow to this day. Alice, Idina, and Paula would themselves wear Patou and direct their influential friends to the salon.
Despite this new business distraction, Alice was restless. Although her time in Paris enabled her to explore her interest in fashion and play a more active part in the lives of her children, her focus remained on Raymund. She was in frequent contact with him and began visiting him regularly in England. It was as if by threatening to leave her, Raymund had triggered a need in Alice to hold on to him at all costs. The shooting had been her first attempt to prevent him from leaving. Now she resolved to get him back for good. Her sense of their relationship as unfinished business continued to blind her to his considerable character flaws. It is tempting to draw comparisons between Raymund and Alice’s father. Both men were unreliable, irascible, profligate, compulsive gamblers and womanizers—which may go some way to explaining Raymund’s continuing appeal for Alice. It is possible that her inability to countenance rejection by Raymund had its roots in her adolescence. One thinks of how Alice was forcibly removed from her father’s care as a teenager, and wonders if she was revisiting and trying to rectify this trauma in her relationship with Raymund.
In June 1927, less than three months after the shooting at the Gare du Nord, Alice and Frédéric had been granted a divorce. The marriage was officially annulled by Pope Pius XI in August 1928. There was no longer anything to prevent a legal Catholic union with Raymund. What’s more, if she could persuade Raymund to become her husband, she would be permitted to return to Kenya without delay, a high priority for Alice. But first, she needed the de Trafford family’s blessing. In London, Alice called on Raymund’s brother Rudolph at his house in Westminster. Rudolph’s son, Dermot de Trafford, the future sixth baronet, recalled a visit from Alice during this period. Dermot’s room and nursery were at the top of the house. Alice climbed all the stairs and warmly greeted him, explaining to his French governess that she was a friend of the family. Dermot remembered that Alice told the governess about her life in Africa and her animals there. (Afterward, the governess remarked unkindly to Dermot that Alice’s French was not very good.) Alice visited Rudolph and Dermot on more than one occasion, even going to stay with the de Traffords at their country home, Clock House, in Cowfold, Sussex, where she signed the visitors’ book with a flourish. Meanwhile, Raymund went back to Kenya at the end of 1928 to receive his other brother, Humphrey, who had decided to see Raymund’s farm and to meet a few old friends. That a single man like Raymund could travel freely to Kenya in this way must have rankled Alice and left her feeling doubly bereft.
By the end of 1928 Alice had decided that she would have to obtain a more permanent base in London if she was going to be a frequent visitor there. Up until this point, she had been staying in London’s Ritz Hotel when in town, but at the beginning of 1929, she moved into an apartment block on fashionable Berkeley Street in Mayfair. Her half sister, Patricia Silverthorne, and her stepmother, Louise Silverthorne, had recently moved into the same building. Louise and Pat had left the United States in 1919, following a drama in which the local sher
iff had arrived at the family home in Sharon, Connecticut, to confront William Silverthorne. Pat remembers her father sitting downstairs, puce in the face. Pat was sent to bed. In the morning, bags were packed and mother and daughter departed. When asked about this incident many years later, Pat refused to give full details, only revealing, “The chauffeur was the informer.” At such a distance, it is difficult to speculate on the nature of William’s crime, but suffice to say that his behavior was inappropriate enough that his wife and daughter sailed for France only a few days later.
Pat completed her education in Florence before being brought to London by Louise, who was determined to introduce her into English society. This was a tricky prospect for an Italian-educated American girl with no fixed abode or society sponsorship. Early in 1929, Alice, Pat, and Louise found themselves living as neighbors. Alice had never been particularly close to Pat, but she had always gotten on well with Louise. However, she was careful to keep a certain distance from both women in public. “With my reputation and the scandal surrounding me, I would not wish to spoil Pat’s chances of meeting the right people,” she explained. Whenever Alice came over from Paris, they would breakfast together, and it was during this period that Pat and Louise were often privy to Alice’s unpredictable tempers and moods. On one occasion, according to Pat, Alice had been eagerly awaiting the day’s mail, perhaps hoping for a letter from Raymund, who had returned again to Kenya. That day, a single letter came and Alice opened it, only to find a large dividend check. Alice threw it to the ground, eyes welling with disappointment and disgust. “I don’t want all this damn money,” she told Pat. “It doesn’t buy happiness.”
Often, Alice would walk alone up Berkeley Street at lunchtime, meeting a friend at the Ritz bar, where she would drink vodka cocktails spiked with absinthe. She was on the verge of her thirties, and her beauty, rather than waning, was maturing as the next decade of her life approached. Although a whisper of scandal accompanied her wherever she went, the countess was much in demand. Most Thursday evenings, she could be found sitting at a table near the entrance of the Embassy Club in Old Bond Street, the famously exclusive London dance club. Thursday evening was the most fashionable night of the week, when the Embassy’s dance floor swam with royalty, socialites, and celebrities. The walls were painted in a soft green, with pink sofas placed against them, and low-level lighting was provided by twin candelabras fitted low on the walls. At the Embassy, Alice socialized with a small circle of Kenya connections that included, when he was in London, Denys Finch Hatton. Alice was also seen regularly with the club’s most illustrious members, Edward, Prince of Wales—who would later abdicate the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson—and his decadent younger brother, Prince George, the future duke of Kent. Prince George kept up a long line of affairs with both men and women throughout his short life (he was killed in an airplane crash in Scotland in 1942). Alice could often be seen at the “Royal Box,” a table on the right at the front of the club, usually the rowdiest table in the room. Another member of the Embassy set was banking heiress Poppy Baring, christened Helen, daughter of Sir Godfrey Baring of Baring banks, and one of Prince George’s many consorts. Gloria Vanderbilt, the widow of railroad heir Reginald Vanderbilt and mother of the future jeans designer, was also a regular. The drug-addicted great-niece of Reginald’s mother, Alice Vanderbilt, was Kiki Preston, known as “the girl with the silver syringe.” She was the woman Prince George had fallen in love with on a trip to Kenya in 1928.