The Woman Before Wallis: Prince Edward, the Parisian Courtesan, and the Perfect Murder

by Andrew Rose

  Georges-Michel’s first encounter with Marguerite was at Deauville, during the summer season of 1913, and, although they would not meet again for nearly twenty years, her style and beauty made an unforgettable impression on the 30-year-old author.

  Meller was by now almost pathologically jealous of his young mistress. Marguerite, with remarkable candour, described herself as being une fichue diablesse (‘a terrible she-devil’), and, after yet another row, she had the gates of the villa locked, the doors barred, and Meller’s horses set free to roam the property. Police were called, Deauville was scandalised and, in the end, Meller decided to break off the relationship. Marguerite secured a settlement of 200,000 francs, which she brazenly described as a pittance little more than a bag of beans, blaming her comparative youth and naivete for not having secured more.

  Leaving rue Pergolèse, she moved to an even grander apartment at 6 square Thiers, off the avenue Victor Hugo in the 16th. Here she employed two indoor servants and kept a stable of horses. Marguerite, with the security of Meller’s cash behind her and using her remarkable power to charm and fascinate, was now in a position to make further attempts to conquer the beau monde of Paris. Some doors would never open to her, but Marguerite’s determination was harvesting some very useful contacts.

  Once more, the Folies Bergère would play a dramatic role in Marguerite’s life. Nicole de Montjoie, who had a financial stake in the great Paris music-hall, was the owner of the Chateau de Montjoie in Touraine, south of Paris.123 Whether Nicole encountered Marguerite through her presence at the Folies or, as Marguerite claimed, at one of the elaborate balls held at Magic-City, they became firm friends. Like others of her class anxious to break away from stuffy convention, Nicole was flattered to make the acquaintance of a true femme du monde (woman of the world), an excellent companion around Paris, and was delighted to show off her new discovery to influential friends. Marguerite, who was now becoming rather a name-dropper, not to say snob, relished Nicole’s introductions to high society figures, young men such as the Marquis de Pracomtal and André de Fels, grandson of Max Lebaudy, the fabulously rich ‘sugar king’ of France.124 Such men might avail themselves of Marguerite’s sexual services, but this was not always the case. Some friendships would remain platonic. Experienced courtesan that she had become, Marguerite deftly compartmentalised the differing aspects of her life.

  A typical day just before the outbreak of war would see Marguerite and Nicole riding together in the Bois de Boulogne, having lunch at the Café de Paris, going to the races in the afternoon, and – leaving Marguerite free for professional diversions during the cinq à sept – dining with aristocratic friends at the newly opened Ciro’s Restaurant at 6 rue Daunou.

  For much later entertainment and opportunities to encounter the eligible rich, one of Marguerite’s favoured Paris nightclubs at this time was in the bohemian quartier of Montmartre.125 The Abbaye Thélème was wickedly named after Rabelais’s fictional monastery in Gargantua, notorious for its motto ‘Fais ce que vouldras’ (‘Do what you want’).

  Until wartime restrictions forced an early curfew, a fashionable clientele crowded into the tiny confines of the Abbaye after midnight, enjoying a late supper before taking to the tiny dance floor. Although the Abbaye may have affected an off-piste air, its visitors were not slumming. This was by no means a low dive. The high standard of service, accompanied by an excellent cuisine approached ‘that pitch of perfection which almost amounts to scandal’.126 Pre-war, the partying could continue until three or four in the morning.

  Since the beginning of the decade, two dance crazes had swept across the Atlantic. The first came from North America. The second – with even greater éclat – originated in the south, from Argentina. Raucous New York favourites, such as the ‘Ramshackle Rag’, ‘Rum Tum Tiddle’ and ‘Hitchy Koo’, imported on single-sided gramophone records, soon featured in the night clubs of Europe. By 1912, however, the Tango, a less frenetic, definitely more sensuous style of dancing than the bouncy ‘two-step’, took centre stage.

  In Paris, noted an observer, the Tango ‘a envahi les salons, les theâtres, les bars, les cabarets de nuit, les grand hôtels et les guingettes [has invaded the drawing-rooms, theatres, bars, nightclubs, great houses and dancehalls]’. There were Tango teas, Tango exhibitions, Tango lectures. ‘La moitié de Paris frotte l’autre [Half Paris cuddles up against the other half]’127

  During that last summer of peace, Marguerite began the pattern of travel that she would re-establish after the war, beginning the season at the Villa d’Este on Lake Como and renting a seaside property at Dinard in Brittany.

  On 16 March 1914, Gustave Calmette, polemical editor of Le Figaro, the leading right-wing newspaper, was shot dead in his Paris office by Henriette Caillaux, wielding a 6.35mm Browning automatic pistol. Mme Caillaux, a beautiful, intelligent woman who cut an impressive figure in court, considered that her victim had slandered her husband, a Socialist minister. Represented by the great Maître Labori (defender of Émile Zola) and despite the strength of the case against her, Mme Caillaux was acquitted of murder. In the course of evidence, she declared that she did not intend to kill M Calmette, only to frighten him. She did not know whether the safety catch was on or off. ‘My finger was on the trigger. I pressed it.’128

  The verdict was also prompted by a curious precedent. In the late nineteenth century, two other French wives had been acquitted of murder after shooting dead men who had allegedly insulted their honour.129 The Steinheil case, five years earlier, had been a revealing exercise, but had not involved the use of firearms. Mme Caillaux had shot an unarmed man dead at point blank range, but nevertheless secured an acquittal. Marguerite would take note of this well-publicised case.

  On 31 July 1914, three days after Mme Caillaux’s triumph and on the eve of war, Jean Jaurès, prominent Socialist and anti-war campaigner, was shot dead by a right-wing activist. On the day now considered a landmark in French history, news of the assassination reached Marguerite, now a beautifully coutured adornment of the best restaurants, sitting at a table in Maxim’s as guest of her rich admirer, André de Fels, enjoying the last days of the belle époque.

  The crisis brought new opportunities to Marguerite, now the owner of a smart new ‘20-30’ Renault. She was delighted to be able to offer her services as a driver to the Baroness Lejeune (née Murat, a family closely connected to Napoleon Bonaparte) who seems to have directed Red Cross work in Touraine, south of Paris. The Baroness, also christened Marguerite, had a vast gothic palace, the Château Mothe-Chandeniers, in Vienne, south of the Loire.

  Personal comforts, of course, could not be overlooked and Marguerite, travelling as ‘Mme Meller’, was cosseted by her personal chef and Vietnamese maid, driving doctors and nursing nuns to and from hospitals whose wards were rapidly filling with soldiers and airmen, the first of many casualties arriving from the Western Front.

  Marguerite’s altruistic commitment to social services in the international emergency did not last long. At the end of the year, she became ill with an unspecified ailment, for the alleviation of which her helpful doctors recommended a warm climate. Marguerite’s indisposition conveniently coincided with midwinter, the most agreeable and fashionable season for Westerners in Egypt. Risks of her ship being torpedoed by German U-boats were weighed alongside opportunities available in Alexandria, Cairo and Luxor. Marguerite, a risk-taker by nature, made a shrewd decision, took ship from Marseilles and, a few days later, had installed herself in Cairo. Here she received the unwanted attention of a rich and powerful Egyptian pasha. Skilfully evading the advances of this pasha, Marguerite secured the protection of another, Mehmet Cherif, described modestly as ‘a friend’ she had made in Paris.

  Cherif cut a striking figure with his enormous bushy (and very Turkish) moustache. He was famous for his love of Paris (his ‘parisianisme’), as well as a flamboyant lifestyle and ‘stable’ of Rolls-Royce cars. He was the brother-in-law of the Grand Vizier of Turkey and was married to a member o
f the Egyptian royal family. A former Turkish Ambassador to Sweden and reformer, he had at first supported the ‘Young Turks’, the nationalist group which overthrew the Sultan in 1908, but disliked their extremism and soon left their ranks to found the Turkish Liberal party.

  Cherif survived four assassination attempts, the most serious being in January 1914, when a Turk (armed with a pistol, dagger, Koran and 200 francs) burst into Cherif ’s Paris apartment, shooting dead a valet before being killed himself by Cherif ’s son-in-law. In Cairo, a disgruntled ex-employee had tried to shoot Cherif while he and Marguerite were strolling through the souk. Instinctively (Marguerite claimed) she threw herself in front of the intended target, later finding Cherif ’s signed photograph in her hotel room, When Marguerite returned to France, avoiding the heat of an Egyptian summer, Cherif prudently moved to Geneva, where, in October 1915, he bravely drew attention to the persecution of Armenians, fruitlessly trying to arouse world opinion in their favour.130 Cherif pasha, one of Marguerite’s top-flight international clients, maintained relations with his favourite parisienne for many years afterwards.

  With Marguerite safely back in Paris, it may have been about this time that she broke with Mme Denart, who had originally guided her career as a courtesan. The rupture explains the latter’s barbed references to her quondam protégée, recollections later given to an English private detective.131 There is certainly evidence that, by the second half of the war, Marguerite was on the books of one of the grandest Paris maison de rendezvous, that of Mme Sonia de Théval at 20 rue Bizet (in the 16th, of course).132

  Marguerite’s new workplace was in no danger of raids or summary closure. The male clientele was necessarily rich and often powerful. Discretion was the keynote. Customers would be received by a maid, formally dressed as the sort of servant found in any upper-class Paris household. Such a maison might sport an impressive marble staircase, bordered by elaborate wrought-iron handrails. The maid would indicate a waiting-room, elegantly furnished in Empire style, in which the client would find, artfully displayed among newspapers and society magazines, some albums of photographs. These would show courtesans in a variety of poses, catering for all tastes and including married women (long predating Belle du Jour), trottins (errand girls) and attractive actresses seeking to augment their income from theatre work. Prominently displayed would be photographs of the grandes vedettes, the ‘big stars’, the most sought after and expensive on the list, women – like Marguerite – who had special skills, equally happy to play the dominatrix, wielding the horsewhip, to take part in lesbian activity staged to the customer’s requirements, and even to indulge a client’s taste for sodomy.133

  The atmosphere of the maison was calm, quiet and unhurried. Mme de Thèval (or her sous-maîtresse Ginette Folway, a former revue actress) would note the client’s selection and requirements, then agree a price. The woman of choice would be contacted (often by telephone), and, after an interval, the customer would be shown to a suitable salon in the building, two of which were on the same floor as the waiting-room. Most liaisons were of the cinq-à-sept formula in the late afternoon, but the maison was allowed to open at noon and earlier assignments were possible.

  Number 20 rue Bizet, with a handful of other establishments (such as the old-established brothel at 12 rue Chabanais in the Marais, which had so often sheltered the Prince’s grandfather), attracted members of the English aristocracy, for whose entertainment Mme de Thèval demanded astronomical sums. During periods of wartime leave in Paris, members of the Prince’s close circle – such as Joey Legh, ‘the Lord Claud’ and Captain Bailey – may well have made their way to this quiet corner of the 16th arrondissement.

  During 1916, Marguerite was taken up by Achille Fould, richissime son of the financier who had bankrolled Louis Napoleon’s coup d’état of 1852 and a close relation of the old Marquis de Breteuil, who had been the Prince’s host during his first visit to France. That year also brought the Duke of Westminster to Paris and Deauville. Recovering from illness contracted during his Egyptian service and already estranged from his first wife, Bendor was ripe for diversion. Marguerite, already a favourite of Captain Ernest Bald (Bendor’s ADC and close friend), entertained Westminster before his return to England in the latter part of 1916. It was Marguerite’s association with the fabulously rich ‘Bendor’, and his exclusive social circle, that would secure for her the greatest prize of all, the patronage of the Prince of Wales.

  By the following year, Marguerite had secured for herself a significant niche in wartime Paris society. In her elegant apartment, seeking to emulate the true grands salons, Marguerite held court at her own soirées, at which minor aristocrats, artists, writers, singers, actors and actresses could be seen, respectable people content to enjoy the hospitality of a woman who was willing, on more louche occasions, to offer herself for reward to the highest bidder.

  Definitely not the Anglo-Saxon model.

  4

  Royal Flush

  The Prince was determined to enjoy his three days’ leave, an escape from dreary routine made possible by his commanding officer, the amiable General ‘Fatty’ Cavan. As ‘Earl of Chester’, driving his new Rolls-Royce coupé to Paris on the morning of St George’s Day, Monday 23 April 1917, he installed himself (with his valet, Finch, now in uniform) in the Hotel Meurice, a comfortable establishment in the Rue de Rivoli, which was to remain his favourite Paris hotel for many years.

  The Hotel de Crillon, a magnificent exercise in French classicism, was created in 1758 at the whim of Louis XV and designed by the architect Jacques-Ange Gabriel. Originally intended as a government department, this most imposing building was soon sold to a noble family and, apart from a temporary state confiscation under the Revolution, remained a private residence until the early twentieth century. In 1909, the Crillon was transformed into a luxurious hotel, patronised by the rich and famous, then as now, and conveniently just a few steps away from the Élysée Palace, from the Chamber of Deputies at the Palais Bourbon, and from the British and American Embassies.

  Although the object of the Prince’s attention was a notorious demi-mondaine, Parisian etiquette demanded formal introduction. This first encounter with Marguerite, formally presented to the Prince by François de Breteuil,134 whose family had entertained the Prince in 1912, took place at lunch in the hotel’s restaurant, the magnificent former ballroom of the Crillon family, now known as Les Ambassadeurs. The restaurant looked directly on to the Place de la Concorde, where the Prince’s distant kinsman, Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were guillotined during the French Revolution.

  Lunch, though leisurely, would have been a light affair. Marguerite’s slim figure was one of her prime assets, while the Prince, image-conscious from early youth, was never much of a trencherman: ‘[He] is a very small eater. Oysters, lobsters etc appreciated.’135 The couple drank only water and conversation would have been conducted entirely in French, which – thanks in part to his connection with the Breteuil family – the Prince could now speak with reasonable fluency. Marguerite, who had no English, was immediately entranced by this shy, eager young man. He spoke French, she recollected, remarkably well, with only a slight accent, which was very appealing to her.

  For his part, the Prince was bowled over by this petite, strikingly attractive young Frenchwoman, dressed by the leading couturier Paquin, her auburn hair (then worn long) and her hazel eyes beautifully complemented by a gleaming ensemble of emeralds and pearls. At table, Marguerite would soon be aware of an early transatlantic affectation on the part of her new companion, perhaps picked up from his contacts with Canadian army personnel. The Prince, having cut up his food, ate only with his right hand, waving his left hand around while talking.

  From all the available sources, it is clear that Marguerite – when she was in the right mood – could be excellent company, delightful and charming. Highly skilled in the arts of her profession, she no doubt hinted discreetly over coffee at the delights which awaited the Prince later that
day. After lunch ended, perhaps beyond three o’clock, there might be a drive around Paris. Edith Wharton, writing just before the war, described ‘the afternoon motor rush to some leafy suburb … the whirl home through the Bois to dress for dinner and start again on the round of evening diversions…’

  Marguerite’s apartment at 67 avenue Henri-Martin was conveniently close to the Bois de Boulogne, where, in the next two days, the Prince and his delightful new companion could enjoy a morning ride on the best horses of her stable. A Paris police report confirms that Marguerite’s practice, in keeping with many other demi-mondaines, was to leave afternoons free for liaisons.137 After that memorable first meeting, the Prince noted Marguerite’s address in his pocketbook, then asked her a highly significant question, On se tutoie?, which derived from the verb tutoyer, an untranslatable French expression signifying the intimacy of lovers.

  That evening, the Prince may well have taken Marguerite ‘back to the Bois, with supper in one of its lamp-hung restaurants’, such as Au Pré Catalan or the Château de Madrid. On the other two nights of his all too brief leave, they might go to the cinema or to ‘the little play at the Capucines or the Variétés’,138 or even to a Montmartre nightclub, such as the Abbaye Thélème, though wartime restrictions now meant that licensed premises had to close early. As a result, clandestine establishments were set up in la banlieue, on the edge of the city. Chauffeur-driven limousines decanted their expensively dressed occupants, who found late-night entertainment sometimes in lonely houses, set behind crumbling walls in unfashionable quarters, where (from bribery or indifference) the police were unlikely to cause trouble.139