by Andrew Rose
* * *
The Prince, in his voluminous correspondence with Fredie, wallowed in self-pity and neurotic reflection. Marguerite, his cast-off mistress, had no such concerns, forging ahead in the years that followed the break-up. Early in 1919, Charles Laurent, her latest rich suitor, proposed marriage. He was well aware of Marguerite’s chequered past, but unaware of her true motive in encouraging his affections. In early 1919, Marguerite told Mme Denart, her former maîtresse, that she was only marrying Laurent for the sake of her daughter and would ‘kick him out’ after six months.235 On the other hand, she claimed to find Laurent’s solemn, thoughtful manner a refreshing change from the flippancy of other friends and she could hardly complain of his lack of generosity. With Laurent’s help, she moved from square Thiers (itself no slum) to a magnificent apartment at 67 avenue Henri Martin, in the heart of the 16th. Laurent made her an annual allowance of 36,000 francs (£450) and paid the yearly rental of the flat, a substantial 18,000 francs (£225).
The Laurent family opposed the match and, though banns were published for the requisite period at the marie (town hall), there was to be no Paris wedding. Instead, as the social column of Le Figaro reported on 2 May 1919, ‘Lundi a été celebré à Venise, par le consul français, le mariage de Capitaine Charles Laurent avec Mme Marguerite Meller ’ (‘In Venice last Monday Captain Charles Laurent and Mme Marguerite Meller were married by the French consul’). Le Figaro was (and is) a newspaper of record for the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie of France. Marguerite had made another significant step in her quest for social acceptance and financial security.
For the honeymoon, Laurent had taken a lease of the fifteenth-century Palazzo Tiepoletto, overlooking the Grand Canal and not far from the Rialto Bridge. Unlike her stormy visit to Venice with André Meller in 1913, there were to be no lively parties at the Danieli or at the Hotel Excelsior on the Lido. Charles Laurent was a young man of sober tastes, loved the history of Venice and its glorious architecture, and had no time for conventional partying. Disagreements began almost at once. Marguerite was eager to visit the chic Venice bars, showing herself at the costume balls and at the many private parties to which they were invited, invitations that Charles would usually refuse. After their return to Paris, Charles expected his new wife to accompany him to concerts, recitals and the opera, while Marguerite pined for the glamour of Ciro’s, the racecourse, and riding in the Bois.
Matters came to a head when Charles was offered a diplomatic post in Japan. He told Marguerite that she could not go on living her pre-war life. Marguerite would have to choose between life in Japan and life in Paris. She chose Paris. And divorce.
On 30 March 1920 (plaint no 267 at the Paris Tribunal of the Seine), the marriage was dissolved. Marguerite’s cool stratagem had paid off handsomely. She secured considerably more by way of settlement than the ‘little bag of beans’ reluctantly handed over by Andre Meller in 1913. With the money from Laurent, Marguerite became a rich woman. She could easily afford the apartment at 67 avenue Henri-Martin, with several indoor servants, a stable (now accommodating ten horses), a full-time groom, and two limousines, driven by her loyal chauffeur, Eugéne Barbay. Eugéne, a handsome man originally from Alsace, which was under German occupation between 1870 and the end of the Great War, had escaped to France and been severely wounded at Verdun in 1917. Provided staff members could put up with Marguerite’s unpredictable temper, she seems to have been a generous employer, perhaps conscious of her own youthful privations.
Her next major conquest was to be Juan de Astoreca, whose family fortune was created in the nitrate mines of northern Chile. The coming of war saw enormous growth in their profitability, since nitrates were used in the manufacture of high explosive shells. After 1917, however, the development of new processes saw the virtual collapse of the Chilean nitrate industry.
Around 1920, the time he and Marguerite became acquainted, Jean d’Astoreca (as he now gallicised himself) was permanently resident in France, and his riches, though diminished, remained substantial. Jean (or ‘Pépé’ as she called him, mocking his heavily accented French) offered Marguerite the life she loved. That wealth and a mutual love of horseflesh (Astoreca adored the races) brought them together and, although the physical side of the liaison was to end dramatically, the couple kept up a more or less amicable relationship for several years.
Raymonde, abandoned for so long, had now returned to Marguerite’s care. Raymonde closely resembled her mother and in later years this provoked Marguerite’s jealousy, a major cause of their ultimate estrangement. Raymonde’s father may, after all, have been an Englishman, for Marguerite decided to give her daughter an expensive private education in England. To that end, she enrolled Raymonde in The Grange, a girls’ boarding school in Totteridge, then a leafy suburb of north London.
Astoreca was the man of the moment, but this did not prevent Marguerite seducing the aristocratic husband of a near neighbour in the Avenue Henri-Martin, a young vicomte who had, in just a month, spent 800,000 francs in a vain attempt to make Marguerite his mistress, sweet revenge for a perceived social snub on the part of his wife.
Like many of her other suitors, Astoreca did not escape the full force of Marguerite’s temper. An absurd argument about the price of trout at the Moulin de la Planche, near Versailles, led to a furious row between the pair in front of an exclusive clientele at the Dauphine. Astoreca, a mild man, eventually told Marguerite to be quiet, whereupon she grabbed her horsewhip and struck him across the face, breaking his glasses. Astoreca stormed off and, sitting in the back of his car, angrily refused to take Marguerite home. Unfazed, she ordered his chauffeur to get out and proceeded to drive herself and her astonished lover back to her apartment. The next day, the couple went out riding in the Bois as if nothing had happened.236
Further scenes and threats of suicide by Astoreca prompted Marguerite to make a second journey to Egypt later that year, as temperatures cooled and the Season began.
Taking Raymonde and an English schoolfriend with her, Marguerite arrived in Cairo in December. Harvesting contacts made during her previous visit to Egypt in 1915, she set herself up as mistress of Mosseri, rich banker and prominent member of a Sephardic Jewish family of Italian origin.
Around the turn of that year, a young playboy experienced an event of the most profound significance. Amid the grandeur of the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo, Ali Kamel Famy bey had his first glimpse of ‘Mme Laurent’ (as Marguerite now styled herself). Just as the Prince of Wales had been enraptured on meeting Marguerite for the first time at the Hotel Crillon, Ali was immediately drawn to this vision of style and fashion, born and bred in Paris, a city he loved.
Marguerite, though attracted by gossip that Ali was a millionaire umpteen times over, kept her guard. Ali was prone to wild acts of generosity, but could – it was said – behave callously to his mistresses. Ali is supposed to have whispered to a mutual friend, ‘Tell her I will give her a fête Venitienne in her honour,’ ordering his dahabeeyah to be decorated with the letters ‘MM’, displayed in flowers and also illuminated on the stern of the yacht. Marguerite, mindful that a rich businessman in the hand was worth a young millionaire in the bush, politely refused to go aboard, and played hard to get, leaving Egypt without saying goodbye to her latest conquest. With her usual acumen, Marguerite had made a mental note of this very interested party for future reference in Paris.237
6
Honey and Roses
Even to a sceptic’s eye, the brief life of Ali Fahmy cannot be robbed entirely of exoticism and romance. Some hard facts exist, like rocky outcrops piercing a miasma of sensationalism. Ali was born, probably in the Ismailiya district of Cairo, on 10 August 1900, the only son of Ali Fahmy El-Mouhandez pasha, a civil engineer and member of the Egyptian upper middle class. When Fahmy père died in 1907, he became a rich man. His young son was left two-fifths of his father’s estate, then worth perhaps £800,000, the balance being divided between four older sisters, three of whom (Aziza, Fatima and Aic
ha) were alive in 1923.
As the benjamin and only boy, brought up by mother and sisters, Ali had a very spoiled childhood in a society that generally cosseted the young male. He attended the reputable Nasrieh School in Cairo, but was said to have been too delicate to be sent to university. When his mother died, he came into his inheritance at the early age of 16, two years before the legal majority. Feebleness vanished at once as Ali took enthusiastic possession of his fortune.
And it was some fortune. Ali’s father had dabbled in cotton, but the Great War had done wonders for the Egyptian cotton industry. The price rocketed, increasing nearly seven times as the war progressed. As prices rose, Ali’s estate bought land in Upper Egypt, amounting to some 4,500 feddans (acres) of prime cotton-producing land. His agents also established links with banks and trading companies in France and England. The banker Émile Miriel, long-serving director of Crédit Foncier, a major French banking house in Egypt, became a personal friend. By the end of the war, Ali’s inheritance was producing over £100,000 annually and, even though the post-war slump caused a sharp decline in cotton prices, his annual income never fell below £40,000 (around £2,000,000 today).
Ali tried to buy friendship and entertained generously. Cairo society smiled indulgently on his growing extravagance, but also because he had charm and cut an elegant figure. He loved to dance and was often to be seen at Shepheard’s, the Semiramis, the Continental-Savoy and other smart hotels of Cairo and Alexandria.
It is not surprising that so enormous an income should have turned the head of a youth whose earlier life had been so sheltered and indulgent. Possibly in an attempt to provide some stability in his new life, Ali was provided with a private secretary. The first to be appointed was Mahmoud Abul Fath, later to become editor of Al Ahram, a prominent Cairo newspaper and a man who came to know a great deal about Marguerite.
Said Enani was six years older than his employer and had previously worked at the Ministry of the Interior in Cairo. A well-educated man who spoke fluent French and English, he served as a sort of guardian, as well as confidant, to a young man who was, in truth, rather unsure of himself.
Ali was 5' 9'' tall and comparatively light-skinned. He was later described by Said as being ‘nervous’, with a weak personality. His behaviour had its neurotic side and Ali appears initially to have had difficulty making friendships with his peers. Ultimately, he came to enjoy the company of a young, intellectual set that included Mahmoud Abul Fath and Mukhtar bey, a distinguished Egyptian sculptor. Ali is said to have loved opera and was a keen amateur photographer. His small circle of friends had nationalistic leanings, keenly aware of the humiliation caused by the British occupation of their country during and after the Great War. Some were attracted by the heady rhetoric of the veteran Saad Zaghloul, founder of the nationalist Wafd Party.
Though his behaviour could be profligate, Ali’s short life reveals a sense of social responsibility far ahead of his time. During the war, in his extreme youth, he had donated substantial sums to the British Red Cross and later set up a fund, administered by the Ministry of Education, to enable poor Egyptian students to visit and study in Europe. He planned to set up a new ophthalmic hospital at Maghagha, on the west bank of the Nile, some 90 miles south of Cairo: the foundation stone was laid by the portly King Fuad II. Ali was honoured with the title bey, a Turkish word formerly signifying the rank of provincial governor. It has been argued, however, that Ali was entitled to the more senior title of pasha, inherited on the death of his father. Although Ali undoubtedly lived on a princely scale, his status as bey did not make him a ‘prince’, arising from mistranslation in the foreign press, a bogus attribution he seems to have done little to discourage.
Although Ali had no need to work and never gained any professional qualifications, his excellent French gained him the honorary post of Press Attaché to the French Legation in Cairo. France had taken a close interest in the Middle East and been involved in Egyptian affairs at least since the time of Napoleon Bonaparte. Many of the Egyptian upper class were both francophone and Francophile and particularly so since Britain had established an unwanted hegemony over Egyptian affairs.
In 1914, the crumbling Ottoman administration was replaced by a British ‘protectorate’ and only in 1922 would Egypt be granted a measure of internal self-government, Britain continuing to control foreign policy and all matters connected with defence and the security of the Suez Canal, regarded as an Imperial lifeline. There was considerable friction between Britain and France throughout the 1920s: at one time, Saad Zaghlul had found sanctuary in Paris, much to the chagrin of Whitehall.
France was also popular as a playground for the Egyptian rich. As many as 3,000 Egyptian families were said to visit every year. ‘Egyptian visitors at watering-places, the Egyptian customers of smart restaurants, fashion houses and gaming tables were prodigal of the wealth they had made from cotton.’253 Ali eagerly joined the throng of his high-rolling fellow-countrymen, making extended tours of Europe each year, taking in Paris, Deauville, Biarritz and Monte Carlo.
In this heady milieu, Ali developed a taste for speed, importing the latest fast cars from France, Germany and England. By 1923, his garage was said to contain a 90hp Mercedes, a Renault coupé and a Buick, together with two Rolls-Royces (one open, with whitewall tyres, the other a more sober saloon), a Berliet, a baby Peugeot, two ‘runabouts’ and several powerful motor-cycles. He would drive at great speed through the narrow, crowded streets of Cairo, indifferent to the confusion and upset caused. When Ali visited Europe, a selection of his vehicles would be shipped out with him.
Ali’s playboy image was also displayed on the waters of the Nile. Thorneycrofts of England supplied a 450hp racing motor-boat, which, with its aeroplane engine, was reputedly the fastest on the river and capable of crossing the English Channel. Ali would race along the Nile, the wash of his craft disturbing, even capsizing, all manner of lesser craft. Another speedboat was commissioned from Neuilly of Paris at a cost of 440,000 francs (£5,500). It was purchased on the recommendation of a member of the French colony in Cairo, one Count Jacques de Lavison, who illustrated the mercenary character of some of Ali’s ‘friends’ by claiming 55,000 francs (£687) commission on the sale after Ali’s death.
With one of his powerful speedboats, Ali won first prize at a Monte Carlo regatta, but the pride of his little fleet was probably the steam-powered dahabeeyah, luxuriously fitted out, in which he could transport his secretary, associates and assorted hangers-on up the Nile to Luxor, fashionable in the cooler months between November and May.
Early in 1922, Ali began to refurbish a small palace in Cairo, on the El Gezira side of the Bulaq Bridge at Zamalek, the most chic quarter of the city. King Peter of Yugoslavia had lived there until his death in 1921. No expense was spared in fitting out the palace: a firm of Parisian interior designers was engaged and an ‘Italian garden’ planned at an overall cost of £120,000 (the equivalent of over £5,000,000 today). Ali owned a villa, slightly more modestly appointed, in Alexandria and a suite of offices in central Cairo.
Life in the fast lane inevitably had a sexual dimension. Ali was handsome as well as extremely rich and from the day he came into his inheritance he would have been the target of those with matrimony in mind. He seems to have had a number of short affairs with women in Egypt and France. For a while, a Mlle Bosini was his mistress, but behind the façade of conventional high life lay a rogue factor, which set Cairo buzzing in 1922 and which would later be appropriated by Marguerite for some very murky purposes indeed. Said Enani, as befitted the private secretary of a multi-millionaire with so many business and social interests, now had a secretary of his own. The three men began to look like an inseparable trio, both in public and in private.
The satirical Cairo weekly Al Kashkoul (favourite reading at the British High Commission as a barometer of ‘native’ opinion) published a cartoon, rendered in French as l’ame damne de Fahmy (the captive soul of Fahmy). The accompanying Arabic text referred c
ryptically to the three men depicted as ‘The Light, the Shadow of the Light, and the Shadow of the Shadow of the Light’. The punch line may simply have been a comment on the self-serving influence that the two secretaries had on Ali, still only 21, but, as will be seen, Westerners chose to interpret the cartoon as somehow referring to homosexual entanglements.
Homosexual behaviour, though barely spoken of in Egypt, could be looked on as a passing phase in a young man’s development or as an adjunct to a basically heterosexual life. Many of the male prostitutes in Cairo would have had wives and families of their own. Although Said knew his master by the familiar, distinctly unoriginal, nickname of ‘Baba’ (after Ali Baba of Forty Thieves fame), there is no evidence of any physical involvement between the two men. In fact, allegations were made that Said sometimes procured women for Ali. As to Said himself, an English private detective’s report of 1923 suggests that Ali’s secretary was resolutely heterosexual, reported as regularly entertaining women in his room at the Hotel Majestic in Paris.239