The Glitter and the Gold

by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan

  It was estimated that 200,000 francs would endow a room and we made this the basis of our first appeal. I was agreeably surprised by the response, for in those days a dollar was worth from 28 to 35 francs and 200,000 francs represented a generous slice in a French income. Even so it was evident that neither donations nor the sums raised by entertainments could collect the total which, owing to the rising prices which appear to accompany a Socialist administration, reached 45 million.

  In due time we obtained the government's promise to pay the deficit—the necessity for the hospital, the excellence of our plans and the fact that our committee would undertake the administration proving undeniable assets in our favor.

  Many entertainments were organized to raise funds, but the most popular and one that became part of "Grand Prix Day" was the dinner at the Cercle Interallié. It was a gay and charming event, with tables laid out in the garden and the youth and beauty of Paris competing for prizes offered to the best dancers by the leading jewelers and dressmakers. An auction of gifts, including a Faberge clock I had brought back from Russia and an automobile, brought lively bidding, though I felt sorry for Andre de Fouquière who so kindly and ably undertook this tâche ingrate.

  On one occasion I had invited a prominent American prima donna as my guest and placed her between two entertaining Frenchmen. Inspired to an undue generosity, she offered to sing for our hospital, but when I asked her to fix her date she answered that she must first be "assured of the Legion of Honor." In spite of the fact that it is an honor more easily accorded to foreigners than to the French, I had not the courage to back so impudent a request. My compatriots, however, were adept in pushing their claims, and on one occasion I was asked to sign a request to a minister which stated that "it would greatly please the American Colony in Paris if Mrs. X were decorated." The lady herself had drawn it up.

  As another fund-raising event, an English university rowing eight offered to race against any French eight. It was the first boat race of its kind to be held in Paris. I found arrangements to entertain our English visitors easy, since the best hotels offered rooms and food at nominal cost, and everyone from the Marquis de Polignac, who entertained them at one of his famous champagne luncheons at Rheims, down to the humblest midinette, co-operated to give them a good time.

  It was more difficult to secure the attendance of President Lebrun who, when asked, announced, "If Madame Balsan comes to ask me I may consent." So one morning, dressed in my best, I called at the Élysée and, met by an officer of the President's household, was led through three great rooms. In each were groups of busy officials who rose and bowed as I passed. Eventually we reached the President, in a charming room with long windows opening into the garden. He was sitting at a large table covered with documents to which he was appending his signature. I had met him previously, and realized that as a busy man he would wish me to get quickly to the point, so I at once presented our request. He stated, as if relenting, that he had been told that the President's presence at such entertainments made a difference of many hundred thousands of francs. "So how can you refuse us?" I asked. But he objected that the President of the French Republic was a busy man and that his presence at a boat race might be criticized. "The King and Queen of England honor international sporting events by their presence," I said, "and our object is to build a much needed hospital for les classes moyennes." Then he smilingly accepted, and I retired as I had come.

  The race was a great success and the English crew won, though the French—considering the disadvantage of inadequate training—made a better showing than expected. Our English guests promised to return whenever we wanted them. They had thoroughly enjoyed their visit, and one of them who had spent a night in a French prison, owing to an altercation with a policeman, assured us he was glad to have done so as he wished to sample everything French.

  The most touching of all the tributes to Marshal Foch's memory, to whom our hospital was dedicated, was paid by Paderewski. No longer Prime Minister of Poland but still a great pianist, he gave a concert for our benefit in the Théâtre des Champs Élysées. The long program must have taxed his failing strength; nevertheless, after the public ovation that greeted his finale he remained to play to a group of students who had gathered round him. Great in his generosity as in his genius, he refused any part of the proceeds, although heavy expenses incurred by his wife's illness were draining his resources.

  At a tea given by the Polish Ambassadress after the concert I was amused by the agonized efforts of some of the ladies present to be presented to the Queen of the Belgians, who had come from Brussels to hear Paderewski play. The Queen sat in an armchair; another chair had been placed close by; and grouped around in a circle stood those who considered they should be spoken to by her, and those who equally considered they had a right to be presented to her. Among the former were several duchesses of France who after their audience remained in the circle, loath to forego the malicious pleasure they derived from the frantic efforts of those who wished to be presented. Suddenly a particularly pushing lady succeeded in shoving her way forward. Unbidden, she deposited her vulgar person in the chair next to the Queen. It seemed to me that I would in her place have been frozen by the haughty glitter of Her Majesty's eyes and by the only half-veiled insolence of die phrases that must have reached her from the encircling throng, but, delighted with her successful maneuver, she remained impervious to any snub.

  The day dawned at last on which our hospital was officially opened by the President. French ministers, foreign ambassadors and exalted personages abounded, but our chief satisfaction lay in the opinion expressed by the medical profession that no finer hospital existed anywhere—an opinion confirmed by the Germans in 1940 when they evicted all French patients and took the hospital over for their own use. In 1950 the Fondation Foch du Mont Valerian was rededicated to the classes moyennes for whom it had been built. In announcing the good news. Monsieur Justin Godart, to whose unfailing support we owed the successful termination of our work, informed me that I had been named Présidente d'Honneur, a mark of appreciation which, after an interval of so many years, deeply touched me.

  It was also to his recommendation as Minister of Public Health that I owed my first step in the Legion of Honor which I received in 1931. How well I remember the day he came to our house in Paris to give me the decoration. I had refused the public function he kindly suggested, and nothing could have been more to my liking than the informal ceremony when in the presence of our household he made a little speech and asked my husband to pin the Cross on me, since not being decorated himself he had no power to confer it. He would, however, not be denied the accolade, which he begged my husband's permission to confer. It was all so very French.

  10: Lou Sueil - Friends and Neighbors

  PRECEDING the happy and busy spring months we spent in Paris each year were lovely months of winter sunshine on the Riviera, where our life, though equally social, was more informal. Some years before Jacques and I were married, I had, while recuperating on the Riviera, been attracted by its beauty and its climate. Soon after our marriage, we decided to buy a property and to build a house there.

  Between the Upper and Lower Corniche—the former built by Napoleon to lead his armies to Italy, the latter following the contours of the coast—there were beautiful slopes where peasants grew vegetables and flowers for the markets below. During World War I these areas were made accessible by the new Moyenne Corniche. We found the property we bought in answer to an advertisement. There were a hundred and fifty acres of land and the negotiations to acquire them would have taxed the patience of any but a Frenchman. There were some fifty peasant owners and it required diplomacy, patience and tact to deal with them. I marveled at my husband's persistence as he bantered and bartered with them, for they were cunning and cautious, and although anxious to sell, were loath to part with their land. Just as we thought a bargain had been made we would find one parcel had not been included, and inevitably it was the choicest bit—the piece
that rendered all the rest useless— and negotiations would start again. Only when every ruse had been defeated would they finally surrender. Then, seated at their kitchen tables, we sealed the contracts in the strong bitter wines they brewed from their vines. Pouring with lavish hand into polished tumblers, they drank without drawing breath, and rather than offend I sipped the potent vintage and suffered the inevitable headache.

  Our house was built in stone and had an inner garden on which cloisters opened. We chose the Convent of Le Thoronet in Provence as inspiration; it had been built by Cistercian monks in the eleventh century. The fortressed village of Eze, which stood across a ravine from us, had once been a shrine to the moon goddess Isis and ever since a stronghold of those who ruled the Mediterranean. We called our place Lou Sueil, which in Provençal means the Hearth, for it was thus identified on local maps.

  Our house was built by six brothers who were stone masons. Every Monday they walked over the mountains from Italy, returning to spend Sundays with their wives. They were accomplished artisans and quick workers, and they built our house within a year. We made our own plans and Duchene, who had designed Sunderland House, was again the architect. Only two rooms were finished when we moved in. The others were being paneled as a background for the period furniture we brought from Crowhurst. When it arrived in vans we spent joyous weeks making the rooms comfortable as well as beautiful, for we disliked a house that looked like a museum rather than a home. Deep sofas heaped with cushions abounded, lamps placed near easy chairs made pleasant seats for reading, and there were writing tables in every room. There were petit point chairs fit for kings, but one sat in them unmolested; beautiful Ispahan rugs covered the floors, and the house was gay with flowers. The scent of tuberoses, lilac and lilies filled the air. When one entered the cloisters, a succession of flame-colored azaleas was a lovely sight.

  In the garden we planned terraces; for our grounds, like the hanging gardens of Babylon, hung in mid-air and unless terraced on stone walls would have crumbled down the steep mountainside. Under the olive trees the grass was carpeted with hyacinths and bluebells. The spring brought its seasoned order of tulips, peonies and daffodils. Almond trees bloomed first in pink and white showers; then came the prunus and the Judas trees with their bronze and scarlet foliage. Every month had its particular mimosa cascading in yellow fragrance. Like those Gothic tapestries strewn with flowers our gardens represented endless toil. In September, after the first rains had softened the soil, we scattered thousands of bulbs; gardeners followed on their knees with trowels. A happy medley of colors was thus achieved, and the effect looked natural. All these bulbs had to be dug up in May and replanted the following autumn, for the drought and heat of summer would have shrunk and killed them.

  There were rose bushes as big as hydrangeas. Stone walls were covered with blue kennedya, rose bougainvillia and purple clematis. Tall cypresses limned their slender blackness against the silver shimmer of olive leaves or grew in narrow avenues encasing a view. Red oil vats filled with flowers stood at protruding corners. This garden, jutting into the Mediterranean on its high promontory, surrounded by an amphitheater of Alpine peaks, became famous. We opened it to visitors. The money went to charities; one winter we made as much as 100,000 francs.

  Across the ravine from us the village of Eze on its pinnacled height was inaccessible but for one steep road through a portcullised arch. Narrow cobbled streets ran between tiers of houses that rose one above the other to where the church stood on a little square. The houses were built of stone, with old tiled roofs, oak doors and arched windows, and on the outer walls looked down a precipice to the blue depths of the sea. Each had a tiny garden from which fig trees spread their gnarled and naked branches to produce most surprisingly their burden of fruit in summer. When we built Lou Sueil only peasants lived at Eze. They were strong and wiry with an endless capacity for work. Even old women carried the produce of their soil down to the markets of Monaco-some ten miles there and back—the heavy baskets balanced on their heads, their hips swaying as they walked. As I passed them in my Rolls-Royce, their fourscore years seemed a challenge to my forty, and one day accompanied by my husband I trudged the eleven kilometers to Nice. My silk stockings were in shreds but I felt less humble.

  Two families dominated Eze, the Millos and Assos. They had come there with the Romans in their conquest of Gaul. Aristocrats, they looked with proud contempt on the Romagnan-Birons, another noble family that had come from Spain in the sixteenth century. It was a proud day for us when we were made citizens of Eze. The priest came to bless our home, and with holy water drove out the evil spirits of the mountain.

  Gradually the beauty of Eze began to attract strangers. Sam Barlow, the composer, deserted his family home in Gramercy Square to spend his summers there. He bought two or three little houses and fashioned an enchanting home where he played the piano until the inhabitants complained they could no longer sleep. One New Year's Eve he and his beautiful wife came to dine with us and the Monte Carlo quartet played one of his compositions, which I thought a lovely way of seeing the New Year in. Through it all H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, ensconced in an easy chair, slept soundly—thus demonstrating to the citizens of Eze that their complaints were unfounded.

  The Duke of Connaught was the youngest son of Queen Victoria. On the death of his Duchess and in failing health he was ordered by his physician to spend his winters on the Riviera. Distinguished and good looking and possessing a genial charm, he was by far the most popular royalty on the Cote. The French more especially appreciated the part he took in the life of the community, for he never failed to be present at a local ceremony.

  Indeed, we had more than our share of royalty on the Riviera. The King and Queen of Denmark, both immensely tall, bicycled indefatigably round the countryside, while the King of Sweden played strenuous tennis in spite of his eighty years. We used to meet them at the luncheons the Préfet gave in their honor at the Préfecture in Nice. The Prefecture was an old Grimaldi palace dating from the days when that family reigned over the Kingdom of Savoy and it had the charm, but also the inconvenience, of an old house. Democracy had unfortunately later established the market place just under its windows and when one arrived for luncheon the water wagons were sluicing the streets of the debris of vegetables, fish and flowers. As one climbed the monumental staircase to the reception rooms the smell of stale fish or, if one was lucky, of faded flowers would drift in on the breeze.

  The Préfecture of the Alpes Maritimes was an envied position and usually accorded to men of distinction, for the reception of important visitors was part of their duties. The préfets I knew during the score of years we spent on the Riviera were able, polished men who entertained with ease in a democratic and yet essentially courtly manner.

  The most eccentric royal person we entertained was a young brother of the Emperor of Japan. He had been sent to England to be educated, and was brought to us by an old friend of mine who had been appointed his cicerone. An English woman, well over six feet tall and equally majestic in appearance, she towered over the unfortunate Prince and his suite. I spent a miserable luncheon trying to make conversation in a mixture of French and English neither of which he appeared either to speak or to understand. As he prepared to leave I asked him to sign the visitors book, little dreaming that the mere inscription of his name in vertical classical characters would take at least ten minutes while we all stood round in embarrassed silence.

  Our life at Eze was very social. Owning a beautiful place has its evident drawbacks. Luncheon parties were as a rule limited to twenty at two tables of ten. On certain occasions I counted seven nationalities present—English, American, French, Austrian, Polish, Belgian and Italian. French was the prevalent language. After luncheon we took our guests round the garden; a short and easy round for the old, with a more extended tour for the hale and hearty. My husband never tired of running up and down our mountain but sometimes I could see the demoralizing effect of these climbs on men and women who
considered themselves athletes and in the pink of condition. On one occasion a fat English banker, collapsing on a seat beside me, faintly asked for a glass of water—but later found a certain satisfaction in thinking he must have lost at least three pounds in the climbs my husband had imposed.

  Entertaining brought its contretemps. When they happened, they were annoying, but in retrospect they are amusing. There was the occasion when one of our guests telephoned that he would walk up from Monte Carlo to lunch with us. The distance being about five miles and uphill I warned him to start in good time; but cocktails had been served and still there was no sign of him. The person in question being a British M.P. of Ministerial rank, I thought it politer to wait a little longer although a score of guests had already assembled. Then as our Minister still did not appear we began luncheon. Halfway through the meal our butler whispered to me, "A gentleman has arrived and wants a bath." "A bath!" I said. "Yes, a bath," he repeated. "He got so hot walking up he must have a bath." Sometime later our butler again appeared looking worried. "I don't know what is the matter with the gentleman but he is throwing all his clothes out of the window to the gardeners and telling them to keep them!" Good heavens, I thought; I hope he does not mean to come in naked, for not knowing the man I had some apprehension he might be another "Milord Anglais fou." At last our M.P. entered (thank goodness properly clothed) and not at all abashed at being forty-five minutes late. "I like walking," he said airily, "and always take a change in case I get hot. Hope you did not mind my throwing my underclothes to your gardeners, it avoids the trouble of carrying them down." "Oh, not at all, I only hope they were properly grateful," I answered. After a hasty meal without a word to the numerous company or even a look at the view we were so proud of he departed to walk down to Nice, and I no longer wondered why the English sometimes are considered eccentric!