by Susan Ronald
On an international level, it was odd that a young woman like Florence, who later claimed to have always adored Impressionist art, did not see the dangers lurking in Kaiser Wilhelm’s headline-grabbing ethnic cleansing of the Berlin Königlichen National-Galerie of its French Impressionist collections. Kaiser Wilhelm was determined to undermine the dominance of France in all forms of the arts as a central doctrine of his war aims. His mantra was simply that Berlin must replace Paris as the seat of international cultural power. In Florence’s defense, France, prior to the Great War of 1914–1918, felt its place as the world’s cultural capital was secure.
Florence was well aware of Impressionism, Postimpressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Progressivism, avant-gardism, and more in fine art, literature, and music. She knew they divided thought and engendered debate as topics of conversation required of any salonnière. Still, her youth prevented her from understanding that these very changes in artistic tastes would impact her personal goals. Her singular determination to succeed was admirable, but it blinded her to the significance of the cauldron of emotions surrounding her and all of civilized Europe. It seems that Florence was never truly political until later in life; but then again, that may have been an illusion purposely created retrospectively through her living a life with mirrors.
* * *
Just before the guns of August 1914 fired for the first time, heralding in the bloody Great War—known today as World War I—a young American man came to Paris. Henry Chittenden Heynemann, a former neighbor of the Lacaze family in Belvedere, California, was visiting Europe with his mother and older brother, James, and decided to look up Florence. Henry claimed publicly that the purpose of his European sojourn was to study architecture.1 Florence proclaimed it was to woo her, and, frankly, not a minute too soon. Henry’s father, Manfred Heynemann, was reputed to be a “blue jeans” millionaire; and since Manfred had died nine years earlier, surely, Florence and Berthe believed, Henry had come into a great deal of money.2 That was their first greedy mistake.
Henry was the youngest child born to a Philadelphia society mother, Alice M. Hotchkiss, and immigrant father, Manfred H. Heynemann. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Henry’s paternal grandfather became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1872. On Manfred’s passport application, dated January 8, 1900, he declared a point of interest at the heart of the Lacaze women’s dilemma: “I am domiciled in the United States, my permanent residence being at San Francisco in the State of California [since the age of six] where I follow the occupation of merchant; that I am about to go abroad temporarily, and that I intend to return to the United States inside of two years with the purpose of residing and performing the duties of citizenship therein.”3
So, why did the twenty-three-year-old Heynemann choose the month before the outbreak of war to visit Florence? Was it to join his brother James, as some newspapers surmised? Or was it to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, as he told the newspapers later? Florence alleged, many years later, that they had never stopped writing to one another after she left San Francisco. Had Florence asked Heynemann to come, and if so, on what grounds? Was it purely out of old friendship, as she later pretended? Maybe it had something to do with her fear of being trapped in the coming conflagration. After all, she had already experienced two natural disasters, and should not have willingly put herself in the path of a war. Or maybe it was simply an innocent, open invitation extended without a thought or care that he would ever come.
Another possibility was that Charles Loeb had reported back unfavorably on Florence’s and Isabelle’s U.S. citizenships—and thereby any right to claim their inheritance from their father in the United States. Had it become essential for Florence to reside in California again, because Berthe was unwilling to go? Perhaps Berthe felt she could not achieve the same results as her stunning daughter, who could always act for her under a power of attorney. As it turned out, both mother and daughter felt that the most expedient solution would be for Florence to marry an American. Although Maximin’s estate may have been negligible, Florinte’s legacy was sizable. As Manfred Heynemann’s passport application indicates, being an alien American, or expatriate, was—and still is—a tricky point for the government of the United States. This explanation might also reveal why Florence approached Henry, and not the elder son, James, the presumed heir to the Heynemann fortune. James was already a grown teen in 1906 when she left San Francisco, and would not have noticed a pretty child of ten.
Whatever the catalyst for young Heynemann’s visit, there had been some change in the Lacaze family’s circumstances. The lovely apartment overlooking the Luxembourg Gardens at 2 rue de Fleurus was no more. By 1914 they lived in a comely apartment at 143 boulevard Raspail in the heart of Montparnasse—the increasingly popular, yet more inexpensive, bohemian district of Paris. Cécile Tellier and her family had also moved to an apartment in the reasonably priced Montparnasse quarter at 10 rue Stanislas. Belts were tightened, too. Florence had yet to make any impact on Parisian society. Apparently, Loeb was frustrated, so far, in obtaining Berthe’s inheritance or her rights to her husband’s estate. Later in life, Florence told her friends that she was making “remarkable progress” as a singer by 1914. Notwithstanding her boast, the old professor was gone, and she was reduced to being accompanied by Cécile Tellier’s mother, a piano teacher.
* * *
At the end of June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, was murdered in Sarajevo. Everyone, except Florence and Henry, talked of war. Whether the young architecture student arrived in Paris on July 1, 1914, as a friend, childhood sweetheart, or potential victim of Berthe’s necessity and Florence’s wiles remains their secret. Staying at the Hôtel Matignon with his mother,* Henry wrote in his brown leather travel diary, titled “My Trip Abroad,” that Florence was a “beauty” and “a dream.” Her sister, Isabelle, rated a mention, too, as very “Frenchy” without much English to her credit. Apparently, the three girls—Florence, Cécile, and Isabelle—showed him the cultural sights of the city unchaperoned by any parent. A trip to Magic City, the mock Coney Island amusement park erected near the Eiffel Tower, rounded off their evening, with Henry accompanying the three girls home just before midnight. While culture and amusement parks were grand, and the girls “swell,” Henry hadn’t traveled all the way from San Francisco to miss the City of Light’s notorious nightspots. Already, Maxim’s was the restaurant where one went to see the rich and famous. Then there were the dance halls—the most famous of which were, of course, the Moulin Rouge, featuring Yvette Guilbert, and the Folies Bergère, starring Gaby Deslys.4 Henry frequented both, but not before depositing Florence home with her mother.
By day, Florence and Henry were chaperoned by Cécile and Isabelle. They visited the the Cluny Museum, the Pantheon, the St. Geneviève Library, the Louvre, and the Eiffel Tower. After supper, the foursome went out again to Magic City with its noisy rides and shrieks of joy. After midnight, Henry went off without the girls, time and again, to see the real sights of Paris—the Bal Tabarin and the Folies Bergère, where he hoped to make carnal conquests of its girls.5 After all, Florence was not of their ilk.
While he seemed smitten with Florence, Henry continued his grand tour of Europe in the company of his mother. Within the month, they were joined by his brother James in Switzerland. Somehow, Florence extracted a promise that Henry would rejoin the Lacaze family in the southwest of France. He rather lukewarmly added the phrase “should time permit” in his letter to her. That tepid caveat speaks volumes. Seemingly, Henry’s mother wanted to put some distance between her son and his steamy enchantress, Florence. She was so anxious, in fact, that the Heynemanns blindly traveled that July to Germany and Italy.
On July 29, the socialist leaders of Europe consulted with one another in Brussels in an atmosphere of “hopelessness and frustration.”6 The declaration of war that followed days later should not have been a surprise, since the newspapers burned with hourly updates. Still, for thousands of t
ourists—and particularly Americans—it was dumbfounding, leaving them slack-jawed. Horrified holidaymakers gathered in their hotel lobbies, gawping. Some wondered aloud what to do, and damned their hotel staff for not speaking better English. The male staff, meanwhile, quit their jobs to join the swelling ranks of marching men filing past their hotel windows toward glory. Female staff either made do or joined the nurses’ training corps. Thousands of Americans scrambled away to seaports to hop on ocean liners to take them home. Thousands more were stuck for weeks. In an age before credit cards, the French government, in its infinite wisdom, froze all foreign currency transactions, making it impossible for banks to honor Americans’ letters of credit or travelers’ checks. Hotel bills couldn’t be paid. Food couldn’t be bought. Americans threw themselves on the mercy of their embassy, just as other nations’ tourists clamored at their consulates’ doors.7
Paris was bathed in chaos. On July 31, Germany published its ultimatum, or Kriegsgefahr, to Russia and initiated the preliminary mobilization of its troops. The antimilitarist French Socialist leader, Jean Jaurès, freshly returned from Brussels, attempted, but failed, to apply pressure on France’s Parlement. Nonetheless, he wrote an article condemning the coming war, and left the offices of the newspaper L’Humanité at nine p.m. exhausted. As usual, he dined with colleagues at the Café Croissant nearby. While he was eating, and talking with his back to the open window on that steamy Paris evening, a young man appeared, pointed a pistol at Jaurès, crying out “Pacifist!” and “Traitor!” and fired twice. Jaurès slumped to one side and fell forward across the table. He died minutes later. The news choked the streets of Paris like the flames from the San Francisco earthquake. Cries of “Vive Jaurès!” reverberated everywhere. Anatole France sobbed, “My heart is breaking.” All Frenchmen understood that without the calming voice of Jaurès, war was inevitable. As Austrian writer Stefan Zweig lamented, long afterward, “We all relied on Jaurès” to stop the madness. It was now up to Premier René Viviani to ensure calm. He issued an appeal for unity. The last thing France needed was the social unrest of which Jaurès had warned Viviani mere hours before his assassination.8
* * *
Most likely, soon after the assassination, Florence and her family headed south to the small spa town of Cauterets, near the Spanish border in the Haute Pyrénées, situated only twenty miles southwest of the celebrated town of miracles, Lourdes.* Florence later claimed that Cauterets had been the family retreat from Paris for summer holidays for years. Still, at the time, they would have been seen by those who remained in the capital as froussards—panic merchants—and frankly, unpatriotic. As Florence and her family left Paris, the poilus—common conscripts—flooded into the train station at Gare de l’Est, drunk with elation, or despair, to die for their country. By the time war was declared on August 3, 1914, Paris felt deserted, deprived of the bulk of its men of fighting age.9
The newspapers, however, reported only events depicting typical patriotic fervor. No one knew that this “War to End All Wars” would last beyond Christmas. While Berthe read the buoyant morning papers aloud to her daughters, hailing the “fresh and joyous” battles to come, they must have been concerned that the object of their desires, young Henry, was somewhere in Germany or Italy—deep within the borders of France’s implacable enemies.
Whatever arguments or internal struggles Henry suffered, amazingly, he appeared on the Lacaze doorstep in mid-August without his mother. Mrs. Heynemann had departed for San Francisco. But why had she left for home without her son? Had they argued over the suitability of his attachment to Florence? Or had Henry, as his mother’s youngest son, persuaded her that it was necessary for her to go home to prepare for his return with his bride? Had Alice Heynemann decided that by leaving her errant son alone in France, he might see his error, without the need to engage him in some unseemly squabble? Whether Henry told his mother before they separated that he intended to rejoin Florence remains unsaid, but Alice would have been an idiot (which she was not) if she hadn’t guessed what would happen next.
This time, neither Berthe nor Florence would allow Henry to escape. He gleefully reported his encounters with the Germans, which were translated by a hungry press as his having been arrested for spying. Apparently, “On one occasion,… when we were travelling homeward from Vienna,* the train was stopped by the military and the officers hearing us speak English asked us if we were of that nationality. ‘Not by a long way,’” he replied, showing their American papers. The officer duly saluted and they were bothered no further.10
Despite his seeming devil-may-care attitude, the war had hit Henry hard. While the Europe of his dreams held the mysteries of the best of European architecture and rediscovery of his beauty, Florence, train travel brought with it the constant sight of wounded troops, suffering from horrific injuries. Refugee camps hastily installed along the railway tracks—filled only with women and children—were burned into his psyche. Thank heavens, he thought on more than one occasion, that America would not enter the war. He needed to forget all he’d seen, and Florence was just the tonic required. The lazy summer days in southwest France, where he was charmed by the countryside and his delectable girl, slowly performed their magic, but Henry still did not propose marriage. At the end of the first week, Florence knew she’d simply have to take matters into her own, rather more competent, hands.
On the morning of Alice Heynemann’s birthday, August 21, Florence pounced. At seven in the morning, she entered Henry’s bedroom and took the bold step of asking Henry to marry her. This was no mere ingénue’s prim marriage proposal to a shy lad from across the gulf of the family sofa or living room. This was young Florence at her alluring best. Henry was still in bed. Her long wavy blonde tresses probably were draped over her shoulder as she was wont to do. She approached him with her feline walk, her swaying, uncorseted, shapely body seductively visible through her dressing gown.11 As was her habit when vamping a man, she spoke softly, her hypnotic eyes locking his, her lips a mere inch from his own. Henry was flabbergasted, and frankly didn’t stand a chance. Overwhelmed, he gladly accepted. It never occurred to him to question her motives.
Then the real performance began. An hour later when the happy couple broke the news, Berthe claimed that she felt Henry was too young, too immature, to marry her daughter. Still, she liked him very much. Alas, Berthe and her daughters were obliged to do the only sensible thing in the circumstances. They decamped the next day to Lourdes, sans Henry. Naturally, the moonstruck Henry followed. He was greeted cordially and pleaded his case, most likely proposing a marriage settlement to Berthe for spiriting away her lovely Florence to San Francisco. Berthe still did not give in. The Lacazes headed to Toulouse, where a mortified Henry in tow couldn’t stop complaining of a toothache. Already, he was getting on Florence’s nerves. When Florence protested that he was acting like a child, he promised he’d buy her a first engagement present if she took pity on him and brought him to the nearest dentist. His nerves were frayed by his toothache and Berthe’s reluctance to acknowledge Florence’s proposal of marriage to him. Fed up, Henry probably threatened to make a dignified retreat via Spain to catch an ocean liner back home if Berthe would not agree to their marriage.
Like any wildcat, Florence knew it was time to move in for the kill. She told Berthe Henry was ready to talk dollars and cents. If they didn’t move now, they risked losing the squirming fish on the line. The marriage settlement agreed between Berthe and Henry has never been published, yet it should be assumed that Charles Loeb was advising Berthe behind the scenes via telegram. Henry would need to settle an income on her daughter—enough to help with Berthe’s and Isabelle’s expenses in Paris, too. Then he would need to compensate Berthe for the loss of potential income Florence could have earned as an opera singer. Then there was the matter of religion. The Protestant Henry must agree not to interfere with Florence’s religion, and to understand that any children of the union would be raised as Catholics. Furthermore, Henry could not claim any of
Florence’s inheritance from her grandmother, father, or eventually, Berthe herself. It was a no-brainer for Henry: he’d seen the apartment on boulevard Raspail and knew they were living respectably but without any great fortune. At last, Berthe relented and gave her willing approval. A telegram was sent off at once to Loeb in Paris to draw up the necessary documents, while Henry bought Florence an engagement present of a fine gold wristwatch.12
Henry, at twenty-three, did not need parental consent, in either America or France. But Florence was only nineteen. According to French law, the consent of her mother was essential, and Henry knew it. By shilly-shallying, Berthe had won significant concessions that were designed to resolve the family’s financial crisis at a stroke, irrespective of the outcome of Florence’s efforts regarding the inheritance in San Francisco. Berthe’s telegram to Loeb stressed that time was of the essence. Henry was losing patience. To placate Henry, a trip to Carcassonne to see its famous medieval Cité fortress—now a UNESCO World Heritage Site—was planned to celebrate their betrothal.
Of course, Henry cabled his mother to let her know the news, and that he would soon be coming home with his bride—that is, once Alice settled her son’s financial promises to Berthe. With all foreign transactions still frozen in France, it was suggested by Berthe that Spain might offer a viable solution to their problem. The suggestion seems to have come from Loeb; however, Berthe decided on her own embellishments.