by Susan Ronald
Wertheimer, Pierre
Westminster Kennel Club
Weygand, Maxime
Wharton, Edith
Whistler, James McNeill
Wiborg, Mary Hoyt
Wildenstein, Daniel
Wildenstein, Félix
Wildenstein, Georges
Wildenstein, Nathan
Wildenstein, Sylvia
Wilde, Oscar
Wilder, Billy
Wilhelm II, Kaiser of Germany
Willard, Marian
Wills, Helen
Wilson, Peter C.
Wilson, Woodrow
Windsor, Duke and Duchess of
Wiper Times
women’s voting rights
Woodhouse, Lindy
The World
World War I (WW I) (1914–18)n
Armistice Day in
outbreak of
World War II (WW II) (1939–45)
African campaign in
Battle of France in
Battle of Stalingrad in
casualties in
D-Day in
France’s occupation in
lead-up to
U.S.’s entry into
war crime investigations post-
Worth, Gaston
X-2 unit, U.S.
Yesenin, Sergei
Zaharoff, Zacharias Basileios “Sir Basil”
Zanini, Diego
Ziegfeld, Florenz
Zographos, Nico
Zola, Émile
Zweig, Stefan
ALSO BY SUSAN RONALD
Hitler’s Art Thief: Hildebrand Gurlitt, the Nazis, and the Looting of Europe’s Treasures
Shakespeare’s Daughter (A Novel)
Heretic Queen: Queen Elizabeth I and the Wars of Religion
The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire
The Sancy Blood Diamond: Power, Greed, and the Cursed History of One of the World’s Most Coveted Gems
France: The Crossroads of Europe
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Born and raised in the United States, Susan Ronald has lived in England for more than twenty-five years. She is the author of several books, including Hitler’s Art Thief and Heretic Queen. Visit Susan’s website at www.susanronald.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
PART I • THE ASPIRING CHANTEUSE
1. San Francisco
2. From Fire to Flood and Death
3. La Parisienne
4. War and the Boy Next Door
5. Young Mrs. Heynemann
6. Home Again, War, and Folies
7. The Man They Call “Franck”
PART II • THE CRAZY YEARS
8. Taming All Those Monsters
9. Leaving the Perfumed Air of Bohemia
10. Careless People
11. An Amusing Intermezzo for Millionaires
12. Taking Stock
13. The Monégasque Feud Fit for a Prince
14. Hollywood Calling
15. The Phoenix Rises
16. Scandal, America, and Separate Lives
17. Dark Horizons
PART III • DARKNESS FALLS
18. Fifth Columnists and Fellow Travelers
19. Fall of France
20. Ludwig
21. The “Anything Goes” Occupation
22. In the Garden of Earthly Delights
23. The Occupation, 1942–1943
24. Florence the Banker
25. Liberation and Treason
PART IV • STILL A GOULD
26. No Safe Havens
27. Paper Clips and Friends Cast Long Shadows
28. A Fortune to Give Away
29. Queen of the Riviera
Epilogue
Photographs
Author’s Note and Acknowledgments
Cast of Characters
Glossary
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
Also by Susan Ronald
About the Author
Copyright
A DANGEROUS WOMAN. Copyright © 2018 by Susan Ronald. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Kerri Resnick
Cover photographs: Florence Gould © Bettmann / Getty Images; Paris © Halbergman / Getty Images
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-09221-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-09222-9 (ebook)
e-ISBN 9781250092229
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: February 2018
* The “Slot,” or the tram tracks on Market Street, the widest thoroughfare in San Francisco at the time, became the social dividing line, a physical separation of blue-collar residents from the white-collar ones. Those who lived “south of the Slot” were generally considered blue-collar or new immigrants.
* Florence claimed later that she did not speak one word of French on her arrival in Paris. This was another of her “hero” stories that helped to explain away her cherished American accent when speaking French.
* Florence’s grandfather, Jean Bazille, had died in 1905.
* Rue de Luxembourg was later renamed rue Guynemer after the World War I French flying ace Georges Guynemer, who died in 1917 in battle, age twenty-two. Florinte lived nearby in a comfortable apartment in the Montparnasse quarter of the city at 10 rue Léopold-Robert.
* The Affaire became one of the four most seminal events in French history, along with the French Revolution, the occupation of France and the Vichy regime, and the May 1968 riots.
† Dreyfus served honorably in the French army during World War I. He died in 1935. The French army did not apologize until 1995.
* The first incarnation of the sewing machine was manufactured by Lerow and Blodgett some years before Singer’s, but its stitching was so crude that it was never able to replace fine hand stitching as Singer’s machine was later able to do in 1851.
* She was a great-grandmother of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, who married the American actress Grace Kelly.
* Many of Alice Pike Barney’s paintings today hang in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C.
* Vivien’s life was short (1877–1909) and marred by drug abuse. Her birth name was Pauline Mary Tarn, and she inherited her British father’s fortune at age twenty-one, moving to France permanently thereafter. Her mother became British upon her marriage, but had been born in Jackson, Michigan.
* Approximately $109 million in 2017 dollars.
* Before marrying Isabella, Singer, a one-time traveling actor with his own troupe called the Merritt Players, had fathered sixteen children without the benefit of clergy. Winnaretta’s siblings were brothers Mortimer, Washington, Paris, and Franklin, and sister Isabelle-Blanche, known as Belle-Blanche.
* Lawrence was denied the prize by the jury.
† Born Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873–1954), and nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
* By all newspaper accounts James was in Europe, but not in Pa
ris, with his brother and mother. Florence’s recollections bear out this point, too.
* Lourdes is where, in 1858, the Virgin Mary is believed to have appeared to Saint Bernadette (Marie-Bernard Soubirous). Known internationally for its Sanctuaries Notre-Dame de Lourdes, or the Domain, it is one of the most significant pilgrimage sites in Europe.
* The Heynemanns were most likely originally of Austrian descent, since Henry’s father, too, visited Austria whenever he could.
* It was opened to its first traffic on August 15, 1914.
* American arms and munitions manufacturers were thrilled by the declaration of war since the Allies—the Triple Alliance of Russia, Great Britain, and France—were unable to match German production quotas, despite a huge increase in arms production and men-under-arms. When the scandals of defective ammunition manufactured early in the war in France and Great Britain became public knowledge, the American government and investment houses delighted in extending France’s credit to the breaking point so they could “buy American.” Great Britain opted instead to correct its shoddy manufacture, fueled by war haste, at home.
* This would later become known as Hôpital Foch.
* Nellie Bly, a former star columnist for William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal-American, made ends meet while stranded in Vienna when she begged Arthur Brisbane, Hearst’s right-hand man, to become the Journal-American’s reporter on the spot. Her harrowing tales about the war from the Austrian front won many accolades. Still, her mission had less to do with journalism than with saving herself from hunger and bankruptcy. (See Brisbane Papers, Syracuse University, New York.)
† The term “doughboy” came from the buttons on the American uniforms, which resembled balls of dough.
* At an inflation rate of an average of 2.17 percent annually over 159 years, the $60,000 is worth $20,701,800 today.
* Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt already controlled the three railway lines serving New York City from the north: the New York Central, the New York and Harlem line, and the Hudson River Railroad, better known to commuting New Yorkers today as Metro North. Acquisition of the Erie Railroad was his next target.
* The “Four Hundred,” the New York social elite, were determined by the size of Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor’s ballroom, simply because that was the number of people it could comfortably accommodate. Naturally, there were more than four hundred millionaires in New York City at the time, so the jockeying for position began for who would be on the list of the four hundred for the next season.
* George was born in 1864, Edwin in 1866, Helen in 1870, Howard in 1871, Anna in 1875, and Frank in 1877.
† Roughly $4 billion today.
* When the San Francisco earthquake hit, Helen gave $100,000 to help George’s own railway workers, among others, to survive and get to safety.
* Frank thoroughly enjoyed his time at NYU, studying engineering under his cousin Alice’s husband. He remained emotionally attached to the university until he died, and bequeathed a million dollars to a building that would bear his name. On his graduation, he gave $4,000 worth of equipment, even though he was not yet twenty-one.
* Kuhn, Loeb & Co. represented the interests of the estate of Edward Harriman for the benefit of his yet-to-be-famous politician and diplomat son, W. Averell.
† Absinthe, “the green fairy,” a highly addictive drink, had been banned in France in 1915 due to its harmful effects and does not seem to have been part of Frank’s ongoing dependency.
* Mother of the poetess Anna de Noailles.
* Neosalvarsan (neoarsphenamine) was available from 1912, and was developed to replace the more effective, but more life-threatening, Salvarsan (arsphenamine). Both were highly unstable organoarsenic compounds. Sterility in women was one horrible potential outcome from the drug, but the most common side effects were extreme nausea and vomiting. It is equally possible that Frank, and even Florence, opted for mercury as a cure given the history of liver failure, severe rashes, and even death reported from Salvarsan. Its Jewish inventor, Paul Ehrlich, became a figure of hate for selling the drug at high prices. Still, the development of Salvarsan became the blueprint for the development of all pharmaceuticals in every clinical trial that followed everywhere in the world.
* Prolonged alcohol abuse can result in Korsakoff psychosis in patients, particularly if they have undergone several “drying out” periods as Frank Gould had done. It has as its root cause a thiamine (vitamin B1) deficiency that cannot be easily treated.
* Sert painted friezes for Winnaretta de Polignac’s salon. His wife, Misia, was an artist in her own right.
* In 1921, the exchange rate was 8.2 francs to the dollar. In 1924, the rate was twenty-six francs to the dollar, recovering to eighteen and a half francs per dollar by the end of the month and lasting until December 1924. By December 1925, the dollar was worth twenty-three and three-quarters francs and twenty-three and a half francs by June 1926. Sources: Statistiques journalière. Archives de la Banque de France and Federal Reserve Bulletin, 1929.
* Misia and her husband “shared” his teenage model’s pleasures in bed, until it became obvious that José preferred the model to his wife and divorced her.
* Cole Porter went to Yale with Gerald Murphy.
† Villa Saint-Louis became the Hôtel Belles-Rives in 1929 under the ownership of Russian émigré Boma and his wife, Simone Estène. Simone came from a long line of Antibes hoteliers.
* Things soon went horribly wrong for the Murphys with the illnesses and deaths of their two sons. Their story was both beautiful and tragic.
* Charles III was the great-great-grandfather of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, husband of actress Grace Kelly.
* Marie Charles Jean Melchoir de Polignac inherited his mother’s champagne business, Pommery, and was its hands-on managing director. While others may have thought he was “in trade,” de Polignac carried a noble name and heritage. His cousin, Prince Pierre, was the father of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco.
* The Juan Jazz Festival exists to this very day.
* Duchess of Marchena y Villafranca de los Caballeros was married to the institutionalized cousin of King Alfonso of Spain, making divorce impossible until his death.
* Mdivani divorced Negri and married the original “Poor Little Rich Girl” Barbara Woolworth Hutton in 1933. He was Hutton’s first husband, while actor Cary Grant was her third. She had eight marriages in all.
* He died in 1930.
* Essentially, the water was cleansed by injecting small amounts of bleach at regular intervals.
* Heynemann was sued by his second wife, who lived in the Midwest, on the grounds of desertion in 1919.
* The Volstead Act was finally repealed on December 5, 1933, although after 1931, little resource was put into upholding the law. John D. Rockefeller, a lifelong teetotaller, had initially supported the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition, but, along with many national leaders, realized the law didn’t work and later demanded that it be repealed.
* Meraud Michael Guinness (1904–1993) was an author, poet, and painter, born into the wealthy Guinness family. She lived most of her life in France, but studied art in London at the Slade School of Art, in New York, and in Paris under Francis Picabia. She married the Chilean painter Álvaro Guevara in 1929.
* The automatic taking of the husband’s nationality was changed at various dates in different countries following World War II, including in the U.S.A., France, and the United Kingdom. Today women or men marrying “internationally” need to apply for the spouse’s nationality to become a dual national in accordance with current regulations. Still, in some cases, this can only be achieved at the risk of losing one’s American citizenship. Frank’s sister, Anna, had to re-apply for her American citizenship when, in March 1939, she returned to the family’s Lyndhurst Estate in Tarrytown, New York.
* Despite its name, it was a centrist party.
* Mayor Joseph Garat and Florence’s lover, the actor Henri Garat, were not related.
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* L’Union fédérale des anciens combattants.
† Reich Youth Directorate.
* Charles G. Loeb had returned to New York to practice law at Coudert Brothers during the late 1930s, but he remained on friendly terms with the Goulds until his death.
* This occurred when a lottery, approved by the French Chamber of Deputies, to raise money to build the canal was proved fraudulent and mismanaged. The company funded by the lottery collapsed in under a year, eventually enabling the Americans to step in under Theodore Roosevelt.
* Women were not granted the vote until April 29, 1945. Women had been allowed their own bank accounts, however, since 1881, with the right extended to married women to open their own bank accounts without their husband’s approval in 1886. Source: https://www.theguardian.com/money/us-money-blog/2014/aug/11/women-rights-money-timeline-history.
* France’s 1936 population was approximately 41.9 million. Source: 1999/2003 “populstat” site: Jan Lahmeyer.
* The CGT is the Communist Union in France.
* Jean Patou’s Joy perfume first appeared in 1929 and was the first fragrance marketed for its high price. It was a huge success, despite the biting Depression, and was voted “Scent of the Century” in 2000 by the Fragrance Foundation FiFi Awards—beating Chanel’s No. 5.