Elsa Schiaparelli
Page 5
One would expect such an experience to make a permanent impression on Schiaparelli, and no doubt it did, particularly since her husband was responsible. Her only comment in her memoir is “Schiap will always remember the Channel crossing.”
A certain flatness of tone pervades Schiaparelli’s account of their stay in Nice while they were awaiting the announcement of an armistice that might or might not appear—no doubt De Kerlor was optimistically predicting its arrival every six months. The Riviera, that playground of the idle rich, seemed a logical choice. Presumably, Willie was either forecasting the outcome of the war, translating Boirac, or trolling the hotels along the Boulevard des Anglais in search of vulnerable American millionaires or Indian maharajahs who might welcome the services of a consulting psychologist. Faced with nothing to do and the lack of a goal, Schiaparelli seemed to subside into a kind of inertia. She was waiting for him, hour after hour. She was taking the train to Monte Carlo and gambling all day long. She usually lost. Once, when she was down to her last sou, the casino gave her a railway voucher for her return journey, stamped with its compliments. She would go on gambling for the rest of her life, she remarked, just not at the gambling tables.
For someone who would become so attuned to the mood of the moment, so alert to possibility, so eager to go everywhere and do everything, her apathy is hard to explain. She liked their small apartment that overlooked gardens near the sea. It was peaceful. She did not want to leave. But Willie was on the move again. Perhaps he did not like the way the war was going. His brother, Edouard, who was a year younger, was fighting with the French army in the infantry, and had been wounded several times. Was Willie about to be pressed into service? To get to Bordeaux, the port of embarkation, would mean another harrowing train trip across the country. As Harding Davis observed on his own trip south, Bordeaux was as far as, or farther from, the battle lines in the north than Naples was from the Italian front. Yet, he wrote, “the multitudes of wounded in Bordeaux, the multitudes of women in black in Bordeaux, make this one of the most appalling, most significant pictures of this war.”
They crossed the Atlantic on the SS Chicago, a passenger liner built to ferry Europeans from Le Havre to New York, most of them immigrants. Since the U.S. was still neutral at the time—it did not enter the European conflict until 1917—the trip was presumably going to be safe from German submarines, or U-boats, and their efficient torpedos. That was the theory. But the Lusitania, a Cunard liner, had been attacked after it left New York for Liverpool in May 1915, eleven miles off the coast of Ireland. Of the nearly two thousand passengers onboard, fewer than eight hundred survived. The sinking of the Lusitania caused an international furor. So had an earlier sinking, in March of 1915. This involved a similarly unarmed passenger boat, the Sussex, a channel steamer going between Dieppe and Folkestone and carrying four hundred onboard, the majority of them refugee women and children from Belgium. The torpedo tore off the vessel’s bow and at least fifty people died, either in the explosion or because they leapt overboard and drowned.
There was yet another protest. But the Germans were still going after unarmed passenger boats in the spring of 1916. In fact, on an earlier trip the SS Chicago was returning to Bordeaux when, in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of Newfoundland, it was challenged by an unknown vessel and signaled to “heave to.” Instead of that, the Chicago, commanded by Captain M. Mace, took off, full steam ahead, at the sprightly speed of 27 knots per hour, and managed to outrun its unknown assailant, a suspected German raider. Anything could happen. Some very compelling reason must have been behind Willie’s determination to leave Europe, taking his reluctant bride with him.
The Chicago, built in 1908, weighed 9,530 gross tons and was 508 feet long, just over half the length of the Titanic. In the boom days of immigration before World War I it had accommodated almost a thousand passengers, but the sinkings of the Sussex and the Lusitania had scared off anyone who did not absolutely have to travel. The cabin class, in which the De Kerlors were berthed, carried babies and children among its 134 occupants in space that could accommodate 360. Once they left harbor, the boat would have had a destroyer escort out of French waters, but then would have to depend on luck and good timing to avoid being torpedoed. A few months later, the same boat was equipped with guns.
It was a fine-looking ship: a black hull, white superstructure, twin funnels in red with black caps, and all the latest niceties of the day. These would have included a smoking room, a library, sitting rooms, progressively more splendid dining rooms for the three different classes of travel, washrooms (salt-water baths only), and a stage for evening entertainment. Grant Willard, a young American who was sailing to France with three hundred other volunteer ambulance drivers, has left a diary of his own uneventful crossing on the Chicago a year later, in May 1917. The food was plentiful and good. At dinner he had the choice of three meats, two vegetables, bread, cheese, and plenty of wine; there were concerts and lotteries and spontaneous recitals given by travellers with tolerable voices. The latest wireless bulletins from France, England, and America were posted every day. At night there was a complete blackout, with no smoking on deck and few lights burning within.
Schiaparelli’s own account of the trip is limited to a single phrase about the cabin: small and dark. They did not have to land at Ellis Island. That immigration center was closed for the duration and only enemy aliens were being held there. The Chicago went straight to its berth, Pier 57 at West Fifteenth Street. On the ship’s manifest, Schiaparelli is listed as an Italian professor from Nice. De Kerlor was even more creative. He had adroitly changed his name to “De Kerlov” and became a Russian, presumably because that country was then fighting with the Allies, ensuring a friendly reception when he appeared on American shores.
If Schiaparelli was not forthcoming about the trip, her husband was almost embarrassingly vocal about it when he was interviewed by a barrage of newspapermen, and he received prominent mention in the Sun and the Herald the following day. This magnetic Pole, elsewhere described as having “grey eyes that twinkle with appreciation and humor, and a whimsical mouth, expressive hands,” was ready to present his credentials and be prophetic about whatever they liked. Would the U.S. enter the war? Yes it would, he said, for once correctly, and the war would continue for another two and a half years. What had he forecast for the trip? He knew it would be uneventful, apart from rough weather on the sixth day out and another spell of wind and cold on the 18th. Right on all counts.
But the real coup was an argument he had with Captain Mace, which he had won, not only on the date the ship would leave, but when it would arrive. Captain Mace said they would leave at midnight on April 8. De Kerlor said the stars foretold otherwise. The ship would leave Bordeaux on the morning of the 9th. Which it did. Pressing his luck, De Kerlor then predicted that the Chicago would arrive in New York early. Impossible, the captain said. “We cannot reach New York until Friday [April 21].” De Kerlor said the augury was for midnight on Thursday, April 20. “Well, if we get in by Thursday, I’ll kiss you,” the captain replied. Right again. The newspapers reported that the captain had disappeared. De Kerlor said he would be happy to release him from his obligation.
De Kerlov, or De Kerlor, as he went back to being as soon as he reached shore, was off to a flying start. He had read the palms of several reporters, with glowing forecasts of future triumphs. That was because he wanted to see his name in the paper, the jaundiced reporters thought, but they printed his words just the same. Did he use a crystal ball? Not at all. “I have the faculty of intuition, in addition to being versed in the science of astrology.”
His intuition told him that the next president of the U.S.—elections being about to take place later that year—would be someone whose name began with an R. There would also be an L and a T in the name. The reporters were puzzled. Woodrow Wilson was in office and seemed a sure bet for a second term. “Root?” someone wondered. De Kerlor said he was not very well-versed in American politics.
They had booked into a hotel on Madison Avenue that Elsa did not like, and soon transferred to the Brevoort in Greenwich Village, which was considerably more to her taste. “They were wonderful to us, appeared to understand all our difficulties, and gave us the best lodging with the minimum expense.” They were in luck. This distinguished hotel stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Eighth Street, and by the time the De Kerlors arrived, was the place in New York for notables in the artistic, literary, and diplomatic worlds. The Prince of Wales had visited before being crowned king, attracted by its famous cuisine and wine cellar. President James A. Garfield had stayed there; so had Mark Twain, Richard Harding Davis, Edith Wharton, and Fyodor Chaliapin, among others. To stay at a prominent hotel was both a good and bad idea for Elsa. It was good for the obvious reasons when you, knowing almost no one, are eager to find the right contacts and make a good impression. But it was also bad because, she reveals, they had been living all this time on her dowry, and that was dwindling fast. An indefinite stay at a big New York hotel was about to bankrupt them, as she belatedly realized: “the fight for existence became acute …” They were living beyond their means; it would not be the first time. Movies in color were just coming into existence. Somehow she found work as a stand-in, but the lighting needed was so blinding that she could hardly see for several days.
Willie was courting the press again. In a prominent case a dentist, Arthur Warren Waite, had murdered his mother-in-law and father-in-law, and on May 27, 1916, less than two months after they arrived, he was found guilty and sentenced to die in the electric chair. He admitted his guilt, thanked the judge for a fair trial, and said he was happy to give his body to medical research. Presumably, after returning to his cell, he was also happy to sit still for a visitor, a certain “Dr. d’Kerlor,” lately arrived from Paris. This distinguished man was, he claimed, about to give a series of lectures at Columbia University. (No evidence of such lectures has been found.) In the cause of justice, “Dr. d’Kerlor” would be glad to take a few measurements of the condemned man’s head and examine his fingerprints. The doctor’s opaque verdict was that Waite had control over his actions but not his impulses. Whether he was paid for his services is not known.
As Schiaparelli tells the story, De Kerlor was roaming aimlessly, but this is hardly fair. On the contrary he was exerting his considerable energy and wit in the pursuit of earning a living and trying one approach after another. He was a famous French lecturer, author, psychologist, seer, prophet, medium, or whatever the moment called for, with disarming eagerness and a torrent of words. If so many efforts seemed doomed to fail, one has to admire his ingenuity. When Boirac’s Our Hidden Forces was published in New York in 1917, the occasion seemed to call for an eminent authority, one nevertheless with the right outlook on world affairs. He made the papers by observing that American universities seemed overly influenced by German scholarship, American industry by German ideas of efficiency, and American business by German ruthlessness. These observations were made in May, a month after the U.S. had entered the war, and would have been accepted as a salutary reminder that the German influence needed to be stamped out in the interests of a more wholesome society. “What of the finer, more subtle, more refined, life and happiness-giving French psychology?” he asked, no doubt with a twinkle in his eyes. What, indeed.
A year later De Kerlor was back promoting his new translation of a second Boirac book, The Psychology of the Future, early in 1918. For the next bout of publicity which had some circuslike aspects, he was wearing, if not a clown’s hat, the temporary title of master of ceremonies. It took the form of a press conference, held in an eighth-floor suite of the Astor Hotel, and was prepared with some care. It involved Boldie, a monkey who had just starred in Tarzan of the Apes, her professional handler, the publisher’s press agent, and “old Doc W. de Kerlor,” as the writer for the Sun put it, otherwise known as the famous French psychologist. The walls of the suite were decorated with diagrams of fingerprints, much enlarged, and an expert gave a talk about the discovery that the lines and whorls on everyone’s fingers were unique and therefore of great value in criminal prosecutions.
All this took the subject of palmistry pretty close to De Kerlor’s heart, and he was in his element as he explained that Boldie, the girl monkey, had fingerprints just like people. At that point Boldie underscored the proceedings by climbing onto the lap of the beautiful press agent, rifling through and scattering the contents of everyone’s pockets, unlatching windows, trying to jump out of windows, swinging from the chandeliers, and attempting to eat the lightbulbs. As charts demonstrating the startling nature of the doctor’s assertions were passed around, the packed audience looked grave. But then the doctor explained that people’s thumbs were much bigger, proving the superiority of the human race, and the audience gave a collective sigh of relief. This was the right moment for De Kerlor to reveal his admiration of the Boirac book. The Sun reporter returned to his particular theme or leitmotif, which had to do with the lap of the beautiful press agent and how much he would like to climb into it.
Whether by accident or design De Kerlor was giving his wife important lessons on how to seize the moment and turn it to one’s advantage. As soon as the U.S. entered the war, universal conscription came into effect, and De Kerlor made the headlines once again, this time about fighting a war. He raised the issue all decent men feared: “Are You Born Coward?” was the headline blazed across page 1 of the Tacoma Times. There was a small inset photograph of the author wearing a serious expression. There was also a profile sketch of the kind of person who was a natural-born coward: small earlobes, projecting tips of ears, high, wide forehead, aquiline nose, thin, tight lips—such a man was doomed. In fact the issue was more than a parlor game; soldiers accused of cowardice or desertion were being court-martialed and faced a firing squad.
A disinterested reader might think that the author (with his small earlobes, projecting ear tips, high, wide forehead, and aquiline nose) was describing himself. But never mind, the writer continued kindly. Such physical markers only meant you were prepared for a better fate than getting yourself killed or maimed. It paid to plan ahead. In the trenches “you might disorganize the whole command and POSSIBLY LOSE A BATTLE,” he warned. De Kerlor was also required to register for the draft, and did so in the third wave of conscriptions in September 1918, but never had to serve.
By the fall of 1917 Willie and Elsa had moved from the ruinously expensive Brevoort to a presumably less expensive apartment directly over the Café des Artistes at West Sixty-seventh Street, just off Central Park West. Despite the expense they had also taken office space in rooms 501 and 502, 373 Fifth Avenue, and opened their “Bureau of Psychology.” An investigator for the Bureau of Investigation, Justice Department (the BOI, later the FBI), dropped in one day and learned that De Kerlor was seldom there, just a young lady receptionist. That “young lady” was certainly Elsa, who must have been the person who made it all happen—letters, phone calls, and appointments, even some of the “stunts” themselves. The evidence is contained in a group of photographs in which De Kerlor, casting himself in the leading role, conducts a series of “experiments” on willing subjects, mostly his wife. If she had always been interested in psychic phenomena and astrology, Elsa became a convinced adherent at that time. In her memoir she relates that she was alone in bed one evening when she saw her father. “He sat down at the foot of the bed where he remained immobile. I looked at his drawn and pale face and wondered for a moment whether he were dead or alive.” The next day, October 26, 1919, a cable arrived from Rome to say that he had died, “at the exact moment of his
visit to me,” she wrote. This was not quite true; he died at ten in the morning. He was seventy-eight years old. “Thus I lost my strongest attachment …”
Willie commanding Elsa to demonstrate her abilities communicating with the dead (illustration credit 2.2)
Elsa being hypnotized by Willie (illustration credit 2.3)
The fact that she was closely involved in her husband’s activities is nowhere mentioned in her narrative, but much of the work required: writing letters, making dates, creating publicity, postcards and the like, must have fallen to her. For instance, one publicity stunt developed by the Bureau of Psychology came in the form of postcards which, one assumes, were delivered door to door. There was a photograph of De Kerlor on one side, and on the other was some highly unreliable information about “THE MAN WHO HAS READ ONE MILLION FACES,” i.e., that he had personally assessed the physical and mental characteristics “of such personages as the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Orleans, Enrico Caruso, W.T. Stead …” and so on. “The great man will read your face—and tell you what you really are …”
Elsa gazing into the future (illustration credit 2.4)
As for letters, Willie and Elsa put together a list of influential contacts who were sent lengthy information about the latest book, price $2.50, a chore in the days when each letter had to be separately typed up and mailed. One particular letter, found in BOI files, was addressed to New York City’s director of employment, a shrewd move. There is also an interesting flyer titled “Your Hidden Powers,” concerning the ordinary person’s unsuspected attributes. It shows a young woman seated at a table, her head resting between her hands, her eyes heavy-lidded, wearing short hair and a fringe, that turns out to be Elsa. She is gazing at a crystal ball, that asset to concentration that De Kerlor airily dismissed on arrival in New York two or three years before. Never mind, if it sold books.