Scandalous Women

Book of the Month: The Creation of Anne Boleyn

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Sun, 19 May 2013 13:46:00 +0000

Title: The Creation of Anne Boleyn

Author: Susan Bordo

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Pub Date: April 9, 2013

How Acquired: Bought

What it's about: Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life. How could Henry order the execution of a once beloved wife? Drawing on scholarship and critical analysis, Bordo probes the complexities of one of history’s most infamous relationships.

Bordo also shows how generations of polemicists, biographers, novelists, and filmmakers imagined and re-imagined Anne: whore, martyr, cautionary tale, proto “mean girl,” feminist icon, and everything in between. In this lively book, Bordo steps off the well-trodden paths of Tudoriana to expertly tease out the human being behind the competing mythologies.

What the critics are saying:

"A great read for Boleyn fans and fanatics alike"
—Kirkus Reviews

"Ms. Bordo offers a fascinating discussion... a strangely tasty book."—The New York Times

"The University of Kentucky humanities chair does a superb job of separating fact from fiction in contemporary accounts of Boleyn’s life, before deftly deconstructing the myriad and contradictory portraits of her that have arisen in the centuries since her death. . . . The young queen has been the source of fascination for nearly half a millennium, and her legacy continues; this engaging portrait culminates with an intriguing exploration of Boleyn’s recent reemergence in pop culture." —Publishers Weekly

About the author: SUSAN BORDO, Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at University of Kentucky, is the author of Unbearable Weight and The Male Body.

My thoughts: It seemed fitting that I should choose The Creation of Anne Boleyn on the anniversary of Anne Boleyn's execution. When I first picked up this book, I felt a sense of schadenfreude. This was a book that I wish that I had written but once I started reading it, I felt a sense of kinship with the author. She gets it! She was just as obssessed with Anne Boleyn as I am! If you were annoyed with The Tudors or you just want to dig deep into the life of Anne Boleyn and how people's perceptions of her have changed over the centuries, I urge you to pick up a copy of this book. It is must for every Anne Boleyn fan out tehre.

Review: Black Venus

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Tue, 07 May 2013 14:12:00 +0000

Title: Black Venus

Author: James MacManus

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Pub Date: May 7, 2013

How Acquired: From the publicist

What it’s About: A vivid novel of Charles Baudelaire and his lover Jeanne Duval, the Haitian cabaret singer who inspired his most famous and controversial poems, set in nineteenth-century Paris.

For readers who have been drawn to The Paris Wife, Black Venus captures the artistic scene in the great French city decades earlier, when the likes of Dumas and Balzac argued literature in the cafes of the Left Bank. Among the bohemians, the young Charles Baudelaire stood out—dressed impeccably thanks to an inheritance that was quickly vanishing. Still at work on the poems that he hoped would make his name, he spent his nights enjoying the alcohol, opium, and women who filled the seedy streets of the city.

One woman would catch his eye—a beautiful Haitian cabaret singer named Jeanne Duval. Their lives would remain forever intertwined thereafter, and their romance would inspire his most infamous poems—leading to the banning of his masterwork, Les Fleurs du Mal, and a scandalous public trial for obscenity.

My thoughts: I knew very little about Charles Baudelaire before reading this book. I had read some of his poetry in one of my French classes in college, and I had heard something about Jeanne Duval, but that was all that I knew. So when I heard that a new novel was coming out about Baudelaire and his mistress Jeanne Duval, I was eager to read it. First of all, the cover is beautifully rendered; I would have picked up the book just for the cover alone. There were so many things that I enjoyed about this book, the intimate view of bohemian Paris, that some might be familiar with from the opera La Bohème. The book starts in 1842, when Baudelaire is about to turn 21; he’s a dandy who spends his allowance on expensive clothes, fine wines and food, and his nights hanging out with his bohemian friends in the cafes and restaurants of Paris. But Baudelaire is different from his friends, he’s aware of the hypocrisy of their lives. They are not true bohemians; they have warm homes and families that they can retreat to after a night out on the town. His mother worries about his extravagant lifestyle, that he is determined to ruin himself. Baudelaire believes that he will be the greatest poet that France has ever seen, although he rejects the Romanticism that has prevailed in literature since the end of the 18^th century. He wants to write about the reality of life, pain, death, and sex. Unfortunately for Baudelaire, what sells are poems about nature, flowers and love.

One night on the town, he stumbles into a cabaret where Jeanne Duval is singing. She’s a mulatto from Haiti, who fled her homeland, hoping that Paris would offer her a better life. In a way, both Baudelaire and Duval are both outcasts which draw them together. That and their mutual desire for opium. MacManus does an amazing job of recreating this world for the reader, not just delving into Baudelaire and Jeanne’s worlds but also the outside world. Paris during this period is changing, from the monarchy of Louis Philippe to the reign of Napoleon III, from a Paris that has changed little from the middle ages to the modern city of wide boulevards that Baron Haussmann created.

What I found difficult was trying to understand not what drew Baudelaire and Jeanne together but kept them together for 16 years. As MacManus describes the relationship, Jeanne was not in love with Baudelaire or he with her. Was it lust? Or their mutual love of opium that kept them together. Jeanne not only slept with his friends, but she was openly disdainful of his work, believing that he would never be a success as a poet. Once she realizes that Baudelaire no longer has the money to keep her in the lifestyle to which she would like to become accustomed, why does she stay with him? MacManus can’t answer that question. In fact, he writes that neither Jeanne nor Baudelaire knew what kept them together. They seem to be two people who can neither live with each other or without each other. That kind of co-dependency can be unpleasant after a while.

Truthfully, I found both Baudelaire and Jeanne not very sympathetic or likeable people. Although the book is incredibly well-written, it wasn’t easy to spend time reading about people you just want to smack. I found Baudelaire to be selfish, childish, jealous and petulant. Jeanne is made of tougher stuff. She’s smart enough to know that because of her color, she would never be able to launch herself as a courtesan the way Marie Duplessis was able to.

While Black Venus didn’t fulfill all of my expectations, I did find it a compelling read of an era that one doesn’t often find in historical fiction.

Review: A Spear of Summer Grass

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 15:20:00 +0000

Title: A Spear of Summer Grass

Author: Deanna Raybourn
Publisher: Harlequin/Mira
Pub Date: April 30, 2013
How Acquired: Through Net Galley

What it’s About: The daughter of a scandalous mother, Delilah Drummond is already notorious, even among Paris society. But her latest scandal is big enough to make even her oft-married mother blanch. As punishment, Delilah is exiled to Kenya and her favorite stepfather's savanna manor house, Fairlight, until gossip subsides. Fairlight is the crumbling, sun-bleached skeleton of a faded African dream, a world where dissolute expats are bolstered by gin and jazz records, cigarettes and safaris. Against the frivolity of her peers, Ryder White stands in sharp contrast. As foreign to Delilah as Africa, Ryder becomes her guide to the complex beauty of this unknown world. Giraffes, buffalo, lions and elephants roam the shores of Lake Wanyama amid swirls of red dust. Here, life is lush and teeming—yet fleeting and often cheap.

Amidst the wonders—and dangers—of Africa, Delilah awakes to a land out of all proportion: extremes of heat, darkness, beauty and joy that cut to her very heart. Only when this sacred place is profaned by bloodshed does Delilah discover what is truly worth fighting for—and what she can no longer live without.

Why you should buy it: I’ve been interested in British Africa between the wars, ever since I saw the film White Mischief. So when I read that one of my favorite writers, Deanna Raybourn, had a book coming out set in that time period, I couldn’t wait to read it. I started the book on Saturday on my bus ride to Boston and couldn’t put it down. From the moment that Delilah set her dainty foot on African soil, I was completely mesmerized. I read it on the T, at dinner, during intermission at the Lyric Stage Company, before bed, and kept on reading it until I finished it on the bus ride back home to New York. And then I was depressed, because the book was done and I had to say good-bye to Delilah and Ryder, two of the most interesting characters that I have met in historical fiction in a long time. Not even the knowledge that Raybourn has another book coming out set during the same time period could assuage my grief. This book made me want to immediately book a safari in Africa but the Abercrombie & Fitch kind with the air-conditioned tents, and four star cuisine.

What can I say about Delilah Drummond that hasn’t already been said by critics who have universally acclaimed A Spear of Summer Grass? Delilah is spoiled, petulant, impulsive, promiscuous, vain, sarcastic, intelligent, and too stubborn for her own good. It takes her forever to admit what we, the reader already knows, that she has not only fallen in love with Ryder White, but she has fallen head over heels in love with Africa. Oh, and I have mentioned that she is fiendishly loyal to both ex-husbands and friends? There times when I wanted to throttle Delilah, particularly when she is being beastly to her cousin Dodo. But as Delilah grew and changed, so did my feelings towards her. Delilah is like an onion, the book slowly peels back the layers to reveal the pain underneath. Like many people, Delilah’s life was marked by the First World War. She’s been trying to mask the pain by dancing, drinking and shagging the night away. By the time she does an impulsively heroic act towards the end of the book, I wanted to be her best friend.

And then there is Ryder White. Be still my foolish heart, if it were possible to marry a fictional character, I would want to marry Ryder White. How can one resist a man who can quote Walt Whitman? A man who can take down a lion with ease but who respects nature, the land and the natives? A man who is also kind and generous as well as being stubborn and proud? Ryder is a man’s man, handsome, brave and a little rough around the edges (all those years living in the Yukon and Africa). He has been through a great deal of pain in his life but he doesn’t let it define him. In fact, before you read Spear of Summer Grass, I suggest you read Raybourn’s prequel novella Far in the Wilds for a glimpse of Ryder before the novel starts. I guarantee you will fall just as madly in love with Ryder as I have.

In fact, all the characters in this book are wonderfully flawed and deliciously quirky, including Tusker, Ryder’s aunt, Kit, the promiscuous self-absorbed artist, Rex and Helen, the long married couple with secrets, and Gideon and Moses. I could gush all day about the wonderful scenes between Gideon, a Masai warrior who becomes Delilah’s protector and friend, and Delilah. All these characters have suffered something whether it is loss of a loved one, or the pain of being a spinster. It is Africa that heals them, that gives purpose and meaning to their lives. Raybourn doesn’t shy away from describing just how hard life in Africa was, how few modern conveniences, the tensions between the colonialists and the natives, and the differing viewpoints on what direction Kenya or British East Africa should go in. To the Europeans, Africa was their Wild West, the final frontier. I do agree with some reviewers who felt that the political situation in Kenya is rather glossed over. I’m still a little unsure as to what was going on at the time. And I’m not sure that the novel needed a murder mystery. It occurred so late in the book, that the denouement seemed rushed to me. The book is at its best when the focus is on Delilah’s relationship with Africa, and her developing relationship with Ryder.

At first when I was reading the book, I tried to imagine what real life characters that lived in Kenya in the early 20^th century Raybourn might have based her characters on. After a while I was so entranced by the story, that I started imagining what actors might play what roles in the miniseries (please make this happen). I definitely see Hayley Atwell (Captain America) as Delilah, Laura Carmichael (Lady Edith in Downton Abbey) as Dodo and Judi Dench as Tusker. Who should play Ryder is the tricky one; I would have said Clive Owen about ten years ago or even Russell Crowe when I still liked him. If Jonathan Cake were a big enough star, I would say that he would make an excellent Ryder as would Richard Armitage, if he lightened his hair.

The verdict: A powerful and poignant novel about redemption and the human spirit told by a master storyteller.

The Girl Who Loved Camellia’s - The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 19:32:00 +0000

Title: The Girl Who Loved Camellia’s - The Life and Legend of Marie Duplessis

Author: Julie Kavanagh
Publisher: Knopf
Pub Date: June 11, 2013
How Acquired: Through Edelweiss

What it’s about: The astonishing and unknown story of Marie Duplessis, the courtesan who inspired Alexandre Dumas fils’s novel and play La dame aux camélias, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata, George Cukor’s film Camille, and Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand. Fascinating to both men and women, Marie, with her stylish outfits and signature camellias, was always a subject of great interest at the opera or at the Café de Paris, where she sat at the table of the director of the Paris Opéra, along with the director of the Théâtre Variétés, and others. Her early death at age twenty-three from tuberculosis created an outpouring of sympathy, noted by Charles Dickens, who wrote in February 1847: “For several days all questions political, artistic, commercial have been abandoned by the papers. Everything is erased in the face of an incident which is far more important, the romantic death of one of the glories of the demi-monde, the beautiful, the famous Marie Duplessis.”

About the Author: Julie Kavanagh is the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton and Nureyev. She was trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet Junior School, graduated from Oxford, and has been the arts editor of Harpers & Queen, a dance critic at The Spectator, and London editor of both Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. She is currently a writer and contributing editor for The Economist’s cultural magazine, Intelligent Life.

My thoughts: One of the first women that I wrote about on the blog way back in 2007 was Marie Duplessis. Like many of the women that I’ve written about, I’ve long been a little obsessed, ever since I saw the film of Camille with Greta Garbo when I was a teenager. As soon as I learned that it was based on a novel, of course I had to read it. Thanks to the helpful introduction, I learned that the novel was based on an actual person, Marie Duplessis or as she was known as a child, Alphonsine Plessis. Back in high school, there was no such thing as the internet (I know it’s hard to believe. How did we ever live without it?), so I was never able to do much research on Marie’s life. I did however read the original play and also Pam Gem’s adaptation. And who hasn’t seen the movie with Greta Scacchi and a young Colin Firth as Armand? (If you haven’t, it’s available on DVD!). I had wanted to include Marie in Scandalous Women but unfortunately she ended up on the cutting room floor. My word count was so short that I had to limit myself to only 35 women.

So I was excited and a little bit jealous that Julie Kavanagh had written a biography of Marie. When I was doing my research on Marie for my post, the only two books that had any real information on her was Virginia Rounding’s The Grand Horizontales and Joanna Richardson’s book Courtesans. Digging deep into the archives at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris as well as brushing up on her French, Kavanagh has been able to dig deep into Marie’s past in Normandy to reveal more information about her early life. Born Alphonsine Rose Plessis, her early life was a Dickensian nightmare. Drunken brute of a father who may have sexually as well as physically abused her, a mother who died young, Marie learned how to take care of herself from an early age. As soon as she could, she left Normandy for Paris, where she worked in a millinery shop before taking her first tentative steps into the world of the demi-monde.

Kavanagh does a remarkable job not only of giving the bare facts of Marie’s life but she takes the reader on a journey into Paris in the last years of Louis-Philippe’s reign. It’s the Paris of Les Miserables, before the sweeping changes made by Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann. In the 19^th century, Paris was the place to be for culture, painters such as Coubert and Delacroix, the romantic ballets Giselle and La Sylphide premiered in Paris, writers such as Hugo, George Sand, Balzac and Theophile Gautier. Like London, Paris also saw the rise of the bourgeois, men who made their money working as lawyers, doctors, inventors, and industrialists. No longer was Paris the playground solely of the aristocracy.

The Girl Who Loved Camellia’s is not just a biography of one of the most well-known courtesans of the early 19^th century but also a social biography of a time period in French history that is not often written about compared to the La Belle Époque era or the era of the Impressionists. One of the hardest things to do in a biography is to give not only a sense of who the subject was but why he or she was so popular during their lifetime. What impressed me the most was how Kavanagh was able to convey that unique something that Marie had that made her unique in Paris, a combination of innocence and sensuality. Despite her profession, Marie never seemed to be bitter or jaded. Even her taste for luxury seems more innocent that avaricious. Kavanagh quotes liberally from both Dumas fils’s novel as well as the biography of Marie written by Romain Vienne, an old friend from Normandy who moved to Paris to work as a journalist at the same time that Marie was making her name as a courtesan, which gives an immediate and intimate look at who she was as a person.

At one point in the book, Kavanagh draws a parallel between Marie and Lola Montez who was an acquaintance of Marie’s in Paris. While Lola was brash, bold, and seemingly fearless, Marie was altogether more demure and lady-like. Yet they came from similar backgrounds and managed to reinvent themselves. Neither woman had a real Pygmalion figure in their lives that molded them. Marie learned by watching her betters so to speak. Not only did Marie have a desire to learn, but being a successful courtesan meant that one needed to be able to carry on a conversation with wit and intelligence. At the time of her death, Marie’s library contained 200 volumes but one of the books that she read the most was Abbe Prevost’s novel Manon Lescaut, the story of a young courtesan who dies tragically.

Perhaps one of the reasons that Marie’s story continues to fascinate whether in fiction or film or opera is because she died so tragically young of consumption at the age of 23. She never grew old and suffered the fate of other courtesans such as Cora Pearl. Like James Dean, she’s forever young. My only quibble with Kavanagh’s book is that I wish she had taken the book further and written more about Marie’s impact and influence on Dumas fils’s novel and play, the Verdi opera, Cukor’s famous film or even the ballets that have been inspired by Marie’s life. There is a little bit in the beginning of the book but I found myself wishing for more.

Verdict: A brilliant recreation of the short, intense, and passionate life of the courtesan who inspired some of the world’s most romantic and tragic literature.

The Many Lives of Beryl Markham

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 00:54:00 +0000

“A life has to move or it stagnates. Even this life, I think. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday.” – Beryl Markham

Two of my favorite writers, Lauren Willig and Deanna Raybourn, have writers have novels set in Kenya during the 1920’s. I have previously written about some of the denizens of the Happy Valley Set (Alice de Janze, Idina Sackville) before but I was all of a sudden inspired to read more about Beryl Markham. Way back in the 1980’s, after OUT OF AFRICA was released, there was a miniseries on CBS called SHADOW ON THE SUN starring Stephanie Powers as Markham. I vaguely remember a scene were Powers as Markham says “I’ve flown the Atlantic” in a really terrible English accent. Born in England but raised in Kenya, Beryl Markham was a notorious beauty. She trained race horses and had scandalous affairs, but she is most remembered for being a pioneering aviatrix. She became the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean and the first person to make it from London to New York nonstop. She also left the world an amazing memoir ‘West with the Night’ which was re-released in 1983, forty years after its initial publication, reintroducing the world to the fascinating life of Beryl Markham.

She was born Beryl Clutterbuck in on October 26, 1902 in the village of Ashwell in Leicestershire, the youngest child of Charles and Clare Clutterbuck. When she was a toddler, her father moved to Kenya, where he had purchased a farm in Njoro. Once he was settled, he sent for Beryl, her mother and her older brother Richard. Beryl was four years old at the time. Unfortunately her mother couldn’t stand the isolation and promptly returned to England, taking Beryl’s older brother with her. Beryl wouldn’t see her mother again until she was an adult. Beryl never forgave her mother for abandoning her; it colored her relationships with women for the rest of her life. Of course, she hero-worshipped her father; he could do no wrong in her eyes. She would compare every man she fell in love with to her father, most of whom were found wanting in the end.

With her father busy training and racing horses, Beryl was basically left to raise herself; her only company the African servants who worked on the farm. Left mainly to her own devices, Beryl grew up wild, running barefoot, without the restrictions and conventions of a traditional English upbringing, which she referred to as “a world without walls.” She spent her days in the company of animals and the local tribes. Her first language was Swahili not English. She was the only white woman permitted to hunt with the male warriors, and she was equally adept with both a spear and a rifle. In many ways, her sensibilities were more African than European. She didn’t treat the Africans who worked for her father as inferior. She learned their languages and absorbed their love of the land. Later on, her father hired a governess, a woman named Mrs. Orchardson. Beryl hated her, particularly after her father and Mrs. Orchardson formed a liaison. She preferred to live in a mud hut and later on her own house on the farm, rather than live under the same roof as Mrs. Orchardson. Her dislike didn’t extend to Mrs. Orchardson’s son Arthur, who became a playmate and later on, worked for Beryl as a jockey.

From childhood, Beryl had an affinity for animals, particularly horses. She could calm even the most recalcitrant horses. In her 84 years on the plant, Beryl’s great loves would be her father, horses and Africa. Although she only had 2 ½ years of actual schooling in Nairobi until she was kicked out for being a bad influence, Beryl was always a great reader throughout her life, thanks to both her father and lovers such as Denys Finch-Hatton and Tom Campbell-Black. Her upbringing meant that Beryl would never be a conventional Englishwoman. It also meant that she grew up practicing the art of survival, that “the end justifies the means.” She could be ruthless and amoral, using people and then discarding them. She often took advantage of friends, running up huge bills on their accounts, without guilt. Outwardly confident, she was also deeply insecure. Blessed with abundant charm, it was hard for her friends to stay mad at her for long.

As an adult, Beryl was almost six feet tall, blonde, blue-eyed with the figure of a super model. Although she grew up a tomboy, Beryl was also incredibly feminine. She loved perfume, ointments, and lotions. She also had regular manicures and salon appointments all throughout her life. All of her clothes were beautifully cut, trousers that emphasized the length of her legs, worn with silk shirts which became her trademark. She wore a great deal of white which emphasized her tan, and her blonde hair. She was striking more than beautiful, with a vibrant personality. When she walked into a room, heads turned. The first woman to earn a license as a horse trainer in not just in Kenya but England as well, Beryl spent most of her time around men and animals. She had few female friends, but those she did have like Karen Blixen, tended to be more maternal, treating her more like an errant daughter.

Beryl was married three times, none of them successful. She married for the first time just before her 17^th birthday to Jock Purves, an ex-soldier turned farmer, who was twice her age. The marriage like her other two foundered under the weight of Beryl’s infidelities. Beryl didn’t know the first thing about the responsibilities of being a wife, nor did she grow up with many examples of a good marriage. Her father lived with a married woman, her mother remarried while abroad, and all around her Beryl saw casual infidelities. The members of the Happy Valley Sets swapped partners the way other people swapped recipes. Beryl was also fundamentally selfish and too independent to be confined in marriage. Some biographers claim that Beryl’s third husband, journalist and ghost writer Raoul Schumacher, may have been the actual author of her memoir West with the Night, although Mary S. Lovell in her wonderful biography Straight On Till Morning disputes that claim. If it were true, it would be the only thing that he contributed during their short marriage. Nor did motherhood interest her. She gave birth to her only child, a son Gervase, during her second marriage to Mansfield Markham. After he was born, she dropped off with her mother-in-law who essentially raised him. Occasionally she would visit her son, if she happened to be in England. She saw him for the final time soon after he married in 1955. She never saw him again after that, nor did she ever meet her granddaughters.

A clairvoyant once told Beryl that while she would have great success in life, she would never be truly happy. She never forgot it. Beryl treated sex more like a man, as a necessary function like brushing one’s teeth, or eating. Very few of her lovers touched her heart. She had a scandalous affair with Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester. The son of George V, Beryl met him when he accompanied his brother, the Prince of Wales on safari. Unfortunately they were not very discreet. When Beryl’s husband at the time, Mansfield Markham found out, he threatened to sue for divorce and name the Prince as a correspondent. In order to keep his name name out of the courts, Prince Henry agreed to put £15,000 into at trust for Beryl, which would pay her an annuity for the rest of her life. The only two men, besides her father, that Beryl ever really loved were Denys Finch-Hatton and Tom Campbell-Black. Both men inspired in her a love of flying and both affairs ended in tragedy. Beryl’s relationship with Finch-Hatton started soon after his affair with Karen Blixen ended, although some of Blixen’s friends believe that Beryl stole him from her. Finch-Hatton introduced her to music and literature, in many ways they were perfect for each other. Neither one had any interest in getting married, or leading a conventional life. Who knows where their relationship might have gone if he hadn’t died in a plane crash.

If anyone could be considered the love of Beryl’s life it would be Tom Campbell-Black. Like Denys Finch-Hatton, he was someone that she had known most of her life. It was he who made sure that she had a thorough education before she took her first solo flight. He made sure that she strip down and repair an airplane engine, how to replace spark plugs, and how to clear jets. She learned how to read maps and to have a thorough knowledge of the instruments. As she did when she was training horses, Beryl kept meticulous records of all her flights. It took 18 months, and a thousand hours in the air; but she soon became the first woman to earn a commercial pilot’s license. From the beginning, flying appealed to her sense of adventure. She ferried people to distant farms, flew mail routes, rescued pilots who had crashed, acted as a spotter for the big game hunters, an an informal air-ambulance service, and could tell from the air where herds of elephants were. This was at a time when air travel was still in its infancy; Beryl often flew with no radio or air-speed indicator, and very few instruments. She was fearless, whether in the air, or riding horses. She even surprised Tom by flying from Nairobi to England solo! While horse racing had been a man’s game, flying was wide open to both men and women. By the time Beryl became interested in flying, several women had already made names for themselves, Amelia Earhart, Amy Johnson, Jackie Cochran and Mary, Duchess of Bedford among them.

In 1936, Beryl Markham became the first woman to fly solo and nonstop from east to west across the Atlantic. No one had made a successful non-stop flight from England to North America, and no woman had crossed the Atlantic from east to west. Amelia Earhart had flown successfully solo across the Atlantic, but she had done it from North America, which was considered the ‘easy way.’ Before the flight, Beryl trained like an athlete, giving up smoking and drinking, and exercising daily to build up her stamina. She pored over maps for hours, plotting what the best route was across the ocean. There were so many factors to consider. She needed a grand total of 6 fuel tanks to make it, if the weather cooperated. For inspiration, Beryl would often visit the factory in Gravesend, England to watch her plane, The Messenger, being built.

She left on Friday, September 4, 1936, after waiting several days for the weather to clear. The crossing was rough from the beginning. Headwinds were driving hard against the plane, reducing her speed to only 90 miles an hour. Four hours in, one of the engines quit, and the first fuel tank was empty. She flew blind for nineteen hours before she crash landed in a peat bog in Nova Scotia, leaving the plane badly damaged. She was lucky to walk away from the nose-in crash with only a small head injury. Despite the fact that she didn’t make it to New York, she was feted and lionized for her daring and skill. Beryl Markham was now a hero. Ironically, one of the reasons that Beryl attempted the flight was to impress Tom Campbell-Black who had surprised her by falling in love and marrying another woman while abroad in England. Beryl hoped that her feat would bring him back to her arms. Unfortunately, Tom Campbell-Black was killed in a freak accident before Beryl could make her case.

Without Campbell-Black to guide and motivate her, Beryl lost interest in flying. She spent the war years in California, doing some work as a technical advisor on a film entitled Safari. She wrote West with the Night in 1942, but although the critics raved, it was not a popular success. There was interest in making a movie about Beryl’s transatlantic flight, starring Beryl, but her screen test proved to be a bust. Finally, in the 1950’s, Beryl returned to Kenya and her first love, horses. For the next twenty years she had great success training and racing horses, including 6 Kenya Derby winners. Unfortunately for Beryl she spent too much time on the horses, and not enough time on her finances. Beryl had lived her life just assuming that money would turn up when she needed it. By 1980, she was living in squalor with just a few horses. But like the mythical Phoenix that is a symbol of the sign of Scorpio, Beryl rose from the ashes once again. The 1983 republication of her memoir West with the Night brought her new found fame and allowed her to live her remaining years in comfort.

After a brief bout with pneumonia, Beryl Markham passed away on August 3, 1986. She was 83 years old.

For further reading:Mary S. Lovell, Straight on Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham. New York: St Martin’s Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-01096-6

Errol Trzebinski, The Lives of Beryl Markham. New York: W.W. Norton. 1993. ISBN 0-393-03556-5.

Napoleon's Women: The Life of Madame de Stael

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 14:45:00 +0000

In her lifetime, it was said there were three great powers in Europe: Britain, Russia and Madame de Staël. She was a political and literary intellectual giant in an age when women weren't expected to be either. She was also crucial in putting together the coalition that brought down Napoleon, most of the important treaty negotiations between Russia and Sweden against Napoleon were conducted through Madame de Staël. After Napoleon's fall, her salon in Paris was where the attempts at constitutional monarchy were framed. She was also an accomplished writer of novels (Delphine, Corrine or Italy), travel writing (her three volume work ‘On Germany’ was heralded at the time), pamphleteer (she wrote a spirited defense of Marie Antoinette) and literary critic (On Literature) who pretty much invented comparative literature. During the reign of terror, Germaine used her status as a Swiss citizen to save the lives of at least a dozen people. Unlike her contemporaries Fanny Burney and Jane Austen (who she had no use for), Madame de Staël is not as well known today as they are. Her colorful life seems to have overshadowed her very real contributions to literature.

She was born Anne Louise Germaine Necker on April 22, 1766, the only child of Jacques and Suzanne Necker. Germaine’s mother was something of an 18^th century Tiger Mom, determined that her little darling would be the most brilliant and articulate child in France. From an early age, Germaine had a steady diet of mathematics, philosophy, religion, and languages. By the age of 3, she could already recite her catechism. Suzanne was a devotee of Rousseau, but she seems to have read the abridged version of his work because she kept Germaine isolated from other children, worried that they might corrupt her child. The upshot was that Germaine suffered a nervous collapse at the age of 12 from overwork. Her doctors prescribed plenty of rest in the country, and play dates with children her own age which her mother reluctantly agreed too. The one good thing her mother did for was invite her to her salons (where she was instructed to be seen and not heard) where she was able to listen to some of the most brilliant minds of the day such as the Abbé Raynal, Marmontel, Buffon, and Jean-Francois de la Harpe. For the rest of her life, Germaine resented her mother for working her to death and her lack of affection.

The only thing that she and her mother had in common was their love and devotion to Jacques Necker, a Swiss Protestant who rose from unimportant clerk to the Director of Finance under Louis XVI (it was said that his dismissal in 1788 was one of the causes of the storming of the Bastille). Suzanne was devoted to him since he rescued her from a life of spinsterhood as a governess after a thwarted romance with the historian Edward Gibbons. She would do whatever she could to promote his career, including holding a Friday night salon in Paris, training herself to become an interesting conversationalist, which did not come naturally to her. Germaine loved him and he doted on her and adored his only child who he nicknamed ‘Minette’. For many years, she considered him to be the love of her life, although all of her lovers were the complete opposite of her sober, puritanical father.

Germaine was striking rather than beautiful with a flamboyant style of dress (girlfriend knew how to rock a turban). She was tall, but rather clumsy (she tripped over her train when she made her debut at court and fell on her face) with abundant black hair, large hazel eyes, beautiful shoulders, and a generous bosom. While not a great beauty, she was also good-humored, vivacious and more important, a witty conversationalist, not afraid to share her opinions, the exact opposite of her mother. And to put the cherry on top of the cake, she was the richest heiress in France. A host of suitors showed up at the Necker front door, including William Pitt the younger, who was turned down because Germaine didn’t want to live so far away from her two great loves: Paris and her daddy. If she had, she would have been the wife of the youngest Prime Minister in British history.

Instead the winner of her hand was Erik Magnus Staël von Holstein, a nobleman eighteen years her senior, who was first attaché of the Swedish legation. He also had a gambling problem which made Necker think twice about having him as a son-in-law. He would only agree to the marriage if the King of Sweden promised to make de Staël lifetime ambassador to France and a title. In return, Sweden received several acres of land on St. Bart’s. Germaine was now the Baroness de Stael, and the wife of an ambassador, a much higher position at court and in society than she would have achieved by marrying a Frenchman. However it was Germaine who proved the more effective envoy. She wrote long letters to the Gustavus IV of Sweden, reporting on the progress of the reformist ideas that were circulating in her salons.

The couple was soon living separate lives. Germaine consoled herself by creating one of the most brilliant salons in Paris. Unlike her mother’s salon which was created mainly to promote Necker, Germaine’s salon gathered some of the most brilliant minds of pre-revolutionary France including Talleyrand, Abbé Delille, Clermont-Tonnerre, and Gouverneur Morris. Later on in Switzerland during the terror and her long exiles, she turned the family chateau at Coppet, into an intellectual powerhouse and asylum for those who opposed Napoleon. Germaine knew or became good friends with most of the intelligentsia of late 18^th and early 19^th century Europe including Byron, Schiller, Goethe, Chateaubriand, the Duke of Wellington, Fanny Burney (until her father forbid her to associate with Germaine) and Juliette Recamier (one of her closest friends). After the Terror, her salon served as a resort for all the restless politicians of the day and she was once considered a person dangerous to the state. She hosted dinner parties where she invited people with varying opinions and on other days she entertained separately the leaders of the various cliques.

Germaine became intimate friends with among others Talleyrand, Narbonne, and the Swiss-born politician Benjamin Constant. Constant came closest to being both the intellectual equal as well as the ardent lover that Germaine had searched for her entire life. Of her five children, only one could be said to be definitively her husband’s. She also had a large entourage of admirers, who orbited around her, hoping against hope that they would get the chance to be more than just a friend. Although she was considered plain by some, Germaine clearly had sex appeal. She was also apparently a demanding lover. “I have never known a woman who was more continuously exacting…Everybody’s entire existence, every hour, every minute, for years on end, must be at her disposition, or else there is an explosion like all thunderstorms and earthquakes put together,” Benjamin Constant once wrote. And he lived with her on and off for seventeen years! Even after he secretly married, he found it hard to tear himself away from Germaine. The two of them forged an intellectual and romantic partnership that was also incredibly co-dependent. It was a classic love/hate relationship. Frankly Germaine sounds both exhilarating as well as exhausting. One of her biographers, Francine du Plessix Gray, speculates that Germaine may have suffered from manic depression. Her final companion was John Rocca, a handsome but poorly educated former Swiss soldier half her age, who she married secretly (her husband had died in 1802) who she referred to as ‘nothing but a little Scottish melody in my life’.

And then there was that little feud with Napoleon. Germaine was fully prepared to jump on the ‘Napoleon is Great!’ bandwagon when she first met him but he was immune to her charms, nor was he interested in hearing her ideas of how to make France great. At their first meeting, she asked him who he thought was the greatest woman in history, he told her that it was the woman who’d had the most children. Napoleon was a misogynist at heart; he disliked intellectual, mouthy women. He preferred submissive, feminine women, more like his wife Josephine or his later mistress Marie Walewska. He once leaned over and remarked leeringly at her cleavage, remarking that she must have breast-fed her children. As Napoleon’s power grew, so did Germaine’s opposition to what became his dictatorship. Her own preference was for a moderate republic or a constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately for Germaine, she couldn’t keep her mouth shut, encouraging Constant to speak in opposition of certain government proposals, although he was strongly advised not to do so by others. Napoleon never forgave her for Constant’s speech and in retaliation, he not only spied on her, censored her books, actually pulping one in mid-printing (On Germany), threatened her with prison, and also exiled her from France on at least three separate occasions between 1803 and 1812.

During her time in exile, she did some of her finest writing. Her novel Corinne or Italy, published in 1807 had a huge impact on women readers outside of France. Corinne’s heroine broke the mold, as a woman and as an artist; she was beautiful, imperious, highly strung and emotionally vulnerable. Many young women consciously modeled themselves after Corinne, including Byron’s Italian mistress Teresa Guiccioli, the British poet Felicia Hemans and Margaret Fuller. Corinne became an international symbol of Romanticism, just as much as Goethe’s Werther. The novel outsold the works of Sir Walter Scott, has never been out of print since.

In On Germany, Germaine compared and contrasted the differences between southern European literature, which stressed classical style, intellectual rationalism, and antiquity, and northern literature, which emphasized emotionalism, folklore, and nationalistic themes. While praising both, she advocated for a spreading of the northern, romantic variety. She also stressed the concept of nature as a cosmic oneness expressible through literature, especially poetry. These notions profoundly influenced Chateaubriand, François-René, Byron, Emerson, and countless other writers and thinkers around the world.

During her final years, Germaine began to suffer from intense stomach pains, probably from years of opium abuse. After a cerebral stroke left her paralyzed, she died on July 14, 1817 (Bastille Day) at the age of 51. Her young husband survived her by only six months before he died from tuberculosis.

Further reading:

Francine du Plessix Gray, Madame de Staël: The First Modern Woman, Atlas & Co., 2008

Maria Fairweather, Madame de Staël. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005

Christopher J. Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël. New York: Grove Press, 2002

Renee Winegarten, Germaine de Staël & Benjamin Constant: a Dual Biography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008 (ISBN 9780300119251).

Book of the Month: Mistress of My Fate by Hallie Rubenhold

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 15:37:00 +0000

Title: Mistress of My Fate (The Confessions of Henrietta Lightfoot)

Author: Hallie Rubenhold
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Pub Date: January 8, 2013

What it’s About: Set during a period of revolution and turmoil, Mistress of My Fate is the first book in a trilogy about Henrietta Lightfoot, a young woman who was abandoned as a baby and raised alongside her cousins, noble children of a lord and lady. At just sixteen years old, circumstance and a passionate love affair tear Henrietta away from everything she knows, leading to a new life fending for herself on the streets of 18th century London as a courtesan, gambler, and spirited intellect of the city.

About the Author:

Hallie Rubenhold is an historian and broadcaster and an authority on British eighteenth-century social history. She has written two works of non-fiction to critical acclaim: The Convent Garden Ladies and Lady Worsley's Whim: An Eighteenth-Century Tale of Sex, Scandal and Divorce. In addition to writing books, articles and reviews, Hallie regularly appears on TV in the UK as an expert contributor to documentaries. Hallie lives in London with her husband.

Why you should buy it: I was lucky enough to get a cover blurb from Hallie Rubenhold when Scandalous Women was about to come out two years ago (has it really been that long?), so when she contacted me and offered me the chance to review Mistress of My Fate, I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately life intervened, and it’s only until now that I actually had the chance to sit down and read the book over the long Easter weekend.

Mistress of My Fate is juicy page-turning adventure reminiscent of Richardson’s Clarissa with a few gothic overtones thrown in for good measure. Narrated by Henrietta herself, the novel is told in a witty, confessional style, drawing in the reader with rich details of the 18^th century to great effect. Raised in the country, Henrietta Ingerton is an orphan, the niece of the Earl and Countess of Stavourley, raised alongside her more noble cousins. From childhood, Henrietta is aware that due to her station in life, the best she can hope for is marriage to the local vicar or to spend her life as the spinster companion to dazzling but spoilt cousin Lady Catherine. Her life is turned upside down when she meets Lord Allenham who is courting her cousin. She falls deeply in love with him and to her shock and surprise her feelings are returned. However Allenham’s estate is heavily in debt and he needs Lady Catherine’s dowry to restore it to its former glory. The fickle finger of fate intervenes and Henrietta’s life is turned upside down.

She learns the truth of her parentage, and is suspected of murder. When her uncle proposes that she marry against her wishes, she flees first to her beloved and then to London where somewhat naïvely becomes a member of the demimonde. She makes her way through London's gambling halls, ballrooms and bedrooms, before finally taking matters and her life into her own hands.

I enjoyed this book tremendously but I have to confess that there were times that I wanted to shake Henrietta; she wandered occasionally into the Too Stupid to Live territory. I began to wonder if Henrietta was a little bit too sweet, innocent and trusting for her own good. On the other hand, it was nice to see a heroine who didn’t instantly become jaded. Henrietta’s relationship with Allenham is almost too good to be true, they read Rousseau and Goethe together, and he appreciates not just her intelligence but her talent as an artist as well. Henrietta becomes enamored of The Sorrows of Young Werther after Allenham mentions the book to her. She becomes obsessed with it and the parallels to the love triangle between herself, Allenham and Lady Catherine. It’s not until the final third of the book that Henrietta finally becomes the mistress of her fate. For most of the book, she seems to make reckless and rash decisions without really thinking things through. When she arrives in London, she tends to ignore the advice of her more worldly friends.

The book for me really took off once Henrietta, who becomes fearful and paranoid when Allenham disappears, runs off recklessly to London to find him. Rubenhold proceeds to dirty up Henrietta a bit, slowly peeling away her innocence and naiveté as she’s forced to survive the only way a woman in her position could at that time, by becoming a member of the demimonde where she consorts with some of the most notorious rakes and birds of paradise in 18^th century London including Gertrude Mahon and Elizabeth Armistead. She even makes the acquaintance of some of London’s leading actors such as Sarah Siddons and Mrs. Jordan when Henrietta is forced by her new protector to play the role of Maria in a production of School for Scandal (I confess that this was one of my favorite parts of the book).

It will be interesting to see what happens to Henrietta in the second volume as the 18^th century comes to a close, and she experiences the dawn of the Regency era.

Verdict: A wonderful journey through the late 18th century, filled with fascinatingly juicy historical details, a passionate love story, and a heroine who learns to learns to take control of her own life.

Emily Warren Roebling - The Woman Behind the Brooklyn Bridge

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 14:19:00 +0000

"Some people's beauty lies not in the features, but in the varied expression that the countenance will assume under the various emotions. She is...a most entertaining talker, which is a mighty good thing you know, I myself being so stupid." - Washington Roebling on his wife Emily, in a letter to his sister, 1865

I’ve always found the story of Emily Warren Roebling inspiring, because it’s a story of how a woman came into her own and learned what she was capable of through adversity. It’s also a deeply moving love story. When Washington Roebling was unable to continue hands-on work as chief engineer, his wife Emily worked tirelessly to relay his wishes to the workers, and to keep the vision that father and son had worked long and hard to achieve. This was during the late 19^th century, when the idea of a woman being able to understand complex mathematics or science, was unheard of. Many men (and women) believed that women’s brains weren’t developed enough or that they were too weak. The idea that a woman could be even partly responsible for building one of the world’s marvels was just too ridiculous to contemplate. Without Emily’s perseverance and faith, Washington Roebling might have been replaced, and the history of the Brooklyn Bridge would have turned out much differently.

Emily Warren was born on September 23, 1843 in Cold Spring, New York. She was the second youngest of a dozen children (only six of whom lived to adulthood) born to New York State assemblymen Sylvanus Warren and his wife Phebe. Although the family wasn’t wealthy, they were one of the most prominent families in Putnam County. Her father Sylvanus had been a close personal friend of the writer Washington Irving. Even though he was fourteen years older than her, Emily was incredibly close to her eldest brother, Gouverneur Kemble Warren, (known to his family as GK) who would eventually become a general in the United States Army during the Civil War.

GK had just returned to take up an appointment teaching as an assistant professor in Mathematics at West Point when their parents died. Her brother took a deep interest in his younger siblings including Emily. He encouraged her interest in science, particularly botany. GK enrolled her in the Georgetown Visitation Convent in Washington D.C. to further advance his favorite younger sibling’s education. Emily studied a wide variety of subjects including history, geography, rhetoric and grammar, algebra, French, as well as housekeeping, tapestry, and piano. By the time of her graduation, Emily had grown into a tall, handsome young woman with dark hair and deep brown eyes, a graceful carriage, and a button nose. She was considered an exceptional horsewoman.

It was also through her brother GK that Emily met her destiny. Despite the war, she managed to convince her siblings to let her visit GK at his military camp in Virginia. In February of 1864, Emily met Colonel Washington Roebling at a military ball. The young man had been serving on her brother’s staff. It was love at first sight, at least on his part. Six weeks after they had met, he’d bought a diamond and after 11 months of constant correspondence, she and Roebling were married in January of 1865 in a double ceremony with her brother Edgar and his bride Cordelia. Washington’s father, John A. Roebling, was an engineer, responsible for building the wire rope suspension bridges across the Niagara River as well as across the Allegheny River in Pittsburgh, PA. Among his many achievements was the first company to make wire rope. Washington followed in his father’s footsteps, studying engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

After the war, Emily traveled with her husband to Cincinnati where he worked with his father on the Cincinnati-Covington Bridge (now the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge) and then to Europe on a mission to study the construction of pneumatic caissons. While overseas, she gave birth to her first and only child, John A. Roebling II, on November 21, 1867. He was born in the same town where Washington Roebling's father had been born, Muhlhausen, Germany. There would be no other children. Emily suffered a bad fall before her son was born, and nearly died.

It was at this time that Washington’s father was undertaking his dream project, constructing a bridge that would connect Brooklyn to New York. It would be the longest bridge to date and cost millions of dollars. But the project seemed both impossible and cursed from the beginning (Twenty men would die over the fourteen years that it took to build the bridge). Three days into construction, one of John Roebling’s feet was badly crushed in a freak accident; he died in agony two weeks later of tetanus. As a result Washington took over the role of Chief Engineer of the Brooklyn Bridge. However in 1872n Washington suffered several attacks of decompression sickness or “the bends” while working in the caissons for the bridge piers, deep beneath the river’s surface. Soon the illness became so debilitating that he was unable to go down to the building site to oversee the work.

His illness would leave him bedridden for the remainder of the bridge construction. Emily and Washington spent time abroad in Germany hoping to improve his condition. After six months they returned, but his condition was no better. He suffered from headaches, nervous exhaustion, his eyesight grew poor, and the only person he could stand to see was Emily. Returning to New York, the couple moved from their home in Trenton to a house in Brooklyn Heights, where Washington could see the building site from his bedroom window. About his illness Washington stated, “I thought I would succumb, but I had a strong tower to lean upon, my wife, a woman of infinite tact and wisest counsel.” Emily Warren Roebling would prove her husband’s praise to be true by undertaking multiple roles to ensure her husband would remain the Chief Engineer. Her first task was to convince the president of the New York Bridge Company, Henry C. Murphy, that Washington could continue his duties as Chief Engineer despite his illness. Fortunately he agreed.

With Washington confined to his sickroom in their Brooklyn Heights home and fearing he wouldn't live to finish the project, Emily began taking down copious notes on what he said remained to be done. She also began a crash course in engineering, learning everything she could about strength of materials, stress analysis, cable construction, and calculation of catenary curves. Over the next 11 years, Emily played pupil, secretary, and messenger throughout the remainder of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Every day without fail, she went to the site to convey her husband's instructions to the workers and to answer questions. She kept records, answered the mail, and represented her husband at social functions. When bridge officials or representatives for the various contractors called on the Roebling house, it was Emily who received them on her husband’s behalf. Despite the heavy burden, Emily never once complained or succumbed to the pressures that she faced. She was his eyes, ears and legs and the more she did, the more people talked. Rumors abounded that Emily had actually taken over her husband’s job as Chief Engineer, that she was the real brains behind the bridge.

Emily Warren Roebling painted by Carolus Duran (Brooklyn Museum)

As David McCullough wrote in his book, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, "By and by it was common gossip that hers was the great mind behind the great work and that this, the most monumental engineering triumph of the age, was actually the doing of a woman, which as a general proposition was taken in some quarters to be both preposterous and calamitous. In truth, she had by then a thorough grasp of the engineering involved." As the project faced delays and cost increases, skepticism mounted that the bridge could be completed under Washington Roebling and it was proposed that he be removed as chief engineer. Emily Roebling wrote down her husband's statement, citing the reasons why he should not be replaced. She delivered it as an address before the American Society of Civil Engineers, becoming the first woman to address the group.

Due to her dedication to the construction of the bridge, Washington asked that Emily be the first one to cross the Brooklyn Bridge as a test. Carrying a rooster as a sign of victory, Emily rode in a carriage from the Brooklyn side of the bridge to the Manhattan side without incident. The dedication and hard work put into the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge by Emily Warren Roebling was noted by Congressman Abram S. Hewitt at the dedication ceremonies prior to the opening of the bridge on May 24, 1883. Hewitt determined the Brooklyn Bridge to be, “An everlasting monument to the self-sacrificing devotion of woman” and stated “The name of Mrs. Emily Warren Roebling will thus be inseparably associated with all that is admirable in human nature.” Today the Brooklyn Bridge holds a plaque dedicated to the memory of Emily, her husband and her father-in-law.

After the bridge was completed, Emily and Washington moved back to Trenton. She assumed a more traditional social life, joining the Daughters of the American Revolution, and other civic organizations. She traveled extensively, attending the coronation of Nicholas II in Russia, and was presented to Queen Victoria in London in 1896. She also served as both a nurse and construction foreman at Montauk, Long Island camp, established to house soldiers returning from the Spanish-American War. In her spare time, Emily managed to obtain a law degree from New York University’s Women’s Law class, enrolling in 1899. Unfortunately Emily didn’t have long to savor her triumph. She became ill with stomach cancer, passing away on February 28, 1903 in the Roebling’s Trenton mansion.

Emily began her married life expecting to honor the traditional Victorian values that a woman’s greatest accomplishment was to be a wife and mother. But when life gave Emily lemons, she made lemonade becoming the public face of the era’s most massive construction project In doing so, she helped to forge a new path for women on the road to equality. It was a role that she never dreamed of or planned for but she took up with courage and determination.

Further Reading:

David McCullough, The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge, Simon & Schuster, 1983.
Antonia Petrash, More than Petticoats: Remarkable New York Women, Globe Pequot Press, 2001.
Marilyn Weigold, Silent Builder: Emily Warren Roebling and the Brooklyn Bridge, Associated Faculty Press, 1984

A Dangerous Woman - The Life of Lady Deborah Moody

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 18:17:00 +0000

I know I have been neglecting this blog shamefully of late. I apologize profusely. I’ve been writing and sending out book proposals over the past couple of months, and also continuing my attempts to write fiction. That has meant that I’ve been writing more book reviews and fewer posts about women. Since March is women’s history month, I’ve decided to focus on some Noted and Notorious New York Women for your entertainment. First up is Lady Deborah Moody, who I have long found fascinating, although there isn’t as much information on her as there is about some of her contemporaries such as Anne Hutchinson, Mary Dwyer or Elizabeth Winthrop. She was the first woman to be granted a land patent in the colonies, founding one of the 6 original towns in Brooklyn, the only woman known to launch a settlement in Colonial America and the first woman to cast a vote in her adopted land. She fought religious prejudice and braved native tribes at an age when most English women were happily in their dotage. She had to be tough as old boots and brave to leave England, her family, and everything she’d known to face an uncertain future.

Memorial for Lady Deborah Moody in Gravesend Cemetary, Brooklyn

Early colonial American history teems with women who bucked the status quo. Perhaps it is the very nature of picking up stakes and moving across the ocean to an unknown and foreign land that inspires women to do and say things that they might not have done back in the old world. In some cases, such as Anne Hutchinson and Lady Deborah Moody, the New World just encouraged them to be even more open and ballsy they were back in England.

She was born Deborah Dunch in 1586 in London. Although Deborah’s father was a Member of Parliament, she spent most of her childhood on the family’s country estate in Wiltshire, along with her three sisters and her brother. Deborah and her sisters were taught to read and write, along with the expected social graces of embroidery, music and dancing. In 1606, she married Henry Moody who was soon after knighted by King James. Now Lady Moody, she gave birth to two children; Henry (born in 1607) and Catherina (born in 1608). The couple soon climbed the social ladder at court when Henry was named Sheriff of Wiltshire and then made a baronet. Henry didn’t get to enjoy his success for long; he died in 1629 at the age of 47 after a brief illness. At the age of 43, Deborah was now a wealthy widow, with several large estates and manors.

Lady Moody's Triangle today, Gravesend, Brooklyn

During Deborah’s early years, the dominant religion was Protestant, Catholics had to worship in secret, and there many who were beginning to question the tenets of the Church of England, in particular the baptism of infants. During the reign of Elizabeth I, she showed a considerable amount of tolerance towards other beliefs but her cousin and successor James I was of a different metal. Believing wholeheartedly in the divine right of Kings, he had no tolerance for those he felt strayed from the one true path. That included Catholics, Puritans, Quakers and Anabaptists. Deborah believed as the Anabaptists did, that baptism was not for infants; that it was something only an older child should undertake once they were able to think for themselves. Although Deborah disagreed with many of the Church of England’s practices, she kept her feelings to herself to avoid persecution.

Lady Moody was not a young woman when she decided to leave England in 1639. Charles I, who was even more autocratic than his father James I, had decreed that the nobility needed to stay on their estates and not come to London. Instead of spending their money on frivolous things, they should plow their money back into their communities. Deborah found this edict intolerable. She enjoyed visiting her friends and family as well as learning about other faiths. Her maternal grandfather, who was a Protestant bishop, had often spoken out about religious intolerance and Deborah believed quite strongly that people should worship as they pleased. Deborah defied the edict that she leave London to return to her country estate. This brought her to the attention of The Star Chamber, a court of criminal and civil jurisdiction. King Charles had given The Star Chamber far –reaching powers and its decisions were feared, the court stopped short only of handing out the death penalty when meting out punishment for offenses which could include perjury, libel and conspiracy. Even jurors were subject to the Court, if they ruled decided against the Crown. When Deborah learned that the Star Chamber was investigating her activities, she decided that it was best for her to get the hell out of Dodge.

Deborah arrived in Boston in 1638. She was warmly welcomed by the Governor of the Colony, John Winthrop. Having a noble woman of Deborah’s stature was a coup for the colony and caused great excitement. By 1641, Deborah had amassed considerable property in the colony, spending £1,100 to buy the estate of Sir John Humphrey who had decided to return to England. The General Court also granted her 400 acres of land for a plantation near the town of Lynn, Massachusetts. She bought a house in Salem and joined the local church. But if Deborah thought she would find religious freedom in Salem, she was quickly disabused of that notion. The Puritans who had fled England to escape religious persecution were not inflicting the same punishment on the colony. They believed that the strict religious laws helped to develop a strong state. Punishments were meted out for card playing, dancing, and even public displays of affection. Women could only wear certain styles of clothing, they were forbidden to cut their hair short or voice beliefs that were different from the clergy (which got Anne Hutchinson into trouble), and they were even forbidden to sing in church.

Even more horrifying to Deborah was the hypocrisy of the Puritans preaching about God’s love and then engaging in the slave trade. The elders of the church in Salem insisted that she give up her Anabaptist leanings. Instead Deborah decided to that it was time to leave Salem and go elsewhere. When she left the colony, she didn’t go alone. Several families decided to go with her. Knowing that Holland had offered dissenters like the Puritans refuge, Deborah thought that the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam might be the answer. The small group decided to take their chances at sea rather than risk the possibility of encountering hostile Indian tribes if they traveled by land. Immediately upon their arrival, they were forced to seek the protection of the local fort against a band of marauding Mohican Indians.

Deborah was tired of fighting and began to wonder if she had made a mistake. She was now 57 years old. But there was no turning back. She’d been excommunicated by the Salem church and the Governor’s deputy John Endecott discouraged the community’s reacceptance of her, unless she repented. “I shall desire that she may not have advice to return to this jurisdiction, unless she will acknowledge her evil in opposing the churches, and leave her opinions behind her, for she is a dangerous woman.” Deborah just had to make the best of it. The group petitioned the Governor Kieft of New Amsterdam for permission to start their own community were they could make their own laws. In 1645, they were granted a patent for a tract of land on the southwest corner of Long Island to be called Gravesend. Gravesend was a planned community based on Kent, England, one of the earliest in the New World to employ a block grid system. The outlines of Gravesend’s block formation are still faintly visible in the outline of the streets.

The 16 square acre tract of land was divided into 4 squares, 10 houses on each lot for a total of forty houses in all. A public plain was designated in the center of town for grazing, and to keep the town safe, a palisade fence surrounded it. Eventually a school and a church would be built. Town meetings were held and all settlers were required to attend. Homesteaders were required to build a habitable house, and to help maintain the wall that surround and protected the settlement. The group was allowed to govern themselves and to worship God freely in the privacy of their own homes as they chose. The town eventually opened its doors to the Quakers, who fled the Massachusetts Bay Colony, ultimately becoming the center for the Quaker religion on Long Island.

By the time Deborah passed away in 1659, the small town of Gravesend was thriving. She founded the town hall government, started a school, and eventually established a church. She also amassed one of the first libraries in the colonies, with over 200 volumes, which she eagerly loaned out. Buried in the cemetery at Gravesend, she could rest in peace knowing that the town’s policy of religious freedom set it apart from most colonial settlements.

Further Reading:

Antonia Petrash, More than Petticoats - Remarkable New York Women. Guildford, CT, The Globe Pequot Press, 2002

Victor H. Cooper, A Dangerous Woman: New York's First Lady Liberty. Bowie, MD; Heritage Books, 1995

Swoon: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 16:31:00 +0000

Title: Swoon: Great Seducers and Why Women Love Them

Author: Betsy Prioleau

Publisher: W.W. Norton and Company

Pub Date: February 4, 2012

How Acquired: Through the publisher for TLC Book Tours

What it’s About: Swoon is a glittering pageant of charismatic ladies’ men from Casanova to Lord Byron to Camus to Ashton Kutcher. It challenges every preconceived idea about great lovers and answers one of history’s most vexing questions: what do women want?

Contrary to popular myth and dogma, the men who consistently beguile women belie the familiar stereotypes: satanic rake, alpha stud, slick player, Mr. Nice, or big-money mogul. As Betsy Prioleau, author of Seductress, points out in this surprising, insightful study, legendary ladies’ men are a different, complex species altogether, often without looks or money. They fit no known template and possess a cache of powerful erotic secrets.

While these men run the gamut, they radiate joie de vivre, intensity, and sex appeal; above all, they adore women. They listen, praise, amuse, and delight, and they know their way around the bedroom. And they’ve finessed the hardest part: locking in and revving desire. Women never tire of these fascinators and often, like Casanova’s conquests, remain besotted for life.

Finally, Prioleau takes stock of the contemporary culture and asks: where are the Casanovas of today?

My thoughts: I had read and enjoyed Betsy Prioleau’s previous book Seductress immensely. Funnily enough, I had also bumped into her one day in the romance section of Posman Books here in New York City as she was doing her research for the book. So when Lisa at TLC Book Tours emailed me about reviewing the book, I leapt at the chance.

First of all, the cover is absolutely gorgeous. The jacket painting is entitled the Storytellers of the Decameron by Boccaccio by Francesco Podesti. I have never seen this painting before, but I love the fact that it seems to embody the title of Swoon. Swoon is a fun, frothy look at the myth and reality of lady killers or Casanova’s from the dawn of time to the 21^st century. She discovers that these men, far from being heartless seducers, love, respect and even admire women. They take pride in being able to give a women not just pleasure but fun. They are not only great conversationalists, but they actually listen to women and what they want, they are people pleasers.

While I devoured the book in one sitting, the book can also be read a little bit at a time, dipping into each section like dipping into a box of particularly good chocolates accompanied by a bottle of expensive wine. The book is divided into mini-sections with titles such as ‘The Satanic Seducer,’ ‘The Real Alpha Male,’ and ‘Social IQ’ just to name a few. Prioleau provides examples of as they pertain to each section. Some of the men fit into more than one category such as Casanova or Gabriele D’Annunzio. Prioleau provides bite-size nuggets of information about each man which left this reader wanting more. She mentions that one of Napoleon’s sisters was the lover of Metternich but doesn’t mention which one (Pauline, Caroline, Elise?).

Prioleau gives details of not just historical lovers but also how figures of both Western and Eastern mythology. By far my favorite parts of the book, however, are her interviews with contemporary lady killers, none of whom are rich or particularly handsome. In fact, for the most part, the historical and contemporary figures she profiles would never make People Magazine’s Sexy Man Alive issue. Men like Jean Paul Sartre who was not quite five feet tall and blind in one eye, or Robert Louis Stevenson who suffered from tuberculosis. It’s interesting that a large number of the men profiled in the book were raised and pampered by women. Perhaps that early exposure to the feminine world helped to shape their perceptions that women weren’t the enemy, or inferior creatures but should be cherished and adored. Above all, most of the men profiled in the book took the time to be friends with the women they loved and seduced, which is probably why so many of these men had great relationships with their ex-lovers after the relationship ended. The art of how to end a relationship successfully could be a whole other book.

Prioleau points out that the contemporary man seems to have gotten the wrong idea of how to go about being a ladies man. They are inundated with images in men’s magazines from Maxim to Playboy that sexualize women as objects of desire but not as real women. They are also mis-educated in romance by their friends and popular books by pick-up-artists who are all about the conquest which is just the starting off point if one wants to be a ladies man. Another interesting fact that Prioleau points out is that a great number of great seducers had a strong feminine side or an androgynous side. Just look at Scott Disick, the boyfriend of Kourtney Kardashian. That’s a man who isn’t afraid to rock pastel colors or to spend a great deal of time on his appearance.

I found the men who were left out of the book to be particularly interesting, in particular men such as Rasputin, Wilfred Scawen Blunt, HG Wells, Henry Fuseli, Henri IV, Louis XIV and Louis XV of France. Even Emo boy Shelley doesn’t make the cut. I was however disturbed by Prioleau describing romantic fiction strictly as fantasy or ‘fantasyland’ as she calls it. Yes, there is an element of fantasy in romance but that sells the whole genre short. She seems to have read only a handful of romances by a few bestselling authors such as Mary Jo Putney, Jennifer Crusie, Nora Roberts, Susan Elizabeth Phillips and Lisa Kleypas. She states in a Q&A that romance novels reflect women’s fondest erotic dreams. I think these books reflect women’s fondest desires of the type of relationship that they are seeking, not just sex.

In the end, this is a book that the men of the world desperately need to read, if they want to learn what it is that women really want from a man in a relationship. Whether or not they do is another story.

Pain, Parties and Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 18:27:00 +0000

Title: Pain, Parties and Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953

Author: Elizabeth Winder

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pub Date: April 16, 2013

How acquired: Through the Publisher

What it’s about: In May of 1953, a twenty year-old Plath arrived in New York City, the guest editor of Mademoiselle’s annual College Issue. She lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended the ballet, went to a Yankee game, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She was supposed to be having the time of her life. But what would follow was, in Plath’s words, twenty-six days of pain, parties, and work that ultimately changed the course of her life.

Thoughtful and illuminating, featuring line drawings and black-and-white photographs, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 offers well-researched insights as it introduces us to Sylvia Plath—before she became one of the greatest and most influential poets of the twentieth century.

My thoughts: Like most teenage girls, I read Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar when I was in high school. It was a rite of passage, the female equivalent of reading The Catcher in the Rye. I remember identifying with Plath’s protagonist Esther, as I’m sure most girls my age did back then. I’ve been fascinated with Sylvia Plath since then, less so her poetry than who she was as a person and her tumultuous marriage to Ted Hughes. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s a Scorpio (I swear one day I’m going to write a book and the only theme is going to be that all the women are Scorpios!).
2013 is not only the 50^th anniversary of the publication of The Bell Jar but also the 50^th anniversary of Plath’s death (February 11, 1963). To mark the occasion, several new biographies have been published about the short life of the poet, including Pain, Parties and Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953. While the other biographies deal with Sylvia’s early life before she met Ted Hughes (Mad Girl’s Love Song: Sylvia Plath and LifeBefore Ted), as well as the scope of her life and career (American Isis: The Life and of Sylvia Plath), Pain, Parties and Work specifically deals with the summer of 1953 when Sylvia won a coveted guest editorship at Mademoiselle Magazine. Her experiences that summer inspired her only novel. Back in the 1950’s, winning a guest editorship of the annual College issue was a dream come true for many girls. For many it was their first experience of life in a big city. Nowadays, internships are commonplace, a necessary rite of passage if you hope to land a job after college but back then internships for something much more extraordinary.

The book is as much a cultural history of young women in the 1950’s as it is a biography of Plath. The book is filled with insights from Plath’s co-guest editors, who ranged from the ages of 18 to 21 during that summer.

When Plath arrived in New York, she had spent two years at Smith College where she was torn between writing and becoming an artist. Winder includes one of Plath’s sketches from her notebooks that indicate that Plath had a certain amount of talent as an artist. However, Plath had also begun to make a name for herself as a writer, she’d won Mademoiselle’s fiction prize (yes, once upon a time magazines like Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle & Harper’s Bazaar published fiction as well as articles!), and had her poems published in Seventeen. Because of her talent as a writer, Plath was assigned to work with the managing editor which may not have been a good fit for her. Plath loved fashion, spending a great deal of time and money putting together her career girl wardrobe for her time in New York.

That was one of the joys of reading this book, realizing that Sylvia Plath was not always this depressed, haggard woman trapped in a marriage gone bad. That once upon a time, she’d been a vibrant, fashion loving, foodie whose favorite past-times including baking in the hot sun, enjoying the simple pleasures of living near Cape Cod. Where the book falls short is giving an explanation for what caused Sylvia’s breakdown when she returned from New York and how her time in New York may have contributed to it. Winder writes about how Sylvia was a perfectionist, and how unhappy she might have been stuck working solely with the managing editor, that they perhaps worked her to hard, and that the magazine may not have really made the best use of her talents.

Winder points out that Sylvia was restless, that she was seeking something from her New York experience that she wasn’t getting, the men weren’t sophisticated enough or worldly enough. Perhaps her expectations had been too high. Winder does mention that the magazine had the guest editors’ handwriting analyzed and Sylvia’s handwriting indicated that she was close to a nervous breakdown. The book also suggests that Sylvia also chafed under the expectations of young women of her era, that their sole ambition should to be wives and mothers.

What the book does extremely well is give the reader an idea of what it must have been like to be a young woman in college in those post-war years, torn between their ambitions and what society expected of them, finding a husband and settling down to have children, putting those ambitions aside. The reader also gets a small glimpse into not only the magazine world but the mixed signals that magazines such as Mademoiselle and Glamour gave young women. I would have liked to have learned more about the history of Mademoiselle, for instance I had been under the impression that Conde Nast always owned the magazine. I had no idea that they only bought it in 1959. I find the whole history of women’s fashion magazines fascinating. I had no idea either that there had been something called Charmed.

Winder briefly in the epilogue details the reactions of the other women to The Bell Jar when it was finally published in the United States in 1971. Many of the women felt betrayed by their portraits in the book, and none of them had any idea that Sylvia had been going through any kind of emotional turmoil, she hid it so well.

Verdict: A wonderful snapshot of a turning point in the life of one of America's most intriguing female poets but lacking in depth and analysis.

Presidential Scandals: The Affairs of Warren G. Harding

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 03:24:00 +0000

“It’s a good thing I’m not a woman. I would always be pregnant. I can’t say no,” President Warren G. Harding speaking to a group of reporters at a private party at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

I’m a little obsessed with the TV show Scandal on ABC, a captivating saga of illicit relationships, unchecked power, and shocking political intrigue in the administration of President Fitzgerald Grant. Grant had been having an illicit affair with Olivia Pope who not only worked on his campaign but also in the White House as his press secretary. Now she’s a crisis management consultant whose job frequently involves the White House. Grant is married to Mellie, the ice-queen who would stop at nothing, even faking a miscarriage to get her husband elected. And then there is Cyrus, the Machiavellian chief of Staff who also happens to be gay, and Hollis Doyle, the Texas oilman who has a stake in the Grant Presidency. Oh, and did I mention that Fitzgerald Grant is a Republican? Although the show is of course fictional, looking back at past occupants of the White House, it’s clear that Shonda Rhimes has a lot of material to work with.

It wouldn’t be President’s Day without talking about one of the most Scandalous Presidents in U.S. History. No, I’m not talking about JFK or Bill Clinton. I’m not even talking about LBJ or Richard Nixon. No the vote for most Scandalous President in more than two hundred years goes to another Republican Warren Gamaliel Harding, our 29^th President. The Rodney Dangerfield of politics, he can’t get no respect. Poor Warren was only President for twenty-nine months before dying mysteriously on a trip out West (it was rumored that his wife Florence had poisoned him because of his adulteries). Like another reviled public figure, Marie Antoinette, he was also born on November 2 in 1865. In 2010 He was ranked #2 on a list of the 10 worst Presidents in US History in US News and World Report but at the time of his death, it was a different story.

He was the poor boy who made good; a self-made newspaper publisher from America’s heartland, one of 8 U.S. Presidents from Ohio. He was not only the first incumbent United States Senator to be elected President but also the first newspaper publisher. It was Harding who first coined the phrase “Founding Fathers” including it in his keynote speech to the 1916 Republican convention. Harding won the Presidency by promising Americans a ‘return to normalcy’ after World War I. His affable manner as well as his conservatism made him the compromise choice at the 1920 convention. He just looked presidential. In the election that year he won the popular vote by a whopping 60%. Everything seemed to be coming up roses for Harding. African-Americans loved him because he openly advocated African-American political, education, and economic equality, especially in the South, and sponsored an anti-lynching bill. Women loved him because he supported their right to the vote, improved health care for mothers, and he enacted the first child welfare program. The country’s unemployment rate dropped in half during his administration. When he died, millions lined the tracks to pay their respects as the funeral train moved through the small towns and cities on its way to Washington. It was the first such procession since Lincoln died.

After his death, the floodgates opened, and all sorts of nasty goings on came out in the press. Anyone remember learning about the Teapot Dome Scandal in school? That was just the tip of the iceberg. Like most incoming presidents, he rewarded friends and political allies with powerful positions in the government but Harding’s friends turned out to be a bunch of crooks for the most part. There were scandals involving the Justice Department, the Veterans bureau, the shipping department and the Prohibition bureau (Harding served liquor in the White House to guests despite Prohibition). “I have no trouble with my enemies,” Harding once said. It was his friends who “keep me walking the floor nights.” There was a rumor that not only was he part African-American, but also that he was a member of the Klu Klux Klan.

And then there were the scandals of a more intimate nature. It appears that long before JFK was sneaking women into the White House behind Jackie’s back; good ole Warren was having an illicit affair with not only a young campaign volunteer but there were other women as well. Two of the women were personal friends of his wife Florence, and the campaign volunteer was a young woman named Nan Britton who developed a big honking crush on the President when he was still a mere congressman and was determined to make him hers.

Like JFK and Lyndon Johnson, Harding was an unrestrained womanizer. The ladies thought him virile and handsome, plus he photographed well. “I cannot hope to be one of the great Presidents, “ he once said, “but perhaps I may be remembered as one of the best loved.” From Ohio, Harding had been a small-town newspaper publisher, two term state senator and lieutenant Governor, before he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Although he considered himself to be uniquely unsuited for the job of President, he had actually had more experience in government than Obama and George W. Bush combined. However, he looked presidential, and that was good enough back in the 1920’s. Like Mellie on Scandal, his wife Florence, known as the Duchess, was the power behind the throne. Five years older than her husband, Florence married Harding against her wealthy father Amos Kling’s wishes. Her first husband had been the ne’er do well son of a wealthy family. As far as Kling was concerned, Harding was cut from the same cloth. But Florence saw a diamond in the rough and was determined to polish him up. Their marriage was a solid business partnership, not a love match. She brought drive and money to the table, and Warren brought her political opportunity.

Harding first cheated on Florence three years into the marriage with Susie Hodder, his wife’s best friend since childhood. Then he began a 15 year affair with another friend of the couple Carrie Fulton Phillips. Carrie was blonde and beautiful with the figure of a Gibson girl, tiny waist and a generous bosom. To make it even more complicated, Harding and Carrie’s husband were good friends. The affair started in 1905, a year after Carrie and her husband James lost their young son. James had a nervous breakdown and spent time at Dr. Kellogg’s sanitarium in Battle Creek. While he was a way, the grieving wife was comforted by Harding. Despite their respective marriages, Harding and Carrie found ample time for their trysts. They would sneak away when the two couples took joint vacations to Europe. Once they even managed to meet up in Montreal for New Year’s Eve.

Most historians consider Carrie to be the love of his life. More than 100 intimate letters were discovered in the 1960’s but publication of the letters has been enjoined by a court order until 2014. Historians who have seen them say that they are very touching in some ways and also very erotic. The relationship foundered when Carrie developed a passion for all things German, moving to Berlin in 1911, where she may or may not have become a spy for Germany during World War I. At the very least she was outspokenly pro-German. When Harding supported President Wilson’s aggressive response to the sinking of the Lusitania, Carrie was pissed. She threatened to reveal their affair if he voted for war with Germany, but she didn’t go through with her threat. Harding warned Carrie that if she kept it up she faced arrest. Still Carrie was such critic that the Bureau of Investigation put her under surveillance. The Bureau got wind of Harding’s affair but kept silent.

After fifteen years, Carrie was tired of being Harding’s mistress, she wanted to be his wife. Unlike President Grant on SCANDAL who was eager to divorce his wife despite the damage to his political career, Harding was not. While he had no passion for his wife, he did for politics. Carrie had had enough. During the presidential election of 1920, Carrie blackmailed Harding ending up with lump-sum of $25,000 and $2,000 a month for as long as Harding was in politics. She and her husband were also sent on an all expense paid trip to the Far East courtesy of the Republican party until the election was over.

There were minor flings with Augusta Cole, whom Harding impregnated and then forced to have an abortion; Rosa Hoyle, who gave birth to Harding's illegitimate son; a distraught New York woman who committed suicide when Harding refused to leave his wife. There is also some evidence that Harding may have been responsible for the accidental death of prostitute at one of the many wild parties he hosted. Apparently Hardings cronies had a secret bank account to buy the silence of his ex-flames.

His third mistress Grace Cross had been one of Harding's secretaries during his senate years, and received a substantial blackmail payment for the return of incredibly sappy and juvenile love letters Harding wrote her. But it was his fourth mistress who was the most infamous, a beautiful blonde named Nan Britton. Britton was a campaign volunteer began sleeping with Harding when she was 20 and he was 51. While other girls pasted photos of movie stars on their walls, Nan plastered his campaign photos on her bedroom walls. Harding and her father were friends, and he knew of her infatuation but pooh-poohed it at the time, insisting that she would meet someone her own age.

Harding helped her get a job in the newspaper business, and they began an affair that would last for six years. Nan allegedly lost her virginity to Harding in an New York hotel room but not before driving him into a frenzy of desire by coyly refusing to sleep with him. She followed him to Washington when he became a U.S. Senator, allegedly giving birth to a daughter named Elizabeth Ann in 1919 (concieved during a tryst in the Senate Office building). When Nan told Harding she was pregnant, he offered to pay for an abortion. Nan refused, moving to Chicago with the baby to live with her sister. She saw him secretly during the Republican convention, apparently he spent more time with Nan then he did attending to the business of the nomination.The affair continued even after Harding was in the White House, aided by two Secret Service Agents James Sloan and Walter Ferguson. According to Nan, Florence almost caught them in mid-tryst in one of the cloakrooms in the Oval Office after being tipped off by another agent.

After Harding’s death, Britton tried to get the Harding family to continue financial support for Elizabeth. While Harding was alive, he sent Nan money, $150 per week. Now Nan wanted part of Harding's estate, estimated at a half a million dollars. When no money was forthcoming, she wrote what many consider the first presidential kiss and tell book entitled The President’s Daughter. The book was so salacious, filled with titillating tidbits including a tryst in an Oval Office closet, that it was suppressed as obscene. Britton spent years arguing that her daughter was Harding’s heir before finally giving up. She busied herself with the Elizabeth Ann Guild, a foundation that provided legal aid for unwed mothers.

Some historians believe that Nan Britton's story of her affair with Harding was nothing but fiction. There is no hard evidence one way or the other, no surving love letters. Both Harding’s relatives and Elizabeth Ann’s descendents refuse to take a DNA test to prove conclusively one way or the other that Harding was her father.

It seems ironic that there was one ambition that Harding almost achieved. "I cannot hope to be one of the great Presidents, " he said, "but perhaps I may be remembered as one of the best loved."
For further reading:

James David Robenalt, The Harding Affair, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009
Larry Flynt and David Eisenbach, PhD, One National Under Sex, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Michael Farquhar, A Treasury of Great American Scandals: Tantalizing True Tales of Historic Misbehavior by the Founding Fathers and Others Who Let Freedom Swing, Perigee, 2003

Scandalous Romance: Crazy/Love - The Story of Burt and Linda Pugach

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 21:12:00 +0000

Happy Valentine's Day! I wrote this blog post way back in 2007, when the documentary Crazy/Love came out. It was one of the most outrageous stories of love gone wrong, that if I read it in a novel, I wouldn't have believed it. Linda Pugach recently passed away this January at the age of 75. If you get the chance, I urge you to seek out Crazy/Love on Netflix.

Everyone knows about Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuco. They had an affair while she was underage, he broke up with her, she shot his wife. Now allegedly they're back together. Well, meet the 1950's equivalent. Instead of Amy Fisher, we have Burt Pugach, the man from whom 1-800-Shyster could have been invented. Burt, not very good-looking, but apparently smart and charismatic works as an ambulance chaser in the Bronx. He's also a film producer, and owns a night club. He spies Lnda Riss, a sheltered dark haired beauty said to look like Elizabeth Taylor, on a park bench and decides than and there that he has to have her.

Linda comes from a broken home, with a mother who had to work to support them since her father apparently abandoned them with no support. So Linda like most girls of that era is looking for a husband who would be a good provider. So despite not finding Burt attractive, she goes out with him.

He puts on the full court press, taking her to work, picking her up at lunch, taking her out to dinner. You have to wonder when he found time to chase any ambulances. He's madly, passionately in love with her. She's impressed by the people he knows, his fancy car, airplane, and the night clubs that he takes her too.

Then she finds out he's married, and refuses to see him. He tells her he'll get a divorce but stalls. This goes on for two years while he is disbarred, and starts drinking heavily, imaging that she cheating on him. She refuses to give up the goods without a ring. He fakes a divorce. The upshot is, she finds out what a lying jerk he is, and dumps him, getting engaged to another man. Burt flips out and hires three guys to disfigure her by throwing lye in her face. She ends up virtually blind from the attack. Later on, she loses her sight completely.

Now things get screwy. I won't go into too much detail, but you have to see this movie to believe it. Burt goes to jail, although he feels he doesn't deserve too, after all, he didn't actually cause the attack. He claims that he just told the men that he hired to rough her up a bit. Linda testified at his trial that he told her "If I can't have you, no one else will, and when I get finished with you, no one else will want you." Once during the trial, Burt took out one of the lenses from his glasses and tried to slash his wrists crying, "Linda, I need you. Linda, I love you. Linda, I want you.'

He was declared insane three seperate times, only to have the decisions reversed at this behest. Eventually he's sentenced to 15 to 30 years. While in prison, he writes her constantly, promising to get her a seeing eye dog. Meanwhile her world shrinks to the point of loneliness, and she faces a future of clipping coupons and cats. He gets out of prison, and manages to convince her to marry him. Now when I first heard about this story, I couldn't believe it. Then I saw Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuco smooching for the cameras. So I thought, stop judging these people and see the film for yourself. So I went to a free screening last night, and I'm glad I did. Whatever draws Burt and Linda together, it seems to work for them.

The one moment that was telling for me was when Linda admitted that Burt sees her the way that she used to be, not as this disfigured woman. Of course, one can argue that the reason she's disfigured at all is because of him. But time seems to have stopped for both of them in 1959 when this all happened. Call it guilt or what have you, but strangely it works for them. You could call it redemption or revenge on her part. The director of the film mentioned in an interview that Linda always wore her dark glasses and never took them off once the entire time they were filming. Apparently she dated a man in the 1960's, and she showed him what she looked like without the glasses and he recoiled at her scars. Burt not only knew her when she was beautiful, but in his eyes, she's still that woman.

I personally think that she married him because she felt that he owed her because of what he did to her, so taking care of her for the rest of her life was his punishment. For him, I think it's the fact that she's elusive, she's there but she's not there. He seems to have her on some kind of pedestal. The ultimate dream girl for a not very good looking guy from the Bronx. A prize. The whole Madonna whore syndrome. The movie is also a cautionary tale about what happens when mistake love and obsession, and you opt for economic and material in a relationship.

February Book of the Month – The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things by Paul Byrne

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:13:00 +0000

Title: The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things

Author: Paula Byrne

Publisher: Harper Collins

Publication Date: 1/29/2013

How Acquired: Through the Publisher

What it’s about: I came to Jane Austen relatively late in life it feels. I didn’t read Pride and Prejudice until my senior year of high school. As a moody teenager, I reveled in the gothic novels of Emily and Charlotte Bronte. It was actually the film version of Pride and Prejudice starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson that got me interested in reading the book. I found the movie so delicious and fun that I had to read the book. Since then I’ve read Northanger Abbey, Emma and Persuasion and I’ve seen almost every single adaptation of all the books. I’ve even read several biographies but I’ve never really felt as if I knew who Jane was. She certainly wasn’t the character played by Anne Hathaway in BECOMING JANE that much is for sure.

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things offers a startlingly original look at the Jane through the key moments, scenes, and objects in her life and work. Instead of a chronological ‘then she did this, and then she did that,’ birth to death biography, each chapter starts off examining a particular object; the topaz crosses that her brother Charles bought her and her sister Cassandra, marriage bans, her first royalty check, an Indian shawl. Byrne uses these items to explore the lives of Austen’s extended family, friends, and acquaintances. Through their absorbing stories, we view Austen on a much wider stage and discover unexpected aspects of her life and character. We learn fascinating stories about Jane Austen’s paternal aunt Philadelphia Hancock and her extraordinary journey to India to find a husband. Then there is Jane’s maternal aunt Mrs. Leigh-Perrot and her sticky fingers which led to jail time as she awaited her trial. Byrne also uses the objects to examine how Jane used the things that she learned, the gossip, navy life to inform and enrich her writing. The reader learns that Jane Austen was actually fairly well-traveled for her time, traveling back and forth from Bath to Steventon, the seaside villages of Lyme, naval ports such as Portsmouth and Southampton and many trips to London where she had the occasion to see actors such as Edmund Kean and Sarah Siddons grace the stage.

What Byrne does is so fantastic, that I’m amazed that other writes don’t tackle their subjects this way. It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion, as each layer is removed, more and more of the real person is revealed. My favorite chapters were actually the ones that dealt with characters and situations from Mansfield Park which is funny because it's actually my least favorite of her novels. However, Byrne's chapter in particular on the Earl of Mansfield and his great niece Dido Elizabeth Belle is so fascinating. In each chapter, I met a new and fascinating person. I think I spent almost as much time looking up people like the poet William Cowper as I did reading the book.

The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things introduces us to a woman who was much worldlier than she has previously been portrayed. Jane was far ahead of her time in not just her independence and ambition but also in her opinions. Byrne also examines how later generations of biographers and family members created the image of the genteel, unworldly spinister, and hid the tougher, more biting, woman who was both politically and socially aware of what was going on in the outside world. Austen may have focused her fiction on four or five families living in the country, but those characters all interact with others who come from the outside world. Byrne points out how ballsy it was for Jane to want to be published. Although there were women authors like Mrs. Radcliffe, Fanny Burney (a particular favorite of Austen's), and Maria Edgeworth, Jane's novels fell into a category all by themselves, altogether quieter but much more realistic. By the time I put the book down, I felt as if Jane Austen had become a dear and treasured friend.

My verdict: I strongly encourage everyone to buy this book, even if you’ve read other Austen biographies. You will walk away from this book looking at not just Jane Austen but the novels with fresh eyes.

New Exhibition: Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 20:58:00 +0000

Frida Kahlo, Mexican, 1907-1954, Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943
Oil on canvas, 81.5 X 63 cm, Gelman Collection. Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D. F. /

While planning a future trip to Washington, DC, I stumbled upon an ad promoting this new exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA. Entitled "Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting" the exhibition will feature some of the best examples of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera's work, approximately 140 paintings mainly from collections in Mexico. According to the press release, the paintings will be exhibited chronologically and according to themes including: maternity, Mexcian identity, and portraiture. The High Museum of Art will be the only U.S. venue for this exhibition, so if you want to see it, you'll have to book a plane to Atlanta.

I wrote about Frida Kahlo in Scandalous Women and I'm not afraid to admit that I became a little obssessed by her and her stormy relationship with her husband Diego Rivera. Any time that you put two passionate people together, particularly if they are artists and sparks are bound to fly! "Frida & Diego" is particuarly significant because it marks the first time that important works by these two artists will be shown in the Southeast. I was lucky enough to see an exhibition of Frida's works at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and well as an exhibit of Diego's work at LACMA in Los Angeles, but just the idea of seeing their work together is truly exciting. If I can afford it, I may have to take a short jaunt to Atlanta!

The museum plans to position their work in the political and artistic contexts of their time. Few contemporary artists have captured the imagination with the force of Frida Kahlo and her husband. The exhibition promises to focus on their shared ideals and ideas instead of their often tumultuous relationship but that's particularly hard to do, particularly since many of Frida's paintings were autobiographical.

The exhibition kicks off with the special opening event “Party with Passion!” on Valentine’s Day and remains on view until May 12. Of course there will be a full color catalogue which may have to suffice for those of us who can't haul our butts down to Georgia. “Frida & Diego” is also the first completely bilingual exhibition to be presented by the High, with Spanish and English versions of wall labels and audio tours, as well as bilingual tour guides on Sundays throughout the show.

The Power of a Kiss: Pericles and Aspasia

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:00:00 +0000

Scandalous Women is pleased to welcome author Vicki Leon to the blog with a fascinating guest post about Pericles and Aspasia.

You wouldn’t think that enthusiastic kissing would set off such a scandal. But even during the glory days of ancient Athens, it did. The couple caught in the act were celebrities around town; Pericles, the most brilliant political and military leader of his time; and Aspasia, the witty, well-spoken foreigner from the Greek city of Miletus.

Such public displays of affection were taboo in that era. And independent, eloquent women, even more so. Well-bred matrons shunned the public eye. Sneered at Aspasia, called her harlot and worse. Some secretly envied her, and the steadfast affection their leader had for her. Each morning, with the neighbors as witness, Pericles soundly kissed his love; and each evening, when he returned, he embraced her again before their jealous eyes. I’m willing to bet they had the most loving, full-bodied relationship of any couple we know from ancient times. Without being wed, either.

She was a many-faceted woman, Aspasia; deeply curious about life, a seeker of philosophical knowledge, she befriended Socrates and other men of note. Naturally this racy behavior made more trouble for her. Like her earlier Milesian countrywoman, the much-wed courtesan Thargelia, she weathered spiteful attacks from playwrights and politicians; shrugged them off.

Things grew worse as Athens got embroiled in conflict. First with the islanders of Samos, where Aspasia was accused of using womanly wiles to persuade Pericles to wage war against them. In 431 B.C., a war with Sparta erupted, turning the political climate even nastier.

Seeing her as a high-visibility scapegoat, opponents threw a charge of impiety (a vague but serious accusation) against Aspasia, which could have brought the death penalty. As a non-Athenian, she couldn’t even testify in her own defense. Pericles stepped up, making a tearful, impassioned plea about her innocence. Case dismissed!

More joy, mixed with tribulations, awaited. When her sweetheart was nearly 50, the two had a son together. Pericles longed to wed Aspasia; in a cruel irony, he’d passed legislation earlier that prohibited him from marrying a non-Athenian! Eventually, after some serious groveling, Pericles persuaded his fellow Athenians to amend the law so at least his son with Aspasia could become a citizen.

This devoted couple, gifted with such intelligence and spirit and bravery of love, had just two more years together before the Great Plague hit, tearing Pericles from her arms.

Little reliable testimony remains to tell us Aspasia’s story, and almost nothing from her point of view; but we can still hope for future finds. And relish the tatters we know of, the bold kisses we know they shared, defying the world around them.

*******************

Author and historical detective Vicki Leon has spent 40 years, joyously researching her passions, from unsung female achievers to the ancient world. Leon also aspires to be uppity but feels that her impertinence still needs work. (www.vickileon.com)

Book of the Month: The Joy of Sexus

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 21:24:00 +0000

Title:   The Joy of Sexus - Lust, Love and Longing in the Ancient World

Author: Vicki Leon

Publisher: Walker and Company

Pub Date:    January 29, 2013

Pages:        302

How Acquired: Through publisher

What it's About:

In her previous books, Vicki León put readers in the sandals of now obsolete laborers, ranging from funeral clowns to armpit pluckers, and untangled the twisted threads of superstition and science in antiquity. Now, in this book of astonishing true tales of love and sex in long-ago Greece, Rome, and other cultures around the Mediterranean, she opens the doors to shadowy rooms and parts the curtains of decorum.

León goes far beyond what we think we know about sex in ancient times, taking readers on a randy tour of aphrodisiacs and anti-aphrodisiacs, contraception, nymphomania, bisexuality, cross-dressing, and gender-bending. She explains citizens' fear of hermaphrodites, investigates the stinging price paid for adultery despite the ease of divorce, introduces readers to a surprising array of saucy pornographers, and even describes the eco-friendly dildos used by libidinous ancients. Love also gets its due, with true tales of the lifelong bonds between military men, history's first cougar and her devoted relationship with Julius Caesar, and the deification of lovers.

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What others are saying:

"A snappy ride into the stunning, sometimes barbaric, and alwauys entertaining sexuality of the ancient world...This is a fun, enlightening trip into the ancient world not covered in high school textbooks."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Enjoyable, edifying, and humorous."--Kirkus Reviews

Meet the Author:

Vicki Leon calls the central coast of California home but returns often to her Mediterranean sources. Having honed her research skills by unearthing nine hundred achievers for her Uppity Women series of books, she's delved deeply into the ancient world with Working IX to V, How to Mellify a Corpse, and, of course, The Joy of Sexus.

Should you buy it? I must confess that I have had this book for 2 weeks now and I just dived into it last night and I'm glad I did. This book will tell you everything that you wanted to know about sex and sexuality in the Ancient World. Stuff that we all wanted to know but were afraid to ask or just didn't know where to look. Readers will learn the answer to questions like 'Did anyone call themselves bisexual or transgendered?' 'And what about romantic love, did that exist in the ancient world?' Vicki Leon's latest book THE JOY OF SEXUS uncovers the astonishing true tales of passion and wide-open sexuality in teh Greek, Roman, and other long-ago cultures. In 89 no-holds-barred essays or short chapters, Leon takes the reader on a randy tour of aphrodisiacs, buttocks worship, cross-dressing, and a Christian martyr named Perpetua (Seriously, someone needs to write a historical or historical romance where the heroine is named Perpetua stat!).

Here are just a few of the topics covered in the book:

The first pornographers, and the first sexual manual
The gay-friendly military of the Greek city-states
The surprising sex life of Socrates
History's first cougar and her relationship with Julius Caesar!

As I mentioned, I just started reading the book, but already I've found quite a few Scandalous Women in its pages, that I'm now dying to write about!

Review: Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 16:48:00 +0000

Title: Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker
Author: Jennifer Chiaverini
Publisher: Penguin Group (USA)
Publication date: 1/15/2013
Pages: 352
How Acquired: Through Net Galley

Overview: New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Chiaverini illuminates the extraordinary friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln and Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley, a former slave who won her freedom by the skill of her needle, and the friendship of the First Lady by her devotion. In Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, novelist Jennifer Chiaverini presents a stunning account of the friendship that blossomed between Mary Todd Lincoln and her seamstress, Elizabeth “Lizzie” Keckley, a former slave who gained her professional reputation in Washington, D.C. by outfitting the city’s elite. Keckley made history by sewing for First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln within the White House, a trusted witness to many private moments between the President and his wife, two of the most compelling figures in American history. In this impeccably researched, engrossing novel, Chiaverini brings history to life in rich, moving style.

My thoughts: I was very excited to read this novel when I first heard about it, it seemed especially fortuitous since Gloria Reuben plays Elizabeth in the new film Lincoln. I have written about Elizabeth Keckley and her friendship with Mary Todd Lincoln before, and I was interested to read a fictional interpretation of Elizabeth’s life. The book opens up right before the start of the Civil War. Elizabeth Keckley is a modiste who spent years working to buy her and her son’s freedom. Now established in Washington City (present day Washington, D.C.), she has made a name for herself as a dressmaker for both Northerners and Southerners alike, one of her best patrons is Varina Davis, the wife of Senator Jefferson Davis (soon to be the President and First Lady of the Confederacy). When Lincoln is elected, another patron arranges for Elizabeth to meet the new First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln. To be chosen as the modiste for the new First Lady would be the ultimate coup for any dressmaker, white or black. Elizabeth is chosen and is soon privy to the innermost workings of the Lincoln White House. We see through Elizabeth’s eyes Mrs. Lincoln’s reckless spending and mood swings, President Lincoln’s death, and his widow’s subsequent penury.

There were many things that I liked about this novel. Jennifer Chiaverini’s characterization of the relationship between Mary Todd and Elizabeth is nuanced, revealing a friendship that is at times uneven and fraught with class and racial distinctions, but also warm and protective (on Elizabeth's part). In a very poignant moment, Mrs. Lincoln calls Elizabeth her best friend. In Chiaverini’s hands, Mary is not quite the Satanic Majesty that she is called by one of the staff, but a woman who if not bi-polar clearly has emotional issues. Unhappy at being shut out of the President’s political life and having her view dismissed, Mary seeks happiness through endless shopping. While reading the novel, I was reminded of the scurrilous gossip aimed at Marie Antoinette and how she sublimated her unhappiness through partying and shopping. Mary becomes dependent on Elizabeth whose own kindness eventually becomes a straightjacket in a way. Elizabeth becomes more than just a modiste to Mary; she also arranges her hair, helps her dress, cares for her children at times and becomes her confidante.

The book is not without its problems; at times the book gets bogged down through too much telling and not enough showing. There are endless pages devoted to telling what is going on with the war, which would be interesting if this were a history book instead of a novel. The book comes alive when the war hits home for the characters, Robert Todd Lincoln wanting to enlist, Elizabeth’s friends fleeing from the disaster that was the first battle of Bull Run. Instead of giving us vibrant scenes of Elizabeth’s trip with Mary Todd Lincoln to New York and Boston during the war, where she attempts to raise money for the Contraband Relief Association, we are told about it. Another wasted opportunity occurs later in the novel when Elizabeth meets the abolitionist Frederick Douglass for the first time. Again we are kept at a distance from the action, instead of plunged right into it. Elizabeth is also curiously passive at that times but again she is stuck between a rock and a hard place. As the reader, I wanted Elizabeth to stand up for herself more, to not let Mrs. Lincoln take advantage of her friendship the way that she does, but I had to remember that this was a different time and Elizabeth also owed Mrs. Lincoln a great deal as well. Her business as a modiste takes off because she worked for the First Lady.

Once Mrs. Lincoln is widowed, the book really moves along as Elizabeth is given the task of helping the former First Lady sell her clothes and jewels to raise money, and then decides to write her memoirs. At this point, we get to know a little bit more about Elizabeth and less about Mary. Chiaverini also does a wonderful job at detailing the hardships that Elizabeth must go through during her stay in New York, having to move to a room in the attic of a hotel because they wouldn’t let her have a regular room, being forced to eat in the servants’ hall. It’s these little details of what life was like for a colored woman in post-Civil War America that really make the book come alive. Although I found the portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln balanced and compelling, my real interest was in Elizabeth, her thoughts and feelings about the war, and her position in society. One of the best sections of the novel occurs when Elizabeth goes to visit the family that once owned her. In the end, that old adage, no good deed goes unpunished comes into play. Elizabeth’s good intentions come to bite her in the butt. Mrs. Lincoln cuts off her friendship once Elizabeth’s memoir is published, and the public chastises her for her revelations. In the end, it is brought home to Elizabeth that no matter how far she has come; there will always be those who look down on her because of her color and want to put her in her place.

Despite my problems with the novel, I was intrigued enough that I’m looking forward to reading Chiaverini’s next novel about the Civil War spy Elizabeth van Lew.

My verdict: Compelling account of the friendship between Elizabeth Keckley and Mrs. Lincoln. Well worth reading for a glimpse into the inner workings of the White House during the Civil War.

Code Name Madeline: The life of Noor Inayat Khan

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:36:00 +0000

Every now and again while doing research for Scandalous Women I come across a story that is truly inspiring. I’ve wanted to write the story of Noor Inayat Khan for some time but work and other fascinating women have come along and Noor has been put on the back burner. Khan’s story is truly inspirational. She was a wartime British secret agent who was the first female radio operator sent into Nazi-occupied France by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Unfortunately, she was arrested and eventually executed by the Gestapo.

Noor un-Nisa Inayat Khan was born on New Year's Day 1914 in Moscow. She was the first child of Hazrat Inayat Khan and his American wife, Ora Ray Baker (Ameena Begum). She was of royal descent from Tipu Sultan, the last Muslim ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore. He refused to submit to British rule and was killed in battle in 1799. Khan's father was a musician and the founder of the Sufi Order of the West and a teacher of Universal Sufism. He moved his family first to London just before the outbreak of World War I and then to Paris in 1920, where Khan was educated and learnt fluent French. As a child, Noor was considered sensitive, dreamy and shy but in 1927, her father died suddenly. At the age of 13, Noor became the head of the household, taking care of her younger siblings, her mother too stricken with grief to cope. After studying psychology at the Sorbonne and harp and piano at the Paris Conservatory under Nadia Boulanger, Noor turned to writing as a profession. She wrote stories for Radio Paris and Le Figaro and published a collection called Twenty Jataka Tales, adapted from ancient Buddhist stories for children, which appeared in 1939. She had plans to create an illustrated children’s newspaper called Bel Age but the war turned her life upside down.

When war broke out in 1939, Noor fled the country just before the fall of France escaping by boat to England with her mother and sister. Noor had been raised by her Sufi father to be tolerant of other religions and as a pacifist but she was outraged by the depredations of the Nazis. "I wish some Indians would win high military distinction in this war. If one or two could do something in the Allied service which was very brave and which everybody admired it would help to make a bridge between the English people and the Indians.” She felt called to take part in the work of liberating Europe, but was dismayed by the paradox of killing to prevent violence.

In England, she joined the WAAF (Women's Auxiliary Air Force) as a wireless operator and soon caught the attention of the Special Operations Executive. SOE's French Section was in dire need of new wireless operators. Finding people with the combination of fluent French and technical skills was rare. Their job was one of the most vulnerable an agent could take on: using radio direction-finding equipment the Gestapo could quickly pinpoint their location, and many were captured within just a few weeks of arriving in France. There was also the constant threat of being betrayed by a Nazi sympathizer or collaborator for money. Despite her own pacifist leanings, Noor was anxious to do something more for the war effort. She wrote back later the same day to accept.

But there were some who were unsure about her suitability (one SOE training report described her as ‘not over-burdened with brains’ and ‘unsuited to work in her field.’) She failed her fake Gestapo interrogation and there were worries that she wouldn’t be able to withstand the real thing. Despite these misgivings, in June 1943 she was flown to France to become the radio operator for the 'Prosper' resistance network in Paris, with the codename 'Madeleine'. Soon after she arrived in Paris, many members of the network were arrested. The Gestapo soon had all the names and addresses of current French Resistance members who were then rounded up and arrested. The SOE planned to get Noor out of France but she chose to remain, at least until they could someone to replace her. She spent the summer moving from place to place, trying to send messages back to London while avoiding capture. Between July and October, Noor sent and received messages that helped 30 Allied airmen escape, arranged for 4 agents to obtain false identity papers, and helped obtain weapons and money for members of the Resistance.

By the fall of 1943, Noor was the last radio operator active in France. The Gestapo, who had her description and knew her code name, made massive efforts to find her and sever the last link between the resistance and London but for months Noor eluded them. They failed to find her because Noor was extremely fast and she had a sixth sense about whom she could trust and who she could not.

But in October of 1943, Noor's luck finally ran out. She was betrayed by a Frenchwoman for 100,000 francs and arrested by the Gestapo. Noor fought like her captors like a tigress. Unfortunately she had kept copies of all her secret signals and the Germans were able to use her radio to trick London into sending new agents - straight into the hands of the waiting Gestapo. Khan escaped from prison twice, once by climbing out the window but was recaptured each time a few hours later. In November 1943, she was sent to Pforzheim prison in Germany where she was kept in chains and in solitary confinement. Noor soon proved those who had doubted she had the strength to withstand torture and interrogation wrong. Despite repeated torture, starvation, beatings and humiliation for nearly a year, Noor refused to reveal any information. She meditated and thought of her father to help keep her spirits up. Her courage and strength led her captors to brand her "highly dangerous.” After refusing to sign a paper stating that she would stop trying to escape, Noor and three other female SOE agents were transferred to Dachau where on 13 September 1944 they were shot and their bodies consigned to the crematorium. Her last word uttered as the German firing squad raised their weapons was a simple “Liberté.” Days later, Dachau was in the hands of the Allied forces, too late to save Noor and the others.

For her courage, Noor Khan was posthumously awarded the George Cross in 1949, one of only three women to be given the award for bravery. The citation read: ‘She refused to abandon what had become the principal and most dangerous post in France, although both given the opportunity to return to England, because she did not wish to leave her French comrades without communications.’ In France she was honoured with the Croix de Guerre, where she is still revered today as “Madeleine of the Resistance.”

On November 7, 2012, The Princess Royal unveiled a sculpture of Noor, in London's Gordon Square Gardens, near the house where she lived and from where she left on her last mission. The statue, which commemorates Britain’s only female Muslim war heroine, is the first stand-alone memorial to an Asian woman in the UK. Campaigners spent years raising £60,000 for the statue from public donations. Princess Anne stated that she hoped the statue will ‘remind people to ask: Who was she? Why is she here? And what can we achieve in her memory.’ Noor deeply affected the hearts of all those she encountered, from her childhood meeting with her father's disciples, to the Nazi interrogators who destroyed her body, but could not break her spirit

Recently, producers Zafar Hai and Tabrez Noorani obtained the film rights to Shrabani Basi’s biography Spy Princess, which they hope to premiere next year in time for Noor’s centenary introducing Noor’s story to an international audience.

Further reading:

Kathryn J. Atwood – Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue, Chicago Review Press, 2011
Shrabani Basi – Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan, Sutton Publishing, 2006

Marcus Binney – The Women Who Lived for Danger: The Women Agents of SOE in the Second World War, Coronet Books, 2003

Rita Kramer – Flames in the Field: The Story of Four SOE Agents in Occupied France, Michael Joseph, 1995

One Lovely Blog Award

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 01:48:00 +0000

This honor comes with certain requirements. (Just imagine that there is a picture there. For some reason Blogger won't let me post the lovely badge)

1. Thank the person who nominated you. (Many thanks, Margaret!)

2. Add the ‘One Lovely Blog Award’ image to your post.

3. Share seven things about you.

4. Pass the award on to seven nominees.

5. Include this set of rules.

6. Inform your nominees* by posting a comment on their blogs.

Seven Things About Me

1. My first appearance on stage came very early in my life...while in nursery school. I think I played a gypsy.

2. My first kiss was in the first grade given to me by my boyfriend. What can I say, I was very precocious.

3. I can tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue.

4. I love to eat sushi. If I could afford it, I would eat sushi every single day, especially spicy tuna rolls.

5. When I was 16, I lived with a family in Redbridge, Ilford, Essex for a month which makes me an Essex Girl by osmosis. Since then I’ve been to traveled to the UK at least 20 times.

6. I’ve read almost every single Agatha Christie novel.

7. I share a birthday with Marie Antoinette as well as William Howard Taft.

In choosing my nominees, I'm highlighting writers, readers, travelers, cat and bunny lovers. Drumroll....

Seven Nominees

1. Melanie at Madame Guillotine

2. Daphne at Tazanites's Castle

3. Evangeline at Edwardian Promenade

4. Hope Tarr
5. Leanna Renee Hieber
6. Eliza at History Undressed
7. Delilah Marvelle at A little Bit of Muslin

Scandalous Review: Georgette Heyer

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 16:30:00 +0000

Title: Georgette Heyer

Author: Jennifer Kloester

Publisher: Sourcebooks, Incorporated

Publication date: 1/1/2013

Pages: 464

How acquired: Through Net Galley

What it's about:

Georgette Heyer remains an enduring international bestseller, read and loved by generations of readers and extolled by bestselling authors. Despite her enormous popularity she never gave an interview or appeared in public.

Jennifer Kloester, Heyer's official biographer, spent ten years researching Georgette Heyer, during which time she had unlimited access to Heyer's notebooks, private papers and family records. Engaging and authoritative, this comprehensive, official biography offers new insights into the life and writing of a remarkable and ferociously private woman.

My thoughts: Happy New Year everyone! During the holidays, I settled down to read Jennifer Kloester's new biography of author Georgette Heyer (1902-1974). I've been reading romances since I was knee high to a grasshopper but I've only read a few Georgette Heyer novels. I confess that most of my early reading was spicier historical and contemporary romances. Oh I knew who Georgette Heyer was, most of the Regency authors and readers over the years have waxed rhapsodical over her novels. I'm surprised that I never picked up a Heyer novel until I was an adult given my complete adoration of Anya Seton and Jean Plaidy/Victoria Holt/Philippa Carr. Perhaps I thought they were too stuffy or I just wasn't as interested in the Regency period as I became later on.

So when the opportunity arose to read Kloester's new biography, I jumped at the chance. It's interesting how some biographies just grab you and some don't. I had this problem with the last biography I read, The Horror of Love which I reviewed before the holidays. However, I didn't have that problem with Kloester's biography. Perhaps because I knew so little about the author that everything was completely knew to me. Heyer was born during the Edwardian era and died during the early 70's. Her upbringing was of that of a typical middle class girl of the time, educated largely at home until her teens. Heyer as a child was apparently incredibly shy but she was also a born storyteller, keeping her younger brothers amused with the tales that she wove for their enjoyment.

Her father, George, initially worked for King's College but eventually moved into fundraising as well as working for a bank in Paris, where the family lived for several months just before the dawn of World War I. Her life was comfortable, the Heyer family lived in Wimbledon for most of Georgette's life. Although Georgette was incredibly intelligent, there was no talk of her going on to University. Instead at the age of 17, she wrote her first novel The Black Moth, which was published when she was 19 (the book is still in print). By the time she died, Heyer had written 55 books, not just historical romances but also detective thrillers and short stories. She married young, at the age of 23 to Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer who later retrained to be a barrister.

Kloester's biography is a fascinating glimpse into the life of a writer. Georgette was the main breadwinner in the house for a number of years until her husband became a barrister. Kloester details how Georgette tried to balance her public life as the author and her private life where she insisted on being referred as Mrs. Rougier, and deferred to her husband. Georgette and her husband had a remarkably modern marriage by our standards. They were good friends as well as husband and wife, Ronald was her beta reader for her novels, helped her out with her detective thrillers in terms of how the murder was committed. He was her biggest cheerleader. However her success did take a toll on family life. Her son Richard, an only child, grew up lonely since he was mainy around adults and her family life often took a backseat to her writing.

Writers will no doubt emphathize with Heyer's frustrations with her publisher and her agent. Heyer frequently complained that her books weren't being promoted enough and she was frustrated at the lack of interest from film producers. Heyer seems to have been one of those rare authors whose books went straight to print without the dreaded revision letters from her editor. Apparently her publisher just took it for granted that what she wrote was awesome and sent the book to print without even reading it despite her begging. She also had the same frustrations with her copyeditor that I'm sure most writers will recognize. Like a lot of creative people, Heyer was terrible with money, but her husband wasn't much better. She tended to rely on her accountant to work things out with the Inland Revenue and we all know how well that turns out. At one point, Heyer seemed to have been supporting an entire village, not just her husband and son, but also her two brothers (her father died when she was in her early 20's, leaving Heyer to support not only her mother but her two teenage brothers), and assorted relatives.

Kloester has a great deal of sympathy for Heyer and tends to gloss over the more negative aspects of Heyer's character, her snobbery and racism. I wish that Kloester had given a bit more insight into the novels, perhaps more description of the plots and how Heyer researched her books. Although Kloester had access to Heyer's private papers, in the end, the reader knows as much about Heyer as they do about Jane Austen. In the end, I'm not sure that I would have wanted to know Heyer personally but I admired her work ethic and tenacity. How many authors today have written 55 best selling books that are still in print (before the advent of being able to e-pub their backlist)?

Verdict: A well-written look at one of the 20th century's most beloved authors.

Happy New Year from Scandalous Women

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Wishing all of my readers a very healthy, happy, and prosperous New Year.

Scandalous Review: The Horror of Love

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 19:09:00 +0000

Title: The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London

Author: Lisa Hilton
Publisher: Pegasus
Publication date: December 12, 2012
Pages: 336

How acquired: Net Galley

Overview: "Oh, the horror of love!" Nancy Mitford once exclaimed to her sister Diana Mosley.

Elegant and intelligent, Nancy was a renowned wit and a popular author. Yet this bright, waspish woman, capable of unerring emotional analysis in her work gave her heart to a well-known philanderer who went on to marry another woman. Was Nancy that unremarkable thing—a deluded lover—or was she a remarkable woman engaged in a sophisticated love affair? Gaston Palewski was the Free French commander and one of the most influential politicians in post-war Europe. Their life together was spent amongst the most exciting, powerful, and controversial figures in the center of reawakening Europe. She supported him throughout his tumultuous career and he inspired some of her best work, including The Pursuit of Love.

Lisa Hilton's provocative and emotionally challenging book reveals how, with discipline, gentleness, and a great deal of elegance, Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski achieved an affair of the heart.

Meet the Author

Lisa Hilton is the critically acclaimed author of Queens Consort and Athenais: The Life of Louis XIV's Mistress, the Real Queen of France. She lives in London.

My thoughts: The first summer I ever spent in England, I had the opportunity to see a new musical called The Mitford Girls. Since I had never heard of the Mitford's, and had no idea why anyone would want to write a musical about them, I declined. It wasn't until later that I learned that Nancy Mitford was the author of Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love, two books that I read and loved in high school. Since then, I have read a great deal about the sisters. Of course, much of my focus has been on the more colorful of the sisters, Diana, who married the British Facist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, Unity Mitford and Jessica. Nancy I knew more as author, especially of Voltaire in Love, one of the books that I used as a source when I wrote Scandalous Women. She always seemed like the dark horse of the family. The more respectable, older sister, who married terribly and moved to Paris, her happy place. So when I saw that Net Galley had Lisa Hilton's new biography of Nancy and Gaston Palewski, I jumped at the chance to review it.

Unfortunately my enthusiasm soon waned once I started reading the book. I'm not sure that I can put my finger on it exactly, but I found the book rather dry and unsatisfying. The book starts off with their first meeting in 1942 in London during the war and then flashes back to their respective childhoods. Since I knew less about Gaston than I did about Nancy, I found the sections on his early childhood and his family history interesting, particularly the fact that he and his brother both converted to Catholicism (their parents were Jewish from Poland originally).

However, once the war starts, the book becomes not only a general history of the Free French but also a mini-biography of Charles de Gaulle. Long stretches of narrative are devoted to the war in Africa and de Gaulle's interactions with both the English and the Americans. When Gaston is involved, I found it interesting but most of it was tedious to wade through. I found myself putting the book down or skipping ahead to parts where Nancy was concerned. Finally after about 150 pages, Nancy and Gaston finally meet but again we're told a lot about their relationship but we don't really see it. Because of Gaston work, the couple spent a great deal of time apart over the 30 years of their relationship.

I'm also not quite sure what it was that drew these two people together, apart from their shared love of France, the 18th century, collecting objet d'arts, and going out to parties. It's clear that Nancy fell madly in love with Gaston for some reason (apparently he was also good in the sack) but whether he actually loved Nancy is a matter of debate. Like Jean-Paul Satre, he seemed to have many women, at one point in the book, besides Nancy, he was juggling at least 3 other women, all of them social acquaintainces of Nancy, including Susan Mary Alsop. Hilton points out that Nancy's sister Diana was also married to a serial philanderer as was another good friend of hers, Lady Diana Cooper but that Nancy is pitied because she wasn't married to Gaston, she was just one of his many mistresses.

By the end of the book, I felt I knew less about Gaston and Nancy but a great deal about post-war French politics and Parisian society after the war. I'm also not sure that I liked either one of them very much either. Hilton points out that Nancy was not a snob, which is partly true. She was virulently anti-American despite the fact that she had never been there, and also her sister Jessica lived in the States for many years.

Verdict: A perfectly serviceable but ultimately disappointing biography.

Hetty Green – America’s First Female Tycoon

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 17:00:00 +0000

I was first introduced Hetty Green during the Bicentennial. LIFE Magazine had put out a special issue on noted American women during the previous two hundred years of the nation’s existence and Hetty was one of the women. Of course, they chose the least flattering picture they could find, Hetty during her later years when she was noted for her eccentricities. She was nicknamed “The Witch on Wall Street,” which is interesting when you consider there were hardly any women on Wall Street or in business in the 19^th century. All of which makes Hetty’s accomplishments all the more remarkable. Unlike Victoria Woodhull and her sister Tennessee Claflin, Hetty didn’t get her stock tips from a railroad tycoon like Cornelius Vanderbilt. She studied the markets closely, bought low and sold high (Warren Buffett would have been proud), and kept her expenses low by borrowing a desk in the offices of Chemical bank (which later merged with J.P. Morgan). For years, Hetty was known more for her eccentricities and her frugality and then for her business acumen. In recent years, however, Hetty has been recognized for being the first American woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street. Her success paved the way for women such as Muriel Siebert and Sayra Lebenthal.

She was born Henrietta Howland Robinson in New Bedford, MA on November 21, 1834. At the time of her birth, New Bedford was a thriving town, whose primary industry was whaling. Her family were Quakers who owned a large whaling fleet. Her father was disappointed that she hadn’t been the longed for son, and her mother suffered from post-partum depression after her birth. As a result, Hetty was farmed out to relatives, including her maternal grandfather Gideon Howland. Feeling abandoned by the people who were supposed to love her, from an early age, Hetty began to act out and throw tantrums when she didn’t get her way. It also led her to become a massive control freak as she got older.

Hetty became interested in finance, through reading the financial papers to her grandfather whose eyesight was failing. It became a way for her to connect not only to her grandfather but also to her father as well. By the time she was 13, she was the family bookkeeper. Despite her financial savvy, when her father died in 1864, and left her $7.5 million ($107 million in 2010), the money was still left in a trust. Hetty was furious that she was not allowed to control the bulk of her money. Hetty had invested a small amount of money on her own; she invested what she could in Civil War bonds, against the objections of her family. Hetty made a killing, as she would continue to do for the rest of her life.

When her aunt Sylvia died and left the bulk of her fortune to charity, Hetty was livid. Her aunt had used her fortune throughout her life as a way to control people; Hetty had catered to her in the expectation that she would inherit everything. Showing just how ruthless she could be, Hetty challenged the will’s validity in court by producing an earlier will which allegedly left the entire estate to her. The case dragged on for years, and ultimately Hetty ended up losing, after the court decided that the signature on the will had been forged.

While Hetty was no raving beauty, she was considered attractive with fine blue eyes and a tall, shapely figure. While living in New York, she met Edward Henry Green, who came from a wealthy Vermont family. Thirteen years older, he was tall and handsome, with wavy blond hair, and blue eyes. While Hetty was reticent, no interest in clothes or parties; and had no small talk , her beau had a robust personality, was a witty conversationalist filled with amusing anecdotes, and he was the type of man who feasted on life. Fluent in several languages, he had lived abroad for twenty years. After a long courtship, the two married when Hetty was 33 years old. In a sort of 19^th century pre-nuptial agreement, she made him renounce all rights to her money before their wedding. For several years, they lived abroad in London, making their base at the ultra-exclusive Langham Hotel. The couple soon had two children, Edward Howland Robinson born in 1868 and Sylvia born almost three years later in 1871. While her husband was much more of a gambler when it came to investing, Hetty was much more practical when it came to money. She had a simple investment strategy, conservative investments, substantial cash reserves, and an exceedingly cool head. While other investors might drop their stock at the first sign of a dip in the markets, Hetty would hold on until the stock rebounded. She initially invested heavily in greenbacks, which according to Wikipedia, were notes printed by the U.S. government immediately after the Civil War. While other investors were wary, Hetty invested heavily and made $1.2 million from her investment in the first year. She later expanded her portfolio to include railroads, eventually feuding with most of the major players including Collis Huntington.

In 1885, the financial house John J. Cisco collapsed, in which Hetty was the largest investor. In the fall out, Hetty discovered that not only was her husband the firm’s biggest debtor but that the firm had used her money as collateral for their loans to her husband. While Hetty had no problem turning a blind eye to her husband’s infidelities and gambling, she put her foot down when it came to her money. Despite his transgressions, the idea of divorcing him never occurred to her. The couple separated, although they stayed on friendly terms, sharing lunch occasionally, and Hetty even nursed him in the years before his death.

Over the years, Hetty began to develop a reputation as an eccentric. Believing merchants raised the prices when they knew that she was coming, she started dressing in old clothes and using a false name to get a better price. When she lived in New York, instead of renting a house or an apartment in one of the new luxury buildings like the Dakota, Hetty preferred to live in boarding houses because it was not just cheap but convenient. Later in life, she moved from one furnished apartment to another in Brooklyn and Manhattan in order to avoid having a permanent residence (and to avoid paying income tax). When the five boroughs combined into what we now know as New York City, she moved across the river to Hoboken. She ate baked onions because she believed that they warded off colds. Instead of eating in fancy restaurants like Delmonico’s, Hetty brought her lunch to work every day to save money. She allegedly wore her clothes until they were falling apart. There were rumors that she ate oatmeal that she heated on the office radiator.

The biggest and most juicy myth was the story that Hetty’s frugality cost her son his leg. Ned injured his leg while sledding at their home in Vermont. Hetty applied a home remedy to try and heal the leg but she also called the local doctor. When it appeared that the methods were working, she canceled the doctor who had been called to attend him, because she would have had to pay him for his time, which she felt would be wasted since Ned appeared fine. Unfortunately for Ned, the healing was only temporary. Hetty, to her credit, when she realized that Ned’s leg was not healed, took him to see several eminent physicians. Almost all of them recommended that Ned have the leg amputated which both Hetty and her son were reluctant to have happen. Over time, the leg grew worse and eventually had to be amputated. She couldn’t escape the rumors even in death; she supposedly died of apoplexy when she argued with a maid about the virtues of skimmed milk. The truth was that Hetty had been suffering ill-health for a number of years. Diagnosed with a hernia, she refused to pay $150 to have an operation, considering the price too high. Instead, she put a ruler in her underwear, pressed against the hernia.

Many of the stories were spread by her mostly male business competitors who gave her the lovely nickname of the ‘Witch of Wall Street,’ partly due to her habit of mostly wearing black. It no doubt galled them that Hetty was so successful in business that the City of New York came to Hetty more than once to help keep the city afloat. Hetty could be just as ruthless and litigious as any male tycoon. She sued the trustees of her father’s estate, accusing them of mismanagement, and despite the negative publicity, she foreclosed on a church that had gotten behind in its loan payments. When the pastor told her that she was in danger of not getting into heaven, Hetty told him to pray for her. Hetty enjoyed making money, the wheeling and dealing, much more than she did spending it. While other tycoons built lavish mansions, monuments to their wealth, or donated large sums to charity, Hetty quietly went about her business, crisscrossing the country to inspect the various properties she owned. Instead of just donating money to charity, Hetty preferred to help others help themselves by providing jobs whenever possible.

Hetty believed that it was important for women to have some knowledge about business, how to write a check, open a bank account, read a financial statement, in order not to be taken advantage of by unscrupulous businessmen. She believed that knowledge of business would make them better wives, since they would have an understanding of the pressures their husbands were under. However, Hetty didn’t believe in women’s suffrage, that they should have the vote or even run for political office. Despite her success in business, she still believed that a woman’s greatest job was to be a wife and a mother.

But all of her money made Hetty paranoid. She believed that not only her aunt but her father had been poisoned. She began carrying a gun to protect against the possibility of an attack. Determined to protect her children against fortune hunters, she made her son Ned promise not to get married for twenty years (he eventually married his long-time girlfriend after his mother’s death). When her daughter Sylvie eventually married in her late thirties to Matthew Astor Wilks, Hetty made sure that he signed a pre-nuptial agreement waiving his right to her fortune. At point, Hetty moved into the brand new Plaza Hotel, but she moved out after six weeks, sick and tired of the letters she received from people begging for money. She also became afraid that she would be kidnapped and made detours to evade the would-be pursuer.

Hetty finally passed away on July 3, 1916 at the age of 81. She left a fortune of between $100 million to $200 million (or $1.9 – $3.8 billion in 2006 dollars), arguably making her the richest woman in the world at the time. Apart from a small bequest to a relative, the majority of her wealth was left to her two children, Ned and Sylvie. Freed from his mother’s eagle eye, Ned spent lavishly but still managed to leave his sister a substantial fortune after his death. Since neither of Hetty’s children had children of their own, Hetty’s fortune ended up being dispersed after Sylvie’s death to 63 charities and financial institutions.

Further Reading:

Farquhar, Michael: A Treasury of Foolishly Forgotten Americans: Pirates, Skinflints, Patriots, and Other Colorful Characters Stuck in the Footnotes of History. New York: Perigee Books (2008)

Slack, Charles, Hetty: The Genius And Madness Of America's First Female Tycoon. New York: Ecco (2004).
Wallach, Janet: The Richest Woman in America – Hetty Green in the Gilded Age. New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday (2012)

Scandalous Review: The Queen Mother - The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Kerri Mahon) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 18:11:00 +0000

Title: The Queen Mother - The Untold Story of Elizabeth Bowes Lyon, Who Became Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother

Author: Lady Colin Campbell

Publisher: St. Martin’s Press

Pub Date: April 2012

How Acquired: New York Public Library

What it’s about: (from the inside cover)

Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother has been called the "most successful queen since Cleopatra." Her personality was so captivating that even her arch-enemy Wallis Simpson wrote about "her legendary charm." Portrayed as a selfless partner to the King in the Oscar-winning movie The King's Speech, The Queen Mother is most often remembered from her later years as the smiling granny with the pastel hats. When she died in 2002, just short of her 102nd birthday, she was praised for a long life well lived.

But there was another side to her story. For the first time, Lady Colin Campbell shows us that the untold life of the Queen Mother is far more fascinating and moving than the official version that has been peddled ever since she became royal in 1923. With unparalleled sources—including members of the Royal Family, aristocrats, and friends and relatives of Elizabeth herself—this mesmerizing account takes us inside the real and sometimes astonishing world of the royal family.

About the Author:

Lady Colin Campbell, who is connected to the royal family through mutual ancestors and marriage, is the author of the New York Times bestseller Diana in Private—which was the first book to reveal the truth behind the "fairytale" marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales—as well as The Royal Marriages: What Really Goes on in the Private World of the Queen and Her Family, and The Real Diana.

My thoughts:

When I first heard about this book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to bother to read it, despite the fact that I basically will read anything about the Royal Family. I’d read an article in the Daily Mail about the book which made it clear that the author had an axe to grind with the Queen Mother. What made me change my mind were two things: I saw the book at my local library, and I had read Lady Colin’s previous books, much of what she had written about Diana in particular was later confirmed by Andrew Morton’s book. So I thought I would give the book a chance. Well after reading the book, I can say that she doesn’t so much as take an axe to the Queen Mother, but more like a chisel.

She starts off the book with the outrageous claim that the Queen Mother (Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon as she was then) was conceived in a sort of Edwardian surrogate mother situation. The Queen Mum’s mother supposedly had a bit of a nervous breakdown after the death of her oldest child, and it was suggested that she not attempt to have any more children. According to Lady Colin, the couple desperately wanted to add to their already enormous brood, so the future Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne conceived not one but two children with the family cook. The author bases her evidence on the fact that the Duke and Duchess of Windsor used to call the Queen Mum ‘Cookie’ as a rather vicious nickname and the fact that there is some discrepancy about where the Queen was actually born. She also claims that the Earl, on his deathbed, confessed to his physician that the true story of the Queen’s origins as well as that of her baby brother David. Oh, and Elizabeth and David were referred to as the ‘Benjamins’ in the family, a reference to the biblical story of Jacob and Rachel (Rachel had offered her handmaiden to Jacob as a surrogate mother since she was unable to conceive).

Her second outrageous claim is that Princess Elizabeth (Elizabeth II) and Princess Margaret were conceived by artificial insemination because the Duchess of York as she was then, hated sex and had avoided it ever since her honeymoon. In her defense, she’s not the first author to come up with this theory. Kitty Kelly wrote in her book The Royals that Bertie was sterile due to the mumps, which is why the royal couple had to resort to artificial insemination to have a child. Campbell also claims that Queen Maud of Norway conceived her son with King Haakon VII the same way. Lady Colin also writes that denied the martial bed, Bertie went back to his previous girlfriend, an actress named Evelyn ‘Boo’ Laye for comfort.

Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, according to Lady Colin, is a steel magnolia. She’s all charm and sweetness on the surface, but manipulative and vindictive when you cross her. Initially, she’d set her sights on the Prince of Wales, but she wasn’t his type of woman. She wasn’t sleek and sophisticated enough and lacked sex appeal. Unable to win the grand prize, Elizabeth settled for his brother who had long pursued her. Campbell states that Elizabeth almost lost Bertie because King George VI and Queen Mary grew tired of the way she strung him along, hoping for a better offer. Once married, she set out to become indispensable to him emotionally, soothing his rages, helping him with his speech difficulties, forging a tight unit. If she couldn’t have the Prince of Wales, then she would help Bertie become the best man he could possibly be. Sort of making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear if you will.

Fans of the Queen Mum will be most outraged by the claims that she manipulated events behind the scenes to get Edward VIII off the throne so that she and Bertie could rule. Apparently a woman scorned, she was determined not to lose her place in the spotlight to anyone. Already she’d had to deal with Bertie’s younger brother George marrying a genuine Princess, Princess Marina of Greece, who supposedly treated Elizabeth with disdain. She wasn’t about to give way to a twice-divorced American woman. Lady Colin claims that Elizabeth worked her magic on the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, amongst other courtiers who were dismayed not just by the idea of a twice-divorced Queen but because the Prince of Wales had ideas about modernizing the monarchy. This bit rings a bit true given the flack that Prince Charles has apparently gotten about wanting to limit the Firm to William and Harry and their children, cutting out Prince Andrew’s kids from performing royal duties. Most egregious is her claims that if Edward VIII had stayed on the throne, he could somehow have prevented World War II from happening or at least kept Britain out of it.

Although this book is half the size of William Shawcross’s biography of the Queen Mother, it feels just as long. She has a tendency to go off on tangents, about Thelma Furness and Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, the Mountbattens, Princess Alice of Greece, Queen Marie of Rumania and on and on. When she finally does get back to the main thrust of her story, the Queen Mother, it’s hard to remember what was happening before the tangent. While Campbell does give the Queen Mother her due during World War II, and that, while she may not have been in love with Bertie, they did manage to forge a strong and enduring bond, she does so begrudgingly. I agree with her that it was ridiculous for Elizabeth to be adamant that Wallis not be allowed to use the title HRH because if the Duke and Duchess ever divorced it would be embarrassing for her to still HRH, Mrs. Bob Smith. Campbell rightly points out that both Diana and Sarah, Duchess of York lost the right to use HRH after their divorce. She makes a point of comparing the two women and declaring Bertie and the Duke of Windsor married similar women, charming, dynamic but who also dominated the two men who were putty in their hands. This, however, she blames on Queen Mary for withholding affection from her two oldest sons.

Campbell manages to wrap up the last 50 years of the Queen’s life in about 15 pages, most of which are a litany of how the Queen manipulated her way into having a bigger role on the royal stage than previous dowager Queens, how she ruined Princess Margaret’s life by not supporting her romance with Group Captain Peter Townsend, and by siding with Lord Snowdon in the divorce, how she hated Prince Philip calling him ‘The Hun’ and tried to undermine his marriage to the Queen, her promotion of Lady Diana Spencer as the perfect Princess of Wales until Diana proved that she was not a team player, and her devotion to the Prince of Wales at the expense of her other grandchildren who were not as important because they were not the heir to the throne. She also spends a great deal of time in the book criticizing everything from the way the Queen dressed to the way she parented her children. At the end of the book, she grudgingly admits a certain admiration for the woman she has spent the previous 400 pages eviscerating.

Most of Campbell’s information comes from people who were no fans of the Queen Mother, such as Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, the Windsors themselves, and other assorted society figures. She clearly comes down on the side of Duke and Duchess, lamenting the fact that he was ‘forced’ off the throne. She quotes liberally from Hugo Vicker's and William Shawcross' biographies but solely to bolster her own conclusions. She takes great delight at revealing what they were supposedly too polite to say in their books. One wonders why Lady Colin would want to write a book about someone she so clearly dislikes.

Verdict: A completely biased and inflammatory look at the late Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. I would suggest readers check out the Shawcross biography or Hugo Vicker’s biography of the Queen Mother.