Authors: Paul Spicer
By the end of 1928 Alice had decided that she would have to obtain a more permanent base in London if she was going to be a frequent visitor there. Up until this point, she had been staying in London’s Ritz Hotel when in town, but at the beginning of 1929, she moved into an apartment block on fashionable Berkeley Street in Mayfair. Her half sister, Patricia Silverthorne, and her stepmother, Louise Silverthorne, had recently moved into the same building. Louise and Pat had left the United States in 1919, following a drama in which the local sheriff had arrived at the family home in Sharon, Connecticut, to confront William Silverthorne. Pat remembers her father sitting downstairs, puce in the face. Pat was sent to bed. In the morning, bags were packed and mother and daughter departed. When asked about this incident many years later, Pat refused to give full details, only revealing, “The chauffeur was the informer.” At such a distance, it is difficult to speculate on the nature of William’s crime, but suffice to say that his behavior was inappropriate enough that his wife and daughter sailed for France only a few days later.
Pat completed her education in Florence before being brought to London by Louise, who was determined to introduce her into English society. This was a tricky prospect for an Italian-educated American girl with no fixed abode or society sponsorship. Early in 1929, Alice, Pat, and Louise found themselves living as neighbors. Alice had never been particularly close to Pat, but she had always gotten on well with Louise. However, she was careful to keep a certain distance from both women in public. “With my reputation and the scandal surrounding me, I would not wish to spoil Pat’s chances of meeting the right people,” she explained. Whenever Alice came over from Paris, they would breakfast together, and it was during this period that Pat and Louise were often privy to Alice’s unpredictable tempers and moods. On one occasion, according to Pat, Alice had been eagerly awaiting the day’s mail, perhaps hoping for a letter from Raymund, who had returned again to Kenya. That day, a single letter came and Alice opened it, only to find a large dividend check. Alice threw it to the ground, eyes welling with disappointment and disgust. “I don’t want all this damn money,” she told Pat. “It doesn’t buy happiness.”
Often, Alice would walk alone up Berkeley Street at lunchtime, meeting a friend at the Ritz bar, where she would drink vodka cocktails spiked with absinthe. She was on the verge of her thirties, and her beauty, rather than waning, was maturing as the next decade of her life approached. Although a whisper of scandal accompanied her wherever she went, the countess was much in demand. Most Thursday evenings, she could be found sitting at a table near the entrance of the Embassy Club in Old Bond Street, the famously exclusive London dance club. Thursday evening was the most fashionable night of the week, when the Embassy’s dance floor swam with royalty, socialites, and celebrities. The walls were painted in a soft green, with pink sofas placed against them, and low-level lighting was provided by twin candelabras fitted low on the walls. At the Embassy, Alice socialized with a small circle of Kenya connections that included, when he was in London, Denys Finch Hatton. Alice was also seen regularly with the club’s most illustrious members, Edward, Prince of Wales—who would later abdicate the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson—and his decadent younger brother, Prince George, the future duke of Kent. Prince George kept up a long line of affairs with both men and women throughout his short life (he was killed in an airplane crash in Scotland in 1942). Alice could often be seen at the “Royal Box,” a table on the right at the front of the club, usually the rowdiest table in the room. Another member of the Embassy set was banking heiress Poppy Baring, christened Helen, daughter of Sir Godfrey Baring of Baring banks, and one of Prince George’s many consorts. Gloria Vanderbilt, the widow of railroad heir Reginald Vanderbilt and mother of the future jeans designer, was also a regular. The drug-addicted great-niece of Reginald’s mother, Alice Vanderbilt, was Kiki Preston, known as “the girl with the silver syringe.” She was the woman Prince George had fallen in love with on a trip to Kenya in 1928.
The novelist Barbara Cartland’s description of Thursdays at the Embassy evokes something of the glamour of the female members of the club:
The faces of the women dancing and sitting round the room have an almost monotonous beauty. They all have large eyes with mascaraed eyelashes, full crimson mouths, narrow aristocratic noses and fine bones. Their hair, cut short and styled close to their well-shaped heads, is like exquisite satin, shiny and neat. Everything about them is neat and the expensive perfection of simplicity. Their skins are white—very white, the only exception being the warm golden loveliness of Lady Plunket as she floats by in the arms of Prince George. Doro the is the first person to be sun-tanned, and she has whispered to me that in the winter she keeps the same colour by applying diluted iodine to her skin.
It was at the Embassy that Alice and Prince George discovered their mutual love of French bulldogs. Alice had come into possession of a bulldog called Jimmy; Prince George had a bitch of equal breeding. It was decided that the two dogs should be married. To demonstrate Jimmy’s eligibility, Alice flew privately from Paris to London with him and her two children. Paola remembers being pulled across The Regent’s Park by Jimmy on his long leather lead. The prince must have approved of Alice’s hound because, despite quarantine regulations, the royal bitch was boxed and flown over to Paris to mate with Jimmy the next time she was in season. Twenty guests toasted the canine consummation with champagne at Alice’s rue Spontini apartment and the dogs were decorated with orange blossom. While guests got drunk, Jimmy and his consort were locked in a bedroom. At one point, Alice decided to see how they were getting along, whereupon she discovered that Jimmy was facing south and the prince’s dog was facing north. Horrified, Alice rang her vet, informing him, “My dog is killing the prince’s poor girl!” The vet advised her to remain calm, assuring her that in twenty minutes all would be well.
When not arranging wedding parties for pets, Alice continued her campaign to secure a marriage of her own. After Raymund returned from one of his Kenya trips, Alice whisked him away to the south of France, where he could indulge his love of gambling. Raymund had always been a keen gambler. He belonged to six clubs in London, including Buck’s and White’s, where he regularly lost money.
Reynold’s Illustrated News
reported that he had lost seven thousand pounds playing cards in London in the course of one year. Occasionally, he got lucky. Soon after leaving the army, he had visited Deauville and cleared five thousand pounds’ winnings in a week’s play. While in Cannes with Alice, Raymund scored an even bigger win. As he later recounted to Margaret Spicer, he had been playing roulette and betting on zero and zero, one, two and three. When zero came up twice running, followed by three, which was half covered by zero, he won many thousands of francs. Inspired, Raymund piled on the chips and won even more. Sensibly, Alice encouraged him to cash in his chips. The amount he received exceeded his total allowance for the year. Later, Pat Silverthorne—who met Raymund only once and took an immediate dislike to him—would describe this incident as the time he “broke the bank at Monte Carlo” (in fact, the win took place at Cannes).
Alice was not the only member of the Happy Valley set in the process of remarrying. As soon as Joss’s divorce from Idina was made absolute at the beginning of 1930, he married Mary Ramsay-Hill on February 8 of that year at St. Martin’s Register Office in London. Soon afterward, the couple returned to Kenya and set themselves up in the sumptuous former Ramsay-Hill residence, which Mary had secured in her divorce settlement from her former husband. Frédéric remarried that same year. The wedding took place on the January 9, 1930, at the Church of Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot in Paris. His bride was Genevieve Ryan (née Willinger), another American and the widow of Thomas Jefferson Ryan, a prominent New York lawyer and politician. Not to be outdone, Idina would also wed before the end of 1930. Her fourth husband, Donald Haldeman—born in England and educated at Eton—was the son of an American shirt maker. Their nuptials took place in Steyning, Sussex, on November 22, 1930. After a honeymoon in the United States, the couple returned to Kenya, where Donald had already made a name for himself as a white hunter.
All these weddings galvanized Alice’s resolve. Despite Raymund’s evident flaws, she continued her campaign. After almost four years of trying to persuade him to marry her, Raymund finally relented. In 1931, the couple announced their engagement.
B
Y THE END OF
1931, R
AYMUND HAD CONVINCED
his family that there was no longer anything to prevent him from marrying Alice. Her marriage to Frédéric had been annulled by the Pope, which meant that as far as the Catholic Church was concerned, Alice had never been married at all. Humphrey and Rudolph gave their consent and secret plans were hatched for a discreet wedding to be held in Paris early in the new year. Raymund must have been anxious to avoid publicity. He was still conscious of his family’s underlying disapproval of his relationship with Alice and the ongoing scandal of the Gare du Nord shooting. Humphrey was warning him to keep the wedding a low-profile affair. Alice was more realistic. She felt that the presence of the press at the nuptials was inevitable and that only so much could be done to control the coverage of the event. In fact, she hoped that the ensuing publicity might actually mitigate the
scandale
in the eyes of the public and silence the lingering recriminations surrounding her relationship with Raymund.
Alice and Raymund decided to get married in the wealthy Parisian suburb of Neuilly. Alice busied herself with the preparations. She needed to find a dress to wear for the ceremony that would be both chic and appropriate. Alice knew she would be photographed extensively, and she enlisted Paula de Casa Maury’s help in selecting a suitably striking outfit. Paula advised Alice to wear black. “I am not in mourning!” was Alice’s response. “You can hardly wear white,” Paula replied. A compromise was reached: Alice would wear black
and
white. Her former employer, Monsieur Arnot, created Alice’s wedding outfit at his shop on rue Saint-Florentin. Arnot made a close-fitting black cloak with black and white feathers, worn over a tight black broad-tail jacket with white gauntlets and an ermine collar. Under the cloak and jacket was a black frock with a white insert, and to top it off, a dramatic black hat. The color scheme matched Alice’s black-and-white bulldog Jimmy to perfection. Jimmy would accompany Alice to the ceremony. The dog was given a special shampoo in honor of the occasion.
The wedding took place on February 22, 1932, in a room adjoining the historic Salle des Fêtes (where the Treaty of Neuilly, between Bulgaria and the Allies, had been signed in 1919) in the Neuilly town hall. The deputy mayor performed the short service in French. The bride was resplendent in black and white, with her bulldog Jimmy at her side. Raymund wore a dark suit and a white shirt and tie and sported a bowler hat. The witnesses were Rudolph de Trafford and Paula de Casa Maury. As with her first marriage, Alice’s father did not attend. Neither did her two children, who were with Frédéric in Paris. Alice was later described as “charming and smiling,” and apparently she signed the register with “a firm hand.” (Even though the register was an official document, usually available to the public, in this instance it was carefully removed and put away in anticipation of the pack of press waiting outside.) When the brief formalities were over, Raymund escorted the guests down a side staircase, and meanwhile Alice slipped away down another. She then caught a waiting car and drove off separately to Paula’s residence in Neuilly, where a small reception was held. That night, a religious ceremony was performed at the church of Saint-Pierre in Neuilly. This time, Alice wore a white veil.
The wedding was widely reported in the French, American, and British press. On February 23, the
New York Times
printed the following pithy headline: AMERICAN WOMAN WEDS MAN SHE SHOT. On the wedding day itself, London’s
Evening News
gave the event front-page coverage with the headline BLACK AND WHITE BRIDE and the subheading “Coat, Hat and Dog to Match.” The
Evening Standard
went with ROMANCE OF HAPPY VALLEY in large type and the subheading “Mr Raymund de Trafford Marries Former Countess.” The
Star
printed LOCKED ROOM WEDDING and “Mr Raymund de Trafford’s Bride Takes Her Bulldog.” The
Daily Telegraph
was more discreet, covering the story on page nine with a photograph of the couple and a short caption. (At least three reporters spelled Raymund’s first name incorrectly. It must have happened all his life. He was Raymund, not Raymond.)
It is true that the majority of Alice’s friends and relatives found her fixation on Raymund impossible to understand: For six years now, she had refused to let go of the idea of marrying a patently unpleasant man who clearly had few redeeming characteristics. Even Raymund’s closest friends were never particularly complimentary about him, referring to him as
tête brulée,
or “hot-head.” After Evelyn Waugh returned from Kenya in 1931, he wrote a letter to Lady Dorothy Lygon, in which he described Raymund as “very nice but SO BAD. He fights and fucks and gambles and gets DD [disgustingly drunk] all the time.” Alice, meanwhile, had continued to overlook Raymund’s bad behavior, clinging to the hope that the relationship would improve if only she could marry him. Now that she was Raymund’s wife, she had a new British passport to boot, presented to her by the British embassy in Paris. It declared she was a “British Subject by Marriage,” which also meant that she could return with Raymund to Kenya.
But first there was the honeymoon, which Alice and Raymund spent in Monte Carlo and Cannes. The newlyweds settled down at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, where Alice installed them in a grand suite overlooking the harbor. No expense was spared, and each day passed in preparation for the night ahead. Raymund, of course, made straight for the casino and its Salon Privée, where he proceeded to play roulette at the high table until the early hours. Unlike his luck in Cannes, his losses during the honeymoon were considerable, and Alice funded him throughout. He was placing maximum bets on numbers “
en plein,
” which never came up. Alice was understandably distressed—after all, he was playing with her money—and they quarreled. Although Alice must have been aware of Raymund’s more unappealing qualities before the wedding, it was in Monaco that she began to have some idea of the full extent of his failings. Marriage, it seems, was having the effect of bringing out the worst extremes of Raymund’s character. This was a man so completely unsuited to being a husband that it makes one wonder why he agreed to marry Alice. But Alice had been extraordinarily persistent, and there were the small matters of her beauty and wealth, both of which would have been powerful incentives for someone as vain and profligate as Raymund. He may also have had a lingering sense of “honor” about the woman he had jilted in very public circumstances.
Before the honeymoon was over, Raymund decided his luck might take a turn for the better if they had a change of venue. They moved along the coast to the casino at Cannes, where he had been successful in the past, and where they stayed in the equally majestic accommodations of the Carlton Hotel, with its grand terrace facing the corniche. Raymund’s luck did indeed change in Cannes and he won back at least half of his considerable losses in Monte Carlo. His mood improved, and Alice diverted the discussion to Kenya, reminding Raymund that she hoped to return there as soon as possible. The couple flew to London in late March 1932, staying initially at Rudolph de Trafford’s home in Cowfold, Sussex. Here the rows continued. Alice was determined to return to Kenya. Raymund would not be told what to do. Although Alice had hoped that the presence of Raymund’s family would tame her new husband’s temper, this was not the case. Alice confided their problems to Rudolph, but it did nothing to alleviate the rancor.
The more Alice tried to talk about returning to Kenya, the more Raymund retreated from the marriage in general. By April of that year, Alice decided it would be best to go away for a while without him. The couple had been married barely two months when she made plans to take the waters at the Thermia Palace spa in Piestany, Slovakia, with her new sister-in-law, Mrs. Keith Menzies. Raymund’s sister was a little older than Alice, having been born in 1893, and had been christened Violet Mary. Like Alice, she had been divorced from her first husband, receiving an annulment from the Pope in 1921. She married Col. Keith Menzies in 1922. The new sisters-in-law agreed that a trip abroad would allow Raymund a cooling-off period. Built in 1912, the Thermia Palace was famous for its curative thermal spring waters, healing mud pool, and luxurious Art Nouveau accommodations. It was a place frequented by Hollywood film stars, European royalty, and Indian maharajas alike. Alice and Violet booked in for a complete course.
While in Slovakia, Alice wrote a letter dated May 8, 1932, to her Uncle Sim (Simeon Chapin), who was still the trustee of her fortune and her financial adviser. Alice wanted to thank him for his wedding present and for his letter of good wishes. She also wrote that she was “suffering considerably from my ‘tummy.’” Alice’s self-inflicted bullet wound to her abdomen continued to trouble her and seems to have been exacerbated by stress and overexertion. Years later, her eldest daughter, Nolwen, remembered that her mother underwent multiple operations over the years and was rarely free of abdominal pain. In Alice’s letter to Uncle Sim, she put a brave face on her ailment as well as her new marriage, even managing to explain away the fact that she was traveling without Raymund only two months after the wedding. After five years of being independent, she wrote, she couldn’t imagine being married “to anyone who had no respect for one’s privacy….” Obviously, Alice did not wish to confide her marital problems to Uncle Sim, because she went on to say that her new marriage was harmonious precisely because Raymund never interfered with her plans and she never interfered with his. After Slovakia, she would join Raymund in Paris.
Despite Alice’s valiant effort to give Uncle Sim the impression that all was well with the marriage, matters with Raymund had grown untenable. When Alice returned from Slovakia, she met Raymund for lunch at a sidewalk café in Paris. Onlookers reported to the American gossip columns that Alice and Raymund were in the midst of a very vocal fight when Raymund picked up his champagne-brandy cocktail—decorated with a glacé cherry—and threw it in Alice’s face. Alice, her face dripping with drink and a cherry sticking to the little black veil on her hat, was seen to reach for her handbag to retrieve a compact. Raymund apparently misinterpreted Alice’s movement, assuming that she was going for her gun again. Terrified, he made off down the street. Alice wasted no time, contacting her lawyers and advising them that she wanted an immediate legal separation. She agreed to buy Raymund a first-class passage to Australia, and to fund him sufficiently to stay there for a considerable length of time.
Raymund took the money and left for Australia as instructed. Mere months after the wedding, Alice was alone again. Determined to return to Kenya, even without Raymund, she traveled to London to pack up her flat in Berkeley Street and went once more to see Rudolph de Trafford. Rudolph seems to have taken pity on his sister-in-law, as she stayed with him throughout August 1932 (according to his visitors’ book). Alice also managed to make contact with a white hunter from Kenya who was arranging a safari for members of the Vanderbilt family. The planned hunting trip would take the party into the Congo from the west coast of Africa and toward the Ugandan border. Alice offered to pay her way if she could tag along, with the idea that she would cross over to Uganda and then get a train down from Kisumu, on Lake Victoria, to Nairobi. The Vanderbilts were delighted to have this interesting American girl as part of their entourage, and so Alice packed her bags.
In Paris, she said good-bye to Nolwen and Paola, who were now ten and eight years old, respectively, promising them she would return for regular visits. Although Alice had been living in Europe for almost six years, her daughters were so accustomed to their mother’s regular disappearances that this one would not have seemed very different from all the others. Alice de Trafford, as she was now known, entered Kenya via the Congo and Uganda with her new British passport and went straight to the newly appointed governor, Sir Joseph Byrne, who had assumed office the previous year. Lady Joan Grigg was no longer in a position to block her return, and so Alice presented her letters of support (one from Frédéric de Janzé himself). Sir Joseph granted her the right to stay. It was now 1933, and Alice had been away since 1928. With her ferocious determination and an unrelenting desire to get what she wanted, Alice had managed to find her way back to Kenya again.