Olga de Meyer
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Baroness Olga de Meyer(bornMaria Beatrice Olga Alberta Caracciolo;8 August 1871 – 6 January 1931) was a British-bornartists' model,socialite, patron of the arts, writer, and fashion figure of the early 20th century. She was best known as the wife of photographerAdolph de Meyerand goddaughter of KingEdward VII,who was also rumoured to be her biological father. After 1916, she preferred to be known asMahrah de Meyer.
Background
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Of Portuguese, Italian, French, and American descent, she was bornDonnaMaria Beatrice Olga Alberta Caraccioloin London, England. Her father was Neapolitan nobleman Gennaro Caracciolo Pinelli (1849–?), eldest son of the 4th Duke of Castelluccio, while her mother was the former Marie Blanche Sampayo (1849–1890), a daughter of Antoine François Oscar Sampayo, a French diplomat who served as that country's minister to Portugal, and his American wife, Virginia Timberlake.[1][2][3][4][5][6]Her great-grandmotherMargaret O'Neill Eatonwas the central figure in thePetticoat affair,a scandal that plagued PresidentAndrew Jackson.[3]Another great-grandparent was aMarshal of France,CountAuguste Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély.[7][8]
Olga was born at 14 William Street, Lowndes Square, Chelsea, on 8 August 1871 and her father registered the birth in Chelsea North-East Sub-District on 5 September 1871, 'Olga' being the third and 'Alberta' the fifth of her seven forenames. The 1871 Census, taken on 3 April 1871, showed the couple with her mother at Thomas's Hotel and Lord Carrington's diary shows them together at Marlborough House on 4 July 1871 when the Duchess was heavily pregnant and the Duke was unwell.[9]Jane Ridley says that the Duchess 'scandalised London society that winter, going out shooting in a kilt and smoking cigarettes'.[10]Later gossip purveyed by Jacques Emile Blanche (who knew Olga and her mother atDieppein the 1880s) said that the couple had separated 'at the church door' and that Olga was the daughter or god-daughter of the Prince of Wales, laterKing Edward VII,but Ridley considers it most unlikely that she was his child.[11]As a Catholic Olga was certainly not the Prince's god-daughter. In the 1870s when staying at Sandringham 'an Italian Duchess, who is an Englishwoman, and her daughter, brought up as a Roman Catholic and now turning Protestant', presumably the Duchess and Olga, are mentioned by a visiting bishop.[12]According to the writer Philippe Jullian the Prince believed that Olga was his child and supported her,[13]but others assumed that her mother's friend Stanislaus Augustus, 3rd Prince Poniatowski (1835–1908), a married former equerry ofNapoleon III,was her father. Immediately after the death of her mother in 1891, Olga went to Naples and married in 1892, Prince Marino Brancaccio, a member of another Catholic family, but they were divorced at Hamburg in June 1899. When Olga married Adolph de Meyer the following month in London she did so in a Protestant ceremony.[14]
Olga de Meyer attended the King's coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1902 when her presence was described as "conspicuous". According to an article entitled "Coronation of King Edward VII: Splendid Scene in Westminster Abbey",The New York Times,10 August 1902, Olga sat in the front row of the King's box along with several of his intimate friends, includingMary Cornwallis-West,Minnie Pagetand the king's mistressAlice Keppel.
In 1916, Olga de Meyer took the forename "Mahrah" upon the advice of an astrologer.
Marriages
[edit]Olga Caracciolo was married to:
- NobileMarino Brancaccio(1852–1920), a Neapolitan nobleman who was a son of Carlo Brancaccio, Prince of Triggiano and Duke of Lustra. They married in Naples, Italy, on 9 May 1892 (civil) and 11 May 1892 (religious), and divorced on 7 June 1899, in Hamburg, Germany. ArtistJacques-Émile Blanche,a family friend, called it "a short and most dramatic union".'
- Adolph de Meyer(1868–1946), a celebrated artist dubbed byCecil Beaton"theDebussyof photography. "They married on 25 July 1899 atHoly Trinity Church, Sloane Street,Cadogan Square, in London.[15]This was amarriage of convenience,as the groom was homosexual and the bride was bisexual; some sources identify her as a lesbian.[16][17]The de Meyers were characterised byViolet Trefusis—who counted Olga among her lovers and whose mother,Alice Keppel,wasEdward VII's best known mistress—as "PederasteandMédisante"(a pun onPelleas and Melisande,from the French for 'pederast' and 'woman who criticises/maligns [médire]') because, as Trefusis observed "He looked so queer and she had such a vicious tongue."[18][19]
Among her affairs was one withPrincess (Edmond) de Polignac,an heiress ofSinger sewing machinesand arts patron, in the years 1901 to 1905.
Muse and writer
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Known for "her elusive combination of childlike innocence and soigné charm" and described as "tall and slender, with Venetian red hair", Olga de Meyer wasmuseand model to many artists, among themJacques-Émile Blanche,James McNeill Whistler,James Jebusa Shannon,Giovanni Boldini,Walter Sickert,John Singer Sargent,andPaul César Helleu.[20][21][22]Another of her artist admirers wasCharles Conder,who was infatuated by Olga Caracciolo and painted her portrait;Aubrey Beardsleywas part of her youthful circle as well.[21]Olga de Meyer also inspired characters in novels byElinor GlynandAda Leverson.
Of Olga's beauty, British novelistGeorge Moorewas unimpressed. As he commented to an admiring artist friend, "By Jove, you're all after the girl, a fineMélisandefor the stage, with her beautiful hair down to her heels. She's paintable, I admit, but as to one's daily use, I should rather have the mother than the child. Too slender for me... you know my tastes. "[23]
She worked briefly as a society columnist forLa Galoise,a Paris newspaper, in the 1890s. As Mahrah de Meyer, a name she adopted in 1916, she wrote one novel, the autobiographicalNadine Narska(Wilmarth Publishing, 1916).The New York Timescondemned the novel as "morbid, exaggerated,... [and] guilty of many carelessly written sentences",[24][25]whileThe Dialcalled de Meyer's book "a miscellaneous mixture of paganism, diluted Nietzsche, worldly morals, and the doctrine of reincarnation".
One of de Meyer's short stories,Clothes and Treachery,was made intoThe Devil's Pass Key,a 1919 silent movie by directorErich von Stroheim.[26]
Sportswoman
[edit]Known as the "woman [amateur fencing] champion of Europe", Baroness de Meyer competed at tournaments in Europe and the United States in the early 1900s. At the Colony Club in New York City on 6 January 1913, she participated in an exhibition match with California champion fencerSibyl Marston.[27][28][29]
Death
[edit]An observer wrote "Nervous, drugged, surrounded by ambiguous friends and accompanied by a too-conspicuous husband, Olga had become frankly spiteful. Her scandal-mongering had eliminated the last of her respectable friends, and people visited her only because they could be sure to find apipe of opiumor a sniff of cocaine. "[23]
Olga de Meyer is said to have died of a heart attack in a detoxification clinic in Austria in 1930 or 1931,[24][30]but she was reported as being at St. Moritz with her husband in January 1931.[31]She died on 6 January 1931, aged 59. She was interred two days later at Freiburg, Baden, Germany.[32]
References
[edit]- ^Annuario della nobiltà italiana(1899), page 263
- ^Simona Pakenham,Sixty Miles from England: The English at Dieppe, 1814–1914(Macmillan, 1967), page 123
- ^abSamuel Gordon Heiskell and John Sevier,Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History(Ambrose Printing Company, 1921), pages 325–326
- ^According to an 1889 letter written by one of Virginia Sampayo's schoolmates, a Mrs Lee, Virginia was engaged in her youth toBarton Key,son ofFrancis Scott Key.She was also known as "a brilliant woman in mind, appearance, and accomplishments... in spite of her want of veracity.... She always changes her history and gets coarser as she grows older. I suppose she may need money, or craves notoriety..." Extract from John Fiske,Essays, Historical, and Literary,Volume 1 (The Macmillan Company, 1902), pages 293–294
- ^The Sampayos married in London on 28 January 1849, when he was the former secretary of the legation of the French mission to the United States; on the marriage license his name is given asAnthony Sampayo.Information on marriage published on page 94 ofNational Intelligencer & Washington Advertiser Newspaper Abstracts, 1849,Volume 23 (Heritage Books, 2007)
- ^In a London newspaper in July 1903, Olga de Meyer placed the following advertisement: "The Baroness de Meyer highly recommends her cousin, Mlle. de Sampago [sic], as ladies' companion, chaperon, or traveling companion. Understands art needlework." Quoted in "Some Tea Table Confidences",The New York Times,2 August 1903
- ^John Rothenstein and Campbell Dodgson,The Life and Death of Conder(Dent, 1938), page 115
- ^Denys Sutton,Walter Sickert: A Biography,(Joseph, 1976), page 41
- ^Anthony Camp,Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fictions:1714-1936 (2007) 357-59.
- ^Jane Ridley,Bertie: a life of Edward VII(2012) 138.
- ^Jacques Emile Blanche,Portraits of a lifetime(1937) 51-2, 171.
- ^H. E. Wortham,The delightful profession: Edward VII: a study in kingship(1931) 190.
- ^Philippe Jullian,Edward and the Edwardians(Viking Press, 1967)
- ^Anthony Camp,Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fiction: 1714-1936(2007) 357-59.
- ^British marriage records available through Freebmd.rootsweb.com state the marriage of Maria Beatrice Olga Brancaccio, Princess de Moavero, and Baron Adolphus Edward Sigismond von Meyer.
- ^"History of Art: Adolf de Meyer".All-art.org.Retrieved28 April2013.
- ^Lesbian identification cited in Philip Hoare,Noel Coward: A Biography,(University of Chicago Press, 1998), page 32.
- ^Diana Souhami,Mrs Keppel and her daughter(London, 1996) 230.
- ^Trefusis-de Meyer liaison cited in Henriette Sharpe,A Solitary Woman: A Life of Violet Trefusis(Constable, 1981.
- ^"Teacup Tattle",The New York Times,16 August 1903
- ^abAnn Galbally,Charles Conder: The Last Bohemian(Melbourne University Press, 2003), pages 187–188.
- ^Natasha (15 August 2002)."Jacques-Emile Blanche's Portrait of Donna Olga Caracciolo dei Duchi di Castelluccio".Jssgallery.org.Retrieved28 April2013.
- ^abPhilippe Juillian and Robert Brandau,De Meyer,(Knopf, 1976).
- ^abMeyer, Mahrah De (1916).Nadine Narska – Mahrah De Meyer – Google Books.Retrieved28 April2013.
- ^"Latest Works of Fiction", The New York Times, 20 May 1917
- ^Richard Koszarski,The Man You Love To Hate(Oxford University Press, 1983).
- ^"Women Fencers Met at the Colony Club",The New York Times,7 January 1913
- ^"Women May Fence Again",The New York Times,12 January 1913.
- ^John McReynolds/Record Correspondent (2 July 2006)."Inheriting a piece of history".Lompocrecord.com.Retrieved28 April2013.
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has generic name (help) - ^Death from heart attack and location of death cited in Ann Galbally'sCharles Conder: The Last Bohemian(Melbourne University Press, 2003), page 247.
- ^The Sketch,21 January 1931, page 14.
- ^Ancestry.com, Baden, Germany Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1502-1985 (database on-line), Provo, UT, USA, 2016.
Sources
[edit]- Profile of Adolf de Meyer,broadway.cas.sc.edu
- Meyer, A. de.Of Passions and Tenderness: Portraits of Olga by Baron de Meyer.Marina del Rey: Graystone Books, 1992
External links
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