SHOULD SHE MOVE TO A NEW TOWN NOW THAT HER RELATIONSHIP IS OVER?

QUESTION

Dear Missy,

I became the Mistress of a much older man in Florida and he has died.  I think we had a wonderful relationship except that I wanted to be married.  He said he wouldn't marry me while his wife was alive and he said that she knew about our relationship and was Ok with it as long as he didn't divorce her and shame her after over 40 years of marriage.  So we had this understanding.  I even thought that she knew that if she died he would need someone like me to be with him until he died.  He also provided for me in his lifetime so I never contested the will.

Well, since he died she's really angry.  It's like she's blaming me for his death but the truth is I took good care of him and made his last years happy and she did not.  I'm sure he loved her much of his life but they fell out of love too.  It's like she's taking out her anger at him on me. She's mouthed off and gossiped about me and caused me so much heartache and trouble, that I feel like all that's left for me is to leave town.

Should I give up my life in Florida or stick it out a while longer and hope things go back to normal?

Cynthia

ANSWER

Hi Cynthia,

If only I were psychic!
 
I think you can stay in Florida, or any city about as large as the one you're in, so long as you move into a new social group(s)where people can get to know you, and will give getting to know you a chance, rather than where people rely on gossip.  And Cynthia, we all know that some people live for gossip, live to be the one with the latest "news" even if they make it all up.  I think you're right that she's taking her anger at him out on you.  

It's also important that you be ready for a brief but self-defending statement should someone confront you or should you feel the need to reveal this part of  your past.

Something like, "I loved a man who loved me too. He'd been married too long to go through a divorce."

A lot of people understand this, even if they don't admit they understand it.

May I suggest that you do some volunteer work somewhere her crowd isn't?

Remember you don't owe anyone your life story.  So if your statement causes people to question you, just say, "Right now I'm grieving.  Maybe someday we can talk more about it."

Missy

NAILHEAD STUDDED PLATFORMS

PAMELA DIGBY and the KATHLEEN "KICK" KENNEDY CONNECTION

This post includes the names of several people previously mentioned in Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot.  Run searches for the names in bold!

Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy (our Mistress of the Month for March 2017) was a debutante, presented to the Queen the same year as Pamela Digby, when her father was Ambassador to Britain. However, Kick didn't think much of Pamela that year. 

Surprisingly, the two would become good friends and Kick would provide Pamela important social and political connections to her American, Democratic Family.  Pamela went along on a back-to-Ireland trip that Kennedy made to see his family roots there. Pamela provided a young sickly John F. Kennedy, Kick's brother and future President of the United States, an introduction to her personal doctor in England, the doctor who first diagnosed him with Addison's disease.

According to Sally Bedell Smith, the author of Reflected Glory, a biography of Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman, the two young women were fast friends and enjoyed socializing together when Kick was widowed from Billy Hartington at age 24.  (Billy was killed by a sniper's bulled just months after their controversial marriage and after a years long courtship.) Kick remained Lady Hartington and lived in London on funds provided her by Billy's family and her own Kennedy inheritance. Pamela joined Kick and her friends whenever possible and went out of her way to be friendly. So Kick invited Pamela to spend some of her winter vacation in Palm Beach at the Kennedy oceanside villa.  Pam loved the elegance and ease of Palm Beach where Rose Kennedy, the matriarch of the family, helped her fit in to society.  Pamela became part of the Kennedy Entourage and got to take a break from World War II in Europe. Pamela went from Palm Beach to New York City.

From previous work on Kick Kennedy, we know that she as a Catholic had to wait a long time to marry Billy, a Protestant, and her marriage to him had disappointed Rose who was devout. The young widow Kick had then become involved with the married Earl Fitzwilliam, so she was a mistress to him. Kick footed the bill to take Pamela along with their traveling peers.  Pamela went back to France in the summer of 1946 when her return to England proved to be a disaster.  Her divorce from Winston Churchill's son Randolph had ruin ed her socially. She was there when Kick and Fitzwilliam took off in the plane that would crash and kill them both and was one of hundreds who attended Kick's funeral.

Pamela eventually converted to Catholicism when she was the mistress of Gianni Agnelli and remained Catholic for the rest of her life.  Eventually she would leave Britain feeling herself to be more American. She remained a friend of the Kennedy family and stood behind the Democratic Party in her later years as an influential fund raiser and campaigner.

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PAMELA HARRIMAN in ART OF SEDUCTION by ROBERT GREENE

ART OF SEDUCTION by Robert Green

EXCERPTS:

pages 86-87 PAMELA is a CHARMER...

The world is full of self absorbed people. In their presence, we know that everything in our relationship with them is directed toward themselves, their insecurities, their neediness, their hunger for attention...

page 273

From the 1940's into the early 1960's Pamela Churchill Harriman had a series of affairs with some of the most prominent and wealthy men in the world - Averill Harriman (whom years later she married), Gianni Agnelli (Heir to the Fiat Fortune), Baron Elie de Rothschild. What attracted these men, and kept them in her thrall, was not her beauty or her lineage or her vivacious personality, but her extraordinary attention to detail. It began with her attentive look as she listened to your every world, soaking up your tastes. Once she found her way into your home, she would fill it with your favorite flowers, get your chef to cook that dish you had tasted in the finest restaurants. You mentioned an artists you liked? A few days later that artist would be attending one of your parties. She found the perfect antiques for you, dressed in the way that most pleased or excited you, and she did this without your saying a word - she spied, she gathered information from third parties, overheard you talking to someone else. Harriman's attention to detail had an intoxicating effect on all the men in her life. It had something in common with the pampering of a mother, there to bring order and comfort into their lives, attending to their needs. 

LIFE IS HARSH AND COMPETITIVE

Attending to detail in a way that is soothing to the other person makes them dependent upon you. The key is probing their needs in a way that is not too obvious, so that when you make precisely the right gesture, it seems uncanny.  As if you just read their mind... This is another way of returning your targets to childhood, when all of their needs were met...

PAMELA CHURCHILL HARRIMAN - A DOCUMENTARY

PAMELA DIGBY HARRIMAN - an AFFAIR WITH JOHN HAY "JOCK" WHITNEY then EDWARD R. MURROW

In London in the summer of 1942, Pamela, now supported by Averell Harriman who was gone to American, set her sights on John Hay "Jock" Whitney, who was a Captain in the American army.  He had many thousands to spend every month and a fortune as an heir to another American fortune.

Different views of this relationship have been stated. That it wasn't serious or that she would have married him.  But if the relationship went nowhere, she was on to the next, Edward R. Murrow, a famous broadcaster working for CBS Radio, 35 years to her 23, and married.  This was a serious affair for both of them.



This is one of many YouTube videos of Murrow broadcasting during World War II.

Pamela's divorce from Randolph Churchill was filed on December 18, 1945 on grounds of three years of desertion! But when Murrow's wife got pregnant and his boss, William Paley, sat him down and told him not to ruin his life and marry Pamela, Murrow had to reconsider. Murrow's child was born on November 6, 1945 and that was the end of the affair.

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Sally Bedell Smith's book Reflected Glory is the primary reference for this post.

PAMELA and LITTLE WINSTON - HER ONLY CHILD

Pamela Churchill and son Winston Churchill II

Life Magazine, January 27, 1941.

PAMELA DIGBY CHURCHILL and WILLIAM AVERELL HARRIMAN - FIRST and LAST GREAT LOVE?!

William Averell Harriman, an American, grew up in privilege and had money. He was a man who married and married and married - but seemed never to have happiness.  His affair with the married Pamela Digby Churchill probably began at the Dorchester Hotel in London during a bombing raid by the Germans during World War II. Nothing like the fear of loosing your life to make you live life to the fullest.

He had a history of wrong marriages and affairs and mistresses. 

The man had a 2nd marriage with Kitty Lawrence who was ill with TB and not compatible.  He had mistresses and there were rumors of affairs.  Then in 1928 another woman, Marie Norton Whitney was his conquest.  She became his third wife in February of 1930.  She was 26 and he was 38.

Pamela was still married to Randolph unhappily.

Ave was much older than Pamela and not much to look at.  Like her husband Randolph he appeared older than his years.  But Harriman was worth multi millions and he was a courtly and debonair man if not in the best physical shape. Women liked him.

By 1941 he and his wife Marie were no longer intimate and so she didn't blame him for his affairs. 

In fact they were both having affairs.  Pamela even befriended his daughter Kathleen, who was about her age, while having an affair with him.

Pamela's reunion with Randolph, who asked for another chance, did not go well.  They both realized their marriage had been a mistake. She went over to tell her father in law, Winston, that she was getting a divorce.  He understood.

Pamela had volunteered with the Women's Voluntary Services (WVS) as many houswifed did and served as a guide to visiting American dignitaries.  (put in previous post)

page 103  "PAMELA WAS A DOER, NOT A THINKER OR A RECORDER."

Though the affair had to end between she and Harriman, there was Lord Beaverbrook as an intermediary who arranged financial support for Pamela.  Randolph was not much of a financial support for her and his son. He spent his money wildly leaving them in debt.  Harriman secretly picked up the costs of her apartment by depositing money in Beaverbrook's accounts which then made it to pay the rent. The man actually forgot he was doing so perhaps because he had too many millions to keep accounting of and did so for three decades (check fact.  Sometimes it went past due but the Lord would give him a nudge.  She was also given a nice  yearly allowance.  Harriman did well by her...  with a little nudging.

At 22, she had the name, the son - heir, and a good relationship with her father in law Winston Churchill.  She was done with the husband and was supported financially, even as Harriman left town and went back to his life in America.

Years would pass, the allowance and rent continuing, but later in life Pamela and Ave would marry. 

*****

As I read these passages of Sally Bedell Smith's book, I had to wonder.  I had learned that Lord Beaverbrook had many house parties that Pamela had attended.  Why was he so willing to be an intermediary?  Harriman was an American.  Did he need to be told how to treat this young British woman who he had an affair with?  Could there have been a hint of blackmail or pay back involved?

HOLLY MADISON and PASQUELLE ROTELLA FINALIZE DIVORCE

E-ONLINE HOLLY MADISON FINALIZES DIVORCE

April 2017 Mistress of the Month, Holly Madison, who wrote about her life in the Playboy Mansion as one of Hugh Hefner's women, and who seemed to have found her good husband, has gone through a divorce after about five years of marriage.  As is the modern thing to do they assure us they will take coparenting their children seriously.  You can use the search feature embedded in this blog to read the posts about Holly - or go into the archive!

SWAGGER COATS KEEP YOU WARM

PLAIN OLD PAMELA DIGBY and THE DEBUTANTE YEARS - MARRIAGE TO RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

"Reflected Glory" by Sally Bedell Smith is the primary reference for posts.

Pamela Digby was born into the peerage of Great Britain, but she spent 20 years of her life as a courtesan - mistress -  a kept woman.  She was feminine, flirtatious, and maternal to men and made them - and her select women friends - feel special.  Wives worried about their husbands around her.  She changed her man and her life many times but she loved to be surrounded by powerful people. She was highly criticized and judged from her earliest days as a society girl but if she knew it she pretended not to or didn't let it get her down.  She was a "bad girl" and yet to her funeral came those with prestige and power.

Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill of World War II fame, asked her to marry him the first date they had, an arranged date, and had asked many women before who turned him down.  She said yes and was married to him before he went off to war. She quickly became pregnant and bore him a son - an heir, named Winston. He would be her only child.

Pamela's family had an old title and prestige if not money.  Her education was not substantial.  They couldn't afford the best schools for her.  But they sent her to France to board with a family that took in girls like her and showed them around to absorb the culture.  Who knew that in her later years she would become the United States Ambassador to France after having lived as a mistress in that country.

At the age of 17 her education had ended. She was "finished."  But she went to the Coronation of King George VI, who took over the throne when his brother The King Edward VIII abdicated his throne to be married to Wallis Simpson.  Who knew that someday she and Wallis, who was a good 20 years older than she, would become good friends.

Pamela Digby made her debut in front of the Queen in 1938, wearing clothes that were not much compared to most of her more wealthy peers, clothing that embarrassed her.  But she still attended a marathon of parties, races, and entertainments designed to show off aristocratic girls ready to marry and breed with wealthy young men. More than 1000 girls debuted that year and most of them left the city and went back home to the country to wait on marriage proposals. The others stayed in the city.  Maybe a hundred girls were considered popular. Not Pam. That same year Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy and her sister Rosemary, daughters of Joseph Kennedy, the United States Ambassador to Britain, and father of the future American President John F. Kennedy, called her dumpy.  As it turned out, she and Kick would have an enduring friendship.

Pamela's father won a substantial amount of money at the horse races that allowed him to afford her a Jaguar car, if not the ability to give her a fancy dress ball like other girls. He rented a place in Mayfair, London, to put her in the right neighborhood. But she was taken under wing by her mother, who never failed to have confidence in her, and some of her mother's friends. One, Olive Baille, invited her to house parties where she had famous Hollywood stars on the guest list. Clearly she had something going for her.

Pamela did get an inheritance that would have allowed her to be independent, so long as she budgeted, but she wanted more. Fulke Warwick (ie. of Warwick Castle fame) may have been her first lover. But she claimed only a dinner while he dined out on stories of being sexual with her. Debutantes were thought to be virgins. Most of them were chaperoned.

And so she went through a second season, 1939, as did many girls still in need of a husband.  She went to a pre-war ball at Blenheim Palace - the home of Winston Churchill's family - that was given by the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough for Lady Sara Spencer - Churchill. (Are the names sounding familiar?)  But she was set up on a blind date with Randolph Churchill.

On October 4, 1939 they married.  The smiling bride wore a coat with a fur collar, not the typical white wedding dress, while the smiling groom wore his military uniform. She now had the Churchill name, so respected, and would carry it all her life. Randolph, by many accounts, was obnoxious and probably alcoholic. By January 1940 she was pregnant. He was in the Fourth Hussars. She had to live alone and went from one friend's accommodations to another.  (I know, you're wondering what about the Palace?)  They were totally incompatible and unhappy but then people thought Randolph as difficult. She was 20.  He was 29.  Like many wives, Pamela got involved in the war effort and became something of a tour guide, guiding American officers in London. Her ability to organize and plan large and small events would be useful in all her relationships.

By the time Randolph returned after almost a year away, Pamela acted excited and happy to see him and introduced them to their son, Winston, for the first time. But she had already met and had an affair with another man who would figure in her life, William Averell Harriman. 

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THE DEBUTANTE WHO COAXED HER BEAUTY

PAMELA DIGBY CHURCHILL

18 June 1938 Coming of Age cover 

Tatler Magazine

source Wikipedia

PAMELA DIGBY CHURCHILL HARRIMAN - DUMPY DEBUTANTE TO AMBASSADOR TO FRANCE

Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Harriman 

20 March 1920 – 5 February 1997

Pamela Digby was born into the aristocracy of Great Britain - the lowest rung of five, she was Honorable. Though her family lacked the money that some of her peers displayed when they were introduced to society formally, and though as a debutante she was considered not successful, and her early and first marriage to Winston Churchill's son Randolph was a disaster, she became known as The Courtesan of the 20th Century. She was the mistress of several important and wealthy men, and managed to marry three times. She seemed to work hard - study - these men to please them - and it could be argued that she actually wanted to marry more than one of them but lost at love. She was known for her femininity and her nurturance of them as well as her ability to help them make the contacts they wanted for business. She had few women friends but counted The Duchess of Windsor, the ex Wallis Simpson, as a close one. She might be thought of as a reinvention-of-self artist. A chameleon. A risk taker. She was ambitious for the good life. She had one, but crisis compelled her to move on, and on. The title of Sally Bedell Smith's book REFLECTED GLORY says a lot; Pamela reflected the glory of the men she enchanted. These men could have so very many women but for a time they chose her. Being her keeper was even a way for them to claim status.

Not one to write her memoirs or even keep a diary, perhaps no one really knew what she was thinking - or plotting - at any point in her life. Often she kept a game face and did not reveal her true emotions. She liked to keep the men guessing about their status in her life. So one has to know the person by the evidence of their actions.  Was she really just after other women's husbands or had the wives of those men not cared enough for them?  Perhaps she learned the lessons of her birth status: women were not heirs. If they wanted to live in style it was though marriage - or men - that one could. Had she not been introduced to society specifically to become engaged and married within a debutante season or two?  Had she not done her duty to produce a male heir - the grandchild of Winston Churchill the World War II era statesman - by marrying his son Randolph; he proposed she marry him on their first date specifically because he feared not leaving an heir as he went off to war himself.  

For those of you who have to coax your beauty, Pamela was considered dumpy in her teens and from mid-life on. She really had to work at it. She was not considered to be all that attractive - just average - and in her early years her clothes were barely fashionable. She was even ridiculed for her looks. Yet she lived through years in which her taste in clothing and upkeep of her hair and skin allowed her to be considered a great beauty. Her personality was cheerful and flirtatious but perhaps not spontaneous. Yet she was not known for her sense of humor and tended not to air her own opinions - not until she was widowed from her third husband and began to become a fundraiser for the Democratic party in the United States. It's said she was important to the election of President William Jefferson Clinton.  She became the Ambassador to France!  She lived into her 80's.

These next two months will be devoted to Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman.  Her life included many whose names have appeared here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT in the past. 

You'll be enthralled with her story.  And you'll learn why she is thought to have achieved what no other woman of the 20th century did; being kept by a "golden string of lovers" who had wealth and power.

Missy

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ALL SUITED UP IN 1942

COMING UP - SHE'S CALLED THE COURTESAN OF THE 20th CENTURY

She was married three times, but she was the mistress of several rich, important, and powerful men who she did not marry.

*Alexander Liberman, said "She was part of a very grand tradition of mistresses kept on a grand scale."

Yet she was ridiculed and made fun of behind her back.

We're devoting two months to her!  Her life intersects with more than one person who you've read about here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT.   By using the search feature embedded in this blog on the side bar or going through the archives, you'll be able to read about some of the other women and men who were in her life - and she theirs!

*instrumental in Vanity Fair Magazine back in the day.