A FOURTH HUSBAND WHO BECOMES OBESSED WITH HER : IDINA and THE AMERICAN

If you're the type to get jealous or obsessed, you should never contemplate Open Relationships or find yourself married to a sexual adventurer.  That is the lesson that Idina Sackville's fourth husband, Donald Haldeman, an American who'd been born in England and educated at Eton, and who lead safaris in Africa, was to learn. - Missy

..."Visitors to Kenya started to return to Europe with tales of wild parties, abundant narcotics, and strange ménages of approved infidelities and potentially Sapphic bonds, all occurring within the Wanjohi Valley.  The gossip columnists seized upon the stories, reprinting them, as was the practice then, with clear descriptions but no precise names, and rechristening the place 'Happy Valley.' (Page 173 of the paperback.)

In October 1926 Wall Street crashed and the Roaring Twenties were over.  When her mother died in 1930, Idina learned that her daughter had been provided for, but not so much for her. In November of that year, Idina went for another civil marriage, a honeymoon in the United States, and then back to Kenya the newly married couple went. Unlike previous husbands, this man was not a womanizer. The estate they founded, called Clouds, was not in Happy Valley. While he was off on safaris Idina, true to herself, began having sex with other men. Donald hated that. 

We wonder what his expectations were. Did he not know of her reputation?  Did he think moving them away from Happy Valley would make a lot of difference?  Did he think that she had outgrown or aged past her previous sexual adventures? Had these two even discussed it? In late 1933 he came home to find another man making a run for it.  Donald fired a gun at the man. He was violently angry. Idina had thought of him as protective, but it seems he was also possessive, obsessive, and controlling.  Donald Haldeman would not give up on his wife easily, threatening to shoot anyone she slept with.

Idina had friends be there for support and as witnesses when she told him she wanted out.

Idina told Donald she was taking her daughter, now eight years old, to England to be educated at a boarding school.  Once there, the young girl was lucky to be offered private lessons along with Idina's brother's child and to be raised by him and other relatives.

This time she kept the house, Clouds.

In 1934 she met her older son, now nineteen and who was discontented with the world and his place in it.  They met at the Ritz Hotel in London. This was a three-hour conversation with a young man who she had not been allowed to see since the day she left her first marriage and agreed to leave her sons with their father, David Euan Wallace. Barbie, their step-mother, had taken on raising the boys and had three children with Euan. She was apparently not going to give the boys up to their birth mother. Idina made an attempt to establish a bit of relationship with them but did not succeed. 

Her last years would be full of grief.

C 2022 Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including Internet and International Rights

Excerpts are from The Bolter, a book by Frances Osborne, the main reference for this month's post.