As part of our inquiry to the Happy Valley Set of Kenya, Africa, a group of people who had Open Relationships, who had affairs, and who often divorced and remarried in the 1920's through 1940's, this month we look at the life of an American heiress and ex-pat named Alice De Janze. Born Alice Silverhorne, also a debutant, Alice and her first husband went to Africa and stayed with Lady Idina Sackville at a time when Sackville was called The Life of the Party. A few years later, when Idina was pregnant while still married to her then-husband Josslyn Hay, she was concerned that he might not stay with her. So she invited her best friend Alice De Janze and her husband to come and keep Jossyln entertained, choosing who he might have an affair with, in an attempt to control him. Alice did have an affair with Joss. She probably had a place in her heart for him for many years. Alice, an American heiress, is thought to have been mentally ill, most likely with some form of mood disorder. She had been suicidal at times since her youth. Her life was wracked with violence - including her own. When he was murdered, she was a suspect.
ALICE SILVERHORNE
The author's mother was friend of Alices and in writing this book
he wanted to set the story straight.
1899 - 1941
Overall, in my reading, the lives of these British aristocrats and other wealthy and important people who chose lives in Kenya over America or Europe, do not seem essentially happy. Some of them worked, even worked hard physically, many did not have to work at all, and it seems they did some hard partying. The reason the Wanjohi Valley was called Happy was that the high altitudes were said to enhance the effects of alcohol. They almost all drank and some also used morphine or heroin and possibly other drugs. (The only thing missing was the Rock and Roll!) Alice was not a Kept Woman, rather her independent means meant that men were interested in her money. Did she mind?
I'll focus a bit on the scandal in her life a little later in this blog. Right now let's learn
about Alice's childhood and her wealth. She was born in Buffalo, New York, then the nations 8th largest city, which had its own millionaire's row! Her mother was a society beauty from Chicago and her father was a self-made man, very successful in business and it would seem, rarely home. Her mother's family may have been one of the riches in America at the time. Alice was, like many aristocratic children, home schooled - tutored. She was destined to be a debutant and to have a life of opportunity and advantage.
But as we know since we've featured a number of debutants here at Mistress Manifesto, the reason for a presentation to society is marriage, early marriage, and the propagation of family through having children as a duty. The Chicago debutant scene bored Alice. She went to jazz clubs. She associated with mobsters and might have had an affair with one. Her mother's family prevailed in moving her towards marriage.
Alice's mother had died at the young age of 35, when Alice was a young girl. Her father rapidly married a cousin of her mothers, who he might have been having an affair with before his wife died. Her father had spent lavishly on her and spoiled her but there was something amiss with their relationship. In 1913 her mother's side of the family had taken action to take her away from her father and his new wife. Alice reportedly never saw him again. Reading between the lines it might have been that he was inappropriate with her. Her childless Aunt Tattie became her new legal guardian when she was 13 years old. Alice was sent to Mt. Vernon Seminary, a private not religious school in Washington D.C. Alice was devastated at this change in her life. At 16 she was miserable enough to have first tried to take her life.
Alice came into her inheritance at 18 and her Aunt set her up in an apartment in Paris. It was the jazz age there too but Aunt Tattie was satisfied that she had gotten Alice away from bad influences in America. Alice got a job at a small fashion house. A job was unexpected for a young woman of her wealth an status. She worked long hours but still went out into the Parisian night to clubs where she met celebrities and artists - but no more Chicago mobsters.
Alice did marry. She was 21 and her groom, Count Frederic de Janze was 25. He came from a family of the French nobility but his mother was an American of Early American lineage. He was Cambridge educated and had already served in World War I so no worry that she might become one of the many thousands of women who lost their young husband to the war. His mother liked her. He had called off an engagement with another American girl and quite possibly his family saw in Alice a way to replenish their wealth. Their engagement made it into the Chicago Daily Tribune. Before she married him, Alice converted to Catholicism, so the relationship was meant to be enduring since in Catholicism there is no divorce. Alice had doubts before the marriage but she went through with it and (echoes of the wedding of Jackie Bouvier to Jack Kennedy) her father was not invited and did not walk her down the isle. Perhaps Alice expected her marriage would provide an escape from her family.
Alice became pregnant on her honeymoon. The couple traveled and then bought an apartment in Paris but she could not get used to the formality of the French nobility. Her first child was born in June of 1922, a daughter. Alice was perhaps too young to be a mother. overly protected and controlled, unable to experience being independent first. She continued to socialize in Paris, to go out on the town. Then, the couple went to live at his family stead in Normandy, where his brother and her sister-in-law were also living. Her sister-in-law, from an elite British family, was superior to Alice in education and beauty and dominated the situation there. Alice had thick curly hair and there was a suspicion that lingered that she had African blood. People started calling her "La Negrese." Her sister-in-law used that. Alice had a second daughter in June 1924. She felt depressed, not much into motherhood. She felt trapped.
Fredrick de Janze and Alice Silverhorne de Janze might not have had a great romance but they became 'excellent friends.' The man did care about her, the mother of his children. He thought a trip to Africa might be just the thing to improve her spitits, so, in 1925, the could did just that. They went to Kenya (then British East Africa) where they had an invitation from Lady Idina Sackville and her then husband, Josslyn Hay. It was a month-long journey and no doubt the couple felt far away from all the things in life that controlled them.
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