http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/guest-diary/2016/the-courtesan-and-the-consort EXCERPT:
Still, men of the World War II generation were enthralled by her as most ached with Churchill-envy, and knew she was the closest they’d ever get to the great man himself. Women, usually, felt over-matched, and they resented her. Not simply because she ignored them, but because she had a past — a vivid, exotic sex-filled past — which had allowed her to accrue wealth from a variety of rich lovers, most of whom were married.
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https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/04/to-war-in-silk-stockings-kathleen-mortimer THIS ONE IS ABOUT AVERILL HARRIMAN's DAUGHTER, who was friends with Pamela.
EXCERPT:
Daughter of aristocratic titan Averell Harriman, Kathleen Harriman Mortimer was born to wealth, beauty, and blueblood values. But when her father plunged into the politics of World War II as President Roosevelt’s special envoy to Britain and later the ambassador to Russia, she went with him, going from working as a wide-eyed ingénue reporter to enchanting both Churchill and Stalin. After Mortimer’s death last February, and with exclusive access to her previously unknown scrapbooks, Marie Brenner excavates the heiress’s backstage pass to history, including Averell’s affair with Churchill’s daughter-in-law, the legendary Pamela, who would be his last wife. (This article originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of Vanity Fair.)
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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/agnelli200808
THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT THE AGNELLI FORTUNE... Agnelli being one of Pamela's men who kept her, as well as the keeper of Bruna Palombo (a Mistress of the Month here at Mistress Manifesto)
EXCERPT: The Agnellis are a study in dysfunction. Gianni, the international titan and epic playboy of a father, turned the family company, Fiat, into a business machine that transformed postwar Italy into the world’s fifth-strongest economic nation and himself into a colossus of power, privilege, and style. His wife, Marella, a Neapolitan princess turned model, photographer, and taste-maker, who was immortalized by Richard Avedon as one of the world’s most beautiful women, and who became one of Truman Capote’s close confidantes (known as his “swans”), was portrayed by Isabella Rossellini in Douglas McGrath’s 2006 film about Capote, Infamous. Attempting to hold her own in the face of her husband’s sexual wanderlust, Marella once told a biographer, “For Gianni, a woman is to be conquered, not to be loved.”
Having not married Gianni Agnelli, in 1954 Pamela Churchill was the lover and kept companion of Jewish Banking fortune's Eli de Rothschild. He thought of her as a "European Geisha" (Page 168) rather than a Courtesan. As she had with other men, she catered to him, did everything his way, and learned about the things that interested him. You could say that Pamela reflected the men she was involved with. The married Eli had many mistresses but overall he was rather cheap with her. She had her own money and he thought it was great that Gianni Agnelli had provided so much for Pamela that he didn't have to!
She was not entirely dependent on the men who kept her.
"Her technique was straightforward. "Darling, I saw the most beautiful bracelet today," She would tell Elie. "Would you go by and take a look and see if you like it?" (Her might not.) Still, Pamela made Eli feel honored to provide for her. (Page 170)
Mistresses were OK with Eli's wife Liliane but since Pamela wanted to marry Eli she felt it was her duty to make this mistress's life difficult. Let go from the job of being a muse of sorts to a man once again, Pamela played as if she were carefree rather than hurt. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe she didn't love him. She now worked to maintain her skin and figure and bought couture clothing. She kept herself and waited for her next conquest.
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Sally Bedell Smith's book Reflected Glory is the primary reference for this post.
He was 27. She was 28. He invited her to leave the house of Aly Khan, where she remained even though she'd been left behind. Her affair with Aly was over. She went on a cruise with Gianni Agnelli to Capri. Soon he installed Pamela in his own villa which was not so far from the one she'd been left in that belonged to Aly.
Like Aly, Gianni was a man who saw women as conquests. It wasn't love that motivated him. But Gianni had met his match in that it wasn't love for her either. At least not right away.
She carefully worked to have him. Pamela established herself as a symbol of a man's importance. She was good at marketing herself. She had connections every man in business wanted. She helped him network - and that included Americans in the United States. She was an outstanding hostess. She could easily entertain on short notice. She was there for him.
A big plus for Pamela was that Gianni took interest in her son, little Winston, named after his grandfather, the legendary Winston Churchill I. Gianni bought her an apartment in Paris, small but with wonderful views. It was a grand place made special by hiring an esteemed decorator to make it beautiful. The decorator even purchased silk woven for Queen Marie Antoinette to upholster. To give you some idea of Pamela as Mistress's spending, an estimated $10,000 a year was spent just on fresh flowers for the apartment. In 1950 she gave up her London apartment that was rented by Averill Harriman and Agnelli got her another one which was larger, less glamorous, but one more to decorate exquisitely.
Gianni Agnelli gambled and partied. Some say that he always had other women and that his relationship with Pamela was not so much about sex, that she earned her keep by providing him contacts. However in Paris she was accepted as his mistress even though this also probably meant that she could not be considered a potential wife.
A chameleon who changed herself - even her accent - with each new important man in her life, Pamela was quiet and often spoke only to uphold her man to be admired by others.
Then she became pregnant and Gianni had her abort. Her marriage to Randolph Churchill was in the process of divorce. They couldn't have married even if he wanted to. Anticipating that her Protestantism was an obstacle, in the spring of 1950 she converted to Catholicism. She had her marriage to Randolph annulled by the Catholic Church, saying she had been young and foolish, which was granted in 1953. This so she and Gianni and she could marry in the church as his family expected.
She turned thirty.
What was the problem? His family, especially his sisters, were opposed to her. She knew it was over but she did not move on. His family introduced him to Princess Marella Caracciolo di Castagneto. He married the Princess three months pregnant.
But once again Pamela Churchill kept the friendship.
She was 33 when it was over. Now what?
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Note: The primary reference for posts on Pamela Digby Churchill Harriman is Sally Bedell Smith's book Reflected Glory.
