GEORGE STERLING'S ROLE IN NORA MAY FRENCH'S UNHAPPINESS ? : GEORGE WAS NEVER A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR HUSBANDING

While reading this book, I thought about George Sterling, a man who made his living and supported his wife through selling land for building, you could say a real estate agent or maybe a developer, of Carmel-By-The-Sea. Carmel is in the Monterey Bay area south of San Francisco and after the historic San Francisco earthquake many unhoused people made their way to Monterey. 

George Sterling was torn because he had entered into a conventional marriage with his wife, Carrie, but was not capable of being a faithful husband. Rather he was a womanizer and alcoholic. I see him as a man out of control of himself. He was so torn up, especially after Nora May French commit suicide by cyanide poison while an ongoing guest in his marital home, that - eventually - years later - he too commit suicide. At least that's a notion. Maybe he was a bit tortured because they'd had an affair and he was not free to be with Nora, but somehow I don't think this man, who seems to have been ruled by his emotions, would have divorced Carrie and married Nora. There was, in my opinion, much more wrong with him and his life that he couldn't bear.

But of fascination is that George had business connections that meant that he was one of the early members of the Bohemian Club, which is now the mysterious and controversial Bohemian Grove, a big boy's camp that has attracted world leaders and Presidents of the United States to its get-aways from the world. Rumors persist that Satanic rituals occur there but I personally have no idea if that's true. It seems to mainly be a men-only club for the very rich, some of whom probably were in secret society type fraternities when youth in college.

What George Sterling wanted was to be a literary person, a poet, to attract such persons to buying land and building homes in Carmel, to put that village on the map as an artists colony. Although his marketing and public relations had that effect, he actually wasn't successful selling property to people who had unsteady or inadequate income. How he hoped literary luminaries like writer Jack London would settle there.

Many of George's friends blamed Nora's death as his undoing. Or women in general. He and his friends attempted to pick up "Bohemian" women on the poetry scene in San Francisco and George was not the success at it. Further, Nora seems to have been given way too much credit for being a "femme fatale." While reading about these men and their ways, I couldn't help but think they were immature and how stuck the women at that time who married men like this were.

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READING THE POETRY OF NORA MAY FRENCH on PROJECT GUTENBERG

 Here's the link! PROJECT GUTENBERG : POETRY OF NORA MAY FRENCH

FROM forest paths we turned us, nymphs, new-made,

And, lifting eyes abashed with great desire

Before high Jove, the gift of souls we prayed.

Whereat he said: “O perfect as new leaves

New glossed and veined with blood of perfect days

And stirred to murmured speech in fragrant eves,

“Still ask ye souls? Behold, I give instead

Into each breast a bird with fettered wings,

A bird fast holden with a silken thread: ........

( read the whole poem at the link!)

POETRY READING: TWO POEMS BY NORA MAY FRENCH

DESPITE TUBERCULOSIS TWENTY YEAR OLD MARIE DUPLESSIS HAS ILLUSTRIOUS AND RICH LOVERS INCLUDING ALEXANDRE DUMAS THE YOUNGER

1844, and lasting a year, Alexandre Dumas "the younger" was twenty, like Marie. He could not support her and could not deal with the facts of her life, that she was a Courtesan and had other lovers.  He was too jealous and perhaps too in love. This man immortalized Marie when he used her as inspiration for a novel he published in 1848 which was called La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas the younger. (She loved that flower.) The book may very well be a romantic fantasy in which Dumas also is a character. In 1952 the book was turned into a play and then the play inspired the opera by Verdi called La Traviata.  La Traviata translates to The Fallen Woman. 

La Traviata is currently the most performed opera in the world. Marie's life, perhaps because she died so young, is a tragedy. 

Perhaps it is the book and the play and the opera that has made Courtesan/ Mistress  Marie Duplessis famous, for there were others we have heard about and many others we have never heard about and never will.  This blog depends on the books and other information on those who became famous but some say the most successful Mistresses are the ones we never hear about.

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VERDI'S OPERA LA TRAVIATA (THE FALLEN WOMAN) IS A TRAGEDY AND THE MOST PERFORMED OPERA IN THE WORLD

Royal Ballet and Opera - United Kingdom, YouTube station, posted this video.

Excerpt:  Richard Eyre;s stunning naturalistic productions contrasts the superficial glamour of the 19th century Parisian high life with intimate scenes for Violetta with Alfredo and Giorgio Germont, culminating in the heart-breaking final act  Verdi's sublime score contains some of his most inspired arias and duets, including Violetta's introspecive 'Ah forse'e lui and hedonistic 'Sempre libera' Violetta and Germont's poignant Act II encounter and Alfredo and Violetta's 'Parigi, o cara', in which they dream of a happy future.

Missy here! 

True love or a crush that would always be unrequited because the one fantasized about has died? Alexandre Dumas The Younger's book inspired by his year long romance with Maria Duplessis spawned plays and this opera, as well as other productions into the present time.

MARIE DUPLESSIS : GRAND HORIZONTALES : PARISIAN COURTESANS OF THE NAPOLEAN III ERA

Virginia Rounding's book Grande Horizontales begins with the assumption that Courtesans were prostitutes of the highest quality and because of this, the most expensive. So, her book begins with quite an interesting expose on prostitution in 19th century Paris. Here at Mistress Manifesto - BlogSpot, we yearn to define what being a Mistress means, and I acknowledge that the assumption of prostitution is there along with the idea that a Mistress is Kept for sex - only or primarily for sex. After many years of blogging I still find the question to be one that has many answers, but I think mistresses are in relationships that are more interesting than "just sex." That said, a prostitute can become a mistress and visa versa but exactly at what point does a woman become a Courtesan, since some of these women did "rise up" out of prostitution? Maria Duplessis's story has an answer to when.

Grande Horizontales focuses on four Courtesans, and this month I will focus on Marie Duplessis who died at the young age of twenty-three of tuberculosis. One of her lovers, Alexandre Dumas, based his main character in the novel La Dame Aux Camelias, which was published in 1848. Camelias were Marie's favorite flowers. She was married in 1846 to Count Edouard de Perregauz, until her death.

MARIE DUPLESSIS

"The Virtuous Courtesan"

"La Dame aux Camélias"

Alphonsine Plessis

Countess Edouard de Perregaux (She kept her name Marie Duplessis though.)

1824 - 1847

Her father was the illegitimate son of a priest and a prostitute who was abusive to his wife, Alphonsine's mother. The poor woman took off to Paris hoping to support herself and, eventually, her daughters but she died when Alphonsine was only six. Abandoned into the care of relatives, rumor was that the girl was sexually abused from the age of eleven and a half.  Accused of being a seductress, she was sent back to the father who didn't want her. He left her and her sister to become apprentice laundresses. At thirteen and fourteen years old she was a blanchisseuse. This was the fate of many girls in those days.

Excerpt Page 32 : "Such an apprenticeship involved long hours of hard and repetitive physical labour... First piles of dirty linen would be sorted and washed, the actual washing sometimes done in a communal washroom by a washerwoman, a lower level of work than the blanchisseuse.  Much of the work of the blanchisseuse consisted of ironing, which would be done at a large table covered with a heavy blanket, itself covered with calico.  Several irons were heated on the large cast-iron stove, and it would be the job of the apprentice to keep this stove filled - always being careful not to overfill it - with coke... The blanchissuese herself and her older employees would be busy ironing intricate objects such as caps, shirt-fronts, petticoats, and embroidered drawers, while the apprentice would be put to work on the plain items, the stockings and the handkerchiefs..."

What happened next would shock today. Her father then gave her over to a man who was sixty to seventy years old and might have actually sold her to him. When her employer realized the situation, she was fired. To escape this man Alphonsine took a job as a hotel maid. Her father than gave her over to another man. Marie would not talk about it, but there is a strong possibility that her father than took her for himself, committing rape and incest on his own daughter. In 1839 The father and daughter suddenly upped and went to Paris.

As I read these passages I do wonder if Alphonsine's father intended for her to become a prostitute as his mother had been. As author Rounding describes it, French Parisian culture had an understanding of prostitution, and many prostitutes' were legally registered. In Paris the father again left her with relatives and, now only fifteen, she was placed as an apprentice with a dressmaker. She worked long hours - 7 am to 8 pm six days a week. She attached lace and embroidery to decorate dresses there. A dressmaker did not want apprentices who became prostitutes but it was not unusual for them, due to the low, unlivable pay to become grisettes - a woman who took on a paying lover.

Alphonsine, despite her hard work, may have been going hungry. 

Then one day she and two friends accepted the offer of a day away by the owner of a restaurant who probably knew they were hungry.

Excerpt Page 35: "Quite who seduced whom, who exploited whom, is debatable: Alphonsine, with her precocious sexual experience, was an easy prey for a man with a certain amount of sophistication on the look-out for a young and pretty mistress, while she was quick to realize that, if she played her cards right, Nollet was in a position to offer her a way out of a life of drudgery and relative poverty. Events progressed rapidly. Within a month Monsieur Nollet had installed Alphonsine in a small apartment in the rue de l'Arcade and given her three thousand francs for her initial needs."

Poverty, hard physical labor, and sexual abuse would give Alphonsine motivation to improve her life, quite obviously. Her relatives in Paris, realizing also what she had done, outcasted her. She was alone in the world. Nollet was her first known patron and she soon overspent for his means and took other lovers as well. It was as if she gave in to her fate, or realized there was only one way to survive.

Alphonsine Plessis would fashion herself Marie Duplessis and rise out of poverty and obscurity by becoming an honored Courtesan. To do that she needed the patronage of a man and one known to other Courtesans came into her life. The next seven years or so of her short life would be dramatic and, perhaps because she had to know she was dying, gravely ill, she earnestly sought entertainments.

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Notes: The image on the book is not that of Maria Duplessis.

Here at Mistress Manifesto I've featured a great many Courtesans and Paris seems to have been the epicenter of Courtesan culture. You can click on the tag below to bring up posts such as Paris, or Courtesan.

NINA BECOMES KNOWN IN THE UNITED STATES

February 11, 1972 Life Magazine Cover

The very beginning of Nina's memoir, which was published in 1973  by Walker and Company publishing in New York, begins with this statement.  

Excerpt page 9:

"I was famous but felt like a freak and was damn well going to show them that I wasn't  No one in America knew me but for being "The Danish Singer in the Hughes Affair." While in New York in February fer the Grand Jury hearings there'd been dozens of offers for cabarets and television and I don't know what else."

(Note; her manager in Europe, John Marshall, had gotten Nina three weeks at the St Regis Hotel "Maisonette", which was a small and elegant room, for a debut in the United States, but the St. Regis became "Press besieged."  She was separated from her husband Frederik at the time and also had a housekeeper and nanny with their children in London.  Her mother, who was in Copenhagen, then brought the children to New York with her.  The three weeks at the St. Regis was a successful run of the show.)

Half way through the book she finally gets to the chapter Ibiza where she mentions Clifford Irving once more.  No doubt the scandal did bring her name into the spotlight, for many in America, for the first time.  Nina Van Pallandt did do some television and other work as a result of the interest in her.

Here's her film information from IMDb IMDB - NINA VAN PALLANDT

ACE DIAMONDS

 

NINA and FREDERIK JAMAICA FAREWELL

CHECK OUT THESE HYPER ROMANTIC QUOTES AND READ THE BOOK ONE CAME FROM : THESE ARE SOOOO GOOD

I found this web site with 111 extremely romantic quotes.  These are good.  Check them out, find one that suits you, make a card and write the quote on it.  Will the one you love collapse in your arms?  You never know!  If the quote is that good, imagine how good the book will be!

EPIC READS- 111 ROMANTIC QUOTES TO READ TO YOUR LOVED ONE

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY - AN INTERVIEW OF HER AS AN OLD WOMAN

It's 1966 and she is 90 something.  She says loyalty is the most important virtue.  Friends have given her up but she never gives up her friends.

NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY THE HEIRESS WITH A FASHIONABLE SALON

When Colette, who Natalie had a relationship with, published the book Claudine s'en va, Natalie's reputation as a lesbian was affirmed. In the book she wrote, Colette depicted Natalie, and in what seems to have been a literary tradition, though disguising her under another character name, and calling the work fiction, readers guessed right. This was the third time that she had appeared as a character in a book and this was not Liane de Pougy's writing but that of a woman of literary strength who well captured Natalie's personality and mannerisms. 

Natalie's mother lived in Washington D.C. and her father lived in Europe. Natalie was still depending on her father's generous hand-outs, when he died in Monte Carlo in 1903.  She had him cremated and traveled to America with his ashes. As it turned out he had split his fortune (which would be about $63 million today) into three parts, one for his wife, Alice, one for Natalie's sister, and one for Natalie, and all in trust, which would prevent any one of them from spending foolishly. Natalie would never have to worry about his rages, his attempts to silence her, or him buying up copies of books so that no one could read them. 

I find it interesting that her father made his will this way, because he could have punished Natalie since he was so conservative and upset about her lesbianism.

Natalie had been living with her lover, beautiful Eva Palmer, for some time when she became an heiress. The women had met at a time when Renee Vivian was involved with an aristocratic and married woman, perhaps the wealthiest woman in Europe, who had already done her duty by providing two children in the marriage. Though not entirely disconnected from Renee, Eva and Natalie had lived in an apartment together, and eventually the two of them bought small houses near each other in Neuilly, near Paris.

Natalie's urge to meet new and fascinating people meant turning her little house into a Salon where the artists, musicians, and other creatives and their admirers could turn up and read their poetry, and otherwise test and show off their skills. She was a wonderful hostess who sometime planned special events to entertain, and Eva participated as an actress in the plays that Natalie scripted for it was her desire to act professionally. ***.

EXCERPT page 154 "The hostess stood serenely in the midst of the crowd. Dressed completely in white, her long hair glinting in the sunlight, she held herself with the straight back and self-assured regality that would still be remarked upon in the tenth decade. She made a point of talking to everyone at least once, focused upon each her ice blue eyes, variously described as kind or cruel, depending on how one felt about her.  She spoke in a soft murmur, never raising her voice and her infectious, melodic, laughter rang out often.

Natalie had other, passionate affairs, beginning immediately.

Perhaps more so than her affairs or her writing, it is her Salons that she is noted for.

*** Isadora Duncan and her brother Raymond came to these events and participated in them.  The names of dozens of creative people and liberals.  February 2016 was devoted to Isadora Duncan, our Mistress of the Month, for her relationship with Paris Singer.

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The primary reference for this book report post is Wild Heart by Suzanne Rodriguez.  My notes were taken especially from pages pages 150, 152, 154.

G.H. LEWES and HIS WIFE AGNES JERVIS and MISTRESS GEORGE ELIOT - FREE THINKERS?

According to author Jenny Uglow, George and the more citified G.H. met - I must say appropriately - in a book shop in October of 1851. He was not attractive physically but honed a wit and was intellectually curious.  He had married Agnes Jervis in 1841 when he was about twenty-four.  A decade later he was considered a womanizer, a cheater, and gave Agnes a difficult time - though the couple were said to have been influenced by FREE THINKING. Was the marriage dead or was remaining married while having others romantically an ideal way of life for them?  (We must remember that this was an extremely controversial way of life at the time they lived it.)

Agnes took a lover - a married man - and had a child by this other man. G.H. stayed married and George Eliot resided with the couple for a time.  She lived openly with them.  (I sense an arrangement!)

G.H. and George traveled together, she remained childless, and as she aged was known to have a few "spiritual daughters."  Usually women young enough to have a mother her age, but I do wonder if these were lesbian relationships.  The author doesn't say...

TAKE NOTES

 

LADY ELIZABETH GEORGIANA ALICE CAVENDISH : NMNK MISTRESS OF POET LAUREATE JOHN BETJEMAN

 LADY ELIZABETH GEORGIANA ALICE CAVENDISH

1926-2018

One of the few public photos of Sir John Betjeman and his Mistress

Lady Elizabeth Cavendish

(pinterest)

I know how much my readers love to know about Modern Mistresses, especially more obscure women from the peerage in the British Isles. Perhaps if you're a member of this elite group you know all the inside information, but Lady Elizabeth Georgiana Alive Cavendish is not a famous woman (or an infamous one) and so I was surprised to know that her arrangement was remarked upon in multiple obituaries and being a Mistress didn't stop her from being acknowledged or rewarded for her accomplishments.

According to numerous accounts, Lady Elizabeth grew up as friends with both Princess Elizabeth (The Queen Elizabeth II) and the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret. She became one of Princess Margaret's Ladies In Waiting from the late 1940's until Margaret's death in 2002 - a long assignment. (As we may have been informed by the series The Crown, Margaret lived an unconventional life and so I can guess that Lady Elizabeth was in the know about Margaret's wild times.) Sometimes we are shocked by just how unconventional Royals and the Peerage can be, perhaps because we think they are prim and proper people being English and in such high standing but maybe they just do as they do knowing theirs is an insular world.

According to The Times - UK, obituary, Lady Elizabeth was already waiting on Margaret at the age of twenty-five when in 1951 she went to a dinner party in London hosted by Lady Pamela Berry and there met John Betjeman, who was not yet Poet Laureate. She was gawky tall and shy, perhaps uncomfortable, and didn't speak to him at all that night and yet some connection must have been made, because that was the start of something. 

Betjeman, born in 1906, twenty years older than she, and married since 1933 to the Honorable Penelope Chetwode, had attended Oxford College but did not graduate. He was involved in World War II but perhaps in intelligence. The couple had a son and a daughter together, in 1937, Paul, and in 1942, Candida.

As if to explain why there was never a divorce, a Wiki on Betjeman, which was highly referenced, especially in regards to his literary accomplishments, states that Penelope "became a Catholic in 1948" I note just a couple years before this meeting. No divorce for Catholics but was that it? There are also major mentions that he was bisexual, at least in his imagination. So Interestingly one wonders why then so many of Lady Elizabeth's obit's have the words "Lover, Companion, and Carer." Despite such rumors he was a High Anglican and even a Church Warden for a while.

Since John Betjeman died in 1984, and they met in 1951, my math tells me that Elizabeth and John were in each other's lives for thirty-three years! The obituary in The Telegraph calls her "The Other Wife" acknowledging that Betjeman had a legal wife and a Mistress and she reportedly was at his bedside when he died. She was a devoted to him. According to a YouTube video from poster Dead Obituary, Betjeman's daughter Candida Lycett Green called Lady Elizabeth her father's "beloved other wife." Apparently he himself referred to Lady Elizabeth as his "London Wife."

Do you know what NMNK stands for?  It means Never Married No Kids. Why does it seem so rare for a Mistress to have never had a child? Well, the description fits Lady Elizabeth. She was satisfied to have this relationship with this man and endured in it and was there at his death bed.

Perhaps Lady Elizabeth grew up knowing about Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, an ancestor who allowed her husband another woman in their home where they lived together sharing a man for many years. (I'll post about the film made about that love triangle latter this month.)

According to multiple sources, Lady Elizabeth achieved some recognition for her service to Princess Margaret. In 1976 she was made a Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order. My research reveals that this is an order of knighthood that Queen Victoria established in 1896 to recognize someone's personal service to the Queen or members of the Monarchy.  Twenty years later Lady Elizabeth became a Commander in the same Order. She was also a Justice of the Peace in the city of London and served in the juvenile and adult courts. It's my guess that the once shy young woman was not shy for long.

Just to further help you tie this noblewoman into other posts here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot, our Mistresses of the Month, Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, an older sister of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who I covered in March 2017 married into her family.

Elizabeth's brother Andrew became the 11th Duke of Devonshire and her brother William, Marquess of Hartington is the one who married Kick after a very long wait due to their religious differences. He was killed during World War II making her a young widow. If interested in reading about Kick, who after the death of her husband went back to England and became a Mistress anticipating marriage, go into that month's archives or search for her within the blog!

While an unpaid Lady In Waiting and never married, the discreet Lady Elizabeth refused to talk about her relationship, which was an Open Secret.  According to a September 18, 2018 article by Sebastian Shakespeare in Daily Mail UK entitled "Betjemen's Mistress Leaves 10 Million (pounds) To Adopted Nieces After Dying Age 92," John's wife Penelope found out about his "London Wife" in 1973 when she moved a few blocks away.

And according to that writer, all Lady Elizabeth's correspondence is held by Chatsworth House Trust, as Chatsworth House is where she grew up, and it will be held there sealed for many years hence. 

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References for this months posts include the aforementioned as well as genealogy sites, wiki's, numerous articles in the British press - newspapers, YouTube videos, and some specifically mentioned references. One article that I had the damnest time trying to read because the teaser required a subscription was in the Telegraph.co.uk obituaries on September 18 2018. I can't link to it for you because you too will require a subscription to read it.  The Telegraph seemed to be quite interested in Lady Elizabeth.

 

Thanks for reading! 

THE ARRANGEMENT : A NOVEL BY ELIA KAZAN THAT MAY BE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

The script by Arthur Miller for the film After The Fall was thought to have been based on his personal experience in a marriage with actor Marilyn Monroe, an ex wife, and she was said to have been the female character. Elia Kazan's 1967 novel that was turned into a film in 1969, The Arrangement, was thought to be based in his relationship with Barbara Loden, also using her as a character. The film started Kirk Douglas as a successful man having a midlife crisis. Faye Dunaway acts as a girl named Gwen - the character possibly based on Barbara.

If interested in when Marilyn Monroe was a Mistress, you can find her in the archive of May 2016:

MARILYN MONROE - ACTRESS - "SEX GODDESS" - and MISTRESS OF TALENT AGENT JOHNNY HYDE

AN EXTRAORDINARY LITERARY AND PUBLIC SCANDAL : DYLAN THOMAS' AFFAIR WITH PEARL KAZIN

WALES ART REVIEW on LETTER OF THOMAS TO KAZIN

Excerpt:  Their affair is chronicled in John Malcolm Brinnn's Dylan Thomas IN America which scandalized the literary world when it was published in 1955 (to the extent Thomas' friend and fellow poet Vernon Watkins moved to refuse permission for publication of his correspondence with Dylan Thomas).  Yet far from taking easy advantage of any apparent sacrificial longings, Brinnin makes the point that Kazin's professional sophistication, her dark handsomeness and social poise 'made her precisely the sort of women from whom one would expect Dylan Thomas only to flee'.

PEARL KAZIN - MISTRESS RECIPIENT OF IMPASSIONED LOVE LETTERS FROM WELSH POET DYLAN THOMAS

PEARL KAZIN

October 1922-June 2011

Dylan Thomas is one of my favorite poets and so I wondered about his muses, his inspirations, and learned that Pearl Kazin was his last great romance. Because the poet died rather young of alcoholism and in New York City - America - in 1953 at age 39, he was not to have another. But as opinions go, some felt that his affairs were a search for his soul mate, a better wife than the only one he had, Caitlin, a wife of many years that he never divorced, and that Pearl Kazin could have been that woman. Was Thomas aware he was drinking himself to death? Was he self treating a mental illness? Was this the affair to end all affairs? Perhaps there is only speculation.  Mine is that perhaps the relationship had that feeling of eternal hope as well as inevitable doom to it. 

Here at Mistress Manifesto BlogSpot we know that affairs are common and having an affair does not make you a Mistress. We also know that not all Mistresses are Kept.  Pearl Kazin was not a Kept Woman.  She was probably financially in better shape that Dylan Thomas, who met her when he called upon her to buy a short story he wanted published, A child's Christmas in Wales.

Thomas' passionate letters to Pearl were published in the book A Pearl of Great Price, not to be confused with the Latter Day Saints religious book with a similar title, in 2014. Her letters in response to his are lost or otherwise unavailable.

Pearl Kazin was of Jewish heritage and a career woman in a New York City of the 1950's that was new to career women when she met Dylan Thomas. Though Dylan Thomas and Pearl Kazin have been portrayed in film in recent years, searching for facts about Pearl the career woman through news articles and web sites on the Internet proves there's some confusion about her career. In one article she is called "An American Journalist." In others she is called an "Editor."  Her obituary says she was a writer and critic who worked as an assistant literary editor at Harper's Bazaar magazine, as a copy editor at The New Yorker, and that she was also a fiction critic through the years for such literary publications such as The New Leader, Commentary, and Partisan Review.

Pearl came from the world of words and stories. Thomas's personal letters and poetry to her qualify her as a literary muse. The literary or the merely curious can read over what is left of those letters In A Pearl Of Great Price and come to a conclusion.  

There was passion.  There was intent. There was the ache of long distance.

The first letter by Dylan to Pearl was sent from the Savage Gentlemens Club (an oxymoron?) in London in April 1950.  He referred to his drinking and said "The world is empty this side of the damned sea."  In February 1951 he wrote the last letter Pearl received which was sent from Iran, where Thomas was working on a film script. *** No one ever said he was lazy or that he stayed put.  According to the Daily Mail article linked below, this affair destroyed his marriage (though it seems to me he had been destroying it since it began) because this one was quite public.  It was a scandal.

And there were those who were especially surprised because they felt that no way was Pearl, Dylan's type.

Like many women who have had affairs, married at the time or not, and many women who have been the muses of creative men, Pearl's public affair did not prevent her from becoming married. She married Daniel Bell, had a son, and became a grandmother.

As mid February is the place where there is sometimes a hint that the worst of winter is over and we begin to look forward to spring, and Valentine's Day is an opportunity to express our love of others, not just romances, but friends and family, perhaps this is the time to begin to imagine a better future for us all.

There are so many ways to love.

Missy

As a note, Dylan Marlais Thomas was born in Sansea, Wales in 1914 and died in November of 1953 in New York. *** This information comes from a wonderful article in Daily Mail UK which you can link to here:DAILY MAIL : DYLAN THOMAS SAUCY LOVE LETTERS TO AMERICAN... Caitlin was portrayed by Sienna Miller in the 2008 biopic The Edge of Love.

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"MISS HOOD" LEANNE EDELSTEN and THE RESPECTED, LITERARY AUSTRALIAN CLIVE "MR WOLF" JAMES

In 2012 news services began to publish that Clive James and Leanne Edelsten (maiden name Leanne Nesbitt) had an affair. As affairs are common, you might wonder what made this one so newsworthy. If you're in America but not in Britain or Australia you may have never heard of Clive James unless you know much about writers and literature. 

Clive James, the man, aka Vivian Leopold James, gained fame as an Australian literary author also successful in Britain. This extremely active writer is also a poet and memoirist as well as a critic. He's been a broadcaster and done chat shows such as Clive James on Television and The Clive James Show and British television documentaries. But perhaps it was his autobiographical television series called Unreliable Memoirs that gave people the feeling they knew the man. (And he has published since the revelation of his relationship with Leanne, so his affair didn't hurt his career.)

Clive said he was a flirt but that he never went further. His audience and fans were actually shocked to hear that this married man had an affair at all.



Perhaps it's that the "affair" lasted 8 years and Leanne Edelsten spoke to the media about it. Unlike so many other women wrongly called "mistresses" in the media (over brief encounters with famous people), she was!

Leanne was an ex model and socialite and 24 years younger than Clive James. She was then 48 when the broken affair made news. She called him "Mr. Wolf" when she spoke to The Daily Mail, telling Writers Sara Nathan and Richard Shears for Mailonline (the internet version of Daily Mail), that he called her "Miss Hood" for Red Riding Hood. 

She bragged that he was "a legend" of a lover, that men half his age couldn't keep up with him. She said he ravished her.  Her words were like an advertisement for the youthful energy of some older men and figured in to his notoriety. Also reported was that the two lovers ate a Cherry Ripe candy bar and cup of tea before each time they had sex. Not kinky but cute.  

Perhaps James went from fame to infamy due to the reaction of his wife, an academic named Prue (Prudence) Shaw, who responded to the news of his long term mistress by throwing him out of their house in the college town of Cambridge, England.  He landed in a shabby basement student type apartment. 

Leanne, continuing to bring up the sexy banter the two lovers shared and said she didn't feel sorry for the 73 year old's wife at all. (They'd been married 45 years.)  That attitude of Leanne's made it all more interesting.  And I think it's one that might be typical of Mistresses; one feels she loves him more than a wife or that if things were going well in the marriage he would not* be looking elsewhere. As one news story - there were dozens - indicated, shame is out of fashion.

Leanne said she and Clive met in Sydney in a restaurant and that Clive is not just a flirt but a funny flirt who always made her laugh. She was on her way to a second divorce and said the affair didn't start while she was legally married. She took the Edesten surname from her first husband,Geoffrey Walter Edelsten, whom she met at 19 when she was modeling.

Edesten, the first ex husband, has called her a liar.  

According to reports in the press Edesten was a much older medical entrepreneur who founded Allied Medical Group with a partner in 2005.

Leanne said he asked her to marry him on their first date, showered her with riches including a personal helicopter, a sports car, and a sports team, the Sydney Swans. Also known for his fleet of Lamborghini's with vanity licence plates and Rolls-Royce's, the doctor was not the most conventional man.

As for Clive James, perhaps it's just that the affair with Leanne came to public attention.  His marriage to Prue ended.

To the television show Current Affair, Leanne said that she outed the affair herself because she feared the British press was going to anyway.  And she said she still loved Clive James. Was he really a confused old man when she met up with him to out herself and him for the show? 

To Benjamin Millar of the Sydney Morning Herald she said, ''I want the truth, rather than come from a defensive position. He will be an incredibly hard act to follow.''

New technology was part of it. The two lovers used e-mail to communicate before and during the affair. Twitter users went wild making commentary when they learned about the affair. James refused to make comment to various journalists who approached him. He got around to apologizing for his behavior stating he had not been a good husband.

The relationship with Clive ended and Leanne moved on to a more modest life. She got an education. She's an intensive care nurse. 

In 2015, Leanne made the news again after being assaulted outside St Vincent’s Hospital.  

References for this month's post include the above mentioned media and references to Leanne and Clive on the Internet. Through this month I'll -provide links to some of the articles that I read which explore Leanne as a controversial figure.

If interested in Literary Mistresses you might find of interest here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT :  Assia Gutman (whose relationship with poet Ted Hughes is said to have driven poet Sylvia Plath to suicide)  October 2017 and Meta Carpenter, long distance mistress to William Faulkner August 2016.)

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* This post was slightly edited to clarify a misstatement of mine.

NORMAN MAILER : A DOUBLE LIFE by J. MICHAEL LENNON : MISTRESS MANIFESTO BOOK REVIEW

The title of the book leads us to know that the man Norman Mailer was complicated, but what stood out for me was author J. Michael Lennon's diminishing of Carole Mallory which held her to sexists double standards - his not Mailer's. Which isn't to say that Mailer wasn't sexist. He seems to use women and to feel as a genius he has the right to. (And so, by the way, did his mother!) The author basically maintains via a quote from a Mailer attorney that Carole and Norman had nothing but sex going on.  Basically he is on the wife Norris Church's side and paints Carole as an exceptionally promiscuous woman while the women who accepted the ultimate bad boy in stride (co-dependent) are admired for being long suffering.

But in Carole Mallory's memoir Loving Mailer she states that Norman had the right to edit what Lennon wrote and did, so be aware that it's possible that Norman dictated what was said about Carole.  Carole also states in her memoir that Mailer warned her that she would be caste as the bad woman if anyone found out about their relationship.  Lots of people knew about it that is certain.  Carole includes wife Norris Church as knowing about the relationship from the early days.

Norman Mailer was an exceptionally promiscuous man and I could argue overall far more of a rogue with women than Carole had been with men; hers was more of a groupie mentality of having sex with a number of celebrities while she herself was a magazine cover model. Yes, she enjoyed using her beauty and sexuality to pick up some Hollywood film stars for sex in her younger life before Mailer and he seemed to be fascinated with this, especially her brief experience with Warren Beatty. She had been engaged to Claude Picasso, the artist's son, as well, and funny but Mailer wrote a book on Picasso and an interview with Warren Beatty.

 ennon writes about Carole being rudely cut off from money, so sex and money or sex for money is implied.  Excuse me!  One does not meet a man for nine years, talk to him weekly, become bicoastal (the New York City and Los Angeles thing) and travel with him, discuss his and her writing and much else, if not in a relationship. The author has the nerve to say that Mallory only knew Mailer "superficially?" It all seemed like an attempt to take from Mallory what she deserves - her own voice, her own truth, and what she earned - the ability to write about it.

If you want to know what made Mailer tick, this book of over 900 pages hardback certainly attempts to explain the man, and other relationships with other women - mostly wives. Mailer even stabbed one of them and a psychiatrist said he needed to give up alcohol.  That wife could have died, but she's almost complimented for not causing him trouble by doing something like having him charged criminally.  Towards what was the beginning of the end of their relationship Mailer also punched Carole i9n the stomach in two episodes she reports. (I know Mailer also attacked a man viciously and got away with it, but if he were not a "literary genius" he probably would have been in and out of prison.)

The total focus of the book is not Carole Mallory nor did I assume it would be, so I culled the pages in which she was mentioned.  And unlike Carole's own book there's some financial information that I know my readers are interested in. But again, Carole is saying Mailer edited this so be aware. Because everyone does want to know the financial aspect of being a mistress. 

In this book it says that Norris Church knew about Carole but seemed to only take the relationship between her husband and the writer seriously when it became public knowledge.  Yes, Norris (named by Norman.  Her name was previously Barbara Davis) was hideously hurt when Norman decided to tell her the whole truth of his inability to be a faithful husband.  He brutally named names, detailed relationships that lasted hours and years, and Carole was not the only woman in his life at any time. She however was seemingly more in the know and accepting of this than Norris. So she too took that in stride. Yet because their breakup happened at a time when Carole seemed to Norris to be the problem, it's like she was blamed for it all.  Norman Mailer hurt Norris. He hurt Carole. He hurt a lot of women.

Carole Mallory was a successful model and on magazine covers.  She also acted in some films. She associated with famous and powerful people throughout her adult life.  She was capable of earning some of her own money. Would it be enough for me or you to live on?

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