Coco Chanel_ An Intimate Life - Lisa Chaney [132]
Yet while Gabrielle now lived on a grand scale, she was about to meet someone who lived on one almost unimaginably more so.
22
Bend’Or
In the summer of 1924, Gabrielle had been holidaying in southern France with Dmitri Pavlovich, her impoverished on-off lover of the past three years. (Like several others, the painter Marie Laurencin was convinced that she had secretly married him.) Meanwhile, the Duke of Westminster, known as Bend’Or, possibly the richest man in England, had recently separated from his wife.
Gabrielle’s social prestige was now unquestioned. She was assiduously promoted in both the fashion press and the society pages; she was interviewed and photographed for Harper’s Bazaar by the all-powerful society photographer Baron Aldolphe de Meyer. Meyer had married Olga Caracciolo, reputedly the illegitimate daughter of King Edward VII. Despite Meyer’s Jewish heritage, his wife’s connections and his own artistry and social finesse had enabled him to move into society. In London, he and Olga hosted one of the city’s most powerful salons. (The Meyers’ union, a long and happy one, was a mariage blanc; each of them preferred partners of their own sex. One of Olga’s most famous affairs was with the music patroness Winnaretta Singer.) Meyer’s article on Gabrielle was titled “Mlle Chanel tells Baron de Meyer her Opinions on Good Taste.”
Meanwhile, the American magazine Women’s Wear Daily reported that “the Prince of Wales terminated a delightfully informal visit to Paris by lunching quietly with some friends . . . at the Ritz . . . In his party was Mrs. Vera Bate, who is . . . well known in English hunting circles. She was wearing one of Chanel’s attractive [knitted] coats in a length that came half-way to the knee.” It was possibly Vera Bate’s great friend Comte Léon de Laborde, Gabrielle’s admirer from Royallieu days, who introduced Vera Bate and Gabrielle. (The English woman’s origins were mysterious. It was rumored she was the illegitimate daughter of the German Duke of Teck, who had renounced his German titles during the war and been given an English one, Earl of Athlone.)
Vera Bate’s connection to royalty apparently explained her easy familiarity with members of the set around the raffish Prince of Wales. Vera was repeatedly described as having a “great appetite for life,” which she coupled with a keen sense of dress. She also appears to have been regularly short of cash. Thus, in a newly discovered list of employees at Chanel at rue Cambon, we find that Vera Bate had been employed by Gabrielle in the “advertising department” since 1921; her social contacts made her invaluable for Chanel public relations. Her hasty marriage to Frederick Bate, at the end of the war, had resulted in a baby girl and a divorce not long afterward. Whatever Vera’s true background, she moved in some of the most fashionable circles in England. Wearing clothes as well as she did, she was given the run of Gabrielle’s salon. Dressed only in Chanel, she was an important ambassador for Gabrielle with the British. Among Vera’s friends she included Winston Churchill, and Churchill’s great friend the Duke of Westminster.
Gabrielle had invited Vera to stay with her at the Hôtel de Paris, in Monte Carlo, for the Christmas–New Year holiday. The Duke of Westminster’s vast yacht Flying Cloud was moored in the harbor, and he had begged Vera to persuade Gabrielle to join him for supper on board. Apparently, Gabrielle was reluctant, but after considerable persuasion from Vera, she agreed. Then Dmitri Pavlovich telegrammed, announcing his arrival in Monte Carlo, and Gabrielle promptly canceled her dinner engagement with Westminster. Dmitri said that he would