An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(45)
Allene hired an expensive Swiss law firm for Heiner and used all her government contacts to get “her son,” as she called him, to America. Every two or three days she wrote him letters, invariably flooded with maternal care and love: “I miss you all the time and find myself constantly turning to speak to you.” She ended most of her letters with “Best love to you ever” or her favorite—in the eyes of the reserved Europeans, she remained a rather overemotional American—“Oceans of love, Mama.”
At first, Allene’s quest appeared hopeless. Heiner was a German citizen, and there were few humanitarian reasons he could use to justify preferential treatment. In her words, it was “a struggle with a heavy black cloud, could not get hold of anything.” In the meantime, relationships between the former Allies were quickly deteriorating. The chance that the Russians would try to get their hands on Berlin, which was in the middle of the portion of defeated Germany they had been assigned, grew by the day. This meant Heiner’s princely title was becoming a real risk for him. The Russians were known for their cruel treatment of anyone who had even the slightest whiff of aristocracy, and two of Heiner’s family members who had the misfortune to end up in the Russian occupation zone had not survived their stays in one of the infamous Soviet prison camps.
As usual, Allene wouldn’t think of giving up. In the summer of 1947, she managed to acquire departure papers for Heiner on the grounds of a completely fictional story that said he wouldn’t be able to withstand the horrors he would have to contend with in both German and Russian captivity. She arranged accommodation for him with a friend in Lausanne, Switzerland, and from New York instructed him like an experienced diplomat about what he should do when he arrived in America:
Be very polite, but use all the arguments you can. Say that in Washington they told your mother that once you got out of Germany, they could and would do something. Say I am a big tax payer and will guarantee your financial position there. Use these same words . . . TELL them you were put in a German prison as Anti-Nazi and that you have suffered horrors with the Soviets. Be patient, be polite, but insist on help. Make as strong a case as possible for yourself and say as little as possible about the German efforts to have you back.
While Allene moved heaven and earth in New York that winter to arrange Heiner’s visa and traveled several times to Washington for it despite the severe weather, Heiner didn’t seem to be in any hurry to reach America. He was enjoying his freedom and the exceptionally comfortable—certainly compared to the poverty he’d suffered in Berlin—house of Allene’s Swiss friend. Even after his stepmother had managed to secure his visa, he continued to delay his departure. “It is not necessary at all to wait for the biggest luxury liner,” she wrote with unusual cattiness. “You are a bit spoiled!”
But Allene forgot all her efforts and irritations when she was able to embrace her prodigal son on the docks of New York in March 1948, after almost nine years of separation. She put him up at Beechwood, where he hoped to find a job and build an independent life, an article in the local newspaper informed its readers. After a while, she returned to Europe herself, to Paul and their French life, which they soon picked up again even though their houses had been damaged and partly plundered during the war.
It turned out that Heiner’s “escape” from Berlin that Allene had orchestrated had indeed been just in time. Several months after Heiner’s departure, the Russians blocked all access to the German city’s western part, which was occupied by the British, French, and American forces. This rang in the start of the Cold War, which would divide the world for decades into a communist power bloc on one hand and a capitalist power bloc on the other. For a while it seemed as if a new world war might break out at any moment, and American expats left Paris en masse to seek a safe haven in their own country. This time, Paul and Allene weren’t among those departing. In July 1948, Allene wrote to Heiner in her characteristic staccato style that she didn’t think that the Russians wanted a war: “Do not feel the Russians want war, they will get all possible too without.” But she also wrote: “How lucky you got out when you did.”
You often hear about people with a happy childhood, but you seldom hear about people with a happy old age. And yet Allene had this, particularly in the years after she turned seventy-five—officially seventy-one, since she never regained the four years she’d deducted from her age almost twenty years earlier. Just as she’d often trodden unconsciously in the footsteps of her compatriot Edith Wharton before, she did this again with respect to the last phase of her life, which according to the writer certainly had its own charms:
The farther I have penetrated into this ill-famed Valley, the more full of interest, and beauty too, have I found it. It is full of its own quiet radiance, and in that light I discover many enchanting details which the midday dazzle obscured. As long as I love books and flowers and travel—and my friends—and good food, as I do now, I want no allowances made for me!
A fervent reader Allene was not, but she certainly loved flowers. Her gardens in Suisnes were featured in France’s leading gardening magazines, and in Newport she won first prize in the annual flower show for her fuchsias in 1949. And in France, when lilies of the valley were sold everywhere on May Day, she was genuinely upset about the unthinking manner in which the woods were robbed of their wildflowers. “It made me so sad, thousands torn up by the roots, the forests will be denuded soon, so thoughtless and cruel.”