An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(46)
Allene fully enjoyed her houses, particularly the one in Suisnes. “Each day I grow to appreciate my lovely home here more, and I am grateful for the years I have enjoyed it . . .” She looked forward to every planned boat trip—“I will enjoy the rest on the boat”—and she liked to write about food, such as “the spaghetti I like so much.” As far as her health went, she had little to complain about aside from some rheumatism and, in the words of a Newport admirer, was a “very vibrant woman.”
In fact, Allene’s only concession to her age was the fact that she released herself from the self-imposed obligation to stay slim at any cost:
The new man Dior is marvelous, but mostly for young, very slender people. I am too fat for the new models but will have to have them made as well as possible to suit me.
The American economy, stoked by the war, was experiencing yet another period of growth, and Allene had enough money not to have to worry about it. She had enough houses never to feel bored anywhere and enough cars to be able to come and go as she pleased. Her fleet in France alone included a Lincoln Continental, a Chrysler, a Buick, and a Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith, which she had shipped over from Newport. And she had the warm and comforting company of her dogs. During those years she was inseparable from “Mademoiselle Zaza,” a Maltese that afforded her a childish kind of pleasure. Without exception, the animal traveled to New York every fall with a new trousseau—an outfit purchased in Paris, consisting of some kind of little sweater and a harness with her name on it.
But most of all, Allene enjoyed the company of other people. Later, a family chronicler of the Kotzebues would describe Paul and Allene’s marriage as “a very social life, entertaining and being lavishly entertained.” The Chateau de Suisnes’s guest book, which Allene had brought into use in May 1932 with Henry—the first official guest had been the famous Nazi prince Stephan zu Schaumburg-Lippe—was dusted off after the war. In the years since then, the book, bound in heavy black Moroccan leather and inscribed with golden crowns, was filled with pages and pages containing the signatures of the most powerful, rich, frivolous, and amusing people on earth.
Among the many great names to enjoy the Kotzebues’ hospitality were famous journalists and writers such as Walter Lippmann and W. Somerset Maugham, as well as leading American politicians like Ambassador Jefferson Caffery; his successor, David Bruce; Warren Austin, a United Nations representative, and future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. George Marshall, the father of the Marshall Plan—an American aid initiative to help prevent Europe from sliding toward communism—was a regular visitor to Suisnes. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, so greatly admired by Allene, was also part of their extended circle of colorful acquaintances. “Saw him at the station when I went for Olive, he looked happy and gay,” she once wrote.
Allene had tea in Versailles with the former commander-in-chief of the Allied forces and later president Dwight Eisenhower. Her dance card was filled with all kinds of (deposed) royalty, such as the former king of Italy, the Norwegian crown prince, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Princess Kira of Prussia, and Princess Ghislaine, the widow of the prince of Morocco. “Regular” Americans were often behind the grand titles in the guest book. Princess Emily Cito-Filomarino di Bitetto had been the all-American-sounding Emily Taylor before her marriage to an Italian prince, and the elderly but irrepressible Baroness Bateman of Shobdon had come into the world in New York as Marion Graham.
An unusual case was Allene’s friend Valerie, Duchess von Arenberg. She had grown up as a commoner, adopted by Jewish foster parents in Hungary, and her real father, Duke von Schleswig-Holstein, only recognized her as his lawful daughter on his deathbed. That recognition rendered her one of Queen Victoria’s great-grandchildren.
In fact, Allene seemed to have just one real requirement of her companions, and that was that they were entertaining. In this respect, the Duke of Windsor—former British king Edward VIII, who had given up the throne in 1936 to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson—committed a mortal sin in her eyes:
Went last night to the American Embassy to dine, 22 at table for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She so tiny but lovely figure and white silk dress, tight. No jewels except sapphire ring, white earrings and tiny black cape of many little black lace ruffles. I sat next to him and think him a bore.
When a dinner was not entertaining enough for Allene’s tastes, she would jolly it up herself, as her friend George Post Wheeler later recalled:
My friend of other years, Allene Burchard, later Princess Henry 33rd of Reuss and at present Countess Kotzebue, was lunching at the Dutch Legation in Paris (she being godmother, with the Countess of Athlone, to Queen Juliana’s oldest daughter) and was seated next to King Gustav. He carried a cigarette box mounted with topazes and set it on the table beside his plate. It happened that Allene had one almost exactly like it in size and mounting, and when he was looking the other way she laid hers close beside him. When he turned and saw the two he started violently, put his hand to his forehead, and exclaimed in a scared voice: But this is not possible! It’s getting me, I’m seeing double!
After many years, the ice had even been broken between Allene and the old Dutch queen, who had withdrawn almost entirely from the public eye by then. “No one could work harder for [her] country than Queen Wilhelmina,” Allene wrote. Aside from this, Allene was particularly fond of Bernhard’s younger brother, Aschwin, for whom she’d arranged a work permit and a job as a Far Eastern art specialist in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In recognition of her efforts, Wilhelmina would later bestow on her the title of Honorary Lady to the House of Orange—“which I thought most kind of her,” according to the lady in question.