An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(50)

But Allene hadn’t had her fill of the view of the sea or Rhode Island’s bay. As soon as she was released from the hospital, she rented a house on the farthest tip of the Newport peninsula, surround on three sides by the Atlantic Ocean. Again she was following in Edith Wharton’s footsteps—the writer had lived at precisely this spot for years, before her departure to Paris—seduced by “the endlessly changing moods of the misty Atlantic” and “the night-long sound of the surges against the cliffs.”

In 1927, the famous architect John Russell Pope built a summerhouse for himself and his family near Edith Wharton’s former home Land’s End. The Waves, as the result was befittingly named, was surrounded by rocks overgrown with wild roses and polished by the ocean, so typical to Rhode Island’s bay. Just as in Cap d’Ail, the sound of the sea and the smell of seaweed were everywhere, but here the atmosphere was more peaceful, with swallows nesting in the stone walls around the garden.

At the back of her new living quarters, Allene had a view of Bailey’s Beach, where, in 1953, Jacqueline Bouvier, one of her neighbors at 740 Park, celebrated her engagement to the young, very promising senator John F. Kennedy. At the front, she had a seascape that stretched out all the way to Ireland.



“Trust you are quite yourself again,” wrote Allene’s Cap d’Ail handyman, John Burnet, in June 1952 to his employer, whom he was clearly very fond of. Allene was indeed more or less herself—in any case, enough of herself to take the boat to Europe the following month and to resume her life as a wealthy nomad. That summer she lunched with W. Somerset Maugham, had drinks with one of Churchill’s daughters, and was given a new puppy to replace Mademoiselle Zaza, who had died and was sorely missed. She and Paul also bought a television set, the new invention that was taking over the world at high speed and that played a major role in the election victory of Allene’s friend “Ike” Eisenhower later that year.

In September, Allene hosted the Dutch royal family for a short vacation in Cap d’Ail. Juliana had, coincidentally, just arrived in New York for her first American state visit when Allene had surgery there in April. The queen had immediately made space in her busy schedule for what the Dutch newspapers discreetly called “a visit to an old, ailing friend.” Bernhard did not accompany her, even though he was in New York at that point, too. The relationship between the queen and prince consort had been strained for years due to his extramarital escapades and Juliana’s deepening friendship with the faith healer Greet Hofmans. During this state visit, the relationship sank to a new low point when Juliana made a pacifist speech at Congress, expressly against Bernhard’s wishes.

It seems that Allene did what she could to bring the estranged couple back together again, since she spent a remarkable amount of time with them that fall. After their vacation, she had lunch with them at the embassy in Paris several times; she also had Bernhard and his two eldest daughters to stay a few times separately. This delighted her fourteen-year-old goddaughter, Beatrix, who, like her father, was unusually attached to the decisive American, so different from her often-doubting and passive mother.

The attempts at reconciliation didn’t amount to much—the discord in the marriage would lead to a publicly fought royal battle shortly after Allene’s death. It was, as an American paper remarked during that period, a pity that Countess Kotzebue was no longer there “to mediate or offer Bernhard sage advice.” Allene herself spoke pithily of marital crises like the Oranjes’ in a letter to Heiner: “It is so tiresome that people are not kinder to each other.”



“Don’t play any more tricks like last year,” wrote John Burnet to Allene in the spring of 1953. He got his way, because that year his employer did return to Cap d’Ail in March after her winter in New York to see how things were going with her impulse purchase of two years earlier. She carried her complete set of New York silverware in her luggage because “picnic fashion” or not, she liked to dine in style. She wrote enthusiastically to Heiner:

Weather, sea, sky and flowers: all wonderful and I do appreciate being here [. . .] IT IS VERY RESTFUL and doing me good.

For her health, she could consult Dr. Moinson, who lived with his wife in nearby Monte Carlo. He provided her with more than enough painkilling pills and injections and came by almost every day to check on her:

He feels if he watches constantly my blood count, pressure and general condition he can get me strong and well. I know his heart is in it & hope he is right.

But in the meantime, the guest list for Allene’s upcoming birthday celebration in Suisnes, an event she’d had so much pleasure organizing the previous year and had celebrated so exuberantly, grew shorter and shorter. Her social diary became emptier, too. She often opted for a “little supper with Miss Brown” and then went to bed early—only, the next day, to hide in her seasoned, hardy manner the fact that she’d been in too much pain to sleep: “The moon is again too beautiful over the sea, I watched it quite a while in the night.” Traveling was also becoming more difficult:

The trip up [to Paris] tired me far too much, could hardly move for 48 hours, now have taken the strongest pill and will surely be better soon.

As Louis Moinson prescribed stronger and stronger painkillers over the course of 1953 and 1954, the life Allene had always liked to keep so free and spacious slowly shriveled. But the way she’d always refused to let the ghosts of her past into her life was also the way she behaved toward death, the other shadow creeping ever closer.