Olga de Meyer

Baroness Olga de Meyer (8 August 1871 – 6 January 1931) was a British-born artists' model, socialite, patron of the arts, writer, and fashion figure of the early 20th century. She was best known as the wife of photographer Adolph de Meyer and was rumoured to be the natural or god-daughter of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. After 1916, she preferred to be known as "Mahrah de Meyer".

Drawing of Olga de Meyer by John Singer Sargent, 1907

Background
Portrait of Donna Olga Caracciolo dei Duchi di Castelluccio by Jacques-Emile Blanche, 1889

Of Portuguese, Italian, French, and American descent, she was born Donna Maria Beatrice Olga Alberta Caracciolo in London, England. Her father was Neapolitan nobleman Gennaro Caracciolo Pinelli, Duke Caracciolo (1849–?), eldest son of the 4th Duke of Castelluccio, while her mother was the former Marie Blanche Sampayo (1849–1890), a daughter of Antoine François Oscar Sampayo, a French diplomat who served as that country's minister to Portugal, and his American wife, Virginia Timberlake.[1][2][3][4][5][6] Her great-grandmother Margaret O'Neill Eaton was the central figure in the Petticoat affair, a scandal that plagued President Andrew Jackson.[3] Another great-grandparent was a Marshal of France, Count Auguste Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély.[7][8]

Olga was born at 14 William Street, Lowndes Square, Chelsea, on 8 August 1871 and her father registered the birth in Chelsea North-East Sub-District on 5 September 1871, 'Olga' being the third and 'Alberta' the fifth of her seven forenames. The 1871 Census, taken on 3 April 1871, showed the couple with her mother at Thomas's Hotel and Lord Carrington's diary shows them together at Marlborough House on 4 July 1871 when the Duchess was heavily pregnant and the Duke was unwell.[9] Jane Ridley says that the Duchess 'scandalised London society that winter, going out shooting in a kilt and smoking cigarettes'.[10]. Later gossip purveyed by Jacques Emile Blanche (who knew Olga and her mother at Dieppe in the 1880s) said that the couple had separated 'at the church door' and that Olga was the daughter or god-daughter of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, but Ridley considers it most unlikely that she was his child.[11] As a Catholic Olga was certainly not the Prince's god-daughter. In the 1870s when staying at Sandringham 'an Italian Duchess, who is an Englishwoman, and her daughter, brought up as a Roman Catholic and now turning Protestant', presumably the Duchess and Olga, are mentioned by a visiting bishop.[12] According to the writer Philippe Jullian the Prince believed that Olga was his child and supported her,[13] but others assumed that her mother's friend Stanislaus Augustus, 3rd Prince Poniatowski (1835–1908), a married former equerry of Napoleon III, was her father. Immediately after the death of her mother in 1891, Olga went to Naples and married in 1892, Prince Marino Brancaccio, a member of another Catholic family, but they were divorced at Hamburg in June 1899. When Olga married Adolph de Meyer the following month in London she did so in a Protestant ceremony.[14]

Olga de Meyer attended the King's coronation in Westminster Abbey in 1902 when her presence was described as "conspicuous". According to an article entitled "Coronation of King Edward VII: Splendid Scene in Westminster Abbey", The New York Times, 10 August 1902, Olga sat in the front row of the King's box along with several of his intimate friends, including Mary Cornwallis-West, Minnie Paget and the king's mistress Alice Keppel.

In 1916, Olga de Meyer took the forename "Mahrah" upon the advice of an astrologer.

Marriages

Olga Caracciolo was married to:

  • Nobile Marino Brancaccio (1852–1920), a Neapolitan nobleman who was a son of Carlo Brancaccio, Prince of Triggiano and Duke of Lustra. They married in Naples, Italy, on 9 May 1892 (civil) and 11 May 1892 (religious), and divorced on 7 June 1899, in Hamburg, Germany. Artist Jacques-Émile Blanche, a family friend, called it "a short and most dramatic union".'
  • Adolph de Meyer (1868–1946), a celebrated artist dubbed by Cecil Beaton "the Debussy of photography." They married on 25 July 1899 at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, Cadogan Square, in London.[15] This was a marriage of convenience, as the groom was homosexual and the bride was bisexual; some sources identify her as a lesbian.[16][17] The de Meyers were characterised by Violet Trefusis—who counted Olga among her lovers and whose mother, Alice Keppel, was Edward VII's best known mistress—as "Pederaste and Médisante" (a pun on Pelleas and Melisande, from the French for 'pederast' and 'woman who criticises/maligns [médire]') because, as Trefusis observed "He looked so queer and she had such a vicious tongue."[18][19]

Among her affairs was one with Princess (Edmond) de Polignac, an heiress of Singer sewing machines and arts patron, in the years 1901 to 1905.

Muse and writer
Portrait of Olga de Meyer by William Bruce Ellis Ranken, Leeds Museums and Galleries

Known for "her elusive combination of childlike innocence and soigné charm" and described as "tall and slender, with Venetian red hair", Olga de Meyer was muse and model to many artists, among them Jacques-Émile Blanche, James McNeill Whistler, James Jebusa Shannon, Giovanni Boldini, Walter Sickert, John Singer Sargent, and Paul César Helleu.[20][21][22] Another of her artist admirers was Charles Conder, who was infatuated by Olga Caracciolo and painted her portrait; Aubrey Beardsley was part of her youthful circle as well.[21] Olga de Meyer also inspired characters in novels by Elinor Glyn and Ada Leverson.

Of Olga's beauty, British novelist George Moore was unimpressed. As he commented to an admiring artist friend, "By Jove, you're all after the girl, a fine Mélisande for the stage, with her beautiful hair down to her heels. She's paintable, I admit, but as to one's daily use, I should rather have the mother than the child. Too slender for me ... you know my tastes."[23]

She worked briefly as a society columnist for La Galoise, a Paris newspaper, in the 1890s. As Mahrah de Meyer, a name she adopted in 1916, she wrote one novel, the autobiographical Nadine Narska (Wilmarth Publishing, 1916). The New York Times condemned the novel as "morbid, exaggerated, ... [and] guilty of many carelessly written sentences",[24][25] while The Dial called de Meyer's book "a miscellaneous mixture of paganism, diluted Nietzsche, worldly morals, and the doctrine of reincarnation".

One of de Meyer's short stories, Clothes and Treachery, was made into The Devil's Pass Key, a 1919 silent movie by director Erich von Stroheim.[26]

Sportswoman

Known as the "woman [amateur fencing] champion of Europe", Baroness de Meyer competed at tournaments in Europe and the United States in the early 1900s. At the Colony Club in New York City on 6 January 1913, she participated in an exhibition match with California champion fencer Sibyl Marston.[27][28][29]

Death

An observer wrote "Nervous, drugged, surrounded by ambiguous friends and accompanied by a too-conspicuous husband, Olga had become frankly spiteful. Her scandal-mongering had eliminated the last of her respectable friends, and people visited her only because they could be sure to find a pipe of opium or a sniff of cocaine."[23]

Olga de Meyer is said to have died of a heart attack in a detoxification clinic in Austria in 1930 or 1931,[24][30] but she was reported as being at St. Moritz with her husband in January 1931.[31] She died on 6 January 1931, aged 59. She was interred two days later at Freiburg, Baden, Germany.[32]

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References
  1. Annuario della nobiltà italiana (1899), page 263
  2. Simona Pakenham, Sixty Miles from England: The English at Dieppe, 1814–1914 (Macmillan, 1967), page 123
  3. Samuel Gordon Heiskell and John Sevier, Andrew Jackson and Early Tennessee History (Ambrose Printing Company, 1921), pages 325–326
  4. According to an 1889 letter written by one of Virginia Sampayo's schoolmates, a Mrs Lee, Virginia was engaged in her youth to Barton Key, son of Francis Scott Key. She was also known as "a brilliant woman in mind, appearance, and accomplishments ... in spite of her want of veracity. ... She always changes her history and gets coarser as she grows older. I suppose she may need money, or craves notoriety ..." Extract from John Fiske, Essays, Historical, and Literary, Volume 1 (The Macmillan Company, 1902), pages 293–294
  5. The Sampayos married in London on 28 January 1849, when he was the former secretary of the legation of the French mission to the United States; on the marriage license his name is given as Anthony Sampayo. Information on marriage published on page 94 of National Intelligencer & Washington Advertiser Newspaper Abstracts, 1849, Volume 23 (Heritage Books, 2007)
  6. In a London newspaper in July 1903, Olga de Meyer placed the following advertisement: "The Baroness de Meyer highly recommends her cousin, Mlle. de Sampago [sic], as ladies' companion, chaperon, or traveling companion. Understands art needlework." Quoted in "Some Tea Table Confidences", The New York Times, 2 August 1903
  7. John Rothenstein and Campbell Dodgson, The Life and Death of Conder (Dent, 1938), page 115
  8. Denys Sutton, Walter Sickert: A Biography, (Joseph, 1976), page 41
  9. Anthony Camp, Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fictions: 1714-1936 (2007) 357-59.
  10. Jane Ridley, Bertie: a life of Edward VII (2012) 138.
  11. Jacques Emile Blanche, Portraits of a lifetime (1937) 51-2, 171.
  12. H. E. Wortham, The delightful profession: Edward VII: a study in kingship (1931) 190.
  13. Philippe Jullian, Edward and the Edwardians (Viking Press, 1967)
  14. Anthony Camp, Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fiction: 1714-1936 (2007) 357-59.
  15. British marriage records available through Freebmd.rootsweb.com state the marriage of Maria Beatrice Olga Brancaccio, Princess de Moavero, and Baron Adolphus Edward Sigismond von Meyer.
  16. "History of Art: Adolf de Meyer". All-art.org. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  17. Lesbian identification cited in Philip Hoare, Noel Coward: A Biography, (University of Chicago Press, 1998), page 32.
  18. Diana Souhami, Mrs Keppel and her daughter (London, 1996) 230.
  19. Trefusis-de Meyer liaison cited in Henriette Sharpe, A Solitary Woman: A Life of Violet Trefusis (Constable, 1981.
  20. "Teacup Tattle", The New York Times, 16 August 1903
  21. Ann Galbally, Charles Conder: The Last Bohemian (Melbourne University Press, 2003), pages 187–188.
  22. Natasha (15 August 2002). "Jacques-Emile Blanche's Portrait of Donna Olga Caracciolo dei Duchi di Castelluccio". Jssgallery.org. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  23. Philippe Juillian and Robert Brandau, De Meyer, (Knopf, 1976).
  24. Nadine Narska – Mahrah De Meyer – Google Books. Books.google.com. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  25. "Latest Works of Fiction", The New York Times, 20 May 1917
  26. Richard Koszarski, The Man You Love To Hate (Oxford University Press, 1983).
  27. "Women Fencers Met at the Colony Club", The New York Times, 7 January 1913
  28. "Women May Fence Again", The New York Times, 12 January 1913.
  29. John McReynolds/Record Correspondent (2 July 2006). "Inheriting a piece of history". Lompocrecord.com. Retrieved 28 April 2013.
  30. Death from heart attack and location of death cited in Ann Galbally's Charles Conder: The Last Bohemian (Melbourne University Press, 2003), page 247.
  31. The Sketch, 21 January 1931, page 14.
  32. Ancestry.com, Baden, Germany Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials 1502-1985 (database on-line), Provo, UT, USA, 2016.

Sources
  • Profile of Adolf de Meyer, broadway.cas.sc.edu
  • Meyer, A. de. Of Passions and Tenderness: Portraits of Olga by Baron de Meyer. Marina del Rey: Graystone Books, 1992
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