by Andrew Rose
By 1921, whatever may have been Ali’s innermost thoughts, he was having to contemplate marriage. There must have been strong family pressure on him, as the sole male heir, to carry on the Fahmy line. He may also have been anxious to scotch rumours, however unfounded, about his private life.
Ali had his first sight of Marguerite at the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo. In the spring of 1922, he travelled restlessly about Europe, taking in a stay at the Savoy in London. By the middle of May, he was back in Paris, where he saw Marguerite again, prominent among the crowd of like-minded women and their admirers, brilliantly on display in fashionable restaurants and nightclubs. Although the weather was generally poor that year, the few fine days of May would see society heading for one or other of the two (partly) open-air restaurants in the Bois de Boulogne. Au Pré Catelan was in the park itself, while the Château de Madrid stood near the Porte de Madrid, then one of the gates of the Bois. This building was a pastiche of a chateau built by Francois 1er in 1528 and it was here that ‘the élite of Parisian society resort to dine … and dance on summer evenings’.240 A dance floor was set up under the trees, with space for a large number of tables. Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun (and in 1940 the controversial architect of armistice with the invading German armies), was a frequent visitor, and at 66 still possessed a lively interest in women.
Marguerite was aware that Ali Fahmy, whose wealth was by now well known in Paris, was attracted to her: she noticed how he would look intently at her on the many occasions their paths crossed, but somehow the necessary introduction eluded him. Marguerite, the mistress of Jean d’Astoreca, was playing hard to get, treading cautiously in a city notorious for gossip. In early July, she spent a few days in Deauville, where she met Madeleine Martinet, ‘an exceedingly charming woman … I felt very sympathetically attracted to her and to her young sister, a remarkably pretty girl, and took them back in my car to Paris’.241
Later that month, Marguerite’s warm feelings for her new friend paid dividends. One day she was telephoned excitedly by Madeleine, who said that she knew someone who absolutely had to meet her. ‘He said it was his sole ambition while he was in Paris,’ added Madeleine by way of encouragement and so, supposedly mystified, Marguerite duly arrived at the Hotel Majestic at noon on 30 July 1922.
This hôtel de luxe, which stood in the avenue Kléber a few metres from the Arc de Triomphe, vied in ‘its splendours, comforts and cuisine’ with the Ritz. The headquarters of the British delegation at the Versailles Peace Conference, the hotel was soon ‘restored to its usual guests to whom display, luxury and wonderful ladies have never seemed scandalous’. There, on 18 May 1922 and in a private salon, Proust, Joyce, Picasso, Stravinsky and Diaghilev gathered for supper, the only time that these emblematic figures of the Modernist movement were together in one room.242
Madeleine duly effected the required formal presentation, beginning an ill-fated acquaintance with the handsome young man whose dark, intense eyes Marguerite had seen so often around town. ‘I felt,’ she later wrote, ‘a curious tresaillement [thrill]’, but if thrill it was, the sensation was as likely caused by the thought of Ali’s bank balance, and what it might mean for Marguerite and her daughter, than by any truly romantic yearnings of the heart.243
Quickly abandoning her new girlfriend, Marguerite accepted Ali’s offer of lunch at the Château de Madrid. As they left the Hotel Majestic, Ali indicated two cars waiting outside. One was his Rolls-Royce coupé, with attendant burly Sudanese chauffeur, while the other was a gaudy sports model shaped like a torpedo. Marguerite, well aware of Ali’s reputation for crazy driving in Cairo, wisely chose the Rolls.
The acquaintance soon ripened. Two or three days after the rendezvous at the Hotel Majestic, Marguerite met Said Enani for the first time, and wondered exactly how deep the friendship was between her new friend and his older secretary. She was also introduced to the secretary’s secretary, and to Ali’s own lawyer, the peripatetic Mahmoud Fahmy. Marguerite later wrote of a whirlwind courtship in which she was pursued by Ali, abrim with des avances furieuses (madcap advances) for over a month in Deauville, in Paris, and back in Deauville again.244 The truth was more prosaic. Not long after their informal introduction, Marguerite moved into Ali’s suite at the Majestic (which cost him 10,000 francs (£125) a week), living with him there for a few days before he left for Deauville.
Ali had taken a suite at the Hotel Normandy, one of the best hotels in the little town, an unlikely-seeming resort for the smart set, situated as it was on the chilly north-western coast of France, opposite Le Havre and the great mouth of the Seine. July and August saw its small resident population swamped by a horde of migrating rich, who travelled there by luxury train, expensive chauffeur-driven motor-car, or by yacht. That season, the Cornelius Vanderbilts were aboard the Sheelah (chartered from Admiral Lord Beatty), Earl Fitzwilliam had brought the Sheemara, while Lord Dunraven thrilled onlookers with his speedboat Sona, a recent sensation at Cowes.
In that Année des Rois (Year of the Kings), the King of Sweden, the Dowager Queen Olga of Greece and ex-King Manuel of Portugal were in town. King Alfonso XIII of Spain could be spied playing a chukka of polo, under the transparent sobriquet ‘The Duke of Toledo’, before returning to his private villa at nearby Hennequeville. Another monarch who patronised the Deauville Season of 1922 was Ahmad Shah of Persia, the occupant of a very wobbly Peacock Throne. A few weeks later, Olga was forced into exile. Both Alfonso and Ahmad would be ousted within a decade.
In the early evenings, people strolled along the promenade des Planches, maybe pausing at La Potinière, with its pretty green tables, for an aperitif. Vermouth cassis was popular and, in place of the battery of wartime cocktails, unchauvinistic French nationals might sip a ‘Dempsey’ (one part gin, two parts Calvados, two dashes of anise and a teaspoonful of grenadine), in honour of the American bruiser who had demolished gentlemanly Georges Carpentier the previous year. And not a few of Deauville’s more antique summer visitors might have been tempted by the promise of a ‘Monkey Gland Cocktail’, another favourite of a year when post-war Deauville really got into its stride.245
After dinner, society migrated to the Casino. During the second week of August 1922, Winston Churchill regularly tried his luck at the tables, in the company of press baron Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook) and his gossip-columnist friend Lord Castlerosse, an Irish peer of enormous girth and zest for life. André Citroën, the car manufacturer, won 750,000 francs (£9,375) on Friday 10 August and lost most of his gains the following Monday night. On the dancefloor, ‘there is no tangoing … no foxtrotting, always the “Shimmy” with its dry and monotonous rhythm and lack of grace, to which the dancers lugubriously revolve’.246
The Hungarian-American Dolly Sisters were a great attraction of the Casino’s cabaret, appearing in fantastic costumes. Tall white ostrich plume head-dresses crowned the effect, creation of the internationally renowned English couturier, Colonel Edward Molyneux, another of Deauville’s seasonal residents.
The inimitable Mistinguett, Queen of Paris vaudeville, was also in town, wearing what The Tatler described as ‘a very short frock’ (at a time when the hem-line still hovered just above the ankle), showing a glimpse of those famous and highly insured legs, encased in shiny silk stockings. That autumn, she would play at the Casino for 20,000 francs (£250) a performance, plus a hard-nosed 15 per cent of the box-office.
Marguerite, despite her dalliance with Ali, still considered herself the mistress of Jean d’Astoreca. According to her rather florid account, she and Astoreca set themselves up at the Hotel Royal. That night at the Casino, Marguerite saw Ali, who greeted her warmly, before she joined Astoreca at the tables of the salle de jeu, only to find her protector with cards in one hand, the other caressing the thighs of a woman sitting next to him.
Ordering her maid to pack her bags, Marguerite marched over to the Hotel Normandy, moving in with Ali, who later gave her a diamond-encrusted powder compact worth 35,000 francs, bought from Van C
leef & Arpels and the first of many bejewelled gifts from her Egyptian suitor.247 Marguerite also savoured the heartier pleasures of the resort, mixed bathing now allowed, also playing tennis and golf while Ali made a short excursion to Verona, from which he returned on 21 August. He was now calling her ‘Bella’, while Marguerite – taking her cue from Said Enani – designated her new Egyptian lover as ‘Baba’.
As autumn approached, the fashionable world drifted down to Biarritz on the Atlantic coast, not far from the Spanish border. Ali Fahmy and Marguerite were now living as man and wife, but Ali never travelled without his entourage, the ‘shadows of the light’, and Said Enani was always at hand to give advice, even if it was not always heeded. More experienced in the ways of the world than his new master, Said viewed Marguerite’s patently strategic manoeuvres with suspicion, though a strange intimacy was growing between them. They had, after all, some coincidence of interests arising from their mutual interest in the fortune of a very rich young man.
From Biarritz, excursions were made to St Jean-de-Luz and over the Spanish border to San Sebastián. On these trips, Ali would often insist on taking the wheel, fully earning Marguerite’s description ‘velocimaniac’, as he sped recklessly along the narrow, twisting roads in the foothills of the Pyrenees. In 1922, the modern syncromesh gear system had not yet been developed. To change gear, it was normally necessary to slip into neutral before re-engaging, a process that could cause considerable loss of speed. Ali was a proud exponent of the ‘racing change’, a risky technique calling for deft use of the accelerator and a cavalier disregard for the welfare of the gearbox.
Marguerite particularly liked the Biarritz set and, in the first major disagreement of their relationship, declared herself reluctant to break her stay in order to go to Milan, as Ali wished. Angrily, he set off alone in mid-September, hoping Marguerite would follow, but with her own strong will (and a well-developed sense of strategy) she would not be persuaded to leave. Marguerite nevertheless agreed that she should go to Cairo in the latter part of the year, though – for form’s sake – she put up token resistance, claiming that she had already planned a winter trip to Cannes.
Ali, completely smitten, returned to Biarritz, where Marguerite was photographed in the fashion of 1865, appropriate dress for the Second Empire Ball, which took place that evening. This was one of the great social events in France, rivalling the Bal du Grand Prix at the Paris Opera, held in June.
Immediately after the ball, Ali returned to Egypt for family reasons, taking ship from Marseilles. He arrived at Alexandria lovesick and in poor spirits. Although he had sent Marguerite romantic letters from Milan, she was perhaps not prepared for the long, emotional letter written to her from Cairo on 26 September. Described coldly by an English writer as ‘written in abject and sickening terms of flattery’,248 the (admittedly inadequate) English translation reads as a statement of courtly love. Extracts convey something of Ali’s passionate lovelorn style, addressed naïvely to an older woman brought up in a tough school:
My Dear Little Bella,
… I landed on Monday and my first … thoughts are for you who, by your bewitching charm, your exquisite delicacy, the beauty of your heart … have brought out all that is good and generous in human nature … that indefinable radiance, proceeding from you, invades and envelops me. Your image everywhere incessantly pursues me … Torch of my life, your image appears … to me surrounded by a halo and your head, so dear, so proud, so majestic, is brightly encircled by a crown which I reserve for you in the beautiful country of my ancestors …
Both unsure of himself and uncertain whether Marguerite would keep her promise to revisit Cairo, Ali seems to have been trying, in this revealing passage, to dispel rumours about other affairs, his sexual orientation, and his very close relationship with Said Enani:
… If, by chance, your journey should be thwarted and if – giving credence to stories, something I would never believe of you – you abandon your planned journey, you will unwittingly have made my life aimless. Envy, jealousy and distraction are common at all times and in all countries. They should never have sway over noble natures like yours …
The letter ends with a hint of emotional blackmail:
… Let me insist … that you embark so as to arrive here at the beginning of November … Come quickly and see the beautiful sun of Egypt … Ill, saved from death in bed, my only consolation is you. My recovery … I owe largely to your sweet and beneficent vision.
Believe me, I love you very much
From your faithful little Baba …
Enclosed were tickets for the journey, but Marguerite was not ready to make the trip. She had other strings to her bow and, once back in Paris, resumed her liaison with Jean d’Astoreca, whose sharp-eyed secretary, Miguel-Surgères, had discovered that Marguerite would always sleep with a loaded pistol under her pillow, morbidly fearful that someone would try to steal her jewellery.249
Ali was not to be fobbed off by Marguerite’s excuses. His melancholia may have brought on some kind of psychosomatic illness, though hardly serious enough to warrant the absurd series of telegrams despatched on his behalf by Said Enani:
CAIRO: 4 OCTOBER 1922: NO NEWS FROM YOU. BABA SERIOUSLY ILL SINCE HIS ARRIVAL. HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO WRITE TO YOU BEING BUSY WITH HIM BUT HOPE FOR PROMPT RECOVERY … SAID
CAIRO: 7 OCTOBER 1922: DESPERATE STILL. GRAVE DANGER TODAY. TOMORROW TELEGRAPH HIM HOW YOU ARE – SAID
CAIRO: 9 OCTOBER 1922: BABA BETTER TODAY. FIRST WORD YOUR NAME. TELEGRAPH DAY OF DEPARTURE – SAID
Marguerite does not seem to have taken this nonsense seriously, but was considering her options. ‘This is the time o’ year,’ commented the Paris correspondent of The Tatler, ‘when affaires du coeur frame up their winter programmes!’250 Perhaps Marguerite had been hoping that Astoreca would make an honest woman of her or maybe she had quarrelled once more with a man almost as neurotic as Ali. At all events, accompanied by her younger sister, 21-year-old Yvonne, Marguerite boarded the Simplon-Orient Express on 16 November 1922, arriving in Trieste the following day. Waiting for them there was SS Helouan (10,000 tons), of the Italian Sitmar line, bound for Alexandria. ‘Mrs Laurent’ and ‘Miss Alibert’, as listed in the ‘Arrivals’ column of the English-language Egyptian Gazette, were to have distinguished company on the voyage. Also aboard ship was Emir Abdullah of Transjordan, ‘a strikingly handsome man of about 40 … of fair complexion and with slender delicately-formed hands’.
The voyage afforded Marguerite and Yvonne a glimpse of this real Arab prince, uncompromisingly dressed in the raiment of his ancestors. The Emir wore ‘an Arab kufiya and argai, with a deep plum-coloured zabun and a gold mesh belt, the clasp of which was formed by the highly worked gold and silver scabbard of a large dagger’.
On Monday 22 November, in brilliant winter sunshine, the SS Helouan put in to Alexandria. Marguerite recalled how the white mass of buildings on the shoreline was gradually transformed into low houses, overhanging buildings and minarets. As the vessel docked, scores of porters noisily vied with each other to claim passengers’ luggage. The Emir, formally greeted by the British Consul, was whisked off to Cairo in a special saloon attached to the boat train. The two Frenchwomen, on a very different errand, were met on board by Ali, miraculously restored to ebullient health. A limousine was waiting on the quayside, engine running, to take the party to Ali’s private villa, overlooking the Mediterranean, a few miles out of town.
7
Munira
Ali’s seaside villa could not compete for splendour with his mansion at Zamalek, so the day after disembarkation they took the train to Cairo, a journey of three and a quarter hours. The party was chauffeured across the city in a procession of three cars (the last of which carried a mass of luggage and assorted servants), over the Nile to the building that Ali unblushingly called his ‘palace’. On the steps leading up to the entrance, twelve liveried Nubian footmen, glittering in gold braid, greeted Ali and his two guests, ushered into salons furnished
and decorated in what was supposed to be the style of Fontainebleau. Marble columns, Gobelin tapestries, Aubusson carpets, venerable Persian rugs and eighteenth-century French furniture, carefully selected (on commission of course) by Fahmy’s agents, filled the ground floor rooms, in some of which Ali had attempted to reproduce the parquet flooring of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.
The Fahmy monogram, a fantastic reproduction of his name in Arabic, designed by Ali himself, was to be seen everywhere, often spelt out in precious stones, on lamps, chairbacks and picture frames, as well as on a surfeit of gold cigarette-boxes strewn throughout the building. As a tribute to his principal guest, Ali had commissioned a special dressing-table set: four hairbrushes, six perfume dispensers, hand mirrors, a manicure set and scissors, each one wrought in gold and tortoiseshell and adorned with the letter ‘M’ in small diamonds.
Marguerite’s bedroom had been fitted out with items once belonging to King Peter of Serbia, who had died in 1921. The décor was very much in the style of the French Empire, possibly reflecting an admiration by the late King for Napoleon Bonaparte. Peter was invited to assume the Serbian throne in 1903 after the previous incumbent and his wife had been brutally murdered in a military coup d’état.
In those first days as resident mistress, Marguerite would go horse-riding with Ali, early in the Cairo mornings. It was always a delight when ‘there was nothing to be seen but masses of white mist … In a minute or two, as the sun strikes over the hills … and the mist turns a delicate pink, in the far distance the bright blue hills of the western desert begin to show, and the horizon line is cut by the pyramids, starting out of the sea of blushing cloud. Incredibly quickly, change follows change. The cloud now turns to a liquid translucent gold and through it dimly appear the feathery palms and the graceful sails of passing boats. In a moment more the rising breeze has swept away the cloud … and the morning pageant is over.’251
