The Bugatti Queen

by Miranda Seymour

  The Amilcar was her biggest threat, according to Mongin. She looked for it and spotted the red and white bonnet jolt into a heavy shudder of anticipation.

  The big clock on the dash showed two minutes to go. The flag was up. She pushed in the magneto switch, waited, laid a velvet foot on the throttle, opened, listened, watched the rev pointer shift, the needles flicker up, listened again. Oil pressure, oil temperature, blower pressure, engine temperature, noise rising, all in balance. Watch the flag, clear the mind, see, just before the flag fell, the emptiness of the road before a howl of sound took the cars forward, bunching too close as she pulled the lever back into third and saw the Donnet bonnet fall suddenly from sight.

  The first corner came up at her. She squeezed the accelerator, aimed in on her familiar course line, out to see Ferrand’s Amilcar ahead, dust rising to shroud the narrow projecting wheels as they straightened. She blinked as a shower of grit struck her goggles, waited for her breathing to regulate.

  Her eyes narrowed as the next corner came at her. Sliding round it, she felt the car’s wheels twitch and straighten in response to the small, deft movement of her hands. She liked this car. Pressing her right foot down, she tightened her grip, pulling the blue prow back into line, scanning the road ahead for the Amilcar.

  Miss Hellé Nice, the charming Casino de Paris dancer, won the Grand Prix Féminin at Montlhéry yesterday.

  The race . . . took place between the five fastest competitors in an elimination trial held the previous day. Two of the drivers broke down, leaving three to battle it out. The driving was magnificent: nobody who saw it would feel able to argue that women drive less well than men. Hellé Nice, the winner, maintained an average of over 100 kph: how many men could match that?

  The victor was given a huge ovation. With a wreath of flowers garlanding the car bonnet, she performed a lap of honour before jumping out and pulling off her wind-protection cap. A slender figure in her white overalls and with a red scarf knotted around her neck, she ran across the track to the medical point, where I found her piercing the blisters on her fingers with a hot needle. (You could see how she must have gripped the wheel!)

  I congratulated her. ‘You raced with such passion! Up until the last moment, the public couldn’t guess which was going to win, you, in the blue car, or Miss Ferrand in the red. And then, when we saw you come roaring past her, so near to the finishing line, the feeling of emotion in the crowd was fantastic!’

  ‘I was chasing her for a long time,’ Hellé Nice explained, ‘but I couldn’t spot her. I knew that I’d passed the others and I had to find the red one, and when I did see it, I’d lost count of how many laps I’d already done. And then I realized that we were on the last lap and there it was. I had to push the car really hard to get past – well, I’m happy.’

  ‘I think you were doing 130 past the stands . . .’

  ‘More, quite a lot more.’

  The new champion told me a bit about her sporting tastes: ‘Cars, of course, then skiing, although I had a bad accident this last season. I go climbing every year, Mont Blanc, the Grepon, the Aiguille Verte.’

  I’m not surprised now by Miss Hellé Nice’s coolness. The mountains are a tough school in which to learn the strengths she has shown here today.

  Hastily, the new champion pulls off her overalls and changes into a beautiful dress for the results of the Concours d’Elégance. She’s only just ready when we hear the announcement that the car she presented came first.

  So, a double victory! Sport and elegance, the qualities that only the modern woman knows how to bring together.

  Odette Marjorie, L’Intransigeant, 2 June 1929

  Newspaper accounts are never to be trusted and Odette Marjorie was not given the scoop she suggested here. Instead, the poor interviewer from L’Intransigeant was obliged to wait for almost an hour while photographers from Le Journal, the day’s sponsor, gathered around the Omega. Hélène’s fingers may have been blistered, but she still managed to get most of the dust off her face, freshen her lipstick and pull her beret on at a fetching angle before taking up her victory pose, the winner of the first Grand Prix for women in the history of racing.

  Hélène is snapped restoring her make-up after winning the Grand Prix Féminin, 1929.

  Back in her apartment and surrounded by telegrams and flowers, she gave interview after interview, flirting charmingly as she agreed that, yes, speed was a great thrill and she’d never felt happier than taking that last corner at 150 kph. Jean Pedron, a dazzled young journalist on his first commission, dutifully noted Miss Hellé Nice’s words without picking up on the hint of a sexual invitation as she told him of the greatest pleasure she knew, the feeling of a great engine roaring and under your control (‘entre les mains un bolide qui ronfle et qui ne demande qu’à foncer’).5

  It was the beginning of a glorious summer. The day after the race, she heard that the Bugatti showroom in Paris would be happy to provide her with a car in which to perform at the Actors’ Championship the following week. Bugatti: she didn’t want to admit how many times she’d lingered outside the handsome showroom windows on Avenue Montaigne, her eyes drawn past the great poster of the racehorse, emblazoned ‘The Thoroughbred Car’, and on past the flowing lines of the great Bugatti Royale, a car like no other, to the pretty, witty shape of the 35, her favourite. The car they were asking – asking! – her to drive was off in a window of its own. The only person she knew who drove a T43A tourer was a duchess who used to come to the back of the casino, looking for a dancer to take home. A couple of the Woods’ sisters, English girls, went along and talked for weeks of the thrill it had given them to sit up in front of the big car, roaring through the night towards Vincennes.

  Fine to be a passenger, but to drive it! Sitting in the T43A in the showroom with her hands on the wheel, Hélène’s face glowed with happiness. Jean Bugatti had designed the chassis, they told her, and it was Jean who had sent the message that they were to let the pretty dancer drive the car. She asked the sales manager to tell Mr Bugatti that she had never felt so honoured in her life.*

  Albert Divo and Guy Bouriat, watching her wriggle her way out of the car and run her hand along the bonnet of Ettore’s Royale before making some remark about how you could guess the level of a man’s sex drive by the kind of car he chose, glanced at each other with raised eyebrows. Not the choice they would have made, but Jean, at twenty, was the firm’s Crown Prince, able to do as he liked, so long as he didn’t race himself. And he wanted, so it seemed, a showgirl to help sell his favourite car.

  Their prejudices, weakened by the determination with which she set about mastering the car’s ways with only a week to go before the competition, were forgotten in the joy of her triumph. L’Auto, the daily paper which helped sponsor the Actors’ Championships, was dazzled by the ease with which she took the first prize in the gymkhana, handling the heavy car as easily as a pony while she paced it through the absurd requirements, opening a gate and closing it again without turning off the engine, leaning out to touch the ground, weaving at speed between a series of stakes. The crowd, reporters noted, adored this new champion with her delicious smile and her way of making a joke of everything she did, nonchalant in the display of superb driving skills. The real news of the day was that she had, for the first time in the six years of the championship’s existence, taken the speed record of the day from the men. Blanche Montel, the foxy-faced veteran star of over sixteen films who usually scooped all the female prizes of the day and monopolized the camera shots, was photographed precisely once on this occasion and not as a champion, but as ‘the charming actress who recently became a mother’. Hélène, carrying home her prizes while Guy Bouriat drove the car back to the showroom, had made herself another enemy.

  By the end of the summer, as she rounded off her triumphs with a well-publicized appearance in a handsome 1928 Rosengart at Le Touquet, feelings about the new driving-star had polarized. Cameramen, car manufacturers and the crowds were captivated by her cha
rm and courage; the singers and dancers who suddenly found themselves standing in her shade, heaped contempt on the shameless way she exhibited her body and used that grin to snatch all the attention. It was unbelievable, they said, how the little bitch got away with it: who had ever heard of driving a Rosengart in a bathing suit? It was pitifully apparent that Hélène Delangle wore one only to remind the world of her stripping-skills: as if anybody needed reminding.

  The old lady had kept a favourite page of news items from this period. The top picture showed her in the Rosengart, one arm twined caressingly around the steering-wheel, long legs stretched out of the open driver’s door, hair damp and curling, as if she had just come from a bedroom, or the sea. Lower down on the same page, the camera framed a group of solid young ladies displaying plump arms and sturdy legs in awkward poses around another of the entered cars. Their smiles are stiff; their eager, clumsy bodies do not please the eye. There seems to be a note of feline irony in a caption which describes the group as our ‘charming competitors’. This provided the ageing Hélène with many pleasant moments. Was it any wonder, she asked, that photographers had preferred the look of the girl in the Rosengart, or that the women who took part in the car contests were so rude about her? Diana, her dancer friend from the casino, was the only exception, a perfect darling, sweet enough even to sign a photograph of herself, just after losing a bicycle race on the road above Deauville beach: ‘To my best friend, the driving-ace!’

  Diana was rewarded. An invitation arrived to join the champion and a few close friends on her new 22-metre-long boat, La Vague, for a sailing trip around the coast of Spain.

  La Vague, like the newly acquired Hispano-Suiza, was an act of bold indulgence. Bills for the glorious, shining black car, with its stork mascot spreading silver wings above a radiator as big as a door, ran up to 40,000 francs a year; a single receipt for various repairs carried out on the boat, a beautiful second-hand ketch, added up to 250,000 francs. Hélène could afford such extravagance; success was turning her into a valuable advertising weapon. A seductive body and a cheeky, heart-stopping grin could sell products as well as cars. In 1929, shortly after her spectacular double victory in the Actors’ Championship, Hélène became the new face of Lucky Strike, ‘cigarette of the championship winner’. Not, as she was anxious to stress, that she ever lost her loyalty to untipped Gauloises, but the money was good.

  Lucky Strike poster.

  In the absence of any information from Hélène herself, conjectures have to be made about the development of her relationship with Bugatti. It seems reasonable to suppose that the connection began with her success in the T43A at the Actors’ Championship in June. We can examine the radiant smiles with which Hélène and young Jean Bugatti were photographed gazing into each other’s eyes the following year, as Jean presented her with the prize for coming 3rd in the Bugatti Grand Prix held at Le Mans. Later, he fell deeply in love with a dancing girl; perhaps Hélène set a precedent.

  The initiative may have come from Jean; the idea of persuading her to set a new world speed record was his father’s. Ettore, by 1929, was looking for a new woman racer to add glamour to the image and help him reach the female market. Elizabeth Junek, the most remarkable of female Bugatti drivers, had retired in July 1928, after the horror of witnessing her husband’s death and that of a fellow Czech on the Nürburgring. Elizabeth Junek’s most remarkable achievement was to hold the lead in the formidable Sicilian race, the Targa Florio, for nearly two laps of the five, in May 1928, two months before her husband’s death. Two other women racers, Albertine Derancourt, and Jannine Jennky, the brilliant pupil of Albert Divo, stopped racing their Bugattis the following summer. Ernest Friderich’s daughter Renée was still too young and inexperienced, although desperate to be given a chance to show her skills; a gap existed and this showgirl, Hellé Nice, seemed equipped to fill it.

  The most probable place and time for Hélène’s first encounter with Ettore and his oldest son is the great Paris car show which was held every year, towards the close of the season. She was in the news again, after her voyage around the coast of Spain. Ettore liked yachts and he shared his son’s taste for attractive, adventurous women. Here, perhaps, he put forward his offer of a 35C, the most beautiful racing car she was ever likely to see, for a speed record, if she was confident that she could take it up to 200 kph.

  Such an offer, to a woman who always told interviewers that the sensation of speed was the most exciting that she knew, was irresistible. Invited to come to the Bugatti estate at Molsheim and have the car prepared for her while she learnt how to handle it, she could hardly believe her good fortune. And all this in less than a year!

  7

  INTERLUDE AT MOLSHEIM

  ‘Bugattis are élite cars created for the élite; the fact that they may be expensive to maintain, repair and tune, is therefore of no significance.’

  ETTORE BUGATTI

  Jean Bugatti’s absence was the only disappointment, although it did not surprise her. She had noticed the sharp look which his father gave her at the Paris Show when, without thinking what she was doing, she touched Jean’s arm with her hand. It was the kind of gesture she might have made twenty times a day and thought nothing about it, but the glance from Ettore told her that it wasn’t a good idea. The Crown Prince was off limits, reserved for some semi-royal Miss, she supposed, picturing a film-star beauty running down a flight of steps from her chateau, and into his arms.

  The flicker of regret was forgotten in the pleasure of being welcomed to Molsheim, not only by Ettore but also by his wife and eldest daughter. It was the latter, Lébé Bugatti, who escorted her to the estate’s hotel – The Thoroughbred, of course – apologizing for the fact that they could not put her up in their own home. A meal could be brought to her room; or would she rather have something in the little bar downstairs? Looking at the young woman’s dark, neatly tailored clothes, Hélène decided to leave her dashing Paris suits in the trunk. She was anxious to fit in.

  Lébé hesitated in the doorway, murmuring something inaudible about her brother. Blushing, Hélène said that she hardly knew him. ‘Well, please don’t let him bother you,’ Lébé said. ‘Roland isn’t supposed to come into the Hotel, but he does love meeting new visitors. Just send him off when you get bored.’

  Not Jean, then; another, younger brother. She was glad she hadn’t said more.

  The hotel was unlike any she had ever encountered. When Lébé had left, she ran round the room like a child, inspecting the delights of this little palace of modernity. Running water in the bathroom, hot and cold, electric light, a well-aired bed, a clean set of overalls laid out on the chair for her first day of training, a dish of ripe plums, some new novels, Italian, German and French, on the shelf, bright-faced flowers in a yellow jug on the windowsill.

  The bed was big enough for two people if they squeezed up close. Leaning out of the window and smelling the sharp tang of pines, hearing laughter from the bar below, she found herself thinking of Jean again and wondering where he took girls, when he was here. Perhaps he didn’t; the father looked as though he’d always be on the watch.

  Jean Bugatti, with a Bugatti Royale, for which he designed the magnificent body.

  It was a shame Marcel hadn’t come along to keep her company. They could have had a good time in here, just like the old days at Brighton. But Mongin was adamant. She’d do better on her own, he told her, so long as she remembered that she was there as a professional driver, not as a cabaret star. No drinking, dancing or silly stuff (by which he meant the morphine which she began using in 1929, to kill the pain of her injured knee; she continued to take it, as many of her friends did, for the sense of euphoric pleasure it delivered).

  At five in the morning, she was dressed, desperate for activity and conscious that nobody else in the building was awake. Resting her elbows on the window ledge, she stared into the grey dawn, watching the lines of the distant hills take shape, wondering where her car might be locked away and whether she coul
d get a glimpse of it, even sneak a practice drive.

  It took her a while to find where the workshops had been hidden away from view, screened by what appeared to be a Roman temple. Behind it, walking on, she discovered the foundry, a carriage-work shop, a carpentry room, a garage especially built for the magnificent Royale, a car built to dwarf all competition. All were open and yet every door was fitted with a gigantic brass lock. Her curiosity had, it seemed, been anticipated. Still looking for the car, she walked past a stable where she counted fifteen horses, a further long room filled with antique carriages, all beautifully polished, and a gallery filled with animal sculptures. This was where she was standing, entranced by the grace and energy of the tiny figures, when Ettore, magnificent and absurd in a scarlet waistcoat and with his brown bowler hat planted at a rakish angle, made his entrance.

  The sculptures were by his brother, he said; dead, unfortunately. Perhaps they might go around the estate later, if she didn’t object to bicycling. He understood that she liked dogs; he had a splendid collection of terriers, prizewinners, the lot of them. And the yacht: she might appreciate that.

  What she wanted most, she said, was to see the car; better still, drive it. A faint smile crossed Ettore’s bland, clever face. Did she realize, he asked suddenly, that Léon Volterra was an old friend of his? He’d seen her, more times than she’d be able to guess, dancing at the casino. Very pretty. Very charming. Turning the handle of his whip over in his hand, he asked if she ever thought of going back to the stage. More money in that than racing, for a woman, after all. And more security.