The Bugatti Queen

by Miranda Seymour

  3. The account of HN’s day in Paris is imaginary, but the Mallet-Stevens garage was highly regarded. Garages offered an exciting opportunity for architects; in New York, plans were drawn up for a skyscraper car park. In Paris, the new Banville Garage had a sweeping spiral ascent which tested the skills of racing-drivers while offering a stylish image to pedestrians.

  4. Solange’s relationship with HN is hypothesized from a number of photographs in which she appears in what seems to be a holiday group; and from the letters she wrote to her sister during the 1930s. Earlier letters have not survived.

  5. Courcelles and M. Melon (Mongin) are listed at Brooklands as entrants for the race. The photographs of Hélène and her friends at Brighton are dated as 1920 and 1921 by her. The visit to Brooklands is speculatively described. It is still possible to take an illegal walk along the banked walls of Europe’s oldest speed circuit; the place remains wonderfully evocative and part of the track is still used for special events. William Boddy’s book on Brooklands is the definitive history; enthusiasts should also visit the library.

  6. It is likely, but not certain, that Mongin and HN were at Montlhéry on the day of Courcelles’s fatal crash. The obituaries, carefully preserved by HN, suggest that he died on the way to hospital; the most detailed report, in La Vie Automobile, 10 July 1927, pp. 243–5, states that death was instantaneous. All the tributes allude to his courage, his charm and his modesty.

  5. THE DANCER

  1. This account is based on photos of the couple in the Agostinucci collection.

  2. The music described here is identified in reviews of their performances in 1927 and 1928.

  3. It is possible that it was these private performances which made HN’s fortune; the salary she received for her music-hall appearances was relatively modest.

  4. Le Journal, 21 January 1927.

  5. Willy’s words have come down to us only through the review by Pierre Varenne which quotes him, n.d. (Brunkhorst).

  6. Varenne’s review, quoting Willy, appears in HN’s cuttings books, but without an attribution or date.

  7. HN’s representations of her career are taken from her conversations with Madame Janalla Jarnach from 1960 to 1962. Madame Jarnach also provided the description of her bedroom (author in correspondence and interview with JJ, autumn 2002).

  8. It is significant that HN preserved a copy of the Ailes de Paris programme; with it she preserved a dossier of photographs signed by members of the cast with affectionate inscriptions to herself. She does not appear to have kept photographs of either The Dollys or Maurice Chevalier, although it would be odd if she had not approached them for similar signed pictures.

  Tempting though it is to speculate on an affair with Maurice Chevalier, there is no evidence. It is just worth noticing that when Chevalier’s former love, Mistinguett, returned to the stage of the Casino de Paris for Paris Miss, in 1928, HN was not in the cast. Publicity shots do, however, leave no doubt that HN was at pains to imitate the most successful French music-hall star of the time. Miss’s smile, her way of crossing her legs, her pose on a car bonnet: all were copied, with great success.

  9. The Gala programmes and reviews were all kept by HN, as were the letters which thanked her for participating. The fact that she did not take part in 1929 is striking and does suggest this as the most likely year for her disastrous ski accident.

  10. HN’s own account of the accident is preserved in the scrapbooks (Brunkhorst).

  6. ‘LA PRINCESSE DES ALTITUDES, REINE DE VITESSE’

  1. Sylvia Beach, Shakespeare & Company (University of Nebraska Press, 1991), pp. 80–1.

  2. Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast (Scribner’s, 1964), pp. 64–5.

  3. Concours d’Elégance had taken place in the Parc des Princes every 17–19 June since 1921, as part of the Actors’ Championships. They had become widespread by 1928.

  4. HN in conversation with JJ and Madame Louis Lavagna, as described to author, October 2002.

  5. The reports and interviews which were given to Pedron and Marjorie are preserved in the HN scrap books (Brunkhorst).

  8. LAPPING THE GOLDFISH BOWL

  1. Winifred M. Pink, Woman Engineer (1928), 2 (17), pp. 235–6.

  2. Details of the Pathé Cinema team’s response are based on the account by a journalist who accompanied them during the week of HN’s speed trial. The man from L’Auto could have been Charles Faroux, the editor, who frequently paid tribute to the outstanding quality of Hélène’s driving (Brunkhorst).

  3. HN’s sensations are collated from several interviews which she gave after the speed trial, and from a journalist who was able to accompany her on a later record-breaking circuit (Brunkhorst).

  4. The invoice is in the Brunkhorst collection and suggests that she collected the car from Molsheim. It is generally accepted that the car is one of two which were made available to her for the speed trial, and that it is the one which is now in the Brunkhorst collection.

  5. L’Intransigeant, 7 February 1930 (Brunkhorst).

  6. This is one of many undated cuttings in the Brunkhorst scrapbooks. I have based my account on the assumption that the details of HN’s forthcoming trip to America, given out at Buffalo, mean that this second Actors’ Championship must also have taken place in the summer of 1930. HN only went once to the US to compete on dirt tracks, and this clearly shows that all her cuttings about the Parc des Princes’ events which mention America must relate to this summer. The Parc des Princes site was dismantled in 1930; from 1931, all Actors’ Championships were held elsewhere in Paris at the Buffalo velodrome at Montrouge.

  9. RALPH’S HONEY

  I am especially indebted for material in this chapter to information provided by Professor Patricia Lee Yongue, and to a fine article she wrote on Hellé Nice’s American adventure for The Alternate (2002). Also to an account given of the Woodbridge Broad Track by John Kozub in The Alternate (15 May 1992).

  1. Henri Lartigue to HN, 18 August 1930, answering her letter of 3 August 1930. These, together with the Savoy Plaza accounts are in the scrapbooks (Brunkhorst).

  2. Scrapbooks, n.d. (Brunkhorst).

  3. Derek Nelson, The American State Fair (MBI Publishing Company, Osceola, Wisconsin, 1999), p. 78.

  4. Albert R. Bockrock, American Auto Racing: A History (Cambridge, Patrick Stephens, 1974), p. 998.

  5. Scrapbooks (Brunkhorst). Misprints crept in to newspaper articles, as did the name Helen Rice by which she was often known.

  6. The car she used belonged to or was being driven that day by Larry Beals, but it is not certain whether it was a Miller or a Duesenberg.

  7. Scrapbooks (Brunkhorst).

  8. Record, 14 February 1931.

  9. Account based on the letters of Teddie Caldwell to HN during the 1930s (Agostinucci).

  10. Record, op. cit.

  11. France Soir, 7 March 1961.

  12. Record, op. cit.

  10. SEX AND CARS

  1. HN–Janalla Jarnach, 3 March 1977 (LRT).

  2. Erwin Tragatsch, Das Grosse Rennfahrerbuch (Bern: Hallwag AA, 1970), p. 238.

  3. Teddie Caldwell–HN, 12 November 1931 (Agostinucci).

  4. Teddie Caldwell–HN, 22 November 1933 (Agostinucci).

  5. HN–JJ, 3 March 1977 (LRT).

  6. Conjectural description.

  7. HN–JJ, 14 June 1976 (LRT).

  8. Teddie Caldwell–HN, 22 November 1933 (Agostinucci).

  9. The second unsupercharged Bugatti, reg. 2066-RD9 went to an English driver, Charles Brackenbury, who drove it with considerable success during the mid-1930s.

  10. Dame Joan Littlewood, Milady Vine: The Autobiography of Philippe de Rothschild (London: Jonathan Cape, 1984); interview and telephone conversations with author, June 2002.

  11. Clive Coates, Grands Vins: The Finest Châteaux of Bordeaux and their Wines (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), p. 64.

  12. Henri Lartigue–HN, 30 March 1935; 5 April 1935 (Brunkhorst).

  11. ‘L’AN
NÉE MALHEUREUSE’

  1. Marcel Mongin–HN, 5 June 1936 (Agostinucci).

  2. Henri Thouvenet–HN, 3 June 1936 (Agostinucci).

  3. Ibid.

  4. Marcel Mongin–HN, n.d. June 1936 (Agostinucci).

  5. Accounts of the accident vary, but the film taken by Arnaldo Binelli, and now in the Agostinucci Collection, shows no sign of a bale of straw or a policeman attempting to remove it. The film does, however, show that something – it could have been a bale – caught the passenger side wheel as she drove alongside the crowd. The nose of the car can be seen pointing into the crowd after she has tried to correct a skid, and has lost control. Chico Landi, who took part in the same race, has given his own version on the www.atlasforum site (20 November 2001). Another account appeared in Allgemeine Automobil Zeitung, Berlin 1936 (no. 33), p. 16.

  The driverless car threw the nearest spectators to the ground, then ran them over, ripping arms and legs from them as if it was a monster, possessed. It finally came to a stop just over the finishing line. Five [sic] died on the spot; a further 35 [sic] were taken to the hospital. At the time, it was believed that the courageous woman driver was another victim; the first news bulletins announced that she was dead. She was taken to hospital in a coma and with severe injuries.

  12. THE ROAD BACK

  1. Solange Delangle–HN, 17 July 1936 (Agostinucci).

  2. Marcel Mongin–HN, 24 July 1936 (Agostinucci).

  3. Henri Thouvenet–HN, 18 July 1936 (Agostinucci).

  4. Race records show that she was initially placed 4th, but that her position was amended and she was given 3rd place (Brunkhorst).

  5. Henri Thouvenet–HN, 21 August 1936 (Agostinucci).

  6. HN–Janalla Jarnach, 3 March 1977 (LRT).

  7. Léon Mouraret–HN, 29 December 1936 and 14 January 1937 (Brunkhurst). The reference to Bidon may help explain the nickname ‘Bidon’ which HN gave to the Alfa which she bought from Lehoux and which was looked after by his mechanic, also known as ‘Bidon’, meaning petrol can.

  8. La Gazzetta del Popolo della Sera, dated by content. The Mille Miglia took place on 4 April that year (Brunkhorst).

  9. Simone des Forest in an interview with author, 2001.

  10. César Marchand, in La Fanatique de L’Automobile, August 1979.

  11. The fullest account available of the Yacco trials is given by Anthony Blight in The French Sports Car Revolution (G. T. Foulis, 1996), p. 283.

  12. Simone des Forest in interview with author, 2001.

  13. Madame Janalla Jarnach, October 2002.

  14. Julien Green, Journal, 1926–1934, in Oeuvres complètes (1975), IV, p. 338.

  15. Heinrich Kleyer, Adlerwerke–HN, 21 February 1938 (Brunkhorst).

  16. Mick Walsh, Classic and Sports Car, June 1997.

  17. Charles Faroux, L’Auto, 7 August 1939, also quoted in Blight, op.cit., p. 522.

  18. I have drawn on the account given by David Venables, op.cit., p 229.

  13. AND WHAT DID YOU DO DURING THE WAR, MADEMOISELLE?

  I am indebted to Antony Beevor and to Artemis Cooper for discussions and for the loan of some illuminating books on which I have drawn for this and the following chapter.

  1. Details are taken from the accounts given by Venables, op.cit. pp. 230–1, and W. F. Bradley, Bugatti, A Biography (London, 1948), p. 144.

  2. René Dreyfus, My Two Lives: Racing Driver to Restauranteur (Aztex Corp, 1983), p. 39.

  3. Robert Ryan, Early one Morning (Headline, 2002); ‘The Hero who Died to Live’, Sunday Times Magazine, 16 December 2001. M. R. D. Foot is sceptical about this approach, as are MI6 (conversations with author, 16 December 2001).

  4. M. R. D. Foot, The SOE in France, Appendix F (HMSO, 1966).

  5. Bradley, op.cit. p. 140.

  6. Quoted by David Pryce-Jones, Paris in the Third Reich: A History of the German Occupation 1940–1944 (London: Collins, 1981), p. 62.

  7. Colette, Lettres aux petites fermières, 15 December 1941, edited and annotated by Marie-Thérèse Colveaux-Chaurang (Paris: Le Castor Astral, 1992), p. 75.

  8. 8 Littlewood/Rothschild, Milady Vine, op. cit., p. 188.

  9. Ibid., p. 187.

  10. Robert Kanigel, High Season in Nice (London: Little, Brown, 2002), pp. 198–200.

  14. THE ACCUSATION

  1. Philippe Viannay, cited by Henri Amoroux, Joies et douleurs de peuple libre (Paris: Laffont, 1998), p. 472.

  2. Ibid. p. 463.

  3. Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, Paris after the Liberation (Penguin, 1994), p. 217.

  4. For the best account of Ettore Bugatti’s last months, see Venables, op. cit., p. 233.

  5. Janalla Jarnach, in interview with the author, autumn 2002.

  6. Marchese Antonio Brivio Sforza to Hellé Nice, 14 January 1946 (Brunkhorst).

  7. These details are taken from the Riviera News, 1 March 1949.

  8. HN to Antony Noghes, 13 February 1949, a handwritten copy (Brunkhorst).

  9. Ibid.

  10. Mick Walsh, ‘One Hellé of a Girl’, Classic and Sports Car (June 1997).

  11. Tobias Achele, Huschke von Hanstein, The Racing Baron (Koneman, 1999).

  12. The Brunkhorst collection, namely, HN’s two incomplete scrapbooks, which were in the Christie’s pre-Tarrytown sale collection or newly owned by Oscar Davis at the time when Mick Walsh had access to them.

  13. HN to Janalla Jarnach, ‘Réponse à Naldo’, 1974 (LRT).

  15. SANS EVERYTHING

  La Roue Tourne, to which I am indebted for the loan of letters, photographs and many of Hellé Nice’s personal items, continues its generous work with the help of private benefactors. It is still based at 56 rue Legendre, Paris 17me, and Madame Jarnach remains its president.

  1. HN–Madame Janalla Jarnach, 1974 (LRT).

  2. HN–JJ, 11 May 1981 and ‘réponse à Naldo’, 1974 (LRT).

  3. Author interview with Madame Jarnach, November 2002.

  4. HN–JJ, 18 May 1981 (LRT).

  5. Alexandrine Delangle–HN, 1960 (Agostinucci collection).

  6. Author interview with Madame Jarnach and correspondence. (August–November, 2002).

  7. HN–JJ, 14 June 1976 (LRT).

  8. Alexandrine Delangle–HN, 1960 (Agostinucci).

  9. HN–JJ, JJ–HN, July–September 1962 (Agostinucci).

  10. HN–JJ, 17 June 1963 (LRT).

  11. JJ–HN, 21 June 1963 (Agostinucci).

  12. Solange Delangle–HN, 1964 (Agostinucci).

  13. HN–JJ, 26 June 1964 (LRT).

  14. HN–JJ, 22 December 1965 (LRT). President Giscard d’Estaing also contributed the sum of 1,000 francs in 1977, following an appeal to him by La Roue Tourne.

  15. HN–JJ, 19 June 1974 (LRT).

  16. HN–JJ, ‘Réponse à Naldo’, 1974. Binelli’s death was announced by his widow on 5 October 1974 (LRT).

  17. HN–JJ, 11 January 1978 and another, n.d. (LRT).

  18. HN–JJ, 28 June 1983 (LRT).

  ENDNOTES

  INTRODUCTION

  * We could add some passages from Dornford Yates, a gripping scene climax to Michael Arlen’s The Green Hat, the chillingly indifferent driving-scene in The Great Gatsby, some stray passages from Anthony Powell, W. E. Henley’s 1903 poem, ‘A Song of Speed’; and Christopher Strong, a powerful novel about a girl racing driver by Gilbert Frankau. The film version of Frankau’s novel, starring Katharine Hepburn, omitted the car-racing altogether.

  1. BEGINNINGS

  * One of only 20,000 in all France at that time.

  2. 1903: THE RACE TO DEATH

  * The bicycle races from Paris to Bordeaux had drawn huge crowds from the local villages and towns since their inauguration in the early 1890s. When Chartres came under German occupation in 1940, the citizens instinctively fled south to Bordeaux, following the familiar road.

  * Louis Renault left racing to develop cars after the death of his brother. In 1944, he was arrested and imprisoned as a collaborator, having offered his factory to the German occ
upiers for their own use.

  3. LOSS AND LEARNING

  * The collection of stamps which she described as her greatest treasure vanished after her death. It has probably been broken up.

  † René Carrère’s portrait of Colette appears on the cover of Yvonne Mitchell’s Colette: A Taste for Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1975).

  * Prudently, perhaps, du Gast decided to relinquish her sporting ambitions after this disaster and devoted herself instead to giving recitals – she was a fine concert pianist – and to presiding over a society devoted to the care of stray and injured dogs.

  * Alsace was annexed by Germany in 1870, following victory in the Franco-Prussian war.

  4. PARIS

  * A second source of revenue was the Neuilly garage from which Mongin sold second-hand sports cars.

  * Formule libre (free formula) races imposed no restrictions on the entrants’ cars.

  5. THE DANCER

  * The ballet was commissioned by Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes in 1909 and first performed in 1912.

  * Colette was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the tradition of nudity at the Casino de Paris, despite the fact that her friend Paul Poiret usually designed the costumes for the shows. ‘Go and look at the Casino,’ she urged the first readers of Gringoire in November 1928, ‘go and see the gorgeous girls, their beautiful breasts quivering as they step out to the rhythm of a march.’

  * The third of Les Stefano was Samson Fainsiber. Curiously, Hélène met him again as a fellow-recipient of La Roue Tourne’s charity in 1962. No evidence of an earlier friendship between them was apparent.

  6. ‘LA PRINCESSE DES ALTITUDES, REINE DE VITESSE’

  * Title given to Hellé Nice by Rochat-Cenise, in Le Journal, 21 December 1929.

  † Frankau’s Christopher Strong was one of the few works of fiction of that time to provide a full and convincing account of the female experience of driving a Grand Prix car competitively against men, as Hellé Nice chose to do. Frankau’s Lady Felicity Darrington, who drives a ‘Straight Eight Courtland’ at Montlhéry, is an intriguing cross between Hellé Nice and Gwenda Stewart, a formidable British record-breaker of the same period.