by Susan Ronald
Mother and daughter agreed that Florence should accompany the impressionable Henry to Madrid, where the letter of credit sent from San Francisco could be cashed. Perhaps Florence could marry Henry in Madrid, too, Berthe schemed. A further enticement, if Henry needed any, would be to show him the marvelous architecture of the great cities of Barcelona and the Spanish capital. Berthe agreed that Florence should go unchaperoned to Spain with Henry, on the pretext of marriage there. In that way, should Henry’s mother fail to fulfill his financial undertaking, Berthe would be able to sue him (and her) for breach of promise and ruining Florence’s reputation. So the young couple left for Spain on September 25, 1914.13
Once Loeb was made aware of Berthe’s thinking, he must have advised that the proposed “marriage” in Madrid was impossible. While French law gave foreigners marrying in France the full force and benefit of its laws, publication of the bans of marriage was left to the national law of the foreigner. Since America didn’t have rules regarding publication of bans, nor any public proclamation by summons of the people of the parish, the pair could readily be married in Paris—so long as Florence’s family published the bans for her. French law allowed Florence to marry a foreigner (Henry) in a foreign country (Spain), so long as the marriage took place in the legal form of that country, and that publication of the bans and the written consent of the parents had been fulfilled in France.14 Loeb was protecting his client from a grievous mistake, since Florence’s nationality had been declared as French.
Soon enough, the would-be bride and groom discovered the difficulties of a marriage in Madrid for themselves. On announcing their intention at the American embassy, they were informed that American law would not apply to Florence until after the marriage—when she would automatically assume her husband’s nationality. For the marriage to be valid, the bans needed to be posted on the walls of the Mairie de Paris (city hall) ten days prior to the marriage taking place.15 Chances are, too, that Florence and Henry had consummated their union in anticipation of the marriage. For Henry, a properly brought-up young man, there could be no honorable way back.
While Madrid was not where they were married, contrary to many announcements in the press, it is where money arrived to complete Henry’s side of the financial bargain struck with Berthe. On their return to Paris on October 13, the bans were posted and Berthe received her hard-earned payment in cash. Florence shopped for her trousseau, while Henry met up with old friends at the Imperial Club. Berthe gave her future son-in-law a diamond-studded tiepin in the shape of a swastika—in those days believed to be an ancient symbol of good luck. The new couple’s passage was booked back to New York on the Rochambeau, due to leave Le Havre on October 31. Precisely ten working days after their arrival from Spain, on October 27, at ten in the morning, Henry and Florence were married at the Mairie de Paris. Florence’s witnesses were her mother and Charles G. Loeb. Henry’s two witnesses were Cécile Tellier’s mother and Henry’s friend from the Imperial Club, Henry Hargreaves. On cue, Henry pronounced his “oui” when prompted, and the pair were finally joined in wedlock. Once Florence obtained absolution for the sin of marrying a Protestant the next day at church, the pair were officially blessed by Abbé Chazot.16
Three days later, Mr. and Mrs. Henry C. Heynemann embarked on the Rochambeau for New York, surrounded by refugees, infants, and fleeing Americans. Meanwhile, J. P. Morgan and company had persuaded the French government to allow it to transfer enough letters of credit and American Express travelers’ checks to fund the repatriation of any American who approached them. Only one American defaulted on the generous loan.17
What mattered to Florence was that she was once again American, and on her way to San Francisco to claim the family fortune at long last.
5
YOUNG MRS. HEYNEMANN
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Back then, Florence Lacaze Heynemann was expert at keeping her thoughts to herself regarding her return to the United States, and ultimately, to San Francisco. Having married an American, and taken his nationality—or more precisely retaken it—Florence would waste no time in settling the family’s affairs in California. First, she and Henry had to cross to the West Coast by steamer through the newly opened Panama Canal.*
Originally, a generation earlier, the monumental project had been undertaken by the Frenchman Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, but he had failed to complete the work due to outbreaks of yellow fever and malaria in his workforce, and was thereafter dogged by financial difficulties. The United States took over de Lesseps’s bankrupt company and began work on the project in 1906.1 Florence never recorded her impressions of this tremendous feat of engineering for posterity, as she neglected to do with so many other significant moments she witnessed in her long life.
The happy couple’s return to San Francisco was heralded with a page-one news item in the San Francisco Chronicle headlined HEYNEMANN WELL-KNOWN and subtitled “Architect and his [sic] Bride Members of Bay Cities Society.” At last, Florence had arrived as part of le gratin, albeit of San Francisco. Annoyingly to her, the newspaper article gave prominence to her husband:
Henry Chittenden Heynemann is well known in the younger circles of society of the bay cities, and the announcement of his marriage to Miss Florence Lacaze, formerly of Belvedere and this city, was received with much interest by their many friends here.
Heynemann received his degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania last spring, and it was following this that he went abroad to pursue his studies. He is the son of Mrs. Manfred H. Heynemann of Belvedere … and also had a number of exciting experiences in being mistaken for a spy by both the Germans and French.
Miss Florence Lacaze, to whom Heynemann was married at Madrid [sic], on October 27th, is also a student of architecture, but more recently has been studying music abroad with a view to an operatic career.2
The flagrant inaccuracies contained in the article indicate that neither Florence nor Henry nor his family were consulted before printing. Although she had made page one of the biggest newspaper in the city, it was all wrong, and the article, rightly, rankled with her. It was her first important lesson in dealing with the press.
The Oakland Tribune featured a large picture of the couple with the caption beneath: MR. AND MRS. H.C.S. HEYNEMANN WHO ARE NOW ON THEIR WAY HOME TO BERKELEY AS THEY APPEARED ON THEIR ARRIVAL IN NEW YORK AFTER THRILLING WAR ZONE EXPERIENCES.3 The article, contrary to the one in the San Francisco Chronicle, made it clear that Henry’s elder brother, James, was not accompanying the newlyweds, in what would have been seen by readers as a breach of good form and manners. Nonetheless, the paper couldn’t help but report the sensational ordeal that Henry allegedly endured: “Heynemann was captured in Europe by soldiers on three occasions, sentenced once to death, and finally met Miss Florence Lacaze with whom he had gone to school as a child in Belvedere. She had come to Paris after studying art in Madrid [sic]. She secured his release from custody and later they were married. They fled from Paris, arriving in New York to embark for the Pacific Coast via the canal.”4
While a thrilling tale that made everyone want to congratulate Florence and Henry, it was more than an embellishment of the truth. Probably prompted by Florence, shortly after their arrival in the Bay Area, Henry made a statement to the Oakland Tribune that was reported in the December 11, 1914, edition. Still, they got other bits of the story wrong: that Henry “traversed in his trip 40,000 miles passing through nine of the war torn [sic] countries of Europe” being the most flagrant. Henry denied the rumors of his being captured as a spy, and explained why any English speaker needed to show his or her passport. The most accurate news the Oakland Tribune announced was that Mrs. Manfred H. Heynemann would be entertaining the newlyweds at the Century Club on December 19, in what was promising to be quite a lavish affair.5
In January, the couple moved to San Francisco proper at Florence’s behest, because she claimed she needed the excitement and culture of the city. In truth, living in the city made her daily sojourns to resolve her family’s affairs with lawyers easier. Within a month, it became evident to Henry that his bride had come “home” with more pressing matters in mind than sampling San Francisco’s cultural attractions, much less being a wife.
Surprisingly, Florence wrapped up her family’s affairs in relative short order. It can be presumed that Maximin had lived indebted to his cousins in his final years, and had not left an appreciable pot of gold. If he had, then Florence would have litigated to reclaim what must have been rightfully hers. Indeed, within a few years, she would demonstrate how she could litigate expertly from the shadows, and use the press to her advantage. Berthe’s claim to her mother’s inheritance was another matter. Florence could, acting under her mother’s power of attorney, legally claim the inheritance for her mother, so long as she declared her intention to remain in San Francisco, and that Berthe would return to the city to live with her. She signed whatever paperwork was necessary and arranged for Berthe to countersign the required documents.
By mid-March 1915, the five-month marriage was already on the proverbial rocks, and Florence was gone. Henry was crestfallen, but remained determined to give a salutary lesson to other young men who intended to make international marriages—ninety percent of which ended in divorce. That April, Henry went public again, explaining eloquently to the world why, in his opinion, his short marriage was over:
The personal equation was simply swamped by forces we failed to recognize before we were married.
It was a case of love battling against environment, and in the end environment was too strong. But when she came here with me she left behind her all the refinement and culture to which she had become attached as part of her very life she was forced to abandon, and the tug upon her fine nature was too severe.
My wife was a songbird, that I found in Paradise. I brought her away—from the atmosphere of art, music and the highest culture in the world, wherein she had been reared and to which she had become accustomed as part of her very existence.…
She came here with me, to a land where people spoke a different language and where the very ideals to which she had been bred were changed.
She found life as we live it—simple, crude in comparison to the culture of Paris, and art a mere smattering. She was not happy. She pined, as a delicate bird of paradise would when taken from its environs. I knew she would not be happy here. She must return to her own home in Paris. So it was arranged.…
Paris is as impossible for me as San Francisco is for her.… I do not speak the French language. My business is here. I must make money here. There is the dilemma.6
Or, perhaps, there was the rub. Had Florence believed that she was marrying a fabulously wealthy, albeit younger son of a blue jeans millionaire? Perhaps she kidded herself that she had. After all, the Heynemanns made a generous settlement on her mother. If Florence truly believed it, she allowed her imagination to get the better of her. The glaring truth was that Henry was a man who had to make his way in the world by working for a living. He was merely a necessary tool Florence used to regain her American nationality and reclaim the family’s inheritance.
Instead of admitting such cold and cruel calculation, Florence said that the error lay in her believing she could make her life in San Francisco. A life with Henry merely as his wife was not the life she believed she’d signed up for. She told her husband that she needed to return to Paris to continue her operatic studies—once the war permitted—at the Conservatoire de Paris. It was the only thing that would make her happy. Yet this, too, was a bald lie. Florence never attended the Conservatoire de Paris, either before or after her marriage to Henry. Indeed, her entire “opera career” was a mere sham.7
* * *
While Henry remained pliable to Florence’s will, what neither bride nor groom recognized was that things would need to get an awful lot nastier before any divorce could be granted. Understandably, Alice Heynemann and her other children pressed Henry to divorce Florence on the grounds of desertion. Yet, in 1915, this was still the ungentlemanly thing to do. From Florence’s viewpoint, she needed grounds for divorce that met the strict regulations set forth in the French civil code.
In France, there were only three reasons for granting a divorce—or recognizing a foreign divorce. First and foremost was adultery by either the wife or husband. Second was mental or physical cruelty, which included publicly uttered grave insults. The third cause was the condemnation of one of the parties to an infamous crime or felony.8 The third cause was a nonstarter. Still, unless and until she could prove adultery or mental or physical cruelty, Florence would never be free again to marry. Desertion was included in the civil code as part of the “grave insults” catchall intended to release unhappy couples, but Florence wisely was not prepared to take the blame for the breakdown of the marriage. That would spoil her chances of remarrying a wealthier catch.
Lawyers on both sides put their heads together to find the safest solution to meet the seemingly unending tribulations of dissolving an international marriage. At first Henry preferred the chivalrous way out: he would insult Florence publicly, calling her a “butterfly” in the press. While hardly an insult today, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was unkind, even if perhaps true in Florence’s case. To “butterfly” not only meant to flit or flutter, but was also politely used to describe someone without substance, a gambler, a sonneteer, or a young person without purpose.9 Apparently, the insult was insufficiently grave to convince Florence or her lawyers that it would stand up in French law. Henry loved Florence utterly, and was prepared to set her free, even if that meant a scandal. So, a scandalous set of circumstances appeared in the press across America that he had committed adultery with a woman in the Midwest.
On August 11, 1916, Florence filed for divorce in San Francisco. Although the divorce papers were sealed, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that “the testimony of another woman may be brought out if the divorce is contested.” It was not. Presumably, the couple agreed privately prior to the filing that the financial agreement with Berthe would remain unaffected. Since there were no children of the marriage, Florence’s vow to the Catholic Church was irrelevant. The only consequence of a civil divorce to her would be that as a divorcée, she could not marry in the Catholic Church again without special dispensation from the Vatican.
Naturally, the good people of San Francisco were gnashing their teeth at the aspersions cast by Florence against their good city. To boot, the reporter’s dander was up against the “Frenchy” wife of poor Henry. “The suit, it is said, will probably shock the friends and family of both young people, although it has been known for more than a year that temperamental differences existed between the two and that Mrs. Heynemann frankly preferred her native and beloved Paris to the cruder environments of a busy Western American city.”10
Of course, to file for a California divorce, Florence needed to be a resident in San Francisco, and her lawyers arranged for her to stay anonymously at an undisclosed location when the press began to whir into gear. Reporters tried every trick to locate her for a quote, without success. Referred to in rough Western style as “dainty” and a “French woman,” it was only the beginning of the onslaught against the soon-to-be ex–Mrs. Heynemann. Henry, on the other hand, left town. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that:
Every attempt was made yesterday to surround the filing of the suit with the utmost secrecy. Mr
s. Heynemann’s attorney brusquely refused either to affirm or deny the suit. Mrs. Heynemann herself, although she is known to be in the city, kept her whereabouts concealed. None of Heynemann’s relatives would discuss the case, other than to say that he is out of the state at present.
Mrs. Heynemann was Miss Florence Lacaze of Paris. Her parents were old friends of the Heynemann family in this city, and when young Heynemann met her two years ago while studying architecture in Paris, he already had heard of her beauty and succumbed quickly to her charms.
The wedding took place in Madrid [sic] after which he brought his dainty bride to San Francisco. But within less than a year, Mrs. Heynemann returned to Paris, and her husband admitted that he had erred in expecting her to be satisfied with conditions here. None of the Heynemann family would say yesterday when Mr. Henry Chittenden Heynemann would return to San Francisco.11
A month later, Henry and Florence were divorced without his contesting the charges on the fictional grounds of his having committed adultery. Florence remarked to her friends that she had wasted “a few months too many” on her San Franciscan boy-next-door and his overweening mother.12 On a personal level, Florence showed the same signal sense of purpose in her twenty-two-month San Francisco escapade that she would demonstrate in later life. Nothing and no one would stand in her path to becoming the woman she believed she could be. Not even a war. Besides, war offered untold opportunities for an artful gambler like Florence. She was well on her way to becoming a dangerous woman.
6
HOME AGAIN, WAR, AND FOLIES
… young women were wearing cylindrical turbans on their heads and straight Egyptian tunics, dark and very “unwarlike.” … Their rings and bracelets were made from fragments of shell casings from the 75s …
—MARCEL PROUST
