Elsie de Wolfe (Lady Mendl)
                                                                                                           by Ludwig Bemelmans
                                                                                                           Frontispiece from 
                                                                                                           To the One I Love the Best
                                                                                                           New York: The Viking Press, 1955

As you know from these pages (Here, for example), had Elsie de Wolfe not left acting in 1904 to pursue the much more promising career of interior design, history would have turned out to be considerably more drab and the world a far less interesting place. For it was shortly after her momentous decision to leave the stage, that Miss de Wolfe and her companion Miss Elizabeth Marbury discovered the Villa Trianon in Versailles. 

"The house, unlived in as it had been for decades, spoke to us with regret and resignation of the passing of an old grandeur.  For it had belonged to the Duc de Nemours, the son of Louis Philippe.  And the outbuildings had been part of the hameau of Marie Antoinette." [After All, by Elsie de Wolfe, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1935]

They bought the house in 1906 for $16,000.

Now, the sad report comes from An Aesthete's Lament that the Villa Trianon, upon which Elsie de Wolfe lavished so much love and time and talent, is to meet its final fate and the wrecker's ball.

  Villa Trianon, interior
                                                                                                                                        Photograph by Jerome Zerbe
                                                                                                                                        Les Pavillons
                                                                                                                                        by Cyril Connolly and Jerome Zerbe
                                                                                                                                        New York: Macmillan, 1962
Beauty is never safe, is it. 

Lamentable indeed would be the loss of the Villa Trianon.  And yet, could there still be a chance to save it?  Can love prevail?

It would not be the first time, of course, that the house had been brought back from the brink of ruin.  Ludwig Bemelmans was with Lady Mendl when, shortly after the War, she returned to her beloved home in Versailles:

"At the door of the villa stood Monsieur Fleurtry in the costume of French garden gatekeepers of the very highest category. It consists of leather puttees and a dark kind of knickerbocker suit made popular for wear in the country by Albert, husband of Queen Victoria...He made his deep obeisance as the car drove in.  When we came to a stop at he door of the villa there was a small fountain at the right, and four large panes of anicent mirror set between rose-marble pillars.  These mirrorrs had seven bullet holes in them.  

    "The Germans?" asked Elsie.

    "No, milady," said Monsieur Fleurtry. 

    "Who, then?"

    "I beg to be forgiven, milady, the Americans."

    [To the One I Love the Best," by Ludwig Bemelmans, 1955]

To Be Continued.