It’s hard to find an exciting biographical subject who has not been done and on whom sufficient unpublished papers and records exist (not to mention alluring photographs). By good fortune, persistence and enthusiasm, Miranda Seymour has done just that with Hélène Delangle.
Who she? Well, she was born in 1900 (her preferred date was 1905) as the cuckoo in the nest of a rural French postmaster and his wife. She had a smile to set a thousand Bugattis roaring, a figure to match and the zest and daring of a corps of cavalry. When Philippe de Rothschild, one of many lovers, first sighted her in a Parisian café he carefully unbuttoned the four tiny pearl buttons of her kid glove, lifted her hand to his mouth and delicately touched the exposed flesh with the tip of his tongue. She kept the gloves for the rest of her life.
She left home for Paris at 18.
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