Any person or persons who attempt to recognize their own sordid idiosyncracies in any character in this book are warned that anything they say will be used in evidence against them. This disclaimer may be the best thing in this book.
Daisy Fellowes was a portmanteau of connections. In her day, she may have been the best-connected person on the planet. If there are six degrees of separation between me and Kevin Bacon, there were probably no more than four between Daisy Fellowes and my grandfather. She packed six of them into her life. But then she did have plenty of hooks to hang them from, carrying around a name that would have taken up a sheet of paper by itself: Marguerite Severine Philippine de Broglie Ducasez Fellowes, Duchess de Gluecksbierg.
Daisy Fellowes on her yacht c. She was the kind of character who provides an irresistible rabbit-hole for even a well-intentioned writer. Thus, Ladislas Farago, when ostensibly writing about her daughter Jacqueline in his history of World War Two espionage, The Game of Foxes , veers off course for a quick swing around the isle of Daisy:.
The Prince was killed in , the year Jacqueline was born. His young widow, a ravishing and poignant figure in the deep mourning that was fashionable at that time, then married the Hon. Reginald Fellowes, a tall, dark, dashing British banker, younger son of the second Lord de Ramsey. With apartments also in Belgravia and Tangier, she was always on the move, allegedly to dodge taxes on the vast Singer fortune. She entertained prodigiously at her many homes and aboard her foot yacht, the Sister Anne.
And there is always some juicy tidbit about her to be shared:. I confess that I bought Cats in the Isle of Man for its title alone, hoping for something quirky and unjustly forgotten. Instead, I found the book quippy and probably not worth what a used copy will cost you. It starts as the story of Claudia and John, twin children of an American Singer-like heiress and a handsome but feckless Polish prince.
