Daisy Fellowes ( née Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg; 29 April 1890 – 13 December 1962)[ Archives de l'état civil de Paris en ligne, acte de naissance numéro 16/494/1890 ; avec mention marginale du décès] was a prominent French socialite, acclaimed beauty, minor novelist and poet, Paris editor of American Harper's Bazaar, fashion icon, and an heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune.
Parents and childhood
Born in
Paris, France, she was the only daughter of Isabelle-Blanche Singer (1869–1896) and Jean Élie Octave Louis Sévère Amanien Decazes de Glücksberg (1864–1912), 3rd Duke Decazes and Duke of Glücksberg. Her maternal grandfather was
Isaac Singer, the American
sewing machine pioneer. After her mother's suicide, she and her siblings were largely raised by their maternal aunt, Winnaretta Singer (Princess Edmond de
Polignac family), a noted patron of the arts, particularly music.
First marriage
Her first husband, whom she married on 10 May 1910 in Paris, was Jean Amédée Marie Anatole de Broglie, Prince de Broglie (born in Paris on 27 January 1886). He reportedly died of influenza on 20 February 1918 while serving with the
French Army in Mascara, Algeria, though there was gossip that he actually committed suicide as a result of his
outing.
Their country estate was Compton Beauchamp House in Oxfordshire, where they raised three daughters:
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Princess Emmeline Isabelle Edmée Séverine de Broglie (Neuilly, 16 February 1911 – Onez, Switzerland, 10 September 1986). Married to Marie Alexandre William Alvar de Biaudos, Comte de Castéja (Paris, 6 April 1907 – Paris, 6 July 1983) in Neuilly, 8 November 1932. Accused of collaboration during World War II, Emmeline de Castéja spent five months in Fresnes Prison, France.
[Lisa Hilton, The Horror of Love: Nancy Mitford and Gaston Palewski in Paris and London (Open Road Media, 2012)]
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Princess Isabelle Marguerite Jeanne Pauline de Broglie (Lamorlaye, 27 July 1912 – Geneva, 18 July 1960). Married to Olivier Charles Humbert Marie, Marquis de La Moussaye (La Poterie, 26 Mars 1908 – Paris, 20 October 1988) in Neuilly, 3 June 1931. Divorced in Paris, 13 April 1945. Isabelle de La Moussaye was a novelist.
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Princess Jacqueline Kraus de Broglie (Paris, 5 January 1918 – Crans-Montana, Valais 26 February 1965). Married to Alfred Ignaz Maria Kraus (Sarajevo, 28 November 1908–) in Neuilly, France, 6 October 1941. Divorced in Münster, 3 February 1958. After her husband—a Siemens electronics senior manager who served as a counter-espionage agent with the Abwehr—
[Artemis Cooper and Antony Beevor, Paris After the Liberation, 1944–1949 (Penguin, 2004).]
Of her Broglie children, the notoriously caustic Fellowes once said, "The eldest, Emmeline, is like my first husband only a great deal more masculine; the second, Isabelle, is like me without guts; and the third, Jacqueline, was the result of a horrible man called Lischmann ...."[David Herbert, Second Son: An Autobiography (Owen, 1972), page 80]
Second marriage
Her second husband, whom she married on 9 August 1919 in London, was The Hon. Reginald Ailwyn Fellowes (1884–1953), of
Donnington Grove. He was a banker, cousin of Winston Churchill and the son of William Fellowes, 2nd Baron de Ramsey.
They had one child, Rosamond Daisy Fellowes (1921–1998). She married her first husband in 1941 (divorced 1945), Captain James Gladstone, and had one son, James Reginald (born 1943). She married her second husband in 1953 (divorced), Tadeusz Maria Wiszniewski (1917–2005); they had one daughter, Diana Marguerite Mary Wiszniewska (born 1953).
Affairs
Among Fellowes's lovers was
Duff Cooper, the British ambassador to France. She also attempted to seduce Winston Churchill, but failed, shortly before marrying his cousin Reginald Fellowes.
[Mary S. Lovell, The Churchills: In Love and War (W.W. Norton, 2011), page 313.]
Literary works
Fellowes wrote several novels and at least one epic poem. Her best-known work is
Les dimanches de la comtesse de Narbonne (1931, published in English as "Sundays"). She also wrote the novel
Cats in the Isle of Man.
Status as fashion icon
She was known as one of the most daring
of the 20th century, arguably the most important patron of the surrealist couturier Elsa Schiaparelli. She was also a friend of the jeweller Suzanne Belperron,
and she was a longtime customer of the jeweller Cartier.
Death
Daisy Fellowes died on 13 December 1962 at her
hôtel particulier in Paris at number 69,
rue de Lille.
[Connaissance des arts, Axelle de Gaigneron, Dernier regard sur l'hôtel particulier du faubourg Saint-Germain dans lequel régna l'Honorable Mrs Reginald Fellowes, N°302 – avril 1977, page 86–93]
See also
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Baron de Ramsey
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Carlos de Beistegui
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Duke of Decazes
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House of Broglie
Further reading
External links
