THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF THE LIFE OF

BRIDGET BATE TICHENOR

by Zachary Selig
TX, PA, PAU COPYRIGHTS 2006 & 2009 & 2015
Writers Guild Registration TX 1382590 2008 & 2015

Zhringen
Derived from

Bridget Bate Tichenor The Mexican Magic Realist

Painter
TX, PA, PAU COPYRIGHTS 1990, 2000, 2006, & 2009 TXU 1 321 112
11/6/06
THE FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF THE LIFE OF BRIDGET BATE TICHENOR TX,
PAU Writers Guild: 1787991 - EFFECTIVE DATE: 6/12/2015 EXPIRATION DATE:
6/12/2020
MIDNIGHT IN CONTEMBO - LOVE LIES BLEEDING - FILM TREATMENT
Writers Guild: 1788005 - EFFECTIVE DATE: 6/12/2015 EXPIRATION DATE:
6/12/2020

www.zacharyselig.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Selig

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Bridget Bate Tichenor Copyright Estate of George

Platt Lynnes 1945

INTRODUCTION
The mesmerizing story of the Magical Realist painter Bridget Bate
Tichenor has not been told. It is not just a story. It is an
extraordinary and riveting story of a remarkable female artist who
impacted the 20th Century world of fashion, art, and society with
enormous contributions.
Revealed are the intimacies and secrets of an outwardly beautiful,
exotic, bold, and courageous, yet painfully shy and reclusive
woman who lived in extraordinary times, hither to the unknown
world or her peers and colleagues.
Bridgets life was led in an astonishing way in many contrasting
countries and in many revolutionary platforms on a level of
excellence that has not been recognized or acknowledged outside
small eccentric art circles.

Bridget adhered to rarefied and noble standards of human pride,

integrity, respect, discipline, and compassion. These humane traits
she honored above all else in life. Bridgets impeccable personal
values in tandem with her determination and prioritization to
execute her artistic vision are the essence of her story, which
creates historical value as her world message.
Bridget inherited a peripatetic world from her self-absorbed,
famous, and creatively gifted parents that fueled deep insecurities
fed by fears of abandonment. Subsequently, she reinvented herself
by necessity and by choice to mold herself into the world that she
needed to fit into at any given time in order to survive.
Bridget's mother, Vera Bate Lombardi (Sarah Gertrude Baring
Arkwright Fitzgeorge Bate Lombardi) was an indomitable
combination of beauty and bravado with the highest connections.
From 1925-1939, Vera became CoCo Chanel's muse and social
advisor and liaison to several European Royal Families. Her
demeanor and style influenced the 'English Look, the very
foundation for the House of Chanel.
The beautiful, noble, artistic, and rich are different and
misunderstood or condemned, yet granted societal privileges few
receive. These very qualities that embodied her unique style
influenced and were copied by some of the greatest names of the
20th century, who were capable of creating a mass appeal through
their vision that she ignited. She was loved and envied, but most of
all she was awe-inspiring.
Bridget had an amazing and tragic multidimensional life that was
filled with an arranged marriage, fantasies, true loves, romantic
and professional rivalries, artistic achievements, mysticism,
perfectionism, and shattered dreams. All of which was portrayed in
the most glamorous world settings with famous personalities and
eccentric nobility that she orchestrated into a dramatic
metaphysical theater of magical relationships.

Her controversial royal illegitimate ancestry overshadowed her

profound artistry and her sense of self worth. In her era and
society, it was important to be of royal lineage. Her achievement in
the art world was diminished by who she was as an illegitimate
royal family member, her ravishing beauty, her refined
intelligence, and her commanding personality.
Bridgets glittering background was more important and interesting
to her friends, which graciously made her celebrated and received
on one hand, yet made her hide how great an artist she was on the
other and minimally acknowledged. This is why she was so shy
about showing who she was as a superlative painter. She rarely
revealed her precious jewel-like paintings that were far more
illuminated contextually than her ancestry.
She compartmentalized her life. She was deathly afraid to remove
her complex multiple masks and reveal not only her precious art,
but also her deepest intimate feelings to others. She was validated
only by those relationships that had a higher profile than she, so
that she could retreat behind her provocatively mysterious and
seductive persona to hide her acute vulnerability.
She was difficult to get to know, guarded, and very secretive. She
revealed certain things to socially survive, while withholding her
poetically rich emotional and spiritual communications to focus
through her dedicated relationship with her sacred and sovereign
art. She had a genius gift of observation and execution in cryptic
detail, both in her character and painting. Bridget painted for
herself, and not for commercial gain or notoriety.
Bridgets life and art lifted Mexican art up to new high point. She
was a European royal that was a part of an international society,
who rejected her privileged upbringing and background for selfrealization and expression as a female artist in rural Michoacan.
Bridget reflected the inherent value of Mexico as a mystical
ancient cultural magnet filled with authentic artistic and spiritual
mosaics of chiascurro passions.

Bridget spiritually adopted me and I became her protg in 1971.

Among her many gifts, she benevolently trained me in drawing
and painting, introducing me to ancient occult religions, which
included many lost esoteric sciences and eschatology of Egyptian,
Hindu Tantrika, and Mesoamerican Magic and Alchemy.
She fed my hunger to learn, and I became her consummate student
in a world that had received a death rattle to classically trained
artists.
Bridgets life stories were one of her great legacies that she
imparted to me during the 19 years of our relationship. Over 20
years ago, I began to research and document a small portion of
these elaborate, and many times confusing, historical events and
their interplay as she told them.
In most cases, she would use a particular aspect of her life, a
family member, friend, or someone she admired in story telling as
an example to teach me something she felt I needed to learn.
Bridgets long and entertaining monologues focused on definitive
standards and values she felt imperative I absorb, all of which were
the antithesis of my troubled and distorted upbringing. There was a
lesson to be learned in every story, which was one of her intimate
ways of expressing her love to me.
To some that knew her superficially or were envious, she appeared
to exaggerate or embellish only to discover that what she said was
true, to others that were awe-stricken by her and did not know the
obscure details of her secreted life, she was labeled an aristocratic
artist, and to those few that knew her well, she was a loyal friend,
wise teacher, and genius painter.
Just before her death, I promised Bridget that she would be known
to the world. -Zachary Selig

Bridget Bate Tichenor was born Bridget Pamela Arkwright Bate

in Paris, France November 22, 1917 and died in Mexico City,
Mexico October 20, 1990 at the age of seventy-two. She was a
Mexican Surrealist painter of Fantasy Art in the school of Magic
Realism and a Fashion Editor. Born in France and of British
descent, she later embraced Mexico as her home.
Her childhood and adolescence were spent in France, England, and
Italy. Her father Fred Bate guided her to attend the Slade School
for drawing and painting in London. She attended other schools,
living in the homes of her mothers relatives such as the Duke of
Westminster (Bendor), her mothers godmother Margaret Evelyn
Cambridge, Marchioness of Cambridge in England, the Savoia and
Agnelli families in Italy until she went to live with her mother Vera
in Paris to work as a model for Chanel at age 16 in 1933.
Her childhood was unstable with both of her parents absent. She
was further abandoned with her parents divorce and her mothers
second marriage when she was 12 in 1929. She was mentored in
drawing and painting in her early teens by Di Chirico in Italy, and
later influenced by her mothers friend Surrealist Lenor Fini.
Bridget learned as a child the skills of painting and people pleasing
to survive. Her childhood was a sad and lonely one, where her pets
and creative pursuits with drawing and painting were her only
consistent source of love and relationship. Bridget said, My father
loved me, yet was absent due to his career. My mother was adored
by the world, but a monster towards me.
Bridget was left alone with her nanny frulein Kraus, who she
adored, to paint herself into an alternate world where the
fantastical creatures of her imagined life were her only friends.
They welcomed her to join them, in a place where love lasts and all
9

things are possible in a fantasy of a changed world. As she became

an accomplished artist later in life, she understood the messages of
the characters she drew and painted as a child.
In her youth, Bridget was a product of The School of Paris, the
inviolable center of art until after WW II. It was the greatest
laboratory as a community versus a style of modern art that
included Fauvism, Cubism, Orphism, Futurism, Dadaism,
Surrealism, and Magic Realism. She grew up in her parents
creative world of the great artists of the day such as Picasso, Di
Chirico, Salvador Dali, Leonor Fini, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst, and
many other individuals in the arts such as Andre Breton. The
photographer Man Ray was a close friend of her father, who
photographed her in Europe and later in Hollywood.
Bridget was born into a rigid patrician tradition and code that was
taboo to break. She once said, England has always been
disinclined to accept human nature, and innate humanness is
shrouded in the most divinely constructed masks of hypocrisy."
Bridget's external character was schooled with an Edwardian
aristocratic bearing that was languid, bored, and supercilious,
which shadowed her insecurities and conflicts in a regal decorum
that sadly lacked intimacy skills. Her glamorously masked
arrogance distanced and set herself apart from others as
impenetrably unflawed in an isolated and altruistic world.
Bridget was the daughter of the Virginia born American NBC,
World War I correspondent Frederick Blantford Bate and Sarah
Gertrude (Vera) Arkwright Bate. Bate was active with the first
automobile ambulance service during the WW I and was an army
mechanical officer, involved with the organization of the first
American Ambulance that became an ambulance service connected
with the First World War armies in the field. He was instrumental
in establishing The Field Sevice of American Ambulance, In Paris
in 1916 that became the AFS Intercultural Programs.
He was the Secretary General of the Paris Peace Conference. Bate
had lived in Britain for more than twenty years, coming from a
10

background in the business and political worlds. He had served on

a War Reparations Committee headed by Owen D. Young of
General Electric, and it was through Young that he had come to the
attention of the network.
Fred Bate married Vera Arkwright in 1916. Bate had been
previously married to an American candy heiress in Chicago and
his wife divorced him on the grounds of abandonment. Fred Bate
was responsible for the first radio broadcast news via Alistair
Cooke of King Edward VIIIs abdication and proposed marriage to
Wallis Simpson in 1936. Not only Edward, but also many Royals,
and UK military leaders became close friends with Bate during his
marriage to Vera. Vera was a nurse at the American Hospital in
Paris in 1915 when she first met Bate, who was a US Army officer
at the time.
Vera was reputed to be the illegitimate daughter of HRH Prince
Adolphus, 1ST Marquess of Cambridge, Duke of Teck, and
younger brother of Queen Mary of Teck, who descended from the
the royal House of Wrttemberg and the Zhringen family in
Germany that dated to 1139. Veras mother was Lady Rosa
Frederica Baring Fitzgeorge of the Baring Brothers & Co. banking
family, descendent of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet (18 April
1740 12 September 1810), and Director of The East India
Company 1779. The Baring family had a long established history
of assisting the British Royal family with various loans and was
closely tied in business with the Bank of England. The Barings
were instrumental in the financing of American War of
Independence and transactions such as the Louisiana Purchase.
Diana, Princess of Wales was a Baring descendant, and therefore a
relation of Bridget Bate Tichenor.
Lady Rosa Frederica Baring Fitzgeorge (9 March 1854 - 10 March
1927) was the second daughter of Mr. William Henry Baring J.P.
and Elizabeth Hammersly, of Norman Court, Hampshire, England.
The Baring family had rescued the British Royal Family in
challenging times. Her maternal uncle was Thomas Weguelin,
partner of Thomson, Bonar, and Company of London, Director and

11

Governor of the Bank of England.

She married first to Captain Frank Wigsell Arkwright August 29,
1878 at Sanderstead, Surrey Court, England and had two children,
a son Esme Arkwright, and a daughter Sarah Gertrude (Vera)
Arkwright, who later through 2 marriages became Vera Bate
Lombardi (b.1885 London - d. 1948 Rome).
Bridget recounted her grandmothers complex history, At age 32,
while unhappily married to Captain Arkwright, Rosa Baring
Arkwright had an affair with the 17-year-old Adolphus Cambridge,
1st Marquess of Cambridge (13 August 1868 23 October 1927),
later the Duke of Teck, younger brother of the future Queen Mary
of Teck at the Baring home Norman Court, Hampshire, England.
Rosa became pregnant from the affair and gave birth to Sarah
Gertrude (Vera) Arkwright in 1885, after her marriage to Captain
Arkwright.
Coincidently, The Duke of Tecks mother, Duchess Mary Adelaide
of Teck, Fat Mary, and her children returned to England from
British debtors exile to Europe in 1885 through a loan from Rosa
Baring Arkwrights father Mr. William Henry Baring. This return
to England secured and positioned the Duchesss daughter to
become the future Queen Mary of Teck consort to King George V.
The Arkwright marriage ended in divorce in 1885 with a disguised
royal family cover-up that involved a transaction between The
Duchess of Teck and the Baring family to insure silencing the
under aged Duke of Teck's affair and guaranteeing a royal,
although morganatic, marriage for Rosa Baring Arkwright to
Colonel George William Adolphus Fitzgeorge. Rosa abandoned
her illegitimate child Sarah Gertrude (Vera) Arkwright in infancy
to be raised by Captain Arkwright's family to focus on her new
socially promising marriage.
Among the conditions made between Rosa Baring Arkwright and
the Duchess of Teck was that Sarah Gertrude (Vera Arkwright) be
given up at birth to the care of the Arkwright family, and that the
family maintain a low profile in her regard, obey the agreement
with a discreetly undisclosed payment with additional monies to
12

support the child. Rosa abandoned her illegitimate infant with

Captain Arkwrights family, who housed Vera in a virtually
isolated rural area until she went to live with her Godmother
Margaret Cambridge, Marchioness of Cambridge, sister of Hugh
Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster.
Rosa Baring Arkwright married a second time November 25,
1885in Paris, France to Colonel George William Adolphus
Fitzgeorge (b. August 1843 London d. 1907 Lucerne). He was
the eldest of three bastard sons of the 2nd Duke of Cambridge and
his mistress, a circus dancer, Louisa Fairbrother, (the other sons
being Admiral Sir. Adolphus Fitzgeorge and Colonel Sir Augustus
Fitzgeorge). He was the male-line descendent of George III, W.F.
Hanover, and King of Great Britain. His parents went through a
ceremony of marriage in the contravention of Royal Marriages Act
1772, while his mother was pregnant with his third brother. He and
his brothers did not hold royal titles, and were ineligible to succeed
to the Duchy of Cambridge.
Rosa Baring Fitzgeorge and Colonel George William Adolphus
FitzGeorge had three children:
1. Mabel Iris FitzGeorge (23 September 1886 13 April 1976)
married in 1912 to Robert Balfour, had issue (Victor FitzGeorgeBalfour). Married secondly, in 1945 to Vladimir Emmanuelovich,
Prince Galitzin, no issue.
2. George Daphne FitzGeorge (23 February 1889 1 June 1954)
married in 1915 to Sir George Foster Earle, divorced in 1926, no
issue.
3. Commander George William Frederick FitzGeorge(12 October
1892 13 June 1960) married in 1915 to Esther Melina Vignon,
divorced in 1927, no issue. Married secondly, in 1934 to France
Bellanger, divorced in 1957, no issue.
Rosa Baring FitzGeorge was not friendly with the families of her
two husbands, and made plenty of capital in the royal veins as
Queen Victorias niece and daughter in-law of HRH Prince
George, Duke of Cambridge, and flourished in New York and
13

Chicago as Lady FitzGeorge.

According to the Marquise de Fontenoy in her book "Revelations
of the High Life Within Royal Palaces" first printed in 1892 and
published later in "Royal Musings, "Rosa Federica Baring
FitzGeorge's marriage to Colonel FitzGeorge, who died in 1907,
"gave great offense" to his father, HRH Prince George, Duke of
Cambridge, who was Queen Victoria's first cousin. King Edward
VII bestowed knighthoods on the Duke's two younger sons,
Adolphus and Augustus, but not on George. This omission was
largely due to Colonel Fitzgeorge's marriage to Rosa Baring and
his constant financial problems.
According to the Marquise de Fontenoy, Rosa Baring FitzGeorge
did not reveal her first marriage to Arkwright at the time of her
marriage to Colonel FitzGeorge in Paris, nor that she had two
children, Esme and Vera. Bridget Bate Tichenor stated, "This
bigamy issue was later magnified by the revelation of Vera's
illegitimate birth and the controversy that surrounded it within the
Royal Family."
Marquise de Fontenoy stated, Queen Victoria grew tired of
financial bailouts of both Teck and Fitzgeorge families and
concealing more illegitimate royal births. The Queen did not
approve of Lady Rosa Baring Fitzgeorge or the Duchess of Teck
and their manipulations with the British Royal Family to improve
their status. Lady Rosa Fitzgeorge later used the title Lady
Fitzgeorge in New York pursuing wealthy American families to
find a husband for her daughter Vera.
Bridget Bate Tichenor described her mother's young adulthood, "In
her early years she followed Hindu Philosophy with Sir John
Woodroffe in London and was considered a mystic, advising both
luminaries and bohemians. Vera was involved with the
philosophical doctrine of Spiritism and organized sances in which
she produced figurative drawings of human and animal spirits.
She had the supernatural ability to see and express things in
intimate details. As an inspiring young adult, her esoteric insight
was sought after by friends such as Isadora Duncan, Marchesa
14

Casati, Sergei Diaghilev, and Jean Cocteau.

Vera had many other friends that were founders and artists of
Modernism, Surrealism, and Dadaism. Andre Breton worked at a
neurological hospital in Nantes during WWI, when he first
consulted Vera for her mediumship. She introduced him to the
principle mediumistic automatism that he developed into automatic
writing. He collaborated with Phillipe Soupault in 1920 to author
The Magnetic Fields (Les Champs Magntiques).
CoCo Chanels admirer Comte Leon de Laborde introduced Vera
to Chanel while she and Chanel worked as nurses at the American
Hospital in Paris in 1915 during WW I. Vera was the head nurse
and assistant to Dr. Blake at the hospital. Mrs. Benjamin (Bridget)
Guinness and Mrs. William Kissam Vanderbilt served as nurses
alongside her and became lifetime friends. Vera named her
daughter Bridget Bate Tichenor after Bridget Guinness.
Vera later became the public relations liaison to the royal families
of Europe for CoCo Chanel between 1925 and 1938. Chanel
venerated Veras style and built fashion statements upon the core of
Veras character that would become an eternal style.
Chanel envied Vera in every way and emulated her behind an
ingratiating employers mask. Vera was ravishingly beautiful,
extroverted, royal, popular, creative, well-mannered, ethical, naive,
and above all a free spirit. Vera was the antithesis of Chanel from
physicality and character demeanor, which Chanel exploited with
shrewd business savvy through Veras naivet and financial
insecurity.
Vera was the muse and inspiration for Chanel that established the
Chanel English Look and brand, based upon Vera borrowing
riding tweeds from her uncle the 2nd Duke of Westminster
(Bendor), and jewels from her aunt Queen Mary of Teck that she
and Chanel costumed together at dinner party pranks in Scotland.
Veras persona, from Oxford and Cambridge intonations to
mannerisms, became Chanels professional identity that she
assumed until she died The Chanel man-tailored tweed suit
accessorized with over-scaled paste jewelry that defined Chanel
15

was founded upon Vera Bate Lombardi and her familys wardrobes
and jewelry caches.
Vera Arkwright was an indomitable combination of beauty and
boldness, who was socially recognized as the granddaughter of the
1st Duke of Cambridge and therefore a descendent of George III,
which was not true, as Fitzgeorge never legally adopted her after
her mother divorced Colonel Arkwright.
According to Bridget, there were webs of illegitimacies both in
Veras bloodline and in reference to her mothers second husband
that confused many a genealogist and biographer. There have been
Chanel biographies suggesting that Veras birth certificate
documented that she was the daughter of a stonemason, which is
false and a royal family cover-up.
Bridget once stated, Maman was born in the same year of Rosas
divorce from Colonel Arkwright in 1885, and she was a child that
represented a pawn on a royal chess-set for Rosa. The truth all
became so muddled as Rosa married the illegitimate 1st Duke of
Cambridge, a morganatic Royal. The gossip in Europe was that I
was Chanels illegitimate child. Some people continue to say that
Comte Leon de Laborde and Chanel were my true parents.
Now seriously, do I resemble Mme. Chanel? She was a deceitful
little thing full of guile that resembled a crafty dwarf toad draped
in luscious faux pearls on exquisite tweed suits reeking of too
much partum. My mother and her immense popularity were social
instruments for Chanel to enter a British royal milieu to build her
name and business.
She created horrors for maman and the family with her betrayals.
All she did was copy, copy, and copy...maman. Her clothes were
ravissant, but she was a cruel hypocrite. This whole matter has to
do with Granny Rosas affair while married at 32 with an underaged 17 year old royal and family financial politics. The Barings
had the money and the Tecks were broke. Granny was miserable in
her marriage and she devised a clever plan to get out of it.

16

Vera introduced Chanel, her constant companion, to her cousin the

Duke of Windsor, which followed with Archies, Duffs, Winstons,
Harolds, and many other sophisticated aristocrats for Chanels
social and business ascent. Chanel had indigent origins as an
orphan and required Veras entre and persona, which she
maneuvered and assimilated to found a Chanel fashion standard
that would insure her success in royal circles and perpetuate the
Chanel name.
After 4 years of professional separation, in 1943, Chanel sought
collaboration with Lombardi in Rome to access Lombardis
relative Sir Winston Churchill in the Walter Schellenberg Nazi plot
Operation Modellhut under the guise of requesting Lombardi
return to work for the House of Chanel in Paris. When Vera refused
to comply with Chanels request to come to Paris; she was arrested
as an English spy and thrown into a Roman prison of the worst
kind by the Gestapo.
Finally, she agreed to fly to Austria only if escorted by two
aristocrat friends of the palazzo set and her pet Calabrian Mastiff
dog. The long-legged dog, the size of a bull calf was too big for the
small plane that could only hold the SS pilot, her friends Prince
Bismarck and Lady Windischgraetz, and herself. Taege had to
remain behind in Rome.
At the end of their relationship, Vera exposed Chanels
Muddlehut war crime in a plot devised by Chanels Nazi lover to
assassinate Sir Winston Churchill and declared her a Nazi spy
directly to Churchill while she and Chanel where in Spain in 1944.
Chanel was known to sacrifice anything for her own personal gain.
Chanel was arrested by the Americans, but later dismissed of
espionage charges through the British Royal familys intervention.
Had Chanel been brought to trial for Collaboration Horizentale, it
would have exposed some of the British Royal Family Nazi
alliances, such as the Duke of Westminster. Chanel lost Vera and
her name was tarnished until the 1950s.
Bridget Tichenor was married two times. In 1939 she married
homosexual poet and International Paper Company heir Hugh
17

Joseph Chisholm in New York City in an arranged marriage by her

mother Vera through an introduction made by Cole Porter and his
wife Linda Lee to remove Bridget from the looming WW II in
London.
Upon their arrival in New York, Bridget and Hugh lived in a
family penthouse apartment at the Plaza Hotel in New York,
where Hugh had been born. Hugh had enabled Bridget to travel
from London by ship with an entourage of assorted pets that he
had purchased for her as a wedding gift, which included a fivefoot albino Burmese Python. The hotel had alarming complaints
one morning from the butler when Bridgets snake attacked him
as the breakfast cart with unfinished soft-boiled eggs that the
python wanted was being rolled away.
Bridget married Hugh Joseph Chisholm at the Chisholm family
home, Strathgrass in Port Chester, New York on October 14,
1939.
Bridget spent money voraciously on clothing, jewels, art,
restaurants, and gifts for new friends, which Mrs. Chisholm
became furious about and closed her charge accounts. Bridget
stated. I thought everyone in America was generous like Hughs
friend Barbara Hutton. Mrs. Chisholm and she did not get along
from the onset of Bridgets New York arrival. Bridget was
accustomed to speaking her mind, and told Mrs. Chisholm that
Hugh had promised both she and her mother in London that she
could have anything she wanted, as long as she would marry him
and produce an heir.
Bridget had been exposed to extreme wealth with her family that
had a long history as arbiters of good taste, yet never had personal
financial security. Having been deprived of an anchoring love her
entire life; she compensated with vengeance and went overboard
with reckless material acquisition in her loveless marriage.
Acquaintances have described Bridget during this time as
striking, glamorous, and a long-stemmed beauty with large
18

azure eyes and sumptuous black hair. Bridget wore clothes by

Mainbocher, Madame Gres, Hattie Carnegie, and Charles James.
Bridget said, Hugh and I left New York for Beverly Hills,
California in order to escape Hughs family in New York and to
be in a more creative and upbeat wartime environment. They
arrived in Hollywood along with the mass exodus of European
artists and intellectuals such as Aldous Huxley, Christopher
Isherwood, Max Ernst, Thomas Mann, and Anals Nin.
Bridget and Hugh had been crowned in London and New York as
the reigning blue-blood King and Queen of aristocratic Caf
Society in the late 1930s. They followed by seducing and ruling
Hollywood in the early 1940s, and represented the idealized
society marriage of great American wealth with British nobility.
Bridget was especially close with film industry icons director
James Whale, designer Adrian, director Val Lewton, director
George Cukor, and actor Laurence Olivier.
Anais Nin was infatuated with Bridget during the Hollywood War
years and it was rumored that they had a long affair. Anais Nin
wrote about Bridget in The Diaries of Anais Nin, volume III
that were later published. It was also rumored that Russian born
silent film star Alla Nazimova had an affair with Bridget.
Bridget said, Tallulah Bankhead was a great party friend, and I
taught her British elocution and diction, which led to her
professional voice signature. Southern American accents easily
adapt to proper English articulation and vice versus.
In 1940, she and Chisholm had a son in Beverly Hills, California
named Jeremy Chisholm, whose godmothers were actress Joan
Crawford and painter Kay Sage, wife of Yves Tanguey. He died in
1982. They gave their son as an infant to a Chisholm family
relationship to be raised. Later, Jeremy lived with his father and
they established a close relationship. He became a celebrated Polo
player and international businessman.

19

In 1943, Bridget became a student at the Arts Students League of

New York under Reginald Marsh with fellow artists George
Tooker, French, Jared, and Paul Cadmus.
Hugh Chisholm was working overseas in Rome when she met
Jonathan Tichenor, the assistant and lover of photographer George
Platt Lynes in New York City. They started an affair in 1944, and
she divorced Chisholm and married Jonathan Tichenor in 1945.
She divorced Chisholm on December 11, 1944 and moved into an
upper eastside townhouse in Manhattan that she shared with art
patron Peggy Guggenheim. She married Jonathan Tichenor, and
they moved into an artists studio at 105 MacDougal Street in
Manhattan, which Anais Nin wrote about in her volume 3.
Pedro Friedeberg said, It was rumored that Chisholm was
simultaneously involved in an affair with playwright Patrick
Dennis (writer of Auntie Mame 1955) that broke the marriage
with Bridget.
Tichenor worked at Vogue magazine in New York from 1948-1952
in a close relationship with Liberman, that was rivaled by 1940s
Harpers Bazaar Fashion Editor Diana Vreeland. The Vreeland
Bridget relationship was parallel to that of the Chanel Vera
relationship in that Vreeland idolized, yet was jealous of Bridget.
Bridgets dear friend, the late Maxime de la Falaise in Paris once
said, Bridget was on the Chanel team and Diana on the
Schiaparelli team. Sciaparelli looked like a monkey, who had lost
its banana. Diana was so envious that she turned chartreuse every
time she saw or heard of Bridget she had the beauty, feminity,
artistry, and vulnerability Vreeland lacked.
Vreeland imitated Bridgets character and taste; and at the same
time, attempted to defame her with Lieberman. In the 1950s,
Vreeland arrived in Mexico on a photographic assignment only to
find Bridget at the same location, and quickly changed the
itinerary.
There was a trip Bridget made in 1949 to Italy to photograph
20

clothing designer Emilio Puccis stretch skiwear. She went with

him to the Palladio in Sienna. Bridget said, I pointed out to him
the hundreds of colored flags with family crests, and told him to
take silk jersey like Mme. Gres, cut the flag designs up and
reassemble them in prints for dresses. The classic Pucci fabric
prints were born from Bridgets inspiration.
In the 1950s Bridget and jewelry designer Kenneth Jay Lane
discussed the idea of him referencing European and East Indian
royal familys jewels, Harry Winston, Verdura, Cartier, and Van
Cleef into his own designs in paste jewelry, much the same as her
mother Vera guided Chanel with her faux jewelry collections.
These collections brought Kenneth Lane great success, and Bridget
wore many pieces of his works throughout her life. Lane visited
Bridget at her ranch Contembo, and they shared a great friendship
for many years.
Mesoamerican cultures, spiritism, shamanism, metaphysics,
science fiction, ancient mystery schools, and her international
background of world cultures and religions would influence the
style and themes of Tichenors work as a Magic Realist painter in
Mexico. Bridgets thematic focus was painting supernatural
enchantments in a 16th century Venetian genre that referenced
ancient cultures with mythical creatures.
Tichenors painting technique was based upon 16th century Italian
Tempera formulas that her friend Paul Cadmus taught her in New
York. She would prepare a well-sanded and eggshell-finished
gesso ground of 20 coats or more on Masonite board and apply,
instead of tempera, multiple jewel-like and transparent oil glazes
created with pigment, mineral spirits, and linseed medium. She
used Sfumato, a painting technique in which the colors blend
softly into each other creating a smoky image, rather than objects
or shapes having sharp outlines or hard edges.
Bridget painted in an Italian Renaissance style, depicting
characters in her spiritually channeled allegories that referenced
Mesoamerican mythology and occult religions. Her biggest
technical concern was that her delicately thin painting would crack
21

or peel, so she allowed each layer of paint to sufficiently dry before

another application was made. The drying time between successive
coats of translucent paint took time, so a painting could take
months to a year or more to finish. The brushes she used were
sable #000, and sometimes a one-hair brush was used for detail.
Tichenor was among a group of Surrealist and Magic Realist
female artists who came to live in Mexico in the late 1940s and
early 1950s. They were drawn to the American Modern Art
movement that was seeded in Mexicos fertile cultural and political
ground by Diego Rivera. After the Mexican Revolution, a new
generation of Mexican artists led a vibrant national movement that
incorporated political, historic, religious, folk-indigenous, and PreColumbian themes.
The painters Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro
Siqueiros became world famous for their grand murals, often
displaying clear social messages. Rufino Tamayo, Frida Kahlo,
Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, and Pedro Friedeberg
produced more personal, abstract, symbolic, and spiritual works.
Bridgets introduction to Mexico occurred after she lived in
Beverly Hills, California during the War years of the early 1940s
through her cousin Edward James, who was living between Los
Angeles and Mexico. Bridget had guided Edward James when
they both lived in Los Angeles around 1942 to seek out a
permanent home in Mexico, which he found via a friend in
Cuernavaca. Edward James had nervous breakdowns in Los
Angeles and Bridget helped him at the time to recuperate.
After having her only child in an arranged marriage that resulted in
disillusionment and acute depression, she looked deeper for her
lifes meaning and purpose that was to be found later through her
art. Edward James insisted she come visit him in Mexico.
Edward James, the British Surrealist art collector and sponsor of
the magazine Minotaure that was published in Paris, invited
Tichenor to Mexico several times in the late 1940s when she was
at Vogue until her move in 1953. Bridgets life-changing epiphany
22

occurred during an ancestral Aztec spiritual ceremony with James

at his home.
The ceremony involved the Nahua goddess Coatlicue - Tonanzin or
Tonantzin - Guadalupe for souls that were ahuicpu, those that
prevented attending to their destines. Tonantzin is the goddess of
the earth and of the dead, known as La de Falda Serpientes.
James had urged Bridget for many years to undergo the same
secret ceremony that had helped him find his life purpose through
his ancestral spirit guides. He organized the ceremony for her with
a secret Aztec Tonantzin sect of priests, where her life solidified
afterwards in a miraculous devotion to her art and spirit guides.
James had lived in Las Pozas, San Luis Potosi, Mexico since the
1940s, and his home had an enormous Surrealist sculpture garden
with natural waterfalls, pools and Surrealist sculptures in concrete.
Tichenor had first met him in Paris in the 1930s. Carrington
painted a mural at Las Pozas as a gift to James.
Bridget discussed her early trips to Jamess home and also
traveling to Mexico for photographic shoots for Vogue with nasty
confrontations with Vreeland in the same locations, prior to her
moving there in 1953.
After visiting Mexico again through invitations of her Mexican
friends artist Diego Rivera, architect Luis Barragan, and Mathias
Goeritz in the early 1950s, she obtained a divorce from her second
husband Jonathan Tichenor in New York in 1952, and moved to
Mexico in 1953, where she made her permanent home and lived
for the rest of her life.
She left her marriage and job as a professional Fashion and
Accessories Editor for Vogue behind and was now alongside
expatriate painters such as Carrington, Remedios Varo, Alice
Rahon, and photographer Kati Horna living in the magic of
Mexico. The French Philosopher Andre Breton, who was
instrumental in Carringtons career said, Mexico is a surreal place
where the people live surreally.

23

In 1958, she participated in the First Salon of Womens Art at the

Galeras Excelsior of Mexico, together with Carrington, Rahon,
Varo, and other contemporary women painters of her era. In 19591960, she bought the Contembo ranch near the remote preColumbian village of Ario de Rosales, Michoacn where she
painted reclusively with her extensive menagerie of pets and
numerous servants until 1978.
Tichenor and her Purepecha lover Roberto built the house together.
They maintained a relationship for 13 years. Bridget said,
Roberto, the wicked Indian left the ranch one day on the bus
from Patzcuaro to get supplies in Morelia, and never returned.
Contembo was positioned in exact alignment with the four
cardinal directions like a compass. On the ground floor, there was
a wide center hall, flanked by a living room and kitchen on one
side, two bedrooms, and two bathrooms. Bridgets bedroom had a
dressing room full of couturier clothing in rags, Verdura and
Kenneth Jay Lane paste jewelry. There was a winding staircase
from the center hall that went up to the center of her studio. A tenfoot high-stonewalled courtyard that was gated in the center of
each four directions surrounded the house. The interior ten-foot
high walls were painted titanium white and the floors were made
of dark ochre hewn stone that was taken from her land. There
were a number of outbuildings on the grounds that served for
carpentry, tool sheds, slaughtering of animals, animal pens,
storage, and servants quarters.
The second story consisted of a large studio with six massive
windows, two on each 3 walls, a center stairwell, and storage
closet that was composed of shelves on bricks covered in plastic
for painting supplies. The approach to the mountaintop where the
house was built upon had a rough winding dirt road that would
wash out during the torrential rainy season.
There was no electricity, but there was a sometimes-inefficient
generator that would be turned on once a day for 10 minutes only
for a dribble of hot water. The house was lit by dozens of
24

kerosene lamps at dusk that made everything from bedding to

flatware reek of petroleum.
Bridget had sixteen indoor dogs and eighteen outdoor dogs, all
with their own basket beds. Each knew their place and once in
their beds did not move without her command. The indoor dogs
slept in a line of baskets around the perimeter of her bedroom
watching her every move. There were twenty-two parrots and
assorted birds that were trained to sleep in shoeboxes at night
stacked in her dressing room.
At dawn a crippled Indian servant with one eye and one leg on a
crutch would arrive to begin the task of taking each bird out of its
box and placing it on an outdoor perch to be fed. The process
took the man the entire day and by dusk all of the birds were
returned to their labeled boxes and stacked in a prescribed order
in a closet.
Her staff of sixteen servants were physically and mentally
handicapped outcasts of the village that she adopted and cared
for, who loyally followed her detailed orders to perfection.
The ranch was self-contained with Jersey cows for milk, cream,
butter, cheese, and yogurt. There were chickens, turkeys, geese,
ducks, guinea hens, and quails for meat and eggs. There were
extensive vegetable and herb gardens with assorted fruit trees.
There was an outdoor conservatory building for bulbs, orchids,
bromeliads, and young plantings.
The compound was filled with handicapped servants and loud,
screeching, or barking animals, like an array of characters from
the 1896 H.G science fiction novel The Island of Dr. Moreau in
a Bruegel painting setting.
Every few months supplies would be picked up by a servant in
Morelia such as clear Sauza Tequila, Salem or Carmencita
cigarettes, the Mexican chocolate Abuelita, and art supplies that
would be shipped to her from New York. Contembo was a six25

hour drive from Mexico City, forty minutes from Patzcuaro, two
hours from Morelia, and a few minutes from the village of Ario
de Rosales.
Bridget painted in her studio from dawn to dusk, with a 1-hour
break for lunch, on a simple tripod wooded easel that was
portable. Breakfast consisted of strong black coffee, and lunch
was served at 3 PM that consisted of an overcooked small piece
of stringy meat or dry chicken, cardboard beans, overcooked rice,
with a wilted Serrano chili that was washed down with several
shots of inexpensive clear Sauza Tequila, chased with the
condiment Magi.
Her guests were starving from lack of food. So, bedtime was a
treat to all those that visited her. Bridget routinely had two huge
hot cocos served in bed at 9 PM by one of her servants. The hot
cocoa was prepared in an English manner as the recipe was a
heavy hot Jersey Cream from her cow with fresh strong Mexican
Abuelita chocolate.
Ario de Rosales was named Place where something was sent to be
said in the Purepecha language. Tichenor in essence was an
artistic channel for the powerful spiritual vortex that she chose to
call her home. She produced paintings that embraced and reflected
a divinely supernatural world that was beyond the emotional or
mental content of the Surrealists of her day.
She did not like being called a Surrealist as she said her work was
of a spiritual nature and contained the alchemy of magic,
reflecting the supernatural. Nor did she ever describe or bring
definition to her art. She said, True art was to be seen and felt, not
intellectualized or conversed about as those wretched art dealers or
academicians do when money becomes involved. What ground do
they have to be called art authorities, when they havent a clue of
being an artist themselves?
Clearly, she did not like most art dealers or many of those that
made a living as art authorities, whom she said knew nothing about
26

art. She did not like her work to be judged or analyzed by someone
that was not an artist himself or herself. Many times she retreated
and refused great opportunities when she heard the word art
dealer or art academician. Yet, she was extremely close with
Mexican art dealer Antonio Sousa and the Argentinean Pecanin
sisters that were gallery owners in Mexico City, who she trusted
completely.
Bridget purposely positioned her paintings reversely against a wall,
so no one could see them. If she liked someone, she would
sometimes turn only one around. Rarely, did she expose every
painting she had available, unless they were intimate friends.
She adored Remedios Varo, and Carrington followed in her
preference for artists that she was close to in her early years in
Mexico. Varo was more spiritual to Tichenor than Carrington, yet
Carrington and she shared many technical commonalities that are
evident in their painterly works of art. Tichenor shared interests
with Varo and Carrington in literary works of Gurdieff and
Ouspensky. Carrington and Tichenor were estranged at the end of
Bridgets life.
Bridget discussed with me the writings of the 13th century German
Neo-Platonist mystic Meister Eckhart, Carl Jung, and 19th century
Theosophists such as Madame Helene Blavatsky, Charles
Leadbeater, and Sir John Woodroffe. She gave me some of her
mothers Theosophist books, and encouraged me to read the 19th
century English translations from Sanskrit regarding Kundalini and
the Chakra systems.
Bridget Tichenor taught me the principles of focusing my mind in
Raja Yoga study. She also trained my mind-to-hand coordination
by giving me Tantric painting exercises in which I was directed to
paint squares, crescent moons, triangles, circles, hexagons,
pentagons, double crosses, stars, swastikas, lotuses, and dots (the
geometric and symbolic foundations of both Mandala and Yantra
cosmograms) with three sable haired brushes with India Ink in one
continuous stroke.

27

She explained that these magical diagrams were universal, and not
limited to Hindu origin, but came from Ancient Mystery Schools
of Solar Kundalini throughout the world.
Bridget quoted Jung, The cardinal lesson as presented by Chinese
texts and Meister Eckhart, was that of allowing psychic events to
happen on their own accord - letting things happen, the action
through non-action, and the letting go of oneself. One must let
things happen. She referred to Jung in his criticizing the Western
tendency to turn everything into methods and intentions, while
teaching me principles of mandala configurations from his book
Mandala Symbolism.
Bridget had a deep understanding of the cosmos and origins of
mankind, as she was born a mystical adept that lived and
communicated from the astral plane. She once said, This sense of
being extraterrestrial I have is something I inherited from my
mother.
It was very hard for Bridget to ground and integrate herself in the
material or third dimension, as she was fulfilled in indescribable
ways from the spiritual realms that she painted. She was in certain
aspect conflicted and in denial of her own psychological pain, but
not in anyway regarding her spiritual identity and purpose. It was
only through painting her beautiful visions that she felt deeply
connected to her source, in bliss, and complete. Creating beauty
was her medicine and salvation.
Many of the faces and bodies of Tichenors magical creatures in
her paintings were based upon her assorted pet Terriers,
Chihuahuas, Italian Mastiffs, sheep, goats, monkeys, parrots,
iguanas, snakes, horses, cows, chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons,
quail, and local Purepecha Indian servants and friends.
The masks that she painted were symbolic of the many mysterious
facets of her extraordinarily diverse spiritual perceptions that she
would hide both her acute emotional vulnerability and the
awesome power of her soul behind, which she chose to express
only in her sacred art. She was guided to paint timeless
28

supernatural visions that were painted in a Magic Realism style.

The landscapes of Tichenors paintings were inspired by the
topography of the volcanic land that surrounded her mountaintop
home Contembo. There was a curvature of the earth with many
plateaus and deep canyons that could be seen from her secondstory studio, where the pine tree covered Venetian Red Mountains
cascaded towards the Pacific Ocean.
The unusual land formations were otherworldly and isolated in a
pre-historic time, like geographic scenes of lost worlds from a Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle novel. And, at the same time the region
evoked a futuristic post-civilization atmosphere. Bridget captured
the essence of her beloved environment at Contembo in her
paintings.
The days would build with sun blazed brilliant colour in a
luminous heat from the contrasting dark grey-green cold nights.
There also was a magnificent waterfall with turquoise pools of
water that traversed her red earth property in a stream of liquid
light that appeared to come directly from heaven.
Although friends for many years with Carrington, Tichenor
counted painters Alan Glass, and Pedro Friedeberg amongst her
closest friends and artistic contemporaries. In 1970, my mothers
cousin New York publicist Lee Kingsley, and my Aunt and Uncle
Robert and Gertrude Fielding introduced me to Pedro Friedeberg
in New York. Then in 1971, Pedro introduced me to Bridget in
Mexico City at the home of Eric Noren. She spiritually adopted
me as her protg and she became my mentor until her death in
1990.
A few days after my first meeting with Bridget, she invited me to
drive with her to her ranch Contembo in Arios de Rosales,
Michoacan. One morning, I arrived at Eric Norens home to meet
Bridget where I loaded her dented and rusty old Nash Rambler
with paintings and our bags. Bridget asked that I drive, while she
sat next to me with 3 highly nervous, toothless, and aging
29

Chihuahuas with halitosis.

We left Mexico City and followed the dangerous highway called
Mil Cumbres to Ario in a 6-hour journey, which was a
mountainous and pine forested road filled with a thousand curves.
Bridget fidgeted with her hair, chain smoked, took shots of
tequila, reprimanded the dogs, and simultaneously directed me on
how to drive properly. She would direct me on how to take the
curves of the road, always holding the steering wheel with my
hands in a ten oclock position.
My mothers cousin publicist Lee Kingsley had also introduced
me when I was 19 to other contemporaries in fashion and film in
New York to her friends children such as actress Marisa
Berenson, photographer Berry Berenson, actor Tony Perkins, and
actress Ingrid Boulting. Bridget criticized my associations with
the Berenson sisters. Ingrid did remain a lifetime friend. And
years later, Marissa and Berry became clients for my Spiritual
Consultation in Paris and LA at critical moments. Much of the
Berenson critique was based upon their being muses for her arch
rival Diana Vreeland, and the fact that Bridget thought Go Go
Schaparelli to be a lost-soul caf societe figure, yet did like her
husband Art Critic Bernard Berenson. She felt the same for Lee,
criticizing her as a PR whore, who talked like a parrot in heat.
Cousin Lee was a magnet for eccentric fortune hunting socialites
between marriages, looking for their next title and economic
ascent, whose husbands could buy art, produce theatre, ballet, and
film, or build cultural centers. Lee did have an amazing knack for
connecting people at her cocktail parties where Truman Capote,
Leonard Bernstein, Kitty Carlisle Hart, Tennessee Williams,
Bobby Short, and other luminaries would gather regularly at her
extraordinary Beaux Arts apartment on the Westside. In fact her
ultra chic apartment was used as the set for the 1948 Hitchcock
film Rope. Born into the Goode Jewish immigrant family,
associated with the Zukor and Loew film industry families from
the early 1920s through our family relations, she rose to the
center of the arts in Public Relations in New York, Europe, and
30

Latin America from the 1930s until 1980.

There was little in my life that Bridget did not criticize or try to
direct. She insisted I spend time with socially appropriate people
of her choosing that were my age that were children of her
friends, x-friends, or contemporaries that she introduced me to in
Mexico and New York, such as Duke Altamira, Kiko von
Hohenloe, Maggie Richter, Patricia Oakes Leighton, Andrea de
Portago, and Anthony de Portago all very charming: yet, at the
time I felt I had little if nothing in common other than a history of
strained, broken, or estranged family relationships. I made an
effort and did what I could to please Bridgets directives for the
people of her choosing, but there was no fit.
Whenever I visited Bridget at Contembo, she would relate her life
stories to me at the end of the day. Every evening she would sit in
her bed, covered in freshly ironed white sheets with heavy
Guatemalan blankets with one kerosene lamp burning on her
bedside table with 16 Chihuahuas and terriers on the bed. She
commanded the dogs to go to their designated baskets that lined
the perimeter of the room. When each dog had taken its place,
there would be a semicircle of eerie glowing eyes with a variety
shapes, sizes, and colors peering at her from the dark room. I
became aware that the dogs eyes were in some of her paintings.
Bridget would call for one of her servants, and an Indian girl
would appear carrying a linen covered tray with two giant
terracotta painted cups of hot coco. After the servant had left,
Bridget would begin her stories. Occasionally she would be
interrupted by one of the dogs leaving its basket. Bridget would
scold the dog to return and then she would promptly praise the
animal. She would resume her dialogue that would go on for hours
with more hot coco and cigarettes.
One night at Bridgets ranch Contembo, Bridget related to me a
story her mother Vera Arkwright Bate Lombardi had told her. Vera
had a friend in Paris that she had met through the Rockefeller
family, who was a French Archaeologist that traveled to the
31

Mexican state of Veracruz in 1920.

The archaeologist had been contracted by Standard Oil Company
to work as a liaison with the Mexican government to investigate
the Olmec sites that covered rich oil deposits before any oil drilling
could begin. During this trip, a local Indian guide had informed the
archaeologist of the existence of the venomous Quetzalcoatl
feathered flying serpent that was thought to be myth or extinct, but
was said by the local Indians to be very much a living creature.
Bridget said that Vera's friend had been diverted from his work
with the oil drilling. He was taken on horseback, and then in
canoes up the mouth of a river that opened into the Gulf of Mexico
into the low mountains in search of place called Tulan-Zuiva or the
Seven Sacred Caves. Mayan legend spoke of Tulan Zuiva as
being the first Atlantean depositories of ancient records in the
Americas by Quetzalcoatl. The fabled Tulan-Zuiva was to have
been the first cave-temple of Quetzalcoatl and his priesthood,
which scholars have positioned to be either in Veracruz, Tabasco,
Campeche, Yucatan, or Guatemala.
The expedition failed to discover the sacred caves, but it was on
this trip that Bridget revealed the story of Vera's archaeologist
friend seeing the Quetzalcoatl creature flying very low above their
canoe on the river in the dawn hours. Bridget said Veras friend's
description was that they saw a bird-like creature with a strange
combination of a head the shape of Camarand bird that was spread
out flat like a viper serpent. The neck was almost two feet long
covered in dense, short, brilliant, white, and tufted green-blue
iridescent plume-like longer feathers.
The swan-shaped body had long broad wings with hand-like claws
on the tips. Bridget said that Vera's friend described the animals
neck retracting into a bizarre almost human curvature when it
landed on a low tree at the rivers edge. It looked like a bird with a
large snake shaped head that resembled both Egyptian and Chinese
snake-headed deities and appeared more dragon-like than anything
she could describe.
32

Bridget had said that Veras archaeologist friend had discussed the
story shortly after the sighting of the Quetzalcoatl animal to the
British author Colonel James Churchward in New York, who later
wrote in generalities about the expedition and the Quetzalcoatl
animal in his Sacred Symbols of Mu.
My great teacher and friend Mexican artist Pedro Friedeberg
guided me simultaneously with Bridget through a labyrinth of
esoterica that included the world of a profoundly learned Mystery
School student, Edward James. Another Quetzalcoatl sighting was
described to me in the 1970s by Bridgets cousin Edward James
that took place circa 1949 near his home Las Pozas close to the
village of Xilitla in the jungled mountains of the Mexican state of
San Luis Potosi five hours west of Tampico near the Gulf of
Mexico.
Bridget had many facets. She was very careful to expose only the
parts of herself to others that she felt they could understand. She
was self-contained in regard to her painting, study, or absorption
and application of knowledge. Each of her close friends had their
own special relationship with her that many times excluded huge
parts of who she was metaphysically, yet had eternal potency in
emotional and intellectual shared intimacies.
Bridget instructed me with many of her techniques in drawing and
painting, which were so highly perfected by her that I could never
attempt to match, but assimilated as standards in my own technical
evolution.
I had a vision in 1976 in which my Spirit Guides directed me to
return to Zihuatanjeo to learn indigenous shaman spiritualism, and
I asked Bridget for an interpretation of these visions. She guided
and supported me from 1976 1979 to work as an apprentice with
a group of Tarascan Nahualli Shaman Spiritualists near
Zihuatanjeo, Guerrero.
After I began my work with the Espiritualistas, I searched for
33

many answers concerning the arduous training I had chosen

through Bridgets wisdom. She directed me to re-read the English
translated ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts from her mother Vera
Bate Lombardis Theosophy book collection that she had given to
me in earlier years as it pertained to my Kundalini awakening
experiences with the Nahualli Espiritualistas.
When it came to Mesoamerican spiritual history, Bridget would
detail her knowledge; The Olmec civilization was established by
African Black colonists from Egypt that were the founding fathers
of Mesoamerican religion in the state of Veracruz, Mexico. Very
little is known of the Olmec by archaeologists, but the Indians of
Veracruz carry their knowledge forward. The Black race existed
throughout the Americas long before Columbuss arrival. This is
evident in the giant Olmec stone heads of Veracruz and in every
other Mesoamerican cultures statuary and pottery. When one
studies Mesoamerican religion it is apparent that it has an Egyptian
foundation from resurrection theology to exact pyramid
construction formulae.
The ancient Mayan culture evolved from the Olmec in the city of
Chichenitza, which is thousands of years older than 19th and 20th
Century archaeological dating. The great empire had extended its
influence to every part of the world, exercising great cultural
power over many nations. The name Maya and the vestiges of its
language, art, religion cosmological, historical traditions from the
ancient culture is discovered in many countries from America,
Europe, Africa, and Asia.
There were many wise men from these distant and remote parts of
the world such as Egypt, Sumeria, and Atlantis, which came to
Chichenitza to consult the H-menes and receive spiritual training
with Mystery School Solar Religions initiations pertaining to the
Kinan or Spirit Body. Additionally, she felt that the Star people
from the Pleiades worked in tandem with these ancient colonists of
the Americas and guided their Sciences.
The name Maya always is attached to power and wisdom. She
34

pointed out the numerous bearded Caucasian men that she felt
represented the Assyrians (Afghans of today) were carved in stone
formats of the Mayan Nation that extended from Veracruz, Yucatan
Peninsula, Oaxaca, and beyond Guatemala as far south as El
Salvador/
Bridget exposed to me the similarities in the Sanskrit words
Kundalini and Chakra in relationship to the Yucatan Peninsular
Mayan dialect words Kultanlilni and Chacla, which have the same
definition.
Bridget related the initiations of Buddha and Kukulcan, Buddha
Sakyamuni was bitten by a seven-headed cobra serpent,
Sakyamunis experience was parallel to the Mayan story of
Kukulcans initiation during his first incarnation with the sevenheaded rattlesnake serpent named Chapat in the Yucatan. Buddha
and Kukulcans initiations symbolized the Kundalini awakening
through the seven Chakras. The Mayan Kukulcan and Nahua
Quetzalcoatl mythology represented the Mesoamerican belief that
humans are the integration of the seven forces of Solar Light
within the Chakra system that spiral as a rattlesnake serpent
infinitely towards a solar, galactic, and universal connection with
God.
Bridget discussed the founding deities of Mesoamerica,
Quetzalcoatl for the Nahuas, Kukulcan for the Mayas, and
Gucumatz for the Quiche Mayas is the pre-emanate founding deity
of Mesoamerican creation mythology, which evolved after the
Olmec civilization and approximately 10,000 years ago at the time
of Atlantiss destruction. Atlantis originally was ruled by a Black
race that held the sacred knowledge of Orishas, which Osiris
brought to Egypt in a pantheon of gods.
Quetzalcoatl, Kukulcan, or Gucumatz mysteriously appeared in
Mesoamerica in several legends. The primary Eurocentric legend
was that he was as a tall, white skinned Caucasian, blonde, blueeyed, and bearded priest and another indigenous legend as a black
man from an Atlantic mother culture continent in the East that had
35

been destroyed by volcanic eruptions called Tlapallan, Tollan,

Atzlan, and Alua. Mesoamerican mythology states that he founded
the Mesoamerican religions, taught them the arts of divination and
civilization, and disappeared and reappeared in five world
successions through incarnations of him.
The name Quetzalcoatl originates from the Nahuatl words;
Quetzal, a rare exotic bird of iridescent green color, and coatl,
serpent, which means plumed serpent Kukulcan with the Mayas
was represented as a serpent with two heads that symbolized Venus
both as the morning and evening star, denoting Kukulkans
faculties as a mediator between night and day, good and evil, and
as force facilitating transcendence of opposites or dualities within
human nature.
Bridget described Kundalini, The goal of the fiery Kundalini as it
makes its serpentine journey up the five lower Chakras, is to unit
human polarities in the sixth center of the Brow Chakra of man.
Quetzalcoatls original teachings were that of a wise and good ruler
who taught the Ancient Wisdom School principles of Chakra
Science through the principles of a microcosmic and macrocosmic
universal view of Kundalini in death and resurrection, sin and
redemption, and the transfiguration of a human into a God.
Bridget explained Quetzalcoatls arrival in the Americas,
Quetzalcoatl arrived from Atlantis with a group of colonists called
Quetzales, who brought the advanced sciences and arts to the
Americas. She said, The Aztecs theology and the few remaining
records distorted the representation of the original Nahua/Toltec,
Maya, and Quiche mythology of Quetzalcoatl in their declining
civilizations before the Spanish Conquest, and lost the historical
data of Quetzalcoatls immigration to the Americas when later
translated.
So, the Quetzalcoatl mythology evolved into one of the creation
myths by the Quiche Maya that are reflected in the Popul Vuh of
the serpent-bird like dragons that were covered with green and blue
feathers that were the gods of both the sea and the sky. Both
36

Quetzalcoatl the man and the myth were based in facts now lost
through both the Mesoamerican civilizations decline before the
advent of Spanish colonization and through the colonizations
destruction of records.
Bridget continued, There were many Quetzalcoatl representations
throughout Mesoamerica, but the one specifically that relates to
Ancient Chakra Science and the Kundalini principle of the
regeneration and resurrection of life force is called the Cobra de
Capella, and Ac-la-Chapa, which was the seven-headed Mayan
Naga that is identical to that of Asia. The seven heads represent the
Seven Planes of Consciousness, the Seven Chakras, the Seven
Rays, and essentially that which encompasses the Kundalini
principle of all living forms. The Seven Headed Naga is carved in
numerous Mayan, Toltec, Mixtec, Olmec, and Aztec sites, but it is
prolific in Chichenitza where Mayan Kundalini Science flourished
most recently during the Toltec reign of power.
Bridgets social or public persona did not reveal her own personal
relationship with alchemy in painting, spirituality, or her acute
vulnerability. To her these forms of self-exposure with others were
taboo, and arrays of well-crafted societal masks were positioned
for her to hide behind. She chose to reveal or discuss who she was
as a spiritualized woman with a few close friends that she trusted.
She discussed her art, its creation, and underlying wisdom with
select relationships.
The dichotomy in her personality made it very challenging for her
to gain personal self-trust or build strong self-esteem, as she hid
behind many noble facades entertaining or intriguing others. The
focus or priority was on Bridget the personality, not the artist,
woman, or lover. Her fragile thinking formula distanced herself
from others emotionally. The unconditional relationships she had
with her animals and in her painting that she controlled were where
she found the purest form of love. She thrived and obsessed on the
creation of a perfected beauty, which she could never permanently
experience or sustain in life.

37

Bridgets sometimes-askew thinking, versus connecting to and

expressing sincere emotions with its self-protecting walls, impaired
her love relationships. Bridget loved an audience, and deathly
feared intimacy, so she was very busy with the most amazing
theatrics. She was never superficial, and always had the most
engaging approach with any in depth topic with anyone. She was
extremely knowledgeable and could expound upon any subject in
elaborate dialogue that she directed. Those that were close to her
had to read between the lines and accept her complexities with
love.
It took me many years to fully grasp the profound depth of the love
we shared. She could be very cruel, controlling, critical, and
demanding perfection of me on every level, which I rebelled
against. Bridget relished telling me how to conduct every aspect of
my life. Later, I grew to accept her and love her with all of her
character defects.
There were times after my near-death illnesses of encephalitis and
liver amoebas in the Mexican tropics in 1979 that I did not want to
see her and chose to distance myself from her. I had lived between
two worlds that Bridget shared with me the world of Studio 54
with Scavullo, Halston, and others in alcoholic and drugged
delirium that led to an insane self-destructive global lifestyle, and
the spiritual world as an apprentice spiritualist and artist in Mexico
that had led to enlightenment and self-realization.
At 29, I could not drink alcohol anymore and had a radical lifestyle
change that occurred where I began to focus on my art
professionally. My relationship with Bridget and her guidance
created the foundation for this life-changing transformation. At the
same time, I had to face and begin to resolve my own daemons and
flaws that had been mirrored in our relationship.
I took all the great values and tremendous nurturing she gave me
from her vast reservoir and left the rest. She understood me and
cared for me with an insight I have yet to experience with anyone
else. I worshipped Bridget in the beginning of our relationship and
38

had so much compassion for her in the end.

When she was dieing, I realized how blessed I was to have her as
my mentor and dear friend. No ones death or shared love affected
me as much as Bridgets. She did not have a bonded mother son
relationship with her son Jeremy, yet she had a spiritually adopted
one with me that we both cherished. The same was true for me in
that I did not have any connection with my mother, and in essence
Bridget became a divinely sent surrogate parent.
The love of Bridgets life was the old Etonian and horseman
Patrick Claude Henry Tritton. Patrick was a British expatriate, who
in 1962 had married for the first time in Mexico City the
fabulously rich, unstable, and difficult Baroness Nancy Oakes von
Hoyningen-Huene, heiress daughter of Sir Harry Oakes. Oakes
was a self-made Canadian gold miner, who became a Bahamian
financier victim of the famous unsolved wartime macabre murder
in Nassau that gave rise to theories embracing Mafia hit men, black
magic, and Nazi gold.
Bridget and Patrick were survivors of that vanishing world of
society peopled by figures such as Nol Coward, Cecil Beaton, and
Lady Diana Cooper. They both had been intimate from childhood
with several generations of members of the British Royal Family.
Tritton enjoyed a well-deserved reputation for fun, unreliability
and attractiveness to women. He was also capable of unexpected
kindness and patience. When a student at Cambridge he was
apparently known to take his horse to lectures. The novelist
Anthony Powell character, Dicky Umfraville, in A Dance to the
Music of Time is supposed to be based upon Tritton.
Tritton kept a full pack of Irish hounds and hunted jackrabbit in the
bleak desert amidst Aztec ruins at an overgrown Agave ranch near
Teotihuacn, where Bridgets romantic dream came true with
shared Anglo-Mexican colonial eccentricities.
Patrick was ugly as hell, blond and blue-eyed, slight of build, sundamaged skin, and bad teeth. He was notorious for being well
endowed, which he did not hide in his rumpled khaki trousers. His
39

nickname amongst his female admirers was The Weenie King

that was taken from the 1942 film The Palm Beach Story.
One weekend in 1971, Patrick picked Bridget and I up at her friend
Swedish shipping tycoon Eric Norens home on the Calle Tabasco
in Mexico City in a decrepit beige Volkswagen Beatlet to drive an
hour near the great pyramids of Teotihuacn to his run-down horse
ranch. Patrick had a marvelous sense of humor that matched
Bridgets, which became further amplified in witty bantering with
every shot of tequila as we drove through the surreal Mexican
desert landscape. They both were adept raconteurs.
Instead of riding horses that day, Patrick insisted we hunt rabbits in
the Volkswagen with his dogs sniffing out anything that moved
from iguana to wild chicken. A madcap hunt with Patrick
barreling the Bug through the Agaves ensued with Bridget holding
her baby Terrier Poppet in one hand, Carmencita cigarette and
shot glass of Sauza tequila in the other, and myself tossed around
in the back-seat. The dogs would chase ahead, disappear, only to
return to the barefoot servants at the adobe house with their iguana
prize catch. The roaring laughter was nonstop, and the love that
Bridget expressed with Patrick made her quite vulnerable under a
mask of frivolity.
That evening a sadly repressed and wet-brained Wasp ex-lover of
Bridgets first husband from Long Island invited us for dinner at
his home nearby. The dinner was black-tie, and Bridget insisted we
simply wash-up and dust-off beforehand, wearing the same clothes
we had worn chasing rabbits all afternoon, adding a blazer.
The hosts were a banished Spanish Princess with her once
handsome and inebriated American husband, who had bought
Cortezs hacienda near Patricks ranch. The couple had moved
from Madrid into the crumbling 16th Century stone fortress that
was under renovation, inclusive of moat and drawbridge, with a
hoard of priceless antique and art appointments down to family
silver and Sevres. A staff of forty servants was acquired to
maintain the property. Their collection of Velazquez and Goya
paintings were impressive. These were the types of people in
Mexico that drooled over Patrick and Bridget with their simple

40

pleasures and no great material wealth, but great passions that

brought fulfillment.
There were many Mexican anglophiles in Bridgets era, some with
European titles that married Mexicans, yet with degrees of family
importance, economic background, or whose offspring were not of
pure Caucasian blood, who vied for both Bridgets and Patricks
attention in a colonial royal court that they aspired to. Inherited
social standing from blood or bank balance to many Mexicans, like
modern society, engenders arrogance and superiority
characteristics - quite un-British.
Then there were the transient indulgent American and European
expatriates in Cuernavaca, Morelia, San Miguel de Allende,
Acapulco, and Mexico City, who lived pathetic and empty lives on
family trusts, going from one cocktail party to another, such as
Bridgets first husbands friends Barbara Hutton and Nina Gore
Vidal Auchincloss Olds.
The reckless, selfish and vindictive Nancy Oakes had the premiere
Anglo-sized Porfirian mansion that was the former Nazi German
Embassy during WW II. Prior to Tritton, anti-Semitic Oakes had
been married to homosexual Baron Ernst von Hoyningen-Huene,
WW II Nazi Ambassador to Portugal.
The remarkable Turners, Gainsboroughs, and Reynolds adorned
the walls of the grand foyer, and the interior stone courtyard had a
mirrored wall 17 ft. high with glass shelving of Pre-Columbian
ceramics and statuary that rivaled the Rockefeller collection
adjacent to a tiled indoor swimming pool. Nancys bathtub was a
giant scallop shell from the Philippines with solid gold fittings.
The look was Balmoral gone 50s Palm Beach with a Valley of
the Dolls script.
Bridget and Nancy had been close friends, through Bridgets
cousin the Duke of Windsor, in New York during Nancys family
tragedy in the 40s. Nancy, fueled by her wealth and temperament
to attract admirers, presented Bridget like a trophy British Royal to
Mexican society in 1956, yet Nancy never bought Bridgets
paintings.

41

Bridgets friend Lady Sarah Churchill, who did collect Bridgets

art, argued with Nancy over her taste and selection of decorators
such as Bob Brady. Oakes wanted British set designer Oliver
Messel to duplicate the fantasy of his 1940 film The Thief of
Baghdad sets in her property, but instead hired Brady. Nancy gave
a cocktail to honor her guest Princess Margaret when she finished
the home, at which Nancy and others fell into the indoor pool,
which became the norm at many of her events.
Brady and Bridget, who were at odds as Bridget said his
proportions and colour schemes were all wrong in the embassy
redo, but the truth was that Nancy never wanted to credit Bridget
with being an arbiter of good taste with her esoteric talents. Nancy
was insanely jealous of Bridget and went into obsessive rages later
when she found out Patrick had been having a long clandestine
affair with her. Patrick left Nancy for Bridget in a nasty divorce.
Bridget and Nancy did not speak thereafter, and Nancy gossiped
that Bridget was the lesbian lover of 1940s Mexican actress Maria
Felix, which was not true, and her Baring banking ancestors were
German Jews, which was true as the Barings were related to the
Beit family of 17th century Germany. The Beit families were wool
merchants that became bankers. Bridget said, I credit my Jewish
ancestry to my quest for knowledge, and the most intelligent and
creative people I have known have been Jewish. Barings Bank had
close ties with the Hambros, Rothschild, Lazard, Seligman,
Perieres, Bischoffsheims families.
Nancys gossip at that time was based in historical fact that Bridget
had an affair with author Anais Nin and rumor that she had been a
lover of silent film star Alla Nazimova during Bridgets WW II
years in Hollywood.
Mixed within the colonial booze and pill crowd were the artists
such as Bridget, Alice Rahon, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo,
Pedro Friedeberg, and Tamara de Limpicka, who had no common
interests with the idle rich foreigners. Many of the expatriate
socialites had known Bridget in New York or Hollywood before
and during WW II in relationship to her first husband, when she
was an editor at Vogue, or had known her mother Vera in London
or Paris at Chanel. They did not embrace her as the great artist she
42

had become, and looked at her as a dilettante to match their own

inadequacies. She called them lost parasitical souls that suck the
life from the illuminated ones.
Bridget was profoundly misunderstood, yet admired for all the
wrong reasons by many of Mexicos elite social circles, which
were handicapped and limited by their own delusional selfperceptions of importance and only looked at her meticulously
exquisite veneer. And on the other hand, there were those insightful
Mexicans, artists, intellectuals, and eccentrics such as her British
cousin Edward James, surrealist Pedro Friedeberg, Canadian
painter Alan Glass, Jean de Laborde, and artist La Bruja Cristina
Bremer with whom she resonated completely.
Bridget and British/Mexican surrealist Leonora Carrington had
known each from the time of Bridgets arrival in Mexico. They
both shared commonalities in their finely detailed oil glazing
painting techniques, interests in the esoteric depths of all things
magical and metaphysical, yet were worlds apart in their artistic
messages and life journeys. Bridget was directly connected with
her spirit guides and portrayed magical worlds that were altruistic
and rich with haunting beauty and idealism, expressing through
painting her spirit guides' communications in a sensorial manner
from her soul, yet never reflecting others' philosophies. Leonora
was focused on her visions of spiritual phenomena and its exquisite
staging of surreal and sometimes grotesquely chilling characters in
theatrical interplay that came from a more mental or
intellectualized reference.
Bridget introduced me to Leonora in 1971 at Leonoras home on
Calle Puebla in Mexico City, where we spent a number of visits in
which Bridget and Leonora would conduct spiritual sances around
a candle lit rustic wood rectangular table in a barren cold and dank
stone floor room. Bridget and Leonora were equally connected to
the paranormal and loved to demonstrate their mediumistic gifts
and interpretations to me. Leonora, dressed in a long white caftan
with a tangle of uncombed wiry grey hair, would address tapping
sounds and mumbling voices in Nahuatl that would occur in the
room, You heard that clearly it is Xochipilli, Aztec god of art!

43

Then, both would elaborate upon their separate interpretations of

the spirits messages.
A peculiar thing about Mexico at that time, like most of Latin
America, was its history of cultural and racial identification that
reflected social status, where every level of society pulled rank. A
European titled Mexican would portray a non-Indian heritage,
when the parenting was mixed and adopt a European identity,
while denying Mexican heritage of Indian blood.
This point was based upon a racial discrimination of
Malinchisma that ran through the culture since the Indian
holocaust of the Spanish colonization, manipulated by the Catholic
Church. Then there is today the reverse snobbery by Mexican
nationalists, where only those of mixed indigenous heritage are
considered true Mexicans and the European expatriate that
becomes Mexican is never considered Mexican. As an example, in
certain Latin American Art circles Bridget has not been considered
a Mexican artist.
Fortunately, Mexican indigenous identification has changed since
Bridgets era with more pride in Mexicos rich and diverse cultural
history, which has been a political correction. After all, there was a
Mexican revolution that was won by Benito Juarez. Like England,
social family class of historical value in Mexico wealthy or poor,
European or Mexican, still holds a powerful position of respect and
honor in certain social circles.
The absence of this class value is clear in the United States where
financial stature is the predominant social barometer for
entitlement such as in some great Oil/Gas fortunes of Texas, where
money has bought position to otherwise insignificant individuals
devoid of any worthy character development or notable personal
achievement beyond disingenuous canned philanthropy. Bridget
once said, The only thing I share in common with _________ is
our family backgrounds, which has nothing whatsoever to do with
my art, interests, values, or life-destiny.
Bridget had many notable rivals in Mexico from elitist Nancy
Oakes to communist Frida Kahlo, who were covetous of her sex
appeal, beauty, talent, wit, intelligence, and background. Bridget
44

was notorious for her social scandals, and was not an angel when it
came to provoking a direct conflict.
Pedro Friedeberg related an event that took place when Bridget
first arrived in Mexico, One evening in 1953 Diego Rivera had a
dinner in honor of Bridgets arrival in Mexico City with a group of
artists and intellectuals, which included his near-death wife Frida
Kahlo in a wheelchair full of opiates with her two nurses.
At the dinner, Diegos attention was on Bridget and they openly
flirted. Bridgets long false eyelashes fluttered like a coy
schoolgirl. Frida struck out and attacked Bridget, You capitalist
English bitch - stop playing with Diego! Bridget retaliated by
slowly opening her purse and tossing Frida a bottle of perfume
replying, Darling, you should try bathing with this scent- it does
wonders.
Pedro Friedeberg later commented on this event, Frida had the
most horrid body odor, as she did not bath. She was full of hate
and quite the antithesis of the glamorized film Frida. Fridas envy
arose from Bridgets friendship with Diego and Bridgets alliance
with Fridas former lover surrealist Jacqueline Breton Lamba.
Bridgets painting and life were far more beautiful and elevated
than Fridas painful monologue - a wretched purgatory that brought
her fame. Fridas monkeys were well executed and had great
character like the ones painted on 1940s Mexican Tamale street
vendors carts.
Bridgets relationship with Tritton unraveled around 1978 with the
sale gone awry of her beloved Di Chirico painting. Tritton then
abandoned Bridget and married a relative of Bridgets, UK actress
Hon. Georgina Ann Ward in Mexico City, daughter of George
Ward, 1st Viscount Ward of Witley, granddaughter of Boy Capel,
Chanels first financier, and former wife of Alistair Forbes. Tritton
reportedly sold groceries from a van around Mexican villages and
died destitute a few months to a year after Bridget in 1990 or 1991.
Another great friend of Bridgets was the 1940s Mexican Yaqui
Indian actress Maria Felix from Sonora, Mexico. There were a
number of occasions where Bridget invited me for Marias visits in

45

her dank and cold lower apartment of Eric Norens house on Calle
Tabasco.
Bridget would spend hours preparing herself to see Maria. She
would wrap her long hair in a circle flat against her head and cover
it with a thin scarf, then take a hair blow dryer and dry the entire
head so her hair would be straightened. Before she removed the
scarf, she began the tedious process of applying her false eyelashes
with thick black mascara and then makeup. Once during such a
preparation, her cap on a front tooth fell off, and she hastily found
some quick-drying glue and adhered the tooth.
Then, she would dress rapidly and immediately go to her bed in
what she called her favorite location in a horizontal position with
pillows supporting her upright back. She would light a cigarette
and impatiently pick up the phone near her bed to call a servant to
bring tequila and Magi.
As we waited for Marias arrival, sipping small shots of tequila,
Bridget would discuss Marias life in Mexico and Paris, detailing
her taste for Napoleon III furnishings, jewels, art, and husbands.
The buzzer from the street would ring, and the house portero
would go to the front-gated door to let Marias chaffeur in. The
portero brought the uniformed chauffeur to Bridgets apartment,
where he announced to Bridget that the Senora Felix had arrived.
Then, Bridget and I would go to the street with the chauffeur and
portero to welcome Maria. Maria sat in the back of a shiny large
black Ford with dark tinted windows, upholstered in leopard skins,
with oversized sunglasses, covered in large Harry Winston
diamond jewelry, and her head covered with an Hermes scarf.
We became Marias entourage, who then discreetly escorted her
into Bridgets apartment. Bridget and Maria kissed and hugged
each other speaking in French and Spanish, as Maria chose not to
speak in English. Bridget positioned Maria in a chair near a table
and then returned to her bed.
Bridget introduced me to Maria, and then they began a fascinating
dialogue between themselves that would go on for 3 hours of
tequila shots. They were two divas mirroring each other from
hairstyles to makeup, hand gestures, and voice. Bridget was
46

original and natural, while Maria was a stylized version of her.

Maria by that time was going blind, and would sit facing Bridget
discussing her life, her lovers painting, her recent travels, and
current interviews. Bridget would respond with total focus on
Maria, ravissant, quelle horreur, no me digas, divino, magnifique,
horrible, quelle de mage, and so on. The content of their
conversations revolved exclusively around Maria, yet it was clear
that they both admired one another and emulated each other in
appearance and style.
During the 1970s Bridget began to spend more time in New York
and Bridgehampton, L.I. at the homes of her dear friend Countess
Bachu Worontzow, a stoic and regal East Indian Maharani lesbian,
who was the most gracious and kind female friend of Bridget's.
Bachu had been an unpretentious Rock of Gibraltar in Bridgets
life and they were the best of friends since Paris and London in
1930s.
There were a number of trips that Bridget and I traveled to New
York from Mexico together in the 1970s, where I would meet
more of her friends in New York. I was living in Mexico City at
the time, and would drive to Contembo to pick Bridget up. After a
cold nights sleep at the ranch with only coffee for breakfast, we
would then drive straight through from Ario to San Antonio,
Texas in one day. Bridget insisted that we eat only hard-boiled
eggs, hard bread, and sip Tequila for the long road trips. We
would then fly from Texas to New York for a couple of weeks.
Upon our return to Texas, we would shop for the items one could
not get in Mexico while staying at my familys ranch in Gonzales,
Texas near San Antonio. It was during these long trips when we
were alone that Bridget would detail her life stories.
Bridget socialized with her friends sculptor Bessie Rockefeller de
Cuevas, Vogue Editor Babs Simpson, Vogue Editor D.D. Ryan,
author Tennessee Williams, photographer Horst, painter Paul
Cadmus, jewelry designer Kenneth Jay Lane, and Jo Carstairs.
Her many friends from London, including Lady Sarah Spencer
Churchill and Lord Anthony Snowdon, would come to visit
47

Bridget as she held court in Bachus impeccably appointed

Regency townhouse on East 61st Street.
Bridget made extraordinary entrances. She would descend the
Baccarat crystal stair rail with solid gold fittings at Bachus
dressed in a basic tailored mans black shirt with a mans scarf
around her neck, tight black jeans with a silver buckled belt,
simple flat black riding boots, thick black false eyelashes,
vermillion orange lipstick, a loose mane of long thick grey hair
held in place with two large tortoise-shell combs, with cigarette in
her left hand that had an array of mystical rings on almost every
finger, and a shot of tequila in her other hand.
She glided like a prima ballerina into lavish and glittering cocktail
and seated dinner parties held every night in her honor to greet
her friends. By the end of the evening, filled with too much
tequila or brandy, when the old Cecil Beaton and Horst
photograph albums would come out, a jealous fight would evolve
between Bachus lover Jackie Rae and Bridget. The catfights
were fueled by Bridget or instigated from Jackies jealousy of the
attention Bachu and Jackies x-lover Jo Carstairs showered upon
Bridget.
Bridget cherished these precious friends that were Caf society
remnants of glamorous eras, which Bachu effortlessly orchestrated
in elaborate theatrical productions.
In 1978, she and Jo Carstairs were photographed in the studio of
photographer Francesco Scavullo and his lover Sean Byrnes
through my introduction for the book Scavullo Harper & Row.
Francesco was a dear friend, who I first met through his lover
Sean when Sean was an editor at Interview with Warhol in 1972. I
later introduced him to Margaux Hemingway in 1974, then we
became good friends during the De Laurentis filming of Lipstick
in LA 1975, and later in 1978 I brought Bridget and British
Standard Oil heiress Jo Carstairs to him to photograph for his first
Scavullo book.

48

Bridget had known Scavullo since he was Horsts assistant in the

1930s, but had not seen him in years. I reunited them in New
York by inviting Scavullo and Sean to Bachus cocktail parties.
Sean fell in love with Bridget and insisted Francesco photograph
her. Jo Carstairs was another friend of Bridgets that caught their
eye, who was the former lover of Marlene Deitrich and British
lesbian Standard Oil heiress enigma since the 1920s that owned
Whale Cay in the Bahamas.
Bridget and Scavullo became friends, and we would go together
to Studio 54 with Dee Dee Ryan, Kenny Lane, and Halston. I
used to spend Christmas with Francesco and Sean at their
fabulous carriage house on E. 63rd St. There were summers in the
1970s that Bridget and I would be in Long Island, and she would
stay at Bachus in Bridgehampton and I at Scavulllos in
Southampton.
Bridget loved New York most of all, but had few options
presented to change residence. She had great hopes with the
prospect of a new marriage in 1982 to a much older Italian Prince
that was a friend of her mothers in Italy.
Bridget stated in her letters of 1982 after her sons death and the
indigenous squatters that claimed her land, F____g invaders of
Contembo Ill try to sell it for anything a shame, as it is truly
one of the most beautiful places I ve ever seen. I always despised
family, but now? Crave it and envy all of the tribes. I suppose I
had this super egocentric idea that I could create my own nonblood family, but people are still so scared and here we are rushing
into the 21st Century with 18th Century debauchery and no
advancements weird 16th Century infinitely less prejudiced.
She wanted to leave the pain of being forced to move out of her
beloved Contembo in 1978, the love lost with Tritton, the
struggles perpetuated by her sons demise behind in Mexico, and
resurrect a new life in Europe. She dismantled her favorite
possessions in Mexico City and shipped not only her belongings,
but also her seventeen Chihuahuas, terriers and two Italian
49

Mastiffs by cargo ship from Tampico, Mexico to Rome in 1982.

Bridget became engaged to her mothers friend Alberto, a married
Italian Prince in Rome in 1982, where she briefly lived at the
Hassler Hotel waiting for his divorce. He died from a heart attack
related to Italian tax stress issues, leaving her without funds,
which ended with her return to Mexico in 1984
Between 1982 and 1984, Tichenor lived in Rome and painted a
series of paintings titled Masks, Spiritual Guides, and Dual
Deities. Her final years were spent painting at her home in San
Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.
After a series of life-shattering events that began with her former
lover Patrick Trittons ill negotiated sale of her beloved painting
by Di Chirico in 1976, her move from Contembo to Mexico City
in 1978, her sons death and the events that surrounded it in 1982,
and culminating in the sudden and untimely death of her Italian
fianc and the proceedings of his family to exclude her from the
estate in Rome 1984 Tichenor became emotionally exhausted and
began to physically deteriorate.
Although apathetic about her fated return to Mexico City to live in
the home of Baron Alexander von Wuthenau, which was assisted
by her friends Milou de Monteferrier and Countess Bachu
Worontzow financing, she continued to paint. She moved from
Mexico City to live her last years with her English Bulldog Bi Bi
in a home built to her specifications in San Miguel de Allende,
Guanajuato, Mexico by her close friend the late Swedish shipping
tycoon Eric Noren.
Eric had supported her financially for many years, and was always
there for her, no matter what. Eric owned the land on a golf resort,
where he built Bridgets new home. The location was not to her
liking, nor the construction or gardens, but she did her best to
compromise, sighing with resignation given her situation. Her
close friends there were English film director Peter Glenville,
Milou de Monteferrier, Carmen Friedeberg, and Jon Lightfoot.
50

Tichenor was the subject of a 1985 documentary titled Rara Avis,

so named by Pedro Friedeberg, shot in her friend anthropology
historian Baron Alexander von Wuthenaus home in Mexico City.
It was directed by Tufic Maklouf and focused on Tichenors life in
Europe, her being a subject for the photographers Man Ray, Cecil
Beaton, Irving Penn, John Rawlings, George Platt Lynes, Joffe,
Horst, her career as a Vogue Fashion Editor in New York with
Cond Nast Art Director Alexander Lieberman between 1948 and
1952, and her Magic Realism painting career in Mexico that began
in 1953. The title of the film, Rara Avis, is Latin meaning a rare
and unique thing or person.
She complained bitterly that San Miguel de Allende was too cold
or too hot, too dry or to wet, too windy or too still, and too full of
loud wealthy Texans with the wrong values or too void of
interesting people with the right values. American Artist Jon
Lightfoot had been introduced to her through myself in 1980 in
Mexico City, and at the end of her life he became one of her
dearest friends in San Miguel de Allende.
Jon was a highly disciplined and well-established fine artist that
had been a student with Joffrey Ballet, a modern dancer with the
Martha Graham Company in New York, a Wilhelmina
print/commercial model in Europe along with his friend Bruce
Weber, and an actor in Hollywood before he began his
professional career as a painter. He was Bridgets most valued
artistic relationship in San Miguel with shared commonalities,
which stimulated and inspired her to continue painting in the face
of her terminal illness. He forced her to eat when she would not,
and gave her the enthusiasm to paint as long as she could.
Her close friends were the only human family she ever had.
Those that were dearest to her heart and soul generously blessed
her with great love, compassion, reverence, and admiration
throughout her life.
Bridget and Jeremy healed their estranged and damaged mother51

son relationship to a degree with its complicated history, becoming

friends, versus intimate family members. Bridget adored Jeremy
and regretted abandoning him and her inability to parent him. She
held that heavy sadness throughout her life, and yearned for family
connection towards the end of her life.
Jeremy was awe-struck by his mothers persona and eccentric
bohemian celebrity. When I saw Bridget and Jeremy together he
appeared hurtfully withdrawn in her presence, reserved in a silence
that I perceived masked unspoken painful resentment and
internalized anger towards her for her maternal absence. He did not
provide financially for her after his death, which was not of his
creation, but due to his Grandfathers Trust structure.
When Jeremy died at age 42 in 1982, his family members ceased
any communication with her, which burst her already broken heart.
She said, The family refused to speak with me after he died in
Boston. Then in New York, I was confronted with the family
lawyers on the steps of the church at Jeremys funeral to block me
from any claim to his Trust, which was the final dagger. The
lawyers forbade any family member to have communication with
her thereafter.
Tichenor never had a true blood-related family that was bonded,
but did have the most amazing sincere family of loyal friends that
respected, admired, and loved her dearly.
There were some years during the late 1980s that I would be in
Mexico City or Carreyes working with clients. When I called her
from Mexico she would appear jealous, when she truly wanted to
see me and was angry, because I was not with her. She would say,
Why are you with so and so, how boring, how shallow of you,
darling must you be so superficial, and who are THEY anyway?
Sometimes, her sarcasm was so horrific of others that I was
involved with that she verbally tore the flesh to the bone of anyone
that I became close to in fits of jealousy.
She did the same with her close friends such as Milou, who like
myself, was brought to tears many times by her acerbic tongue.
52

She was irreverent to her own class that considered themselves

superior, authoritative figures that classified or dominated, and
those that prioritized finance as being the finite measure of human
success. She abhorred anything inhuman or unkind, yet could be
both with her piercing wit.
As with many people, there were contradictions in her character
revealed only with a few friends. She would deliver elaborate sets
of values in comparative analysis that involved discernment with
lessons to be learned in every story she told, which was one of
her intimate ways of expressing her love to me.
In one of her letters from 1987 she said regarding my portrait
painting, Brilliant you are painting these peoples portraits, but
must you make the photo you sent of Mum and Child painting so
Aryan? Darling, they are way too Nazi, but then again perhaps
they are, no? Germans living in Gstaad with heaps of Swiss
Francs Dios mio Nazi bank accounts for the privileged few in
the distillery business, who once were my German relatives
servants, no doubt!
You can make a tidy fortune with your portraiture career with all
those super rich, who crave their graven images for posterity God
only knows why - paint them as YOU see them and nothing else,
take FOREVER to finish, and charge a bloody FORTUNE the
clients love the attention and the higher the price the better
besides, its enormous discipline and good for you!
So few people are doing portraits these days. BUT, dont forget to
do them with the BEST you can do, as fashion changes all too
rapidly. DO everyone who approaches you And, NEVER use
Copal Medium or any of the Cobalt Blues only Prussian Blues or
Manganese Blues and, do not forget the WHITES, never Zinc
and only Titanium they crack otherwise and all the work is a
disaster!
Then later, you will be free to paint, as you like. I cant paint
anyone I am not in love with, and if I do, they are much to true or

53

prophetic. I used to paint my favorite companions, the two-legged

winged ones and four- legged ones, dear souls, and then they
immediately died. So, ISLAM has its points.
When I was living in Paris in 1990 painting and spiritually
advising actress Marisa Berenson and others, I made a trip to give
spiritual consultations to Italian HRH Princess Maria Beatrice di
Savoia in Cuernavaca. I called Bridget when I arrived, as I always
did, and she informed me that she had bone cancer and was
undergoing treatment in San Miguel and Mexico City. She went
into her normal rage on the phone, demanding the reasons for me
being in Cuernavaca and not with her in San Miguel. She would
try the little girl poor me act to get me to change my plans, and
when that did not work, she would start dissecting whomever I was
with into pieces.
I explained that I was helping Beatrice with spiritual consultation,
which she said was a futile case to denigrate me. Darling, you
are as mad as she I knew the family well, lived with them in Italy
before the War - you are wasting your God given gift as a Spiritist
help the poor and needy that are connected spiritually - not the
spoiled rich that worship the Golden Calf in a17th century
paralyzed genetic dysfunction - they contribute nothing and isolate
in walled compounds with the worst God-awful taste I have ever
seen! And darling, why on earth are you seeing Marisa. There are
far more interesting people in Paris.
I was deeply concerned and upset with her comments, yet had
learned to distance myself with a protective wall from her expected
verbal assaults and not take it personally. I hoped for the best and
prayed for her, but did not realize how seriously ill she was.
I had a defiant boundary in place for over a decade to protect
myself from Nanny Bridget and her acid-tongue, which was
about to crumble into my first and greatest acceptance and
compassion for an alcoholic loved one.
There were other friends that followed Bridget, where I learned to
love unconditionally those with drinking and drug diseases. I had
54

been in denial that I came from an alcoholic family myself, until

my eyes were opened at the end of Bridgets life. The beginning of
my own self-awareness regarding the effects of my alcoholic
parents was triggered at the time of Bridgets death.
A few weeks later, after I returned to Paris from Mexico, I received
a call from Pedro Friedeberg. Pedro informed me that Bridget was
dieing and that she asked that I come to Mexico to see her as
quickly as possible. He said, She is seeing only THOSE she loves,
which is excluding Leonora, Maria, and MANY others.
Why was I selected as one of the chosen few was I really the
spiritually adopted son she declared I was after years of constant
brow-beating and criticism that I had distanced myself from? Now,
she wanted me with her when she was dieing what to do to
prepare myself was I too walk on the same 19 year old path of
egg-shells at this critical moment how to be with dear Bridget?
I called her immediately and she said, Please bring me Hershey
Kisses from Duty- Free and none of that Swiss or French stuff
good old Hersheys. I was on the next plane to Mexico City in a
state of shock.
I arrived in Mexico City from the 11-hour trip, and took a taxi to
my hostesss home and then straight to the hospital. I arrived at the
entrance to her room where Countess Bachu Worantzow and her
lover Jackie Rae were sitting. We spoke and they somberly went
into detail regarding Bridgets operations and treatments with the
doctors prognosis that she could die at any moment, or could last a
while longer. I was aghast, having never experienced the thought
of loosing Bridget or anyone I loved.
Pedro Friedeberg opened the door to Bridgets room and asked that
I come in to see her alone. I entered the room where Bridget was
sitting upright in a hospital bed with a doctor, nurse, and her dear
friend Marina Lascaris sitting in a chair beside her doing petitepointes. Her hair had become snow white and she wore no
makeup. Shockingly, she looked younger with the innocence of a
child. Her glamorous masks were gone and she sat still. I instantly
55

recognized her complete surrender and acceptance to death,

something that she talked about often years earlier.
Bridget said with her still whisky patrician voice, Darling
Zackapoo, Lambbbbkins, you are here, at last! What took you so
long and what on earth has happened? - youre face has become so
round, but your eyes are as blue as ever! What are you eating and
why are you so muscular? Aren t you looking smart tres chic et
beau! Where are you staying and who are you with? Why are you
with so and so simply ridiculous stay in a hotel Gods sake, not
with THOSE people.
She then introduced me to everyone in the room and directed the
nurse and doctor to find a chair for me, as though they were her
maid and butler for a cocktail party to begin. The nurse and doctor
then left the room.
We began to talk with her focusing on me and wanting to hear my
news and asking to see photographs of my recent work. She loved
my Swirl Vortex paintings and she called them lyrical notes of
light. Carlos de Laborde entered the room to check on her and
quickly left, while Marina sat quietly doing her petite-pointes.
During that first visit, she asked that I place one Hershey Kiss at a
time in her mouth. Her eyes opened with delight, and said, These
are soooo divine, reminds me of the War years in America, one
more please. I gave her a few more, which was a lovely exchange
between us, where we expressed how much we loved one another.
She quickly said, No more my pet, not now. Then, in the next
moment she shifted from our shared intimacy to saying in a more
Bridget the nanny character, Now be a good boy and sit over
there.
Bridget then pushed the button for the nurse, who immediately
appeared. Bridget asked that she call for the doctor. The doctor
arrived, and the room became full of Bridgets directives to close
the curtains, turn a lamp on with a scarf over the shade, move the
flowers, move a table, bring more chairs, and check her life
support apparatus. She resumed her normal character of barking
56

orders, insisting the rooms dcor and ambiance be re-arranged

with a burst of controlling activity that distracted from our
intimacy.
That was Bridgets way of distancing herself from her vulnerability
when she was in an intimate situation. I said, I know you want to
see Bachu and Jackie, and I will come back tomorrow. I left the
room to join Bachu and Jackie with uncontrollable emotion. My
conscious love surged out of me with an eruptive grief behind it
that took many years to subside, yet never ended.
At the time of Tichenors death in the Hospital Londres and finally
at the de Laborde-Noguez Yturbe residence in Mexico City in
1990, she chose to be exclusively with her intimate friends Pedro
Friedeberg, Eric Noren, Cristina Bremer Faesler, Jon Lightfoot,
Countess Bachu Worontzow, Alan Glass, the De Laborde -Noguez
Yturbe family and myself. Even her other friends such as Leonora
Carrington and Maria Felix were not permitted to visit her. There
had been rifts in the Carrington relationship.
After her son Jeremy Chisholms death in 1982, she had no contact
with or from his estranged family. There were no family members
with her at the time of her death, nor were there family relations
included in the last will and testament of her estate. Yet, when
Bridget began to receive fame post-mortem, certain insignificant
family members through marriage, who had cruelly abandoned her
in hard-times alive, tried to capitalize on her notoriety with BBT
consultation titles and resourcing blatant copyright infringement of
this very material.
It is interesting to note that Tichenors mother Vera Bate Lombardi
was a close friend of Comte Leon de Laborde, who was the most
fervent admirer of CoCo Chanel in her youth. At the end of
Bridgets life, his descendents and their wives Carlos de LabordeNoguez Yturbe and his wife Marina Lascaris, Daniel de LabordeNoguez Yturbe and his wife Marie Aime de Motalembert became
Tichenors most respected allies, trusted friends, and caretakers at
the end of her life in their home in Mexico City, Mexico. Carloss
and Daniels father Jean de Laborde had been a close friend of
57

Bridgets since her arrival in Mexico 1953.

The celebrated sculptor and artist Marina Lascaris, former wife of
economist and art collector Carlos de Laborde-Noguez Yturbe was
the lovingly devoted individual, who stood a constant vigil at
Bridgets bedside from the onset of her illness until just before her
last breath. Marina was the embodiment of quiet dignity, which is
the noble characteristic that the British have always admired most.
As death approached Bridget in the hospital in Mexico City during
my final visit, I saw and heard the visions and voices of her past
returning to her in sequential apparitions guided by her ancestral
spirits. We sat alone, speechless, and staring at one another for a
long time. I witnessed her spirit guides effortlessly remove each
one of her identity-masks to reveal long-held truths of her souls
identity and purpose.
Her acute awareness of her defects of character in those moments
enabled her to release the binding malignant chains of sadness,
anger, resentment, and fear that handicapped her self-love and the
love she had for others. A marvelous transition had occurred with
her and between us, where I experienced an immortal love from
Bridget that I knew would be forever. I promised her in those
moments that what she had not done in regard to her own selfworth in her life, I would do for her so that she would be known to
the world
Her psyche had surrendered to her anima. The struggle and the
pain were over with her ego that she considered a choking ivy
and her worst enemy. Bridget was like a serene ancient Egyptian
Isis with alabaster skin and white hair in an ascension modality
letting go. She was smiling and in perfect balance as her spirit
guides prepared to transport her soul to the magical worlds she
painted and beyond.
A few weeks later, Bridget peaceful passed away in the home of
Daniel de Laborde-Noguez Yturbe in the arms of his wife Marie
Aime de Motalembert.
58

I had the realization when Bridget died that every choice she made
in her life, as with any great work of art, was a self-portrait of
courage and conviction. So many of the life lessons that she had
learned and taught me were mirrored in my own life and prepared
me for my own challenges.
After her death, she became my principal spirit guide, continuing
to show me my path to authentic self-fulfillment. In spirit form,
just as in life, she has illuminated her sharp discernment in values
to me of what is important and what is not.
Ines Amor Gallery, Galeria Souza, Karning
Gallery, Galeria Pecanins 1954 1980s
Bridgets paintings were first sold in 1954 by the Ines Amor
Gallery in Mexico City, and then later by her beloved patron, the
late Mexican art dealer and collector Antonio de Souza at the
Galeria de Souza, Paseo de la Reforma 334-A, Berna 3, Mexico D.
F., Mexico. In 1955, the Karning Gallery, directed by Robert
Isaacson, represented her. In 1972 and 1974 she exhibited at the
Galeria Pecanins, Durango, 186, Colonia Roma, Mexico D.F,
Mexico 06700.
Instituto de Bellas Artes de San Miguel de
Allende 1990
Her last exhibition was a comprehensive retrospect at the Instituto
de Bellas Artes de San Miguel de Allende in February 1990. Her
works became a part of important international private and
museum collections in the United States, Mexico and Europe that
included the Churchill and Rockefeller families.
History of Women: Twentieth-Century Artists of
Mexico - Museo de Arte Contemporneo de
Monterrey 2008
The Museo de Arte Contemporneo de Monterrey held an
exhibition of Bridgets work in 2008, with the inclusion of her
paintings amongst 50 prominent Mexican artists, including the

59

renowned Frida Kahlo. It was titled History of Women:

Twentieth-Century Artists in Mexico. The exhibition centered on
women who had developed their artistic activities within individual
and diverse disciplines while working in Mexico.
Bridget Bate Tichenor works presented recently:
In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of
Women Artists in Mexico and the United
States*
December 22, 2011-April 22, 2012
In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in
Mexico and the United States assumes a new perspective on
surrealism, demonstrating the unique role geography and gender
played in this international movement. North America represented
a place free from European traditions for women surrealistsboth
native-born U.S. and Mexican citizens as well as migrs fleeing
war-torn Europe.
Unlike their male counterparts who usually cast women as objects
for their delectation and imagination, female surrealists delved into
their own subconscious and dreams. For them this exploration was
one of self-discovery as this new knowledge empowered and
ultimately enabled them to create extraordinary visual images, both
personal and universal.
Arranged thematically, approximately 175 works in a variety of
media date from 1931 (the year of Lee Millers first surreal
photograph) to 1968 (the year that Yayoi Kusama, working in New
York City, presented one of her landmark happenings, Alice in
Wonderland in Central Park).
A handful of slightly later examples demonstrate surrealisms
historical overlap and influence on the feminist movement. They
represent some thirty-five artists, both those who personally
associated with the surrealist movement as well as those who
experimented briefly with its philosophic tenets.

60

Curators: Ilene Susan Fort, American Art, LACMA, and Teresa

Arcq, adjunct curator,
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico
Credit Line: This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the Museo de Arte
Moderno, Mexico (MAM). It was made possible through a
generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico DF,
Mexico 2012
The Museum of the City of Mexico's director, Cristina Faesler, has
organized an exhibition dedicated to Tichenor in Mexico City
beginning May 23, 2012 to August 5, 2012. The exhibition at the
Museo de la Ciudad de Mxico is a visual monograph of over 100
paintings and 35 drawings of Tichenor's works from 18 private
collections worldwide of her surrealist vision and technique.
Director: Cristina Faesler
Curator: Teresa Arq
Museum President: Jose Valtierta
Collectors, Museums, and Auctions
Bridgets paintings are sought after for their rare and refined
esoteric nature with superlative detail in master painting technique.
She left 200 paintings upon her death that were divided between
Pedro Friedeberg and the de Laborde-noguez Yturbe family. Her
works rarely come on the market.
Interest in her work by art collectors and museums has been
increasing greatly in recent years. Christies auctioned two
paintings by Tichenor in July 2007 at New Yorks Rockefeller
Plaza, and both received nearly 10 times the original estimates in
the auction of Mexican actress Mara Felixs estate. Bridgets oil
on canvas titled Domadora de Quimeras, featuring the face of
Flix with details by painter Antoine Tzapoff, went for $20,400
USD, which was several times higher than its original low estimate
61

of $2,000 USB. Another work, Caja de Crystal, fetched more

than its estimated price:
Price Realized: (Set Currency) $18,000 USD Price includes
buyers premium Estimate: $2,000 $3,000
Bridget Bate Tichenor has been mentioned in
the following books:
(1944) The Diary of Anas Nin, Volume III, 1939-1944
(1992) Kundalini Awakening - A Gentle Guide to Chakra
Activation and Spiritual Growth Author: Zachary Selig Bantam
Publishing ISBN: 0553353306 New York, New York
(2000) Intimate Companions - A Triography of George Platt
Lynnes, Paul Cadmus,Lincoln Kirsten, and Their Circle Author:
David Leddick St. Martins Press ISBN:0312208987 New York,
New York
(2003) "Them: A Memoir of Parents" By Francine du Plessix Grey,
Penguin Books Ltd.London, UK. ISBN 1-559420-049-1
(2007) Surreal Eden: Edward James and Los Pozos Author:
Margeret Hooks Princeton Architectual Press ISBN:
13:97815686128 Princeton, New Jersey
(2010) American Vogue; Anna Wintour, Bridget Bate Tichenor,
Sadi Ranson, Isabella Blow, Lauren Weisberger, Diana Vreeland,
Stacy London Author: Books LLC (Creator) Publisher: Books LLC
Pub. Date: May 1, 2010 Binding: Paperback Pages: 114 ISBN:
1155156536 ISBN-13: 9781155156538
(2010) British Expatriates in Mexico: Bridget Tichenor, Paul James
Trade paperback, Books LLC 2010 English 22 pages ISBN:
1156908787 ISBN-13: 9781156908785
(2010) "Chanel: The Legend and the Life" by Justine Picardie,
62

Harper-Collins, September 21, 2010, ISBN-10: 0061963852

(2011) Friedeberg, Pedro, De Vacaciones Por La Vida - Memorias
no Autorizados del Pintor Pedro Friedeberg: Trilce Ediciones,
Mexico DF, Mexico, Editor Deborah Holtz, Direccin General de
Publicaciones del Conaculta y la Universidad Autnoma de Nuevo
Len (UANL) 2011, ISBN 607-7663-24-7 ISBN 13
9786077663249.
Artist Pedro Friedeberg wrote about Tichenor and their life in
Mexico in his 2011 book of memoirs De Vacaciones Por La Vida
(Holiday For Life), including stories of her interaction with his
friends and contemporaries Bridget Bate Tichenor, Alan Glass,
Salvador Dal, Zachary Selig, Leonora Carrington, Kati Horna,
Tamara de Lempicka and Edward James.
(2012) In Wonderland The Adventures of Female Surrealists in
Mexico and the United States, edited by Illene Susan Forte, Tere
Arq with Tere Geis, Dawn Ades, and Maria Buszek
Bridget Bate Tichenor Articles:
Hombre Vogue (Mexico) 1985, Vol. 74470745617, pg. 51-56, by:
Tufic Mahlouf Aki, "Bridget Bate Tichenor"
Bridget Tichenor (Mexico) by Jean de Laborde 1991
Carta Postuma a Bridget (Mexico) by Pedro Friedeberg,
Mexico en el Surrealismo La Transfusion Creativa 1995
References
1. Marquise de Fontenoy. Revelation Of The High Life Within
Royal Palaces; The Private Life Of Emperors, Kings, Queens,
Princes, And Princesses (1892). From the original first edition
with Pedro Friedeberg. New edition: ISBN-13: 9781167983870
Publisher: Kessinger Publishing Company, Publication date:
9/10/2010
63

http://archive.org/details/marquisedefonten00font
2. The Diary of Anas Nin, Volume III, 1939-1944
3. Sarah (Vera) Gertrude Bate Lombardi
http://www.thepeerage.com/p15929.htm
4. Charles-Roux, Edmonde. Chanel: Her Life, Her World, and the
Woman Behind the Legend She Herself Created, New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1975 ISBN 0-394-47613-1, pp.249, 250, 256, 323, 33143, 355, 359.
5. Drummond, Helga. The Dynamics of Organizational Collapse;
The Case of Barings Bank, New York: Routledge, 2008 ISBN 9780-415-39961-6.
6. Vera Bate Lombardi/Chanel
Chanel by Edmonde Charles Roux, Published by Alfred A.
Knopf, Inc., Copyright 1975, ISBN 0-394-47613-1.
Text: P. 249, 250, 256, 323 331-43, 355, 359
7. April 18, 1997, lot #249, Man Ray Bridget Bate 1941.
8. Christie's Photography Auction, London, May 1, 1996, Lot
213/Sale 558 Man Ray - Bridget Bate, 1941
9. Tufic Makhlouf IMDB
10. Frederick Blantford Bate
http://www.vlib.us/medical/FriendsFrance/ff07.htm
11. "MISS BRIDGET BATE SETS WEDDING DAY", New York
Times, October 10, 1939

64

12. Bridget Bate Tichenor Website

http://bridgetbatetichenor.com/
13. The Tarot Reader (Jean Patchett and Bridget Tichenor) - New
York 1949 by Irving Penn SAAM
14. Rosa Frederica Baring Fitzgeorge
http://www.thepeerage.com/p10092.htm
15. Captain Frank Wigsell Arkwright
http://www.thepeerage.com/p10854.htm#i108534
16. "Hugh Chisholms Jr. Have Son", New York Times, December
23, 1940
17. Rosa Frederica Baring Fitzgeorge biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Frederica_Baring_FitzGeorge
18. www.answers.com - rara avis
19. FOBO: Brewer's: Rara Avis (Latin, a rare bird)
20.

Frederick Blantford Bate

http://www.thepeerage.com/p15929.htm#i159284
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Blantford_Bate
21. Baring Banking Family
Drummond, Helga. The Dynamics of Organizational Collapse; The
Case of Barings Bank, New York: Routledge, 2008 ISBN 978-0415-39961-6.

65

22. Spring, Justin. "An interview with George Tooker," American

Art v. 16, No. 1 (Spring 2002): pp. 61-81.
23. Morelia Film Festival, Mexico
24. Sir. Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
http://thepeerage.com/p10620.htm#i106196
25. Selby, Jon and Selig, Zachary. (1992) Kundalini Awakening, a
Gentle Guide to Chakra Activation and Spiritual Growth, New
York: Random House, ISBN 978-0-553-35330-3 (0-553-35330-6),
Front matter: Acknowledgements.
26. Mara Flix: la Doa Auction
27. The Papers of Hugh Chisholm Wedding date/location 1939
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/service/mss/eadxmlmss/eadpdfmss/2007/ms0
07013.pdf
28. Madsen, Axel. Chanel: A Woman of Her Own. Macmillan,
1991.
ISBN 0805016392. p. 4.
http://books.google.com/books?
id=jgJ7jYuXeYsC&pg=PA357&lpg=PA357&dq=Vera+Bate+Lom
bardi+'Chanel'&source=bl&ots=AaHRA2399r&sig=dJtmns0B1tgJLb-5bnf8gqbp5U&hl=en&ei=VM9bS971B4z0sQPQ4WgAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CBk
Q6AEwBzgK#v=onepage&q=Vera Bate Lombardi
'Chanel'&f=false
29. Morelia Film Festival, Mexico
31. Pedro Friedberg Letter

66

http://zacharyselig.com/images/film/bridget/pedroletteradoption.jp
g
32. Zachary Selig - bio IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2325528/bio
33. Christie's Latin American Art Auction, New York, July 17-18,
2007, Bridget Tichenor Lot 182/Sale 1931 Domadora de quimeras
34. Christie's Latin American Art Auction, New York, July 17-18,
2007, Bridget Tichenor Lot 181/Sale 1931 Caja de crystal
35. Vera Bate Lombardi/Co Co Chanel
Chanel and the Nazis: what Coco Avant Chanel and other films
don't tell you The Times. 4 April 2009
36. Vera Bate Lombardi/Chanel
http://www.internetstones.com/chanel-cuff-bracelet-gabriellecocol-fine-jewelry-artistic-collection-hautecoutureaccessories.html
37. Vera Bate Lombardi/Chanel
http://www.forward.com/articles/115561/
38. Bridget Bate Tichenor at the Internet Movie Database
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2664461/
39. Bridget Bate Tichenor & Sarah Vera Gertrude Arkwright Bate
Lombardi - The Peerage
http://www.thepeerage.com/p15929.htm
http://www.thepeerage.com/p15929.htm#i159288
40. Isadora Duncan Isadora Duncan, My Life Boni & Liveright
67

1927, Reissued Liveright Publishing Corporation 1995. ISBN 0

87140 158 4
http://www.amazon.com/My-Life-Isadora-Duncan/dp/0871401584
41. Bridget Tichenor IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1037838/

42. Scavullo, 1978 The Peerage website

43. Vera Bate Lombardi/ Chanel
http://www.detourmagazine.co.uk/2009/03/01/the-life-of-gabriellebonheur-coco-chanel/
44.Vera Bate Lombardi/ Chanel
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?
qid=20090224181650AAvdGiP
45. Hooks, Margaret. Surreal Eden-Edward James and Las Pozas,
New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007 ISBN 1-56898612-2, ISBN 978-1-56898-612-8, p.57.
46. Vera Bate Lombardi/Chanel
http://halloftheblackdragon.com/reel/795/hotties-of-history-cocochanel.html
47. www.cornermag.com - the Chronology of Remedios Varo
48. Leddick, David. Intimate Companions: A Triography of George
Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Lincoln Kirstein, and Their Circle, New
York: Macmillan, 2001 ISBN 0-312-27127-1, ISBN 978-0-31227127-5, pp.201-202.

68

49. "Dream Works: Can a Legendary Surrealist Garden in Mexico

Bloom Again?", New York Times Style Magazine, March 30, 2008
50. Vera Bate Lombardi/Chanel
http://www.themakeupgallery.info/lookalike/icons/chanel.htm
51. Vera Bate Lombardi/ Chanel
http://shoesareourreligion.blogspot.com/2009/06/coco-chanelfashion-legend.html
52. Gray, Francine du Plessix. Them: A Memoir of Parents, New
York: The Penguin Group, 2006 ISBN 1-59420-049-1, p.307.
53.Vera Bate Lombardi/ Chanel
http://www.celebrities-galore.com/celebrities/bridget-batetichenor/home/
54. Vera Bate Lombardi/ Chanel
http://www.ovimagazine.com/art/5293
55. Breton, Andr. "The Second Manifesto of Surrealism",
Manifestos of Surrealism, Ann Arbor: U of Michigan Press, 1972,
pp.117, 194.
56. Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge Duke of
Teck, Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge: Facts,
Discussion ... Vera Bate Lombardi, Coco Chanel Muse and PR
representative was rumored to be the illegitimate daughter of
Adolphus Cambridge, 1st Marquess of Cambridge and ...
www.absoluteastronomy.com/.../Adolphus_Cambridge,_1st_Marq
uess_of_ Cambridge - Cached Similar

69

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphus_Cambridge,_1st_Marquess
_of_Cambridge
57. Queen Mary of Teck
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_of_Teck
58. Vera Arkwright - Head Nurse American Hospital Paris WW I
"War Letters of an American Woman" by Marie Van vorst,
American Ambulance, Neuilly, France, copyright John Lane
Company, NY 1916
http://www.archive.org/stream/warlettersofamer00vanvrich/warlett
ersofamer00vanvrich_djvu.txt
59. Chanel S.A.
60. Royal Musings Text from Marquise de Fontenoy later edition
- Vera Arwright to Marry Frederick Bate 1916
http://royalmusingsblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2010/04/veraarkwright-to-marry-frederick-bate.html
61. Rosa Federicka Fitzgeorge NY Times 1909
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?
_r=1&res=9A0CE1DE1630E733A25756C2A9669D946897D6CF
62. The Yale University Art Gallery Bridget and Hugh Chisholm
Portrait Eugene Berman 1840
http://ecatalogue.art.yale.edu/detail.htm?objectId=52444

70

63. Artnet: Bridget Tichenor, past auction results for Domadora de

quimeras
64. Artnet: Bridget Tichenor, past auction results for Caja de cristal
Bridget Bate Tichenor biography
65. Chisholm Family History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_J._Chisholm
66. In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in
Mexico and the United States at LACMA 2012
http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/in-wonderland
67. Art review: "In Wonderland: Surrealist Adventures of Women
Artists" Los Angeles Times, January 30, 2012
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2012/01/artreview-in-wonderland-surrealist-adventures-of-women-artists-atlacma.html
68. Secretera de Cultura DF: "Bridget Tichenor Presentacin al
pblico en general"
http://www.cultura.df.gob.mx/index.php/cartelera/details/7687bridget-tichenor-presentacion-al-publico-en-general
69. Huffington Post Magic Realist Painter Bridget Tichenor
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vernissagetv/magic-realistpainter_b_1564512.html

71

Bridget Bate Tichenors Mother Vera Bate Lombardi (R.) with Coo Chanel (L.)

72

73

Vera Bate Lombardi biography by her relation Graham Senior-Milne

UK.
http://www.academia.edu/12973462/Vera_Bate_Lombardi

Vera Bate Lombardi Biography- accurate

genealogy data sourced and referenced by
Graham Senior-Milne, BBTs Hammersly
family member author Copyright owned by
Mr. Milne.
Vera Bate Lombardi
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

VeraBateLombardi

74

'WellknowninSociety',1909
Born

VeraNinaArkwright
11August1883
London

Died

1948
Rome

Nationality

British,American,Italian

Occupation

WWInurse,socialite,associateof
CocoChanel

Knownfor

IntroducedCocoChaneltoEnglish
Society,inspiredChanel's'English
Look',denouncedChanelfor
collaboratingwiththeNazis

Vera Bate Lombardi (18831948), born Vera Nina Arkwright but said to have
also used the name Sarah Gertrude Arkwright,[1] was a British socialite and
close associate of Coco Chanel and the mother of Bridget Bate Tichenor, the
75

surrealist artist. A British subject by birth, she became a citizen of the United
States after her first marriage and of Italy after her second marriage. She was
arrested in Italy in 1943 on suspicion of spying for the British during World War II.
After her release, she went to Madrid, where she denounced Chanel
for collaborating with the Nazis.
Contents
[hide]

1 Early life and reputed royal illegitimacy

1.1 Birth
o 1.2 Mother's connections
o 1.3 Reputed daughter of Prince Adolphus by Rosa
Baring
o 1.4 Lombardi after her parents' divorce in 1885
o 1.5 The official evidence - The 1891 Census
o 1.6 Prince Adolphus and Rosa Baring - Did they know
each other?
o 1.7 Prince Adolphus and Rosa Baring - Were they in
the right place at the right time?
o 1.8 Rosa Baring's motives - Seduction or revenge?
o 1.9 Other matters requiring explanation - What
happened in 1885?
o 1.10 The Hammersleys - Gluttons for punishment?
o 1.11 Lombardi's place in Society
o 1.12 Lombardi's firm status as an illegitimate daughter
of Prince Adolphus
2 World War I
3 Marriages
4 Association with Coco Chanel
o 4.1 English 'High Society'
o 4.2 Introduction of Chanel into English 'High Society'
o 4.3 Chanel's Muse - The Origin of Chanel's 'English
Look'
5 World War II
o 5.1 Suspicions of espionage and arrest
o 5.2 "Operation Modellhut" - a plan to end World War II
o 5.3 Appeal to Churchill
o 5.4 The Churchill/Mussolini correspondence
6 Later years
7 Notes
o

76

8 Sources

Early life and reputed royal illegitimacy[edit]

Birth[edit]
Lombardi was born at 17 Ovington Square, Kensington, London, on 11 August
1883,[2]and she was registered as the daughter of Frank Wigsell Arkwright, later
ofSanderstead Court, Surrey, lately a Captain in the Coldstream Guards and a
descendant of Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) ('The Father of the Industrial
Revolution'), and his then wife, Rosa Frederica Baring, a daughter of William
Baring (1819-1906) of Norman Court, West Tytherley, Hampshire, a member of
the Baring banking family, and his wife, Elizabeth Hammersley (1825-1897), a
member of another banking family (the Hammersleys of Cox & Co.). Interestingly,
given the allegations concerning her own parentage, she was, through both
William Baring and Elizabeth Hammersley, the (twice over) great-great-greatgranddaughter of Andrew Thomson, a Russia merchant who was the father
of John Julius Angerstein (1732-1823), almost certainly by Anna, Empress of
Russia (1693-1740). Angerstein's art collection formed the basis of the National
Gallery, London.
Vera Nina translates as 'True gift of God', from the Latin 'Vera' ('True') and the
Hebrew 'Nina' ('God has shown favour').
Mother's connections[edit]
Lombardi's mother, Rosa Baring, was a first cousin of Gertrude Jekyll (18431932), the noted gardener; of Reverend Walter Jekyll, whose friend, Robert Louis
Stevenson, borrowed the family name for his famous novella 'Dr Jekyll and Mr
Hyde'; of Frederick Eden (1828-1916), who created the Garden of Eden,
Giudecca, Venice (later home ofPrincess Aspasia of Greece and Alexandra,
Queen of Yugoslavia; now a national monument), so Lombardi was also related,
by marriage, to Anthony Eden, Churchill's Foreign Secretary, later Prime Minister
(195557) and 1st Earl of Avon; of Major-General Frederick Hammersley CB
(1858-1923), who commanded the 11th Division at the disastrous Landing at
Suvla Bay in 1915; of Mary Frances Hammersley (ne Grant) (1863-1911), the
subject of John Singer Sargent's famous portrait, 'Mrs. Hugh
Hammersley' (1892); of Sir Everard Hambro (1842-1925), first chairman
of Hambros Bank (founded in 1839 as C. J. Hambro & Son) and a Director of the
Bank of England from 1879 to 1925. Rosa Baring was a niece of Thomas
Matthias Weguelin MP (1809-1885), of Billingbear Park, Waltham St. Lawrence,
Governor of the Bank of England (1855-1859) and of Charlotte Rosa Baring, the
heroine of Alfred, Lord Tennyson'spoem 'Maud'. Through her great-grandmother,
Anne Greenwood, wife of Thomas Hammersley (1747-1812), Rosa Baring was

77

descended from Sir Henry Percy (1364-1403), Shakespeare's 'Sir Harry Hotspur',
and Philippa Plantagenet (1355-1382), Countess of Ulster and of March, from
whom the House of York derived their (successful) claim to the throne. [3] Rosa
Baring was a second cousin of Hon. Margaret Baring (1868-1906), who
married Charles Spencer, 6th Earl Spencer (1857-1922); they were greatgrandparents of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Norman Court, West Tytherley

Reputed daughter of Prince Adolphus by Rosa Baring[edit]
Lombardi was reputed to have been the illegitimate daughter, by Rosa Baring,
of Prince Adolphus, 2nd Duke of Teck and 1st Marquess of Cambridge, younger
brother of Queen Mary.[4] The family belief (as stated by Lombardi's daughter,
Bridget) that Rosa Baring seduced Prince Adolphus (a pupil at Wellington
College between 1883 and 1885) at Norman Court appears to have been
accepted by Hal Vaughan since he describes Lombardi, in his biography of
Chanel ('Sleeping with the Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War'), as a "cousin and
childhood friend"[5] of Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII), and
a "member of the British royal family";[6] he also refers to her "royal blood".[7]
Lombardi after her parents' divorce in 1885[edit]
After her parents' divorce in 1885, on the grounds of her mother's adultery
with George FitzGeorge (who Rosa Baring married in Paris later that year), she
appears to have lived with her Baring grandparents. It appears that she later
became the "surrogate child"[8] of Margaret Cambridge, Marchioness of
Cambridge, a daughter of Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster,[9] Several
factors could have contributed to Lombardi's adoption by the Cambridges; the
increasing age of her Baring grandparents, the death of her legal father, Frank
Arkwright, in 1893, and the engagement and marriage of Prince Adolphus to

78

Lady Margaret Grosvenor in 1894 (which might have prompted a confession from
Prince Adolphus).
The official evidence - The 1891 Census[edit]

Extract from 1891 Census describing Vera Nina Arkwright as 'grand dau adopted'
Lombardi is described as "adopted" ("grand dau adopted") in the 1891 census,
[10]
when she was living with her Baring grandparents at Norman Court in
Hampshire. This is the only officially recorded evidence (which would have been
provided by Lombardi's grandfather, William Baring) that has emerged which
indicates that she was not the legitimate issue of her legal parents - on the basis
that if she had been William Baring's legitimate granddaughter in the normal way
he would have simply described her as his 'granddaughter'. The fact that
Lombardi was living with her grandparents at Norman Court in 1891, while her
brother, Esm Francis Wigsell Arkwright (born 7 May 1882), was living with his
father at Sanderstead Court may indicate that Frank Arkwright wanted to have
nothing to do with his 'daughter'.
Prince Adolphus and Rosa Baring - Did they know each other?[edit]

79

Warren House, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey

If Rosa Baring and Prince Adolphus did actually ever meet, they are far more
likely to have done so at or near Warren House, Kingston-upon-Thames (Map ref:
51.423792, -0.272045),[11][12] the home of Rosa Baring's uncle, Hugh Hammersley
(1819-1882), and his wife, Dulcibella Hammersley (ne Eden) (d. 1903),
daughter of Arthur Eden (1793-1874) of Harrington Hall, Slingsby, Lincolnshire
and later ofCannizaro Park, Wimbledon. Warren House is only a mile and a half
from White Lodge, Richmond Park (Map ref: 51.445183, -0.264913), then the
home of Prince Adolphus' parents, the Duke and Duchess of Teck. Given that
Warren House is on the edge of Richmond Park and that there are no buildings
between the relevant part of the park boundary and White Lodge, the two families
were, in fact, next-door neighbours separated only by parkland.

80

Richmond Park, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey

Hugh Hammersley built Warren House in 1865 and the Tecks moved into White
Lodge in 1869, so by 1882 the Tecks and the Hammersleys had been
neighbours, and had almost certainly known each other, for 12 or so years.
Perhaps the families also met in church. Rosa Baring and Prince Adolphus had
therefore probably known each other, or at least been acquainted, since he was a
one-year-old and she was 15. Hugh Hammersley knew Prince George, Duke of
Cambridge (Prince Adolphus' uncle) both socially and professionally (he was the
Duke's banker); in fact, he built Warren House on land on the Coombe Estate
which he acquired from the Duke of Cambridge. Furthermore, as a partner in a
leading private bank (Cox & Co.) who were bankers to various members of the
royal family, it is more than likely that Hugh Hammersley not only lent money to
the Duke and Duchess of Teck, who were known for their extravagance and
inability to live within their income (they had to flee the country from 1883 to 1885
to escape their creditors), but that he may also have been involved in efforts to try
to otherwise resolve their financial difficulties.
Prince Adolphus and Rosa Baring - Were they in the right place at the right
time?[edit]

81

Hugh Hammersley died in September 1882 and his sister, Elizabeth Baring (ne
Hammersley), Rosa Baring's mother, will undoubtedly have visited Hugh
Hammersley's widow, Dulcibella, in the following months; that is, in the last three
months of 1882. Rosa Baring may well have visited Warren House in this period
to be with her mother. Vera Bate Lombardi was conceived in late October/early
November 1882; given a 40-week pregnancy she was conceived on Saturday 4
November 1882.

The latest style of riding habit 1886

Thus there is an event, a location (known proximity) and a known social
connection that could account for a meeting between Prince Adolphus and Rosa
Baring at precisely the right time. The two could have had assignations either at
Warren House, or at White Lodge or, more probably, inRichmond Park itself
(possibly in Spankers Hill Wood (Map ref: 51.440775, -0.265439), which is
between White Lodge and Warren House). There is an entrance gate to
Richmond Park (Map ref: 51.425944, -0.275816) just opposite the drive of
Warren House and visitors to Warren House will invariably have gone for walks or
rides in Richmond Park on a regular basis.
Rosa Baring's motives - Seduction or revenge?[edit]

82

The Teck boys were known for their good looks and Rosa Baring cannot be
regarded as a 'shrinking violet', given that her husband divorced her in 1885 on
the grounds of her adultery (though we cannot assume that she was entirely to
blame). Perhaps Rosa Baring felt that it was time to introduce Prince Adolphus, in
a kindly way and as a friend and neighbour, into a 'garden of earthly delights'
previously unknown to him. He appears to have graciously accepted her offer.
But an alternative scenario cannot be entirely discounted; namely, that Hugh
Hammersley/Cox & Co. lent money to the Tecks (possibly as a favour to Prince
George, Duke of Cambridge), that the Tecks' financial situation became
untenable in 1882, that this contributed to or even caused the death of Hugh
Hammersley (because he might have been left 'on the hook' financially) and that
Rosa Baring seduced the Tecks' eldest son as an act of revenge. This scenario is
consistent with the fact that the Tecks had to flee the country between 1883 and
1885 to escape their creditors and might, in turn, explain why Hugh
Hammersley's widow, Dulcibella, unexpectedly sold Warren House in 1884. [13]
Other matters requiring explanation - What happened in 1885?[edit]
Other matters require explanation. Who paid off the Tecks' debts in 1885,
allowing them to return to England? Was it the Barings (Barings Bank was itself
rescued by the Bank of England in the Crisis of 1890)? Lombardi's daughter,
Bridget, believed this to be the case.[14] Certainly, Queen Victoria and Prince
George, Duke of Cambridge, had resolutely refused to help the Tecks financially.
If either of them had helped the Tecks then surely this would be public knowledge
because it would reflect to their credit, so the fact that there is no such public
knowledge is a clear indication that some other party rescued the Tecks
financially. And was this matter in any way connected to Rosa Baring's divorce in
1885 and her marriage to George FitzGeorge, eldest son of Prince George, Duke
of Cambridge, in that year? George FitzGeorge was himself constantly in
financial trouble.[15] These are murky waters. Was there, as Lombardi's daughter
believed,[16] some 'arrangement' between the Tecks, the Barings and possibly the
royal family which involved (1) the Barings paying off the Tecks' debts, (2) the
Barings paying off George FitzGeorge's debts, (3) the divorce of Frank Arkwright
and Rosa Baring, (4) a marriage between George FitzGeorge and Rosa Baring,
(5) a financial settlement to provide a trust fund for Rosa Baring's illegitimate
daughter by Prince Adolphus, Vera Nina Arkwright, and possibly Vera's brother
as well, and (6) an agreement that the royal family would take that illegitimate
daughter under their wing at some stage (as seems to have happened). These
are interesting questions, given that the return of the Tecks to England in 1885
paved the way for the engagement of their daughter, Princess Mary, toPrince
Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, eldest son of the Prince of Wales
(later King Edward VII), in 1891 and, ultimately, for her to become Queen as wife

83

of George V. Is it possible that what stood between the Tecks and the throne of
England was a little baby girl?
The Hammersleys - Gluttons for punishment?[edit]
If the Hammersley family did lose money in the manner outlined, it would not
have been the first time that they had suffered as a result of financially supporting
the royal family. Hugh Hammersley's grandfather, Thomas Hammersley (17471812), was banker to the Prince Regent (later King George IV). At the time of
Thomas Hammersley's death in 1812, his bank, Hammersley & Co, was in deep
financial trouble and it was eventually taken over by its main competitor, Coutts &
Co., on the death of Thomas Hammersley's eldest son, Hugh Hammersley
(1774-1840). There is a Hammersley family legend to the effect that Hammersley
& Co. lent money to the royal family on the security of the crown jewels. This
appears to be a slight embellishment but it is true that Hammersley & Co. lent
money to the Prince Regent (later King George IV) and held a casket of royal
jewels as security, as evidenced by a letter from the Prince Regent to William
Morland and Thomas Hammersley dated 10 May 1791, which states: '... in order
to secure the payment of the said sum of 25,000 his said Royal Highness
hath delivered to the said William Morland and Thomas Hammersley a casket
covered with red morocco leather containing a diamond epaulette, a diamond
star, a diamond George, a diamond garter and sundry diamond trinkets and
ornaments belonging to his Royal Highness '.[17] 25,000 in 1791 is equivalent
to well over 3 million today. Furthermore, Thomas Hammersley's brother-in-law,
Charles Greenwood (1748-1832) of Greenwood, Cox & Co. (later Cox & Co.),
banker to Prince Frederick, Duke of York (1763-1827), was also effectively
bankrupt for the same reason (lending money to the royal family) when he died.
Hammersley family records state: 'Mr. Greenwood was believed to have amassed
a very large fortune, as indeed he had done, but his contributions to impecunious
Royalty, the lavish hospitality which the necessities of his peculiar position
entailed upon him, his generosity towards all who claimed his help, and above all
the great sacrifices he made to avert the fall of his brother-in-law's bank,
ultimately so reduced his means that his nephew Charles Hammersley [father of
Hugh Hammersley (1819-1882)] who had been led to expect a large inheritance,
found himself a loser of 25,000 by having accepted the trust bequeathed to him
under Mr. Greenwood's will as sole Executor and Residuary Legatee.' Some
loans that Charles Greenwood made to the Duke of York were not repaid until
more than sixty years after his death.[18]
Lombardi's place in Society[edit]
Lombardi certainly occupied a place in the highest echelons of British Society as
a close friend of, amongst others, Edward, Prince of Wales (later King Edward
VIII), Winston Churchill and Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster. She was,
84

through her mother's second marriage, the step-daughter of George

FitzGeorge (1843-1907), the eldest son of Prince George, Duke of
Cambridge (1819-1904), uncle of Queen Mary, and therefore the half-sister of
George FitzGeorge's three children by Rosa Baring: Mabel Iris FitzGeorge (18861976), George Daphne FitzGeorge (1889-1954) and George William Frederick
FitzGeorge (1892-1960). This connection is unlikely to have counted in
Lombardi's favour because George FitzGeorge's financial irresponsibility, his
abandonment of his military career and his marriage to a divorced woman (Rosa
Baring) were disapproved of in royal circles; he was also illegitimate.
Lombardi's firm status as an illegitimate daughter of Prince Adolphus[edit]
Axel Madsen, in his 'Chanel: A Woman of Her Own' (1991), says of Lombardi:
'Though Vera had married an Italian cavalry officer and was living in Rome, she
was British and her connections with the royal family and the nobility were as firm
as her status as illegitimate daughter of the Marquess of Cambridge.'
The evidence that Lombardi was indeed the illegitimate daughter of Prince
Adolphus would therefore appear to be persuasive. The assertion has however
been dismissed by some, including Anthony Camp in an addendum to his 'Royal
Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and Fiction 1714-1936' (Self-published),[19] where
he concludes, largely on the basis of the witness statement of Frank Arkwright,
Lombardi's legal father, in the divorce proceedings of 1885: 'The sensational
stories of a royal illegitimacy and cover-up thus have no basis in fact. It is equally
clear that Vera Nina Bate Lombardi (1883-1948) and her daughter Bridget Bate
Tichenor (1917-1990), both of whom have biographies on Wikipedia, had no
royal descent through the FitzGeorge connection.' [20]In the first place, this is
something of a red herring since there has never been an assertion that
Lombardi had a royal descent through the 'FitzGeorge connection'. It is also
worth bearing in mind that husbands did not always tell the truth in divorce
proceedings and that many instances are known where the husband would go so
far as to allow his wife to petition for divorce on the grounds of his own fictitious
adultery in order to protect her reputation. Indeed, in the 1885 divorce
proceedings both Rosa Baring and George FitzGeorge denied committing
adultery - and we know that this was a false assertion (because the divorce on
the grounds of adultery was granted). Witness statements in divorce proceedings
should therefore be treated with caution. Furthermore, Anthony Camp was
unaware, at the time, of the fact that Lombardi was described as 'adopted' in the
1891 census.
World War I[edit]

85

During World War I Lombardi worked as a volunteer Auxiliary Nurse with the
Voluntary Aid Detachment, American Ambulance Auxiliary at the American
Hospital of Paris, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris. She is mentioned in Marie van
Vorst's 'War Letters of an American Woman' (New York, 1916), as follows:
Extract from a letter of 15 October 1914 to her mother, Mrs. Van Vorst, Edgware
(London), England.
'Now I want to speak of Vera Arkwright, who replaced me in the gangrene ward.
She is perfectly beautiful, full of sympathy and sweetness, and a warm friend of
Bridget Guinness.[21] I got her into the hospital with a vague feeling that she was
simply going to flirt with the officers and perhaps make me regret. Well, well! Vera
has been in that ward now from eight in the morning until half-past six every
night. I wish you could see her with crimson cheeks and a floating veil,
carrying the vilest of linen and oilcloth, not to throw away, but to wash it herself
with a scrubbing brush. She has a keen sense of humour, and even amid the
horrors it shines forth.
Yesterday she was heartbroken over Hern, and told me that the bullet in one of
his wounds had severed a vein, and when she came in on duty this terrible
haemorrhage had flooded the bed and the floor, and it was she who cleaned all
that up. Yes, and she gathered up his little treasures to save for his people, and
going into the linen room, from under all the filthy bandages extracted the poor
little tin cigarette case which had been thrown out as rubbish.
Last night, at half-past ten, my bell rang, and poor Vera blew in asking for a
morsel of food, as when she came out from duty every restaurant in Paris was
shut. So my maid and I fed her up and sent her home. She certainly is a brick,
and Glory Hancock, if she comes, will be another.' (pp. 6970)
Extract from an undated letter to Miss Ann Lusk, New York.
'I am prepared every day to be thrown out of my smart ward, and if I have to go
back to that charnel house I hope that God will give me grace. Vera said to-day,
"It Is discouraging to work for people whom you know will all be dead in a week."
You remember in the Roman games how the gladiators used to cry, "Ave Caesar,
those who are about to die greet you." So those poor creatures seem to salute
the country for which they have fought, and surely we can help them as they go.
My lieutenant with the amputated leg in the other ward has gone to-day. That is
four out of that infected ward, and three nurses are sick in bed with violent fever
from it. Yet Vera is going on like a house on fire at her job. The poor lieutenant
died as she was feeding him, and that girl did all the solemn and dreadful offices
for him. She is wonderful.' (pp. 7475)
Extract from a letter of 11 November 1914 to Mrs. Victor Morawetz, New York.

86

'Last night, at the end of the hospital day, I brought down with me in a tiny motor
belonging to Vera Arkwright, the head nurse of the hospital, Miss Devereux, who
has charge of the American Hospital in times of peace. She was so exhausted
and worn out with the terrible day that she could hardly speak. The fresh air and
the drive down began to rest her, and when she got here in my little study, before
the fire, so quiet and so sweet, with a good little dinner, and with Bessie's society
and mine to cheer her, she bloomed out like a flower. She is a New York hospital
nurse, and gave me another picture to remember in the little study, under the war
map, all in snow white, with no cap, and just the gold medal of the New York
hospital round her neck. Such a fine spiritual face; such a strong, dignified
woman! We didn't talk much of the hospital, but we talked, all three of us, of
spiritual things, and it was a wonderful thing to find her one of those simple
Christians, full of the very light of God, strong in the best sense of the word, living
by faith. I don't think I have enjoyed any evening half so much for a long time. I
am sure that you will respond to this note and care too. It is fine to feel that the
hospital there is under the spell of this noble woman who believes in fairies," as
Barrie's play says who believes in miracles. There wasn't a discordant second
in the long evening and she went back with pink cheeks and bright eyes to those
wards where three were to die that night and she had to go on her noble watch.
She spoke in an especially kindly way of the auxiliaries and of their extraordinary
powers of endurance. She said that she would not have believed that women of
the world unused to discipline or to concentrated effort, could have been what
these women have been at the Ambulance. Vera Arkwright, for instance, has not
missed a single day since she went there. The dressing carts are so picturesque.
You see, I naturally see the notes of colour that things make I can't help it
and when I went out from the hospital, Vera stood there in her blue dress, with
her tiny little cap on her head she is faultlessly beautiful, and very celebrated
for her looks and all around her was a pile of the most dreadful bandages you
ever saw. (I won't describe them.) She was gathering them up to destroy them
and to prepare her cart for the next trip. Both she and Madelon are able to do
their dressings themselves.' (pp. 108109)
For her war service Lombardi was awarded the 1914/15 Star, the British War
Medal and the Victory Medal.[22]
Marriages[edit]
Lombardi married, firstly, in 1916, Frederick Blantford Bate,[23] an officer in the
American Ambulance service in Paris who she met while working as a volunteer
nurse in the American Hospital of Paris. They had one daughter, Bridget, born in
1917. Lombardi introduced her husband to Edward, Prince of Wales (later King
Edward VIII), and the two became close friends. This allowed Bate, then NBC

87

representative in London, to produce up-to-the-minute reports for NBC during

the Abdication Crisis of 1936. Lombardi divorced Bate in 1929[1] and then married
Italian Cavalry Officer, Alberto Lombardi, a member of the Italian Fascist
Party held in high esteem by Benito Mussolini (and possibly the Alberto
Lombardi who was a member of the Italian equestrian team that won a bronze
medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris). Lombardi joined her husband in Rome and
became a member of the Fascist Party. [24] She wrote enthusiastically to Churchill
about Mussolini and Churchill publicly expressed admiration for Mussolini and
Italian Fascism during this period.[25] In Rome, Lombardi and her husband
'reveled in la dolce vita' at his villa at 31 (some sources say 32) Via Barnaba
Oriana, situated in the exclusive Parioli area of the city. [24]
Association with Coco Chanel[edit]
English 'High Society'[edit]
Lombardi was a popular member of the British elite who, in her youth, attracted
the attention of a string of suitors; it was said of her that "No one was more
keenly appreciated by London high society".[1] She was an enthusiast of the
sporting life, an avid participant in the outdoor activities so favoured by the upper
classes. The wealth and status enjoyed by the rarified circle in which she moved
gave them the means and leisure to engage in hunting, sailing and other
activities and to lead lives dedicated to pleasure and self-gratification. [1]
Introduction of Chanel into English 'High Society'[edit]
Lombardi gave Chanel entre into the highest levels of the British aristocracy. It
was in Monte Carlo in 1923 that Lombardi introduced Chanel to the vastly
wealthy 2nd Duke of Westminster, Hugh Richard Arthur Grosvenor, known to his
intimates as Bendor or, more usually, "Benny" (a pun on the Grosvenor coat of
arms, which included a 'Bend Or' before the famous legal case of Scrope v
Grosvenor in 1389), who became Chanel's lover for the next ten or more years.
[26]
Lombardi also introduced Chanel to Edward, Prince of Wales (later King
Edward VIII), and they were reported to have had a brief affair. [1]
Chanel's Muse - The Origin of Chanel's 'English Look'[edit]
Adapting traditional British sporting clothes to her modern vision of dress, Chanel
found in Lombardi and her social set an inspirational template for a new design
concept; Chanel's signature 'English Look'. Linking Lombardis promotional value
to her own business success, Chanel hired the thirty-seven-year-old Lombardi as
public relations representative for the House of Chanel in 1920. The Chanel look
worn by Lombardi was the visible daily attire, the casual yet chic style that
became identified with the modern ease and elegance of Chanel couture. [27] The
Lombardi/Chanel friendship was a close one, sustained over many years. Their

88

formal business association, however, ended in 1930 when Lombardi left Chanel
to work for couturier Edward Molyneux.[1]
World War II[edit]
Suspicions of espionage and arrest[edit]
Lombardi's English background and habits, her high-born affiliations and her
frequent presence at social functions held at the British Embassy in Rome, made
her a person of interest to the Fascist police and various intelligence agencies.
Her activities were monitored accordingly. In 1936, the Chief of Staff of the Italian
Political Investigation Service reported to the Italian Interior and War
Ministries: "This ladys mysterious and varied lifestyle makes us suspect that she
is in the service of Great Britain without the knowledge of her husband, who is a
highly respected person and sincere patriot"Surveillance of Lombardi was
suspended on two grounds; no evidence was ever uncovered that proved her to
be involved in espionage and her husband's military status as the commandant
of a cavalry regiment and loyalty to Fascism made such activities implausible. In
addition, Alberto Lombardi's brother, Giuseppe Lombardi, was Head of the Italian
Naval Intelligence Service. Nevertheless, in the coming years, and throughout
World War II, suspicions surrounding Lombardi would continue. In addition, her
association with Chanel would later bring Lombardi to the attention of British
Military Intelligence, MI6, who suspected her of being a Nazi spy. [28] Thus
Lombardi was suspected by the Axis powers of being a British spy and suspected
by the British of being a Nazi spy.
Lombardi was, through her grandmother, Elizabeth Hammersley (1825-1897), a
second cousin of Sir D'Arcy Osborne (1884-1964),[3] later 12th and last Duke of
Leeds, Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See from
1936 to 1947, a close personal friend of the Queen, who, in 1940, was involved
in a plot to overthrow Hitler involving Pope Pius XII and certain German generals,
including General Ludwig Beck, who was to replace Hitler as Head of State.
[29]
D'Arcy Osborne was also involved with, supported and helped to run (through
his appointee, Major Sam Derry), the escape movement run by Monsignor Hugh
O'Flaherty, "The Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican", which concealed thousands
of Allied escapee soldiers and Jews in safe houses and on farms in and around
Rome. There is no evidence that Lombardi herself was involved in this movement
but her husband, Alberto Lombardi, ended the war in hiding on an old Papal
estate. Lombardi was also, through the same family connection, a second cousin
of Sir Ronald Hugh Campbell, PC, GCMG (1883-1953), Ambassador to France
(1939-1940) and Portugal (1940-1945), so she was well-placed to act as a
channel of communication to the British Foreign Office. Sir Ronald Campbell's

89

son, Captain Robin Campbell, took part in Operation Flipper in North Africa in
1941, an attempt to assassinate General Erwin Rommel.
In 1943, she was arrested and held for a week in a women's prison in Rome on
suspicion of having spied for the British Secret Service "for the last ten years".
[30]
She was released on orders of the German Police Headquarters in Rome.
[30]
According to'Hitler's Intelligence Chief: Walter Schellenberg' (1991), the
Germans expected her to work as an agent for them, intending to bring her to
Paris to rendezvous with Chanel.[31]Accompanied by her friend, "Eddie" Bismarck
(Count Albrecht Edzard Heinrich Karl von Bismarck-Schnhausen), Lombardi
joined Chanel and her lover, Baron Hans Gnther Von Dincklage, a German
agent, in Paris. Lombardi was then issued with a passport on the orders of the
Paris Gestapo chief, Karl Bmelburg, allowing her to travel to Spain. [1]
"Operation Modellhut" - a plan to end World War II[edit]
In this way Lombardi unwittingly became embroiled in a political intrigue involving
Chanel and Von Dincklage, and orchestrated by Nazi intelligence at the highest
levels (up to and including Heinrich Himmler), which required Lombardi to travel
to Madrid, with Chanel and Von Dincklage, to act as an intermediary between
Germany and Great Britain by delivering a letter from Chanel to Winston Churchill
via the British Ambassador in Madrid. The plan, code-named "Operation
Modellhut" ("Model hat"), was an attempt to persuade Great Britain to end
hostilities with Germany in order to prevent post-war Russian domination in
Europe (and also to save the senior Nazis involved from potential prosecution for
war crimes), but Lombardi was led to believe that the journey to Madrid would be
a business trip to explore the possibility of establishing the Chanel couture in
Madrid. The mission failed because Lombardi, on her arrival in Madrid,
denounced Chanel and her travelling companions as Nazi spies. [32] No evidence
has been found that shows that Lombardi herself was ever involved in actual
espionage activity, though it is acknowledged that she was an informer. [33][34]
Although, on one level, "Operation Modellhut" appears to have been a somewhat
lightweight means of trying to achieve such a vital diplomatic and political
objective, the Germans could not have found anyone in the whole of Occupied
Europe with closer personal connections to Churchill and the British Royal Family
than Lombardi and Chanel, bearing in mind that the operation was carried out
without Hitler's knowledge or approval and would have amounted, in Hitler's
mind, to clear treason on the part of those involved. [35] In 1945 Himmler tried to
negotiate with the Allies again; this time through contacts in Sweden. This
attempt also failed.
Appeal to Churchill[edit]

90

In March 1944, Lombardi, still stranded in Madrid, wrote an appeal to her friend,
Lady Ursula Filmer-Sankey, a daughter of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, to
intercede with Churchill and ask him to use his influence to reunite her with her
husband in Rome.[36] It was not until early in January 1945, that Lombardi was
finally allowed to leave Madrid, after the British Foreign Office had notified the
British Embassy in Madrid: "Allied Forces have withdrawn their objection and the
lady is free to return to Italy". Churchill had ultimately come to Lombardis
rescue, as verified by a classified communication sent four days later from
Downing Street (Churchill's official residence as Prime Minister) to Allied
Headquarters in Paris. Lombardi expressed her gratitude to Churchill in a letter to
him of 9 May 1945 (addressing him as "My Dear Winston"): "Thank you with all
my heart for what you found time to do for me..." [37] In April or May 1945, she was
reunited in Italy with her husband, who, by the end of World War II, had managed
to rehabilitate his reputation with the Allies.[24]
The Churchill/Mussolini correspondence[edit]
Main article: Death of Benito Mussolini
Although it is a subject almost entirely ignored by British historians, the question
of whether Churchill and Mussolini corresponded before and during World War II,
and the nature of that correspondence, has been a matter of widespread
speculation in Italy over the years and the subject of numerous books, articles,
TV documentaries and so on. Notable amongst these are Luciano
Garibaldi's 'Mussolini - The Secrets of His Death' (Enigma Books, 2004), which
has an extensive bibliography, and Frank Joseph's'Mussolini's War' (Helion,
2010). The allegation is broadly that such correspondence did take place and
that in it Churchill made various proposals and agreed to certain things (including
a proposal that Great Britain, USA, Germany and Italy should unite against
Russia and a proposal that French territory, including Nice, should be handed
over to Italy) which would have been highly embarrassing to Churchill if revealed
after the war, and possibly even fatal to his political career. It appears that
Mussolini did in fact possess documents which he believed (and told his close
associates) would clear his name in any postwar trial and that copies of these
documents were made and passed to trusted people. It is alleged that Churchill
ordered the assassination of Mussolini in order to prevent these documents, or
knowledge of them, becoming public (a view held by Italy's most celebrated and
respected historian of the Fascist period, Professor Renzo De Felice of Rome's
La Sapienza University[38]), that strenuous efforts were made by the British secret
service to track down and destroy all copies of these documents and that many
(possibly hundreds of) people who had knowledge of these matters were tracked
down and killed or otherwise silenced in the years after the war. Many people,
including Italian Communists, had their own reasons for keeping this matter

91

secret (in their case, the theft of Mussolini's treasure, worth many billions of
dollars).
This issue is relevant to any assessment of Lombardi's life for the simple reason
that there appears to have been no-one better-placed to have acted as a gobetween between Churchill and Mussolini. Clearly, the most important
characteristics of a go-between are that he or she should (1) be in the right place
at the right time (as Lombardi was - at least until 1943) and (2) trusted by the
individuals concerned. Lombardi was a long-standing personal friend of Churchill,
she was related to (second cousin of) the one person in Rome who had a secure
channel of communication to the British Foreign Office (D'Arcy Osborne, Envoy
Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Holy See) and she was married
to a man known to and admired by Mussolini, being a senior Italian army officer
and Fascist who was the brother of the head of Italian Naval Intelligence.
Although no evidence has emerged that Lombardi was the go-between (possibly
because it hasn't been looked for), such a possibility should not be excluded and,
of course, there is no evidence that Lombardi's death shortly after the war was in
any way suspicious. If her death had in any way been suspicious, it would give
rise to a shocking possibility; namely, that Churchill was complicit in the
assassination of a member (even if an illegitimate one) of the British royal family;
a niece of Queen Mary.
Later years[edit]
Lombardi died in Rome in 1948 after a severe illness. [39]
Notes[edit]
1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g (Vaughan 2011, p. 34)
2. Jump up^ Crisp, Frederick Arthur, 'Visitation of
England and Wales', 1914, vol. 18, p. 26.
3. ^ Jump up to:a b 'The Hammersley Connection',
Accessed 4/6/2015
4. Jump up^ Selig, Zachary, Sarah Gertrude
Arkwright Fitzgeorge Bate Lombardi Biography,
2011
5. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2012, p. 42)
6. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2012, p. 185)
7. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2012, p. 193)
8. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2012, p. 37)
9. Jump up^ (Lundy 2011, Lady Margaret Evelyn
Grosvenor)

92

10. Jump up^ 1891 census for Norman Court, West

Tytherley, Hampshire ref. RG12/932-69-9
11. Jump up^ Warren House Hotel website
12. Jump up^ The Warren House Tales website
13. Jump up^ Good, Victoria, 'The Warren House
Tales', Third Millenium, 2014, p. 31
14. Jump up^ Selig, Zachary, Sarah Gertrude
Arkwright Fitzgeorge Bate Lombardi Biography,
2011
15. Jump up^ St. Aubyn, Giles, 'The Royal George',
Constable & Co., 1963, p. 253
16. Jump up^ Selig, Zachary, Sarah Gertrude
Arkwright Fitzgeorge Bate Lombardi Biography,
2011
17. Jump up^ 'The Correspondence of George,
Prince of Wales, 1770-1812: 1789-1794', Oxford
University Press, 1971, p.152
18. Jump up^ 'Records of the Hammersley Family',
1894 (In the possession of Sir Andrew DuffGordon)
19. Jump up^ http://anthonyjcamp.com/ Camp,
Anthony, 'Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and
Fiction 1714-1936'
20. Jump
up^ http://anthonyjcamp.com/page16.htm Camp,
Anthony, 'Royal Mistresses and Bastards: Fact and
Fiction 1714-1936', addendum re Rosa Frederica
(Baring) FitzGeorge
21. Jump up^ Bridget Henrietta Frances Guinness
(ne Williams-Bulkeley) (1871-1931)
22. Jump up^ Medal Index Card, WO/372/23
23. Jump up^ (Picardie 2010, p. 214)
24. ^ Jump up to:a b c (Vaughan 2011, p. 102)
25. Jump up^ Daily Telegraph, 'Winston Churchill
'ordered assassination of Mussolini to protect
compromising letters', Henry Samuel, 2 September
2010
26. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2011, p. 36)
27. Jump up^ (Madsen 1991, p. 142)
28. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2011, pp. 102103)

93

29. Jump up^ Chadwick, Owen, 'Britain and the

Vatican During the Second World War', Cambridge
Paperback Library, 1988, p. 86 et seq.
30. ^ Jump up to:a b (Vaughan 2011, p. 172)
31. Jump up^ (Doerries & Weinberg 2009, p. 166)
32. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2011, pp. 174175)
33. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2011, p. 171)
34. Jump up^ Madsen, Axel, 'Chanel: A Woman of
Her Own', Henry Holt & Co., 1996, Chapter 31
35. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2012, p. 188)
36. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2011, p. 177)
37. Jump up^ (Vaughan 2011, p. 191)
38. Jump
up^ http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/di
d-churchill-kill-il-duce/95537.article'Did Churchill kill
Il Duce?', Paul Bompard, Times Higher Education,
16 October 1995
39. Jump up^ (Lundy 2011, Sarah Gertrude
Arkwright)
Sources[edit]

Doerries, Reinhard R.; Weinberg, Gerhard L. (1 July

2009). Hitler's intelligence chief: Walter Schellenberg.
Enigma Books. ISBN 978-1-929631-77-3.

Lundy, Darryl (September 2011). "Sarah Gertrude

Arkwright". thePeerage.com.
Madsen, Axel (1 September 1991). Chanel: A Woman
of Her Own. Macmillan.ISBN 978-0-8050-1639-0.
Picardie, Justine (21 September 2010). Coco Chanel:
The Legend and the Life. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-006-196385-8.
Vaughan, Hal (16 August 2011). Sleeping with the
Enemy: Coco Chanel's Secret War. Alfred A.
Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-59263-7.
Vaughan, Hal (August 2012). Sleeping with the Enemy:
Coco Chanel's Secret War. Vintage Books. ISBN 9780-307-47591-6.

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