Rosetta (29 page)

Lady Archibald Campbell (the Duke of Argyll's daughter-in-law and subject of a famously controversial portrait by Whistler); the Princess of Pless (the former Daisy Cornwallis-West, wife of the extraordinarily wealthy Hans Heinrich XV of Germany); Lord Victor Paget (heir to the Marquis of Anglesey); Prince Min of Korea (ministerial plenipotentiary); Lady Lilian Bagot (Baltimore-born daughter of a US Congressman, wife of Conservative politician the 4th Baron Bagot); Sir Edgar Vincent (art collector, politician, diplomat and author, 12th Baronet of Stoke d'Abernon); Her Grace the Duchess of Rutland (Lady Violet Manners, artist and prominent member of the literary salon The Souls); Lady Diana Manners (actress, daughter of the Duchess of Rutland, later social identity Lady Diana Cooper); The Right Hon. Diana Lister (daughter of the 4th Baron Ribblesdale, became the wife of Chanel's former lover Boy Capel and later married the Earl of Westmorland); Her Grace the Duchess of Westminster (the former Constance [Shelagh] Cornwallis-West, sister of the Princess of Pless); Lady Juliet Duff (daughter of the 4th Earl of Lonsdale and the Marchioness of Ripon, patron of the arts, notable supporter of the Ballets Russes); Lady Bathurst (daughter of Baron Glenesk, owner of
The Daily Telegraph
); Sir Fitzwilliam (Eric Spencer Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 9th Earl, army officer); The Right Hon. the Countess of Glasgow (wife of the former Governor of New Zealand); Lady Anna Rosslyn (Countess Rosslyn, previously Minneapolis chorus girl Anna Robinson); Sir John (former Australian politician and Chief Justice of Tasmania) and Lady Dodds; Vice Admiral Charles
Windham (naval hero and Gentleman Usher to the King); Colonel Smith; Captain Parker; Lady Parker; Major Simpson; Thomas Beecham (renowned conductor, founder of the London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic orchestras); Sir Oliver Lodge (winner of the Royal Society's Rumford Medal, first Principal of the University of Birmingham); Miss Gertie Miller (actress and singer, married the Earl of Dudley, 4th Governor General of Australia and great-grandfather of Australian actress/director Rachel Ward); Miss Thelma Raye (Brazilian-born performer, later the wife of English screen legend Ronald Colman); Miss Gabrielle Ray (musical comedy star, included Alfred Vanderbilt and King Manuel of Portugal among her admirers); Captain Higson (Master of the Hunt, served with the 14th Hussars); Mrs Marconi (wife of the Nobel Prize-winning inventor Guglielmo Marconi, formerly the Hon. Beatrice O'Brien, daughter of the 14th Baron Inchiquin, and later the Marquise di Montecorona); The Right Hon. Earl of Sandwich (author, spiritualist, Conservative Member of Parliament); Madame Ernesta Stern (authoress, famous saloniste, widow of the French banker Baron Louis Stern); Lady Miller.

A number of publications have provided me with invaluable information. These include:

 

Ackroyd, P.,
London: The Biography
, Vintage, London, 2001

Barnes, J.,
Arthur & George
, Jonathan Cape, London, 2005

Bell, M. (Editor),
And The Spirit Lingers …,
Genazzano College History Committee, Burwood, 1988

Betcherman, L.,
The Riviera Set: From Queen Victoria to Princess Grace
, Bev Editions, Smashwords, 2010

Farris Thompson, R.,
Tango: The Art History of Love
, Vintage, 2006

Freyd, J.,
Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Childhood Abuse
, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, 1998

Hoss de le Comte, M.G.,
The Tango
, Maizal, Buenos Aires, 2000

Howell, G.,
In Vogue
, Penguin, London, 1978

Kolatch, A.,
The Jewish Book of Why
, Jonathan David, New York, 1981

Lindsay, N.,
Bohemians of the Bulletin
, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1965

McKernan, M.,
Australians at Home, World War I
, The Five Mile Press, Scoresby, 2014

Penglase, J.,
Orphans of the Living: Growing Up in ‘Care' in Twentieth-Century Australia
, Fremantle Press, Perth, 2010

Twopeny, R.,
Town Life in Australia
, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1973 (first published London, 1883)

Van der Kiste, J.,
Charlotte and Feodora
, Amazon KDP, 2012

Woodhead, L.,
War Paint: Miss Elizabeth Arden and Madame Helena Rubinstein
, Virago Press, London, 2003

Writer, L.,
Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh and the Razor Gangs
, Macmillan, Sydney, 2001

Ziegler, P.,
Diana Cooper
, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1983

Ziegler, P.,
Mountbatten: The Official Biography,
Collins, London, 1985

My great-grandmother, Rosetta, known in London as Madame Zeno, c. 1913. By age thirty-three and as stylish as she was arresting, Rosetta had beguiled society both in Europe and Great Britain.

Rosetta holds one of her exquisite tea cups while her nonchalant paramour looks on. Melbourne, c. 1905.

Wonderland City with, among its thrilling attractions, the Switchback Railway (foreground) and an airship perilously suspended above the sea. Tamarama Beach, Sydney, c. 1907.
Waverley Library Local History Image Collection

Rosetta, pictured at Sydney's Government House with a chauffeur and her splendid Packard limousine, c.1928.

The distinguished Professor Carl Zeno, ‘erstwhile of Japan'. In reality, William Norman, son of a Chinese immigrant who came to Australia to work on the goldfields. London, c. 1910.

Rosetta's daughter, my grandmother Frances Catherine Raphael, age two, Melbourne, 1902. Only three years later, her mother ran away.

The aristocratic Lilian Pakenham developed a unique relationship with Zeno and Rosetta. Photographed by T. Humphrey,
Table Talk
, Melbourne, 13 October 1899.
National Library of Australia

‘A figure, white as alabaster, in a dark, sylvan glade.' Zeno is thought to have created this portrait of Rosetta during the early 1930s.

Professor Zeno's astonishing
List of Patrons
.

My parents, Asher and Sybil – later the Hon. Sir Asher and Lady Joel – attending a state banquet held in honour of Queen Elizabeth II, Sydney, 1954. My mother doesn't know she has a grandmother living in the same city.

This photograph of me, age five, was taken in 1958. It was the same year that Rosetta, my unknown and unseen great-grandmother, died.