The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice De Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll Read Online Free PDF Page B

that Alice was most probably completely inexperienced. The thought of going to bed with Frédéric may have been extremely alarming to her, especially as she did not find him particularly attractive. On two separate occasions she told Aunt Tattie that she wanted to pull out. Pat Silverthorne, Alice’s half sister, remembers Alice’s tantrums during this period and poor Aunt Tattie’s exasperation as a result.
    Alice’s trepidation and ambivalence continued, but the engine of the wedding had been set in motion and could not be stopped. In order for Alice—who was Presbyterian—to marry in a Catholic church to a Catholic man, she had to be given Catholic instruction. Father Casey and Father Shannon of East Lakeview, a section of Chicago, carried this out in some haste. Father Casey informed Alice that any children of the union were to become Catholic and they must be baptised as Catholics. By now, the invitations and guest list had been agreed upon, the church was booked, and Frédéric and his family were already in New York, preparing for their journey to Chicago. On their arrival, even the aristocratic de Janzés would have been impressed by the vast means of the Armour and Chapin families, and by Aunt Tattie’s lavishly appointed home.
    The wedding took place as planned on September 21, 1921, at five in the afternoon at the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in East Lakeview. It was a small but elegant affair. Guests included various Armour and Chapin family members as well as some notable society friends. Alice looked the picture of sophistication in a white satin gown with a court train and bouquet of lilies. Her floor-length veil was made from lace that had been her mother’s and was held in place with a band of medieval pearls. The matron of honor was Alice’s cousin Lolita Armour, who wore a simple beige gown of satin and a hat of brown velvet. Her two bridesmaids were her cousin Elizabeth Chapin and a friend, Mary Baker. Following the ceremony, there was a small reception at Aunt Tattie’s lakeside Chicago apartment on Sheridan Road. The event was reported in the Chicago Daily Tribune alongside a photograph of the newlyweds. Although Alice looks stunning in her long gown and veil, there is little evidence of the exuberance or radiance that is normally associated with a bride on her wedding day. In fact, Alice looks positively morose.
    Although Alice’s stepmother, Louise, traveled to Chicago for the occasion, William Silverthorne was not invited to his daughter’s wedding. In her father’s absence, it was left to Uncle Sim to give Alice away. Did Alice appeal to her Armour and Chapin relatives to allow William to attend? She had long since come of age, and was about to become a newly married woman, therefore possessing a newfound degree of independence. She could have requested that he be invited. In fact, there is every possibility that she simply did not want William there. In the coming years, Alice did not attempt to reconcile with her errant father, and it seems that, for whatever reason, William was disinclined to play an active part in his daughter’s life. Since his separation from Alice, he had continued with his business interests, experimenting in patenting various inventions, including new pour-outs for bottles and ways of treating paper to make it waterproof; he was also instrumental in developing several mining prospects in Canada. Alice and William certainly corresponded during the ensuing years, but they would rarely meet. Their estrangement, if not complete, was effective.
    After the wedding, Alice and Frédéric spent two weeks at the Armour house on Long Island. There is a photograph of Alice from this time that can still be found in the de Janzé family albums at their ancestral estate, Château de Parfondeval, in Normandy. She is sitting cross-legged on a rumpled bed at the house on Long Island, wearing nothing but her nightdress, big windowpane reading glasses on her nose. On her