The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice De Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll Read Online Free Page B
achieved the most glamorous effect by straightening her hair so that it was either sleek against her head or loose around her shoulders.
Initially, Alice enjoyed the attention she received at parties and in the press, but as she became more accustomed to the Chicago social whirl, she quickly began to tire of it. She possessed an adventurous spirit and hated to be placed in a box. Evidently, she was frustrated by the restrictions and unspoken codes of the debutante lifestyle, where she could barely move without being spotted and recognized. This was a somewhat shallow world ruled by somewhat shallow people who placed enormous value on the “right” makeup and clothes, and who cared most of all about whom you were seen with and where you had gone for dinner the previous night. No end of effort was made to look attractive. Chicago debutantes were known to take the train to New York just to have their faces, hair, eyebrows, and lips made up by Elizabeth Arden on Fifth Avenue before dashing back to Chicago in time to get dressed for the next ball. Alice, a natural beauty, had no such compulsion. She began to find the rounds of debutante parties unspeakably dull. It was at this point in her life that Alice began to explore Chicago’s seamier sides.
The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald dubbed the decade to follow the “Jazz Age,” but Chicago was ahead of the game. In 1918 and 1919, when Alice began to frequent Chicago’s nightclubs, jazz was helping to create a new atmosphere of postwar optimism and liberation that crossed racial and class boundaries. Partygoers were unhindered by Prohibition, which would begin in 1920. Alice learned to hold her liquor and loved to dance until the early hours. She was moving away from her elite circle and beginning to explore her identity outside of her family and their expectations for her. She was also meeting some decidedly shady characters. Organized crime was rife in Chicago. James “Big Jim” Colosimo, the most powerful mobster in the city, ran “the Outfit,” as it was known. His gang of Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Greek cohorts controlled the fourteen gangland districts of the city and all of the vice, gambling, and labor racketeering. When Al Capone fled Brooklyn in 1919 for Chicago, it was to join Colosimo’s ranks. Jazz clubs like the Green Mill, where Alice was a regular, were the places where the leading mobsters went to socialize and operate.
Around this time, rumors began to circulate that Alice was stepping out with a good-looking man of Italian descent with a doubtful reputation. The mobster in question has never been named, but later in life Alice spoke of him to her friend Margaret Spicer. This unnamed character couldn’t have been Al Capone, because he arrived for the first time in Chicago in 1919 (at which point he was newly married to an Irish girl baptised Mary but known as Mae), but there were plenty of other candidates. Whatever the exact identity of this new boyfriend, Uncle Sim and Aunt Tattie were, quite naturally, alarmed. It was feared that the gang member in question might begin to exert pressure on the wealthy Armour and Chapin families. Worse, the sensitive Alice could be dragged into a mire of criminality. Alice was popular with all her relations, who felt, quite rightly, that she was vulnerable. What’s more, she had recently come into her inheritance, and although the exact degree of her wealth is unknown, it is assumed she was worth several million dollars. In order to put some distance between Alice and the growing scandal, Uncle Sim and Aunt Tattie decided that the best course of action was to remove Alice from Chicago for a time. Aunt Tattie had an apartment in Paris, so it was decided that Alice should be taken there immediately.
Alice arrived in Paris with Aunt Tattie early in 1920, a few months before her twenty-first birthday. The two women installed themselves in Aunt Tattie’s apartment, close to the Bois de Boulogne, at 115, rue de la
Initially, Alice enjoyed the attention she received at parties and in the press, but as she became more accustomed to the Chicago social whirl, she quickly began to tire of it. She possessed an adventurous spirit and hated to be placed in a box. Evidently, she was frustrated by the restrictions and unspoken codes of the debutante lifestyle, where she could barely move without being spotted and recognized. This was a somewhat shallow world ruled by somewhat shallow people who placed enormous value on the “right” makeup and clothes, and who cared most of all about whom you were seen with and where you had gone for dinner the previous night. No end of effort was made to look attractive. Chicago debutantes were known to take the train to New York just to have their faces, hair, eyebrows, and lips made up by Elizabeth Arden on Fifth Avenue before dashing back to Chicago in time to get dressed for the next ball. Alice, a natural beauty, had no such compulsion. She began to find the rounds of debutante parties unspeakably dull. It was at this point in her life that Alice began to explore Chicago’s seamier sides.
The novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald dubbed the decade to follow the “Jazz Age,” but Chicago was ahead of the game. In 1918 and 1919, when Alice began to frequent Chicago’s nightclubs, jazz was helping to create a new atmosphere of postwar optimism and liberation that crossed racial and class boundaries. Partygoers were unhindered by Prohibition, which would begin in 1920. Alice learned to hold her liquor and loved to dance until the early hours. She was moving away from her elite circle and beginning to explore her identity outside of her family and their expectations for her. She was also meeting some decidedly shady characters. Organized crime was rife in Chicago. James “Big Jim” Colosimo, the most powerful mobster in the city, ran “the Outfit,” as it was known. His gang of Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Greek cohorts controlled the fourteen gangland districts of the city and all of the vice, gambling, and labor racketeering. When Al Capone fled Brooklyn in 1919 for Chicago, it was to join Colosimo’s ranks. Jazz clubs like the Green Mill, where Alice was a regular, were the places where the leading mobsters went to socialize and operate.
Around this time, rumors began to circulate that Alice was stepping out with a good-looking man of Italian descent with a doubtful reputation. The mobster in question has never been named, but later in life Alice spoke of him to her friend Margaret Spicer. This unnamed character couldn’t have been Al Capone, because he arrived for the first time in Chicago in 1919 (at which point he was newly married to an Irish girl baptised Mary but known as Mae), but there were plenty of other candidates. Whatever the exact identity of this new boyfriend, Uncle Sim and Aunt Tattie were, quite naturally, alarmed. It was feared that the gang member in question might begin to exert pressure on the wealthy Armour and Chapin families. Worse, the sensitive Alice could be dragged into a mire of criminality. Alice was popular with all her relations, who felt, quite rightly, that she was vulnerable. What’s more, she had recently come into her inheritance, and although the exact degree of her wealth is unknown, it is assumed she was worth several million dollars. In order to put some distance between Alice and the growing scandal, Uncle Sim and Aunt Tattie decided that the best course of action was to remove Alice from Chicago for a time. Aunt Tattie had an apartment in Paris, so it was decided that Alice should be taken there immediately.
Alice arrived in Paris with Aunt Tattie early in 1920, a few months before her twenty-first birthday. The two women installed themselves in Aunt Tattie’s apartment, close to the Bois de Boulogne, at 115, rue de la
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