French Connection

On April 2^nd and 3^rd 1987, Sotheby’s Geneva absorbed the attention of the world’s most acute eyes on royal gems. The French-speaking Swiss city would be the setting where on a rostrum the auctioneer’s gavel struck the wooden block to signal the acceptance of the highest bids, which in this noble instance were for 200 jewelled treasures consigned by the Duchess of Windsor, formerly Wallis Simpson.

Spearheaded by Arthur Weinstein – a bon vivant and after-hours outlaw – the World, located in Alphabet City, Manhattan, sprouted in a haze of artistic progression in the mid-80s. In the ensuing years, it would earn the moniker of the most iconic nightclub that you’ve never heard of. But it was a playground of freaky glamour, where you would see Romy Haag from Berlin, the forgotten muse of David Bowie, who was also a popular fixture in the club. And then you had the Herreras, Reinaldo and Caroline, the embodiment of taste in each declension of life, and it couldn’t possibly be displayed with a more natural guise than when Caroline showed up wearing a giant emerald jewel – a stunning necklace that her husband, the esteemed Venezuelan aristocrat and arbiter of style, had bought for her at that storied Sotheby’s Duchess of Windsor jewellery auction in Geneva.

Sixty or so years previously, three wealthy and auspicious Americans, dubbed the “Border Barons” by the media, bankrolled the development of an entire resort, Agua Caliente, only just beneath the border in Tijuana, Mexico, to steal a march on the crippling regulations of Prohibition. Booze, prostitution, erotic dance and gambling were all coming under a moralistic glare; therefore, in part to provide the thrills that were proscribed in the US, they built an emphatically stylish horse racing track.

Unsurprisingly, Hollywood’s stylish elite, who had a penchant for risk, would immerse themselves in the avant-garde festivities of the racetrack – so much so that Western cowboy Tom Mix became an honorary field judge, and world-famous boxer Jack Dempsey became an honorary starter at Caliente. Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, and especially Jean Harlow, were regularly seen at the track. Clark Gable would even be seen giving his jockey a leg-up before the race. It is now almost inconceivable that ostrich racing was frequently included on the special events calendar – Mexican jockeys guided the birds by means of their wings. With enough money and tequila, anything was possible at Agua Caliente!

Eduardo Cansino, a Spanish-born American vaudevillian performer in Los Angeles, and pushy father of Rita Hayworth, was keenly aware of the opportunity that presented itself at Agua Caliente for his daughter’s budding dancing career: “I knew if I took Rita by the hand and visited the casting offices, we would get nothing but exercise. So, I gave up my dancing school seven months ago and accepted a longstanding offer to dance at the Agua Caliente. Rita was my partner. I knew that most of the studio executives visited Caliente from time to time .” Known as the ‘Dancing Cansinos’, they showcased their talents up to 20 times a week. It proved a shrewd decision; Fox Film Corporation were enchanted by the 16-year-old Hayworth and signed her up.

Political, economic and social instability, a by-product of the Great Depression, marked the onset of the 1930s. But as with the restrictions imposed by Prohibition, this situation incites amoral actions to fill the void. Agua Caliente’s louche conviviality and its ability to print dollars, especially for gangsters, quickly eclipsed Monte Carlo’s gambling coffers. On the other side of the ocean, as part of an African tour, in the former British colony of Kenya the Prince of Wales, later both King Edward VIII and then the Duke of Windsor, and his brother Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, were greeted by naked, painted warriors – despite being welcomed with the brandishing of spears as a royal “goodwill” gesture, they ensconced themselves in the illicit affairs of European nobles and aristocrats, a runaway troupe better known as the “Happy Valley set”.

Tasteful attire, lovemaking, nobility and Hollywood beauty – all represent a rondure of risk similar to the hobby of jockeyship. And so it’s no surprise that the Duke of Windsor, Prince Aly Khan and the Marques de Portago, who shared all of those traits, were seduced into climbing into the saddle to compete in horse races. Edward VII, the grandfather of the Duke of Windsor, remains the sole reigning monarch as a racehorse owner to secure the Triple Crown, which encompasses the 2000 Guineas Stakes, the Derby and the St Leger Stakes. And strangely, commemorating his love and contribution, he died on May 16^th, 1910, just hours after Witch Of The Air had given him his last victory at Kempton Park. But like Mexico’s forgotten Monte Carlo and the World, the most iconic nightclub that you’ve never heard of, the Duke of Windsor’s decade-long dalliance as an amateur jockey is largely consigned to history.  

It is true that after he, as King Edward VIII, abdicated the British throne in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, becoming the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, they lived a chic exiled existence in France, where they soon settled into the 14-room mansion in the Parisian park the Bois du Boulogne, better known today as “Villa Windsor”. But it was during the latter half of his bachelor life as heir to the throne that, as the Prince of Wales, he fervently chose to engage in various country sports. He was bestowed the title of Prince of Wales by his father, George V, when he ascended to the throne in 1910, and he held that title until his father’s death on January 20th, 1936. As alluded to, his amateur horse riding escapades on the turf are not well known today, because he opted to test himself in the more countryfied pursuit of point-to-pointing, as opposed to going “under rules”, a synonym of professional horse racing. He would earn his first victory in 1921 at Great Brington, in the Pytchley Hunt country in Northamptonshire – a triumph that would be repeated a handful of times.

Historically, point-to-pointing is a recreation sport embraced by farmers or country squires, very unlike the exquisite grandstand at Chantilly Racecourse, where immaculate spectators would be seen throwing their newspapers and superior trilby or top hat into the air as they are overcome with excitement at landing a big gamble when their fancied horse is first past the post. One autumn evening in 1833, Prince Alexey B. Lobanov-Rostovsky, a Russian statesman and country sport zealot, was returning on horseback with comrades after a splendid day of hunting, emerging from the forest of Chantilly onto the vast meadow that ran alongside it. In jovial spirits, he and his companions made a wager – the first to arrive at the Grandes Ecuries (Great Stables) on the opposite side of the lawn would win 100 louis. Lobanov would lose his stake; however, along with his hunting folk, he was utterly enchanted by the soft and silky terrain – a typography tailor-made for racing horses. The following year, that grassy plain became the Hippodrome de Chantilly, which is today the oldest racecourse in France.

In 1830, three years before the discovery of those saintly horse racing pastures, July 10 saw the birth of Camille Pissarro, otherwise referred to as the “Father of Impressionism”. Born on Saint Thomas Island in the Caribbean Sea, he moved to Paris in 1855 to further harness his early painting talent – a transfer that quickly earned a selection of his traditional-style paintings to be exhibited at the prestigious Paris Salon. While attending the free school, the Academie Suisse, in Paris, he became friends with younger artists. Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne were two of these, and they shared with Pissarro dissatisfaction with the dictates of the Salon. After a year, he often decamped from the capital to small “picturesque” settlements, such as Louveciennes, where he often painted the road to Versailles in various seasons. And Cézanne followed suit, notably finding the colour and depth of the landscape in Chantilly a sublime setting, resulting in a series of his famous pieces, such as his oil-on-canvas landscape referred to as “Avenue at Chantilly”.

There are no records of Cézanne’s like-minded friend Pissarro using the beauty of Chantilly in his works, but only last week, in a different guise, he made arguably the biggest impression on French horse racing, when the jockey Ryan Moore produced a masterpiece by steering his equine namesake Camille Pissarro to victory at Chantilly Racecourse in the Prix du Jockey Club, the race sometimes known as the French Derby. The Betfred English Derby (in Honour of His Highness Aga Khan IV), took place on June 7 this year. The iconic green and red racing silks of the Aga Khan family have been first past the post for him on five occasions in that race and eight times in the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby). They were seen again this year in the race honouring him, but sadly without success this time.

Prince Aly Khan is seen on Nearque II after winning the Prix des Lions at Longchamp racecourse, 1952. (Picture courtesy of Smith Archive via Alamy)

In the summer of 1948, it was unlikely that there was another party citadel like the legendary hostess Elsa Maxwell’s French Riviera House, which would become the hacienda of gaiety for a peerless list of bold-faced names. On a sabbatical, post filming of The Loves of Carmen, was the flame-haired beauty Rita Hayworth, who was at the height of her career and was married to fellow actor Orson Welles. There was another married individual at the chic soirée, also on a sabbatical – a more permanent one – the fast-living Prince Aly Khan. He arrived at Maxwell’s party with his English socialite wife, Princess Joan Aly Khan (née Joan Barbara Yarde-Buller, later Viscountess Camrose), mother of the late, lamented Aga Khan IV. However, if there was ever such a seductive first glance, it was between Prince Aly Khan and Hayworth.

Whisked off at intervals to Biarritz, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Acapulco, Havana and, of course, Paris, it was in some of those destinations that, without their respective spouses, Hayworth accompanied Prince Aly Khan to many classic turf meetings. It must be mentioned that only the month before the onset of their instant romance on the Cote d’Azur, the befittingly named My Love, owned in a partnership by Prince Aly Khan and the glamorous and prolific horse owner Suzy Volterra, took the 1948 Epsom Derby, trained by the Chantilly-based British trainer Robert “Dick” Carver. The couple’s marriage partners were soon abandoned, and in true liberated Prince Aly Khan fashion, he wed Hayworth in the Cannes town hall on May 27, 1949. On December 28, Hayworth gave birth to a daughter, Yasmin.

Frequenting Agua Caliente, Del Mar Thoroughbred Club (San Diego), the latter of which Hayworth became a member, Epsom, Longchamp, Chantilly, and many other environs of turf excellence, she was gifted many impeccably bred thoroughbreds, including Double Rose, one time favourite for the Prix de Diane, held at Chantilly and sometimes referred to as the French Oaks. It was for that race that Carver brought jockey Bill Rickaby over from England to ride the filly and famously, in the paddock, Double Rose received a pre-race kiss from Hayworth. The filly didn’t deliver to expectations, but this anti-climax secretly was not the reason for Hayworth’s dissatisfaction towards horse racing; the truth was that, despite being given the moniker of “The Princess of the Turf”, she fundamentally was not interested. However, you cannot diminish Prince Aly Khan’s unprecedented contribution and influence on Horse Racing. He was a leading amateur rider in France, winning three amateur steeplechases championships, and such was his daredevil approach to life that he rode a winner over the hurdles with a broken collar-bone. It was this panache he ingrained into the sport – a footprint that nobody will ever leave again.

Prince Aly Khan had an insatiable appetite for women, particularly those among the glamorous denizens of Hollywood, and so it was not a surprise that one day Hayworth caught him in a public clinch with Joan Fontaine – an adulterous action that certainly contributed to his and Hayworth’s divorce on September 2, 1951. Despite his somewhat lackadaisical playboy endeavours, Prince Aly Khan remained unwavering in his passion for horse racing. The Prix de’ l’Arc de Triomphe had always eluded him but finally, in 1959, his colt Saint Crespin won arguably the most contentious Arc ever. An automobile accident claimed his life seven months later, as he drove to a dinner party following a day of racing at Longchamp – a befitting ending for the iconoclastic thrill-seeking noble.

As mentioned, the bet that Prince Alexey B. Lobanov-Rostovsky made with his hunting chums on that day in 1833, as they were hacking back from a day of hunting in the forest of Chantilly, led to the founding of the Hippodrome de Chantilly. Born in London in 1928, but educated in Biarritz, Alfonso de Portago, whose full name is Alfonso Antonio Vicente Eduardo Ángel Blas Francisco de Borja Cabeza de Vaca y Leighton, 11th Marquess of Portago, would win his own bet more than 100 years later when, aged 17, he flew his plane beneath London Tower Bridge. Now, historians, or even polite society, who are enthused by researching and then unearthing trails of family misdemeanours, tragedies, and disasters, would be hard pushed to find one that eclipses that of de Portago.

However, it was the realm of horse racing that brought much-needed cheer to the family. Pictured strolling arm-in-arm with his new wife, the American model Carroll McDaniel, at Aintree races in 1950, he sports a beige trench coat and binoculars wrapped around his neck and, when the picture is taken, his eyes extend upwards from the race card he is studying. And we know he had a vested interest that year, because in the Grand National, the most famous steeplechase in the world, the rakish nobleman-conquistador would steer Garde Toi to finish third. And to highlight further the family’s significant turf achievements, in 1994 his sister, the undeniably chic Spanish noblewoman the Marquesa de Moratalla, had her horse The Fellow, carrying her pure red silks, win the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Sometimes such figures have that burning innate desire to experience unquantifiable thrills and, like his fellow high-octane noble Prince Aly Khan, he famously died on May 12th, 1957, when competing in the infamous open-road motorsport endurance race, Mille Miglia, which ceased in 1957 because of the irrepressible danger. Driving his Ferrari 335 C, he crashed and he, his co-driver, Edmund Nelson, and nine spectators were sadly killed, the untimely end of another unlimited risk-taking noble.

But they all lived and stuck to their wild convictions, and never wavered – an approach to life that you cannot begrudge, remembering them for their different, yet equally exciting, endeavours that are waning as we enter an increasingly pedestrian era. However, unlike other sports, we still cherish the continued entertainment of horse racing worldwide, and restrictive rules haven’t nullified it. And we head back to Chantilly next week for the irrepressibly chic Chantilly meeting which hosts the Prix du Diane Longines, a race that the late Aga Khan won seven times, might the famous green and red silks be victorious again?