Word: misia
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Dates: during 1953-1953
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...Misia was not the only one who was impressed with Misia. Before she was 16, she was married to a young Parisian man of affairs, Thadee Natanson, whom she met one evening while out with Alfred Nobel, the dynamite manufacturer, and his American mistress. After blithely spending her dowry of 300,000 francs (then $60,000) on a trousseau, Misia settled in Paris, and while Thadee concerned himself with business, she diverted herself by building homes on the Riviera, helping imprisoned anarchists and bewitching the first of a long succession of assorted geniuses...
Soon another Frenchman, the multimillionaire proprietor of Le Matin, Alfred Edwards, fell in love with her. The day Misia lunched at his home he left the table too distraught to eat. Edwards' wife berated Misia for upsetting the great man; rather than distress him, Mme. Edwards told her, Misia should become his mistress. Misia was indignant, but Edwards was persistent. For all the world like the heavy in a French melodrama, he lured Thadee Natanson into a disastrous business scheme, then offered to save him in exchange for Misia. The bargain was struck, Misia finally agreed, and after rapid...
...Dazzled Heart. Misia's new husband owned an immense castle with towers and battlements, but castles were not to Misia's taste. "Why should I limit myself to two or three hundred acres, when I can revel in the whole world?" she demanded. Edwards promptly sold his castle and built Misia a 100-ft. yacht. Caruso acclaimed the yacht's acoustics perfect, and tirelessly sang Neapolitan songs whenever he was a guest. "Enough!" Misia finally cried. "I can't bear that any more!" Eyes popping, Caruso exploded in dismay: "I, Caruso, the great, the incomparable Caruso...
Then Edwards fell in love with an actress, and just when Misia was feeling most deeply forsaken, Jose Maria Sert, the Spanish painter, walked into her apartment wearing a sombrero and Spanish cape. Before leaving, he asked her to go to Rome with him for a few weeks. Amused, irritated and taken aback, she heard herself say she would be delighted. With Sert she "knew what it was to have a dazzled heart," and for the first time had the "calm and frightening feeling of something final...
Their few weeks together stretched into a couple of decades during which Misia continued to charm such people as Diaghilev, Clemenceau and Debussy, and Sert won an international reputation as a mural painter, plus a fortune in commissions. All was idyllic until Sert met Roussadana Mdivani, a Georgian princess young enough to be his and Misia's daughter. It was a strange triangle, with Sert torn between Roussadana and Misia. each of whom loved and consoled the other at every turn of Sert's affection. Misia let him have a divorce. "The poor girl was not responsible...