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essinink 's review for:
An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew
by Annejet van der Zijl
I probably never would have heard the name "Allene Tew" were it not for the Amazon first reads email, but for once I'm fairly satisfied with the non-fiction offering.
Allene Tew: born 1872 in Jamestown, NY and married five times before her death in 1955 seems to have been one of the great socialites of the Gilded Age. Today, she is mostly forgotten, but over the course of her life this small-town American woman negotiated her way through marriages both ill- and well-advised, raised and lost children of her own, became independently wealthy despite numerous financial crises, and brokered a marriage between Princess Juliana of the Netherlands and Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. She became godmother to the aforementioned couple's children, and ultimately finished her life as the Countess Pavel Pavlovich Kotzebue.
Biography is always an odd mix of fact and supposition. Women's biography especially is an uneviable task. In the case of Allene Tew, as with many women of her time, the biographer is often forced to look to the well-recorded men in her orbit for clues. Fortunately, the men around Allene Tew were notable indeed.
Unsurprisingly, van der Zijl has the most trouble reconstructing Allene's early life in Jamestown. There's a fair bit of speculation in the early chapters about how Allene may or may not have responded to certain events or environments. From a reader's standpoint, the hedging is frustrating, but not unexpected. It lessens as the book goes on. Allene moved to Pittsburgh, PA, and later to New York, NY both of which had well-recorded society pages to draw from.
Even still, it seems that Allene either did not leave much behind in her own words, or that she was fairly self-contained in her expressions. While van der Zijl does an excellent job reconstructing Allene's timeline, Allene herself remains distant, pictured largely through the eyes of others and framed by the dramatic world events of her lifetime.
One other interesting point of note is how isolated high society seemed from the everyday troubles of less privileged people. "Trouble at home? No worries, we'll just go to France until it blows over." That sort of thing. And later, when Allene was able to use her considerable wealth and influence to get her German stepson out of post WWII Berlin. Truly, the woman born as Allene Tew lived in a different sort of world than most women of the time. She may not have been born to it, but she knew how to use it.
All in all, quite an interesting read.
Allene Tew: born 1872 in Jamestown, NY and married five times before her death in 1955 seems to have been one of the great socialites of the Gilded Age. Today, she is mostly forgotten, but over the course of her life this small-town American woman negotiated her way through marriages both ill- and well-advised, raised and lost children of her own, became independently wealthy despite numerous financial crises, and brokered a marriage between Princess Juliana of the Netherlands and Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. She became godmother to the aforementioned couple's children, and ultimately finished her life as the Countess Pavel Pavlovich Kotzebue.
Biography is always an odd mix of fact and supposition. Women's biography especially is an uneviable task. In the case of Allene Tew, as with many women of her time, the biographer is often forced to look to the well-recorded men in her orbit for clues. Fortunately, the men around Allene Tew were notable indeed.
Unsurprisingly, van der Zijl has the most trouble reconstructing Allene's early life in Jamestown. There's a fair bit of speculation in the early chapters about how Allene may or may not have responded to certain events or environments. From a reader's standpoint, the hedging is frustrating, but not unexpected. It lessens as the book goes on. Allene moved to Pittsburgh, PA, and later to New York, NY both of which had well-recorded society pages to draw from.
Even still, it seems that Allene either did not leave much behind in her own words, or that she was fairly self-contained in her expressions. While van der Zijl does an excellent job reconstructing Allene's timeline, Allene herself remains distant, pictured largely through the eyes of others and framed by the dramatic world events of her lifetime.
One other interesting point of note is how isolated high society seemed from the everyday troubles of less privileged people. "Trouble at home? No worries, we'll just go to France until it blows over." That sort of thing. And later, when Allene was able to use her considerable wealth and influence to get her German stepson out of post WWII Berlin. Truly, the woman born as Allene Tew lived in a different sort of world than most women of the time. She may not have been born to it, but she knew how to use it.
All in all, quite an interesting read.