poodles and pearls

The divorce decree of Margaret, Duchess of Argyle took four and a half hours to read.

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On the basis of the evidence, declared the judge, the duchess, 49, “was a completely promiscuous woman whose sexual appetite could only be satisfied by a number of men.” He named four specific adulterers including John Cohane, a U.S. businessman living in Ireland whom the court described as a “self-confessed wolf” with “the morals of a tomcat” and an unidentified partner who had been photographed in the nude with the duchess.

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The Argylls’ litigation, which has dragged on for 3½ years, was the longest, most expensive and most sensational in Scottish history. And it may not be over, since the duchess still faces charges of libel and conspiracy stemming from her own divorce petition against the duke, which she dropped last May. In that suit, she accused her husband of committing adultery with her stepmother.”

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In 1943, the Duchess who was then known as Margaret Sweeny had a near fatal fall down an elevator shaft while visiting her chiropodist on Bond Street.

“I fell forty feet to the bottom of the lift shaft,” she later recalled. “The only thing that saved me was the lift cable, which broke my fall.

After her recovery, Sweeny’s friends noted that not only had she lost all sense of taste and smell due to nerve damage, she also had become sexually voracious. As she once reportedly said, “Go to bed early and often.” (Given her numerous earlier romantic escapades, including an affair with the married George, Duke of Kent in her youth, this may have been a change in degree rather than basic predisposition.)

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Introduced into evidence in the 1963 divorce case was a series of Polaroid photographs of the Duchess nude apart from her signature three-strand pearl necklace. Also included were photographs of the bepearled duchess fellating a naked man, and though the photographs showed his genitalia and torso, they excluded his face.

Also introduced to the court was a list of eighty-eight men the Duke believed had enjoyed his wife’s favours; the list is said to include two government ministers and three royals.

The duchess never revealed the identity of the “headless man,” though it was widely believed to be Douglas Fairbanks Jr. who denied the allegation to his grave.

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She once told the New York Times, “I don’t think anybody has real style or class any more. Everyone’s gotten old and fat.” To the end of her life, her superficiality remained superbly intact, as evidenced by one characteristically vapid quote: “Always a poodle, only a poodle! That, and three strands of pearls!” she said. “Together they are absolutely the essential things in life.”