Yola Letellier : Socialite Spy?

 

Well-known in 1920s-30s Paris, Yola was the confidante of Lord Mountbatten and the Hungarian vice-regent Istvan Horthy.

  Was she passing on their information to the French secret service?

 

                  Yola by Man Ray, around 1926

 

Yola Letellier (1904-1996), in adulthood celebrated as a quintessential Parisienne, spent her early childhood in the northern French commune of Jaulgonne. Her father Henri was a factory worker, while her mother Marie embroidered.

             She was very close to her older sister Henriette; a brother, Xavier, arrived in 1909. Her parents each had four siblings, and she would recall winter sleigh rides to tell stories around the fire with her cousins.

              This happy existence was brought to an end in 1914 with the outbreak of WW1. Within the first months, Henri was killed and their house destroyed by bombs. His older sister Jeanne Henriquez offered for her bereaved relatives to live with her in Paris.

     Jeanne was a successful opera singer, who’d sung all the major Wagner roles at the Paris Opera, and hosted a weekly salon for artistic figures. Yola was allowed to attend from a young age, and here she met Jeanne’s friend, the eminent author Colette, who would play a noted role in her life later.

   Jeanne was also a noted singing teacher, and likely suggested Yola take it up. Yola began lessons at the Conservatoire, where her teacher suggested she learn ballet to correct her posture. This was a lucky suggestion-Yola adored ballet, boarding at the Opera to take ordinary lessons and dance small roles in their productions. However, at 18, she left, having been told she wasn’t short or talented enough to make it as a professional .

     

                     Jeanne Henriquez

                   

      So Yola turned her attention to another option : marriage. In 1926, Jeanne introduced her to her old friend, Henri Letellier. Owner of the third-biggest-circulating paper of the time, Le Journal, he had also developed Deauville into France’s preeminent seaside resort, and would serve 8 times as its mayor. They were married quietly the same year in London, possibly to avoid gossip. Their spent their honeymoon in Saint-Raphael, where they happened to stay at the same hotel as Colette. She was charmed by Yola, and would later use her as the main model for the heroine of her wildly successful 1944 novella Gigi.

                         

          The 36-year age difference excited significant comment : Yola was 22 to Henri’s 58. Mary Jayne Gold wrote in her memoirs that the relationship was companionable rather than romantic, and Henri was happy for Yola to conduct 2 other significant relationships, but they were nevertheless extremely close, and remained so for nearly 40 years of marriage.

                    

 

                             Yola and Henri

   Henri’s previous marriages had been stormy : his first wife, the Swede Marthe Lindstrom, was Edward VII’s mistress, while his second, the American dancer Peggy Hopkins Joyce, shot her lover, a Brazilian ambassador. He enjoyed the domestic stability he found with Yola!

       The ‘famous Mme Letellier’

    The marriage made Yola mayoress of Deauville and a well-known figure of the Parisian social scene. She was photographed by Man Ray and Vogue, dressed by Chanel and Schiaparelli, and caricatured by Sem . Her friends included Mistinguett, Maurice Chevalier, Salvador Dali, and the American heiress Mary Jayne Gold.

     The year of her marriage, she met Lord Louis ‘Dickie’ Mountbatten, then an ambitious naval officer related  to the Royals. He was married to the heiress Edwina Ashley, who was known for her good looks and intelligence, but, frustrated with his workaholic tendencies, had begun affairs.

            Lord Louis Mountbatten

    Dickie and Yola started a relationship that would last more than 30 years. He valued her liveliness and wit, but above all, her willingness to listen to extensive details of his work. According to Yola’s niece:  ‘If Dickie had a secret, he would tell her.’

        Edwina was initially furious, but after confronting Yola, she became close friends with her, realising that Yola’s relationship with Dickie was mainly that of an understanding listener. Yola was very discreet, and did not want to marry Dickie, as we shall see.

   His feelings seem to have been stronger. Her photo was kept on his naval desk, along with his family's, and every letter to her had 'ILYFE' at the bottom. (His inquisitive valet, John Barratt,  guessed it meant 'I love you forever').

                                                                                   

She also remained close to Henriette, who was involved with an Austrian, Count Hubert Deym, paving the way for Yola to meet significant Central and Eastern Europeans. Chief among these was Istvan Horthy, vice-regent of Hungary and son of the regent, Miklos Horthy. They met in 1930 in USA, where Yola was holidaying alone. A trained engineer, Istvan was apprenticed at the Ford factory.

  

  Yola at 34, by the Australian society painter Alexander Saint-Paull, by kind permission of Virginie Lozada Echenique

                         Istvan Horthy

   The relationship soon became serious. According to Yola's family, Horthy and Mountbatten were jealous of each other, but kept it in check.  Yola frequently stayed in Budapest with him, and they kept up a regular correspondence : Istvan’s valet Gyorgy Farkas recalled that if he had any spare time in the evening, he would write to Yola. Their letters’ location is currently unknown : possibly the Horthy family destroyed them.

     According to Farkas, Istvan wanted to marry Yola, but his family were unwilling for Hungary’s heir to marry a divorcee. (In 1935, Yola and Henri  divorced, although they remained living together as happily as before : according to Yola’s family, the divorce was for financial reasons, and Henri was unworried by Horthy) Aside from her divorced status, Yola’s working-class origins would likely have been objected to, as would her foreigness ( she called Istvan Etienne, and they communicated in French:she couldn’t speak Hungarian).

   But there may have been a further reason : rumours circulated that Yola was reporting on Istvan to the French secret service. These may simply have been due to prejudice, but Yola certainly had access to important information via the relationship, which, given her position, she could have easily passed on to the French government, or to Dickie.

     Ultimately, the obstacles proved too much : the relationship ended in 1939. In 1940, Istvan married the eminently suitable Countess Ilona Edelsheim-Gyulai, and in 1942, he was killed in a plane crash.

     Rumours  held that Hitler had assassinated him. It is true that, unlike his father, Horthy was Anglophile,  convinced Germany would lose, and appalled by the persecution of Hungary’s Jews. But he had not flown for a while, and the Heja plane model was notoriously poor quality. A recording also exists, recorded without his knowledge, where Hitler expresses regret for Horthy’s death, believing his presence would have helped to stabilise Hungary.  Most historians hold that his death was a tragic accident.

             There is no direct evidence of Yola’s reaction, but she was surely devastated. In his will, written just before he went to the front, Horthy left her two houses in Sunny Hills. Yola refused these via her lawyer, possibly out of grief, or a desire to spare his widow Ilona pain, who had only been given beneficial ownership of the houses.

          Yola spent the war in Paris with Henri, unwilling to be driven out by the occupiers. Unlike many in high society, they refused to collaborate.  She carried on corresponding with Dickie throughout the war, now elevated, partly through nepotism, from a mid-ranking naval officer to Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces.  

     She and Henri resumed their former lives after the war, and she remained close to Dickie, visiting him monthly and travelling to India during his term as the last Viceroy, the legacy of which is still controversial.

      In 1960, Henri passed away. Yola eulogised him as ‘a perfect gentleman’. Dickie proposed, but she refused on the grounds that she disliked royal formality. She later married an architect, Jacques Ruillier, and they remained friends. 

  Dickie was now employed by the Ministry of Defence. His role was largely that of manager, but questions remain about his alleged involvement in a plot to forcibly oust Harold Wilson and take over the government, on the grounds that Wilson's ineptitude was putting the UK in danger of revolt.

   In 1979, Dickie was assassinated by the IRA while on holiday in Ireland. Yola was devastated. Her sister's family had lived with her since Henri's death, and helped to buffer her grief, and in the 1980s she would provide valuable testimony to Janet Morgan, Edwina’s biographer. She lived on to the age of 92, remaining sharp and lively,  and is deeply missed by her great-nieces.

       Unanswered questions

  Yola burnt the letters she wrote to Dickie, but his post-1940 letters to her have survived. Mountbatten biographers have had access to them, but they aren’t quoted in any biographies.

    Mountbatten was famously possessive over his legacy, so understandably, his commissioned biographers were reluctant to discuss his relationship with Yola. This lack of research, and the fact that 1980s biographers had write with her approval in mind, means that the possibility of espionage hasn’t been properly considered.

    A Horthy biographer, Andrea Bern, was the first to raise this possibility in an article for the Hungarian-language magazine HelloMagyar. The relationship only became public knowledge when Farkas gave an interview in the 1970s, and researchers were rightly unwilling to upset Yola or Horthy’s widow Ilona. There has been little research on Horthy himself, due to his tragically shortened life, but historians now are remedying this.

        It seems likely that an attractive, intelligent, discreet woman with the ear of both an English royal, (not to mention Supreme Allied Commander, Viceroy of India and Ministry of Defence advisor) and Hungary’s vice-regent, would be of interest to the French secret services. But did Yola actively help them?

      Andrea Bern is sorting the Horthy archive, and Yola’s great-niece Virginie has decided to examine her letters and photographs. Whether she was a spy or a confidante, interesting details are likely to emerge.