How to get out of poverty, seduce a British prince and fall in love with 5 men at the same time: The real Frenchwoman Marguerite Alibert

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The fate of Marguerite was full of incredible twists and turns of fate: she had a chance to get out of complete poverty into high society, she fell in love, made scandals, she crossed the world and she even had to kill. Such a life is literally created to be filmed, but at the same time it can be considered too provocative to be talked about publicly.

Marguerite was born in 1890 into an ordinary French working-class family - her mother was a governess, and her father was a taxi driver. When Marguerite was still a child herself, she had to look after her younger brother. However, one day, when the boy was 4 years old, she did not finish watching, and he was hit by a truck. Parents could not forgive her for this and, in order not to drive her out into the street, they sent her to a boarding school at the monastery.

When Marguerite was 15 years old, the nuns found a family for the girl, where she began to work - cleaning the house, helping with the housework. But a year later, the girl was kicked out - she turned out to be pregnant, and did not confess who the father of the child was. Marguerite did not get rid of the child, but she also did not have the means to take care of her. Therefore, she gave birth - it turned out to be a girl, and after a while she sent her child to one of the farms in the center of France, where they would take care of her daughter, while Marguerite could find how to "put herself on her feet."

To find money, Marguerite went straight to the most famous brothel. Madame Denart's institution was known for the fact that high-class prostitutes worked there, and the clients were very wealthy men. It was Madame Denart who saw the "potential" of the girl and decided to invest her attention in her. She taught Marguerite publicity, etiquette and manners, and soon the girl became "a mistress for almost all the best clients of the institution, wealthy gentlemen holding high positions in France, England, America and other countries" - as Madame Denart herself described Marguerite.

At 17, Marguerite met 40-year-old Andre Meller. He was a wealthy stable owner, and Marguerite had a soft spot for these animals. He rented an apartment for the two of them, and Marguerite assured that they even signed, so she took his last name. However, later it turned out that Andre was not divorced from his first wife all this time, so the marriage was never officially recognized. They lived together for six years, after which Marguerite returned to her work as a courtesan.

The next constant and influential lover of Marguerite was no less than Prince Edward VIII herself. The First World War was going on, and the British prince, along with the army, was at that moment in France. He was 23 years old, and his friends decided that it would not hurt the young man to learn about the sex life from an experienced woman - this turned out to be just Marguerite. They dated for about a year, until Edward finally lost interest in the girl.

Since then, Marguerite has chosen exceptionally wealthy lovers for herself. They gave her expensive gifts, took her on trips, but the girl wanted more. Just a year after breaking up with Prince Marguerite, she got married. Together with Charles Lauren, they formalized their relationship, but they lasted only six months. Which, however, did not particularly upset Marguerite - as a result of the divorce proceedings, she managed to sue Charles for a decent amount, which fully covered her expenses for the house, the maintenance of the stables, cars and the payment of the servant.

Three years later, Marguerite met an even more wealthy gentleman. Accompanying one of the businessmen, she met Ali Kamel Fahmel Bey, a prince from Egypt. In fact, he was not a prince, and he received the title of nobility "Bey" solely because of his incredible wealth. Marguerite charmed the prince, and just a few months later he invited her to marry him and move to Cairo with him.

Upon marriage, the couple entered into an agreement. For her part, Marguerite wanted to be allowed to wear Western clothes and end the marriage at will, and the prince wanted her to convert to Islam before marriage. However, just before the signing of the contract, the line about divorce "suddenly" disappeared from the contract, and instead it appeared assertion that Ali Kamel would be able to take several more wives for himself.

It was a very profitable marriage for Marguerite, but very unhappy. She was expected to be an obedient quiet wife, which Marguerite did not want to be. They fought at home, fought in the street, fought even at a party. Marguerite began to behave defiantly on purpose, and the prince did not restrain himself and began to raise his hand to her. Marguerite's friends thought she was deliberately preparing the ground for a divorce in order to sue the prince as much as possible, collecting evidence of her husband's abuse.

However, no one expected exactly how their marriage would end. On July 9, 1923, the couple was in London at the Happy Widow exhibition, and upon returning to the hotel, they again began to quarrel, after which the prince left the room for several hours. And at 2 o'clock in the morning three shots were fired at the whole hotel. Marguerite killed her husband with a pistol she had been keeping under her pillow for some time. Marguerite was arrested, and her husband died in the hospital an hour later.

Once upon a time, when the British prince Edward left Marguerite, she sent him letters with threats that she would betray to the public all those letters and notes that he wrote to her during their relationship. Marguerite used the same tactics in court, where she was accused of murdering her husband. Suddenly, at the trial, she presented 20 letters in her defense, in which Ali Kamel spoke rather badly about Marguerite herself, and about her father, and even about Britain. The prince would definitely not like to make such letters public. And the court itself did not want publicity, since in Ali Kamel's letters he spoke especially impartially about Marguerite's former lover Prince Edward. Therefore, they decided to close the case, acquitting Marguerite, calling this murder "self-defense."

After this high-profile case - and it received the widest resonance in society, people lined up in huge queues to hear how the process was going and what the judge was saying - Marguerite returned to Paris, where she lived until the end of her days. She still fascinated the rich men who supported her. She even starred in episodic roles in films several times.

Marguerite died at 80. Her grandson, after her death, discovered that Marguerite's carefree life was supported by five men at once, who did not suspect each other's existence.

We talked about another famous French courtesan Valtesse de La Bigne in our articlededicated to this girl's story.