Pamela Harriman, daughter-in-law of Winston Churchill, described as a “European geisha” and “The Last Courtesan” was supposedly, according to a new biography, pimped out by her father-in-law (and Lord Beaverbrook) to seduce key Americans to ensure support for the UK war effort. She did bed W. Averell Harriman, Roosevelt’s representative in London and in later years married him. Though Pearl Harbour was more of a clincher than her charms.
Having hitched herself at 19 to Randolph Churchill, “a drunken, debt-ridden, offensive adulterer,” she needed to find a diversion. After the war she rollicked through a series of affairs with Prince Aly Khan, Alfonso de Portago, Gianni Agnelli, and Baron Elie de Rothschild plus two marriages one to a Broadway producer. By the end of her life, Bill Clinton made her U.S. ambassador to France.
Reviews suggest the biography is somewhat over-egged but her chart is interesting if only because her Sun, Mercury and Moon all in late Pisces are fairly current at the moment. She had a tough Water Grand Trine of Mars in Scorpio trine Pluto in Cancer in her attention-grabbing 5th trine Uranus Venus in Pisces, made into a Kite by Uranus Venus opposition Saturn in Virgo. She also had an upbeat Jupiter Neptune conjunction on her Descendant square Mars.
A hard, ultra-determined, courageous but not exactly nice person – she seemed to have had squabbles over inheritances in later life with her husband’s families.
She died of a brain haemorrhage aged 76 in 1997, collapsing in the swimming pool at the Paris Ritz and was fished out and given oxygen by Henri Paul, the intoxicated driver who later that year drove Princess Diana to her death. Tied into the zeitgeist to the end.
Thank you Marjorie, a fascinating woman. Also from a family patterns point of view – she was very intrigued by her free-spirited ancestor, Lady Jane Digby, 3 April 1807:
“Jane Digby, whose life of amorous adventure scandalised Victorian London. Married to the much older Lord Ellenborough, Jane embarked on her first affair at 19, and soon fell in love with Prince Schwarzenberg, with whom she conducted a very public affair and had two children. Divorced from Ellenborough, exiled from England and abandoned in Paris by Schwarzenberg, she left for Munich and became the mistress of King Ludwig of Bavaria. Other liaisons followed, taking her eastwards, first to Greece and finally to Syria, where she married a sheikh on condition that he gave up his harem.” The Independent
Jane’s Saturn in Scorpio squares Jupiter in Aquarius, with Venus in Taurus making a t-square. Saturn at 8 Scorpio is conjunct Pamela’s natal Mars, and squares her Jupiter/Neptune in Leo. Both women have Mars square Neptune – Digby’s in Virgo and Sagittarius. Digby also has her Taurus Venus opposing Uranus and Saturn, while Pamela had Venus conjunct Uranus, opposing Saturn – a see-saw of unconventional behaviour versus the establishment ‘rules’ perhaps? Jane Digby’s first husband subsequently had a colourful career, and was by all accounts a very difficult, autocratic individual who often attracted hostile criticism.
I tend to think those Victorian ‘scandals’ were somewhat hypocritical, considering the ongoing bed-hopping hobbies of the aristocracy,widespread child prostitution, and the flourishing pornographic literature trade of Victorian England!