Venus With Arms

Time has not dealt too kindly with the theatre of the Nineties: it has dubbed once-famous plays hokum, once-famous players hams. But it has never questioned that in Lily Langtry, Lillian Russell, Maxine Elliott, the Nineties produced some of the most breathtakingly beautiful women ever seen on any stage.

Of these three, only Maxine Elliott long survived the post-war world, and not as an actress: she quit the stage years ago. She had always hated acting, had never been too good at it. But it made her rich, it paved the way for her to become one of the world's great hostesses.

She began as plain Jessie Dermot, a Maine sea captain's daughter. She changed her name, and in 1890, when she was 19, made her stage debut. Ten years later she was the toast of Manhattan--in Ethel Barrymore's phrase, "a Venus de Milo with arms." Fifteen years later she was hobnobbing with Edward VII at Marienbad. Twenty years later, divorced from many-wived Actor Nat Goodwin, she was entertaining all England in her country house near London. After the war she built a $350,000 chateau at Juan-les-Pins, there entertained all Europe.

While guests at Juan-les-Pins bathed in her great pool cut out of solid rock, or slid down a long chute into the Mediterranean, Maxine Elliott, no longer beautiful, played with her famed monkey Kiki, ate whole chocolate layer cakes for lunch. She grew, old there, and monstrous fat. There, last week, she died.

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