She was raised by nasty nannies and an army of ambiguously teasing aunts and uncles, some of whom had behaved so badly that she would occasionally break off a story with a maddening “ pas devant les enfants”.
She seemed to have no father – at least she never mentioned him – and, like a fairytale princess, had a beautiful mother who died tragically young. I never tired of these stories as they were about her childhood. Gale’s great-great aunt Pattie ‘during her years of glory as a Gaiety Girl’.
