Think your friends are a little strange? That’s only because you did not hang with Adolph de Meyer, whose birthday we celebrate today (he would have been 147!) and who called himself “Baron”—though it is impossible to get to the bottom of this claim. We know that he was born Adolphus Meyer (no de) in Germany in 1868 but liked to say that he was French; he drifted to London and was a member of the louche crowd that was then kissing the tweedy jacket hem of the Prince of Wales.
But De Meyer wasn’t just another sycophantic parvenu. He was also a magical portrait photographer, employed by Vogue from 1913 to 1921, so gifted that Cecil Beaton dubbed him “the Debussy of photography.” Where once fashion photography was stiff and awkward, he introduced dreamy, beautifully lit works, the better to flatter his clients—celebrities like Ann Pennington, Marilyn Miller, and Irene Castle. (These were very famous people 100 years ago! No one alive when this trio lit up the stage could ever imagine how totally they would be forgotten. Think about this, Nicki and Miley, Taylor and Kim.)
But anyway. The Baron, who was gay, married the equally gay Olga, born Donna Maria Beatrice Olga Alberta Caracciolo, another character with a mysterious provenance. Her birth records asserted that she was the daughter of a Neapolitan nobleman, but everyone thought King Edward VII was her dad. In any case, she grew up in a house called Villa Olga in Dieppe, France, paid for by the king. (Now why didn’t my parents name our house in Massapequa Villa “Lynn”?) Variously a fencing champion, a muse, an artists’ model, and, not least, an author, she penned an autobiography called Nadine Narska that the New York Times panned as “morbid, exaggerated . . . [and] guilty of many carelessly written sentences.” In 1916, Olga changed her name to Mahrah, on the advice of a soothsayer. Not to be outdone, Adolph changed his to Gayne.
But no matter! Who are we to pass judgment on Mahrah and Baron Gayne, their invented backstories, their closely held fantasies? What we do know is this: De Meyer’s exquisite photographs would enchant us even if his name were Lucifer Schlomo, even if he lived in a council flat in Bethnal Green and his only connection to titled royalty was a paper crown from Dismaland.