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Double Exposure – A Twin Autobiography by Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt and Lady Thelma Furness: book review







Double Exposure: A Twin Autobiography (1958, this edition 2017) is written by both Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt (1904-1965) and Lady Thelma Furness (1904-1970) – twin sisters.

Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt was a socialite and mother of fashion designer Gloria Laura Vanderbilt; Lady Thelma Furness was an actress and the mistress of the British King Edward VIII and Prince Aly Khan.

Readers know which twin is writing through the use of clear headings.  The twins take it in turns to write, resuming where their twin finished, so that there is minimal overlap in the chronology of events (hence the flow is all rather tidy and organized).

They describe their lives as American diplomat’s daughters – with travel to France, Belgium, Spain, and introductions to politicians and celebrities. Thelma begins with the early years. Thelma’s description of her mother’s (Mamma’s) domineering mind indicated her ‘strange, dark, labyrinthine windings … with warped, obsessive impulsions.’

Gloria begins when they are sixteen and living together in New York during the Roaring Twenties. Thelma relates her first marriage at the age of 17 to abusive James Vail Converse, which lasted three years. Gloria also married at 17, to Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt. In 1926, at the age of 22, Thelma married Marmaduke Furness, the Second Viscount Furness, while Gloria was mourning the death of Reggie in 1925, two years after their marriage.

Thelma discusses her brief Hollywood years. Gloria describes the brief ‘kidnapping’ of their daughter which turned out to be Mamma’s ‘fool-of-a-nurse’ that took the wrong train.

Thelma writes of her affair in 1930 with King Edward VIII (the Prince of Wales), while she was still married, and her travels with him to Kenya (with the royal entourage): ‘No one could remain insensitive to the vastness of the starry sky, the teeming, fecund sense of nature at its most prodigal … we would instinctively draw closer as if we were the only two people on Earth.’

The writings are similar, although Thelma is more chatty and spontaneous, whereas Gloria is more succint and measured. Thelma is the one that wrote the most in the autobiography. Her best writing is of her romance with the King and her time in Kenya. She makes a comparison to Edward and her friend Wallace Simpson – Edward eventually abdicated his position as King of England to marry Wallace.  

Gloria’s best writing is of her move to California in 1940.

They both discuss their children and their estrangement from Gloria Laura Vanderbilt, Gloria’s daughter, after her second marriage to Leopold Stokowski in 1945, and her third marriage to Sidney Lumet in 1955. Thelma began the autobiography, and also finishes it, with the line ‘Gloria and I are now businesswomen. We live together quietly in a small apartment in New York.’

Gloria and Thelma lived together in New York and California until their deaths – Gloria of cancer five years before Thelma died of a heart attack. They are buried side-by-side.

For readers interested in the Vanderbilt empire, and the lives of two formidable women, this is a satisfying and interesting double autobiography.










 

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS  is an international human rights-based consultant in education, healing and wellbeing, peace and stabilization, foreign aid audits and evaluations, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).



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