Cleo de Merode and La Belle Otero — A Great Rivalry

1907

Will She Wed Just To Show Rival She Can?

The Bitter Rivalry Between the Two Famous Dancers, La Belle Otero and Cleo de Merode.

Has Long Been a Source of Amusement to Paris.

La Belle Otero wills to wed. All Paris is betting that Cleo de Merode must follow suit. The rivalry between these two beauties of the Parisian stage is so great that one never permits the other to enjoy an achievement without immediately attempting to eclipse it.

It has long been a favorite joke of the gay French capital that if Merode got a hat worth 500 francs, Otero would immediately spend twice that sum for a hat of similar design, only manifestly finer in quality and mere luxurious.

If Otero got a dress, Merode drew from her enormous profits in the Congo ventures of King Leopold of Belgium enough money to enable her to cast the creation of Otero's modiste into the shade.

Some years ago an admirer of Otero presented her, says a Paris correspondent to an eastern contemporary, with an automobile worth 25,000 francs. Shortly after Merode startled Paris by appearing with two automobiles. The first of these was an exact counterpart of the one Otero had recently acquired. It was the identical make, colored the same and furnished in every detail so as to be a perfect reproduction.

In this rode Merode's maid and dog.

A few yards back, in an infinitely finer machine, in fact in what has been said to be the costliest one Paris had at that time turned out, rode Merode.

Otero was so angered by this incident that she sold her automobile for only half what it cost, and with the proceeds bought a dog of the same breed as Merode's only a much finer specimen.

These instances are fair illustrations of how the two beauties have vied to outdo each other.

It is not difficult to understand how in the first place the contention began. Both made the same bid for popular favor, being dancers and famous beauties. Otero was the first to flash into brilliancy, and she was the adored of the Paris jeunesse doree before Merode had quit the obscurity of a minor ballet place in the Grand Opera house.

But though Merode arrived a little bit late, her activities soon atoned for lost time.

Her curious style of hairdressing — the arrangements of her lovely locks by bands, so that they encircled her face, but kept the ears completely covered, piqued curiosity. Some of her critics whispered that she had been born without ears, and produced photographs to show that even at the age of 10, long before she had dreamed of going on the stage, she dressed her hair in the same bandeaux.

La Belle Otero, then in the zenith of her glory, is given credit for spreading the report that the closely bound tresses of the younger woman concealed a horrible deformity, which, if revealed, would immediately dispel any claim that the new dancer had to beauty.

This bit of criticism, whether true or false, naturally did not have the effect of endearing Otero to Merode, and from that time an unceasing rivalry has existed.

A great artist pictured Otero as the spirit of "Terpsichore." It was a masterpiece of art, and immediately Merode felt a tingling to have her beauties reproduced.

Two famous artists obliged. Alfred Grevin put her in his group, arranged for the waxworks, "Behind the Scenes at the Opera," in company with such celebrities as Gounod, Rose Caron, Felix Faure and other great ones.

The sensation this picture made was nothing to what followed when a few years later, the eminent sculptor, Falguierre, almost raised a riot with his life-sized nude of Merode, in pink marble, which was exhibited at the Paris salon.

This was a notable triumph for Merode, which she enjoyed to the full, and the point of it was in no sense spoiled by the saying of Otero's that she too might be similarly presented, but that her decency was too great for her to consent.

While Merode, though famous, was still struggling along on a comparatively small income, Otero revelled in wealth, and her wonderful toilettes were the despair of the younger woman.

Merode had admirers, but none who could maintain her on the luxurious scale in which Otero lived.

None — until the King of Belgium came along.

The venerable monarch was quickly attracted by the slender dancer of the Grand Opera, and by a still greater marvel continued to show an abiding interest in her, even after his visit to Paris had ended.

Merode revelled to the full in her opportunity to pay back with interest all the slights she had suffered at the hands of Otero.

The king, recognizing her genuine business ability, gave her liberal interests in his infamous rubber ventures in the Congo Free State, and Cleo managed these with such consummate financial skill that they doubled in value, until it is said she is somewhere near being a millionaire in her own right.

Cleo has handled this wealth with excellent prudence, and has refrained from any prodigality.

Only in matters involving her undying dislike of Otero has she cut loose from caution, and with malicious joy she has made it a point to duplicate every purchase of Otero, and add just enough additional to go her rival one better. But then some admiring masculine has usually paid the bill, Cleo's fortune has not suffered. It must be admitted that Cleo, worsted at first, had reached a few weeks ago a point where she had clearly the better of the battle. She is younger than Otero, and her fortune is greater; therefore her chances for future popularity better. Moreover, the prestige of her connection with the King of Belgium has ever been a thorn in the side of Otero.

But now the situation has undergone a sudden change.

Otero has made a new and unexpected play that temporarily puts Merode in the shade.

The older woman is going to have a husband.

Moreover, he is an enormously wealthy husband, one Rene Webb, an Englishman.

Otero was a long while making up her mind to play her last card and give her hand to this British suitor, for, as she frankly admits, the humdrum of being an English matron does not attract her.

But Webb's importunities won the day, and now Otero is scornfully asking what man ever wanted to marry Merode, especially a man who was fitting in every particular, a gentleman and a man of wealth and taste?

Mr. Webb has already spent a fortune on Otero in jewels, help for her family, contributions to charities in which she is interested, and in a magnificent palace which the pair will inhabit.

Otero will not withdraw from the footlights. This might give Merode a chance to say that the charms of the older woman have waned so that the public no longer want to see her. She will continue to dance, but in the future she will be known as Mrs. Webb, her husband having insisted on this deference to his name.

Merode faces the most critical stage of the long rivalry. Otero is giving out all details of the magnificence of the new life into which she will pass, and insinuating that in the future she will only appear in public when she pleases, and that the receipts of her performances she will give to charity. "An act of generosity which other dancers are either too poor or too selfish to perform," as she puts it.

Half a dozen suitors, who have long vainly wooed the beautiful Cleo, are hoping that to get even she will likewise take a life partner. Paris thinks she will.

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, CA, Jan. 6, 1907, page 9, back section.