Wife Elsie de Wolfe
Queer Places:
Harrow School, 5 High St, Harrow HA1 3HP, United Kingdom
51 Av. Montaigne, 75008 Paris, France
After All, 1018 Benedict Canyon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA
Sir Charles Simon Mendl (December 14, 1871 – February 15, 1958) was born in London on December 14, 1871, the second son of Jewish Czech-born grain
importer Ferdinand Mendl and Jeanette Rachel, with an older brother named Sigismund. Educated at Harrow School, his early professional life involved
managing a branch of his father's grain business in Buenos Aires and later working as a financial agent and railway director in South America. With the
outbreak of the First World War, Mendl served as an intelligence officer in the 25th Infantry Brigade until 1915, when he suffered severe injuries after
a horse fell on him.
By 1918, Mendl transitioned into diplomatic and intelligence circles, working for Admiralty intelligence in Paris and attaching himself to the British
embassy during the Paris Peace Conference. His diplomatic career was marked by colorful intrigue, high-society influence, and suspected espionage. He was
made a Knight Bachelor in 1924 for services to the Crown, though his knighthood was widely rumored to be a reward for retrieving compromising letters
from a gigolo who had been blackmailing Prince George, Duke of Kent. Operating as the head of the press section at the British embassy in Paris, Mendl
wielded significant informal power. French political figures, such as Pierre Laval, suspected him of working directly for British intelligence and blamed
him for leaking the Hoare-Laval Pact. Mendl also utilized his extensive social connections to bridge political divides, famously inviting socialist
leader Léon Blum to the embassy following his 1936 election. Leading up to the Second World War, Mendl and ambassador Eric Phipps supported a policy of
appeasement, actively downplaying Winston Churchill's influence and attempting to block anti-fascist figures from speaking in Paris.
Mendl's personal life was defined by high-society arrangements and notable LGBTQ connections of the era. In 1926, at the age of fifty-four, he entered
into a marriage of convenience with the prominent American interior designer and lesbian icon Elsie de Wolfe.
De Wolfe was living openly in a long-term lesbian relationship with literary agent Elisabeth Marbury, and
her marriage to Mendl served primarily as a social arrangement that granted her the coveted title of Lady Mendl and provided Mendl with financial support
through a monthly allowance. The couple maintained separate residences, did not live together, yet functioned as a formidable social unit, hosting lavish
parties and entertaining elite circles in Paris before de Wolfe's death in 1950.
Following the Nazi occupation of France in 1940, Mendl fled to the United States and settled in Beverly Hills, where he briefly pursued an acting
career. He memorably appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film Notorious as a commodore and hosted an early television program titled The Sir Charles
Mendl Show in 1947. After the war ended, Mendl returned to France. Following the death of Elsie de Wolfe, he married Yvonne Steinbach in the early 1950s,
though she predeceased him in 1956. Sir Charles Mendl passed away on February 15, 1958, in Paris, France, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most
vibrant, eccentric, and well-connected figures in twentieth-century European diplomatic and social history.
References:
- The National Archives (UK): FO 800/220: Contains official correspondence and files concerning Sir Charles Mendl from 1924.
- Cambridge University Library & Churchill Archives Centre: MS Crewe C.35.50: Letters from Charles Mendl to Lord Crewe (January 1924).
- Hardinge Papers & PHPP (Sir Eric Phipps Papers): Extensive correspondence documenting Mendl's tenure at the British embassy in Paris, diplomatic strategy, and political alignment during the interwar period.
- Bodleian Library, Oxford University: Special Collections: Multi-year correspondence files with prominent contemporaries including Lord Bryce, Lord Ponsonby, Sir Horace Rumbold, and Lady Milner.
- National Library of Scotland: Manuscript Collections containing interwar political and social correspondence directed to Lord Haldane.
- The New York Times: Period coverage regarding his high-profile 1926 marriage to interior designer Elsie de Wolfe.
- The New Yorker: Ruth Franklin, "A Life in Good Taste: The fashions and follies of Elsie de Wolfe" — detailed biographical essays addressing the social circles and marital arrangements of Charles and Elsie Mendl.
- International Obituary Notices (February 1958): Contemporary press coverage detailing his passing in Paris, career as a British diplomat, and the subsequent probate of his will in Los Angeles (such as reports in the Spokane Chronicle, Toledo Blade, and Lewiston Evening Journal).
- Notorious (1946): Directed by Alfred Hitchcock; film featuring Sir Charles Mendl in the credited role of the Commodore.
- The Sir Charles Mendl Show (1947): Early television program hosted by Mendl.
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