Partner Mimì Franchetti
Queer Places:
Villa Alba and Ca’ del Sole, Via Castello, 8, 80076 Capri NA (after Villa Mura, on the right)
Cimitero acattolico (Protestant Cemetery), Via Marina Grande, 80076 Capri NA
Frances "Francesca or Checca" Edersham Lloyd (died September 25, 1950) was a rich Australian of the family Edersham, whose marriage had broken up. She lived together with her friend Mimì Franchetti at the Quisisana. In real life, some older Capri locals could still recall Mimi and Checca throwing bottles at each other in their adobe at the Quisisana (called the Hotel Augusto in Extraordinary Women).
Checca was masculine in outlook, but inconveniently feminine in shape – which made it something of an ordeal to don full evening dress, with white tie and stiff shirt, which she liked for grand occasions.
Mimì was the daughter of Baron Alberto Franchetti, Italian opera composer, and of a beautiful mother who had bequeathed her good looks to her daughter.
Compton Mackenzie remembered her arrival at the Quisisana in May 1918 with ‘short accordion-pleated skirt … rifle green jacket and waistcoat, her double collar and black satin tie with coral pin, her long jade cigarette holder and slim ebony stick and … rippling hair lustrous and hatless’.
Checca was hopelessly in love with Mimì, but so were other women, like the bedraggled ‘Contessa Giulia Monforte’ who traipsed around Europe in pursuit of her and was also staying at the Quisisana.
Unfortunately for all concerned Mimì was an accomplished ‘bitch-girl’, who loved only herself and used her charms to play off one woman against another and create general havoc.
Ca’ del Sole was the fictional Villa Leucadia in Extraordinary Women. Villa Alba and Ca’ del Sole initially belonged to Talmage White. White, a painter, used Ca’ del Sole as a gallery and guesthouse. Frances (Checca) Lloyd bought Ca’ del Sole e Villa Alba in 1919 for 100.000 lire. Extraodinary Women’s climax is a long-delayed housewarming party at Rory’s Villa Leucadia, located at exactly the point on the road to Anacapri where the Hotel Caesar Augustus is today. The real party, at Lloyd’s Ca’ del Sole (or Villa Alba), was attended by the entire Mytilene crowd including Rosalba/Mimi, whose summer-long efforts had resulted in seductions of numerous of Olimpia/Romaine’s conquests, but not of the dragon lady herself. This night of nights, which was still remembered in real-life Capri, is highlighted by a classical dance performed by an Englishwoman named Hewetson (actually a Dutchman named Van Decker), who is dressed in nothing but a pink silk handkerchief and a paper rose. Shortly after, Olimpia steams away for good, accompanied by the Principessa Bebe Buonograzia. In real life, Romaine Brooks was accompanied by Faith Mackenzie. At the end of the 1930s, Gloria and Thelma Morgan rented the two houses. Apparently Thelma Colman, ex-wife of the Hollywood star, was anxious to give a party, with coloured lights, an orchestra and a singer. She wanted fifteen men and seventeen women – but all the men would have to be he-men. Norman Douglas, who was asked for advice, thought it would be impossible to find so many in Capri. In the 1970s the villas were home to Laetitia Cerio, daughter of Edwin Cerio, a famous painter.
Extraordinary Women is mainly about the chase she led poor ‘Rory Freemantle’, a composite character in the novel, but based on Checca Lloyd.
There were frequent quarrels – Carlo Civitella remembers seeing them at the Quisisana throwing bottles at each other – and separations, interspersed with reconciliations and rare periods of harmony.
Mimì could not be expected to refrain from intervening in the friendship between Renata Borgatti and Lica, and for a time Renata in her frustration succumbed to Mimì’s charms.
The one person who puzzled Mimì was Olga de Tschélischeff, who seemed not to care at all when the Principessa Soldatenkov became temporarily infatuated with Mimì and for a time abandoned Olga, who withdrew gracefully to a remote cottage on Tiberio. Her inability to wound Olga infuriated Mimì, and what she found even more offensive was the fact that Olga appeared to be laughing at her.
Baby Soldatenkov, described by one of the set as ‘jeune fille … fourbe, mais au fond innocente’ – the imputation of innocence reduced her to tears – was soon conquered by Mimì. Baby’s affair with Mimì was warmly encouraged by her mother who felt that ‘it struck as hard at the whole male sex as it had at one presumptuous youth’. Baby, however, soon got tired of Rosalba and took up with another boy. Mimì then found herself burdened with far too much of the Princess’s company. In the autumn they returned to Sorrento, where Baby joined a group of young people who passed the time in playing poker, drinking cocktails and making love. All this reduced ‘Missi’ to a breakdown and she was sent on a long holiday. Her place as governess was taken by the ‘Baroness Drenka Vidakovich’, ‘a handsome young woman of about thirty with a hard mouth, coarse hands and bright bitter eyes which always seemed to be looking as if she had not been given the correct change’; the Princess was confident that her daughter would learn something of the world from the Baroness.
Lesser characters flitted in and out from other parts of the world. ‘Mrs Royle’, a rich American living in Rome, old and ugly ‘like a squat cracked little gilded bronze’, came to the Quisisana with her daughter ‘Janet’, ‘tall and slim and olivine, with graceful mind and body, and gentle melodious voice, fastidious and intellectual’. Janet was serenaded and temporarily won by Mimì. There were ‘Principessa Flavia (Bébé) Buonagrazia’, disingenuous, urbane, with a serpent’s tongue and a ‘laugh which tinkled and pricked like broken glass, ‘Dicky Freemartin’, Gloria, Lola and Lydia; Aretusa, Titi and Zenaide.
Faith Mackenzie summed them up: ‘The fair ladies, and some were very fair indeed, put pretty noses out of joint and monopolised attention with little apparent effort. They had but to walk on the Piazza or Funicular terrace, swinging military capes, or wearing feminine little frocks as the case might be, fingering interminable cigarette-holders, to be immediately the objects of popular interest. Their kaleidoscopic changes of companionship were enough to keep the gossips amused.’
To everyone’s surprise, Frances Lloyd began living with a man – Captain Nicholas Borselli, a handsome, much-decorated, former cavalry officer. It was assumed that they were married, but this was not the case. Towards the end of the ’twenties they left the Cà del Sole and moved to Borselli’s property at Scalèa in Calabria, taking with them her maid Mafalda, whom Borselli had made pregnant – and in due course two sons were born. Just before Borselli died he married the maid to legitimise the children. After his death Frances returned to Capri with the maid and the boys, whom she always presented as her own sons, and lived there until her death in 1950; she ws buried in the cimitero acattolico under her maiden name, Frances Edersham.
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