Mercedes from Hugo Vickers

Between 1920 and 1935 Mercedes was married to the painter Abram Poole, but she refused to be described as Mrs. Poole, remaining resolutely Mercedes de Acosta. Nor' did her marriage prevent her from pursuing various ladies. She even claimed to have taken a girlfriend with her on her honeymoon. She had remarkable success in this regard. Alice B. Toklas wrote of her, "A friend said to me one day—you can't dispose of Mercedes lightly—she has had the two most important women in US—Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich." Shortly before her death at the age of one hundred, "Dickie" Fellowes-Gordon, Elsa Maxwell's lifelong friend, recalled that Mercedes used to boast, "I can get any woman from any man,"and there is considerable evidence to support this claim. Truman Capote was one of those fascinated by Mercedes's sex life. "Truman thought up a game he called International Daisy Chain, the point of which was to link people sexually, using as few beds as possible," recalls the art historian John Richardson. "He used to say that Mercedes was the best card to hold. You could get to anyone—from Cardinal Spellman to the Duchess of Windsor."

Mercedes always dressed in either black or white, or a combi-nation of the two. She favored cloaks, and tricorn hats, and well-cut jackets. She operated with champagne, lilies, and caviar, and if necessary would fill a room with such delights, giving no thought to cost in the cause of seduction. She was variously fascinated by many famous and complicated women—the Italian diva with the tragic face, Eleonora Duse, whom she first saw passing in a gondola in Venice when she was eleven and who died in Pittsburgh and whose body she arranged to have lie in the Dominican Catholic Church on Lexington Avenue; the Russian ballerina Tamara Karsavina; and Isadora Duncan.

Garbo's return had done nothing to alleviate Mercedes's depressions, and during a particularly acute bout she went out in her car with one of her maids, saying, "I wish to God a car would hit us and kill me." Her foolish wish was almost granted, and she was at that instant the victim of a serious accident, being propelled from the car and landing on her head. She found herself in Santa Monica Hospital and only just escaped permanent disfigurement. Dietrich telephoned from Paris and offered to pay Mercedes's expenses. Later Dietrich inquired, "How are my scars?" Mercedes recovered from her accident, though she needed consider-able plastic surgery on her face, often necessitating her going around with bandages on.

and Truman Capote on Garbo:
I'm afraid she will never be a satisfactory person, because she is so dissatisfied with herself and dissatisfied people can never be emotionally serious. They simply don't believe in anything- except their own limitations