“Not All Vanity” 1952 DE STOECKL, Agnes Baroness The Cary Collection

DE STOECKL, Agnes

de Stoeckl, Baroness [Agnes]; George Kinnaird, ed.

[255] pp.

Charles Scribner’s Sons

1952

8.75″ x 5 7/8″

Jacket design by Osbert Lancaster ’50

*Two photo plates detached pages 104-105*

Not All Vanity. By Baroness de Stoeckl. In 1892 Agnes Barron, aged eighteen, married Sacha de Stoeckl. Attached at the Russian Embassy in London, who later became Equerry to the Grand Duke Michael and finally Comptroller to the Grand Duchess George.

Her parents were Irish; her father’s vast wealth was derived from Mexico, but he made his home in Paris and entertained the fashionable world on a princely scale. At the start of her diplomatic life in London, Baroness de Stoeckl found that it was necessary to do ‘much hard work resting’ to look fresh. She would begin the exhausting process of dressing at four o’clock, whether the party was a dinner at eight-thirty or a ball at eleven. Sleeves were so enormous at that time that her husband could not sit beside her in the brougham; he had to follow in a hansom.

The Grand Duke Michael, who lived permanently outside Russia. regarded himself, like the other Grand Dukes, as a being apart. Lunching once in public with the authoress [i.e., Baroness de Stoeckl], he insisted on sitting on a large soufflé, roaring with laughter as he did so. Agnes de Stoeckl visited Russia for the first time after her husband had joined the Grand Duchess George. She and her daughter, Zola, were made much of by Tzar Nicholas, who, in 1914, gave her land in the Crimea on which he intended to build her a house.