Days of future past

Today’s celebrity culture pivots around Instagram stars. In earlier, less youth obsessed eras, the prestige of European royalty could attract attention, if only ironically.

In March of 1923 the New Zealand press made merry with the story of ‘‘Her Royal Highness, The Grand Duchess, Princess Henrietta Ivanovitch of Russia’’.

This would-be regal lady arrived in the country from Australia and promptly held a press conference in the lounge of the Grand Hotel. Her reputation had very much proceeded her.

The Waikato Times, quoting an Australian correspondent, described the ‘‘princess’’ as ‘‘...nearer 60 than 70, frail, dishevelled and dressed in shabby, moth eaten clothes’’. However, the tale she told transcended the usual imposter fiction.

Princess Ivanovitch - or Mrs Brewster Fuller, as the

NZ Truth described her claimed to have been once married to Vereker Verchoyle Clay, ‘‘one of the wealthiest Americans’’. When Clay perished from pneumonia after heroically saving the life of a sailor on his yacht, his grieving widow inherited $12 million.

Such was the pride of her new husband though - a White Russian nobleman that she elected to travel the world on his coin alone.

Unfortunately, the Russian revolution had undermined the currency. Fifty thousand roubles only fetched 2s 6d at a London bank.

The princess was undone by her lack of funds. A thirsty demeanour didn’t help, either.

Travelling via train from Christchurch to Dunedin, she imbibed heavily. When a guard relieved her of her whisky, ‘‘her indignation knew no bounds’’.

‘‘Muddled with drink and seething with temper’’, she was said to have ‘‘achieved a remarkable state in mind, manner and untidiness’’.

The Evening Star

reported that ‘‘her clothing was terribly arranged; her boots found rest in another part of the car; and her stockings flapped about her ankles’’.

Put off the train at Ashburton, she was promptly arrested. The next morning, even when sober, ‘‘for a lady of sixty number summers her voice possessed remarkable volume’’. The princess declared her intention to inform Lord Jellicoe, the Governor General, of her unjust incarceration. The attendant jailer replied by stating that ‘‘Lord Jellicoe had instructed him to put her in the cells’’.