Sugar Daddy & the de Brettevilles

31Aug07

Alma de Bretteville (1881-1968) grew up big, strong and loud amidst the caterwauls and contusions of one odd and impoverished household. Just picture Oliver Twist’s version of The Addams Family. Now dispel the romantic assumption that papa Viggo de Bretteville (1840-1922) would move mountains to rescue his family from privation. In fact, any suggestion he should perform work of any sort was, well, an unforgiveable affront to Viggo’s self-annointed aristocratic dignity. Yet never has pretension served a family better than did the imperious moxie of these de Brettevilles.

Viggo de Bretteville claimed noble lineage—not an uncommon assertion back in those days. The Wild West, after all, provided time and distance from verifiable truths. Practically any good liar with a decent foreign accent could pass himself off as a Count Haraszthy, a Grand Duchess Yoonohoo, or the Emperor Norton I.

But, back to Viggo. Though born and raised in Denmark, Viggo insisted his title came straight from that primordial swamp of pre-revolutionary Cheveliers and Chatelain. Viggo failed to realize that these minor French nobles were, even back then, often as penniless as he.

A haughty Viggo de Bretteville hastened to Gold Country in 1866, eager to morph from beggar to king. He hit town 17 years after California’s Argonauts first weighed anchor, expecting he’d bag unending heaps of gold, like so much dust swept from the floor. This was akin to making with the flowers in your hair, expecting ’67’s Summer Of Love to be extended through the winter of 1984. No matter, Viggo reasoned, if unwashed “commoners” could claim riches, how much more fitting that he, perfectly bred for lavish leisure, should grab his righteous due. Viggo felt preordained to wealth and status. Hell, it was his birthright. To meet these ends Viggo begrudgingly acquiesced to the occasional stoop–but only if to pocket precious metals lolling about on the ground before him. Thus would Viggo de Bretteville ascend to his rightful place in life–at the pinnacle of San Francisco society.

But it just didn’t work out that way.

A well dressed Viggo was legend for aimlessly strolling San Franciso’s streets, arrogantly aping the idle rich gentleman, caning any breathing thing daring to happen past him. He carried a chip on his shoulder the way a gunslinger wore his stock in trade–always at the ready. Wife Mathilde, in contrast, must either have been a saint or a sap. Imagine putting up with such a pompous whiney bore as Viggo. Moreover, while Viggo lifted nary a digit to help her, poor Mathilde labored around the clock baking pastries for sale, taking in the neighbors laundry, and giving massages to put food on the family table. All that and a half dozen kids to attend to.

As he had with her four elder siblings, Viggo plucked Alma from school to help support the family. She was 14 years of age. But Alma had no interest in washerwomen work. She quickly set to her own methodical and sometimes mercurial rise to fame and fortune. “I have a great destiny to fulfill” was Alma’s oft voiced mantra.

Unlike papa Viggo’s, Alma’s weren’t embittered pipe dreams, nor were they fairydust contrivances. The teenaged Alma set in motion a realistic, if risque strategy to accomplish her desired goals. To finance new clothing Alma posed her buxom six foot hourglass frame proudly and notoriously nude before gaggles of budding artists. Nature had endowed Alma with Aphrodite’s looks and libido, Machiavelli’s cunnning, with the heart and the will of a lion–and with the energy of a full throttle locomotive. Her booming voice was custom-made to drown out competition. “Big” Alma reveled in shocking others, often blaring out lines like “You got anyone you want murdered, Pet?”

Unlike Viggo, Alma grappled with her dreams in the real world. She pursued and eventually married a wealthy playboy 23 years her senior. Here enters Adolf Spreckels, heir to the sugar fortune. Alma’s pet name for Adolf was destined to be enshrined in our American lexicon. She called Adolph “Sugar Daddy.” Like Alma said, “I’d rather be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave.”

When The City’s society crowd iced her out, Alma created her own bohemian salon, entertaining avant garde and internationally acclaimed artists, writers, statesmen and nobility. Rumors swirled that hers was more than a mere friendship with Loie Fuller, the inventor of modern dance. Alma chain smoked, swam buck naked in her enormous indoor pool, drank martinis by the pitcherful and cared not one loud damn what anyone thought of her. Alma Emma Charlotte Corday Le Normand de Brettville Spreckels didn’t need to give a hoot. After all, she had an exceptionally long name, and she was filthy rich.