The Dangers of Dating a Twin

      There must be something special about having an identical twin which we singletons can never experience. For a start, it usually means having an automatic best friend. You can also tell stories of mistaken identity. More to the point, there were times when the both of you decided to create confusion over who was who.

      Thus the beautiful YouTube influencer, Brittany Sellner née Pettibone and her twin sister, Nicole once told how, for a lark, they had swapped classes and identities at school until an older sister outed them. Also, they were mirror twins, which meant that one was right handed and the other left handed.

     There is also the story of two French Canadian twin brothers who worked as naturalists, and who returned to the city after several months in the wilderness. Having had his beard shaved off, the first twin told the barber: "My beard grows terribly fast. In an hour's time it will be just as thick again."

     The barber laughed. "Listen," he said. "If your beard is just as thick in an hour's time I shall shave it again for free." An hour later, in walked his brother.

     But today I am going to talk about the Dolly Sisters, Rosie and Jenny. Born in Hungary in 1892, they migrated to the U.S., where they made their mark, and their fortunes, principally as dancers, before moving to France. They worked jolly hard for their money, but in a sense, they did not work at all, following the adage, "If you find a career you love you will never work a day in your life." They made scads of money in this career. They received scads of gifts of furs, jewels, and dinners from male admirers, which they accepted as par of the course. They lost scads of money at the casinos and won scads more, several times breaking the bank. They lived on a colourful stage in the playgrounds of the ultra-rich, whose anticks kept me thinking of camels and the eye of a needle.

     It would have been around 1923 that the 50 year old Count André d'Aubigny watched their performance and arranged to be introduced to them. Twenty years their senior, this French aristocrat was reputed to be able to judge a woman at a casual glance, and determine her character, habits, and everything else of importance about her. (I wish I'd had that skill when I was younger!) And he fell for Rosie. Swearing he could invariably distinguish her from her twin sister, he added: "But even if my eye should deceive me, Mademoiselle, I know my heart would tell me it is you."

     That was too much of a challenge for the Dolly Sisters. Rosie accepted his invitation to dinner the following evening at one of the poshest restaurants in Paris. (Where else?) "I'm sorry I haven't the least bit of appetite," she told him once they were ensconced in an intimate corner. She had just had tea with friends, and had eaten half a dozen chocolate éclairs. However, she did volunteer to eat a little omelette. So he ordered an omelette "à la grande Duchesse" sprinkled with truffles, plus a bottle of Château Margaux 1911. She ate almost all of it, and agreed with him that it whetted the appetite, but she claimed she couldn't eat anything else.

     Just then a porter came to announce that she had an important phone call. (This was well before mobile phones, remember.) She hurried off. But, of course, it wasn't a phone call; as arranged, it was her sister, Jenny clad in an identical outfit, right down to the rings on her fingers. She briefed Jenny on the conversation and meal, and the latter took her place.

     The false Rosie "returned" with an air of excitement, announcing that Georges Baud had offered them a contract in South America for £1,500 a week. It was enough to give her a fresh appetite. So the Count ordered a tender young partridge, one of the first six to arrive in Paris that season, and "Rosie" ate most of it.

     Just then a porter arrived with news of another phone call. This time the real Rosie returned excitedly announcing that M. Baud had informed her he had a guarantee of £10,000 travelling expenses paid in advance. It so improved her appetite that she requested another partridge. (Her sister must have told her how good it was.)  Over the next hour three more phone calls arrived - along with "two plates of delicious asparagus, some mushrooms cooked in champagne right before their eyes, a large dish of wild strawberries in cream, various kinds of pastries and ices, some cheese, the some more pastries and more cheese." Then Rosie remembered that a car was ready to take her to the theatre to dress for the performance.

     The next day a note was delivered to the Count: "Dear Count - We thank you very much indeed for the splendid dinner you gave us yesterday. Rosie and Jenny."

      The Count departed in high dudgeon, vowing not to return to Paris until the Dolly Sisters were gone. But whether he ever lived it down is something I have not been able to establish.

Reference: Gary Chapman, The Dolly Sisters, icons of the jazz age, 2006 Sutton Publishing, 2013 Edditt Publishing, chapter 9