Hello Dorothy
Josephine Hartford Bryce and Ivar Bryce were married, in 1950, and
researching their lives has led to an interesting variety of famous
and/or wealthy names on both sides of the Atlantic.
They wed in 1950 when Josephine was about 46 and had been married at
least three times before. She was the granddaughter of George
Huntington Hartford of the A&P grocery chain (Great Atlantic & Pacific
Tea Co.).
Ivar was related to the Mountbatten family, cousins to the British
royal family.
Josephine owned horses, stables, yachts and property. She played
tournament tennis, piloted airplanes and is described as a musician,
art collector and philanthropist actively involved with the Hartford
Foundation. Her art collection, including Picasso's "Les Communiants",
was auctioned at Christie's in 1996, four years after her death. The
only reference to the Dali portrait which I found online comes from a
discussion of art in Newport, Rhode Island, where she sailed and owned
a home overlooking Bailey's Beach:
"A portrait of Josephine Bryce from approximately the same era
portrays her like a noble Renaissance matron, strictly in profile, and
seems somewhat stark in its hardedged Surrealism until one notices the
signature of the artist. For Salvadore [sic] Dali, it's really pretty
tame."
http://users.1st.net/jimlane/2000arch/7-11-00.html
Her parents were Princess Guido Pignatelli and Edward V. Hartford,
inventor and president of Hartford Shock Absorber Co. Her uncle, John
A. Hartford left her money in his will in 1951. Sometimes her first
name is given as Marie-Josephine. Amongst the horses she owned were
Miss Grillo and Chop Chop, a leading sire in Canada.
Her two-masted trans-Atlantic sailing yacht, the Vamarie, won races
(some at Newport), before she presented it to the U. S. Naval Academy.
Ivar Bryce's claim to fame comes not so much from his noble relatives
but from his friendship with Ian Fleming and his role as an agent in
World War Two. It is said that it was Bryce who thought of the name
"James Bond" and he wrote memoirs called "You Only Live Once" in 1975.
His name comes up often as Fleming's friend: looking at property
together, choosing cars, collaborating on books and movies, sometimes
with a third friend Ernest Cuneo. Confusingly, Ivar is also known as
John F. C. Bryce.
Ivar was at Eton (the exclusive British boarding school) with Fleming
and they were colleagues in naval intelligence. It is believed one of
Bryce's wartime missions was to draw the USA into action. He himself
claimed to have thought up a "secret map" designed to "show" Americans
that Hitler had plans for their continent. He died in 1985.
As well as property in the Bahamas, the Bryces owned a country estate
in Vermont and an Elizabethan house at Moyns Park in England.
Josephine also had property in Canada, a farm in Bedford, NY, Mill
River Stable in Vermont and for twenty years she owned a house in
Newport, designed by architect John Russell Pope. This she sold in
1951. Her links with Rhode Island continued, partly via her daughter
by her first marriage, Nuala (O'Donnell) Pell, wife of Senator
Claiborne Pell.
Josephine Hartford Bryce died at the age of 88 on June 8, 1992 in
Manhattan.
I pieced this together from a variety of sources, including an
obituary from the Chicago Tribune which I can't reproduce for
copyright reasons. But here are excerpts and links which I hope will
round out the picture for you, and show you where I found the
information. There are one or two inconsistencies but I think it is
safe to assume Josephine's last name was McIntosh at one time, since
this is used more than once for her.
You may be able to access the Chicago Tribune article through a
library if you are in the US. Otherwise, you can read it here for a
small fee:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/
========================================================================
Balcony House
The property was later sold to Mrs. Marie Josephine Bryce, a wealthy
American woman and major shareholder in the chain of A & P foodstores
in the U.S.A.
Mrs. Bryce hired Grace Richards Inc., a New York interior design firm,
to redesign the interior of the House. By the mid 1970s, Mrs. Bryce
had stopped visiting The Bahamas, leaving the House in care of her
maid, Mrs. Rosalie Armbrister.
http://www.bahamascentralbank.com/gallery_house4.lasso
====
One such American was Marie-Josephine Hartford, heiress of the large
grocery chain A&P.
On October 13th 1934, the Marquis Nicolas D'Albizi bought that parcel,
including several other parcels of land totaling 280 acres, and sold
them to Mrs. Hartford. The conglomeration of land came to be known as
the Saint Gabriel Territory. In 1936 Mrs. Hartford built a logwood Inn
fit with 16 rooms, running water, a dinning room and a grand living
room and named the Inn The Marquise.
On December 4th 1941 Ms. Hartford sold ownership of the Inn to
Mont-Gabriel Resorts Ltd.
http://www.montgabriel.com/history.html
====
Then, in the 1950s, Williamson's and parts of a couple of other
adjoining farms were purchased by Josephine Hartford McIntosh, heir to
the A&P fortune. She gave Sunnyfield its name, taking it from an A&P
store brand.
By 1960, she teamed up with Michael Page, a widely respected horseman
who took a hand in running the farm and representing it on the road.
In 1961, he won the National ThreeDay Event on a horse Mrs. McIntosh
owned.
http://www.bedfordweb.net/brla/brla117.htm
====
In May, 2002, the Daily Mail newspaper reported that a £4.5 million
Grade I listed Elizabethan house, located between the counties of
Suffolk and Essex in eastern England, had put out the 'For Sale' sign.
T
The house, called Moyns Park, was once owned by Ivar Bryce, a close
friend of Ian Fleming. Fleming stayed at the house in the summer of
1956 and it was there that Fleming is understood to have made the
final changes to his then latest novel 'From Russia, With Love', the
fifth in the series.
Bryce and Fleming met in 1914, attended Eton together, and became
life-long friends. After a spell with the American OSS espionage
organisation during World War II, Bryce married a rich American and
Moyns Park became a hedonistic retreat for him and his wife.
http://www.continental.org.uk/bond.htm+%22IVAR+BRYCE%22+married+OR+wife&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
====
Picture of Moyns Park
http://www.essexpast.co.uk/moyns-park.html
====
Lord Ivar Mountbatten [...] and his older brother inherited the house
from their
mother's cousin, Ivar Bryce, who was a good friend of Ian Fleming.
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=ivar+bryce+mountbatten&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=plcHdAb.makoenig%40delphi.com&rnum=1
====
Fleming was a friend of Ivar Bryce, the first cousin of Janet,
Marchioness of Milford Haven, who owned Moyns Park - it was Ivar Bryce
who coined the name James Bond -- not the late Lord Milford Haven
http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=ivar+bryce+mountbatten&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&selm=xLfl9qf.makoenig%40delphi.com&rnum=2
====
The drive is about a mile long and winds through parkland towards the
main facade of the house, which is Elizabethan with two earlier Tudor
wings at the back. The house contains a full set of first editions of
Ian Fleming's James Bond books, each with a dedication to his old
friend Ivar Bryce, who thought up the name for the fictional hero.
Mountbatten family home for sale at £4m
By Tom Rowland, Property Editor
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/htmlContent.jhtml?html=%2Farchive%2F1997%2F06%2F30%2Fnmou30.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=226446
====
Original Funding Source
The McIntosh Foundation began in 1949 with money from Josephine H.
McIntosh, whose grandfather George Hamilton Hartford founded the Great
Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (later renamed A&P).
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/activistcash/donor_detail.cfm?DONOR_ID=411
====
Find snippets from the 1951 Newport Daily News by searching here:
http://www.newspaperarchive.com/members/search.aspx
====
Correspondence between the Bryces and Ernest Cuneo (Fleming's friend)
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu:8000/findbrow.cgi?collection=Cuneo,+Ernest
====
"j.f.c.b" refers to Fleming's life long friend Ivar Bryce. "e.l.c." is
Ernest Cuneo, a war-time Fleming associate and life long friend.
http://www.commanders.com/pages/timeline.htm
====
Josephine H Bryce owned a Picasso sold at an estate sale in 1996
http://www.tamu.edu/mocl/picasso/works/1919/opp19-31.html
====
Important old master paintings: The properties of the estate of
Josephine Hartford Bryce a. from various sources. A cat. of publ.
auction. New York, Jan. 14, 1993. - N.Y.: Christie, Manson &
Woods intern., 1992. - 185 p.: ill.
http://www.libfl.ru/koi/SBNIK/2001_2/ART_D.HTM
====
Goes to Washington to meet with the US Navy department's Office of
Intelligence and then goes onto Jamaica, with his school friend Ivar
Bryce, to represent the DNI at a U-boat conference. Bryce and Fleming
go and see Bryce's Jamaican house. [early 1940s?]
http://www.obsessional.co.uk/ianfleming.htm
====
British agent Ivar Bryce, who worked under Churchill's man William
Stephenson, who had been given his mission: Provoke America to go to
war with Germany.
http://www.theamericancause.org/patnakedforgeryprint.htm
====
In 1955, it was shipped by Rolls-Royce from England to the Bahamas for
use between the Bryces' home in Nassau and Xanadu, their magnificent
property at Lyford Key. Subsequently the car was sent to New York and
kept at Black Hole Hollow Farm, the Bryce country estate in Vermont,
which Fleming visited on several occasions.
All Bond's cars were painted a non-glossy matt grey, a colour
described by both Fleming and his school friend and wartime colleague
Ivar Bryce as "elephant's breath grey." (As with Fleming and Bryce,
Bond too had been to Eton and served as a Naval Intelligence
Officer.). Interestingly this was also the colour of the Bentley
Continental belonging to Bryce and his American wife, Josephine Bryce
of 161 East 74th Street in New York City. In the autumn of 1952 when
Rolls-Royce announced the introduction of this exclusive new model,
Ian Fleming ordered a left-hand drive car, chassis number BC-10-LB. He
did this at the Bryces' request and handled its purchase directly with
Rolls-Royce on their behalf. The Bentley build-card lists Commander
Ian Fleming as sales agent for this tax-free 'export' transaction.
The Bryces' chauffeur collected this car from the factory at Crewe on
the 22nd of April 1953
http://www.continental.org.uk/index.htm?http://www.continental.org.uk/bond.htm
====
It was a forgery produced by the British intelligence service, most
probably at its technical laboratory in Ontario, Canada. William
Stephenson (code name: Intrepid), chief of British intelligence
operations in North America, passed it on to U.S. intelligence chief
William Donovan, who gave it to Roosevelt. In a memoir published in
late 1984, war-time British agent Ivar Bryce claimed credit for
thinking up the "secret map" scheme.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v06/v06p125_Weber.html
====
One of Josephine's husbands, Vadim Makaroff (m.1931), on the Vamarie:
http://posters.seindal.dk/p323619_Vadim_Makaroff_At_the_Wheel_of_Vamarie.html
I do hope this is helpful for you. Please don't hesitate to ask for
clarification if anything needs further explanation. I'll be glad to
help if at all possible.
Thanks for an interesting question!
Regards - Leli
search strategy:
"josephine hartford bryce"
"josephine bryce"
"josephine hartford"
"ivar bryce"
"ivar bryce" josephine
bryce josephine hartford married
Then I searched newspaper databases for further information, including
a specific statement that they were married. |
