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12 Oo Success and Romance at Home and Abroad The year 1929 began like any other year for Belle. She celebrated the New Year at Hobcaw with her family, then headed north to New York to see a few plays and look after her business affairs before setting sail for Europe. Unaware of the crisis looming in America, Belle reached France in the spring for the start of the riding season. She entered fewer shows that year, riding mostly in Paris and Pau with only one trip each to Fontainebleau, Vichy, and Biarritz. She acquitted herself well, finishing in the top three in half her meets. Miss Baruch, it was noted in the European newspapers, was frequently the only American and the only woman competing. While foxhunting at Pau, Belle met Barbara Donohoe, the daughter of a prominent family from Menlo Park near San Francisco. Barbara was tall, elegant , every inch a lady. Barbara and Belle liked each other on sight, each recognizing in the other a kindred spirit and shared interests. Both were independent and adventuresome, eager to meet life head-on, relishing all of life’s pleasures. It was Belle who persuaded Barbara to join the horse-show circuit, offering to board Barbara’s beloved Malicorn with her own mounts since Barbara had no stable in France. The two women traveled through Europe together, foxhunting , competing in horse shows, and hitting the high spots. Once again, Belle had a close friend with whom to share her life. Barbara was her first great love. The secret to their enduring friendship, Barbara once observed, was that “I was myself and she was herself and we wouldn’t dream of trying to influence one another. I shouldn’t like it and I know she wouldn’t.” Success and Romance at Home and Abroad 57 When not at home with her family or visiting friends, Barbara was a frequent visitor at Hobcaw Barony and traveled extensively with Belle. They were devoted to each other, and Belle grew restive when Barbara was not at her side. Through the summer of 1929 Belle rode and hunted, and toured in Italy, France, and England. Her father’s misgivings over the state of the market had long since slipped from her mind. But fortunately for Belle and the rest of the Baruch family fortunes, Bernard Baruch had been keenly attentive. Baruch was increasingly restless and intuitively mistrustful of the aggressive bull market. As early as late 1928, he began to sell out of the market. “Repeatedly,” he wrote, “in my market operations I have sold stock while it still was rising—and that has been one reason why I have held on to my fortune. Many a time I might have made a good deal more by holding a stock, but then I would also have been caught in the fall when the price of the stock collapsed.”1 As he stated more succinctly to Helen Lawrenson, writer and former managing editor ofVanity Fair (and with whom Baruch had an extended affair): “I have a talent for making money, the way Fritz Kreisler has a talent for playing the violin and Jesse Owens has a talent for running. I buy when stocks go down, I sell when they go up. When prices go up, production increases, consumption decreases, and prices then fall. When prices go down it’s vice versa. I got rich, Madame Fathead [Baruch’s pet name for Lawrenson], by remembering those words.”2 By the time “Black Tuesday” struck in September 1929, Baruch had divested himself of nearly all his holdings. It was not that he foresaw the coming of the Great Depression, rather that his common sense and intuition warned him that there had to be a limit to soaring prices. On the night of the crash, Baruch hosted a dinner for his friend, Winston Churchill. Financiers, bankers, and political friends gathered at Baruch’s Fifth Avenue residence to honor his British guest. One man stood to toast Churchill and address the group as “friends and former millionaires.”3 For Baruch the millions were still secure. He had come out of the crash with nearly all his wealth and that of his children intact. Belle hurried home from Europe to find devastation throughout the financial world. The country was sliding rapidly into the abyss of a depression that was to last more than a decade. Thanks to her father’s sagacity, however, Belle’s carefree life changed very little. Banks failed...

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