A Mystery Solved – Monsiuer D., Doan, Prince Doan and a Chinese in Marrakesh

Quite a while back I appealed for any anecdotes or references to Chinese in North Africa in the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s. The Chinese get a mention in Casablanca and the French film Pepe Le Moko, while a Chinese-Vietnamese-French antique dealer in Marrakesh, called “Monsieur D.”, gets a mention in Peter Mayne’s memoir A Year in Marrakesh. Well, thanks to Anne Witchard’s wide ranging reading habits, I now know who the mysterious Monsieur D. was…and he was really quite someone…

According to Mayne, Monsieur D. rented a beautiful riad with gardens and a pavilion in the old town of Marrakesh. Mayne became friends with him and saw him working as an antique and curios dealer. He doesn’t give much more information.

However, Barbara Skelton, who married the author Cyril Connolly and then the publisher George Weidenfeld remembers Monsieur D. in the second volume of her autobiography, Weep No More (1989). Skelton met Monsieur D., who she refers to as Doan, through her own acquaintance with Peter Mayne. She describes him as a “Chinaman” with a great sense of humour and was working on a book about Indo-China. She also describes his eighteenth century riad – ‘stone floors, raffia mats and heavy cedarwood shutters’ and containing many Chinese antiques and birdcages. She also describes him as having a lisp and being obsessed with horoscopes.

A picture of Doan circa 1950s from Barbara Skelton’s Weep no More

Digging around a bit more it all really takes an amazing turn. It seems Doan was fully Raymond Doan who was technically Vietnamese, a trained chemist, had worked for a French oil company but was now in Marrakesh selling antiques and doing oil painting. He also fancied himself somewhat of a poet and this was how he wooed the heiress Barbara Hutton, heiress to the Woolworth fortune.

Hutton married a succession of interesting characters – seven in all – including Cary Grant, a self-styled Georgian Prince, a mitteleuropean Count, a championship tennis playing Baron, a white Russian prince, the Dominican diplomat and playboy Porfirio Rubirosa and finally Raymond Doan. None of the marriages was very successful. The marriage to Hutton came later, in the 1960s and after he had befriended Mayne and Skelton. Doan apparently wooed Hutton with his poetry while she was in Morocco, Tangiers to be precise. They married in 1964 and divorced in 1966. However, perhaps Doan exaggerated his position, or just never old Mayne or Skelton, for now he was described as Prince Pierre Raymond Doan and claiming to be an adopted son of the former Royal Family of the Kingdom of Champasak (in what is now Laos and reduced from a Kingdom to a mere province of Indo-China in 1946). However, a formal adoption seems unlikely and the rumour mill says Hutton bought Doan the title from the Laotian embassy in Rabat.

Hutton and Doan

Doan was Hutton’s last husband – she died in 1979 still calling herself the Princess Raymond Doan Vinh Na Champassak…