The Carthaginian Rose

Stanzas from "To the Not Impossible Him" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ilka Chase, the daughter of longtime Vogue editor Edna Woolman Chase, was an actress and writer. 

The Carthaginian Rose is a memoir of her world travels.  The adventures she describes were mostly undertaken with her third husband, a distinguished doctor.  The late-1950s, first-class mode of travel depicted:  American Express escorts from airport to hotel, cocktails with ambassadors, fittings with tailors in Hong Kong, a private tour of the Acropolis Museum, ordering Paris couture to be "sent home" to New York.  Let's just say it's something to think about the next time you're standing in your socks at United Airlines security holding a Ziploc bag full of 3 oz toiletries!

Chase's husband, Dr. Norton Brown, o.d.'s on St. Sebastian in Italy.
"'Don't tell me he was a martyr,' he snapped. 'He was simply arrow-prone.'"

Ilka Chase travels to Monaco to cover the wedding of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier.

A few samples from The Carthaginian Rose:

''Peggy,' I cried, 'what on earth are you doing here?"

"'Directing Noel's play, of course, what else?'"

"'Another friend in Venice was Her Royal Highness the Princess Aspasia of Greece, the mother of the Alexandra married to ex-King Peter of Yugoslavia, whom I had met the previous year on the Riviera. The princess had been married to the king of Greece who died so tragically of a monkey bite in 1920."

Chase, Ilka. The Carthaginian Rose.  New York: Doubleday & Company, 1961.

Illustrated by Mircea Vasilu.