Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs"... Dagmar and her perfume bottle...

I know I've told you about my identical twin sister Dagmar and of her constant mischief and reckless life as we grew up, right?... well, around 1920, she was going through a particularly envious streak. World War I had just ended, and both America and Europe were in the process of liberating their morals and mores! Women on both sides of the Atlantic were experiencing newfound freedoms, and it showed in their fashions, their homes, and in their adventures!

Dagmar in particular, never having been very constrained to begin with, now exhibited the most scandalous behavior, much to the shock of much of our family (although our deranged mother only egged her on to greater and greater antics!). Suffice it to say that Dagmar began working her way through some of the remaining royal houses of Europe and the crossover businesses in style and fashion. Various Princes, Dukes, and Counts in assorted mini-countries and kingdoms scattered throughout Central and Eastern Europe found themselves having to lend their names to the manufacture of luxury goods to stay afloat; fine automobiles, gourmet wines and champagnes, exclusive tins of imported caviar, and exotic fragrances at the most expensive department stores. A case in point was "Mes Courgettes Violettes"... a perfume bottled by the French couturier, Fernande "Fifi" La Flouncet. She commissioned the great designer, Josef Hoffman, to create a flask that would be both unforgettable and perceived as possibly obscene by the public... and here it is, with Dagmar as the model for the dauber. She had been skinny-dipping one night in the enormous swimming pool at Madame's estate, and a photograph by Georgia O'Keefe of her jumping from the balcony of her bedroom became the inspiration for womankind's headlong plunge into modernity!

Was it MY fault that the public always assumed it was ME that had been the model for the iconic bottle? Dagmar and I were, after all, identical twins... so I'd just blush and and cast my eyes downward all-a-flutter when asked by admiring dinner companions and party-goers. Why should I spoil their fun???...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs!... He's not heavy! He's my... uh... brother(s)!!

Did I ever tell you about my brothers? You already know about my identical twin sister Dagmar, but I also have other siblings including two younger brothers; Szilvestre and Ivor… Do you have a younger brother? Well, there’s nothing worse than having him tease you, hide your stuff, play with your personal things… or perhaps even try them on!… well, multiply that by TWO!

Yep! That’s them! Szilvestre on the left and Ivor on the right! Dagmar and I weren’t sure which one was playing which of us, but it was one of the few times we were ever united on anything! And fortunately, our legs are much prettier… although I still maintain that Dagmar has a little… um… mustache problem!… sort of like Ivor’s… or is it Szilvestre?… whatever!

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Sybil Bruncheon’s 31 Days of Halloween… What to wear??...

Questions for Sybil: I am always ready for Halloween. But it’s kinda hard to really enjoy in central Florida. Ya need really cool enough weather for costumes. What do you think??

Sybil: So true... and I never really feel comfortable with children Trick-or-Treating in coconut brassieres and grass skirts... it just isn't DONE!!! Perhaps it’s the lipstick and the false eyelashes! Even on the girls! Of course, when I was a child, my parents who were members of a “free-love society” dressed my twin sister Dagmar and I as Adam & Eve… in nothing but cardboard cut-out fig-leaves… (and not very big ones at that!) They had fallen on hard-times through bad investments in flavored toothpastes (caviar, escargot, sole meuniere, etc.), but my mother didn’t want Dagmar and me to “go without on Halloween”!

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Sybil Bruncheon's "MY MERRY MEMOIRS"... or maybe Dagmar's...

With many thanks to my friend Jonathan Boorstein for finding this old photo: That's my identical twin, Dagmar, who entered a skiing competition in Vroče Žemljice, the famous and glamorous resort in Slovenia. Drugged and drunk as usual, she got on the wrong train and overnighted South into Italy to Venice!! The one thing I can say about my sister is that she never sulks... she's unsinkable much like Mummie... we got that quality from our Mother, deranged as she was.. Anyway, Dagmar challenged all the local gondoliers to a race and managed to... um... "water-ski" her way around the canals and win an impromptu marathon against twelve of the burliest gondola-guys. Peggy Guggenheim's mansion happened to be the finish line, and she invited everyone in for an extended weekend of "dining and debauchery" as she called it... I DO remember Dagmar's outfit in this photo along with various striped shirts, trousers, and... ahem... "underthings" floating in the canal in front of Peggy's the next morning. A side note; Peggy didn't have a trophy she could give Dagmar so she gave her a small Picasso of one of his wives looking like a guitar with both eyes on one side of her face and screaming about something. It was gorgeous!... Can you blame me for stealing it from Dagmar's guest bathroom a week later?? Can you???

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Sybil Bruncheon's 31 DAYS OF HALLOWEEN... from MY MERRY MEMOIRS, Chapter 32, page 976: All about Abner…

Did I ever tell you about my sweet little brother, Abner? He was ten years younger than me and my identical and incredibly dangerous twin sister Dagmar, and when he was born, I was thoroughly taken with him; devoted and entranced by his smiles, his laughter, his waving of arms and legs whenever he heard music, oh, everything! I helped feed him, bathe him, change his diapers, all of it... without a moment's hesitation.

Dagmar, on the other hand, arranged our Lionel toy-train tracks so that they would end in his crib, often directly at his head. She also would build her towering skyscrapers of Lincoln logs near his bassinet during bath time... and electrify them shortly before she would arrange one of her "earthquakes"! Once she crashed our toy zeppelin in full flames into his stroller when Nanny Prumble took him to the park. And on another occasion, she dressed herself as an Indian, made him into her "papoose", and then wandered into a nearby woods luring bears and wolves to attack by making chicken-clucking sounds, oinking, and smearing the two of them with gravy...

This photo of Abner was taken at Halloween time, not only to show him in his first costume, but more importantly, to prove to the local authorities and Scotland Yard that my family and the staff were doing everything they could to prevent him from dying in a mysterious Jack-O-Lantern/pick-up truck traffic accident... His pumpkin was not only 48 lbs of mattress stuffing reinforced with chicken-wire but was also bullet, flame, and dynamite proof. His little helmet/pumpkin lid was too. He was even taught to "duck and cover" if Nanny Prumble gave him the signal in the event a clown, a bunny, or Dagmar drifted too close...

(postscript: My father rigged up the pumpkin carriage with a miniature machine gun and flame thrower projecting through the Jack-O-Lantern's mouth. Abner learned how to be quite a good shot!!)...

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Sybil Bruncheon's "My Merry Memoirs... A case of mistaken identity!"...

Ah, yes... that particular day when my identical twin sister Dagmar tricked our poor little brother Cecil into riding on her tricycle to O'Grady's Exotic & Extraordinary Candy and Delicacies Emporium... I believe this is the terrible moment when he finally realized it wasn't ME doing the driving, but rather psychotic Dagmar. You can clearly see that there are pedestrians filled with terror and that an alarmed policeman is trying to flag her through the intersection without incident. Later on, it was revealed that she had already run a trolley of commuters off a bridge, and a bus load of innocent children down a ravine and into a fiery catastrophe...

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From Sybil Bruncheon's "MY MERRY MEMOIRS"... chapter 111, page 712... Dagmar, Me, and The War...

It was in 1942 when I had been recruited by the OSS as an espionage agent and part-time assassin. I was a very public celebrity in the Hollywood and Broadway circuits, always in the society columns in the papers, which was a fabulous cover, so no one would believe that the middle-aged, frumpy cleaning lady leaving my dressing rooms was actually me in disguise carrying military secrets, battle strategies, secret communiques, or a gun with a silencer... on my way to a dangerous assignment.

And it was at that time, and only that time, that my identical twin sister Dagmar, could be counted on to reject her usual and all-consuming narcissism, and actually devote herself to the war effort. So there we were, strolling through the fog in London, an elderly lady hobbling along on the arm of her nurse-companion... rounding the corner on Dunruddy Way to 21 Baysend Mews... to exterminate Dr. Gaylon Burnfender... aka Fritzi Großer Schlauch, a gestapo officer.

And then home again to our little apartment, for a tin of caviar on toast and a bottle of icy cold Veuve Clicquot and perhaps a round or two of Mah Jong… ah, good times… good times…

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From Merlin Monroe's "Legacy news"... Sybil as a child at the Café Papillon Dérangé...

Oh, how I hoped I would grow up to be Jane Austen… or maybe Elizabeth Bennett!

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Sybil Bruncheon's My Merry Memoirs!... Dagmar's "doll"...

Darlings, I've told you about my twin sister many times and in stories that you either have asked me to dig up or stories which you like me to tell and retell again... (much like terrifying ghost stories around a roaring campfire during a girl scout jamboree... with S'mores... and calamine lotion!)

Anyway, I don't think I've ever told you the story of Dagmar and her special doll... and "The Nearly Lost Weekend". You see, Dagmar and I are (and always were!) identical, and I mean IDENTICAL twins! No one, not even our parents could ever tell us apart... well, unless Dagmar had pulled a gun out of her purse or started a fire in someone's dining room, starting a five years of age. I would find a stray kitten and be devoted to it... Dagmar might start researching recipes to serve it "en brochette". Thankfully, our family's staff of gardeners, butlers, maids, etc. managed to keep her from any serious mischief, (although old Mrs. O'Reilly next door DID disappear during our Halloween party when we were 8... and she was never found again. A piñata bearing a striking resemblance to her was reported at the Masonic Lodge's costume ball a couple of miles away... oh well. Another story for another time...)

At one Christmas when we were still quite young, Dagmar had managed to drug my eggnog claiming she was just sprinkling some nutmeg in it. I really should have known better, especially because her "nutmeg" was in tablet-form and out of a clearly marked prescription bottle! But I was still very open-minded, open-hearted, and credulous, even for a child! It turned out that Dagmar dragged me, unconscious, gagged, and handcuffed into a remote corner gable of our cavernous and maze-like attic! There, buried in stacks of crates, Vaudeville trunks, dress-forms, and clippings and posters of questionable hootchy-kootch acts, I languished while she rampaged through our family's Christmas celebrations, completely undetected! She had secretly commissioned a life-size doll from a Bulgarian puppet-maker... or was it Hungarian??... Akron?... whatever. It arrived by post, and she spirited it away to her room, dressed it in one of our matching pinafores, and then proceeded to walk it around the entire estate, conversing elaborately with it, and keeping it just out of eye-shot enough for no one to notice that it, in fact, was NOT me! 

Imagine! Decorating the house, Christmas Eve dinner with family and friends, off to bed before Santa's arrival, and then... CHRISTMAS MORNING! There was Dagmar dragging that damn doll dressed in a matching nightgown downstairs with our entire family... handing out gayly and gloriously wrapped presents! Opening them! OOOHING AND AHHHING at each lovely gift... and Dagmar using her infernal talent for ventriloquism to make the doll sound like me in complete conversations about the whole Holiday weekend! Apparently, my "gifts" to the family (courtesy of Dagmar's diabolical sense of humor!) included crayon-drawn "gift-certificates" to my Mother (building a gazebo out of field stones for her herb garden), to my Father (fetching, cleaning, and dressing any game birds that he and his pals had shot in the next 3 months!), to my Aunt Deirdre (canasta and rapt listening to her endless stories of nursing during the earlier Influenza epidemic of 1889 during which she fell in love with about 87 doughboys!), etc., etc., etc. for everyone else in the family! Given Dagmar’s natural instinct for practical jokes… and malice, you can imagine the “gifts” that I was responsible for by that evening. Thank goodness for completely disoriented and dotty Aunt Deirdre (yes! THAT same Aunt Deirdre!) who wandered away from the family festivities, blundering about unsupervised until she finally got to my remote part of the labyrinthine attic dressed in her old Florence Nightingale nurse’s uniform. Carrying her old railroad kerosene lamp, she literally stumbled over me, sure that I was a prisoner of war of the Kaiser’s German army that she needed to rescue! Despite her impaired perceptions and abilities, she still nimbly picked the locks on my handcuffs with a bobby pin plucked from her nurse’s wimple. But before she would release me, she insisted on checking me thoroughly for signs of abuse, torture, malnutrition, and lice. When I finally got back downstairs and confronted everyone, I wasn’t sure what I was more infuriated by; Dagmar’s villainy, or my family’s not noticing the difference between me and some doll… or possibly Aunt Deirdre’s highly invasive checking for lice! Whatever. This photo is of Dagmar and her doll… By the way, that’s Dagmar on the left!!!!!

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For Mother's Day... From My Merry Memoirs:

That's me with my own family. From the left, my eldest daughter, Clinique (in her school uniform from the La Petite Académie Pour Les Ingénieuses... (My other two daughters, L'Oreal and Jean Naté, hadn't been born yet.), myself with the binoculars (watching the men in our family playing a hearty round of Cross-Country-Obstacle-Course-Polo-Croquet!), my identical twin sister Dagmar (concealing a sharp object, or perhaps a firearm in her pocket, as usual!), and lastly my own mother (in one of her sane and fairly manageable moments!) also holding a gun, a stick of dynamite, or possibly a flask filled with gasoline ....interestingly, I must admit that a good 94% of my existence is (and always HAS been!) among the more ...um..eccentric, or as you might say ODD characters in life... starting with my own family... I have posted photos and anecdotes about them, and their misadventures can be found in medical encyclopedias, on post office "Most Wanted" boards, and in Madame Tussaud's "Hall of the Hellacious".

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