Early Life
With such wealth and cultural advantages, Elena enjoyed a privileged childhood. She and her siblings were educated by private tutors, and she spoke and wrote fluent German, French, English, and some Russian. She attended art school in Munich where she studied with Hans Hoffman at the age of seventeen and in Paris, at the atelier of André Lhote with fellow students Henri Cartier-Bresson, Simon Elwes, Guy Arnoux, and Conrad O'Brien-Ffrench.
In her memoirs, Tatiana von Metternich recalls Elena and her mother Olga visiting her aunts in the Paris émigré community, bringing luxurious gifts to leaven their reduced circumstances. (Later, when Tatiana married Prince Paul Metternich, the owner of Schloss Johannisberg, she lived up the hill from the Mumm family's estate, on the famed wine-growing terroir of Johannisberg, a small mountain girdled by vineyards which overlooks the Rhine, near Frankfurt am Main.)
Elena's sister, Olga, was for over 26 years the companion and partner of the Whitney heiress and horse racing queen, Dorothy Paget.
Read more about this topic: Elena Mumm Thornton Wilson
Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:
“... business training in early life should not be regarded solely as insurance against destitution in the case of an emergency. For from business experience women can gain, too, knowledge of the world and of human beings, which should be of immeasurable value to their marriage careers. Self-discipline, co-operation, adaptability, efficiency, economic management,—if she learns these in her business life she is liable for many less heartbreaks and disappointments in her married life.”
—Hortense Odlum (1892–?)
“Mormon colonization south of this point in early times was characterized as “going over the Rim,” and in colloquial usage the same phrase came to connote violent death.”
—State of Utah, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“What is a life or two, Guy! Some people are better off dead. Like your wife and my father, for instance.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)