Kiki Preston - Biography - Marriages and Happy Valley

Marriages and Happy Valley

In 1919, Kiki married Horace R. Bigelow Allen, after he completed his service with the American army. In later years, Allen would become an executive in a plastics corporation. Kiki and Horace had a daughter, Alice Gwynne Allen, who later married pilot officer Geoffrey Borden Russell, as well as a son, Ethan Allen. Living in Paris with her husband, Kiki met and befriended some of the future key members of the infamous Happy Valley set, such as Alice de Janzé and Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll. The Happy Valley set was a community of mainly British expatriates in Kenya, in the Wanjohi Valley close to the Aberdare Mountains, which had become notorious for its hedonistic lifestyle. In November 1924, Kiki applied for divorce at the Paris courts, on the grounds of desertion. Horace R. B. Allen died on December 17, 1961, in Harbour Island, Bahamas.

In April 1925, Kiki married investment banker Jerome "Gerry" Preston (15 March 1897 – 28 May 1934), a Harvard alumnus from Colorado, a man later described by writer Frédéric de Janzé in his memoirs as "a creature of instincts" and "untamed". Shortly afterwards, she formed a brief but close friendship with actress Kay Francis. Following travel to the British East Africa colony of Kenya, the home of the Happy Valley clique, Kiki and her husband were persuaded to permanently move there, after a friend of the couple gave them the land she had on the shores of Lake Naivasha. The Prestons began to live in a Dutch-style house they built at the shores of Lake Naivasha and associated with the Happy Valley set. Both she and Jerome were successful as big game hunters and horse breeders. On their farm, they entertained several guests at times, including actor Gary Cooper on one occasion. Friends of the couple in the community included Alice de Janzé, Lord Erroll and his wife, Idina (Kiki was often entertained in their mansion), writer Evelyn Waugh and aviator Beryl Markham.

Kiki was a scandalous presence among the Happy Valley set, noted both for her great beauty, as well as her wild lifestyle, which included partying all-night long, rising from bed during dinnertime and drug abuse. Kiki had become a notorious drug addict by that point; she especially fond of heroin,cocaine and morphine. She was nicknamed "the girl with the silver syringe", due to her habit of always carrying with her a syringe with which she injected herself. She was reported to often take out the silver syringe to inject herself, oblivious to onlookers. Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke's second wife, Cockie, once wittily remarked of Kiki: "She's very clever with her needle". Kiki was one of the best clients of the chief drug dealer of the Kenya colony, Frank Greswolde Williams, until his death in 1932. Whenever she was out of morphine, she would send an aeroplane to pick up new supplies.

Kiki had many lovers during that time, including actor Rudolph Valentino and Prince George, Duke of Kent, whom she first met in the mid-1920s. Through 1928, she introduced him to cocaine, morphine and a variety of other drugs. Reportedly, Prince George shared Kiki in a ménage à trois with Jorge Ferrara, the bisexual son of the Argentinian ambassador to England.

In his attempt to rescue his cocained-addicted brother from the influence of Kiki, Edward VIII of the United Kingdom attempted for a while to persuade both George and Kiki to break off their contact, to no avail. Eventually, Edward forced George to stop seeing Kiki and also forced Kiki to leave England, while she was visiting George there in the summer of 1929. For years afterwards, Edward feared that George might relapse to drugs if he maintained his contact with Kiki. Indeed, in 1932, Prince George ran into Kiki unexpectedly at Cannes and had to be removed almost by force.