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American-born novelist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bettina Riddle (February 14, 1874 – January 26, 1957), also known as Betsey Riddle, and later as Baroness von Hutten, was an American-born novelist, specializing in historical fiction. As an American in England during World War I, she was arrested and fined as an enemy alien, because she had a German ex-husband.
Elizabeth Riddle was born in Erie, Pennsylvania,[1] the daughter of John Simms Riddle, a lawyer and state legislator, and Kate Howard Riddle.[2] Her grandfather was Congressman William Alanson Howard, and her brother was a medical writer, Hugh Howard Riddle. Bettina's grandmother Mary Dickinson Riddle was a cousin of artist Mary Cassatt.[3][4] Among her uncles were ambassadors Thomas A. Scott and Thomas J. O'Brien.[5]
She called herself "Pam" for a time, after the most popular of her fiction-characters, and kept a pet monkey like the fictional Pam.[6][7] In 1910 she tried acting.[8]
She married Friedrich Karl August, the Baron von Hutten zum Stolzenberg, in 1897, in Florence. They had two children, Karl (1898-1971) and Katharina (1902-1975). They divorced "by mutual consent" in 1909,[9] amidst rumors of her infatuation with Italian tenor Francesco Guardabassi.[5][7]
She soon had two more children with actor Henry Ainley, actor Richard Ainley (1910-1967) and Henrietta Riddle (b. 1913). Henrietta was briefly engaged to Alistair Cooke in 1932.[10]
Bettina von Hutten lived in England but wintered in Rome.[11] During World War I she lived under travel restrictions as an "enemy alien" in England, because of her German ex-husband. She was arrested and fined for breaking these restrictions.[12] In 1921 she was badly injured in a car accident near Danzig; in 1925, she was in bankruptcy.[13][14] She regained her American citizenship in 1938, and lived in California during World War II.[15] She converted to Roman Catholicism late in life,[16] and died in 1957, in London, aged 83 years.[15]
Her granddaughter Katrine von Hutten (1944-2013) was a German writer and translator.
Novels by Betsey Riddle include:
Further:
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