Aimée Crocker, queen of the wild frontier

from a drinking game with Oscar Wilde to parties where she would play the piano with her feet with a snake around her neck and occasionally show up riding on an elephant

If I could hang out with any historical figure, I would pick Aimée Crocker without hesitation. I came upon her story by accident a few months back and became instantly obsessed (she's even in my new book, published next month, which you can pre-order today).

Crocker was a wild woman who lived a life full of husbands, unexpected lovers - including a few monarchs, eccentric friends and insane adventures all over the world: from orchestrating a drinking game with Oscar Wilde to throwing huge parties where she would play the piano with her feet with a snake around her neck and maybe occasionally show up riding on an elephant.

What makes everything even better is the fact that she never apologized. The title of her autobiography (“And I'd Do It Again”) leaves it all very clear.

In the introduction, she writes:

“I have been accused of living adventurously. Let us admit the word. But I have never been an “adventuress”. If I have never cared about your man-made conventions (and every modern schoolgirl would laugh at those of my day), I was not immoral, but un-moral. If I have often loved, I have at least loved well and fully. I have nothing to be ashamed of, in spite of the scandalous press reports that hopeful reporters managed to use to amuse a scandal-loving public. And if I have dared to stick my nose into trouble just because the game was fun, does it make me a brazen hussy?

No, this is not an apology.

It is the recollections of a woman who is no longer young and who has crowded a great deal of movement and fun and action and love and adventure into a lifetime now drawing towards its close.

And if I could live it again, this very long life of mine, I would love to do so. And the only difference would be that I would try to crowd in still more… more places, more things, more women, more men, more love, more excitement. 

Let the Mrs. Grundys arch their eyebrows and reach for their smelling salts.”

When the book was published in 1936, a reviewer writing for the Los Angeles Times called it a “deplorable record.”