Yola Letellier (born Yvonne Henriquet (also spelled Henriquez or Henriques), 28 June 1904 – 5 June 1996)[1][2] was a French socialite and the wife of a newspaper owner.
In the novella, Gigi is a teenager educated to be a French courtesan, to provide companionship and intellectual stimulation as well as sex, who marries an older wealthy man.[7]
In real life, Yola married Henri Letellier [fr], 36 years her senior,[8] who was a wealthy investor, owner of Le Journal, a stylish Parisian newspaper, and mayor of Deauville from 1925 to 1928. Letellier's family also owned hotels and casinos in Normandy.[9]
Yola had affairs with other men, including one with Lord Louis Mountbatten, from 1932 until his death in 1979.[10]
Marriage
Henri Letellier before 1913
Henri Letellier (1868–1960) was honored in 1904 as a Knight of the French Legion of Honor for his services as an entrepreneur in French Indochina. In 1913 he was further honored as an Officer of the Legion of Honor.[11]
Yola was Letellier's third wife.[14]
Colette observed the newlyweds Yola and Henri in 1926 at a hotel near Saint-Raphael, where they all were guests. [2]
After the wedding Yola was reported to have been a ballerina at the Paris Opera from an early age.[5]
Described as an "extremely attractive, boyish-looking girl with cropped hair and a little snub nose",[3] Yola was among those photographed by the pioneering French street fashion photographers Frères Séeberger, wearing clothes from fashion houses such as Chanel.[5]
The Letelliers reportedly maintained a normal family life in the French upper-class tradition, albeit one where extra-marital affairs were accepted.[15]
When Henri died in 1960, Yola became wealthy in her own right.[16]: 75
Yola and Mountbatten met at a dance in Deauville in 1932, where they danced a Viennese waltz and the other dancers stopped to applaud them.[17] Mountbatten claimed this was his first extra-marital affair. Yola was to be his principal mistress until his death in 1979.[14][18] Mountbatten, according to one story, installed a pull-out double bed in his 1931 Rolls-Royce Phantom II to entertain Yola.[15]
Louis Mountbatten and his wife, Edwina, maintained an unusual family relationship. Soon after Mountbatten's affair with Yola began, Edwina confronted Yola in Paris with a surprising result. "Your girl is sweet," Edwina wrote to her husband "and I like her and we got on beautifully and are now gummed and I am lunching with her at her house on Tuesday!!!"[14] Yola became a close friend of both Mountbattens, as well as their two children.[9][16] "Yola did not live with us but would visit frequently, bringing us charming gifts," according to the younger daughter, Pamela.[19][20] The gifts included a French peasant dress and a short-hair dachshund.[21]
Edwina and the children even visited Yola and Henri Letellier at their home in France.[8]
