Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Jeanne Elinor LeGon.
Mr. JENNER. And she changed her name to Christiana?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Yes; her father did it. She was just a youngster.
You know what happened to him mentally. He went completely--I don't
know, maybe when people go crazy, lots of things begin to bother them,
maybe his conscience was bothering him because he dropped his father's
name or something. But for a particular reason he didn't take it
himself, but he put it--insisted that my daughter will take the name.
Mr. JENNER. What name?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. Bogoiavlensky--and drop the LeGon. And she
was baptized--she was brought up as Episcopalian. I never baptized
her, because I wanted her to choose her own religion when she grew
up. I know too many people who have too many difficulties later when
they find out they want something else. By the time she was baptized
she liked the name Christiana and she took that name. And he changed
her name to Bogoiavlensky again. So it was very, very unpleasant and
horrible, what the poor fellow didn't do.
Mr. JENNER. Did he cause you some difficulty with respect to accusing
you of being a Communist?
Mrs. DE MOHRENSCHILDT. I don't know if you have a letter, I wish
I would have a letter what he did. You see I had charge accounts
throughout the country, because I was making very good money. Lord and
Taylor, Saks, all the biggest restaurants everywhere. And when that
happened, I actually told him that is the end, I am divorcing you, and
that is it, and there will be no change back, nothing at all, he sent
out letters to all of these places, to all the restaurants, all the
department stores, including Niemans, and I believe Niemans showed me
the letter, and there was a Golden Pheasant Restaurant--they showed me
the letter--that so and so, and he expressed in a horrible way that
Eugenia Fomenko Bogoiavlensky, my ex-wife, she is--almost putting that
I am a spy, and God knows what in it, and that he is not responsible
for my debts, for my accounts.
It was 1957, and since 1941 I was the one that made all the money in
the family. I was the one making all these things, bringing up my
child. So that was horrible. That is not all. He sent letters, and he
signed "FBI"--make believe they are from the FBI. He sent to all my
people in New York, firms that I work with, that also I am a spy or
something, this and that, horrible.
And I was in Europe that summer. And a friend of mine came over and
said, "What is the matter with you?" She said, "What happened to you?
The FBI are looking for you."