Unbeknownst to Beaverbrook, Toto had been having an affair with his son, Max Aitken. When Beaverbrook learned that Toto and Max had been seen out and about in London, his outrage was immeasurable. To make matters worse, this relationship was more than a fling—young Max was said to be hopelessly in love. Furthermore, Lord B. learned that his best friend, the Viscount Castlerosse, was also in love with Miss K.; Viscountess Castlerosse was threatening to sue her husband for divorce and name Toto as co-defendant. Through it all, Toto remained unperturbed, paying no attention to the ongoing uproar. She was in love, and nothing else mattered.
When Max proposed marriage, his father immediately tried to get rid of Toto. Miss K. burst out laughing when she learned that Lord B. called her “that negress,” referring to her background. It would take more than that to rattle her, however, and the mediocrity of his insult left her unruffled. The old lion decided to sully her reputation and make her disappear. He barred his newspapers from mentioning the name of “the culprit” and began a defamation campaign against her in London society that was particularly vicious. It was time for the branding iron and the scarlet letter.
For Beaverbrook, Toto’s name was now synonymous with sin and lust. There was no small irony to be found in these accusations coming from someone who was not particularly innocent himself. Indeed, Toto’s only wrongdoing was behaving like a man. Her insolence, her defiance of conventions and complete lack of taboos and sexual hypocrisy—she drifted casually from the arms of a man to those of a woman, from the bed of the father to that of the son—would send shock-waves through the self-righteous people of England in the 1930s. Lord B. intended to use that fact to his best advantage.
Such attacks only reinforced Toto’s determination to live life as she pleased. Never had the Koopman sorceress been more beautiful, more determined or more dangerously free. People were mesmerized by her, their feelings caught between fascination and horror. She scoffed at being a social outcast and troublemaker, fearing neither insults nor blackmail. Toto felt no shame, nor was she concerned about maintaining her social position. Her determination made it possible for her to withstand the most hurtful and spiteful remarks.
Her lifestyle was a tribute to moral freedom and reminiscent of that of Ninon de Lenclos, another scandalous courtesan who humorously classified her lovers into three categories: the payers, the martyrs and the favorites. Father and son Beaverbrook belonged, respectively, to the first and third categories. Lord Castlerosse belonged to the second group: portly, bald, religious and born to suffer, he repeatedly fell for femmes fatales, Miss K. included, who thought of him only as an amusing companion. He was the perfect martyr.
At twenty-seven, Toto resolutely held her own against the old lion. Many people shunned her, fearing the wrath of Britain’s most powerful press baron. She was on her own. Her Parisian friends were far away, and she had not seen her family for a long time. Her mother had died in July 1933 and Toto chose not to visit her on her deathbed but rather to remember her as she was. Her father left the army to become a director of the Royal Dutch Airlines and her brother, Ody, was now a banker in Holland. The two men led quiet lives, far from the chaos that engulfed Toto.
When Lord Beaverbrook realized that his tactics were not succeeding, he turned on Max, who was still determined to marry Toto. Beaverbrook père threatened to cut off and disinherit his son. That approach failed as well, resulting in a vicious animosity between the two men, where jealousy mixed with racism.
As was his way, Beaverbrook spied on them day and night. The couple managed to escape to Spain for a time, where they stayed with Roussy and José Maria Sert. When they returned, Lord B. resumed his harassment. Toto did not speak about this episode for many years. However, a few months before her death, she agreed to meet with Anne Chisholm, the author of a biography of Beaverbrook, to reveal both her feelings about the man and her side of the story.
Comparing her former lover to “a little monkey,” Miss K. described an unattractive man who “had great charm, but he was not lovable, and he wasn’t really sure of himself.”7 Chisholm recalled that Toto, who was eighty years old when they met, remained very discreet and chose not to dwell on the subject. She did, however, reveal the negotiations that had occurred over her. “He told Max: ‘I’ll give you a lot of money if you promise not to marry that girl.’ I said, ‘Take it!’ So he did, and we had a wonderful time.”8 Miss K. did not, however, mention that Beaverbrook offered her a lifetime pension in exchange for the promise that she would never become his daughter-in-law. Believing that he owed her that much, Toto signed the contract.