Accidentals

by Helen Mackay

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332 pages, Hardcover

First published August 21, 2008

About the author

Mrs. Helen Ganesvoort Edwards Mackay (1876-1961), author and long a prominent American resident of France, died in her New York home, the Savoy Hilton Hotel. She had maintained an apartment in the Place du Palais Bourbon, Paris, where she lived for more than fifty years.

Mrs. Mackay was the widow of Archibald K. K. Mackay, a member of an old New York family, who had been in the real estate business but lived most of his life in Paris. He died in 1941. A woman of social prominence, great charm and strong feelings, Mrs. Mackay gave much of her time and money to welfare work in France, particularly among soldiers in World Wars I and II. She formerly had a chateau near Aix-les-Bains, France.

Fluent in French and Italian, she wrote in both languages as well as in English. Her first novel in French, Patte Blanche, published in the 1920s, won a French Academy prize. In Italian she wrote the novel, Vagabond.

In English Mrs. Mackay wrote With Love for France, published in 1942. This tale of the agony of the fall of France in World War II won high critical notice. Orville Prescott wrote of her in The New York Times, "Mrs. Mackay has a darting, elusive, lyrical style that is both beautiful and highly charged with intense feeling."

Her country home in France was requisitioned for the safeguarding of Louvre treasures when World War II started.

She also wrote five books of short stories in English, Stories for Pictures, Accidentals, Houses of Glass, Journal of Small Things, and Chill Hours. Mrs. Mackay wrote a book of poems in English entitled London One November and she contributed poems and short stories to French publications including Le Figaro and Le Correspondent.

Much of her charitable work was with the wounded French soldiers in the Hotel des Invalides in Paris although she had done welfare work among poor women and in other fields. In 1944 she gave an ambulance and kitchen trailer for use in villages devastated in World War II. Mrs. Mackay received from France the decorations of Chevalier and Officer of the Legion of Honor among other honors.