From Switzerland to San Remo

You can't talk about Michel Louis Ormond without talking about his whole family.

Michel Louis Ormond

(1828-1901) was a Swiss cigar manufacturer, had taken over a tobacco processing factory in Vevey on Lake Geneva and had successfully expanded it. Initially trained as a banker, he worked in various banks in Avignon and Paris before returning to his native country where he became a prominent figure in industry and public finance. He remained for many years a member of the Grand Council of the Canton of Vaud, was one of the founders of the Vevey Gas Company and president of the Western Swiss Railway Company. He had a passion and interest in history, a great encyclopaedic connoisseur of certain periods in particular, and an amateur of art and literature. With his wife he regularly went to Paris, where they met famous people such as the historian Hippolyte Taine, the statesman Lèon Gambetta and Adolphe Thiers and the novelist Alexandre Dumas.
Their knowledge of contemporary art and their instinctive sensitivity led them to choose and purchase numerous paintings and to frequent the authors.

Marie Margherite Ormond

(1847-1925), born Renet, wife of Michel-Louis was a woman of strong character, yet very inclined to literature and with refined artistic taste. A poetess, although not a great one, she published in 1919 a volume of her verses entitled "Resonnances". She was born in Versailles in 1847, the daughter of a French banker whose family, originally from Nimes, was strongly Protestant.
Both her grandparents had been deputies in Paris and had held high positions in their neighbourhood. Her only brother died in 1866 and since then she has remained an only child.
In her biographical manuscript about her husband she describes herself as follows: "Although her profile was irregular, her face was illuminated by large, pure eyes. She had much grace and was a woman of good society, her delicate body contained a refined and energetic spirit. Louis Ormond was proud of her and loved her until the end of her days". For her part she reciprocated with constant affection "mixed with respect and admiration".

The couple had met in Paris in April 1865 and married at the beginning of the following year.

Their only son, Francis (1866-1948), was born in their house on Lake Geneva, Villa Mirabaud in Clarens, in November 1866. He was a very independent boy, at the age of sixteen he left home and went as far as Canada.

It was Marie Marguerite's delicate health that prompted her and her husband to look for property on the Italian Riviera. In order to spend the coldest winter months they bought in 1875, in the eastern part of the city, Villa Rambaldi, but it was damaged by the terrible earthquake of 24th February 1887, which caused collapses and destruction in the surroundings.

Louis Ormond, with his organisational capacity and initiative, directed the aid for the local population. He received the order of San Maurizio and Lazzaro from King Umberto I, in recognition of his exceptional contribution.

Following the serious damage suffered by Villa Rambaldi, the Ormond family decided to build a new villa and employed an architect from Geneva: Emile Reverdin.
They themselves planned the destination of the premises and followed the work of the construction, which was designed in a very sober neoclassical style.
The stone came from a quarry in Cassis, near Toulon, the ironwork from Switzerland and the window panes from St. Gobain, the fabrics, copied from ancient samples, were woven by a workshop in Paris. The house was full of antique collections, collected by the Ormond family over the years, some pieces from the Demidoff sale in Florence.
After 15 months of uninterrupted activity, the house was officially opened on the first of June 1890. The Ormond family had always entertained the guests with elegance, their guests were the Hereditary Prince of Germany and his family, the Duke of Aosta and other famous people.

Francis Ormond had married Violet Sargent, the beautiful sister of the American painter John Singer Sargent, in 1891.

Many of their children were born in San Remo, including my father, the youngest of six, in 1898. Francis had become an intrepid traveller in Arabia and spent much time there, entrusting the education of his eldest daughters Daisies and Rose Marie to his grandmother.

After her husband's death, in 1901 she continued to keep the villa and spent part of the year there, in Paris, and part in Crevins Castle, a new property acquired outside Geneva.

She continued to live in great style, planning everything with precision, writing letters and instructions with a steady hand and red-purple ink, she was a formidable matriarch who managed to overcome any obstacle.

She forced her older nephew Jean Louis, at school in England, to take courses in the cigar industry. She must have been less than vigilant when Rose Marie met and fell in love with a young French art historian, Robert André Michel, whom she married in 1913.

Marie Margherite never lost her energy by continuing to travel back and forth from her villa in San Remo until the end of her days.

When she died in 1925 the villa was sold and the bond between San Remo and the Ormond family - which lasted about fifty years - was thus broken.

(Source: Memories of Richard Ormond donated to San Remo)