In 1929, Belle Baruch was foxhunting in Pau, in the French Pyrenees, when she met Barbara Donohoe, a tall, elegant woman from a prominent California family.
The two women were immediately attracted to each other. They became close companions and and for years were frequently seen together on the social circuit.
In January, 1935, Belle wrote from Paris to her assistant Lois Massey, “Miss Donohoe arrived 10 days ago and she is fairly speechless as I have dragged her around to balls, dinners, horse shows in record time.”
During the 1930s Barbara and Belle visited Hobcaw Barony several times a year.
When Belle became owner of part of the property in 1935, Barbara helped her with the design of the gardens at Bellefield House. She loved the property and traveled the South collecting plants for landscaping.
In 1937 Barbara and Belle spent their first Christmas at Bellefield and cooked dinner for the family, but their happiness was cut short when Annie Baruch contracted pneumonia.
In this photograph, taken in January, 1938, guests pose on the Hobcaw House porch prior to departure after the Christmas season. Annie Baruch, in the back row, second from left, waves goodbye. Mrs. Baruch went back to New York and died less than a month later, with Belle by her side.
Unable to ride as she once had, Belle Baruch took up another sport - flying airplanes. She earned a license to pilot a single-engine plane and to co-pilot a two-engine one.
Recalling the thrill of flying with Evangeline Johnson in 1919, she bought two airplanes, and she and Barbara took a cross-country trip from New York to California and back to Georgetown. The itinerary was found among Belle’s papers:
Western Flight
August 11 to September 2, 1939
The romance between Belle Baruch and Barbara Donohoe lasted for more than a decade. They were close companions and lived together in Europe, New York City and at Hobcaw.
But in 1940 the relationship ended abruptly and mysteriously when Barbara left to go home to California, leaving her horse and belongings behind.
A few months later, Barbara Donohoe married Fred Jostes in California. She never returned to Hobcaw, and never saw Belle Baruch again. Perhaps her wealthy, Roman Catholic family pressured her to leave Belle and marry a man.
Like Evangeline Johnson, Barbara left Belle to get married. But while they were involved, Belle herself had betrayed Barbara's love by considering marriage to two different men.
The first was Charles Davila, the Rumanian Minister to the U.S. whom Belle called “the only man I ever loved.” Both Bernard Baruch and the King of Rumania opposed the union - her father because he believed that Davila was after her money, and the King because she was Jewish.
Several years later she almost became engaged to Monro Cuthbertson, an old family friend, but he was caught up in a scandal involving another man. To the family’s relief, the engagement had not been announced.
