The Grandes Dames Read online

  The Grandes Dames

  Stephen Birmingham

  FOR MY MOTHER

  IN MEMORY

  Contents

  Foreword

  PART ONE

  Little Eva vs. Philadelphia

  1. “A Sense of Personal Theatre”

  2. Philadelphia, Meet Mrs. Cromwell

  3. The Ring-Mistress

  4. More Stately Mansions

  PART TWO

  New York Belle Among the Brahmins

  5. “A Terrible Cut-up”

  6. A Patroness Is Born

  7. Flings

  8. The Palazzo

  PART THREE

  Jewish Princess of the Old South

  9. J.R.’s Money

  10. J.R.’s Daughter—R.A.U.

  11. “The Example We Set”

  PART FOUR

  The Queen of Gomorrah

  12. 1000 Lake Shore Drive

  13. Mrs. McCormick Departs

  14. Mrs. McCormick Returns

  PART FIVE

  The Loneliest Millionairess

  15. “Guppy”

  16. A Litany of Good Works

  17. The Tsarina and the Lady

  PART SIX

  A Woman of Mystery

  18. Secrets and Scandals

  19. Mrs. Huntington

  20. Pompadour and Medici

  21. The Grands Messieurs

  PART SEVEN

  “Walk Erect, Young Woman!”

  22. Ingenue

  23. Rules and Regulations

  24. Leading Lady

  PART EIGHT

  First Lady

  25. “A Hard Woman to Say ‘No’ To”

  26. Bayou Bend

  27. “I’m Doing What I Want to Do”

  Afterword: “A Vanishing Breed”

  Image Gallery

  Bibliography

  Index

  Foreword

  When I first mentioned to friends and acquaintances that I was writing a book about American grandes dames—that special and increasingly rare breed of women who flourished between the Mauve Decade of the nineteenth century and the Second World War as high priestesses of uppercase Society, Culture, Philanthropy and Civic Duty—it suddenly seemed that everyone knew at least one, if not several. “You should include my grandmother!” was a familiar response, or it might have been a great-aunt, or the great-aunt’s best friend. Everyone, it seemed, had his or her favorite Mrs. Worthy or Lady Bountiful, whose singleminded mission in life was to provide Uplift and Example. It began to seem as though to compile a full roster of candidates for grande dame–ship would require a volume the length of the Manhattan phone book.

  The arena, I found, was crowded with controversy. Who, for example, would qualify? How did one tell the true grande dame from the poseuse? Was it essential that a grande dame be rich? Wouldn’t Mother Teresa be the ultimate grande dame?

  Well, yes; but no, not really. The most successful grandes dames were not saintly creatures. They were tough. They were not sufferers, but fighters. They could be wily and manipulative and, clad in the armor of a righteous cause, they were stronger than all the hosts of Error and no more scrupulous than the average ward boss.

  Take my own mother. My mother was not rich, and yet I am sure she considered herself a grande dame in the little Connecticut town where she lived and held a certain sway, though of course she never referred to herself as one. (Grandes dames never do.) On the other hand, she had been splendidly educated at Wellesley College and had emerged from that experience convinced, as most Wellesley alumnae are, that Wellesley had taught her all there was to know about everything. (A Wellesley friend of mine once said, “It’s true. If there’s anything wrong with you, Wellesley fixes it. If you don’t walk properly, Wellesley corrects that. If you don’t speak correctly, Wellesley teaches you how. If you can’t swim when you enter Wellesley, you will have to swim a length of the pool before you graduate.”)

  My mother’s chosen fields of civic duty, in our little town, were improving the local schools and straightening out local politics. As grandes dames often do, she made enemies, whom she simply ignored. Some found her autocratic, overbearing, opinionated and mule-stubborn, as indeed she was. She stood serenely above the criticism, buoyed up by her supreme self-confidence. Wellesley, you see, had made her an expert in many matters: plumbing, electrical circuitry, and automobile repair were useful ancillary skills. I remember, as a child, hearing of the first explosion of an atomic device over Hiroshima and, as we discussed the frightening new era we were entering, hearing Mother airily explain that she could have built an atomic bomb from what she had learned in chemistry class at Wellesley. All she would have needed was the money to buy the necessary parts. (Grandes dames, as the reader will perhaps discover, could also be eccentric.)

  But here, of course, was the major difference between my mother—along with close members of their own families of whom readers of this book may be reminded—and the women taken up in the chapters that follow. She lacked the financial wherewithal, which these women had, to build wings of museums, to pay for a season of symphony, to support a struggling opera company through a Great Depression, to build a school, or a library, or a hospital, or a whole “model town” designed to lift the poor out of the slums. As a result, my mother’s sphere of influence was a few square miles of New England countryside. She was a Legend in Her Lifetime only to her neighbors. And so, yes. A grande dame can be a much grander dame if she is very, very rich.

  Many of the names dealt with in this book—Stotesbury, Dodge, Rosenwald, Huntington, Gardner, Belmont, Rockefeller—are nationally known. They stand for banking and industrial efficiency, government service, patronage of the arts, science, education, and vast philanthropy. In many cases the women who bore these names were also well known, but perhaps less understood. They were not, in Aline Saarinen’s phrase, merely Proud Possessors. They saw to it that their money and possessions (or at least a goodly share) went to the public weal. They did not collect great art merely to adorn their drawing rooms but actually saw themselves as custodians of masterpieces which would eventually pass to the public. They also represent a naïve, almost-forgotten era—before a foundation’s board decided who got what, before corporate giving, before government social welfare programs—when philanthropy was considered an individual matter, and a duty. It was an era when a rich woman felt that she personally owed something to her city and, rightly or wrongly, selected a personal way to pay her debt.

  It was an era when Eva Stotesbury could say with great seriousness (as she once did to her young son), “Great wealth carries with it great responsibilities,” and not be laughed at. It was an era when the word “charity” did not have a defensive edge to it, and when one could speak of “the deserving poor” without fear of reproach. (It was simply assumed that some of the poor were not deserving, an almost treasonous thought today.) And it was an era when great entertainments were put on for their own sake, not as fund-raisers, promotions, or tax write-offs. And, oddly, it was really not all that long ago.

  A second question I was asked while working on this book was: How are you selecting which American grandes dames to write about? The answer has to be: Very arbitrarily.

  There are, meanwhile, a number of individuals who were especially helpful to me in my research, and I would like to express my thanks to each of them. For the sections on Eva Cromwell Stotesbury, I am indebted to her son, the Hon. James H. R. Cromwell of New York, and her former secretary, the late Mrs. Katherine MacMullan of Philadelphia; for reminiscences and impressions of Edith Rosenwald Stern, I wish to thank Mr. Edgar B. Stern of Aspen, Colorado, Philip and Helen Markel Stern of New York, and Mrs. Marion Rosenwald Ascoli and Mr. Steven Hirsch, both of New York. T
he section of the book devoted to Isabella Stewart Gardner owes much to the impressions of Mr. Edward Weeks of Boston. In Houston, I would like to thank Misses Charlotte Phelan and Terry Diehl of the Houston Post for access to that newspaper’s files, as well as Mrs. Barbara Dillingham for personal anecdotes. In Cincinnati, several people were helpful to me in trying to capture the elusive personality of the shy philanthropist Mary Emery. These would include Mrs. Elizabeth Livingood McGuire, Mr. Warren W. Parks, Mr. Robert Ashbrook, Mr. Millard Rogers of the Cincinnati Art Museum and Mr. Steven Plattner of the Cincinnati Historical Society. Miss Lee Scott of Packer Collegiate Institute, Brooklyn, New York, was helpful in supplying Mrs. Emery’s school records. Helping to round out the figure of Eleanor Belmont were Mr. August Belmont of Easton, Maryland, Mrs. Patricia Shaw of New York, and Mr. Thomas Lanier of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.

  Three other people deserve a special word of thanks: my friend Dr. Edward Lahniers, psychologist par excellence, who read the entire book in manuscript and offered analysis and interpretation of the characters involved; my friend and agent, Mrs. Carol Brandt, who guided the project from the outset with her usual cool aplomb; and my friend and editor, Mr. Frederic Hills of Simon and Schuster, who was first to propose that this was a project worth undertaking.

  While all of the above had a hand in shaping the book, I alone must be held responsible for any errors or shortcomings.

  —S.B.

  PART ONE

  Little Eva vs. Philadelphia

  1

  “A SENSE OF PERSONAL THEATRE”

  There are several qualities that would seem to be required of a woman before she can be admitted to the hierarchy of Great Ladies, or grandes dames, a member of that vanished breed—the Great American Matriarchy—which ruled American society from the 1880s to the Second World War. One would certainly be toughness—physical and emotional toughness—the ability to fly serenely in the face of criticism, malice, and jealousy. To be a grande dame required thick skin. It also required, on the opposite end of the scale, a naïve, almost childlike, faith in oneself and one’s infallibility. Luck was involved too, and, of course, money. Looks and manners—and that elusive ingredient charm—all helped, but were not essential. Most important, perhaps, was what author James Maher has described as “a sense of personal theatre.” This is the sense which, if one is blessed with it, assures its possessor that, when she has entered a room, something important has happened. A curtain has risen, and the pink spotlight has fallen on the face of the star. It picks her out from the others, and follows her as she moves. The audience is hushed, expectant. Tilting her head just slightly to acknowledge the packed auditorium, she smiles. Then she speaks. Her timing and inflection are perfect. The drama, which is her creation, has begun.

  Lucretia Bishop Roberts seemed to have been born with this sense of personal theatre. There was, for example, the matter of her name. She was a beautiful child, with light wavy hair, enormous gray eyes, a cupid’s bow mouth, a beautifully shaped, slightly turned-up nose. Her skin was fair and flawless, her cheekbones were high and her cheeks were dimpled. Surely this pretty girl did not deserve to be named Lucretia, calling to mind as it did Lucretia Borgia, the famous poisoner. She also disliked her girlhood nickname, Lulu. No, this girl with the face of an angel, resembling paintings of the first woman in the Garden of Innocence, was more appropriately an Eva. And Eva was what Lucretia Roberts became. Later, when she became one of the wonders of her era, Eva would explain that her mother had given pet names to all her children, and that Eva had been hers. But one wonders. Every great star in the theatre tries to choose a name appropriate to her particular aura as she perceives it. And so Lucretia became Eva.

  She had been born in Chicago in 1865, of parents who were by no means rich but were nonetheless respectable. Her father, James Henry Roberts, was an attorney who liked to recall the days when he had ridden the judicial circuits in southern and central Illinois with an older lawyer named Abraham Lincoln. In Chicago, Mr. Roberts’s law partner was Melville W. Fuller, and the firm had a number of important clients, among them the Illinois Central Railroad. Fuller, in particular, was active in Illinois state politics, and from 1863 to 1865 was a member of the State House of Representatives. In 1888, by President Grover Cleveland’s appointment, Fuller was named to succeed Morrison R. Waite as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. According to a Roberts family legend, Cleveland had given both Fuller and Roberts equal consideration, and the two partners had flipped a coin to see which man would go to Washington. Roberts had lost. The story is undoubtedly apocryphal, but as a young woman Eva Roberts learned to believe that somehow fate had cheated her family of a magnificent destiny. While her father’s partner went on into the pages of American history textbooks, her father remained James Roberts, Esq., successful attorney at law.

  In 1889, Eva accompanied her father to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he was arguing a particularly bitter case involving one of the many railroad “wars” that had become a commonplace of the era. The opposing counsel was a New York lawyer named Charles Thorn Cromwell, and with the senior Mr. Cromwell was his son, Oliver Eaton Cromwell. In the little frontier town, Eva Roberts and Oliver Cromwell met and fell in love. It was a match that displeased both sets of parents. Charles Cromwell and James Roberts were not only representing opposing sides of the case; they were also bitter enemies, had been for years, and were complete opposites in terms of personality. Cromwell was foul-mouthed, hard-drinking, and uncouth. Eva’s father was courtly, abstemious, and devout. When Eva and Oliver Cromwell announced their intention to marry, Eva’s father reportedly warned her, “Daughter, you must faithfully attend church every Sabbath to arm yourself against the godless Cromwells.” Eva and Oliver were married in Albuquerque later that year, and their honeymoon was spent in a local hotel. She was twenty-four and he was forty-one.

  Godless the Cromwells might be, but they were socially very well connected. Oliver Eaton Cromwell was a direct descendant of the Oliver Cromwell, Britain’s Lord Protector. In New York, his father had belonged to all the best clubs, including the Union and the New York Yacht Club, and the Cromwell yachts had won a number of important racing trophies. When Oliver brought his beautiful young bride to New York in 1890, he and Eva sailed into the Social Register and into the waiting arms of New York’s reigning hostess, Mrs. William Astor, and her chief lieutenant, Ward McAllister.

  Mrs. Astor and McAllister had codified and delineated New York society ten years earlier. A list, Mr. McAllister explained, had to be made of those who “counted” in New York, as opposed to those who did not, and that list consisted of no more than four hundred people. Besides, the capacity of Mrs. Astor’s ballroom was four hundred, and thus the phrase “the Four Hundred” became fixed in the press and made its way into the American vernacular. (For years society reporters tried to get McAllister to reveal the names of who the chosen Four Hundred were, and when he finally complied it seemed that his arithmetic was off: his list consisted of only three hundred and four names.)

  Though Caroline Astor unquestionably considered herself the grandest of New York’s grandes dames—and would continue to do so long after Ward McAllister had ceased to be useful to her (cruelly, she held a large gala on the eve of her former mentor’s funeral)—it would be incorrect to suppose that she served as a role model for Eva’s later career in society. Caroline Astor was a plain, stiff, frosty woman who rarely smiled and was often rude. It is possible, too, that she was not very bright. A story persists that once, boarding a streetcar and asked to deposit her fare, Mrs. Astor said, “No, thank you. I have my own favorite charities.” (But how could this be true? She had her own carriages and coachmen and would never have needed to use a public conveyance.) She was usually overdressed, nearly always in black, the better to show off her extravagant amounts of jewelry, and she invariably wore a very obvious black wig. Furthermore, she gave terrible parties, and why New York society groveled before Caroline Astor’s pointed feet for ne
arly a quarter of a century is, in retrospect, a little hard to understand. Her own sense of personal theatre was based on intimidation rather than enchantment.

  For her evening entertainments, Caroline Astor had set rigid, grueling rules. Gaiety was frowned upon, as was any conversation that smacked remotely of intelligence or wit. Within Mrs. Astor’s gilded inner circle, the talk was almost studiedly irrelevant, and its topics were restricted, as historian Lloyd Morris put it, to “thoughtful discussions of food, wines, horses, yachts, cotillions, marriages, villas at Newport and the solecisms of ineligibles.” Anything that might be remotely considered an idea was eschewed at the Astor dinner table, and during the day Mrs. Astor’s set had the dinners of the previous evenings to discuss. Actors, opera singers, musicians, composers, and people connected with the theatre in any way were considered socially disreputable. Writers, painters, and sculptors were not deemed worth discussing—or buying—until they had been respectably dead for a number of years. Politicians were vulgar, nor were educators or even clergymen regarded as fit for inclusion in fashionable society. The only “working” people to whom the Four Hundred gave the nod were high-ranking members of the military, and the Astor-McAllister list included at least five generals and two colonels and their respective ladies.

  Mrs. Astor and her friends’ one concession to the arts was to attend the opera at the old Academy of Music on Monday and Friday nights during the winter season. But the dictates of fashion precluded any real appreciation of the music, as fashion required that one not enter one’s box until the end of the first act. Then, during the second interval, one made conversation with one’s friends in the neighboring boxes. Then, before the house lights dimmed for the third act—so that the departure could be observed by the less fortunate in the stalls below—one grandly left the opera and went home.

  At Mrs. Astor’s Fifth Avenue house, the evenings were equally ritualized. Foregathering for dinner was at seven, and an invitation to dinner with the Astors meant arriving at seven, not a moment later. If too early, one waited in one’s carriage outside the door and alighted to ring the bell at clockstroke. This meant that all the guests arrived at once, and proceeded into the house in single file. The gentlemen wore white tie and tails, and the ladies long gowns and their best jewels. The ladies took their wraps to a downstairs cloakroom, and the gentlemen took theirs upstairs. In the gentlemen’s cloakroom, white envelopes were arranged on a silver tray, a gentleman’s name on each envelope. Inside was a card with a lady’s name on it—the lady he was to escort in to dinner. The ladies and gentlemen then reassembled downstairs, and there their hostess received them in her black wig and black dress which might be adorned with “the costliest necklace of emeralds and diamonds in America,” or “the finest sapphire.”