Stephen Birmingham - The Grandes Dames

The Grandes Dames

Stephen Birmingham

F OR MY MOTHER

IN MEMORY

Foreword

When I first mentioned to friends and acquaintances that I was writing a book about American grandes damesthat 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 Dutyit 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-aunts 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 dameship 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? Wouldnt 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, Its true. If theres anything wrong with you, Wellesley fixes it. If you dont walk properly, Wellesley corrects that. If you dont speak correctly, Wellesley teaches you how. If you cant swim when you enter Wellesley, you will have to swim a length of the pool before you graduate.)

My mothers 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 motheralong with close members of their own families of whom readers of this book may be remindedand 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 mothers 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 bookStotesbury, Dodge, Rosenwald, Huntington, Gardner, Belmont, Rockefellerare 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 Saarinens 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 nave, almost-forgotten erabefore a foundations board decided who got what, before corporate giving, before government social welfare programswhen 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. The 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 newspapers 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. Emerys 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