An American Princess

by Annejet van Der Zijl

  “Misery loves company.” This project taught me that happiness is just as likely to seek company. In all the years since I stood in Allene’s Blue Room for the first time, I never for a moment regretted my decision to tackle her life story. Her life was turbulent and eventful, sometimes overwhelming. The same goes for writing this book. But just as she herself never seemed to have lost pleasure in her life, I never lost pleasure in piecing together the parts of this story—if only because it filled me with something I never would have expected or looked for previously, something you can never have too much of: hope and courage.

  SOURCES

  This reconstruction was put together, as always, with the help of numerous sources. The most important are listed below. Since I gained a lot from my peregrinations to all of the places Allene Tew called her own during her life, I have also made a short overview of them.

  To start with, I’d like to emphasize that I wouldn’t have been able to write this book without the godsend of the internet. Just as Jamestown was able to flourish in the second half of the nineteenth century thanks to the Industrial Revolution, stories from that period have been able to come to life thanks to the digital revolution—and in particular the treasure trove of digitized historical newspapers. On top of this, I was also fortunate that historical archives are not only generally easy to find in America, but relatively easy to search. It would be too much to list the many sites I consulted during the course of my research, but I would like to bring a few to the reader’s attention—if only because they were so essential to this book and perhaps may be of use to other researchers.

  The genealogical site Ancestry.com was an inexhaustible source of birth certificates, passport applications, passenger lists, census files, and other hard facts so essential to reconstructing a life. The society columns in the New York Times and the Washington Post, easily accessible via their digital archives, made it possible to follow the comings and goings of the main characters—and minor ones—almost tracing their steps. Finally, through Newspapers.com and the Dutch variant Delpher.nl, hundreds of smaller and lesser-known papers were searchable at the push of a button so that everything and everyone I wanted to know something about could be found.

  PEOPLE

  Every book, and this one, too, has its guardian angels—people who in some way or other have played a special role in its production. Like Victoria Theisen, the current owner of Castel Mare, whose hospitality allowed me to get the idea for this book in the first place and who helped me during the ensuing years in so many ways with information and inspiration. Her daughter Marie Schäfer was a great help in locating and deciphering Allene’s letters. I’m also incredibly grateful to her.

  Then there were my standard “angels” in the guise of Kees van der Sluijs and Jo Simons—the former was yet again an invaluable mainstay as historical conscience and as a creative researcher, the latter a tireless travel guide and field researcher. Flip Maarschalkerweerd, director of the Dutch Royal House Archives, was kind enough to read my manuscript and offer commentary where necessary. He also contributed as much as he could. I would also like to thank Jeroen Kwist for the use of his beautiful house on Lake Chautauqua, and Anne Walton, the daughter of Charlotte Felkin née Rosewater, and her son David for their hospitality—they provided the research period with a warm and pleasurable ending.

  I also owe great thanks to Patricia de Groot, Gaia Cerpac, Annette Portegies, Paulien Loerts, and the other staff of my Dutch publishing house, Querido, for the enthusiasm and professionalism with which they turned my manuscript into a book. If courage was the theme of Allene’s life, then there’s no more fitting publishing house to come to mind than this one, which decided recently to become independent and stand on its own two feet. Finally, the people close to me, whom I won’t name by name, if only because—to my great pleasure—they are almost the same as those in my previous books and know by now that sometimes the story in my head takes priority over the life I share with them.

  The following people—ordered by location—provided assistance in all kinds of ways:

  Jamestown

  Karen Livsey, Fenton History Center

  Barb Cessna, Fenton History Center

  Kathleen Crocker and Jane Cadwell

  Samuel R. Genco, Lake View Cemetery Association

  Pittsburgh

  Kelly Linn, Fort Pitt Block House

  John Canning, the Allegheny City Society

  New York City, Long Island, Newport, and surroundings

  Frank Ligtvoet and Nanne Dekking

  Consuela Almonte, Consulate General of Pakistan

  Rick Hutto

  Roberta Maged en Nick Nicholson, The Russian Nobility Association in America, Springfield, New Jersey

  Linda Beninghove and Doris Oliver, Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey

  Michael Perekrestov, Foundation of Russian History, Jordanville, New York

  Amy Driscoll, Locust Valley Historical Society

  Marianne Howard, Planting Fields, Oyster Bay

  Simon Forster, Saint John’s of Lattingtown Episcopal Church, Lattingtown

  Dolores and Thomas Gahan, Lattingtown

  Robert Mackay, Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities

  Heather Andren, Pomfret School, Pomfret

  Kyle De Cicco, Harvard Library, Harvard

  Kathleen M. Sylvia, City Clerk Newport

  Bertram Lippincott, Newport Historical Society

  France

  Tanguy de Vienne, Château de Suisnes

  Hans Buys, Institut Néerlandais

  Pierre Mavoud, Île-de-France

  Helena Stork, Salernes/Amsterdam

  Switzerland

  Alexandre Vautier-Kotzebue

  Germany

  Princess Woizlawa Feodora Reuss, born Duchess zu Mecklenburg

  The Netherlands

  Tatiana and Hans Crooijmans

  Freek Hooykaas

  Angela Dekker

  Bearn Bilker and Angelika Bilker-Steiner

  LOCATIONS

  Few of Allene’s footprints can still be found in Jamestown. Her great-uncle George Tew’s blacksmith’s shop and her grandfather Andrew Smith’s livery stables, on the corner of Main and Second Streets and at 19 West Third Avenue, respectively, are long gone, and the family house at 32 Pine Street has also disappeared beneath the dreams of subsequent generations. Lake Chautauqua, however, is largely as idyllic as it was when Allene was a young girl.

  Of the glamour and glitz of the former millionaires’ enclave Allegheny City, which merged with Pittsburgh in 1907, little remains. The site of David Hostetter’s mansion at 171 Western Avenue is now a parking lot. Tod’s and Verna’s graves in the hills are still there, as are those of Allene’s grandparents in Jamestown. Raccoon Creek, near Monaca on the Ohio River, where Allene and Tod built Hostetter House, now hosts the Kubota power plant, built at the site in 1941.

  Allene’s first address in New York, the Rosenbaum mansion at 5 East Seventy-Third Street, still exists, as does Tod’s house at 12 East Sixty-Fifth Street. The latter building is now in use as the Consulate General of Pakistan. The Allene Tew Nichols House at 57 East Sixty-Fourth Street, which Allene had designed by Charles P. H. Gilbert during her second marriage, has withstood the test of time with flying colors. It recently belonged to a famous Italian fashion designer, who renovated the mansion down to the last detail.

  Birchwood, the house on Feeks Lane in Lattingtown that Howard Greenley designed for Anson Wood Burchard in 1906, is still standing, too. It now belongs to a rich New York couple who use it as their second home. The same goes for the former farm of the country house on the other side of the street, which once belonged to Greta Hostetter. She and Anson rest in peace in the Locust Valley Cemetery, close to Birchwood; Teddy can be found at the Somme American Cemetery, the American graveyard near Bony in northern France.

  The Henry P. Davison House at 690 Park Avenue, bought by Anson and Allene in 1925, is currently in use as the Italian Embas
sy. The house with Allene’s lucky number—33 Rue Barbet-de-Jouy—is now the offices of the French province of Île-de-France. Château de Suisnes, renamed Château de Bougainville, stood empty for years before being renovated by a young French count and is now an exclusive wedding location and hotel. The apartment complex at 740 Park Avenue is still one of the most exclusive buildings in New York, surrounded by great secrecy and guarded by concierges who aren’t allowed to reveal the names of the inhabitants. It is not known whether Allene’s former apartment in this building is currently inhabited.

  The Astor mansion, otherwise known as Beechwood, at 580 Bellevue Avenue in Newport has been used over the past decades as a wedding location and a kind of historical party center, among other things. It was recently sold to a rich art collector who intends to turn it into a museum. The Waves on Ledge Road in Newport has now been divided up into condominiums. Castel Mare in Cap d’Ail is now located at 26 Avenue Raymond Gramaglia. The villa still belongs to Heiner Reuss’s niece. It is at times rented out, at times used as a holiday house. The trunks Allene used to travel all over the world are used there as side tables.

  TEXTS CONSULTED

  Newspapers

  Battle Creek Enquirer (Battle Creek, MI)

  Brooklyn Eagle (NY)

  Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago, IL)

  Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY)

  Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI)

  Eastern Daily Mail and Straits Morning Advertiser (Singapore)

  Evening World (New York, NY)

  Jamestown Evening Journal (Jamestown, NY)

  Jamestown Journal (NY)

  Leidsch Dagblad (Leiden, Netherlands)

  Liberty Press (Liberty Center, OH)

  London Gazette (London, England)

  Los Angeles Herald (Los Angeles, CA)

  Newport Daily News (Newport, RI)

  New-York Daily Tribune (New York, NY)

  New York Herald (New York, NY)

  New York Journal-American (New York, NY)

  New York Times (New York, NY)

  Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pittsburgh, PA)

  Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA)

  Star Press (Muncie, IN)

  Het Vaderland (The Hague, Netherlands)

  Washington Post (Washington, DC)

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  Country Life in America

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  The Pittsburgh Record: Alumni Magazine of the University of Pittsburgh

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