The Grandes Dames

by Stephen Birmingham

  When the receiving line broke up, a butler appeared with a tray, and cocktails were served. There was never a choice of drinks. Mrs. Astor preferred something called a Jack Rose, and a Jack Rose was therefore what was offered, one to a guest in a small sherry-sized glass. A maid then entered with a tray of canapés, again one apiece. No one would have dreamed of asking for a second canapé, much less a second drink. In exactly fifteen minutes dinner was announced. At the table were printed place cards and menus, each embossed with the Astor crest, outlining the courses through the appetizer, soup, fish, meat or game, salad, cheese and fruit, dessert and coffee, with perhaps a lemon sorbet somewhere in the middle “to cleanse the palate.” Of course, each course was adorned with an appropriate wine.

  Dinner lasted two hours, and through it all, in addition to keeping track of what one was saying to one’s dinner partner, it was necessary to keep an attentive eye on the hostess to catch the exact moment when she “changed the conversation.” When Mrs. Astor shifted the focus of her attention from the dinner partner on her right to the person on her left, the entire dinner table had to turn heads with her. At approximately half past nine, Mrs. Astor rose, and the table did likewise. The ladies and gentlemen then separated—the men to the library for brandy and cigars, the ladies to the adjacent drawing room for a ladylike glass of mirabelle liqueur and gossip. In the library, the consumption of brandy was usually rapid and enthusiastic; it was the first chance the men had had all evening for solid alcoholic stimulation. Then, in exactly half an hour a butler opened the doors between the two rooms, and the gentlemen joined the ladies for another thirty minutes. At half past ten, Mrs. Astor rose again, the signal that the party was over.

  The new Mrs. Oliver Cromwell had almost immediately become pregnant, and her first child, a daughter, was born in 1890. Two more children followed, both boys. Though her face was still smooth and beautiful, childbearing thickened Eva’s figure somewhat. Still, it was not a matronly figure, and, with the aid of corsetières, she was able to achieve the hour-glass silhouette that was very much the fashion of the day—full-bosomed, full-hipped, with a tightly cinched-in waist. Ward McAllister died in 1893 and, though she did not yet realize it, Caroline Astor’s star was beginning to set on the New York social horizon; her last important ball was held in the spring of 1897. Now it was possible for Eva Cromwell to do some important entertaining of her own.

  Like many of his male contemporaries in Mrs. Astor’s group, Oliver Cromwell’s occupation was somewhat loosely defined. His father had died and left him a rich man. He was “in finance” and he “kept an office”—consisting of a secretary, a stock ticker, and a telephone—downtown, where he “managed his investments.” Unlike the Philadelphia financier Edward T. Stotesbury, whom Eva would meet later on, Oliver Cromwell did not seem to have a lucky streak. Then, too, as America entered the twentieth century, panics on Wall Street began to occur with alarming frequency. In 1903 there was the so-called rich man’s panic, caused by manipulators in U.S. Steel stock, when Steel plunged from $58 to $8 a share, taking most of the market with it. Then, four years later, the panic of 1907 threatened to wreck the whole fabric of the financial community. (Acting almost singlehandedly in October of that year, J. P. Morgan managed to avert a depositors’ run on a number of leading U.S. banks; among the handful of financiers Morgan turned to were John D. Rockefeller, E. H. Harriman, and Edward Stotesbury.)

  Through all these vicissitudes, Oliver Cromwell plunged ahead in the stock market, sending good money after bad and displaying all the desperate traits of a compulsive gambler. Alarmed, Eva begged her husband to move the family to Washington, on the probably naïve assumption that if she could physically remove him from the Wall Street area she could curb his speculative fever. It is also possible that she had begun to weary of the tedious predictability of New York parties, for which Mrs. Astor’s continued to set the tone. And so the move to the capital was made.

  In Washington, of course, Eva had many important social contacts. Her father’s former partner was Chief Justice, and Washington, under the cheerful administration of President Teddy Roosevelt—sparked by the spirited antics of his irrepressible daughter Alice—was a merry place. Alice Roosevelt and Eva’s daughter Louise were about the same age, and were invited to many of the same parties, and Eva and Oliver Cromwell were an immediate social success. They were taken up by the international diplomatic set, and it was here that Eva began to blossom into full flower as a hostess. Her parties were much gayer and less constrained than Mrs. Astor’s. Guests chattered in both French and English. Champagne flowed. The hostess’s personality was as sparkling and effervescent as Caroline Astor’s had been dour and flat, and Eva was able to demonstrate another extraordinary talent: the ability, in a roomful of hundreds of people, to remember the name of every guest and, in most cases, the names of their children. Her sense of personal theatre was beginning to emerge.

  Then, in 1909, tragedy struck. Oliver Cromwell suffered a series of strokes, the third of which was fatal. He had been sixty-one, and Eva was a widow at forty-four. The press reported that Eva had inherited “three houses” and an “ample fortune,” but two of the three houses had never existed, and the fortune—though there was enough for Eva to live on comfortably—was far from ample. It had been seriously drained by her husband’s financial misadventures. Eva went into deep mourning and seclusion.

  Early in the spring of 1910, at the suggestion of friends who were concerned about her continuing depression, Eva Cromwell decided to take a trip to Europe with her nineteen-year-old daughter. The trip was intended to take Eva’s mind off her loss. It would “give her something to do.” It was assumed, of course, that Eva’s brilliant social career was over.

  In fact, it was just beginning.

  2

  PHILADELPHIA, MEET MRS. CROMWELL

  By 1910, Edward T. Stotesbury was already known as “the richest man at Morgan’s.” The wunderkind who had started his banking career as a lowly janitor-clerk had not disappointed those men who first spotted his financial genius and promoted him upward, Anthony J. Drexel and J. Pierpont Morgan. Officially, Stotesbury was now the resident senior partner of Drexel and Company of Philadelphia, but he was also a senior partner of J. P. Morgan & Company in New York—“Morgan’s man in Philadelphia,” as he was often called. Actually, of course, the Morgan and Drexel banks were themselves a partnership, making Stotesbury a double partner. It was not as confusing as it sounded: Morgan ran New York and Stotesbury ran Philadelphia. When necessary, the two men used each other’s services.

  Stotesbury had been born in Philadelphia of an Episcopalian father and a Quaker mother, and he had been raised in the stern discipline of the Society of Friends. He was a short, dapper man, proud of his trim figure and carefully clipped moustache, and in dress—outside the office, at least—he was something of a fashion plate, favoring high collars, flowing foulard neckties, English-cut tweed jackets, and spotless white flannel trousers. As a young man he had started collecting watches, and as he grew wealthy this collection had become a truly princely one. He had also made himself an expert on gems and precious stones, and this collection too had become valuable. Horsemanship was another enthusiasm, and he maintained a stable of handsome trotting horses. In the office, of course, he was bankerly and sober, all business and humorless. Socially, on the other hand, he could be gracious and charming and even, in his dignified way, amusing.

  He had been married quite young, in 1873 at age twenty-four, to a pretty Quaker girl named Fanny Butcher. Eight years later, in 1881, Fanny Stotesbury had died after giving birth to their second child. He had been left a widower at thirty-two, with two small daughters, one of them an infant. From that time he had lived alone in his big dark house on Walnut Street, “south of Market,” where fashionable Philadelphia lived. Young and handsome, single and rich, he was a popular extra man at Philadelphia dinner parties. Even though he had often let it be known that he would never marry again, the newspapers, noting h
is imposing eligibility, were always “linking” Edward Stotesbury’s name with this young woman or that. In his roguish way, by never denying these persistent romantic rumors, he encouraged them. Early in 1909 the second of his two daughters married. Now, save for the servants, he was truly alone in the Walnut Street house. It must have seemed very large and very empty.

  Accompanying Eva Cromwell to her European sailing in 1910 was William Eldridge, an old family friend and the godfather of her younger son. Friends had long suspected that Eldridge might have had a romantic interest in Eva, though he was far too much of a gentleman to admit it, and on that chilly spring day, after Eldridge had got Eva settled in her stateroom and the two were strolling on the deck waiting for the whistle to signal that it was time for all visitors to go ashore, an event occurred—coincidence, luck, trick of fate—that would remove Eva from William Eldridge’s future forever. Whom should Eldridge spot, also strolling on the deck, but his old friend Ned Stotesbury, the Philadelphia banker, who was on his way to Europe on business. Eldridge promptly introduced the two, and suggested that they might enjoy each other’s company on the voyage. Thus the widower of twenty-nine years and the widow of just a few months were thrown together in that most romantic of settings, an ocean crossing. Ned Stotesbury, from all reports, was immediately smitten.

  For Eva, meeting Ned Stotesbury must have involved a sense of déjà vu. He was almost exactly the same age her husband had been when he died. And though he was shorter than Cromwell—a shade shorter, in fact, than Eva—there was otherwise a strong physical resemblance. Also, with his proper manners and his pious Quaker ways—he still occasionally used “thee” instead of “you”—Ned Stotesbury may have reminded Eva of her father. In any case, before the pair debarked at Cherbourg to go their separate ways, they had fallen in love.

  Obviously, for Eva’s sake, a “decent interval” had to elapse between her first husband’s death and the announcement of her remarriage. This came some eighteen months later, in early December of 1911.

  Obviously, too, some noses would be placed permanently out of joint by this news in Philadelphia, where there were plenty of attractive widows who would have been not at all reluctant to accept a proposal from the city’s richest citizen. While the newspapers proclaimed the engagement in banner headlines, Philadelphia society braced for an “outsider” and an upstart. Who, after all, was this Mrs. Cromwell? She was associated with three cities which Philadelphia had always held in low esteem. Born in Chicago, she had dazzled social New York and political Washington. With no Philadelphia credentials whatsoever, she had snapped up Philadelphia’s richest single man. Eva Cromwell, if she was aware of it, might have been alerted to the opposition she would soon encounter by a headline in the Bulletin which soothingly reassured its readers that

  MRS. CROMWELL IS “ENTIRELY CHARMING”

  as though to put down rumors that she was only partly charming. The story went on, in the same patronizing vein, to predict that the new Mrs. Stotesbury would be “every bit as popular” in Philadelphia as she had been in New York and Washington. Did the Bulletin reporter slyly realize that this sort of thing was certain to raise the hackles of Old Philadelphia? Philadelphians were not going to be told whom they would and would not like.

  “Philadelphians” here is used advisedly. In Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class, the historian E. Digby Baltzell writes, “Within the fashionable and sometimes snobbish world of Proper Philadelphia … there are, of course, a few ‘old families’ who consider themselves, and are reverently so considered by many others, to be ‘first families.’ In the local upper-class vernacular, these ‘first families’ are known simply as ‘Philadelphians.’ One may have been born in Philadelphia, and one’s ancestors may have been born there since colonial times, without ever presuming to call oneself a ‘Philadelphian,’ at least within the city’s loftiest circles. This rather esoteric use of the term ‘Philadelphian’ is altogether confusing to the outsider.” In other words, not all Philadelphians are Philadelphians; that distinction is left for the few.

  Obviously, Eva Cromwell was not a Philadelphian. Neither, for that matter, was her future husband, even though, as Baltzell points out, he was born there. For one thing, no individual of the Quaker persuasion, no matter how industrious or prosperous he might be, was ever admitted to the ranks of Philadelphianism: this was a rule of thumb, unalterable as the course of the Schuylkill River. Furthermore, Philadelphia would never forget that Edward Stotesbury, though he might be the richest man in town, had started his career as a $16-a-month clerk; he was a man who worked. One of the earliest standards for admission to the Social Register was this: “One must not be ‘employed’; one must make application; and one must be above reproach.”

  Even on this last score Ned Stotesbury had a black mark against his name, having managed, innocently enough, to offend the city’s most prestigious family, the Biddies. When Anthony J. Drexel was still head of the bank, his daughter Emily had married Edward Biddle, and Drexel had brought his son-in-law into the business, giving him a partnership. Fiske Kimball, in his memoir of the Stotesbury family, wrote of an episode that occurred not long afterward, and that illustrated the high esteem in which Mr. Drexel held young Stotesbury:

  One day … Biddle came to Drexel saying, “Your clerk has insulted me. Either he or I must go.” “What clerk?” croaked Drexel. “Stotesbury.” “Then you’d better go.” And go Edward Biddle did.

  It was a gesture that cost Edward Biddle many millions of dollars.

  At least two Philadelphia institutions exist only for Philadelphians in the Baltzell sense. One is the Philadelphia Assembly, a debutante ball—but really much more than that, since so much weight and importance are attached to Assembly invitations—which was established as an annual event in 1748, making it the oldest organized ball in the United States. Both of Edward Stotesbury’s daughters, by virtue of having married Philadelphians, had been rewarded with Assembly invitations. Edward Stotesbury himself had never been invited.

  The second is the Philadelphia Club, the oldest men’s club in America, membership in which, as Digby Baltzell puts it, is “the hallmark of gentlemanly antecedents and business accomplishment.” In Philadelphia, Edward Stotesbury belonged to many clubs, including the Merion Cricket Club, the Philadelphia Cricket Club, the Philadelphia Art Club, the Radnor Hunt, the Germantown Cricket Club, the Racquet Club, the Rabbit Club, the Rose Tree Hunt, the Pennsylvania Club, the Corinthian Yacht Club, the Philadelphia Country Club, the Huntingdon Valley Country Club, the Bachelor Barge Club, the Farmers’ Club, and the Union League Club. As a clubman, he was unquestionably popular, and he served five full terms as president of the Union League.

  But two club invitations, the top two, eluded him: the Rittenhouse Club and the Philadelphia Club. Then at last came an invitation to join the lesser of the two, the Rittenhouse. With this, Ned Stotesbury may have felt that he was finally making some real headway against Philadelphia snobbery because, after all, the Rittenhouse was considered the final steppingstone into the Philadelphia. Everyone taken into the Rittenhouse was eventually taken into the Philadelphia; it would only be a matter of time. But the ultimate invitation that should have been forthcoming never came. Edward T. Stotesbury had been snubbed. It was Philadelphia’s pointed way of telling him that he could come just so far toward joining the ranks of Philadelphians. But no farther. Ever.

  Between the December 1911 announcement of the Cromwell-Stotesbury nuptials and the January 18, 1912, wedding itself, newspapers across the country—and particularly in Philadelphia—were crammed with details of the impending event. The wedding was described as “socially important” and “one of the most important in this country … in several years.” Wisely, probably, Eva chose to be married in the drawing room of her Washington house on New Hampshire Avenue. It is doubtful whether Philadelphia would have been able to choke it down. It was certainly a glittering occasion. President William Howard Taft was among the guests
. J. P. Morgan, away in Europe on business, had sent regrets, but his wife, son, and daughter were there to represent him and so was his gift, a diamond necklace set in platinum with a center pendant “the size of a robin’s egg,” according to the Bulletin. It was said to have cost $500,000. Ned Stotesbury’s gift to his bride was a $100,000 sapphire necklace, plus a rope of pearls so long that, if worn as a single strand, it would have extended to the floor. During the engagement Ned Stotesbury had also spent some $2,000,000 refurbishing the Walnut Street house for Eva’s arrival. If the sheer expenditure of money is any indication of the extent of one’s devotion, Ned Stotesbury adored Eva.

  Following the ceremony, the newlyweds boarded a private “palace” railway car for Palm Beach, where they dallied for about a month, staying at the Breakers Hotel. In the newspapers the honeymoon was reported to be “quiet,” but even the quietness and uneventfulness of it was chronicled daily in the press. Desperate for Stotesbury news, even the stately New York Times was driven to write about how, during the Stotesburys’ Palm Beach stay, two new dances, the Bunny Hug and the Turkey Trot, “took the fashionable colony by storm.” The Stotesburys, it was assumed, were ipso facto taken by storm.