The Grandes Dames

by Stephen Birmingham

  Meanwhile, Philadelphia waited. The trouble was, there was no clear consensus on how the new Mrs. Stotesbury should be treated. Would it be simplest merely to snub her? That might prove unwise, as Mrs. Stotesbury appeared to have powerful friends—United States Presidents, the nation’s most powerful banker—at her beck and call. Perhaps it would be better to test her, put her through a social probationary period, let her show her colors, reveal the extent of her ambitions. The mood of the city grew tense as the news came, early in February, that the bridal pair were winding up their Florida stay and preparing to return home.

  In most successful dramas of the early twentieth century, the curtain did not rise to reveal the heroine, the star, sitting on a sofa in center stage. It rose, instead, on a butler and a parlor maid discussing the peccadilloes of the mistress of the house, who was expected home at any moment from some long journey and some unusual experience. The maid might go to the window, part the curtains: Could this be she arriving now? No, it was only a porter delivering trunks. A sound of voices offstage: This must be she at last. No, it is only the Australian cousins who have come to ask her an important favor. The cousins enter, fuss and wring their hands. What can be keeping her? The maid makes a few last passes at the furniture with her feather duster. The butler straightens his tie and arranges the sherry glasses. The audience, teased and tantalized with suspense beyond endurance, strains forward in its seats. Then, all at once, through the door she sweeps and stands there, looking up at the key light.

  This was the way Eva Stotesbury orchestrated her entrance into Philadelphia, her “debut” before its society. She and Ned Stotesbury slipped into town quietly, unnoticed by the press, secured themselves in the newly decorated Walnut Street house, and only after they had arrived let Philadelphia learn that Eva was there and waiting in the wings for her proper cue. That came on February 12, when it was learned that the Stotesburys had taken seats for the opera that evening. In the event, the house was packed, but not for the performance. Society reporters, each eager to scoop the next, filed their stories in advance of the event. One wrote that Eva was twenty minutes early, another that she was half an hour late. Actually, unlike Mrs. Astor, Eva and Ned arrived precisely on time.

  “Scores of opera glasses” were immediately trained upon her. Her appearance, according to the press, drew “audible” comments. Her majestic figure was swathed in a dress of white satin “with a net of silver and crystal spangles.” Over this she threw a long purple opera cloak with heavy swags of white fox fur at the collar and cuffs. On her bosom lay the Stotesbury pearls, looped in four coils, and above these, at her throat, were the Morgan diamonds. But the climax of her costume was a diamond tiara, “the most beautiful ever seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, or at the Academy of Music, for that matter,” declared the Bulletin. The Inquirer’s headline was typical: MRS. STOTESBURY IS SEEN AT OPERA. The Inquirer went on to predict that the new Mrs. Stotesbury would “doubtless … assume a commanding position in local society corresponding to that she occupied … in Washington.”

  The Inquirer was wrong. Diamonds and pearls alone could not make a Philadelphian, nor could all the breathless publicity in the world. Philadelphia would have the last word on Eva, one way or the other. Did Eva Stotesbury realize even then, as the necks craned and the opera glasses were trained on her, and as, during the intervals, opera goers jammed into the narrow aisle behind the Stotesbury box for an even closer look at her, that those in “a commanding position in local society” were viewing her as an interloper, a creature from a strange and hostile planet?

  A few days later, however, she must have known. It was announced that neither Edward Stotesbury nor his bride would be receiving invitations to Philadelphia’s 1912–13 Assembly season.

  3

  THE RING-MISTRESS

  One of the many unusual things about Philadelphia is that it is a city that doesn’t mind making fun of itself. When a New Yorker is chided or ridiculed about his city, he springs angrily to its defense. So does a Chicagoan, San Franciscan, or Houstonian. A Philadelphian merely smiles pleasantly and says, “But that’s the way we are here.”

  A number of funny stories Philadelphians tell on themselves are repeated so often over the years that one wonders whether any of them was ever true. Take, for example, the one about the Philadelphia debutante who, standing in the receiving line at the Assembly, suddenly feels the elastic in her panties give way and feels the garment slip to her ankles. Undeterred, she stoops, picks the garment up, stuffs it in her purse, and continues shaking hands. This story is intended to illustrate Philadelphian sang-froid. The only trouble is that so many former Philadelphia debutantes insist it occurred at their debut that one can only conclude it may have been an annual event, or the elastic in Philadelphia is particularly flimsy stuff.

  There are also a number of stories about how Eva and Ned Stotesbury got to the Assembly that year, because, in the end, they went. One version has it that the Stotesburys simply crashed the party, and that the invited guests were so flabbergasted by their temerity that no one knew what to do about it. Another tale insists that Ned Stotesbury threatened, “If my wife and I are not invited to the Assembly, I’ll call in all the commercial paper in Philadelphia and ruin everybody.” A second version of the threat is that Stotesbury said, “If we’re not invited, I’ll move Drexel and Company and all its business to New York.” Still another has it that, if not invited, he threatened to fire “all his aristocratic young clerks.” According to a fifth tale, Stotesbury resorted to bribery, saying to one of his brokers, who had powerful Assembly connections, “If you’ll get us an invitation, you’ll be the next head of Drexel’s.”

  Whatever actually occurred, the point of all the stories is the same: pressure was applied; the Stotesburys were not wanted at the Assembly, but they wangled their way in anyway. Somehow, the Philadelphians had been forcefully reminded that they needed the Stotesburys as much as the Stotesburys needed them. A bargain was struck—which is of course a little different from “acceptance” of the Stotesburys.

  A postscript to the various Stotesbury-Assembly stories is that Ned and Eva were so thrilled with their invitation that they at once had it framed and hung under a spotlight in the entrance foyer of Whitemarsh Hall. This, however, could not possibly have been true because Whitemarsh Hall did not exist until a number of years later.

  And through the thorny undergrowth of tales, one wonders: Why did Edward Stotesbury, for it must have been he, act in such a way as to insure that word of the grudging invitation would travel through the catty annals of Philadelphia society for the next half-century? All the stories varied the same theme—and did nothing to enhance the Stotesburys’ position but, rather, forever tarnished Eva’s reputation. The only plausible explanation must be that Ned loved Eva so much that he would have done anything to get her invited to the city’s most exclusive party. But he underestimated Philadelphians’ long memories.

  Eva Stotesbury, meanwhile, was not a limited woman. She realized soon enough that she not only had caught Philadelphia’s biggest fish but also had moved back with him into enemy territory. Wisely, she saw that she needed another ally besides her doting husband, and her choice was a clever one. She did not choose a member of Philadelphia’s genteel society to be her aide, mentor, and amanuensis. She selected, instead, a forthright young Irishwoman named Mrs. Edward J. MacMullan.

  Katherine MacMullan was from Philadelphia, but she was by no means a Philadelphian. Her background—or so it was said—was humble, though no one knew for sure because Katherine MacMullan preferred to keep her background out of the conversation. No one knew for certain, either, what had become of Mr. MacMullan, unless, as a local wag suggested, “She ate him.” All that was certain was that Katherine MacMullan was a striking-looking woman, with flaming red hair, an aquiline nose, boundless energy, and an Irish temper. She was twenty-some years younger than Eva Stotesbury and, as an outsider looking in, she had studied the rites and rituals of Philadelp
hia’s ruling class for years. She knew who liked whom, who hated whom, and she knew where several embarrassing family skeletons were buried. She understood the politics of social maneuvering, especially as it was done in Philadelphia, and knew that there were more subtle forms of intimidation than threats and bribery. “My rules are simple,” she once said. “Manners. Good manners. Rudimentary good manners are all I ask. There’s little enough elegance left in the world. Are a few good manners too much to ask for?”

  Eva Stotesbury had no need for lessons in good manners, but when Katherine MacMullan first offered her services to Eva, in the loosely defined capacity of social secretary, she did provide a few other inside tips. She knew, for example, that whereas Washington’s society might be based on government, and New York’s on money, Philadelphia’s was essentially about food. Philadelphians took special pride in their chefs and menus, and were fond of supposing that the meals served in Philadelphia’s private homes were among the finest in the world. Furthermore, there were certain regional dishes—terrapin and canvasback duck among them—that were special favorites. Finally, Katherine MacMullan—“Mrs. Mac,” as Eva was soon calling her—knew that Philadelphians prided themselves on “giving the most beautiful parties of any city in the country,” even though, as Mrs. Mac liked to say tartly, “They don’t.” Eva Stotesbury’s social star would rise or set, Mrs. Mac advised, depending on the quality of her entertainments.

  Later, Katherine MacMullan would confess to having been “as nervous as a cat with kittens” when diagramming the seating arrangement for Eva Stotesbury’s first large party, planning the menu, overseeing the table settings, the flowers, and the music. Nervous she may have been, but it didn’t show in the evening that resulted. Spurred, no doubt, by curiosity about the redecoration of the Walnut Street house, society turned out in force, and the party was pronounced a complete success.

  One of Mrs. MacMullan’s “inventions” for that first evening was a rearrangeable dinner-seating chart. She cut a large piece of poster board to represent the Stotesbury dining table, and around the edges of the board she made little slits representing the chairs. Cards bearing the guests’ names could then be inserted in the slits. Thus the hostess could inspect the seating plan and, if she wished, reseat her table simply by shifting the cards around. After each dinner the charts were dated and filed for reference. Also filed with each seating chart were such important bits of information as what the menu had been; which gown, shoes and jewels the hostess had worn; and what flowers had been used in the centerpieces. Soon Katherine MacMullan and Eva Stotesbury were working so well together that the relationship became almost symbiotic. Quite often Eva had no idea who might be coming to her dinners until Mrs. Mac had given her a quick pre-party briefing.

  Soon, as Eva’s arbiter elegantiarum, Katherine MacMullan had made herself indispensable. One of her rules was that, on the afternoon of a party, the hostess herself should have absolutely nothing to do except take a nap, followed by a long hot bath in salts, followed by dressing for dinner. Katherine MacMullan turned into a furious list maker, listing in detail the menus and flowers and guests of each of Eva’s parties, so that there would never be an exact duplication. She also catalogued Eva’s dresses and jewels, so that what the hostess wore would never be repeated for an occasion involving the same people, and the elaborate seating charts were filed and indexed so that no two guests would ever be seated together a second time at a Stotesbury party. Mrs. Mac could also be peppery with her boss, and Eva grew to enjoy the occasional scoldings. “She’s such a bear!” Eva would exclaim happily when Mrs. Mac would tell her which necklace should be worn with which gown. One of Eva’s difficulties was a particular diamond and emerald tiara, so heavy with stones, she said, that whenever she wore it she got a stiff neck. “You deserve to suffer with that much jewelry on your head,” said Mrs. Mac. “Either attach a few helium balloons to it or wear it without complaining!” The same tiara had a tendency to list to one side and fall over Eva’s ear. And so Katherine MacMullan stationed herself behind Eva at parties and, whenever the tiara began to slip, nudged it back into place again.

  Emboldened by her early success, Mrs. Mac began to develop more imaginative ideas for parties, and Eva’s “theme evenings” became the talk of Philadelphia. If Philadelphia prided itself on splendid parties, Eva reasoned, she would produce parties more splendid than Philadelphia had ever seen. And the Stotesbury-MacMullan parties were just that—theatrical productions. Katherine MacMullan, for example, frequently introduced wildlife into her décors, releasing flocks of white doves, or, in one instance, four hundred canaries. Once a herd of peacocks, plumes fanned regally, was paraded across the Stotesbury ballroom.

  As the fame of Eva’s parties grew, so did the span of her social horizon. Seated dinners for forty were her usual dos, and she often gave as many as three a week. There were also frequent teas and receptions, for as many as six hundred and fifty people. House parties were common, too, and guests were brought in from Washington and New York by private trains. Soon it was estimated that the Stotesburys entertained, on an average, two hundred people a week and that, all told, a hundred thousand guests had crossed the threshold of their house. Eva had become one of the most extraordinary hostesses in the world, and even the State Department began turning to her for advice on protocol and the proper way to entertain visiting foreign dignitaries. Through it all, Eva’s composure was complete, as, bejeweled, she spoke to everyone, remembering every name. “A nervous hostess makes an unhappy guest,” she used to say.

  Does this mean that Eva Stotesbury had a hundred thousand friends? Alas, it does not. Many on Eva’s long list of guests were among the most cynical and hypocritical people in the city. “It was sad,” Katherine MacMullan recalled many years later, “but I could see perfectly well what was going on. The way people would grovel to her for her invitations, go to her house and gorge themselves on her wonderful food, and then start disparaging and ridiculing her the minute they got outside the door, talking about how the Stotesburys were vulgar and nouveaux riches. Often they didn’t even wait to get outside the door. They’d come in, shake her hand, kiss her cheek, and say, ‘My dear, you look absolutely ravishing tonight,’ and three minutes later they’d be whispering with their friends, ‘Have you ever seen such a pretentious necklace?’ It was disgusting, I thought.”

  Was Eva herself ever aware of this? “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. MacMullan. “She knew it, and it amused her in a grim sort of way. She had no illusions about what people said. She knew that it was simply jealousy. She had more money than they did, that was all it was, and she spent it better than they did, and she and he dressed better than they did and looked better than they did. She had no use for the whole idea of Philadelphia ‘society’—actually, she considered many of those people a dangerous and destructive element in the city. In her own way, she succeeded in exposing those people for what they were. That gave her a certain sense of power. After all, no matter what they said about her, they were still dancing to her tune. It was a circus, and she was the ring-master.”

  Ned Stotesbury had begun buying paintings before he met Eva, and he owned a number of Gainsboroughs and Romneys. As a wealthy collector he quite naturally came to the attention of the legendary art dealer and supersalesman Joseph Duveen. Duveen, as he had managed to do with other rich men of the era, had become Stotesbury’s mentor of taste in art and, in the process, was selling him a number of costly pieces. Now it was natural that Duveen should take Eva under his protective wing as well. Soon he was guiding her in purchasing paintings and sculpture as well as furniture, tapestries, rugs, china, crystal, gold and silver services, bibelots, and other objets d’art. It wasn’t long, under the guidance of Duveen’s suave persuasion, before Eva had acquired more art and furniture than the Walnut Street mansion would comfortably hold. It was Duveen who now began persuading Eva that the scale of her entertaining demanded a larger proscenium—a truly princely residence, a palace. With more space for her act
ivities, of course, there would be more rooms for Joseph Duveen to fill. Eva’s two-story ballroom on Walnut Street was already the biggest in the city. This did not mean, however, Duveen suggested, that she did not deserve a bigger one.

  Eva mentioned Duveen’s suggestion to her husband, who immediately liked the idea. Late in 1915 he purchased three hundred and sixty-five acres in semisuburban Chestnut Hill, and architects began submitting sketches. Joseph Duveen, as usual, had made his suggestion at precisely the right psychological moment. J. P. Morgan had been appointed purchasing agent for the Allies, and the profits of the firm were enormous. In the years 1915 and 1916, for example, Ned Stotesbury’s personal income had topped $7,000,000 a year. The supply of money now appeared to be endless. Why shouldn’t his beloved Eva be given her personal Taj Mahal—the biggest, grandest, costliest, most beautiful estate Philadelphia (or almost any other place) had ever seen? It was only fitting.

  4

  MORE STATELY MANSIONS

  “I stay here,” Eva Stotesbury once confided to a friend, “only because of Ned. Philadelphia is Ned’s town. I really don’t like it much.” Perhaps she felt that she had earned the city’s most imposing castle as due compensation for the way Philadelphia had treated her. Or perhaps, in the five years—from 1916 to 1921—that it took to build Whitemarsh Hall, with Eva supervising every detail, Eva was merely busying herself with a project that kept her mind off Philadelphia.

  Whitemarsh Hall was six stories tall and had three basements. There were two mahogany-paneled passenger elevators, and a dozen more for freight and service. There were a hundred and forty-seven rooms scattered across a hundred thousand square feet of floor space, and if that much floor space is difficult to envision, it amounted to approximately two and a half acres. In volume, the house comprised 1,500,000 cubic feet. There were forty-five bathrooms. To communicate from one part of the house to another a commercial telephone switchboard and operator were required. In the cavernous basements were bakeries, laundries, a tailor shop, a barber shop, a carpenter’s shop, a gymnasium, even a movie theatre. Forty-five live-in servants were required to staff the house, and other full- or part-time “dailies” came in from the village. Whitemarsh Hall employed a full-time carpenter and a full-time electrician. Eva even had her own resident hairdresser and couturier, and each house guest was assigned his or her personal chauffeur. There was garage space for eighteen automobiles. Servants’ rooms were supplied for house guests’ servants. Outside, to care for the three hundred acres of formal gardens, seventy gardeners were employed.