Angel Dorothy

by Jane Brown

  Willard left on the Trans-Siberian express: ‘I am crossing half the world to see you, Princesse. I want to see you more than I want anything else – I know I am right and hence have no smiting conscience – one learns somehow as one grows older that even one’s elders and betters have to be told what to do.’ This last meant that he was going to deal severely with the laggard bankers, even the great Mr J.P. Morgan, as he believed his first-hand knowledge of the Chinese circumstances was the soundest. In Berlin he found the Roosevelts, T.R. being feted by the Kaiser, and he joined their special train, arriving in London in mid-May. At the Morgan Grenfell office in the City he found that Mr J.P. himself and Mr Davison were not expected from America for three days. Three free days! He leapt on a train for Milan and Dorothy.

  Willard arrived at 6 this morning – there were no pretenses then. After one brief word of greeting he told me why he had come. Standing against the door of our little sitting-room with his hat still in his hand he poured out the yearnings of his heart. I, who had been living for six months in anticipation of this day, suddenly found myself weak and uncertain. Confronted with the reality I drew back in hesitation and doubt.

  That she did not fall into his arms was a shock. Beatrice and Marraine were unfailing chaperones, having breakfast with them and joining them on a drive to Stresa. This was Dorothy’s favourite place of all, and they took the boat onto Lake Maggiore to Isola Bella, where she and Willard sat in the garden, alone but not out of view. Travelling took two of his precious days so he had to leave on the Simplon express at 6.15 p.m., after just twelve hours. From her hotel Dorothy wrote:

  It’s just five hours, Willard, since you went away, and I have been standing on the balcony and thinking of you as you cross the mountains tonight – as you left the clouds began to gather, and a mist crept over the lake, so that when the sunset time arrived we had no sunset, and now instead of a starry sky and moonlight on the waves, there is only an impenetrable darkness above... so in leaving you took light and colour away with you.

  She was glad for their day together in Italy, ‘the land that has always meant so much to each of us in our dreams’.

  This was 22nd May; she had been travelling, buffeted by the winds of the world, for ten months, lost to her family and her beloved home. In her heart she knew that Harry and Gertrude and many of her friends would disapprove of Willard, as perhaps her sister Polly had already done. She continued to Willard:

  And I wondered if you know how much I appreciate the high ideal of truth you showed me yesterday – when you told me all those things about yourself – after you had told me I knew that our relationship was on a higher plane and that you had given me your truth as a part of your love.

  While they were in Milan, and out of Dorothy’s hearing, Beatrice had challenged Willard on the nature of his relationships with Mary Harriman and Katherine Elkins – Mary was marrying the artist Charles Cary Rumsey but there was still gossip about Miss Elkins, an heiress he had supposedly abandoned for a richer heiress – and these were the things about himself that he had confessed, winning Dorothy’s assurance. In Paris he brightened with the ‘Great Hope’ that she would tell him she loved him, and he rediscovered his sense of humour:

  You have asked me to wait. Do you know how hard it is. Do you know that I can’t wait long – and that any moment I am apt to let the spirit of the Moyen age sweep me away – to ride for you and swing you into the saddle before me. I shall be quite terrible then – on a very big horse – and all in tin clothes. Are you not afraid?

  She was afraid, afraid of his vibrant sexuality as well as the rumours of his fortune-hunting. She wanted him to have the success of the Chinese loan agreements, for which the Paris and London papers were already feting him in anticipation. In Paris he talked for hours without a conclusion and he was ordered to New York. Dorothy had reached Paris and they had a short time together before he sailed on the Lusitania – cablegrams and flowers, posies of lily of the valley and a daily single red rose descended on Dorothy. He dashed mercurially from Wall Street to Washington, to Oswego to see his sister and aunt Laura, then back to New York catching the Lusitania like a riverboat on her return trip. He realised, ‘I am not in love but I love and there’s all that difference – it is very wonderful and very terrible – it makes me ache.’

  In Paris Dorothy and the Bends were being sociable with Ambassador Robert Bacon, and the coterie of Edith Wharton and Henry Adams.64 Their host in Peking, Prather Fletcher, now appointed Minister to Chile, stopped over to renew his courting of Beatrice. Willard, fresh off the Lusitania, spent three days with them, before leaving for St Petersburg to tussle with the Russian bankers. Dorothy gave him a gold locket with her portrait; she hung it around his neck, and he thanked her, writing, ‘Without you paradise would be a wilderness – the Great God that rules us – and shapes our lives – has meant this to be. The hand of Providence has led us together – and together we must be.’

  Dorothy reached London, finding it in sober and uncertain mood at the ending of the Edwardian era with the death of the king in May; she was too late for the black and white Ascot in mourning, and everyone she knew had gone to the country. Sister Polly, who loved to rent a different house each summer, was installed at The Deepdene, near Dorking in the Surrey hills, a fantastic Italianate palace in its own garden valley.65 Making her preference clear, Polly had invited Lord Falconer to the house party, but Willard also arrived, commuting from gruelling days in the Morgan Grenfell office, and prickly with frustration. Dorothy, tossed on emotional seas and exhausted from travelling, took to her bed, though she was not excused from sitting for her portrait. Willard was reduced to plying Louisa with notes, ‘Buongiorno princessa mia – before going to pose will you tell Louisa to knock on my door – and see me for a moment in the hall – today you must be kind princessa mia.’ Trysts in the dark panelled corridors, knocking on heavy doors, dodging the hawk-eyed servants, no wonder Willard felt driven to medieval tactics, and he certainly felt that everyone was against him. Polly had summoned Harry, who was in England for his polo anyway, for a family conference, but it is unlikely that he faced Willard. Harry admired him for his work but had heard on good authority that he had declared himself to be deeply in love with Katherine Elkins.

  Dorothy, finding The Deepdene claustrophobic, headed back to Paris, closely followed by Willard. His attentions were becoming tumultuous, but then he knew he was being sent back to America and then directly to Peking. One of his many bouquets of roses came with this note:

  You may shake you may scatter

  Your Boy if you will

  But the scent of his roses

  Will cling round you still!

  He had found his old Cornell professor, Henry Morse Stephens, in London and persuaded him to write his testimonial. ‘Without parents or means he has made himself what he is,’ the professor wrote.

  Without any backing but his own brave heart he set out to play the game and he has played it like a man [with no one to guide him or play influence for him] – he has kept himself clean and wholesome and brave, when many a young man would have gone down; he has steered clear of cynicism and credulity, he has made his way in the world by sheer merit, held his head high and asked no man anything.

  The letter is dated 8th July 1910 and Dorothy kept it.66

  They had six days together at Divonne on Lake Geneva at the invitation of Mrs Wharton, who had just relinquished her romance with Morton Fullerton. Walter Berry was there too; Judge Berry had been at Dorothy’s christening, and he had just returned from working on a tribunal in Cairo in his role as an international lawyer, experience of special interest to Willard, and Dorothy. Willard left for New York on 30th July.

  Poor Dorothy, her feet were itching and cold at the same time; marriage to Willard ‘would be such a complete break with the past, such a plunge into new surroundings and new circumstances, such a separation from people I loved’. However much she wanted to go home she felt she must not weaken. Willard wrote
from New York to Beatrice urging her to persuade Dorothy to come home, and Dorothy lost her usual equanimity:

  You foolish child to have written the way you did to Beatrice. Of course she doesn’t understand what right you have to expect us to change all our plans and go home earlier to see you and I’m afraid she thinks it somewhat fresh of you to ask it. If you and I were engaged, or even if I knew I cared, it would be entirely different. Your nerves must be on edge, poor Boy.

  It was unsaid and unwritten that Dorothy’s closest companion Beatrice Bend was completely opposed to her romance with Willard, and this also unnerved her; there must have been many a long silence as they avoided the subject while staying in France and England through August and September. They all arrived in New York on the Lusitania on 13th October; Willard met them, and he was invited to Old Westbury. He had little time for he was due in Washington prior to his return to Peking, via London, and he was working desperately hard. The American bankers had increased the loan for the Chinchou–Tsitshan–Aigun railroad to $300 million, but he had to get the British, French and Russians over the final hurdles, in the face of opposition from those in Washington who preferred to make loan agreements with the Japanese. Something has to be said for his persistence under pressure, especially to those who thought him too volatile. While Dorothy cheered him on and sympathised with his exhaustion, Willard must have felt it would all have been so much easier had ‘Papa’ Harriman not died – he so wanted to achieve Harriman’s last dream of influencing the Chinese ‘so that we can show them how to do it right & and thus get a real lasting American influence’.67

  After just twelve days on the same continent as Dorothy, Willard sailed for London and headed east. From Moscow he wrote:

  Here tonight I am starting out across Siberia, and you are four thousand miles away – even though you say the Miracle has not yet been granted – there is that bond between us – the bond that makes me wake with thoughts of you – that gives you my last waking thought, and weaves you through my dreams.

  In New York Dorothy did not appear concerned that the gossip columnists seemed affronted that their ‘Number One Marriageable Heiress’ should have abandoned ‘both common sense and tradition in becoming involved with an outsider whose status as an heiress chaser seemed generally accepted’.68 She stayed close to her friends in her Book Class, at Henry Street and Grace Church; she was often with the Roosevelts at Sagamore Hill where Ethel was sympathetic and T.R.’s sister, Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, became her affectionate champion.69

  Harry Whitney had announced that he intended to buy back their father’s palatial 871 Fifth Avenue, which he felt they had mistakenly sold to James ‘Silent’ Smith, who had died. Mr Smith must have been the veritable one careful owner, for it was all settled in a month (for something like $2 million) and Gertrude and Harry were able to move in immediately, on Dorothy’s twenty-fourth birthday, 23rd January 1911. She was pleased that her father’s treasures were safe, but she and Beatrice were actually occupied in moving into their own apartment in the Lorraine Building at Fifth Avenue and East 45th Street. Dorothy’s tactics became startling. Putting on her prettiest hat she called at the Morgan Library to beard the great man in his lair. ‘JPM was lovely to me,’ she reported to Willard, ‘he laughed and said he wished I would go there every single week – dear Mr J.P. he’s such a sweetie underneath the sternness.’70 Wearing a slightly less becoming hat she presented a large donation ($25,000) to the Red Cross, in the person of none other than her Long Island neighbour Harry Pomeroy Davison, who was the Red Cross Representative and the Morgan partner most closely associated with the Chinese loans.71 She talked with Theodore Roosevelt whenever the chance arose because she felt he was Willard’s greatest ally. She also told him about the Henry Street Settlement; he visited the new Music Settlement, and thanked her: ‘They mentioned incidentally what you had done, and your interest in that new working-girls’ home or hotel or boarding house, or whatever it is – I wish you would take Ethel and me to it.’72

  Was it possible that she had made up her mind? That Roosevelt’s high opinion of Willard, that with the Chinese loans to his credit, he would become a prime political asset with a great, perhaps the greatest, future role? Had she pierced the rosy glow of in loveness to see Willard as the husband who would enfold her in his arms, and also the partner who needed her, or at least her fortune, for their great work together?

  Her friend Ethel Roosevelt met a storm of publicity when she felt unable to accept Dr Richard Derby’s proposal of marriage – and Dorothy liked him so much that she urged him to keep trying. ‘He really is a wonder,’ she wrote to Willard, ‘and Ethel simply must marry him – I’m afraid Ethel is terrified by the great wonder of marriage just the way I am – I believe in it so much Willard, that I don’t dare believe in it too much – that’s all. But I do get panics now and then.’ She and Ethel talked into the small hours, and Ethel told Richard Derby that she would not marry him unless Dorothy married Willard! Derby immediately threatened to go to Peking and fetch Willard home. Fortunately Miss Elkins spoke out, exonerating Willard from any dishonourable conduct: there had been no promises and none broken. Dorothy cheered him on:

  I know how dreadfully hard and lonely it must be for you – but I have great faith that you will pull the loan through – and then, oh Willard – won’t that be wonderful! Wouldn’t it be the greatest triumph ever, if you won! Don’t be too positive – especially with men – for it antagonizes them and really, humility is always one of the characteristics of a big person... Oh Willard, don’t be in a hurry to leave the Group for the [State] Department. I’m sure it is far wiser to continue for a while in this way with Mr Davison and Mr J.P.

  Then, suddenly everything came together, and on 15th April the $300 million loan was agreed and ensured. Willard cabled and then wrote:

  O Dorothy child – before this letter reaches you I should be started on my way... the loan was signed today without any further quibbling... and ‘Dollar Diplomacy’ is justified at last. Oh child – if only you had been here to celebrate, but you were – for it was your Victory, and the courage you gave, and my hope for you, Dorothy mine – alone carried me through – and I’ve you to thank for it all.

  She went to church singing glad hymns of praise. But there was also the second, smaller Hukuang railroad loan, and she felt he should stay until that too was completed. He wrote, ‘My – but you are such a greediness oh Dorothy mine! So you want the Hukuang too, do you? As a matter of fact we seem to be in a very fair way to get it – inside a week.’

  It took until 20th May and Willard finally left Peking. He was a physical wreck, full of aches and pains and influenza, and he felt ‘a little more twisting on the strings would have snapped ’em, I know’. Dorothy was pleased and proud, but ‘when I think of you being here with me again I just gasp for joy – and the next moment I just shiver inside and feel just as terrified of you as I used to, last year’.

  Willard’s success made headlines as he travelled westwards, so that by the time he reached New York, on 21st June, he was feted, and many of his critics, most importantly Harry Whitney, were mellowed. Dorothy cautioned, ‘Please be humble with everyone, they all know what you’ve done, and I know best of all.’ At Old Westbury he proposed again, and she accepted, but it was to be a secret. She wanted a quiet wedding, not a circus. Her passage, with the Bends and Louisa, was booked on the Olympic at the end of the week, and so Willard sailed with them. Harry announced their engagement to surprise ‘heard on all sides – the match is one of the most amazing in many years. Straight is a poor man – and Miss Whitney is the last heiress of her set remaining unwed – [she] has had untold chances to marry. For five years she has been the most sought-after and most talked-of girl in New York.’73

  Ethel Roosevelt was among the first to know; she wrote to Willard welcoming their friendship, and to ‘Best Beloved Dorothy – how very happy I am for you both... some-day Dick and I will join you’. She sent on a letter which perhaps
typified the feelings of those who hardly knew Dorothy: ‘I hear Dorothy Whitney is engaged to Strait [sic] – he has got to do some flying to get to her... in my estimation there is nobody as fine, splendid, big and humanly Olympic as she in the whole wide world.’ From Henry Street, Lillian Wald wrote of her genuine pleasure ‘to know that you were as happy in your own right as well as through the happiness of others’, and that hers would be a marriage of true minds as well as of hearts.74

  They had landed from the Olympic and gone their separate ways, Willard to London, and Dorothy and company to Paris to buy her trousseau. Then they were installed at the huge Caux Palace Hotel in Montreux and letters and cablegrams flew backwards and forwards with wedding arrangements. At the end of August, Dorothy told Lillian Wald, ‘Willard and I expect to be married very quietly in Geneva next week – and soon afterwards go out to China, but we are planning to be home by the beginning of January.’ She told Lillian to expect $50,000 sometime in the winter, ‘but please, say nothing, will you?’75

  Their wedding day was 7th September, Willard’s special number. Everyone was to foregather at the Grand Hotel National which sprawled palatially along the Geneva lakeside, though Willard’s bachelor quarters were at the Tennis Parc. Dorothy was nervous, she had been reading through the marriage service, ‘and oh Best Beloved, it is so beautiful that I felt a dreadful lump in my throat at the thought of what it all meant’. Willard feared she would be tired from staying up too late and talking to Beatrice, who – even at this last moment and having come this far – was still opposed to the marriage of her dearest Dorothy. On their wedding morning he wrote, ‘Oh, my Best Beloved – I miss you. I love you everything. I’m looking forward to 3.45!’