Angel Dorothy
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Acknowledgements
The genesis of Angel Dorothy has been long, too long, and it is with deep regret as well as gratitude that I look back to the generous encouragement given to me many years ago by Lord Young and Dorothy’s son, Michael Straight. My debt to her youngest son William Elmhirst is acknowledged in the introduction (and dedication) and the names of Maurice Ash (her son-in-law), James Cornford, Peter Cox and Charlotte Johnson must be added to those for whom my book and gratitude come too late. Charlotte wrote a brilliant study of Percy Cane’s work for her Garden Conservation diploma at the Architectural Association and she was to edit Dorothy’s garden diaries, but was not given time.
For original permissions to use the Dartington archives I would also like to thank Kate Caddy (Dorothy’s grand-daughter Kathryn Ash) and Paul B. Elmhirst (both Trustees), Mary Bride Nicholson (for the Elmgrant Trust), Ivor Stolliday, Katy Hockings, Angie St John Palmer, Maggie Giraud, Heather McIntyre and Lucy Bartlett, most of whom I saw when the archives were kept at High Cross House. My visits to Mary Bartlett were always enlightening and delightful. Latterly my thanks go to the kind and efficient staff of the Devon Record Office at Sowton, Exeter, and the detailed catalogue references for their holdings are given in my Notes. Also at Dartington, my thanks go to the former CEO Vaughan Lindsay, as well as to the former financial advisor Christopher Zealley.
My first visits to the Rare and Manuscript Collections in the Carl A. Kroch Library at Cornell University were before the days of online catalogues and so the published guides to Dorothy’s papers (Coll. No. 3725) and Willard Straight’s (Coll. No. 1260) by Ingeborg Wald and Patricia H. Gaffney respectively have proved invaluable. My thanks go especially to Heather Furnas at Cornell for updating my research. These sources are also given in detail in my Notes. Paper collections such as Dorothy’s and Willard’s become ever more precious, and it is a sobering thought that soon there will be no additions of this kind. Collection No. 3725 conveys both sides of a complete and candid love story, a romance conducted around the world as it existed before 1919 and the Treaty of Versailles; Collection No. 1260 holds Willard’s descriptions, drawings and photographs of the last years of Imperial China; both bestow the gift of time-travelling beyond imaginary realms and both collections are of inestimable value.
I acknowledge the published sources for my quotations and for illustrations, all I hope carefully noted in the preceding pages. Vera Brice and Leslie Robinson have once again blessed a book of mine with maps and plans, though we are sad that this time it is too late for ‘Rob’ to see the result. Rex Nicholls drew the galleon and white hart images. Yvonne Widger’s patience has made it possible to use the illustrations credited to Dartington, and I am grateful for her long experience of that archive.
My thanks as ever to Caradoc King and to Mildred Yuan and Millie Hoskins; to my tolerant friends, most especially Patricia Reed for her art historian’s wisdom and her sustaining hospitality in Devon, and to Ursula Buchan for her critical reading of an earlier version of Angel Dorothy and for our neighbourly writer-to-writer conversations. I am delighted to have been ‘adopted’ by Unbound and applaud the founders Dan, Justin and John for reasserting the importance of readers and writers to publishers, and for their beautiful books. Mathew Clayton and DeAndra Lupu have created Angel Dorothy as she is launched out into what DeAndra calls ‘her universe’; blessings on them, Tamsin Shelton, Mark Ecob, Lauren Fulbright and everyone at Waterside, and to all the readers and supporters who sail with her.
List of images
William Collins Whitney [Online, originally DWS Coll. 3725, Series II, Cornell]
Flora Payne Whitney [DWS Coll. 3725, Series II, Cornell]
Pauline and Payne Whitney [Private collection]
Dorothy’s debut portrait [Private collection]
Harry and Gertrude Whitney [Private collection]
Dorothy’s house at Old Westbury [Private collection]
Willard Straight c.1910 [DWS Coll. 3725, Series II, Cornell]
Dorothy and Willard on honeymoon [DWS Coll. 3725, Box 9, Cornell]
Old Westbury from the air showing Chinese garden [Private collection]
Willard, Dorothy and baby Whitney [Swanberg/Dartington Hall Trust]
Willard and the family, ‘soldiers three’ [DWS Coll. 3725, Series II, Cornell]
Dorothy and Leo
nard at Dartington, 1925 [Dartington Hall Trust]
Willard Straight Hall [L.K. Elmhirst, 1925, Dartington Hall Trust]
Dorothy’s five children [Dartington Hall Trust]
The Dartington Hall estate, 1930s [Vera Brice]
Dartington Hall and gardens, 1930s [Vera Brice]
Dorothy photographed by Cecil Beaton [Private collection]
‘Windblown’ Dorothy at Whitney’s wedding [Private collection]
Michael Chekhov at Dartington [Dartington Hall Trust]
Louise Croly and Dorothy,, Naushon, 1937 [Private collection]
William, Leonard and Ruth, Naushon, 1937 [Private collection]
William, Dorcas Edwards and Eloise Elmhirst [Private collection]
Dorothy and William, Chappaquiddick [Private collection]
Leonard and Dorothy’s first tour, autumn 1941 [Vera Brice]
Their second tour, winter 1941–42 [Vera Brice]
Dorothy the gardener [Private collection]
The gardens at Dartington, 1960s [Vera Brice]
Leonard speaking [Private collection]
Founders’ Day 1967 [Dartington Hall Trust]
Images of the Galleon and the White Hart throughout [Vera Brice, drawn by Rex Nicholls]
Endnotes
1 De Tocqueville, ‘How Aristocracy Could Issue from Industry’, p. 531.
2 The Newport News Shipbuilding Hull no. 1, the tugboat Dorothy, was launched in 1891 and restored and returned to Newport News in 1976.
3 Gwynn ed., vol. 1, 22nd April 1887. For Dorothy’s godmother Frances Cleveland, see Nevins pp. 304–11, Boller Chapter 21.
4 De Tocqueville, ‘How the Girl is Found beneath the Features of the Wife’, p. 565.
5 Flora Payne Whitney born 25th January 1842, William Collins Whitney born 5th July 1841. For their courtship and marriage see Hirsch pp. 36 ff., Hoyt pp. 124 ff, Swanberg, Chapter 2.
6 Dorothy’s siblings: Leonora Payne Whitney born and died 1870; Henry (Harry) Payne Whitney born 28th April 1872; Pauline Payne Whitney born 21st March 1874; (William) Payne Whitney born 21st March 1876; Olive Payne Whitney born 22nd January 1878, died 1883.
7 Dorothy’s memoir Inagua South, dated 2nd February 1959 (DWE) and Mary Bride Nicholson’s typescript of the hand-written original (DWE), is the main evidence for ‘the somewhat hidden story’ of her early life.
8 Swanberg p. 50. See also Mark Hirsch, ‘A Gallant Lady’, New York History April 1946; Hirsch wrote a manuscript of over 100,000 words on Flora’s life, DWS 3725 Series II, Box 5, folder 8, unpublished.
9 Dorothy’s own memories from Inagua South 1959 (DWE).
10 Almeric Hugh Paget born 14th March 1861, 6th son of General Lord Alfred Paget, died 1886, and his wife Cecilia Wyndham. For Harry and Gertrude’s wedding in Newport, see Friedman pp. 144–7.
11 Her father’s passion for horse racing was lost on Dorothy, though it passed to Harry Whitney and Pauline’s daughter Miss Dorothy Paget. Volodyvoski won the 1901 Derby.
12 Mrs George Keppel (1868–1947), Edward VII’s discreet and kind mistress, escaped to New York when she thought it tactful.
13 Addie Randolph’s coming-out, Swanberg pp. 195–7.
14 Flora Payne wrote ‘Summering Amongst the Catskills’ signed ‘Clevelander’, published in the Cleveland Daily Herald, 15th September 1870.
15 Washington Irving’s Sketch Book (1819), which included ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’, gave Americans their own folk tales, hence Nathaniel Hawthorne’s image of the steam locomotive violating the Catskill mountain country became the metaphor for the industrialisation of America. See Marx, 1964.
16 October Mountain is now an 11,000-acre State Forest; at Aiken in South Carolina, Whitney Park, including the much enlarged Joye Cottage on Whiskey Road and Easey Street where Dorothy stayed, has extensive recreational facilities.
17 Friedman p. 270 on the interior of 871 Fifth Avenue, where Gertrude Whitney lived until her death in 1942, when most of the contents were sold and the house was subsequently demolished. For Harriman’s appendicitis and survival, see Klein, pp. 294–7. Dorothy could never write of her father’s death, which is sensitively covered in Swanberg pp. 215–21; Gwynn ed., p. 598, notes the funeral in the (Episcopal) Grace Church, on 6th February 1904, with a ‘great congregation’ and a wreath of lilies placed on his empty pew. Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx is now a National Historic Landmark and the Whitney graves are prominent.
18 WCW’s legacy to Dorothy, Swanberg pp. 221, 227.
19 Beatrice Bend was the daughter of George Bend, late president of the New York Stock Exchange, whose widow Marraine became their regular travelling companion and Dorothy’s adoptive ‘mother’.
20 An audit of Whitney’s once-reviled developments can now include the elevated railway that is Manhattan’s High Line Park.
21 Swanberg p. 226 on her approach, ‘I like you and hope you will like me’.
22 ‘Greek mythology’ from a letter, Leonard Elmhirst to Joseph P. Lash, 18th October 1968, Papers of Joseph P. Lash, Box 44 Library, Hyde Park, NY, kindly found for me by David Michaelis researching his biography of Eleanor Roosevelt, email 28th September 2011. Dorothy’s school work notebooks DWS 3725 Series II, Box 5, folders 1–7. ‘Books I have read’ notebook came to England, DWE/G/S7/F.
23 For her jottings on this first trip to Europe, Line-A-Day diary, DWE/G/S7/A/001.
24 For Gertrude Whitney’s dilemma see Friedman, ‘Wedlock’, pp. 213–14, also Biddle, 1999.
25 Robert Bacon (1860–1919), Assistant Secretary of State 1905, Ambassador to France 1909–12, during WW1. Robert Law Bacon his son (1884–1938), Harvard 1907, US Treasury 1910–11, then Kissel, Kinnicutt & Company, married Virginia Murray 1913, Republican Congressman 1923–38. Elihu Root (1845–1937), Secretary of State 1905–9, Senator for New York, Nobel Peace Prize 1912; his mother was Nancy Whitney Buttrick.
26 Florence Jaffray Hurst ‘Daisy’ Harriman (1870–1967), vivacious favourite in political circles, married to J. Borden Harriman. She was an active suffragist and Democrat interested in social welfare, Minister to Norway in 1937 and awarded the Citation of Merit by President Kennedy in 1963.
27 Roosevelt’s First United States Volunteer Cavalry were called Rough Riders; they were a mix of cowboys and college men of legendary exploits, if only for four months in 1898 in the Cuban Campaign.
28 Roslyn etc., see Weidman and Martin eds., 1981.
29 Her style was the now familiar Colonial Revival, which ‘continues to influence interiors across the US and has become known as the quintessential American aesthetic’, Victoria Maw reporting on an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York, Financial Times, 18/19th February 2012.
30 Klein p. 290.
31 Unlike the Whitneys and their many homes, Harriman had only Arden, his much-loved country place, the former Greenwood Iron Works estate in the Ramapo Highlands, about forty miles north of Jersey City, see Klein pp. 68–9.
32 Mary Harriman (1881–1934), ‘Harriman expected no less of his daughters than of his sons’, Klein p. 299. Mary was well educated, finishing at Barnard College, and well travelled as her father’s companion; she is the acknowledged founder of the Junior League for the Promotion of Settlement Movements across North America and internationally.
33 Ruth Morgan (1870–1934) became Dorothy’s most valued counsellor and friend; sometime president of the Colony Club, a leader in civil rights and social welfare activism, a commissioner for the Red Cross in WW1 and on the National Committee on the Causes and Cure of War; see DWE/G/8A for surviving correspondence. Dorothy’s daughter Ruth Elmhirst born in 1926 was named after her.
34 Swanberg p. 250.
35 Lillian D. Wald (1867–1940), a native of Cincinnati, had come to train as a nurse at New York City Hospital and, finding so many immigrants living in terrible conditions, opened a house for nurses to work in the community, which evolved into the Henry Street Settlement, which still exists as a lively welfare centre; correspondence survives from 190
9, DWS 3725, Box 2, folder 48.
36 Lillian Wald to Dorothy, 16th June 1909.
37 Henry James, The Ambassadors, 1903 codifies Dorothy’s society and its pitfalls, for which Paris offered both escape and retribution; her Book Class was devastatingly lampooned by Louis Auchincloss, The Book Class, 1984, which was set in 1908.
38 Swanberg pp. 244–5 has the full text, undated, but 1907.
39 Grosvenor Atterbury had by now expressed his interest in social housing, hospitals etc., which interested Dorothy; she would have found it impossible to acquire architectural training (even if she could draw) and marriage was not the solution. See my Beatrix, 1995, for Farrand’s training, and Ellen Perry Berkeley ed., Architecture, A Place for Women, 1989, for other pioneers.
40 These ‘horrid feelings’ which she does not explain would seem to come from meeting too many ‘clothes-horse’ and ‘trophy’ wives in Russia; at home she had carved out a useful life because of her desire to work and help the needful, but now her comedy of manners lifestyle threatened to overwhelm her again.
41 Her text trails off after this; Swanberg p. 245 suggests she meant Sheldon Whitehouse or Bob Bacon, but related events taken from other sources – Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Klein etc. – confirm she is thinking of Willard Straight whom she believes is ‘spoken for’.
42 On her return to America Dorothy found a press cutting that she kept (and somehow it arrived into her Dartington papers) about Harriman’s fury at Mary’s ‘engagement’, also Klein pp. 300–1. Mary was to marry Charles Cary Rumsey in 1910.
43 Toynbee Hall in Commercial Street, Aldgate, was founded in 1884 as the pioneering University Settlement House where Oxbridge undergraduates lived and served the people of London’s East End.
44 Jane Addams (1860–1935) explained her philosophy and experiences in Twenty Years at Hull-House, 1910; Chapter 12 ‘Tolstoyism’ tells of her visit to Tolstoy. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 and the website Nobelprize.org has a contemporary biography and bibliography.
45 Addams, Chapter 6 ‘Subjective necessary for Social Settlements’.
46 John Dewey (1859–1952) and his book The School and Society were to be the sources of Dorothy’s beliefs about education for her own children and for her later syllabus for the school at Dartington; see Cochran ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dewey, p. 27, and Noddings, ‘Dewey’s philosophy of education’, pp. 265–87.