“With disdain, my fair visitor would reply, ‘You are easily satisfied, sir/
“And so on, from day to day, these interviews would go on; all were Huguenots, Pilgrims, or Puritans. I would sometimes call one a Pilgrim in place of a Puritan, and by this would uncork the vials of wrath. If they had ever lived south of Mason and Dixon’s line, their ancestor was always a near relative of Washington, or a Fairfax, or of the ‘first families of Virginia.’ Others were more frank, and claimed no ancestry, but simply wished to know ‘how the thing was to be done’“4
McAllister, as social monarch, had become as well known to the public as any member of the exalted Four Hundred. As a transcontinental train carrying a party of New York society leaders steamed through Tennessee, a group of men on horseback waited at a station for the train to pass so that they could observe the passengers.
“I want to know!” said a gaunt mountain horseman. “Wal, I’ve rid fifteen miles a-purpus to see that dude McAllister, and I don’t begrutch it, not a mite.”5
The mountain men of Tennessee might have been fascinated by that dude McAllister, but members of society were growing weary of his pontifications and name-dropping as he courted the press. Reporters pursued him for gossip about the Four Hundred, often waiting on the sidewalk outside his house and club. They were never disappointed. For several years he teased them with scraps of information. Finally in 1892, he thought he would have some fun and consented to give the reporters his famed list. The Four Hundred consisted of an “original inner circle” of 150 who attended Mrs. Astor’s dinners. Another 19 were of the “contingent inner circle,” the next 26 were “star members inner circle fringe,” the next 49 were “plain inner circle fringe” and 156 were “fringe to plain inner circle fringe.”6
From then on, to the horror of the upper crust, McAllister kept refining and explaining his list to reporters: “It has raised an awful rumpus, doncherknow, an awful rumpus, d’you understand? It leads off, don’t you see, with a little boy from Boston—Fred Allen, don’t you understand? It puts him ahead of the Astors, doncherknow. Of course, that’s an alphabetical accident. It’s absurd, don’t you see? The Astors are at the very front of Society. They should come first as a matter of course, doncherknow?
“People running around with the list in their hands—that is, people who are on it, doncherknow—running around, you know, with the list in their hands, I say, saying ‘See here, you know, here I am, the hundred and fortieth or the hundred and forty-fifth, close to the tail end.’ I say to them, ‘You’re very lucky, really, to be on it at all, doncherknow.’ “7 (“The first thing a reader must do with one of Mr. McAllister’s statements is to find out what it means,” joked Town Topics, “since he cannot [speak] intelligible English.”8)
McAllister was committing the unpardonable sin of telling all, an error he compounded when he published his memoirs, Society As I Have Found It, a volume readers found almost humorous in its arrogance, and which caused the Four Hundred to writhe in embarrassment. The structure of society, which had seemed so natural, did indeed appear a bit ridiculous in cold print.
McAllister had grand plans for a Ceremonial Ball in 1889, but the committee in charge of the ball ostracized him. ‘The whole thing in a nutshell,” said Stuyvesant Fish, the president of the Illinois Central Railroad and chairman of the entertainment committee for the ball, “is that McAllister is getting pretty well advanced in years and the committee is not one that can be bossed by any demagogue, big or little, young or old.’
McAllister became perturbed at “that man Fish.’ “I do feel a little stronger on balls than a mere railroad president,” he sniffed.
Twirling his moustache, Mr. Fish had the final word. “Who is Ward McAllister, anyway? McAllister was our major domo, our master of ceremonies, our caterer. As such he was not acceptable to us, and we told him his services were no longer required. McAllister is a discharged servant. That is all.”9
Incensed, McAllister boycotted the ball and stayed in Washington, D.C., until it was over. Upon his return to New York City, he caught hold of reporters. “A young lieutenant, mind you, dancing with Mrs. Astor! I don’t wonder the country laughs! And young Harry Cannon, forsooth! And, mind you, young Creighton Webb! Why as a dance of dignity the thing was a farce! I am glad that I had nothing to do with such a Fishball.”10
The laughter over this pompous social arbiter turned into a roar when in a series of newspaper interviews in 1893 he tried to prepare Chicago for the members of New York society who would be visiting the World’s Columbian Exposition that year.
“I would suggest that Chicago society import a number of fine French chefs. I should also advise that they do not frappé their wine too much. Let them put the bottle in the tub and be careful to keep the neck free from ice. For, the quantity of wine in the neck of the bottle being small, it will be acted upon by the ice first. In twenty-five minutes from the time of being placed in the tub it will be in perfect condition to be served immediately. What I mean by a perfect condition is that when the wine is poured from the bottle it should contain little flakes of ice. That is a real frappé.”
Chicago took offense that this eastern dandy, who obviously believed that west of Central Park began an endless social wilderness extending across the continent, would attempt to educate the city in social etiquette. The Chicago Journal assured McAllister that “the mayor will not frappé his wine too much. He will frappé it just enough so the guests can blow the foam off the tops of the glasses without a vulgar exhibition of lung and lip power. His ham sandwiches, sinkers and Irish quail, better known in the Bridgeport vernacular as pigs’ feet, will be triumphs of the gastronomic art.”
McAllister responded. “I never intended to convey the impression that any New Yorker as a man is necessarily superior to a native of Chicago,” he began, but then could not resist continuing his lessons: “In these modern days, society cannot get along without French chefs. The man who has been accustomed to delicate fillets of beef, terrapin, pâté de foie gras, truffled turkey and things of that sort would not care to sit down to a boiled leg of mutton dinner with turnips.”11
McAllister became the butt of a hundred jokes. “Ward Make-a-Lister” they called him, the “New York Flunky,” “A Mouse Colored Ass.” Life ran a cartoon of a policeman dragging two drunks in formal evening wear into the police station. “What’s that you’ve got, O’Hara?” the police captain asked his officer. “Society as Oi have found it, sorr!”12 Perhaps at last he began to perceive that he had never been the master of society, but rather its head butler.
Ward McAllister died of the grippe on the night of January 31, 1895 at the age of sixty-eight, while all society danced at the great Charity Ball. Mrs. Astor, his “true and loyal friend in sunshine and sorrow”13 as he often commented, who was about to move to her just completed Renaissance palace at Sixty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue, had scheduled her last dinner in her famous old brownstone for the next day. McAllister’s Mystic Rose saw no reason to cancel her dinner just because her chamberlain was lying in state in the parlor of his home several blocks away. After all, wasn’t it McAllister himself who had said that “a dinner invitation, once accepted, is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend the dinner”?14
So the dinner went on, and perhaps Ward McAllister would have approved. And, no doubt, he would have been charmed that the pallbearers at his service at Grace Church included an Astor and a Vanderbilt, for he was the man who had pulled together New York’s old and new money to create a special world of high society. But where were the Four Hundred he had served so long and so well? Where were the Patriarchs? Where were those leaders of society for whom he prepared such wonderful fetes, such evenings of unforgettable food and wine? Only five of the Patriarchs and less than twenty of the Four Hundred came to pay their respects. The church was filled to capacity, but not with nobs or swells, not with the old Knickerbocker aristocracy or the parvenus. Rather, the common pe
ople, having heard so much about “that dude McAllister,” mobbed the church for the dandy’s final social event, grabbing flowers off his coffin as mementos of a famous man. The common folk were there, and the band of musicians he had hired for every social event.
And then the funeral cortege carried him slowly down Fifth Avenue past Mrs. Astor’s old home, past the newer Vanderbilt mansions, past the scenes of high society that had been so dear to his heart. “Doubtless, ‘other side of Styx,’ “a friend wrote, “his spirit has found congenial companions. I see his shade in dignified disputation with other shades. He argues with Brummel about the tying of a cravat, with Nash about a minuet, the proper composition of a sauce is the subject of a weighty dialogue with the great Vatel.”15
The world could change, her prime minister could fall from grace, but Mrs. Astor went on and on, invincible. She needed another Ward McAllister, and it was not long before she found one.
“I begin,” said Harry Lehr, “where Ward McAllister left off. He was the voice crying in the wilderness who prepared the way for me.”16
Harry Lehr had been born in Baltimore in 1869, just before Ward McAllister helped Mrs. Astor emerge as Queen of Society. His father was a prosperous tobacco and snuff importer and served as consul of Portugal and Belgium. In the financial crash of 1886, when Harry was seventeen, his father lost everything and died, leaving the Lehrs penniless, shunned by their old friends. The family went to France, where Harry found a job as a bank clerk.
Harry hated every moment of living in poverty. “I must have beauty, light, music around me,” he wrote in his diary. “I am like Ludwig of Bavaria, I cannot bear the cold greyness of everyday life. It withers my soul. Other clod-like people can stand it if they choose—I cannot!”17
He returned to Baltimore two years later, and quickly realized that to get back in “the social set I had been in in my father’s lifetime, I should have to offer something in place of the money and position we had before.’18 Harry was tall, well built, and handsome, with blond hair and “eyes of vivid blue that seemed to hold the very spirit of gaiety.”19 What he had to offer was his personality, his gift of laughter. “There was something so magnetic in his gaiety that other people instinctively responded to it,” a friend remarked. “All women were happy in his society. He liked them and understood them.”20 Though this charm was spontaneous, he nevertheless was quite aware of its power. “I saw,” he wrote in his diary, “that most human beings are fools, and that the best way to live harmoniously with them and make them like you is to pander to their stupidity. They want to be entertained, to be made to laugh. They will overlook most anything so long as you amuse them. I did not mind cutting capers for them if I could gain what I wanted through it.”21
Harry Lehr’s radiant vitality was nothing short of infectious. His manners were impeccable, he was modest, tactful, accommodating, full of a wealth of stories and jokes, an accomplished pianist who could sit at the keyboard for hours “as he drifted dreamily from Chopin to Liszt, from Liszt to Grieg, to Schubert, to Beethoven, completely absorbed in the music.”22 He livened every party with his nonstop conversation, his wit, and his contagious braying laugh.
This debonair bachelor was invited everywhere, and soon found he could live by his charm alone. “Other men have to sweat in offices. I made up my mind I never would. I had only to be amusing to get a living, much better than working for one.”23
One summer he was invited by Mrs. Evelyn Burden to be a guest at her Newport mansion. It was at a Newport ball that Harry Lehr first met Mrs. Astor.
As usual, Caroline the Magnificent was aglitter in her diamonds. Harry seized a bouquet of red roses from a vase, walked up to her, and handed them to her.
“Here!” he said with his boyish grin. “You look like a walking chandelier! Put them on. You need color!”24
Mrs. Astor stared at him. They were standing in front of a parrot’s cage. Harry looked at Mrs. Astor and put his finger to his lips.
“Don’t interrupt,” he said.25
Mrs. Astor continued to stare in disbelief. And then she laughed. Mrs. Astor, in her sixties, was charmed. Harry Lehr, in his twenties, was born.
For millionaires surrounded by obsequious servants, fawning sycophants, social climbers, and deferential friends, Harry Lehr’s humorous irreverence was as refreshing as a summer breeze off Newport Harbor. Newport’s Morning Telegraph was as captivated as Mrs. Astor:
The seaside Valhalla of swaggerdom is dull—dull as a Presidential message, or a Punch joke. But what cares Newport? It can console itself with its new bona fide sensation—’Harry’ Lehr’s laugh. Haven’t you heard ‘Harry’ Lehr’s laugh? That shows that you have not been within a hundred miles of Newport this season. Everybody within rifle range of Newport has ‘Harry’s’ laugh down by heart. Not that it is stentorian, clangorous or of the ten-ton gun variety. Not at all. But its vibrations, once started, have an initial velocity of a mile a second, and by the end of the third peal, the very earth is undulating in unison, the church steeples begin to wag in perfect time, and the jaded souls of Newport’s ‘h’inner suckles’ seem acted upon by some new and potent stimulant. As Newport’s court jester, ‘Harry’ is a wonder. He simply laughed himself into the bosom of the ultra exclusives. He has held up the town with his irresistible chuckle, and robbed it of invitations to dinners, musicales, yacht cruises, barn dances, and heavens knows what not, at his piratical pleasure.26
At lavish multicourse dinner parties, Harry would send the servants into a tizzy by requesting a hard-boiled egg and glass of milk. “I always love to do it at a party of this sort,” he chuckled. “Champagne may flow like water, but you will see the whole staff won’t be able to produce one glass of milk.”27
Harry Lehr could get away with anything. When Alva Vanderbilt, another of his admirers, waded into the surf at Newport’s Bailey’s Beach, outfitted in a bathing dress, black silk stockings, and a large hat, bobbing up and down over the waves while carrying a green umbrella to preserve her complexion, Harry Lehr and her son Willie K. approached her from behind.
“You engage her in conversation, Willie,” Harry instructed, “while I close the umbrella under the water.”28
The maneuver was successfully executed, with Alva chasing both across the beach with the remains of her umbrella.
“Samson’s strength lay in his hair,” Harry Lehr once said. “Mine lies in the favour of women. All I have to do is keep in their good graces and everything comes to me.”29
Mrs. Astor took him under her wing. During opera season, she reserved a seat for him in her box. He helped plan her balls, line up caterers and musicians, choose her party favors. He escorted her everywhere.
He encouraged her to add a touch of “Bohemianism” to her parties.
“I am having one of those new parties, too,” she proudly told a friend.
What guests made up the Bohemian element? her friend inquired.
“Why, Edith Wharton and J. P. Morgan.”30
One Sunday evening in 1895, Harry Lehr even persuaded her to do the unthinkable: to accompany him to Louis Sherry’s new restaurant on Fifth Avenue, the first time in her life that sixty-four-year-old Mrs. Astor ever had dined in public. As she swept into the restaurant on Harry’s arm, she created a sensation. “I could hardly believe my eyes,” one reporter exclaimed. “I never dreamed it should be given to me to gaze on the face of an Astor in a public dining room.”31 “Harry Lehr and his legs and his piano playing and his singing and his witticisms and all the rest of it,” another reporter commented, “have completely fascinated Mrs. Astor. To see that august lady…in a coquettish raiment of white satin, with the tiniest hair dress, at Sherry’s on Sunday last, dos-à-dos almost with Lillian Russell, I could hardly believe my eyes. And she seemed to enjoy it, and nodded her head to the rag-time tunes, and took the most gracious interest in everything.’32 “But what are we coming to? Mrs. Astor at Sherry’s table d’hôte, breathing the same air as that of the ‘middle classes’! But Ha
rry Lehr, dear child, is irresistible.”33
Harry Lehr even lived for a year in Mrs. Astor’s mansion, until her granddaughter started the rumor that the wedding of Mrs. Astor and the young Harry Lehr, thirty-nine years her junior, would soon be announced.
It was after he left the Astor mansion in the spring of 1901 that he began courting Elizabeth Drexel Dehlgren, “Bessie,” the recently widowed heiress of the Philadelphia Drexel banking fortune.34
“I have invited four of my best friends to meet you,” Harry Lehr told Bessie one day after seeing her for several weeks. There at lunch, much to her surprise, were Mrs. Astor; Alva Vanderbilt; Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, the wife of the president of the Illinois Central; and Mrs. Hermann Oelrichs, the daughter of the miner who had struck the Comstock Lode. These four ladies were the leaders of high society. Together, the four had become known as Newport’s Social Strategy Board.
“I think she is delightful, Harry,” Mrs. Oelrichs whispered to him after lunch. “We four are going to take her up. We will make her the fashion. You need have no fear….”35
That afternoon, Harry Lehr proposed to Bessie, who quickly accepted. “He said he was not ‘animal’ or ‘emotional,’ “she confided to her diary; “(neither am I, but I thought all men were). He is the one glorious exception, the one pure and Godly man…. That he is honourable and high-minded I know—I am also sure that I truly admire him. I do not believe in what novelists are pleased to call ‘romantic love’; it is low and bestial and not worthy of men and women, who are made in God’s image. True love which lasts to the end and which strengthens with years is founded on respect, not on passion….”36
Bessie was soon “hurt and disappointed” to discover that Harry was “infinitely more interested in the precise details of the fortune my father had left me than in anything else.”37
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