“King Lehr” and the Gilded Age

By Elizabeth Drexel Lehr

HARRY SYMES LEHR was born in 1869 into a family that was neither wealthy nor socially prominent. His natural gift for entertaining and his penchant for hobnobbing with the very rich earned him entry to the powerful circle of the New York and Newport social elite, where Harry clowned his way to a position of prominence. One of his admirers and patrons, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, introduced him to a young widow, Elizabeth Wharton Drexel. Elizabeth was smitten with young Harry, his elegant dress, and outrageous behavior. They were soon married.

But King Lehr had a secret—he was not what he seemed. On their wedding night he cruelly dictated the rules of their strange relationship to his new bride. For twenty-three years, Mrs. Lehr protected his secret and remained in a loveless and abusive marriage.

After Harry’s death Elizabeth remarried, to the Baron Decies. Lady Decies wrote down her secret story in 1938, incorporating Harry’s most intimate diaries, and told all in this scandalous tale of power, desire, and deception.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Papamoa Press
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789121254

Elizabeth Drexel Lehr

Elizabeth Wharton "Bessie" Drexel Lehr (April 22, 1868 - June 13, 1944) was a Manhattan socialite. She was also the author of two books: "King Lehr" and the Gilded Age (1935), which told the story of her unhappy 28-year marriage to American socialite Harry Lehr; and Turn of the World (1937), a semi-autobiographical history of American high society during the Gay Nineties up through the first World War. Elizabeth was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Lucy Wharton (1841-1912) and Joseph William Drexel, who was the son of Francis Martin Drexel, the immigrant ancestor of the Drexel banking family in the United States. Elizabeth’s first marriage was to John Vinton Dahlgren I (1869-1899), a graduate from Georgetown University and the son of Admiral John Adolph Dahlgren (1809-1870). During this marriage, she made generous donations to Roman Catholic charities and to Georgetown University, including funds for the construction of Dahlgren Chapel Following Dahlgren’s death, she married Henry Symes Lehr (1869-1929), aka Harry Lehr, in 1901. The Lehrs moved to Paris in 1915, where Elizabeth worked for the Red Cross, and remained there after World War I. In 1923 they purchased the Hôtel de Canvoie at 52, rue des Saints-Pères in the 7th arrondissement. Harry Lehr died in 1929. In 1936, Elizabeth married John Beresford, 5th Baron Decies (1866-1944), a widower who had previously been married to Helen Vivien Gould (1893-1931). Elizabeth died in the same year as her third husband at the Hotel Shelton and was buried in the Dahlgren Chapel at Georgetown University, which she and her first husband had built as a memorial to their son, Joseph Drexel Dahlgren, who died in infancy.

Book preview

This edition is published by Papamoa Press – www.pp-publishing.com

To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – [e-mail]

Or on Facebook

Text originally published in 1935 under the same title.

© Papamoa Press 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

KING LEHR AND THE GILDED AGE

by

ELIZABETH DREXEL LEHR

WITH EXTRACTS FROM THE LOCKED DIARY OF HARRY LEHR

WITH 32 ILLUSTRATIONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

CHAPTER I—HARRY LEHR AND I 6

CHAPTER II—MYSELF 8

CHAPTER III—HARRY 18

CHAPTER IV—"TOUT COMPRENDRE, C’EST TOUT PARDONNER" 28

CHAPTER V—AFTER MY MARRIAGE 35

CHAPTER VI—A QUEEN AND HER JESTER 42

CHAPTER VII—"THE UNKNOWN QUANTITY" 48

CHAPTER VIII—BACK IN NEW YORK 53

CHAPTER IX—NEWPORT NEWS AND VIEWS 60

CHAPTER X—"KING LEHR" 75

CHAPTER XI—BAILEY’S BEACH 79

CHAPTER XII—THE FAVOUR OF WOMEN 90

CHAPTER XIII—HOUSE PARTIES 94

CHAPTER XIV—YEARS OF TRAVEL 107

CHAPTER XV—REVOLUTION AT SHERRY’S 118

CHAPTER XVI—THE KAISER AT HIS COURT 122

CHAPTER XVII—"THE STATUE AND THE BUST" 130

CHAPTER XVIII—LIVING IN FRANCE 138

CHAPTER XIX—THE WAR 150

CHAPTER XX—LIFE GOES ON 158

CHAPTER XXI—BEGINNING OF THE END 163

CHAPTER XXII—RUE DES SAINTS PÈRES 166

EXTRACTS FROM HARRY LEHR’S LOCKED DIARY, 1916 175

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 184

DEDICATION

TO MY MOTHER

LUCY WHARTON DREXEL

FOR WHOSE SAKE

I ENDURED

MANY THINGS

CHAPTER I—HARRY LEHR AND I

HARRY LEHR DIED IN BALTIMORE ON JANUARY 3RD, 1929, and the news of his death flashed over two continents. I was in Paris, whither I had rushed back from a visit to Colonel and Mrs. Jacques Balsan at their Riviera villa. My maid greeted me with a sheaf of newspapers. One glance at her face told me the truth.

I sat down slowly on my bed...no need to hurry now...and began to read them. The headlines flared up at me...Harry Lehr, America’s Former Social Leader, Dies...The Beau Brummell of Twenty Years Ago...Once the Four Hundred’s Playboy...Death Takes Society’s Jester.... Long columns were filled with the exploits of the man whose claim to fame had been that he had found out the way to make a jaded world laugh; his freak parties were recounted at length, his bons mots quoted, his social triumphs commented upon, his many eccentricities remembered.

Reading them I looked back into the past, visualizing those twenty-eight years of our life together, years that had brought him success and laughter and approbation, years when he had been acclaimed as the King Lehr whose wit had enlivened the drawing-rooms of New York and Newport. For me those same years had held sorrow and disillusion. I had known loneliness in the midst of crowds, had learnt to endure agonies of humiliation in secret.

And now it was all over. The tragic farce of our marriage had ended.

For days I shut myself up in my home in the Rue des Saints Pères, while reporters clamoured at my door in vain.

My lawyer called to see me. He hesitated in explaining his business. Harry Lehr had left a will, bequeathing $200,000, all the money he possessed in the world, to his brothers and sisters. It was just what I had anticipated. I had never thought to inherit money from him, or wanted to. But there was a strange codicil attached:

I bequeath to my wife, Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, my houses, lands, silver plate, tapestries, pictures, carriages, yachts, motor cars, in all parts of the world, excepting in the United States of America and in France, absolutely and for ever.

I took the document and stared at it incredulously. Houses, lands, yachts? Harry had never owned any at any time during our married life! How could he leave me what did not exist? Surely such a codicil must have been made during his illness when he was not responsible for his actions? No. It was dated some years before. Then my lawyer enlightened me.

I am afraid you will have trouble, unless you take instant precautions, Mrs. Lehr. Your husband has made you residuary legatee, which means that you would be liable for all taxes, all claims which may be made on his estate, and for the payment of any debts incurred by him. You will have to renounce this bequest legally even though it only exists on paper.

So I had to make a solemn, formal declaration that I refused to accept my imposing fictitious inheritance, that I would never lay claim to it.

The few friends of Harry Lehr who heard of the wording of the codicil laughed at what they called his final and best joke. So like him to get the last ounce of fun out of life, to waste the time of pompous lawyers drawing up codicils to bequeath imaginary possessions. But their laughter was tinged with affectionate regret for the man who had been able to jest while death knocked at the door. Not one of them guessed the real meaning of the codicil. That remained for me. It had always been thus in my life with Harry Lehr; always the jest for the world and the bitterness for me.

So now after many years let me write the truth of our story, in order that those who knew us both may perhaps understand for the first time. Many wounds have been healed for me, and at last I can look back on the past seeing it in its true perspective. I want to be fair to Harry Lehr, to write of him as he really was; not only as The Funmaker as he liked to call himself, America’s Court Jester; nor yet as the man who embittered the best years of my life. As Stevenson wrote: There is so much bad in the best of us, and so much good in the worst of us...

CHAPTER II—MYSELF

MOST FITTING TO BEGIN OUR STORY WITH THE SIMPLE statement that I was born Elizabeth Drexel, for it is almost superfluous to add that had I not been thus born I should never have been married to Harry Lehr. My grandfather Francis Martin Drexel founded the Drexel family in America. From the little Tyrolese town of Dornbirn on the shores of Lake Constance he arrived in Philadelphia in 1817, a young artist with a stock of paints and brushes as his principal capital, and remained to become first one of the most fashionable portrait painters in America, and secondly the founder of a banking house.

My father, named Joseph William, was his youngest son. I was scarcely out of my childhood when he died. A big, bearded man with fine dark eyes, sensitive, beautifully shaped hands, and a low musical voice rather at variance with his habitual sternness and the iron discipline that ruled our household. He was perpetually tired. Every hour of his day was given over to work, even at home he was constantly harassed by messages from his secretaries. When he came back from the office at night he was more exhausted than a field labourer; I have often known him to fall suddenly asleep even at the dinner table in the middle of a conversation that was obviously interesting him, although when he made an effort he could be a delightful companion and talk well on nearly every subject.

My mother was younger than my father, small and golden-haired, with a little heart-shaped face that was nearly always smiling and big china-blue eyes that reminded me of those of my beloved Paris doll. Before her marriage she had been Miss Lucy Wharton and she was immensely proud of her descent from the Duke of Wharton.

The winters we spent in New York in a big house at 103 Madison Avenue, only a few blocks from J. Pierpont Morgan’s house, and since they were so closely allied in business the two families saw a great deal of one another.

Jackie, as everyone called him, ruled his entire household like the autocrat he was, and I do not think that anyone in the family would have dreamt of disobeying him, unless indeed it was his youngest daughter, little Anne Morgan. A thin, lanky child with an elfin face and penetrating eyes, she had a personality and a will as strong as his own and a disconcerting habit of putting her elders in the wrong. On one occasion when Mrs. Morgan was giving a dinner party, Anne was brought into the dining-room after dessert, and with her usual self-possession started to amuse those sitting near her. After she had announced her intention of never marrying and of making a career of her own instead, her father asked her what she intended to be when she grew up. Something better than a rich fool, anyway, she replied with infinite contempt, and the scornful child’s voice rang through the room, making more than one millionaire look uncomfortable.

* * * * *

The New York of my childhood was a city of changes. Fifth Avenue which bounded my small world was the first to reflect them all. While I grew up I watched it pass from the era of modest, discreet-looking brick and brownstone houses, each with its high stoop striving to look as much like its neighbour as possible, to the splendours of the great, gaudy palaces which proudly reared their Italian, Gothic or Oriental structures to house the new millionaires. In my school-days when Twenty-third Street was the fashionable shopping centre, when a cock horse waited patiently at the corner of Thirty-fourth Street to help the bus horses up Murray Hill, and the colossal right hand of the Statue of Liberty, installed in Madison Square pending the arrival of the statue itself from France, was considered one of the sights of the city, you could have counted the great homes of New York on your fingers. A. T. Stewart’s white marble house at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street was one of the pioneers—visitors from the provinces used to stand before it in open-mouthed admiration. They were as interested in the Astor houses at the corners of Thirty-third and Thirty-fourth Streets, twin structures of red brick joined by a garden, though here their curiosity was defeated by the high red wall which safeguarded the privacy of the most exclusive family in New York. Jay Gould had a fine house at the corner of Forty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue, and Pierpont Morgan another on Madison Avenue, but they still conformed to the solid brownstone tradition and indulged in no flights of fancy.

Then almost imperceptibly there came a change. The new architecture adapted itself, like everything, to meet new standards, the standards of a society in the melting pot, an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of dazzling wealth, restless endeavour, ambition and rivalry. The Gilded Age had dawned. It merited its name. There was gold everywhere. It adorned the houses of men who had become millionaires overnight, and who were trying to forget with all possible speed the days when they had been poor and unknown. It glittered on their dining-tables when they sat down to unfamiliar awe-inspiring banquets of rare dishes whose high-sounding names conveyed nothing to them; it enriched the doors of their carriages in which their wives and daughters drove round Central Park behind the high-stepping thoroughbreds imported from England. Gold was the most desirable thing to have because it cost money, and money was the outward and visible sign of success. They cultivated the Midas touch to such good purpose that truth to tell they were often bewildered by their own magnificence.

They sent their experts to Europe to seek out the art treasures of France and Italy, gave them carte blanche to buy regardless of cost. Mediæval châteaux of the Touraine yielded up their tapestries and carvings, whole wainscotings, panel by panel; ancient Florentine palaces bade farewell to their frescoes. Suits of armour that had gathered the dust of centuries in grim old Scottish castles were ruthlessly packed and shipped across the Atlantic to lend realism to the newly-built feudal home of some baron of trade.

Plain, sensible houses were out of favour now, everyone wanted to outshine the rest in architectural originality, and they all looked to the past for inspiration. The Astors transferred themselves to other and more splendid twin houses, built in the François I style, connected this time by a magnificent ballroom instead of a garden. Harry O. Havemeyer acquired an imposing feudal castle of granite bristling with culverin towers. Cornelius Vanderbilt built a sumptuous palace of red brick and white marble at the corner of Fifty-seventh Street, which was only eclipsed in splendour by the supposedly Venetian Palace designed to the order of his sister-in-law, Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt. Opposite the Park a bewildering row of mansions sprung up like toadstools.

On Saturday afternoons we went to the Opera. My father, who was passionately fond of music and was President of the Philharmonic Society, was one of the directors of the Metropolitan Opera House, and all through the season we had a box. My mother, who was not musical, had little interest in the performance, especially if the opera happened to be one of Wagner’s, whose music she detested. She regarded the Opera purely as a social function and never failed to occupy her box on Monday evenings, like everyone else with any claim to being fashionable. On these nights the house would be crowded, every box in the Diamond Horseshoe would present the spectacle of two women superbly gowned and be jewelled sitting in the front row, while four men grouped themselves behind. In the entr’actes the velvet curtains at the back of the box were drawn aside and they would all retire to the salons behind, which were decorated according to the individual taste of their owners, draped in costly brocades or massed with flowers. Lily Hamersley, who afterwards became Duchess of Marlborough, used to have the entire walls and ceiling of hers concealed by festoons of orchids.

In those days it was considered fashionable to be unable to understand Wagner and to despise him accordingly. He was described as vulgar and immoral. I remember my uncle, Anthony Drexel, once holding forth on the subject at a dinner party at his house....His loud voice boomed through the room....There’s going to be a concert next week and I want no child of mine to go to it. Some fool whose name is Dam...Dam...some kind of bug or other...Roach, that’s what it is, Walter Damroach, and he’s going to play the music of that miserable Wagner! None of you go to it, you understand.

* * * * *

Every summer we, in company with the whole fashionable world of New York, used to flock to Saratoga Springs, to fill the two ornate hotels, The United States and The Grand Union (the latter owned by A. T. Stewart, already famed as the pioneer of the department store). There were of course other hotels, but socially speaking they did not exist. They might even expose their guests to the dreadful indignity of meeting the chosen race of Israel, a catastrophe against which both The United States and The Grand Union took care to insure themselves by placing conspicuous placards at all entrances bearing the stern warning...No Jews or Dogs Admitted Here.

How well I remember the mornings on the sun-bathed piazza of The United States Hotel watching the fashion parade. The women in their latest dresses imported from Paris, skin-tight bodices, skirts of yards and yards of shining silk looped over enormous bustles that swayed as they walked slowly up and down, their waists squeezed into twenty-inch stays, their feet encased in boots at least a size too small for them, their hands buttoned into hot kid gloves. Their lace parasols, opened to shelter their complexions from the sun, were like a forest of gaily coloured trees.

* * * * *

In contrast to the artificial atmosphere of Saratoga Springs was our daily life, which was very simple. Over our home loomed the shadow of Queen Victoria of England, who was my mother’s ideal of wifehood. Every English newspaper and magazine which informed its readers of life at Windsor or Balmoral was sure to be found in our drawing-room. We did our best to model ourselves upon it.

The Queen of England did not countenance divorce; neither would Mother. In the midst of a fast-changing New York social world, where already the old standards enjoined by a Puritan ancestry were slipping farther and farther into the past, she remained unshaken. She refused to receive divorced persons in her house.

* * * * *

Many friends came to my father’s house; among them was Ward McAllister, of whom years afterwards Harry Lehr said to me....I begin where Ward McAllister left off. He was the voice crying in the wilderness who prepared the way for me.... I used to smile, thinking that McAllister would scarcely have liked this definition of himself, for his conceit was equal to Harry’s own.

I rather liked this Shepherd of the Four Hundred and the most complete dandy in America, his pleasant lazy drawl, his hearty laugh, but Mother used to raise her eyebrows at many of the things he said....I cannot admire a man who spends all his time pushing some people into society and pushing others out of it, she would say.

He took his responsibilities very seriously. Knowing that his decision was regarded as the verdict of the Supreme Court of Appeal where matters of etiquette were under discussion, he devoted his whole life to compiling his famous set of rules for the guidance of social New York. He read books on heraldry and precedence, studied the customs of every Court in Europe. He revelled in forms and ceremonies, his cult of snobbishness was so ardent, so sincere, that it acquired dignity; it became almost a religion. No devout parish priest ever visited his flock with more loyal devotion to duty than did Ward McAllister make his round of the opera-boxes on Monday evenings. He would listen to plans for forthcoming parties with the utmost gravity, offer his advice as to whom should be invited, restrict the number of guests. He would spend ten minutes discussing the wording of an invitation, the colour of a sheet of note-paper. And all the while his watchful eyes would be observing the neighbouring boxes, noting the newcomers, whom they were talking to, who was taking them up.... You can never be absolutely certain whether people are in society or not until you see them at four or five of the best houses. Then you can make advances to them without the danger of making a mistake, was his favourite dictum. He took precautions to make no mistakes.

Almost as much in demand as Ward McAllister was old Mr. E. N. Tailer, who rarely missed a social occasion of any importance on account of his diary. All his friends knew of the existence of this all-important document, not a few were afraid of what it might contain. It was known that he never went to bed without devoting at least an hour to writing up the events of the day. Even the most trivial incidents were recorded with a wealth of detail, conversations were reported verbatim, every party was described, the names of guests noted. As the years passed by the diary was augmented, volume was added to volume. People who wanted to be certain of the precise date of any happening had only to refer to him, and he would delve into the past for them. He would produce pages of conclusive evidence in his neat, clear handwriting, adding the last word to any argument. The hostesses who entertained him at their country houses knew that one of his trunks was sure to contain the famous diary and that they would figure in its pages; so he never lacked invitations, despite the fact that he was noted for a rather caustic wit. His diary was useful on more than one occasion. When produced in court it settled discussions over wills.

* * * * *

I used to look forward for weeks to the Coaching Club’s Annual Parade which was held on the first Saturday in May. My sisters and I were always allowed to drive to Central Park with our governess to see the start, and my childish imagination could conceive of no greater bliss. How vividly the scene comes back to me today! The shrill blasts of the horns, the clatter of hooves as coach after coach swung past to take its place in the long line awaiting the starting signal from Colonel Jay, the President of the Club. The sunlight gleaming on brightly-polished harness and sleek coats of chestnut, bay or black; the grooms in their smart liveries backing the teams slowly into position, springing to the heads of the leaders as they reared and fretted, impatient to be off. How I envied my mother as she climbed into her seat on Colonel Jay’s coach, a breathtaking adventure in those days of voluminous trailing skirts when the least slip might have exposed her to the everlasting shame of affording the spectators the view of a pair of feminine legs. All around her other women would be mounting the steps to the accompaniment of timorous giggles and a great display of lace petticoats, while their escorts gallantly stood beneath in readiness to catch them should they fall. Soon the tops of the coaches looked like so many flower-gardens, for every woman had put on her most betrimmed hat and loveliest dress in honour of the most important event of the season. Silk capes and lace ruffles fluttered in the breeze, painted parasols were unfurled to shield delicate complexions from the sun, jewelled buckles sparkled on Paris-made shoes. Even the men conceded to the gaiety of the day by wearing enormous bouquet buttonholes of red and white to brighten their regulation Coaching Club livery of black coats, check suits, tan aprons and buckskin gloves.

I used to think Oliver Belmont one of the handsomest men at the Coaching Parade, with his dark eyes, clear-cut profile and slender, faun-like grace. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt often sat at his side on the box behind the four famous bays, Sandringham, Rochingham, Buckingham and Hurlingham. The women glanced at her as she sat wide-eyed and innocent-looking, and whispered