Writing historical fiction is sometimes a daunting as well as exciting venture. You attempt to be as accurate as possible, while knowing that you’re also writing fiction, which demands a different set of parameters. A story or scene with many historical figures participating may have to be whittled down to a number that a reader can remember. Sometimes characters have to be consolidated. That’s why authors rely on the Author’s Note to be fair and honest with our readers.
For example, many of the women at the original Newport meeting and the subsequent early meetings didn’t figure largely into this particular story, so a decision had to be made. To learn more about those women left out of my story, I refer the reader to Daisy Harriman’s memoir, From Pinafores to Politics.
On the other hand, some important historical characters who were absent became recurring characters in this story and after consultation with my editor we decided to add them to the original meeting.
Of the three main point of view characters, two were real historical figures.
Daisy Harriman is, of course, well-known today. At the time when she had the idea of a women’s social club, she was a thirty-two-year-old wife, mother, and socialite. The Colony Club was one of her first forays into her work as a reformer, organizer, and diplomat, for which she earned the first Citation of Merit for Distinguished Service Award. Active in women’s suffrage, food purity, child labor laws, working conditions, and tuberculosis treatment (she eventually donated the Harrimans’ Mount Kisco estate to be used as a tuberculosis sanitarium), she was also active at the federal level and served as U.S. Minister to Norway.
Elsie de Wolfe was indeed known as the best-dressed actress of the Rialto, the name for the theater district when it was clustered around Union Square before migrating to Forty-second Street. And though not an extremely talented actress, she did, according to all who knew her, have an exacting eye for style. She is known as America’s first interior decorator. Until this time interiors were usually designed by the architect. The Colony Club was Elsie’s first big commission and from there her career in design flourished. She owed much of both of her successes to her companion for twenty years, Bessie Marbury.
Bessie was one of the most powerful theatrical agents of the time. Among her clients were Oscar Wilde, Victorien Sardou, J. M. Barrie, among others. She was a formidable planner and was instrumental in the forming of the Colony Club and in inducing Stanford White to design the clubhouse.
Stanford White is perhaps remembered these days more because of his murder at the rooftop theater of Madison Square Garden and the subsequent sensationalist trial than his architecture. Unfortunately many of his works have since been demolished.
Much has been written about this aspect of his life, but what was interesting to me was how his fall affected so many people. And how the mere association with the world-famous, suddenly disgraced architect could be detrimental to even the most tangential relationships. Something that with our instant news sources today we can all relate to.
My third point of view character, Nora, is entirely fictitious, but she had many good models to inspire her—and me. There were successful female architects at this time (Alice Hand, Mary Gannon, Faye Kellogg, Louise Bethune, etc.). In 1900, only thirty-nine American women had graduated from formal four-year architectural programs. And though a degree in architecture wasn’t necessary, it was important to have a good apprenticeship, which was difficult to come by for women.
I never found that McKim, Mead, and White ever employed an in-house female architect, though White employed a large network of independent artists, many of whom were women. Nora, if she’d had a studio from which to work, would have become one of those independent contractors.
The original clubhouse is still standing and is the home of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. The Colony Club itself is still in existence, though they moved to more spacious accommodations shortly after the original clubhouse was finished.
In the course of my research, as always, I found primary sources to be of immense benefit. Especially the New York newspapers that as well as reporting daily on the news, both local and world, also give us day-to-day insight on fashion, entertainment, art, politics, and the prices of everything from lingerie to automobiles.
For those interested in further reading, I suggest: