PHILADELPHIA, MEET MRS. CROMWELL
By 1910, Edward T. Stotesbury was already known as “the richest man at Morgan’s.” The wunderkind who had started his banking career as a lowly janitor-clerk had not disappointed those men who first spotted his financial genius and promoted him upward, Anthony J. Drexel and J. Pierpont Morgan. Officially, Stotesbury was now the resident senior partner of Drexel and Company of Philadelphia, but he was also a senior partner of J. P. Morgan & Company in New York—“Morgan’s man in Philadelphia,” as he was often called. Actually, of course, the Morgan and Drexel banks were themselves a partnership, making Stotesbury a double partner. It was not as confusing as it sounded: Morgan ran New York and Stotesbury ran Philadelphia. When necessary, the two men used each other’s services.
Stotesbury had been born in Philadelphia of an Episcopalian father and a Quaker mother, and he had been raised in the stern discipline of the Society of Friends. He was a short, dapper man, proud of his trim figure and carefully clipped moustache, and in dress—outside the office, at least—he was something of a fashion plate, favoring high collars, flowing foulard neckties, English-cut tweed jackets, and spotless white flannel trousers. As a young man he had started collecting watches, and as he grew wealthy this collection had become a truly princely one. He had also made himself an expert on gems and precious stones, and this collection too had become valuable. Horsemanship was another enthusiasm, and he maintained a stable of handsome trotting horses. In the office, of course, he was bankerly and sober, all business and humorless. Socially, on the other hand, he could be gracious and charming and even, in his dignified way, amusing.
He had been married quite young, in 1873 at age twenty-four, to a pretty Quaker girl named Fanny Butcher. Eight years later, in 1881, Fanny Stotesbury had died after giving birth to their second child. He had been left a widower at thirty-two, with two small daughters, one of them an infant. From that time he had lived alone in his big dark house on Walnut Street, “south of Market,” where fashionable Philadelphia lived. Young and handsome, single and rich, he was a popular extra man at Philadelphia dinner parties. Even though he had often let it be known that he would never marry again, the newspapers, noting his imposing eligibility, were always “linking” Edward Stotesbury’s name with this young woman or that. In his roguish way, by never denying these persistent romantic rumors, he encouraged them. Early in 1909 the second of his two daughters married. Now, save for the servants, he was truly alone in the Walnut Street house. It must have seemed very large and very empty.
Accompanying Eva Cromwell to her European sailing in 1910 was William Eldridge, an old family friend and the godfather of her younger son. Friends had long suspected that Eldridge might have had a romantic interest in Eva, though he was far too much of a gentleman to admit it, and on that chilly spring day, after Eldridge had got Eva settled in her stateroom and the two were strolling on the deck waiting for the whistle to signal that it was time for all visitors to go ashore, an event occurred—coincidence, luck, trick of fate—that would remove Eva from William Eldridge’s future forever. Whom should Eldridge spot, also strolling on the deck, but his old friend Ned Stotesbury, the Philadelphia banker, who was on his way to Europe on business. Eldridge promptly introduced the two, and suggested that they might enjoy each other’s company on the voyage. Thus the widower of twenty-nine years and the widow of just a few months were thrown together in that most romantic of settings, an ocean crossing. Ned Stotesbury, from all reports, was immediately smitten.
For Eva, meeting Ned Stotesbury must have involved a sense of déjà vu. He was almost exactly the same age her husband had been when he died. And though he was shorter than Cromwell—a shade shorter, in fact, than Eva—there was otherwise a strong physical resemblance. Also, with his proper manners and his pious Quaker ways—he still occasionally used “thee” instead of “you”—Ned Stotesbury may have reminded Eva of her father. In any case, before the pair debarked at Cherbourg to go their separate ways, they had fallen in love.
Obviously, for Eva’s sake, a “decent interval” had to elapse between her first husband’s death and the announcement of her remarriage. This came some eighteen months later, in early December of 1911.
Obviously, too, some noses would be placed permanently out of joint by this news in Philadelphia, where there were plenty of attractive widows who would have been not at all reluctant to accept a proposal from the city’s richest citizen. While the newspapers proclaimed the engagement in banner headlines, Philadelphia society braced for an “outsider” and an upstart. Who, after all, was this Mrs. Cromwell? She was associated with three cities which Philadelphia had always held in low esteem. Born in Chicago, she had dazzled social New York and political Washington. With no Philadelphia credentials whatsoever, she had snapped up Philadelphia’s richest single man. Eva Cromwell, if she was aware of it, might have been alerted to the opposition she would soon encounter by a headline in the Bulletin which soothingly reassured its readers that
MRS. CROMWELL IS “ENTIRELY CHARMING”
as though to put down rumors that she was only partly charming. The story went on, in the same patronizing vein, to predict that the new Mrs. Stotesbury would be “every bit as popular” in Philadelphia as she had been in New York and Washington. Did the Bulletin reporter slyly realize that this sort of thing was certain to raise the hackles of Old Philadelphia? Philadelphians were not going to be told whom they would and would not like.
“Philadelphians” here is used advisedly. In Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class, the historian E. Digby Baltzell writes, “Within the fashionable and sometimes snobbish world of Proper Philadelphia … there are, of course, a few ‘old families’ who consider themselves, and are reverently so considered by many others, to be ‘first families.’ In the local upper-class vernacular, these ‘first families’ are known simply as ‘Philadelphians.’ One may have been born in Philadelphia, and one’s ancestors may have been born there since colonial times, without ever presuming to call oneself a ‘Philadelphian,’ at least within the city’s loftiest circles. This rather esoteric use of the term ‘Philadelphian’ is altogether confusing to the outsider.” In other words, not all Philadelphians are Philadelphians; that distinction is left for the few.
Obviously, Eva Cromwell was not a Philadelphian. Neither, for that matter, was her future husband, even though, as Baltzell points out, he was born there. For one thing, no individual of the Quaker persuasion, no matter how industrious or prosperous he might be, was ever admitted to the ranks of Philadelphianism: this was a rule of thumb, unalterable as the course of the Schuylkill River. Furthermore, Philadelphia would never forget that Edward Stotesbury, though he might be the richest man in town, had started his career as a $16-a-month clerk; he was a man who worked. One of the earliest standards for admission to the Social Register was this: “One must not be ‘employed’; one must make application; and one must be above reproach.”
Even on this last score Ned Stotesbury had a black mark against his name, having managed, innocently enough, to offend the city’s most prestigious family, the Biddies. When Anthony J. Drexel was still head of the bank, his daughter Emily had married Edward Biddle, and Drexel had brought his son-in-law into the business, giving him a partnership. Fiske Kimball, in his memoir of the Stotesbury family, wrote of an episode that occurred not long afterward, and that illustrated the high esteem in which Mr. Drexel held young Stotesbury:
One day … Biddle came to Drexel saying, “Your clerk has insulted me. Either he or I must go.” “What clerk?” croaked Drexel. “Stotesbury.” “Then you’d better go.” And go Edward Biddle did.
It was a gesture that cost Edward Biddle many millions of dollars.
At least two Philadelphia institutions exist only for Philadelphians in the Baltzell sense. One is the Philadelphia Assembly, a debutante ball—but really much more than that, since so much weight and importance are attached to Assembly invitations—which was established as an annual event in 1748, making it the oldest organized ball in the United States. Both of Edward Stotesbury’s daughters, by virtue of having married Philadelphians, had been rewarded with Assembly invitations. Edward Stotesbury himself had never been invited.
The second is the Philadelphia Club, the oldest men’s club in America, membership in which, as Digby Baltzell puts it, is “the hallmark of gentlemanly antecedents and business accomplishment.” In Philadelphia, Edward Stotesbury belonged to many clubs, including the Merion Cricket Club, the Philadelphia Cricket Club, the Philadelphia Art Club, the Radnor Hunt, the Germantown Cricket Club, the Racquet Club, the Rabbit Club, the Rose Tree Hunt, the Pennsylvania Club, the Corinthian Yacht Club, the Philadelphia Country Club, the Huntingdon Valley Country Club, the Bachelor Barge Club, the Farmers’ Club, and the Union League Club. As a clubman, he was unquestionably popular, and he served five full terms as president of the Union League.
But two club invitations, the top two, eluded him: the Rittenhouse Club and the Philadelphia Club. Then at last came an invitation to join the lesser of the two, the Rittenhouse. With this, Ned Stotesbury may have felt that he was finally making some real headway against Philadelphia snobbery because, after all, the Rittenhouse was considered the final steppingstone into the Philadelphia. Everyone taken into the Rittenhouse was eventually taken into the Philadelphia; it would only be a matter of time. But the ultimate invitation that should have been forthcoming never came. Edward T. Stotesbury had been snubbed. It was Philadelphia’s pointed way of telling him that he could come just so far toward joining the ranks of Philadelphians. But no farther. Ever.
Between the December 1911 announcement of the Cromwell-Stotesbury nuptials and the January 18, 1912, wedding itself, newspapers across the country—and particularly in Philadelphia—were crammed with details of the impending event. The wedding was described as “socially important” and “one of the most important in this country … in several years.” Wisely, probably, Eva chose to be married in the drawing room of her Washington house on New Hampshire Avenue. It is doubtful whether Philadelphia would have been able to choke it down. It was certainly a glittering occasion. President William Howard Taft was among the guests. J. P. Morgan, away in Europe on business, had sent regrets, but his wife, son, and daughter were there to represent him and so was his gift, a diamond necklace set in platinum with a center pendant “the size of a robin’s egg,” according to the Bulletin. It was said to have cost $500,000. Ned Stotesbury’s gift to his bride was a $100,000 sapphire necklace, plus a rope of pearls so long that, if worn as a single strand, it would have extended to the floor. During the engagement Ned Stotesbury had also spent some $2,000,000 refurbishing the Walnut Street house for Eva’s arrival. If the sheer expenditure of money is any indication of the extent of one’s devotion, Ned Stotesbury adored Eva.
Following the ceremony, the newlyweds boarded a private “palace” railway car for Palm Beach, where they dallied for about a month, staying at the Breakers Hotel. In the newspapers the honeymoon was reported to be “quiet,” but even the quietness and uneventfulness of it was chronicled daily in the press. Desperate for Stotesbury news, even the stately New York Times was driven to write about how, during the Stotesburys’ Palm Beach stay, two new dances, the Bunny Hug and the Turkey Trot, “took the fashionable colony by storm.” The Stotesburys, it was assumed, were ipso facto taken by storm.
Meanwhile, Philadelphia waited. The trouble was, there was no clear consensus on how the new Mrs. Stotesbury should be treated. Would it be simplest merely to snub her? That might prove unwise, as Mrs. Stotesbury appeared to have powerful friends—United States Presidents, the nation’s most powerful banker—at her beck and call. Perhaps it would be better to test her, put her through a social probationary period, let her show her colors, reveal the extent of her ambitions. The mood of the city grew tense as the news came, early in February, that the bridal pair were winding up their Florida stay and preparing to return home.
In most successful dramas of the early twentieth century, the curtain did not rise to reveal the heroine, the star, sitting on a sofa in center stage. It rose, instead, on a butler and a parlor maid discussing the peccadilloes of the mistress of the house, who was expected home at any moment from some long journey and some unusual experience. The maid might go to the window, part the curtains: Could this be she arriving now? No, it was only a porter delivering trunks. A sound of voices offstage: This must be she at last. No, it is only the Australian cousins who have come to ask her an important favor. The cousins enter, fuss and wring their hands. What can be keeping her? The maid makes a few last passes at the furniture with her feather duster. The butler straightens his tie and arranges the sherry glasses. The audience, teased and tantalized with suspense beyond endurance, strains forward in its seats. Then, all at once, through the door she sweeps and stands there, looking up at the key light.
This was the way Eva Stotesbury orchestrated her entrance into Philadelphia, her “debut” before its society. She and Ned Stotesbury slipped into town quietly, unnoticed by the press, secured themselves in the newly decorated Walnut Street house, and only after they had arrived let Philadelphia learn that Eva was there and waiting in the wings for her proper cue. That came on February 12, when it was learned that the Stotesburys had taken seats for the opera that evening. In the event, the house was packed, but not for the performance. Society reporters, each eager to scoop the next, filed their stories in advance of the event. One wrote that Eva was twenty minutes early, another that she was half an hour late. Actually, unlike Mrs. Astor, Eva and Ned arrived precisely on time.
“Scores of opera glasses” were immediately trained upon her. Her appearance, according to the press, drew “audible” comments. Her majestic figure was swathed in a dress of white satin “with a net of silver and crystal spangles.” Over this she threw a long purple opera cloak with heavy swags of white fox fur at the collar and cuffs. On her bosom lay the Stotesbury pearls, looped in four coils, and above these, at her throat, were the Morgan diamonds. But the climax of her costume was a diamond tiara, “the most beautiful ever seen at the Metropolitan Opera House, or at the Academy of Music, for that matter,” declared the Bulletin. The Inquirer’s headline was typical: MRS. STOTESBURY IS SEEN AT OPERA. The Inquirer went on to predict that the new Mrs. Stotesbury would “doubtless … assume a commanding position in local society corresponding to that she occupied … in Washington.”
The Inquirer was wrong. Diamonds and pearls alone could not make a Philadelphian, nor could all the breathless publicity in the world. Philadelphia would have the last word on Eva, one way or the other. Did Eva Stotesbury realize even then, as the necks craned and the opera glasses were trained on her, and as, during the intervals, opera goers jammed into the narrow aisle behind the Stotesbury box for an even closer look at her, that those in “a commanding position in local society” were viewing her as an interloper, a creature from a strange and hostile planet?
A few days later, however, she must have known. It was announced that neither Edward Stotesbury nor his bride would be receiving invitations to Philadelphia’s 1912–13 Assembly season.