#elisabeth marbury

[antis-hero]

I found a lesbian anti-suffragette (kinda)??? Elisabeth Marbury was a known anti for a while (though she refused to join any organization on either side of the suffrage question) but then changed her mind and became a devoted suffragist after woman suffrage was won.

[corallapis]

Elisabeth Marbury and Elsie de Wolfe at their home, 1923 (from Elsie de Wolfe: A Decorative Life)

[lost-in-woodlawn]

Happy Gay Pride Weekend!

Around the turn of the 20th century, Clyde Fitch was the most popular playwright on Broadway.  At one point, he had an unheard of five shows running at the same time!  Fitch suffered from ill health for most of his life and was only 44 when he died in France in 1909; he rests in Woodlawn Cemetery’s Wintergreen plot.

The never-married Fitch was known as a “dandy” in his day and going by his written correspondence it’s probable he had a brief affair with Oscar Wilde. He was also good (platonic) friends with Edith Wharton. His literary agent was lesbian Elisabeth Marbury who openly lived for decades with her partner Elsie DeWolfe. 

Elisabeth Marbury also rests in Woodlawn; I’ve blogged about her before: https://lost-in-woodlawn.tumblr.com/post/162243799522/happy-pride-weekend-elisabeth-bessy-marbury

Fitch in his study in Connecticut; photo via NYPL Digital Collections https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-b980-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The above poster for Fitch’s play “Girls” and the photo of the beautiful Woodlawn mausoleum Fitch’s mother had designed for him were found at his Wiki page where you can find more biographical info as well as links to other reference pages.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Fitch

The website NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project has a page referencing Clyde Fitch and other LGBT people who rest in Woodlawn Cemetery; you can see it here: https://www.nyclgbtsites.org/site/woodlawn-cemetery/

[yourdailyqueer]

Elisabeth Marbury (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 19 June 1856  

RIP: 22 January 1933

Ethnicity: White

Occupation: Theatrical and literary agent, producer, socialite, interior designer, writer

[365daysoflesbians]

DECEMBER 20: Elsie de Wolfe (1859-1950)

The famous socialite and interior decorator, Elsie de Wolfe, was born on this day in 1859. Elsie is most well-known for her 1913 book The House in Good Taste; In a review of the book’s enormous influence, The New Yorker would eventually write that ”interior design as a profession was invented by Elsie de Wolfe.”

An older Elsie de Wolfe photographed amongst the extravagance of her Paris apartment (x).

Ella Anderson de Wolfe was born on December 20, 1859 in New York City. Her father was a Canadian-born doctor who provided a comfortable life for his family, but in a look back at her childhood, Elsie would say that she went through life as “a rebel in an ugly world.” When she was young, Elsie began a career as an actress. She appeared in a few plays and one act comedies but enjoyed no real success. It was while travelling with the Empire Stock Company and assisting in the art of staging plays that she found herself interested in interior design.

The passion for design and aesthetics was already there, but it took pulling some string to get Elsie de Wolfe’s name on the map. Once Elsie began foraying into the uncharted territory of interior design as a career, it was her partner Elisabeth Marbury who secured her such prestigious clients as Amy Vanderbilt, Henry Clay Frick, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Although Elsie was simply known as an actress of mediocre fame in the 1890s, Elisabeth was a wildly successful literary agent who had managed the likes of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. The two had first met at a party and soon entered into a Boston Marriage; it was her partnership with Elisabeth and the design of their multiple New York Homes that truly made Elsie’s reputation.

Elsie with her partner of over 40 years, Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury, in 1923 (x).

In 1926, Elsie was married to a diplomat by the name of Sir Charles Mendl and became the Lady Mendl. However, the marriage was only formed out of convenience for both parties and Elsie remained true to Elisabeth until her death. For the rest of their lives, the women moved through high society as the artsy lesbian power couple of New York City. One friend even described them as “"the willowy De Wolfe and the masculine Marbury... cutting a wide path through Manhattan society.” Elsie would be named the best-dressed woman in the world by Paris magazines in 1935 and be immortalized in the lyrics of multiple Cole Porter songs before her death on July 12, 1950 at the age of 90. Elisabeth has preceded her, passing away in 1933.

-LC

[fieldtomatoes]

LGB Historical Figures I’m Manifesting for Season 14

(yes I know some of these people probably never visited Toronto in their life but that hasn’t stopped them before)

Dr Louisa Martindale (1872-1966) - British physician and surgeon

Frances Loring (1887-1968) - Canadian sculptor

and her partner

Florence Wyle (1881-1968) - Canadian sculptor

E. M. Forster (1879-1970) - British author

Edith Watson (1861-1943) - Canadian photographer, particularly of women

Maud Allan (1873-1956) - Canadian dancer and actress

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) - British economist

Mary MacLane (1881-1929) - Canadian-born writer, pioneer of confessional memoirs

Margaret Cuthbert (1887-1968) - Canadian-born pioneer radio host and producer

Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury (1856-1933) - American theatrical and literary businesswoman (friend of Elizabeth Arden, who appeared in 12x02 under her birth name)

and her partner

Elsie de Wolfe (1859-1950) - American actress and interior designer

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) - French author

Dr Lilian Welsh (1858-1938) - American physician, suffragist, advocate for women’s health

and her partner

Dr Mary Sherwood (1856-1935) - American physician, educator, advocate for preventative medicine

Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson / Xavier Mayne (1858-1942) - American author of Imre, the first published gay book with a happy ending (published in 1906, two years before S14)

Bonus: bring back Emma Goldman and have her speak about gay rights, which she did starting around this time

[oh-sewing-circle]

"Marie Dressler was the heavyset mother figure of the movies who won an Academy Award for Min and Bill (1930). Her life partner was her secretary, Claire Du Brey.

Du Brey, who died at age 100 in 1993, left behind a frank, unpublished memoir of her relationship with Dressler, according to William J. Mann in Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood. She didn't mention sex, but she didn't shy away from their intimacy either, whether in shared hotel rooms or in quiet domestic evenings at home.

When Dressler was younger (she was 61 in 1930), she consorted with many in the lesbian subculture of New York, including Elisabeth Marbury, Elsie de Wolfe, and Anne Morgan, but when Dressler died in 1934, it was Du Brey who sat in the front pew."

[cooperhewitt]

A Living Factory of Chic

In celebration of World Pride, June Object of the Day posts highlight LGBTQ+ designers and design in the collection.

A woman of nearly seventy-five, dressed in a voluminous white gown with contrasting shawl, gazes over a well-appointed interior in a photograph by a thirty-five-year-old aesthete. The woman is Elsie de Wolfe, the interior is of her decoration, and the photographer is Cecil Beaton. In this photograph, originally outfitted in a mirrored frame designed by de Wolfe, the two creators’ oeuvres converge, as they both had a talent for elevating reality to the glamorous artifice they desired. Their lives and friendship bridge generations of “good taste”—from the Gilded Age to the golden age of glamour.

De Wolfe was at the center of a vibrant social circle of wealthy women in late Gilded Age New York, a circle that included Sarah and Eleanor Hewitt, the founders of Cooper Hewitt. She started her career as an actress and traveled to Paris before every theater season to select her own costumes.[1] Luckily or not, she garnered more acclaim for her wardrobe than her character portrayals, and transitioned the attention around her taste into a career as an interior decorator, a profession she later claimed to have invented.[2] As exhibited in this photograph, her decorating taste tended to favor the eighteenth-century French Louis XV style—“If it was good enough for Marie Antoinette, it’s good enough for you.”[3]—with generous mirrors, pleasing natural curves, and light colors.

Beaton and de Wolfe met through Elisabeth “Bessy” Marbury, de Wolfe’s longtime partner. De Wolfe and Marbury—a renowned theatrical agent—became companions in 1892 and were living together as a couple until Elsie unexpectedly married Sir Charles Mendl in 1926. The marriage was largely perceived as a marriage of convenience, or perhaps even a marriage of aesthetics (who doesn’t want the title of “Lady”?). In 1930, Elsie was visiting from Paris and was staying with Bessy in what was formerly their shared Sutton Place home. Beaton had started working regularly for Vogue magazine, and, new to New York, had “wangled a letter of introduction from [writer] Osbert Sitwell to Bessy, who was a legend to the gay young things in the London set, in which he moved.”[4] When he finally had an opportunity to meet the legendary Marbury in 1930, he inevitably met Elsie as well. Observing her style, poise, and wit, he later described her as “a living factory of ‘chic.’”[5]

Beaton was himself no slouch in the chic department. His photographs were informed by the elegance and élan of his Edwardian upbringing, echoing the exaggerated decadence of the 1890s, inspired by figures such as Oscar Wilde. Producing an oeuvre that is sensual and romantic, Beaton’s sensibility had always been sophisticated and glamorous, albeit indulging the artificial—in his university days, he was known to have attended class at Cambridge in female drag. He also took inspiration from the theater and produced stylized vignettes of otherworldly elegance and glamour.[6]

This photograph of de Wolfe was a relatively early portrait considering Beaton’s storied career (this was twenty-five years before Audrey Hepburn in big hats in My Fair Lady). The photograph was also taken at a transitional moment in Beaton’s career. In 1938, a year earlier, he had been fired from his position at Vogue for an editorial indiscretion that demanded a large reprint of an issue. But in July 1939, he received a now-famous phone call from Buckingham Palace asking him to photograph now-Queen Elizabeth II. The commission reinvigorated his career as a photographer and portraitist.[7]

This Elsie moment was photographed either at Villa Trianon at Versailles, a small chateau that Elsie and Bessy had purchased with their friend Anne Morgan in 1903, or at Elsie’s apartment in Paris. Beaton had been a guest at de Wolfe’s Circus Ball in 1939, her second-annual themed party at Villa Trianon that was considered to be the final soirée for Parisian society before World War II (instead of “RSVP” de Wolfe joked “INW”—”If No War”).[8] While the photograph is hand-dated by Beaton as 1939, de Wolfe’s ensemble is not what she wore to the 1939 Circus Ball—the Mainbocher gown she wore in 1939 is sparklier—it is actually what she wore to her inaugural 1938 ball. (As possibly part of the same photo session, Beaton also captured de Wolfe in the same interior in the radiant Apollo of Versailles cape made for her by Elsa Schiaparelli, a photograph in which she barely outshines her longtime secretary Hilda West, standing nearby.) Whatever the fact or fiction of the date (or which extravagant party it orbited), the photograph captures the decadence of eras both ending and beginning.

The Villa Trianon was occupied by Nazi troops during World War II. After the war, Beaton was the first to report back to de Wolfe on the state of her dream home.[9] The wine cellar had of course been pillaged and a chandelier stolen, but she would be able to restore it to the chic home of her dreams.

Matthew J. Kennedy is the Publishing Associate at Cooper Hewitt, and additionally researches the histories of design and theater.

[1] Ruth Franklin, “A Life in Good Taste, The New Yorker, September 19, 2004, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/09/27/a-life-in-good-taste.

[2] Margery Masinter, “Best Friends,” Cooper Hewitt Short Stories, August 31, 2016, https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2016/08/31/short-stories-best-friends/.

[3] De Wolfe allegedly used this quip to scold her client Natica Warburg, daughter of Condé Nast. “The Marie Antoinette Card,” Nick Harvill Libraries, February 7, 2016, https://www.nickharvilllibraries.com/blog/the-marie-antoinette-card.

[4] Alfred Allan Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women (New York: Penguin Books, 2000), 415.

[5] As quoted in Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women, 416.

[6] Love, Cecil, directed by Lisa Immordino Vreeland (New York: Fischio Films, 2017).

[7] Love, Cecil.

[8] “The Fabulous Parties of Elsie de Wolfe,” ArchitecturalDigest.com, October 31, 2014, https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/elsie-de-wolfe-paris-article.

[9] Lewis, Ladies and Not-So-Gentle Women, 474.

from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum http://bit.ly/2FnDvRg via IFTTT

[cosmicballads]

TAG 10 PEOPLE YOU WANT TO GET TO KNOW.

STAR SIGN:

Capricorn

HEIGHT

5′10

PUT YOUR ITUNES/SPOTIFY ON SHUFFLE. WHAT ARE THE FIRST 4 SONGS THAT POP UP?

Chill - EXO

Fall in Love - SF9

Take It Slow - Red Velvet

Forever - EXO

GRAB THE BOOK NEAREST TO YOU AND TURN TO PAGE 23. WHAT’S LINE 17?

“[...literary] agent Elisabeth Marbury suggested that they jointly sponsor a series of modern...”

EVER HAD A POEM OR SONG WRITTEN ABOUT YOU?

Nope.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PLAYED AIR GUITAR?

Uhh….probably a few days ago?

WHO IS YOUR CELEBRITY CRUSH?

Um it literally fluctuates. my kpop boyfriends Mark (Tuan, not Lee) and Chanyeol. I forever will love Natalie Dormer and honestly no male celeb really gets my goat rn. I can look at Chris Evans all day tho

WHAT’S A SOUND YOU HATE + SOUND YOU LOVE?

Hate: screechy noises, love: rain!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?

Yes!

HOW ABOUT ALIENS?

Yes!

DO YOU DRIVE? IF SO, HAVE YOU EVER CRASHED?

Yes, never crashed but I’ve bumped into things and a person has bumped into me

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ?

Snotgirl vol 2. California Screamin but if comics don’t count, The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up

DO YOU LIKE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE?

no

WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW?

In theaters: Captain Marvel, at home: Poltergeist, the original

WHAT’S THE WORST INJURY YOU’VE EVER HAD?

I cut off part of my finger

DO YOU HAVE ANY OBSESSIONS RIGHT NOW?

I hyper fixate on shit. Um i’m back to playing the shit out of the sims right now. I CAN BUILD A NICE HOUSE AND NOT OVER DO IT ON WINDOWS NOW

DO YOU TEND TO HOLD GRUDGES AGAINST PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE YOU WRONG?

Ehhhh, depends on what it is

IN A RELATIONSHIP?

Nop

Tagged by: @camuseic

Tagging: @allegradegray @aholywrathincurred @rileymcdaniels @agaywad @outfromthesea @stumblingwords @leiaskywclker and anybody else ~

[sircnss]

TAG 10 PEOPLE YOU WANT TO GET TO KNOW.

NAME: Diandra

STAR SIGN:

Capricorn

HEIGHT

5′10

PUT YOUR ITUNES/SPOTIFY ON SHUFFLE. WHAT ARE THE FIRST 4 SONGS THAT POP UP?

Cause it’s you - Red Velvet

Egoistic - Mamamoo

Let’s Hang Out - SF9

Do You Love Me - Luna, george

GRAB THE BOOK NEAREST TO YOU AND TURN TO PAGE 23. WHAT’S LINE 17?

“[…literary] agent Elisabeth Marbury suggested that they jointly sponsor a series of modern…”

EVER HAD A POEM OR SONG WRITTEN ABOUT YOU?

Nope.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU PLAYED AIR GUITAR?

Uhh….probably a few days ago?

WHO IS YOUR CELEBRITY CRUSH?

Um it literally fluctuates. my kpop boyfriends Mark (Tuan, not Lee) and Chanyeol. I forever will love Natalie Dormer and honestly no male celeb really gets my goat rn. I can look at Chris Evans all day tho

WHAT’S A SOUND YOU HATE + SOUND YOU LOVE?

Hate: screechy noises, love: rain!

DO YOU BELIEVE IN GHOSTS?

Yes!

HOW ABOUT ALIENS?

Yes!

DO YOU DRIVE? IF SO, HAVE YOU EVER CRASHED?

Yes, never crashed but I’ve bumped into things and a person has bumped into me

WHAT WAS THE LAST BOOK YOU READ?

Snotgirl vol 2. California Screamin but if comics don’t count, The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up

DO YOU LIKE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE?

no

WHAT WAS THE LAST MOVIE YOU SAW?

In theaters: Captain Marvel, at home: Poltergeist, the original

WHAT’S THE WORST INJURY YOU’VE EVER HAD?

I cut off part of my finger

DO YOU HAVE ANY OBSESSIONS RIGHT NOW?

I hyper fixate on shit. Um i’m back to playing the shit out of the sims right now. I CAN BUILD A NICE HOUSE AND NOT OVER DO IT ON WINDOWS NOW

DO YOU TEND TO HOLD GRUDGES AGAINST PEOPLE WHO HAVE DONE YOU WRONG?

Ehhhh, depends on what it is

IN A RELATIONSHIP?

Nop

Tagged by: @chocolatspring

Tagging: @acetrainermj @toptotoe @omegalovaniac @verfound @understandrabbits

[lost-in-woodlawn]

Happy Pride Weekend!

Elisabeth “Bessy” Marbury rests in Woodlawn’s Prospect plot.  She is pictured above with her closest friend and devoted companion, Elsie de Wolfe (Miss Marbury is the one on the left, sitting down.)  The two lived together for decades, even after Elsie married Sir Charles Mendl and became Lady Mendl (said to be only a marriage of convenience.)  They were referred to by some gossips as “The Bachelors.”

It was to Elsie that Marbury dedicated her memoir, My Crystal Ball.  They remained together until Marbury's death in 1933.

Marbury was a woman ahead of her time, becoming a literary and theatrical agent in the early part of the 20th century. She handled the careers of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw among others.  Her wiki page gives a good bit of information on her personal life and career:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Marbury

Here are two photographs from Marbury’s memoir that I like a lot.  The first shows her in her Knights of Columbus uniform from when she was involved in post-World War I relief work in France (a duty which she took a great deal of pride in), and the second photo is Elisabeth at 10 years of age looking amusingly like Wednesday Addams from The Addams Family!

[suzylwade]

Elsie de Wolfe “If I am ugly, and I am, I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life.” - Elsie de Wolfe, America’s first decorator. Though dead for over half a century Elsie de Wolfe remains an icon to this day revered as America’s first decorator. Born in New York City (“Our home is now ‘Macy’s’ front door”) ugly little Elsie spent some early years in Scotland and in 1885 was presented at court to Queen Victoria (“a little fat queen in a black dress and a load of jewels”). After having had some success in amateur theatrical circles in New York, she became a professional actress and performed various light comic and historical roles throughout the 1890s. However, her appearances were praised more for the clothes she wore than for what she did in them - de Wolfe enjoyed the unusual arrangement with her producer of being allowed to choose her own wardrobes - usually couture ensembles she ordered in Paris from ‘Paquin’, ‘Doucet’ or ‘Worth’. As early as 1887 de Wolfe had settled into what was then called a “Boston marriage“ with Elisabeth “Bessie” Marbury a formidable figure in New York society who also happened to be a wildly successful literary agent and business representative for, among others, Wilde, Shaw, Bernhardt, Sardou, Rostand and Feydeau; Marbury even brought the play ‘Charley’s Aunt’ to the U.S. After having restyled with some panache the house the two women shared on Irving Place - sweeping out her companion’s Victorian clutter, opening spaces and introducing soft, warm colours and a bit of 18th-century French elegance - de Wolfe decided in 1905 to become a professional decorator, issuing smart business cards embellished with her trademark wolf-with-nosegay crest. (at USA) https://www.instagram.com/p/CY8pyWfoa04/?utm_medium=tumblr

[ghervier]

Packing the Supreme Court ?

« Jamais un plus immense pouvoir judiciaire n’a été constitué chez aucun peuple » écrit Alexis de Tocqueville en parlant de la Cour suprême cité par Elisabeth Zoller dans son ouvrage sur les grands arrêts de la Cour Suprême[1]. « Consolidé en 1803 dans l’arrêt Marbury v. Madison, l’immense pouvoir parvient au stade de la suprématie judiciaire en moins d’un siècle. Mais sous la présidence de…

[deviatesinc]

Elsie de Wolfe and Elisabeth Marbury at the (in)famous Hyde Ball, 1905