The dream of accruing her own fortune arrived in one afternoon. Henry Clay Frick, the multi-millionaire steel magnate, asked Elsie to decorate the private quarters of his Fifth Avenue mansion/museum. Their business arrangement stipulated de Wolfe would receive ten percent of everything she purchased on his behalf. While in Paris, Elsie persuaded Frick, who grudgingly postponed his golf date for half an hour, to visit a warehouse to examine its treasures. In that half an hour, they obtained what is estimated to have cost between two and three million dollars and provided de Wolfe with one of the highest incomes for that year in America. De Wolfe was in charge of fourteen rooms, including Mrs. Frick’s boudoir—complete with eight panels painted by Francois Boucher for Madame de Pompadour. The future Edward VIII invited the celebrated designing lady to decorate sections of Buckingham Palace, but his abdication nixed the project. The debt-ridden doctor’s daughter became the queen of international chic and the arbitrator of taste. Elsie also donned an activist hat in 1912 when she carried a banner in a suffrage parade. However, most felt her participation was more economic than political—the act was good for business, the altar on which de Wolfe worshipped.
It is hardly a tossup which was Elsie’s greater love, Bessie Marbury or her home, the Villa Trianon in Versailles, a deserted Louis XV pavilion on the grounds of Palace of Versailles. The pavilion became a showplace and the crown jewel of de Wolfe’s legendary entertainments. The decadent decorator created mirror-paved galleries; walls held gilt-framed Old Master drawings that surrounded leopard-upholstered furniture. There was even a painted ceiling in the library showing the mistress of the manor as a cloche-hatted, short-skirted flapper leaping across the Atlantic to France with a small dog at her heels. Mirrors were also de rigueur in the dressing room because, “Know the worst before you go out!”
De Wolfe’s days as a businesswoman and hostess continued until 1914; the outbreak of World War I transformed the Villa Trianon from a pleasure dome to a hospital when Elsie offered her home to the Red Cross. She served as a dedicated nurse to burn victims (accompanied by her French maid) and received the Légion d’ Honneur. For two years, never far from the risk of German shells, she put the soldiers’ needs above her own. With the advent of the Armistice, the best-dressed actress on Broadway and the highest paid decorator in the world embarked on her third career as the most feted American hostess in Europe. Her parties were known for their skimpy menus—she was a dedicated dieter—profusion of flowers, and guest lists that included Coco Chanel, Douglas Fairbanks, and a spattering of deposed monarchs. Wallis Simpson observed, “She mixes people like a cocktail—and the result is sheer genius.”
The era’s most celebrated interior decorator was an unforgettable character: she stood on her head at the slightest provocation, posed as Mata Hari, and when Cartier delivered an aquamarine and diamond tiara, an elderly Elsie dyed her snow-white locks pale blue in color-coordinated homage. But nothing the design diva did topped what she orchestrated in 1926 when she became a bride. Figuring money and a title belonged together, she wed Sir Charles Ferdinand Mendl at the British Embassy in Paris and embarked on a month-long honeymoon in Egypt. Their odd union produced the dropping of many jaws. The groom was fifty-five years old and the bride was at least a decade older than the fifty-seven years she claimed as her age. Moreover, her only previous relationship had been with a woman. The nuptial made sense to the couple as Elsie was rich, and Sir Charles gave her the title she used for the remainder of her days: Lady Mendl. The marriage was one of social convenience as was evidenced when, ten years later, Elsie published her autobiography and hubby hardly merited a mention.
Exquisite when it came to decorating, Elsie fell short in other arenas; she chose paintings based on whether they matched a sofa. Upon a visit to Gertrude Stein’s home, she was horrified by the work of Salvador Dali. Her political actions also did not bear too much scrutiny, something not surprising for someone who harbored sympathy for Marie Antoinette. In 1933, in Rome, while watching an Easter parade, she praised the extravaganza, saying, “only Mussolini and Jesus Christ could stage a spectacle like this” and posed for a picture giving the Fascist salute.
In addition to being the Grande Dame of well-appointed interiors, de Wolfe was the winner of the best-dressed woman award in her seventieth year, the originator of blue-dyed hair, and an exhibitionist who, even in her old age, enjoyed her ability to stand on her head. In 1940, with the Nazis goose-stepping into her beloved Paris, Sir Charles and Elsie fled in their Rolls-Royce. Their final destination was California, where de Wolfe commandeered a Beverly Hills mansion that she christened After All (her favorite expression, which was also the title of her autobiography) and transformed it into a palace of mirrors and palm trees. The estate also contained one of her most cherished possessions, a stool from her Versailles home that had once belonged to Marie Antoinette. As was her lifelong pattern, interiors, rather than people, remained her passion. She recognized this character trait when she wrote another book, The House of Good Taste, “Probably when another woman would be dreaming of love affairs, I dream of the delightful houses I have lived in. I think that is why some people like my rooms—they feel, without quite knowing why, that I have loved them while making them.”
In addition to a decapitated queen’s stool, Elsie kept her scrapbooks, time capsules of a bygone era. They record her jewelry, parties, and telegrams from Wallis Simpson. Another memento was a dog tag, estimated at $1,000 to $1,500, that recalls the French poodle that she dyed the perfect shade of blue. A House & Garden cover preserves the living room of the Beverly Hills home where she waited out the Second World War.
with the Nazi defeat, De Wolfe returned to Versailles, where she spent her final years. Her remark illustrated the true love of her life, “If I have done anything really fine, it is the Villa Trianon.” In 1950, Elsie received her final commission: redecorating heaven.
Urban legend has it that the word golf is an acronym for “gentlemen only ladies forbidden.” Although the etymology is incorrect, what is true is that women and sports have often seemed incompatible. If a lady attempted to sneak in during the ancient Olympic Games, the men would throw her off Mount Typaeon. Fortunately, Gertrude Ederle merited a kinder fate, and she became the first woman to conquer the English Channel.
The Jazz Age mermaid proved what could happen when women were freed from corsets, long skirts, and stockings. Gertrude Caroline, nicknamed Trudy, was born in 1905, one of four daughters and two sons of German immigrants Henry Ederle, owner of a successful New York City butcher shop, and his wife, Anna. At the age of eight, Gertrude had her first encounter with deep water, and the result was she almost drowned. The experience encouraged her to learn to swim; her father taught her by tying a rope around her waist and throwing her into a river. She later recalled of her summers at her family cottage in Highlands, located in Monmouth County on the Jersey Shore, “I just went out the back door and jumped in the Shrewsbury River.” At age five, she had developed a hearing problem after a bout of measles, and though the doctor cautioned exposure to water would worsen her disability, she never heeded his advice.
At age twelve, Gertrude joined the famed Women’s Swimming Association in Manhattan and made her mark in amateur competitions. Word of her aquatic prowess spread, and she found herself