de Wolfe, Elsie (1865–1950)

views updated

de Wolfe, Elsie (1865–1950)

American interior decorator, known as the Founding Mother of Decorating. Name variations: Lady Mendl. Born in New York, New York, in 1865; died in Paris, France, on July 12, 1950; one of five children of Stephen de Wolfe (a doctor); attended Mrs. Macauley's School for Young Ladies, New York, and a finishing school in Scotland; lived with Elisabeth "Bessie" Marbury (a theatrical agent), from 1887 to 1926; married Sir Charles Mendl (a British embassy functionary), on March 10, 1926.

Elsie de Wolfe, known as the Founding Mother of Decorating, rescued interior design from the stuffy, dark Victorian period and remained its arbiter of style for 50 years. Espousing a philosophy of simplicity, suitability, and proportion, she turned the design world upside down with her innovations—cotton chintz, mirrors, trellises, painted furniture, and decoupage. De Wolfe was also a legendary character, a master of self-invention, and one of the first international celebrities. She dieted before it was fashionable, maintained a live-in relationship with a woman for 40 years, was a front-line nurse during World War I, married at 60, and, at 70, tinted her hair blue and entered a fancy dress ball by way of a cartwheel.

De Wolfe's remarkable life and career appeared to be driven by a deep-rooted insecurity. She was one of five children of an engaging but irresponsible New York doctor, whose risky business ventures relegated the family to the fringes of New York society. A precocious and difficult child, de Wolfe was also exceedingly plain, a fact that her parents and schoolmates would not let her forget. To compensate, she escaped into fantasies, dreaming about "beautiful objects, about pictures and houses," she later recalled. She was educated in New York and at a finishing school in Scotland where she lived for three years with her mother's cousin, the wife of a chaplain to Queen Victoria 's chaplains. Through this connection, de Wolfe was presented at court during the social season of 1885, an occasion that determined her future course. "If I am ugly, and I am," she remembered saying to herself, "I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life." To that end, she dressed in stylish well-cut clothes, kept herself immaculately groomed, and embarked on a stringent diet and exercise program that she continued throughout her life. She also aligned herself with the American beauty, Cora Potter , whose own place in London society assured de Wolfe an entrée to the beautiful people.

In 1886, de Wolfe returned to New York with Potter and began performing as a drawing-room actress, then an acceptable route into New York society. With the death of her father, however, and the pressing need to earn a living, she embarked on a 10-year professional acting career that, according to biographer Jane S. Smith , "was marked by neither talent nor favorable reviews but provided a good income, the possibility of summers in France, and the commissioning there of the clothes she wore on the stage." Despite her "wooden" acting and poor notices, de Wolfe gained a loyal following of women who flocked to her plays to see her Paris clothes. The first Saturday of an Elsie de Wolfe play came to be known as the "dressmakers' matinee." During her early acting career, de Wolfe also met Elisabeth Marbury , a wealthy, unmarried eccentric of high social standing who eventually became a theatrical agent. The two women became long-term companions, a relationship that would endure for 40 years, until de Wolfe's sudden marriage to an English diplomat in 1926. Marbury's devotion to de Wolfe was unfailing, though de Wolfe maintained an emotional detachment characteristic of all her relationships.

In 1892, the two women purchased a rundown house on the corner of 17th Street and Irving Place in New York City, and it was there that de Wolfe first tried her hand at interior decorating. Stripping away the dwelling's Victorian accumulation of heavy paneled walls and somber rugs, she painted much of the house white and introduced French cane chairs, soft-toned fabrics, tile floors, transparent lamp-shades, and muslin curtains. The transformation was revolutionary at the time, and news of it sent ripples through the New York social scene, in which the women, dubbed "the Bachelors," had become quite prominent. De Wolfe had cards printed up announcing that she was available to decorate other people's houses, and there were a few immediate takers. Then in 1905, Marbury, who was on the founding board of the Colony Club, a prestigious retreat for the wives of New York's elite businessmen, helped secure de Wolfe a commission to decorate the interior of the Club's new building, designed by Stanford White. De Wolfe patterned her decoration on her memories of English country houses, using chintzes, wicker furniture, and, most startling of all, trellises. She dressed the room off the main drawing room in a dark green trellis, with a fountain, and trellised cornices and friezes, reminiscent of an 18th-century conservatory. The two-year project was a triumph and established de Wolfe in a new profession. Among the important clients of her early career was tycoon Henry Clay Frick, who hired her to decorate the private rooms of his new mansion on Fifth Avenue and paid her a healthy commission. In 1913, she published her first book, The House in Good Taste, a collection of how-to articles on interior decoration that were mostly ghostwritten by Ruby Ross Goodnow , who later became her first competitor.

Marbury, Elisabeth (1856–1933)

American author's representative, producer, and theatrical manager. Name variations: Bessie. Born in New York City on June 19, 1856; died in New York on January 22, 1933; privately educated, mostly by her father; never married; lived with Elsie de Wolfe, 1887–1926.

Elisabeth Marbury was twice decorated by the French government for services rendered to French authors. Born in New York in 1856, she was educated by her father and often attended the theater. At age 29, she organized a charity benefit for a theatrical producer that raised $5,000 and prompted him to recommend that she pursue a career in the theater. In 1888, she co-produced Little Lord Fauntleroy on Broadway and began to manage the career of its author Frances Hodgson Burnett . In 1891, she became the English and American representative for the Société de Gens de Lettres, a French writers' organization, and began to handle the English-speaking rights for French playwright Victorien Sardou. She would also represent the American interests of Georges Feydeau, Edmond Rostand, Ludovic Halévy, George Bernard Shaw, James M. Barrie, Jerome K. Jerome, and many others. Her American clients included Rachel Crothers and Clyde Fitch. Marbury had offices in Paris, London, Berlin, and Madrid. By the turn of the century, she was attaining prominence in New York as a producer of plays and musical comedies, including Love o' Mike (1916) with music by Jerome Kern, and See America First (1916), with music by Cole Porter. She was responsible for the American careers of Vernon and Irene Castle .

Marbury's live-in relationship with American interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe began in 1887 and was to endure for 40 years. With Anne Morgan and Florence J. Harriman , Marbury founded the Colony Club, the first women's social club in New York, which was a prestigious retreat for the wives of New York's elite businessmen (de Wolfe was commissioned to decorate the Club's building). When World War I broke out, the energetic and influential Marbury gave valuable aid to the Allied cause and was made honorary president of the Women's National Committee of the American Defense Society. In 1919, she was decorated by the Belgian government with the medal of Queen Elizabeth, "in recognition of services she has rendered to Belgium since 1914." Marbury, a 200-pound, five-packs-a-day smoker, died in 1933. Her funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan and was attended by, among others, the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York state.

suggested reading:

Marbury, Elisabeth. My Crystal Ball. 1923.

While working on the renovations of the Colony Club, de Wolfe planned for the restoration of what would become her masterpiece and

the passion of her life, the Villa Trianon at Versailles, the house in France Marbury had purchased for them in 1905. It was part of the great Versailles palace complex built during the reign of Louis XIV). Nancy Richardson , who wrote of the designer for House & Garden (April 1982), viewed the Villa Trianon as the ultimate example of de Wolfe's contribution to the 20th century. It reflected "her love of the way Europeans lived and of 18th-century furniture, which [suited] her own modern taste for comfort, light, and a certain bareness." It also illustrated "her lighthearted treatment of period furniture (she painted it, used it, tweaked it with the freshness of cotton rather than silk), [and] her underlying restraint and flair."

During World War I, de Wolfe and Marbury turned Villa Trianon over to the Red Cross to be used as a hospital (thus assuring it would be saved). At Marbury's insistence, de Wolfe returned to her New York decorating business, but she could not forget the devastation she had seen on a tour of the Marne battlefield. In 1916, she returned to France, volunteering as a nurse in the Ambrine Mission outside Paris, where she endured the worst aspects of war while tending to the injured French and British soldiers. At one point, she returned to America and used her celebrity and influence to raise money for the purchase of ambulances. Toward the end of the war, she helped the Ambrine flee the approaching Germans. The French government, in a tribute to her service, awarded her the Croix de Guerre and later the Legion of Honor.

After the war, de Wolfe ended her relationship with Marbury and spent increasingly more time in Europe, where she partied in Elsa Maxwell 's circle and plied her decorating schemes among a new set of rich clients. Now in her 60s, she married British diplomat Charles Mendl, whom she had met at a party on the Riviera. Theirs was a marriage of convenience and companionship, which also considerably enhanced de Wolfe's social contacts. Constantly seeking new decorating challenges, in 1931 she bought an apartment in Paris (once the home of Prince Roland de Bourbon) and created what she considered to be the perfect bathroom salon; this was described by biographers Nina Campbell and Caroline Seebohm as "a triumph of elegance and comfort, with fireplace, mirrored friezes, a divan upholstered in bold zebra skin, a tub surrounded with all-mirrored columns, taps in the shape of swans' heads, hooks in the form of dolphins, light fixtures gleaming the luster of oyster shells and mother-of-pearl." De Wolfe, perched on her zebra-skin sofa, often entertained visitors in the elegant salon de bain.

As the Depression took hold and deepened, de Wolfe's client pool began to dry up. In 1937, when her New York business declared bankruptcy, she was set loose into what Campbell and Seebohm have called "a kind of glittering limbo." Now 72, she invented herself anew with a face lift, blue-dyed hair, and an ever more strenuous regimen designed to stave off the ravages of time. Her parties grew more costly and exotic. A circus ball in 1938 included animals, jugglers, acrobats, three orchestras, and a Hawaiian guitarist strumming from a boat in the swimming pool. When World War II interrupted the festivities of her life, de Wolfe took refuge in California, purchasing what was said to be the ugliest house in Hollywood and transforming it into a showplace. For the four years she resided there, the parties continued, attended now by movie stars, writers, musicians, and a growing list of male protégés, including James Amster, who later became a well-known New York decorator, and designer Tony Duquette, who became president of the Elsie de Wolfe Foundation after her death.

I can't paint, I can't write, I can't sing. But I can decorate and run a house, and light it, and heat it, and have it like a living thing and so right that it will be the envy of the world, the standard of perfect hospitality.
—Elsie de Wolfe

At the age of 81, crippled by arthritis and hardly able to walk, de Wolfe returned to France and undertook the daunting task of restoring her beloved Villa Trianon, which had not weathered well the effects of the Nazi officers who had inhabited the villa during the occupation. Restored to its prewar glory in spite of shortages of materials and artisans, the villa was the scene of a few more parties, although de Wolfe was beginning to fade. "There she was in a small wheelchair by the pool," recalled Jean-Louis Faucigny-Lucinge, "looking terribly pathetic … in great pain … surrounded by her dogs, very made-up, still, and determined not to give in." De Wolfe finally released her tenuous hold on life on July 12, 1950. By her request, there was no funeral. She bequeathed the bulk of her estate to her stalwart maid and companion Hilda West , with the remainder going to her foundation, established to provide scholarships for young designers and to carry on her charities. The Villa Trianon was left to her friend and neighbor Paul-Louis Weiller, who in 1981 put the contents of the house up for sale.

Elsie de Wolfe's innovations and personality continue to influence decorating and decorators to this day. Designer Albert Hadley recalled that de Wolfe's doctrine of suitability, style, and taste was an integral part of his training at the prestigious Parsons School of Design. "Lots of people were as talented as she was," he said, "but she was the first, she had endured and was the best known."