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Elsie de Wolfe: A Life in the High Style
This is the first full-scale life of one of the most flamboyant and influential women of the late 19th and 20th century.
Actress, tastemaker, businesswoman, feminist, and hostess, Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl, reigned supreme over turn-of-the-century New York, cafe-society Paris and wartime Hollywood. Her fabulous parties were 'de rigueur'; her skills as an interior decorator..which profession she virtually invented...revolutionized 20th century design; her advice on art and decoration helped build the collections of Fricks, Vanderbilts and Morgans; her derring-do....she flew lines during World War I ...earned her the French Legion of Honor. And the eccentricities of her personal life...most notably her 'bachelor' relationship with powerful impresario and politician Bessie Marbury, followed by her sudden marriage to the knight with the shadowy past, Sir Charles Mendl...kept gossip columns going for decades.
She marched down Fifth Ave for women's rights, taught Wallis Simpson how to make a home fit for a King, and helped transform a row of tenements on Manhattan's east side into Sutton Place. On Broadway, Ethel Barrymore understudied her. Around her swirled everyone from the richest families of Europe and America, to the great names of Hollywood, to such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Cecil Beaton.
Actress, tastemaker, businesswoman, feminist, and hostess, Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl, reigned supreme over turn-of-the-century New York, cafe-society Paris and wartime Hollywood. Her fabulous parties were 'de rigueur'; her skills as an interior decorator..which profession she virtually invented...revolutionized 20th century design; her advice on art and decoration helped build the collections of Fricks, Vanderbilts and Morgans; her derring-do....she flew lines during World War I ...earned her the French Legion of Honor. And the eccentricities of her personal life...most notably her 'bachelor' relationship with powerful impresario and politician Bessie Marbury, followed by her sudden marriage to the knight with the shadowy past, Sir Charles Mendl...kept gossip columns going for decades.
She marched down Fifth Ave for women's rights, taught Wallis Simpson how to make a home fit for a King, and helped transform a row of tenements on Manhattan's east side into Sutton Place. On Broadway, Ethel Barrymore understudied her. Around her swirled everyone from the richest families of Europe and America, to the great names of Hollywood, to such luminaries as Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Gertrude Stein, and Cecil Beaton.
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
366 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 1982
About the author
Jane S. Smith
10 books3 followersJane S. Smith writes about the intersection of science, natural history, and popular culture. She received her B.A. from Simmons College and her Ph.D. from Yale University and has taught at Northwestern University on topics ranging from twentieth century fiction to the history of public health.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
May 23, 2011
I am obsessed with Elsie de Wolfe. On seeing the Parthenon for the first time, she exclaimed, "Oh! It's beige - MY color." Witty, wicked, talented to her toes, she led a gorgeous and busy life, hobnobbing with the glitterati, decorating for the Windsors, the Vanderbilts, the Fricks and more. When the bill came for a week's stay in the hospital, de Wolfe sent them back an even bigger bill for her services to them - from her sickbed, she'd redecorated the ugly wing in which she'd stayed. She had panache. And more than a little chutzpah - but what a success she made of her life!
March 25, 2024
I've been reading as much as I can on Elsie de Wolfe. All told, I think I found about six books through the interlibrary loan system. You walk into any public library anymore and think "Where are the books?" I have two more books for delivery and then I'll consider myself done with Elsie. I'm surprised I'm giving her so much time. Writer Anita Loos once wrote about Elsie, "She has dollar signs for eyes." That about sums it up.
Early on, Elsie (ever the aesthete) threw tantrums over how her parents redecorated the dining room and she got out of her small town from city to Canada to Scotland and back stepping all along the way. She was a terrible actress by all accounts yet she hooked in to a very wealthy woman and they lived together in some sort of sympathetic arrangement until Elsie cut the cord and married in her sixties to a titled Englishman--not highly wealthy, but enough to keep him going while she plowed along. Having rich friends, especially rich patrons, will get you what you want. I'm surprised people put up with it, but apparently they did, with a wink and a grin. (She charged her own husband for "his" use of electricity in their mutual home.)
Most people who read this state that it is well researched, and that it is. In the end though, with her rooms so carefully and expensively cultivated, you wonder about the self-absorption and shallowness of her life versus other women of her era, like the abandoned Bess Marbury and how well they lived their own lives to benefit those less fortunate.
Her family contested the will and were awarded "some," but there wasn't much left and her personal aide, who was counting on a comfortable retirement and her husband were left to fend for themselves. All of the properties have been destroyed or changed hands several times over. Such are values.
Early on, Elsie (ever the aesthete) threw tantrums over how her parents redecorated the dining room and she got out of her small town from city to Canada to Scotland and back stepping all along the way. She was a terrible actress by all accounts yet she hooked in to a very wealthy woman and they lived together in some sort of sympathetic arrangement until Elsie cut the cord and married in her sixties to a titled Englishman--not highly wealthy, but enough to keep him going while she plowed along. Having rich friends, especially rich patrons, will get you what you want. I'm surprised people put up with it, but apparently they did, with a wink and a grin. (She charged her own husband for "his" use of electricity in their mutual home.)
Most people who read this state that it is well researched, and that it is. In the end though, with her rooms so carefully and expensively cultivated, you wonder about the self-absorption and shallowness of her life versus other women of her era, like the abandoned Bess Marbury and how well they lived their own lives to benefit those less fortunate.
Her family contested the will and were awarded "some," but there wasn't much left and her personal aide, who was counting on a comfortable retirement and her husband were left to fend for themselves. All of the properties have been destroyed or changed hands several times over. Such are values.
April 16, 2011
Who knew? She looks like a tight assed old lady on the cover, but her life was remarkably unconventional, and interesting and fun- a pretty cool story
September 19, 2012
loved it. I love reading about the high style! and she and her partner Bessie Marbury were wonderfully independent. they made the lives they wanted for themselves.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews