Record of the Rich

"KING LEHR" AND THE GILDED AGE-- Elizabeth Drexel Lehr--Lippincott ($3).

In Paris in 1929 Mrs. Elizabeth Drexel Lehr heard that her husband was dead. To the daughter of Philadelphia Banker Joseph William Drexel, that event meant that the "tragic farce" of a 28-year marriage had ended, that she was now free to tell her story. A bitter, disillusioned book, "King Lehr" is memorable for the lurid light it throws on U. S. Society of the Gilded Age, may confidently be opened as one of the most startling and scandalously intimate records of life among the wealthy yet written by one of them.

A young widow when Edith Gould introduced her to Harry Symes Lehr, Elizabeth Drexel was amused and entertained by him, found him tactful, with a flair for drawing out unsuspected talents, with an al- most feminine desire to please and say the right thing. Penniless, Lehr was a "little brother of the rich," hobnobbed with Wanamakers, Goulds, Fishes, Astors, Oelrichs. Born in Baltimore, son of a once-wealthy importer, he consciously made entertaining rich people his career. Tom Wanamaker was glad to let him occupy his apartment. Wetzel made his clothes free. Kaskel & Kaskel gave him the latest designs in shirts and underwear, only asked that he let it be discreetly known where he got them. Black, Starr & Frost provided watches and cigaret-cases. Mrs. Clarence Mackay got her husband to let him send Postal telegrams for nothing. Mrs. Fish, Mrs. Gould and Mrs. Vanderbilt gave him passes on their husbands' railroads. He advised women on their clothes and social affairs and husbands did not distrust him. Among multimillionaires who, as Elizabeth Drexel Lehr says, "might hold up the market but could not prevent conversation slumping heavily at their own tables." Lehr's levity and social resourcefulness made him a valued companion, although malicious society writers sometimes made fun of his spectacular dress, his talent for taking feminine roles at amateur theatricals.

Sentimental, unworldly Elizabeth Drexel was amused and touched when Harry Lehr told her of the difficulties of living by one's wits. Courtship was brief and high-minded, although Elizabeth was hurt that Lehr pressed her for exact details of her fortune, wanted a marriage settlement. She gave him $25,000 a year and expenses. When he took his fiancee to lunch with Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, Mrs. Oelrichs, Mrs. Belmont, they passed judgment on her, told him frankly, "We will make her the fashion. You need have no fear." But on their wedding night he dined alone, then, pale and nervous, told her that he had married her for her money, did not and never would love her, at last confessed that she was physically repulsive to him.

The bewildered bride was too humiliated to confide in anyone, would not hurt her strict Philadelphia parents with the scandal of a divorce. Devoted and attentive in public, Lehr made her a social favorite. They took part in social life during its most ostentatious period, attended the Harriman ball that cost $100,000, the $200,000 James Hyde ball that became a great scandal, caused Hyde's disgrace. For that ball Sherry's was made over by Stanford White as a reproduction of the court of Louis XVI; Rejane was imported from France to recite Racine; the floor of the supper-room was strewn with rose petals. Lehr made more gossip at the ball by refusing diamond-back terrapin and the finest wines, eating only hard-boiled eggs and drinking only cold milk.

Life in Newport, Saratoga, New York, Paris, was a round of extreme, extravagant, vulgar display, lit occasionally with sulphurous scandals, with conflicts that ended in tragedy or madness. The John Drexels had 26 carriages. Mrs. Drexel had ropes of pearls made into a Sam Brown belt. Moral standards were confused. Once James Van Alen picked up a local charmer and brought her home with him, outraged Newport ladies who broke their engagements for lunch. Mr. Van Alen's strict daughter refused to make the girl welcome, but agreed to lunch with her for $10,000.

Grand Duke Boris said Newport society was the most luxurious he had ever seen. His visit brought to a head the quarrel between Mrs. Goelet and Mrs. Fish, who were fighting over young Jimmie Cutting. Mrs. Goelet entertained the Grand Duke at her home. Mrs. Fish invited guests to meet the Grand Duke at a dinner and ball, but refused to include Jimmie Cutting. Mrs. Goelet demanded that he be invited. Mrs. Fish refused. Mrs. Goelet therefore would not let the Grand Duke attend the Fish party given in his honor. Unwilling to disappoint guests anxious to see royalty, Harry Lehr masqueraded as the Tsar of Russia, made a joke of the conflict, amused the absent Grand Duke.

Undisciplined, purposeless, irresponsible, the great names in "King Lehr" and the Gilded Age careen from vulgarity to greater vulgarity, while poseurs prey on ignorance and snobbishness, social climbers spend fortunes trying to get accepted. Elizabeth Drexel Lehr fell in love, waited until after her mother's death to plan her divorce. Then her lover died. Harry Lehr had quieted down, showed symptoms of acute melancholia before the War, which finally put an end to his way of life. He grew more & more morose; his mind slowly failed; he became panic-stricken at the thought of his despised wife's leaving him. She accepted an impossible situation, gave him money, buried herself in War work. Upon his death he left her, as one last malicious joke, all his "houses, bonds . . . carriages, yachts, motor cars," except those in the U. S. and France--in other words, nothing but debts. Later his widow found his diary, understood for the first time that her witty, audacious, unscrupulous husband was homosexual.

Museum Piece

LIFE WITH FATHER--Clarence Day-- Knopf ($2).

Three years ago Clarence Day amused readers with a slight, shrewd, sentimental collection of sketches called God and My Father, dealing with the many difficulties in the relationship of the elder Day to religion in general, his wife's religion in particular. Father was stubborn, spirited, redheaded, nothing if not practical. The God visioned by clergymen and his wife struck him as distinctly unrealistic, overemotional, inefficient and certainly not a good executive type. Father thought of Heaven in terms of a good club; he snorted with exasperation when he took his troubles to God, and sometimes shock his fist and roared, "I say have mercy, damn it!" Although God and My Father had value as a recapture of middle-class religious beliefs and customs in New York's 1890's, readers were more interested in the brief, incidental provocative glimpses of the Day household, the rou-tine domestic crises, the wifely art with which Mrs. Day controlled her thundering husband.

Last week Author Day's Life with Father, chosen by the Book-of-the-Month Club, gave readers a more detailed account of existence in a well-to-do broker's family in a settled and serene period of U. S. history. For young Clarence Day it was a great treat to visit his father's dusty Wall Street office on Saturday mornings, riding to work on the steam-driven Sixth Avenue Elevated, watching his father salute acquaintances by touching cane to ilk hat brim. He listened to bewhiskered brokers fuming about the proposal of the Knights of Labor for an eight-hour day, watched bookkeepers remove their detachable cuffs, carried messages through a financial district that rarely saw a woman visitor, never a female employe. Father lunched at Delmonico's, stopped for half an hour at his club on his way home from work, fussed regularly over wishy-washy editorials in morning papers, considered his wife's family damnably inconsiderate, registered automatic, unfailing, profane disapproval of whatever happened in Washington. It never occurred to him to try to fathom points of view other than his own, or respect practices and opinions which he thought unreasonable. When he decided his son should learn music, he bought him a violin and hired a teacher, would not listen when his wife, the teacher, neighbors and Clarence complained that the youngster produced only horrible, tuneless sounds, insisted they were not strict enough with the boy.

Not entirely devoted to tempests in the domestic teapot, Life with Father is most readable in its accounts of the rare moments when Father's self-confidence was shaken by his wife's distress, or when small bewilderments overwhelmed him. Father Day worried over money, fretted at Mrs. Day's inability to keep her household accounts straight, tried to force his boys to a discipline that would have floored most adults, rarely relaxed, regarded Clarence "like a humorous potter, pausing to consider--for the moment-- an odd bit of clay.'' Writing with affectionate good nature, Son Day neverthe-less makes it clear that Father was a trial. In college Clarence sowed his wild oats with a sense of Father's disapproval accompanying him on his revels, and when he got into debt his knowledge of what Father would say clung to him like a wet rag. Comparing his household with that of friends, he writes without humor but with strained family pride: "Our home life was stormy but spirited. It always had tang. When Father was unhappy, he said so. He poured out his grief with such vigor that it soon cleared the air."

Readers may not be amused by accounts of essentially painful situations written as if they were good jokes, but they are likely to remember Father, like a quaint museum piece, dusted off and displayed as the last of the oldfashioned, strongwilled, unself-conscious individualists of pre-War days.

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