The Last Week of March, 1916
Music, a matinee and great mourning were on Kate Roosevelt’s agenda for the last days of March, 1916.
David Mannes
Her week began by going to see, “A recital of Negro music put on by the Colored School Settlement.” Although her husband, the world famous, organ maker, Hilborne Roosevelt had been dead for 30 years, his impact on the world of music was still very much alive in New York City and his widow, Kate Roosevelt, did her bit to elongate his legacy. The concert she wrote about in her diary was the brain-child of David Mannes, a gifted violinist who had studied in Harlem with composer and violinist, John Thomas Douglass, the son of a freed slave.
Walter Damrosch, Symphony Orchestra
Mannes was a member of the New York Symphony Orchestra, a musical institution founded by Hilborne Roosevelt and Leopold Damrosch in 1877. On this day, in 1916, the founders were dead but what they envisioned had taken on a life of its own and was flourishing through the participation of loyal family members like Hilborne’s widow, Kate Roosevelt, and Leopold’s son, Walter Damrosch, who became the symphony director after his father’s death.
W.E.B. Dubois
Leopold Damrosch’s daughter, Clara, married the violinist, David Mannes, and the family’s musical chords grew stronger. In 1912, Mannes founded the Colored Music Settlement School located at 6 West 131st Street as a way to bridge divides between races and social classes in America. He believed that music was a universal language to be shared by all. The African-American social activist, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, also known as W.E.B. Dubois was instrumental in the music school’s founding. Mannes also established the Mannes Music College, originally located on East 70th Street. It is now part of the New School.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
For many years, David Mannes conducted concerts like the one Kate Roosevelt attended at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Great Hall, possibly accompanied by her friends, Juliet Morgan Hamilton and Louisa Morgan Satterlee, the two eldest daughters of J.P. Morgan. The fantastically wealthy financier was a sponsor of such musical endeavors and an advocate for the appreciation of art in all forms. Along with Kate Roosevelt’s uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, Sr. and others, J.P. Morgan founded the Metropolitan Museum Art on Fifth Avenue and 80thStreet in 1870.
Taking a break from music, the next day, Kate and her eternal sidekick, Ettie Shippen, went to a matinee at the Booth Theater at 22 West 44th Street to see The Fear Market.
Amelie Rives, ca. 1890
The theater was named for the Shakespearean actor, Edwin Booth, whose deranged brother, John Wilkes Booth, shot President Abraham Lincoln to death. Coincidentally, the play produced there in March, 1916 was written by Amelie Rives, who was the goddaughter of Lincoln’s nemesis, the South’s illustrious, Civil War General, Robert E. Lee.
The play was an interesting one based on blackmail, deceit and scandal. As stated in Kate Roosevelt’s diary, it was, “Quite interesting and very well done,” but the play’s plot was placid compared with the real life story of its author.
Quick or the Dead by Amelie Rives
Amelie Rives was born to a distinguished family in Richmond, Virginia and began writing a string of scandalous novels at a young age. Her most scintillating was Quick or the Dead and much of her life was lived according to its morals. She married John Jacob Astor’s great-great grandson, John Armstrong “Archie” Chanler, the victim of a trust-fund, who in addition to his thoroughbred lineage, was insane.
According to the book, Archie and Amelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age by Donna M. Lucey, their public and scandalous romance unfolded far better than fiction. The bluebloods met at a ball in Newport, Rhode Island and almost immediately her Southern charm and his Northern swagger and social status set off sensual fireworks. The couple settled at her family’s mansion known as Castle Hill in Virginia, but the newlywed’s life soon became unspooled as Archie’s mental illness manifested itself in the most bizarre behavior.
One of Archie’s brothers wanted to get him back to New York to try and have him committed to the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum. Located in White Plains, it was called the “madhouse for the rich,” where the silverware and table linens were monogrammed. Just like in one of Amelie’s novels, the plot thickened when Archie’s old friend, the architect Stanford White, whom he fondly referred to as “Fuzz Buzz” and family friend, then, New York’s Commissioner of Police Theodore Roosevelt lured him back to New York where a judge declared him insane and committed him to the asylum for “silver spoons.”
Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy
After Amelie divorced Archie, she married the penniless, Russian artist and aristocrat, Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy, and soon became addicted to morphine. It is said that her silver syringe is still at Rokeby, the run-down mansion located in the Hudson Valley, where some impoverished Astor ancestors still call home.
Rokeby, the Astor Mansion
And so it seemed that drama both real and imagined was put on the back burner for a few days as Kate and her family went about their usual routine of scurrying around the city, but that all changed with a phone call.
Madeleine Astor, wife of John Jacob Astor IV
By this time, Georgina Morton Shippen had moved to a smaller residence at 126 East 39th Street in New York City. Dr. Reuel Kimball made a house call and informed Kate and her five sisters and brother that their mother was seriously ill with a spot of pneumonia on her lung. Dr. Kimball was the trusted family physician who summered near the Shippen’s cottage in Sea Bright, New Jersey and maintained a prestigious medical practice in New York City. He was also Mrs. John Jacob Astor IV’s physician. She survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and Dr. Kimball was at the dock to meet her when she arrived back in New York safely and five month’s pregnant. But even his reputation as one of the finest physicians in New York City could not save the 87 year-old matriarch. Kate’s diary transcribed the sad news, “Dear Mother died at 2:30 p.m. We were all here, six daughters and one son.”
Church of the Incarnation
A crumpled clipping from the New York Times read, “Georgina Elmina Shippen, widow of William W. Shippen and daughter of the late George W. Morton and Caroline Denning passed away at her New York City residence. Funeral services will be held at the Church of the Incarnation at Madison Avenue and 35th Street and the family kindly requests that flowers are to be omitted.”
It is a tradition in the Episcopal Church that flowers should be kept to a minimum at burial services, so as not to distract from the sanctity of the ceremony, but music is encouraged.
The month of March began with music and memories and so it would end for Kate Roosevelt, seated at her mother’s funeral mass in a front row pew listening to the sacred music emanating from an organ built and installed in the church by her late-husband, Hilborne L. Roosevelt.
Sharon Hazard’s Dowager’s Diary appears on Thursday.
Photo One:
Archie Chanler on horseback
Holsinger Studio Collection, University of Virginia
Photo Two:
David Mannes
Library of Congress
Photo three:
Walter Damrosch, Symphony Orchestra
wiki
Photo Four:
W.E.B. Dubois
Library of Congress
Photo Five:
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Postcard
Photo Six:
Amelie Rives, ca. 1890
wiki
Photo Seven:
Book Cover:
Quick or the Dead by Amelie Rives
Albert and Shirley Small Collection, University of Virginia
Photo Eight:
Prince Pierre Troubetzkoy
University of Virginia Library Collection
Photo Nine:
Rokeby, the Astor Mansion
Historic Structures.com
Photo Ten:
Madeleine Astor, wife of John Jacob Astor IV
Library of Congress
Photo eleven:
Church of the Incarnation
Madison Avenue, New York City
nycago.org
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