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Elsie de Wolfe, photograph from The House in Good Taste 1913 [15]

Elsie de Wolfe in Red Cross nurse's uniform

Elsie de Wolfe (also known as Lady Mendl^[1]) (December 20, 1865?^[2][3] – July 12, 1950) was an American interior decorator, nominal author of the influential 1913 book "The House in Good Taste,"^[4] and a prominent figure in New York, Paris, and London society. During her married life, the press usually referred to her as Lady Mendl.

Career

In the 18th century, interior decoration was the purview of upholsterers (who sold fabrics and furniture) and architects (who employed a variety of craftsmen and artisans to complete interior design schemes for clients), while in the 19th century, the skills of designers such as Candace Wheeler and design firms such as Herter Brothers were well known. De Wolfe reaped publicity and was one of the field's most famed practitioner in the early 1900s, a period that also saw an increase of interest in interior design in the popular press. Among her clients were Anne Vanderbilt, Anne Morgan, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Elizabeth Milbank Anderson (philanthropist) and Adelaide and Henry Clay Frick [17] . She transformed the design of wealthy homes from the dark Victorian style into designs featuring light, fresh colors and a reliance on 18th-century French furniture and reproductions.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}.

In her autobiography, de Wolfe—born Ella Anderson de Wolfe and the only daughter of a Canadian-born doctor—calls herself a "rebel in an ugly world." Speaking of herself in the third person, she says that her mother said often that she was ugly, but "just what ugly was she did not know... Now she was to know." Arriving home from school, she found that her parents had redecorated the drawing-room:

She ran [in]... and looked at the walls, which had been papered in a [William] Morris design of gray palm-leaves and splotches of bright red and green on a background of dull tan. Something terrible that cut like a knife came up inside her. She threw herself on the floor, kicking with stiffened legs, as she beat her hands on the carpet.... she cried out, over and over: "It's so ugly! It's so ugly."^[10]

Hutton Wilkinson, president of the Elsie de Wolfe Foundation, notes that of course many things that De Wolfe hated, such as "pickle and plum Morris furniture," are prized by museums and designers; he believes that “De Wolfe simply didn’t like Victorian—the high style of her sad childhood—and chose to banish it from her design vocabulary."^[11]

A room designed by Elsie de Wolfe. Color photograph from The House in Good Taste 1913 [16]

De Wolfe began her professional career in theatre, making her debut as an actress in Sardou's Thermidor in 1891, playing the rôle of Fabienne with Forbes-Robertson.^[12] In 1894 she joined the Empire Stock Company under Charles Frohman. In 1901 she brought out The Way of the World under her own management at the Victoria Theatre, and later she toured the United States with this play.^[12] On stage, she was neither a total failure nor a great success; one critic called her “the leading exponent of . . . the peculiar art of wearing good clothes well.”^[13] She became interested in interior decorating as a result of staging plays, and in 1903 she left the stage to launch a career as a decorator.^[14]

In 1905, Stanford White, the architect for The Colony Club and a longtime friend, helped de Wolfe secure the commission for its interior design. The building, located at 120 Madison Avenue (near 30th Street), became the premier women's social club. (It is now occupied by the American Academy of Dramatic Arts) The success of this endeavor was a turning point and launched her on a financially successful career.^[15][16]

De Wolfe's 1926 marriage to diplomat Sir Charles Mendl was page-one news in the New York Times. The Times said that "the intended marriage comes as a great surprise to her friends," perhaps because since 1892 she had been living openly in what many observers accepted as a lesbian relationship; as the Times put it "When in New York she makes her home with Miss Elizabeth [sic] Marbury at 13 Sutton Place." Elisabeth (Bessy) Marbury, like de Wolfe, was also a career pioneer; she was one of the first theatrical agents, and her clients included Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw. During their years together, Marbury, the daughter of a prosperous New York lawyer, was initially the main support of the couple. Dave Von Drehle speaks of "the willowy De Wolfe and the masculine Marbury... cutting a wide path through Manhattan society. Gossips called them "the Bachelors." ^{[17][18][19][20][21]}

In 1926 the New York Times described de Wolfe as "one of the most widely known women in New York social life," and in 1935 as "prominent in Paris society." She was immortalized in popular songs of the day. In Irving Berlin's Harlem On My Mind the singer professes to prefer the "low-down" Harlem ambience to her "high-falutin' flat that Lady Mendl designed." One of the color schemes she popularized was the inspiration for the Cole Porter song "That Black and White Baby of Mine" (whose lyrics include the lines "All she thinks black and white/She even drinks black and white").

Her morning exercises were famous. In her 1935 autobiography, de Wolfe wrote that her daily regimen at age seventy included yoga, standing on her head, and walking on her hands. Shortly after her marriage she scandalized French diplomatic society when she attended a fancy-dress ball dressed as a Moulin Rouge dancer and made her entrance turning handsprings. A guest chided her: "Elsie, it is wonderful to be able to turn handsprings at your age. But, after all, you are, you are Charlie's wife, and do you think it is in perfect taste for the wife of a diplomat to perform acrobatics in a ballroom?" A Cole Porter lyric observed that "When you hear that Lady Mendl, standing up/Now turns a handspring landing up-/On her toes/Anything goes!"^[22][23][24]

In 1935, Paris experts named her the best-dressed woman in the world, noting that she wore what suited her best, regardless of fashion.^[25]

De Wolfe had embroidered taffeta pillows bearing the motto "Never complain, never explain."^[26] On first seeing the Parthenon, De Wolfe exclaimed "It's beige—my color!"^[27][28][29] At her house in France, the Villa Trianon, she had a dog cemetery in which every tombstone read "The one I loved the best."^[30]

American Decades opines that "she was probably the first woman to dye her hair blue, to perform handstands to impress her friends, and to cover eighteenth-century footstools in leopard-skin chintzes."^[31]

Books by Elsie de Wolfe

• de Wolfe, Elsie (1913). The House in Good Taste. New York: The Century Company.  
• de Wolfe, Elsie (2004) [1913]. Hutton Wilkinson. ed. The House in Good Taste. Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-2631-7.   (Reprint)
• de Wolfe, Elsie (1934). Elsie de Wolfe's Recipes for Successful Dining. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company.  

• de Wolfe, Elsie (1935). After All. New York: Harper and Brothers.  

See also

• The Decoration of Houses a manual of interior design by Edith Wharton and Ogden Codman
• Victorian decorative arts

External links

• Flanner, Janet (1938) "Handsprings Across the Sea," The New Yorker, 1938-01-15, as posted online[18]; profile of de Wolfe
• Works by Elsie de Wolfe at Project Gutenberg
• House The house in good taste (University of Wisconsin Digital Collections)
• Elsie de Wolfe, The House in Good Taste Reviewed by Sarah E. Mitchell
• Elsie de Wolfe House
• Elsie de Wolfe The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration by Penny Sparke ISBN 0–926494–27–9
• A Decorator’s Life Elsie De Wolfe 1865 - 1950

References

1. ^ "Lady Mendl" was frequently used by the press during her married life. "Elsie de Wolfe" is the name that appears as author of her published books; modern biographers usually use this form of the name. "Lady Elsie de Wolfe Mendl" is mentioned by The Encyclopedia of World Biography Supplement, volume 20, Gale Group, 2000. "Ella Anderson de Wolfe" is given by the Encyclopedia Britannica as her name "in full," adding "married name 'Lady Mendl'"[1]
2. ^ "LADY MENDL DIES IN FRANCE AT 84," July 13, 1950, p. 25. (Birth, death dates: with regard to her date of birth, the Times says she "rarely discussed her childhood" and "differences of opinion existed... one source said she was born on Dec. 20, 1865 on West Twenty-Second Street, a daughter of Stephen de Wolfe, a physician of Wolfville, N. S., and Georgiana (Copeland) de Wolfe of Aberdeen, Scotland.")
3. ^ Flanner, Janet (1938) "Handsprings Across the Sea," The New Yorker, 1938-01-15, as posted online[2]; re birth date, "Her passport gives the date of her birth as 1870, because a passport has to give some date and Lady Mendl enjoys a joke. The 1920-21 American Who's Who gave data which would make her now seventy-two years old; unprinted authorities say she is seventy-six; some grandmothers who went to school with her claim that she is eighty-two." (Doing the math, these would place her year of birth at about 1866, 1862, or 1856, respectively)
4. ^ Ghostwritten by Ruby Ross Wood: Abercrombie, Stanley (1999), "100 Years That Changed Our World," Interior Design 12/1/1999, as presented online [3] In 1913... Elsie de Wolfe publishes her book The House in Good Taste, based on previously published articles ghostwritten for her by Ruby Ross Wood. In 1914, Ruby Ross Wood and Rayne Adams write The Honest House.
5. ^ Flanner, Janet (1938) "Handsprings Across the Sea," The New Yorker, 1938-01-15, as posted online[4]: "Twenty years after [1904] she had made a million and an international name by inventing the new fashionable profession of interior decorating.
6. ^ Webster, Katherine (2001) "A Decorator’s Life: Elsie De Wolfe 1865 - 1950", Canadian Interior Design website [5]( "the first lady of interior decoration," "without question the first woman to create an occupation as designer")
7. ^ Webster, Katherine (2001) "A Decorator’s Life: Elsie de Wolfe 1865 - 1950", Canadian Interior Design website[6]
8. ^ Sparke, Penny; Mitchell Owens, Elsie De Wolfe (2005). Elsie De Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration. Acanthus Press. ISBN 0-926494-27-9.  : "Considered the mother of interior decoration" is from a synopsis of this book, attributed to "Book News, Inc., Portland, OR," at bookseller's website[7].
9. ^ Cummings, Mary (2004), "The Interior Realm of the Hamptons."[8]("Stretching things...")
10. ^ De Wolfe, Elsie (1935). After All. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.  ; (Reaction to Morris wallpaper, p. 2-3)
11. ^ Wilkinson, Hutton (2004) note in de Wolfe, Elsie (2004) [1913]. Hutton Wilkinson. ed. The House in Good Taste. Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-2631-7.  , p. 225
12. ^ ^{a b} New International Encyclopedia
13. ^ Franklin, Ruth (2004) "A Life in Good Taste: The fashions and follies of Elsie de Wolfe." The New Yorker, Sept. 27, 2004.[9]
14. ^ "Elsie de Wolfe to Wed Sir Charles Mendl; Their Wedding Set for Tomorrow in Paris," The New York Times, March 9, 1926, p. 1: early career as actress, "most widely known women in New York social life."
15. ^ Gray, Christopher (2003), "Streetscapes/Former Colony Club at 120 Madison Avenue; Stanford White Design, Elsie de Wolfe Interior," The New York Times, September 28, 2003[10]
16. ^ Flanner, Janet (1938) "Handsprings Across the Sea," The New Yorker, 1938-01-15, as posted online[11]: "Twenty years after [1904] she had made a million...
17. ^ "Elsie de Wolfe to Wed Sir Charles Mendl; Their Wedding Set for Tomorrow in Paris," The New York Times, March 9, 1926, p. 1: early career as actress, "most widely known women in New York social life."
18. ^ Aldrich,, Robert; Garry Wotherspoon (2002). Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History. New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-15983-0.   p. 494 ("famous lesbian relationship... openly received...")
19. ^ Bunyan, Patrick (2002). All Around the Town. Fordham Univ Press. ISBN 0-8232-1941-0.   p. 204 ("Miss Marbury... was the lesbian lover of Elsie De Wolfe...")
20. ^ Von Drehle, Dave (2003). Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0-87113-874-3.   "willowy Dewolfe and the masculine Marbury..." p. 72
21. ^ Curtis, Charlotte (1982), "A Decorative Collaboration." The New York Times[12]. ("Miss Marbury was born to a fortune she herself enhanced. Her attachment to Miss de Wolfe lasted more than 40 years, during which time Miss Marbury paid more than half of their shared household expenses.")
22. ^ De Wolfe, Elsie (1935). After All. New York: Harper and Brothers.  , p. 256: "I have a regular exercise routine... founded on the Yogi method... introduced to me by Ann Vanderbilt and her daughter, Princess Murat... I stand on my head... I can turn cart wheels. Or I walk upside-down on my hands." Costume-ball incident, p. 258. Photographs of her sitting in a twisted Yoga position and standing on her head, between pp. 142-3
23. ^ Porter lyric: Irving Berlin: A Hundred Years, Columbia CGK 40039, track 8: "Harlem On My Mind," sung by Ethel Waters: 1:44
24. ^ Musicals! 15 Hit Songs from Classic Musical Shows, Angel CDC 0777 7 54835 2 9, track 8, "Anything Goes," 4:35
25. ^ "PARIS EXPERTS PICK 20 'BEST DRESSED'; Ten American Women Among Those Considered Leaders in Smart Attire. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt One. Ina Claire, Constance Bennett, and Kay Francis Others—Duchess of Kent Among Americans." The New York Times, November 26, 1935, p. 27. Two days later, November 28th, p. 33, the Times reported that Lady Mendl, just arriving in Paris, said she did not agree and that Mrs. Reginald Fellowes (a.k.a. Daisy Fellowes) of Paris and London was the best-dressed woman anywhere. The Times reported Lady Mendl as "scoffing at the report that she spent $40,000 a year for clothes. She spends around $10,000 annually—certainly no more than $15,000—she declared." $10,000 in 1935 dollars is roughly equivalent to $138,000 in 2005 dollars [13]
26. ^ Hadley, Albert (2004): Foreword to de Wolfe, Elsie (2004) [1913]. Hutton Wilkinson. ed. The House in Good Taste. Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-2631-7.  , p. xv
27. ^ Wilkinson, Hutton (2004), note in de Wolfe, Elsie (2004) [1913]. Hutton Wilkinson. ed. The House in Good Taste. Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-2631-7.  , p. 229 ("Beige, my color!")
28. ^ Rich, B. Ruby (2001): "Frames of mind: Dykes take on decor heaven." The Advocate. Los Angeles: Aug 14, 2001., Iss. 843/4; p. 64 ("It's beige—my color!")
29. ^ Flanner, Janet (1938) "Handsprings Across the Sea," The New Yorker, 1938-01-15, as posted online[14]
30. ^ Wilkinson, Hutton (2004) note in De Wolfe, Elsie (2004) [1913]. Hutton Wilkinson. ed. The House in Good Taste. Rizzoli. ISBN 0-8478-2631-7.  , p. 232 ("The one I loved the best")
31. ^ "Elsie de Wolfe." American Decades. Gale Research, 1998