We dine at 9 on steak and wine

 Helen Ridder, around 1940
(Screen shot of newspaper photograph)

Just a party girl, said her stepson’s third wife.  Ply Helen with a streak of Orange Blossom cocktails and she’ll laugh all night. 

She buried her past in the drawer where she kept her diaries. Born in St. Louis in 1885, one of seven children, Helen Bush was reared largely by her grandmother. In 1896, her father died and her mother went off to work as a teacher.

Helen was fortunate to have an enterprising brother, John, who had climbed the ladder at the Brown Shoe Company. By the time the World’s Fair came to St. Louis in 1904, John’s title was junior executive and he cut a deal that would transform the company.  At the fair, he met the newspaper cartoonist R. F. Outcault, creator of two famous characters: the Yellow Kid and Buster Brown.

John Bush persuaded his company to purchase the rights to the Buster Brown character and Buster’s dog, Tige.  Sketched together, they became the emblem of Brown Shoe’s children’s line.  Eventually John became president of the company.

"Buster Brown" cartoon character before he and his dog,
Tige, became the Brown Shoe Company trademark.

Meanwhile, Helen was just dyin’ out there in St. Louis. Fortunately, through her brother she met a widower with two children: H. Sherman Howes, president of the Howes Leather Company in Boston. They married around 1915.   

Soon enough, Helen became restless.  With the Great War over, she divorced Mr. Howes and sailed off on a cruise ship to Bermuda. On board she met William Leonard Shearer of Boston, also a widower.  Within a year they married. 

As president of a furniture company founded by his father in 1835, Mr. Shearer ran a big showroom and a factory.  He owned a large stone house on Bay State Road, which ran along the Charles River.  He and Helen lolled about on his yacht, The Paprika.  When things got dull, they traveled to Europe.

Passport photographs, William and Helen Shearer, early 1920s
(Ancestry.com)

But the twenties were drawing to a close.  Time to move on.

Helen’s third husband, the newspaper tycoon Bernard H. Ridder, fell in love with her at the Lake Placid Inn in upstate New York while his wife was traveling abroad during the summer of 1929.  As fast as he could, Ridder installed Helen in a Manhattan hotel.  Subsequently, Helen divorced Shearer on grounds of incompatibility and went to Reno to marry Ridder.

Helen stayed nearly a decade with Mr. Ridder, who had been married twice before himself.  But in 1939 she socked him with a divorce suit citing cruelty.  In court, Ridder claimed that he owed Helen nothing because she had carried on an affair with a man named Neil English.  What evidence did Ridder bring forth?  It was Helen’s diary, snuck from her dresser drawer.

 “The diary’s presence in court,” one reporter noted,

once more brings up the dark mystery of why women, especially those who are skating on the thinnest legal ice, persist in setting down the secret archives of the heart, knowing they may be used against them in court.

The diary excerpts that Ridder’s lawyer read in court relate to an automobile journey taken by Helen, Neil English, and a chaperone of some sort named Mary Harris.  As the three headed toward the Adirondacks, Helen wrote:

How cold! Very cold. What is Neil saying about the warmth of Havana? We try to comfort him. The invigorating mountain air will do him good but he is cold and cross and wishing he were in Havana.  That does not sound like a bold Lothario running away with another man’s wife. . .

 The group moved on to Saranac, where a cabin awaited.

What an adorable little cottage with a well-equipped kitchen to mix our beloved orange blossoms.  It is all breathtaking.  We dine at 9 on steak and wine and so grow warmer and a little kinder. . . Later we discover dancing in the casino where Neil and I entertain with a sensational rhumba.

Broadway, the main street in Saranac, 1930s

Back to the trial. . . .

Eventually Neil took the stand dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, blue shirt, and “a tasteful tie of many colors,” according to a reporter.  Turned out he was 20 years younger than Helen Ridder, and a jewelry salesman to boot. 

The judge granted Helen a legal separation and an annual allowance of $6,000. After the trial ended in 1940, Helen lodged briefly at a residential hotel. But she ended up in a Park Avenue apartment, which perhaps was her goal all along.

"Encore les Orange Blossoms!" as Helen liked to say.

Two recipes for Orange Blossom Cocktail,
pre-Prohibition at the top. 

See posts January 28, January 24, January 20 2016.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2017/09/we-dine-at-9-on-steak-and-wine.html

Mr. & Mrs. Bernard H. Ridder

Mount Vernon, N.Y., 1910

After her father’s death, Nellie’s life meandered along. There she is, in the social pages of the Mount Vernon papers, the guest at numerous lawn parties for children. 

It’s pleasant to imagine her chasing bubbles from out of the shadows near the deep porches where adults, including her mother’s patron, spoke quietly.

The city’s first treasurer who subsequently became postmaster and vice president of the First National Bank of Mount Vernon, Clarence S. McClellan served as co-administrator of Daniel Hickey’s estate because Hickey died without a will. Claiming “no business experience,” Hickey’s widow petitioned the court for McClellan, a calm man with a large mustache, to join her.

As guardian of her underage children, Ellen Hickey would provide to the Surrogate’s Court an annual report of expenses made on her youngest daughter’s behalf until Nellie turned 21 in 1908.

In the meantime, the pince-nez’d Reverend Flynn, who had presided at Daniel Hickey Sr.’s funeral, watched over Nellie at the Sacred Heart Convent. There she struggled with catechism. Nellie had distractions.

Records of Surrogate’s Court show that Nellie sought medical attention at least twice monthly. Ellen Hickey must have felt both stricken and annoyed each time Nellie visited the doctor, which necessitated hiring a carriage. One can’t help but imagine Victorian-style woman’s troubles.

Robert Howe, M.D.                                   $  6.00

Wm. Stump, M.D.                                     $  3.00

Jos. J. Sinnott, M.D.

Services at Hospital                     $157.14

Visit                                                    15.00

Visit                                                     6.00

Visit                                                   40.00

Dr. J.J. Higgins

              Visit                                               $   5.00

              Visit                                               $ 10.00

J.J. Thomson, M.D.                                 $   5.00

               

It’s fair to conclude that Dr. Joseph John Sinnott – a young surgeon who graduated from Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1903 – performed an operation on Nellie when she was 21 years old.  

Dr. Sinnott might have made a good husband for Nellie but her mother likely hoped for a man who would amass greater wealth. To that end, Ellen Hickey invested persistently in her daughter’s appearance and social standing:

Mrs. H. Fowler, dressmaker                 $   6.00

                                                                          1.50

                                                                          1.00

A.S. Clark, dressmaking                         $ 55.19

Rosen & Yale, tailor                                $  2.00

M. Jenks, dressmaker                             $20.47

B. Altman & Co.                                       $35.45

                                                                          8.70

                                                                          5.30

                                                                          2.22

M. Kereng, dressmaker                           $  7.25

                                                                     $22.95

R.H. Macy, dry goods                              $  4.44

Stern Brothers, trimmings                     $  2.04

Ufland Millinery Co.                                $22.00

                                                                          3.00

                                                                             

The Manhattan hat shop owned by Moe Ufland was known widely for its extravagant creations: crown of French-blue fancy straw, having the side-crown covered with black poppy leaves, two black spires upstanding at the left back, as described in the Millinery Trade Review in 1914.

Trimmed up and unchaperoned, Nellie was sent off to mingle in places where she might find a husband. In Larchmont, N.Y., she stayed at the stylish Bevan House one block from the beach along Long Island Sound; at Lakewood, N.J., she luxuriated at the Laurel-in-the-Pines Hotel, a winter resort where trains purportedly arrived every 20 minutes from New York City. 

She wasn’t a gold-digger – the term came into use in 1915 to describe working-class women and showgirls who sought wealthy husbands – but it’s easy to imagine Nellie dressing for dinner, lounging in the lobby, hoping to catch someone’s eye.

Hotel Laurel-in-the-Pines, circa 1900 

That person would be Bernard H. Ridder, the newly-divorced son of the publisher of the Staats-Zeitung, the nation’s largest German language weekly newspaper. Bernard and Nellie Hickey eloped on December 31, 1915, two months after the death of Ridder’s father.

The old man did not leave his sons in a good spot. The company had lost money through risky investments in typesetting equipment, although Bernard and his brothers would get it back on track and build it into the large newspaper corporation, Ridder Publications. 

Meantime, back in Mount Vernon, Nellie’s mother moved to the nicer side of town. Eventually Daniel Hickey, Jr. followed their deceased father into politics, becoming a ward supervisor, supervisor of elections, and State Tax Appraiser. He and his siblings continued to live at home.

So the question is: how did Nellie and Bernard come to know each other?  

Very likely they met in 1915, through efforts to create a nationwide organization called Friends of Peace, which opposed U.S. entry to World War I. Its immediate demands were that the U.S. stop exporting ammunition to England and that England lift its blockade of German boats. Bernard Ridder and his father were among the group’s organizers.

In September 1915, Friends of Peace held its first big meeting, a two-day convention, in Chicago. 

Many who attended – including Nellie – were Americans of German and Irish descent who opposed any alliance between the U.S. and England. Labor unions considered joining in, but were scared off by the anti-U.S. rhetoric. 

In this way, Friends of Peace differed from pacifist groups like the Woman’s Peace Party.

One wonders what lesson Bernard Ridder took away from World War I, after which the family fell under suspicion for publishing pro-German propaganda. Two decades later, he would be drawn to Germany after Hitler rose to power, going so far as to meet and publish a sympathetic interview with the Fuhrer.

By that time, Bernard had divorced Nell.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/01/mr-mrs-bernard-h-ridder.html

See January 20 + January 24, 2016 posts.

Mrs. Ridder

Advertisement for 555 Park Avenue, where Nellie Ridder lived
after her divorce from Bernard H. Ridder, Jr.

Three ex-wives of a newspaper tycoon: Hilda, Nellie, and Helen, their lives branching into the world. Every morning Hilda sat before a three-way mirror to put her hair in pin curls, even on the day that she filed a divorce action against her first and only husband, Bernard H. Ridder.

Nell, as she came to call herself, shook hands with President Wilson during her honeymoon with Hilda’s former husband, Bernard H. Ridder, at the Homestead resort in Virginia.

Helen met her third husband, Bernard H. Ridder, at the Lake Placid Inn during the summer of 1929 while his second wife, Nell, was traveling in Europe.  

The man to whom they were married successively across three decades declared bankruptcy in 1934 in order to get out from under an alimony suit brought by Nell.

A year earlier Ridder had crossed the Atlantic to interview Adolf Hitler for the German-American newspaper Staats-Zeitung, which he owned. That fall, heckled by Nazi supporters at a convention of the United German Societies in New York, he recalled, “I suffered a great deal for defending Germany during the World War” and warned the delegates not to “stir racial agitation.”

However, Helen told her stepson later, one night in the late 1930s Bernard walked in the door and announced, “Pack a bag, we’re moving to Germany. Just one bag” – that’s what stuck with the languid Helen. I said no and that’s how the marriage ended, Helen confided. Did she object to living in Germany or to the single suitcase?

Mr. Ridder did not move to Germany, but a newspaper account of Helen’s own alimony suit described Bernard’s discovery of his wife’s 1938 car trip from the Catskills to the Adirondacks to Cape Cod with a handsome younger man.  

Scandalous Helen Ridder:
from the San Antonio Light, December 8, 1940

After Helen, Bernard quit the East Coast and moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he met his fourth wife, the love of his life.

The three ex-wives stayed in Manhattan. The 1942 telephone book reveals “Mrs. Hilda Ridder” at 667 Madison Avenue, “Mrs. Bernard H. Ridder” (Nell) at 555 Park Avenue, and “Mrs. Helen B. Ridder” at 480 Park Avenue: close enough to pass each other regularly on the street. 

In 1960 the three women still lived a quick cab ride away from each other on the Upper East Side, their doorman residences made possible with Bernard’s money.

They loathed their ex-husband yet he enabled them to carry on stylishly through the postwar era, attending opening nights and entertaining those children and grandchildren they were allowed to see. The women were born in 1885, 1886, and 1887, years that slid fast into the past along with whatever else might have been true.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2016/01/mrs-ridder.html

See posts January 20, 24, 28 2016 + September 20, 2017.

Otto Luyties, Part 2

Patent, Otto G. Luyties

Otto Luyties’ younger brother, Henry, disappeared from New York City in September 1912. The men were ten years apart. Henry, who was deaf, worked at the Dabs Cigarette Company, which bought out their father’s wine and liquor importing business a few years after his death.

Otto contacted the police when Henry had been missing for ten days. He also hired a private detective. The police reported that Henry left his apartment with two suitcases and a pet Chinese yellow chow dog. He gave the dog to a friend and stepped into a taxi on Riverside Drive.

An orderly at St. Vincent’s Hospital said he saw a man who looked like Henry Luyties, seemingly deranged or drunk. A representative of the Kisko Chemical Corporation told Otto that it had received an order for face cream from someone named Henry Luyties who lived in Chicago.

Then came a report that Henry actually left the dog with a friend in Port Washington. The friend was Addison Mizner, a high-society architect who went on to greater fame and fortune designing resorts and mansions along the south Florida coast in the 1920s. After visiting Mizner, Henry strolled to the Port Washington train station with a man named Dodge. Henry was thinking about going to the Maine woods for a rest, Dodge told the police.

Four months later Henry turned up at a hotel in Denver. Otto told a reporter that the family had known where he was since October but had “not wanted any further publicity given to the case.” Otto’s explanation of what happened involved Pennsylvania Station, the Chicago Yacht Club, and much more.

“The whole thing was the erratic action of a man who was suffering from a nervous prostration and desired to get away temporarily from work,” Otto said. “In his state of mind he never looked at a New York newspaper and knew nothing of the stir his disappearance had caused.”  

Until the advent of Social Security, Americans could disappear easily without a trace.  Therefore the discovery of Henry was fortunate – although who knows if he wanted to be found? Either way, Otto managed the situation well despite his probable anger.

Meanwhile, Otto’s younger sister, Hilda Marie, struggled in her marriage.

In 1906, Hilda married Bernard H. Ridder, son of the publisher of the Staats-Zeitung. This paper was the largest German language daily newspaper in the United States. The marriage produced a son but proved to be a bad match. In 1914 Hilda filed for divorce.

Just around that time, Bernard met the woman who would become his second wife. She was Nellie J. Hickey, daughter of an Irish political boss from Mount Vernon, N.Y. Chaperoned by the wife of a Columbia history professor, Nellie attended a convention in Chicago sponsored by “Friends of Peace,” an organization that opposed American entry to World War I.

It’s easy to understand why U.S. citizens of German ancestry opposed a declaration of war against Germany. But many Americans of Irish ancestry also found repugnant the idea of the United States aligned with England. In fact, one reason why Congress voted down the League of Nations was fierce opposition from brilliant legislators like William Bourke Cockran who did not want England in the position of adjudicating international conflicts.

Back to Otto: in 1915, he charged Bernard H. Ridder and his father, Herman, with assault. They “struck and held him and inflicted bodily injuries upon him,” the action stated. Otto wanted $10,000 in damages. “In the first place, there was no assault,” Herman Ridder told a reporter. “In the second, I was not even present at a quarrel my son had with Luyties.”

Otto may have been attacking Ridder's pro-German views or defending Hilda's honor. One has to wonder, though, who assaulted whom.

Hilda was beautiful and vain and wore fake fingernails. Each morning she spent hours in front of a three-way mirror putting her long hair in pin curls. She raised chocolate poodles and entered them in shows.

Otto himself disappeared from the scene when he moved to Sharon Springs, a New York spa town that had seen better times. He died suddenly of appendicitis the day after Christmas in 1922, at age 41, and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx.

Otto Luyties' gravestone,
Woodlawn Cemetery, The Bronx, NY

See post November 18, 2015.

https://www.throughthehourglass.com/2015/11/otto-part-2.html