Evalyn Walsh McLean

Evalyn Walsh McLean (August 1, 1886 – April 26, 1947) was an American mining heiress and socialite who was famous for being the last private owner of the 45-carat (9.0 g) Hope Diamond (which was bought in 1911 for $180,000 from Pierre Cartier), as well as another famous diamond, the 94-carat (18.8 g) Star of the East. She also authored the memoir, Father Struck It Rich, together with Boyden Sparkes.

Evalyn Walsh McLean
Portrait of Evalyn Walsh McLean (1914), wearing the Hope Diamond
Born(1886-08-01)August 1, 1886
Leadville, Colorado, US
DiedApril 26, 1947(1947-04-26) (aged 60)
Washington, D.C., US
Resting placeRock Creek Cemetery
OccupationHeiress
Known forLast private owner of the Hope Diamond
Spouse(s)Edward Beale McLean
Children4
Parent(s)Thomas Walsh
Carrie Bell Reed Walsh

Early life

Evalyn was born on August 1, 1886, in Leadville, Colorado,[1] the only daughter of Carrie Bell Reed, a former schoolteacher, and Thomas Walsh, an Irish immigrant miner and prospector. She had one sibling, a brother, Vinson Walsh (1888–1905), who died in a car accident in Newport, Rhode Island, when he was 17 years old.[2] When she was twelve years old, her father discovered a gold mine and became a multimillionaire. The family moved to a large mansion on Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, D.C. At the age of fourteen, Evalyn moved to Paris for singing lessons. Instead she lived a wild life, coloring her hair and drinking alcohol. She began adding rouge to her cheeks to adopt the look of prostitutes.[1]

The Hope Diamond

On January 28, 1911, in a deal made in the offices of The Washington Post, McLean's husband purchased the Hope Diamond for $189,000 (equivalent to $4,939,000 in 2019) from Pierre Cartier of Cartier Jewelers in New York.[3][4] The Hope Diamond was traditionally associated with a curse, but no tragic events befell the couple until eight years later. Due to the rumors of a curse, Evalyn's friends, and her mother-in-law, urged her to sell it back, but Cartier refused to buy it.[5]

Personal life

In 1908, she married Edward "Ned" Beale McLean, the son of John Roll McLean and heir to The Washington Post and The Cincinnati Enquirer publishing fortune. They had four children:

  • Vinson Walsh McLean (1909–1919), who died aged 9, after being hit by an automobile[6] (The maternal uncle for whom he was named had died in a car accident at age 17.)
  • John Randolph "Jock" McLean II married three times:
    • Agnes Landon Pyne Davis Bacon (née Davis), in 1941
    • Elizabeth Muhlenberg “Betty” Brooke Blake Phipps Reed (née Blake), in 1943
    • former model Mildred W. "Brownie" Brown Schrafft née Brown (July 14, 1917 - January 9, 2019), in 1953. In 1976, Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt rented Brownie McLean's Palm Beach estate, El Solano, and used it as a background for published photographs. In January 1980, she sold the mansion to Yoko Ono and John Lennon. She turned down the Hope Diamond in 1952, when offered to her by her husband, after his mother's death, due to the alleged "curse" associated with it.[7]
  • Evalyn Washington "Evie" McLean (November 16, 1921–September 20, 1946), married United States Senator Robert Rice Reynolds (1884–1963),[8] and was found dead by her mother less than five years later, at age 24.[9] A coroner's inquest determined the cause of death to be an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.[10]
    • Evie's daughter Mamie Spears Reynolds, was the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500,[11] and married Luigi "Coco" Chinetti Jr., the son of Italian race car driver and Ferrari agent Luigi Chinetti, in 1963; they divorced two years later.[12][13] She later married Joseph E. Gregory, with whom she had two children.
  • Edward Beale McLean, Jr., married Ann Carroll Meem, in May 1938. Their divorce was granted in July 1943 and, in August, he married actress Gloria Hatrick, with whom he had two sons, Ronald and Michael. Ronald died, in 1969, from enemy fire, while serving in Vietnam as a first lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps.[14] McLean and Hatrick divorced in January 1948 and, that October, McLean married Manuela Mercedes "Mollie" Hudson, who had been the first wife of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt Jr. In August 1949, Gloria married actor James Stewart. McLean Jr. and Hudson-Vanderbilt separated in the 1960s, then divorced in 1973, after which he married a fourth time, to Patricia Dewey.[15]

The site of the McLean home, Friendship — a sprawling country mansion built for her father-in-law by John Russell Pope and which was located on Tenleytown Road, N.W. — is now a condominium complex known as McLean Gardens. The original house was demolished in the 1940s though some of the property's garden features remain intact, as does the Georgian-style ballroom. A later residence, also known as Friendship, is located at the corner of R Street, N.W. and Wisconsin Avenue, and remains a private home. Her childhood home, a grandiose Second Empire-style mansion at 2020 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., is now the Indonesian embassy.

McLean was a friend and confidante to Alice Roosevelt Longworth and Florence Harding, the wife of Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States. McLean and Harding frequented movie theaters and played bridge together and had a close relationship.[16]

McLean and her husband made a highly-publicised journey to Russia, shortly after the October Revolution, in an effort to get Ned's uncle, George Bakhmeteff, reinstated as the Russian ambassador to the US.[17] An American diplomat, William Bullitt, had to talk McLean out of flaunting the Hope Diamond on the streets of Moscow as a symbol of the superiority of capitalism.[18]

McLean was a victim of Gaston Means, a former BOI agent, murder suspect, and grifter, who claimed he had set a deal to free the Lindbergh baby for a ransom of over US$100,000, which Evalyn McLean advanced him. Means disappeared with the money, only to resurface months later in California, and ask McLean for additional funds. Suspicious of Means' activities, she helped lead police to him; he was also wanted for various other crimes and civil actions. That ultimately led to his conviction and imprisonment on larceny charges.

Edward McLean eventually died in a mental institution in 1941.[19]

Death and estate

On April 26, 1947, Evalyn Walsh McLean, aged 60, died of pneumonia, and was buried in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington D.C., in the Walsh family tomb, alongside her daughter.[20] The Reverend Edmund Walsh, S.J. vice president of Georgetown University read her funeral service, which was attended by family, and close friends including United States Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy.[20]

Upon her death, the principal of her estate and her jewelry, including the Hope Diamond, were left to her seven grandchildren, to be managed by four trustees until the five oldest grandchildren passed their twenty-fifth birthdays.[8] The trustees were:

Her sons, however, received the proceeds of the Walsh Trust, which was established by her father Thomas Walsh, who had died in 1910. She gave her son-in-law, the former United States Senator Robert Rice Reynolds, lifetime use of the McLean home, Friendship. If the home was sold by the Trustees, he was to receive the proceeds of the sale for his own use.[8]

Her highly-promoted trip to the Russian SFSR is mentioned in the Cole Porter song, "Anything Goes", in the lines "When Mrs Ned McLean (God bless her) / Can get Russian reds to "yes" her, / Then I suppose / Anything goes."[21]

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References
  1. Anthony, Carl Sferranza (1998). Florence Harding: The First Lady, The Jazz Age, and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President. W. Morrow & Company. pp. 133. ISBN 0688077943.
  2. Staff (February 26, 1932). "MRS. T. F. WALSH, SOCIAL LEADER, DIES Widow of Former Miner Who Won Fortune in Colorado Is Stricken in Washington. ONCE HOSTESS TO ROYALTY Honored by Albert, King of the Belgians, for Her Work for His People in the World War". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
  3. Columbia, David Patrick (March 9, 2016). "A Life of Style". New York Social Diary. Retrieved 17 March 2016.
  4. "Treasures of the World - Hope Diamond".
  5. Anthony 1998, p. 134
  6. Staff (May 19, 1919). "M'LEAN HEIR KILLED BY AN AUTOMOBILE Nine-Year-Old Who Would Inherit $100,000,000 Struck in Road Near His Home". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  7. "LENNON MANSION BRINGS $3.5 MILLION", by Julie Eagle,South Florida SunSentinel, February 6, 1986. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
  8. Staff (May 1, 1947). "' Unlucky' M'Lean Hope Diamond Left in Trust for Grandchildren Gem Will Be Worn No More for at Least 20 Years — Sons Inherit Walsh Estate — Reynolds Gets Life Use of 'Friendship'". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  9. St. Petersburg Times, September 21, 1946.
  10. "Mrs. Reynolds' Death Accidental," The New York Times, October 4, 1946
  11. "Paid Notice: Deaths — GREGORY, MAMIE SPEARS REYNOLDS". New York Times. 21 November 2014.
  12. "Mamie S. Reynolds Married in Chapel". New York Times. 28 July 1963.
  13. Tuscaloosa News, October 10, 1965
  14. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-03-15. Retrieved 2011-05-06.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  15. Nashua, New Hampshire Telegraph, August 9, 1949
  16. Anthony 1998, p. 136
  17. Hansen, Stephen A. (2014). A History of Dupont Circle: Center of High Society in the Capital. Charleston, S.C.: The History Press. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  18. Smith, Kathryn (2016). The Gatekeeper. New York: Touchstone. p. 151. ISBN 978-1-5011-1496-0. Retrieved 2020-03-27.
  19. Staff (April 28, 1947). "HOSTESS MAGNIFICENT". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  20. Staff (April 30, 1947). "MRS. M'LEAN BURIED BESIDE HER DAUGHTER". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  21. Canden Schwantes (11 March 2014). Wild Women of Washington, D.C.: A History of Disorderly Conduct from the Ladies of the District. The History Press. p. 99. ISBN 978-1-62619-367-3.
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