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2. Only Child
- University Press of New England
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34 Two❒ OnlyChild lords and ladies More than one hundred people gathered the morning of November 3, 1915, at the Episcopal Church of the Heavenly Rest on New York City’s Upper East Side to celebrate the wedding of a woman and a man who, like them, stood prominently in American society. An account of the ceremony and the reception that followed at the St. Regis New York hotel, built by John Jacob Astor IV, who had gone down with the Titanic three years before, was published the next day in The New York Times. Matilda Bigelow, twenty, was the daughter of Nelson Pendleton Bigelow, who had made a fortune in lumber, and Bigelow’s ex-wife, the former Sophia Dallas deBorda, a demanding and sometimes disagreeable woman whose family included a former vice president and U.S. senator. Matilda was a shy woman who had completed eighth grade in America, followed by four years of art school in Italy, passing all of her young life in cocooned privilege. She had long dark hair, pale skin and brown eyes that hinted of sadness. She was beautiful, despite fragile health. Herbert Claiborne Pell, Jr., ten years older than his bride, was the son of Katherine Lorillard Kernochan, whose family’s riches originated in tobacco, and Herbert Claiborne Pell, a direct descendant of the second Lord of the Manor John Pell, a wealthy seventeenth-century landowner. Herbert possessed a keen mind, an interest in politics, and insatiable wanderlust. At six-foot-five and nearly 250 pounds, he physically overwhelmed Matilda, who was a full foot shorter and thin almost to the extreme. And that was not the only difference. Matilda’s emotional warmth stood in contrast to Herbert’s cool intellect, which ruled him. They had met a year before, after Herbert had returned from almost a decade in Europe. Asked to a dance by a suitor, Matilda had replied that her mother would not permit her to go alone—to which the suitor had replied that he would bring his own mother and a friend, Herbert Pell. Pell was smitten, and the next day, he sent Matilda an orchid and a copy of Anna Karenina, not the sort of book she ordinarily read. Their engagement was among the highlights of the 1915 summer season in Newport, Rhode Island, where Herbert’s maternal grandmother, a Lorillard, hosted a tea for her grandson and fiancée at her summer home, which was run with a staff of eighteen. o n l y c h i l d ❒ 35 Pink chrysanthemums and autumn leaves decorated The Church of the Heavenly Rest. Matilda’s brother, Anson, a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, gave her away; Herbert’s best man was his brother, Clarence, his only sibling. Dressed exquisitely, Matilda captured the fancy of The New York Times. “She wore a frock of white satin having a short skirt over a many-tiered underskirt of white chiffon, touched with silver,” the paper reported. “The corsage was draped with tulle, and straps of silver cloth going over the shoulders held the tremendously long plain train of silver cloth in place. Clusters of orange blossoms were fastened at one corner of the square end. The long tulle sleeves were loose and the veil of old family point, an heirloom of many generations, was banded flat on her dark hair just above the forehead with orange flowers and the veil fell in mantle effect over the long train. She wore a plastron of emeralds and diamonds, the gift of the bridegroom, and carried a sheaf bouquet of white orchids with valley lilies.” The Times society writer provided scant details of the reception beyond where the bridal party received their guests, in the Louis XVI suite. But more was revealed in the gift book that Matilda kept. Among others, it listed members of the Fish, Saltonstall, Roosevelt, and Pyne families—people with primary residences in Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Manhattan, and the exclusive community of Tuxedo Park, New York, founded in 1885 as an alternative resort to Newport by Pierre Lorillard IV, Herbert’s great-uncle. Matilda received a gold bracelet with sapphires and diamonds, a jewelry box, fine linen, clocks and mirrors, but silver gifts predominated. Mrs. Newell Tilton of 63 East 82nd Street, New York, presented a bronze box. Mrs. Tilton was the former Mildred Bigelow, a friend and distant cousin of Herbert’s new wife. She was closer in age to Herbert, and her eccentric personality...