Maria Longworth Storer: From Music and Art to Popes and Presidents by Constance J. Moore and Nancy M. Broermann (review)

In March 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt abruptly recalled the United States ambassador to Austria-Hungary, his longtime friend Bellamy Storer. Although Roosevelt officially removed Storer from his post for refusing to communicate with the White House for nearly three months, the president was even more intent on removing Storer's wife, Maria Longworth Storer, from diplomatic circles. Longworth Storer and her husband, both Cincinnati natives, were devout converts to Catholicism, and Maria had long sought to use her connections to forge closer ties between Washington and the Vatican. In the scandal that resulted from Bellamy Storer's dismissal, the press roundly mocked the Storers and Roosevelt, portraying Maria Longworth Storer as a managing woman whose ambition diminished both her husband and the president. But despite Longworth Storer's reputation for political intrigue in turn-of-the-century Europe and America, she is primarily a provincial figure in historical memory. Her work as a philanthropist, artist, and the founder of Cincinnati's Rookwood Pottery Company have long overshadowed her peculiar career as an unofficial diplomat. In their intriguing new biography, Constance Moore and Nancy Broermann seek to remedy the situation, recasting Longworth Storer as a talented and pious intellectual who was driven by her faith to use her influence to bring Catholicism into mainstream American society and politics.

Moore and Broermann have drawn from an impressive, transatlantic archival base, deploying sources held at sites ranging from midwestern religious communities' archives to large research centers in the United Kingdom and Belgium. Letters and telegrams, personal and official, along with newspapers and other periodicals form the bulk of this material, and the authors display a strong mastery of their sources. Relying on such sources is often necessary in a biography, but in this case, it also draws the reader further into a narrative driven by its subjects' production, transmission, and interpretation of those documents.

Maria Longworth was born into the prominent and wealthy Longworth family of Cincinnati in 1849. During her troubled first marriage to George Nichols, a temperamental author and musician, Longworth established a reputation as a talented artist, an astute entrepreneur, and a leading patron of art and music in the city. The period between their marriage and George's death in 1885 was likely the most successful and productive in Longworth's life, and she appears to have been exceptionally gifted at the artistic and organizational activities associated with upper-class women at the time. Maria spent only a few months as a widow, quickly marrying the patrician lawyer Bellamy Storer, who offered her an opportunity to move in loftier circles as the wife of an aspiring politician.

Following Bellamy Storer's 1890 election to Congress and the family's subsequent move to Washington, Longworth Storer (and later Bellamy) converted to Catholicism. This decision would profoundly reorient the couple's priorities while ultimately damaging their social standing and ending Bellamy's political and diplomatic careers. Certainly, converting to Catholicism during a period of feverous anti-Catholic sentiment in the United States was a courageous act for a woman with social and political aspirations for herself and her family. Yet Longworth Storer often seemed unable to fully appreciate the risks she took, continually lobbying politicians (and family friends) such as Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft to support her schemes to secure the elevation of the progressive Catholic archbishop John Ireland to the rank of cardinal. Central to her campaign was an 1899 letter Roosevelt wrote while governor of New York indicating support for Archbishop Ireland. Roosevelt quickly realized the political and constitutional implications of the letter, and he rescinded his permission for Longworth Storer to share it with diplomats and other international officials. Although Roosevelt issued multiple warnings to Longworth Storer over the next six years, she was either too inexperienced or perhaps too...