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American heiress and socialite (1886–1947) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Evalyn McLean (née Walsh; August 1, 1886 – April 26, 1947) was an American mining heiress and socialite, famous for reputedly being an owner of the 45-carat (9.0 g) Hope Diamond (which was bought in 1911 for US$180,000 from Pierre Cartier), as well as another famous diamond, the 94-carat (18.8 g) Star of the East. She also authored a memoir, Father Struck It Rich, with Boyden Sparkes.
Evalyn Walsh McLean | |
|---|---|
Portrait of Evalyn Walsh McLean (1914), wearing the Hope Diamond | |
| Born | Evalyn Walsh August 1, 1886 Leadville, Colorado, U.S. |
| Died | April 26, 1947 (aged 60) Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Resting place | Rock Creek Cemetery Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Occupation | Heiress |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 4 |
| Parent(s) | Thomas Walsh Carrie Bell Reed Walsh |
McLean was born on August 1, 1886, in Leadville, Colorado,[1] the 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, at age 17.[2] When she was 12 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 14, she moved to Paris for singing lessons. Instead, she lived a wild life, coloring her hair, adding rouge to her cheeks, and drinking alcohol.[1]
On January 28, 1911, in a deal made in the offices of The Washington Post, McLean's husband purchased the Hope Diamond for US$180,000 (equivalent to $5,886,000 in 2023) from Pierre Cartier of Cartier Jewelers in New York.[3] 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, her friends and mother-in-law urged her to sell it back, but Cartier refused to buy it.[4]
In 1908, McLean 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, two of whom predeceased their parents:
The McLean marriage ended with much publicized and bitterly contested divorce proceedings, initiated by Mrs. McLean on grounds of infidelity, in October 1931. Mr McLean filed for divorce in Mexico but McLean obtained a permanent injunction from a District of Columbia court ordering the cessation of the Mexican proceedings. Edward McLean then suddenly announced he had already married Rose Douras, a sister of Hollywood film star Marion Davies; though a marriage had not occurred. Mr McLean immediately took up residence in Riga, Latvia, where he again filed for a divorce, which was granted on December 13, 1932.
Edward McLean's increasingly erratic behavior and reckless spending led to the forced sale of The Washington Post by trustees appointed by the court. The divorce proceedings of Evalyn McLean continued in United States court but were dropped following an October 31, 1933, verdict by a jury in a Maryland trial that declared Edward McLean to be legally insane and incapable of managing his affairs. The court ordered that he be committed indefinitely to a psychiatric hospital.
Edward McLean died of a heart attack at Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital in Towson, Maryland in 1941.[16]
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.[17]
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.[18] 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.[19]
She was a victim of Gaston Means, a former FBI 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 she 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.
On April 26, 1947, at aged 60, McLean died of pneumonia, then 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 25th 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.[8]
Her highly promoted trip to the Russian SFSR is mentioned in a Cole Porter song, "Anything Goes", in the lines "When Missus Ned McLean (God bless her) / Can get Russian reds to "yes" her, / Then I suppose / Anything goes."[21]
In the 1979 NBC television miniseries Backstairs at the White House, in the midst of a score-settling rant Florence Harding mentions to White House maid and hairdresser Maggie Rogers that on the traditional day that the outgoing First Lady shows the incoming one the executive mansion and how things work there, outgoing First Lady Edith Wilson effectively told her that it would not be acceptable to bring McLean along with her; no doubt in her mind because Mrs. Wilson looked down on them. Mrs. Harding had not forgiven Mrs. Wilson for the perceived slight and for that and other perceived ones, she was going to make a point of inviting McLean over to the White House.
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