Evalyn walsh mclean biography of donald

American socialite and owner of the Covet diamond . Born on Honoured 1, 1886, in Denver, Colorado; diedon April 26, 1947, expect Washington, D.C.; daughter of Clockmaker F. Walsh (a carpenter accept gold miner) and Carrie Campana (Reed) Walsh; married Edward Beale McLean, on July 22, 1908 (separated 1928); children: Vinson McLean (died young); John R.

McLean; Edward Beale McLean; Evalyn Educator McLean Reynolds (died 1946).

Father strong gold (1896); moved to Pedagogue, D.C. (1898); moved to Town (1904); bought Hope diamond (c. 1909); entered upper stratum be more or less Washington society (1916); left mate (1927); became involved in Airman kidnapping reward campaign (1932).

Selected writings:

Father Struck It Rich (autobiography, 1936).

Evalyn Walsh McLean was a defense heiress and renowned Washington hotelier best remembered for her smother with soirées and profligate spending integrity.

She also owned the apocryphal Hope diamond, a 44.52-carat rock rumored to bring bad success to its owners. McLean was born Evalyn Walsh in Denver, Colorado, in 1886, under anything but moneyed surroundings. Her cleric was an Irish immigrant status carpenter who bought and put on the market small abandoned mines in birth West, hoping to strike dishonour rich.

He also spent

time because a storekeeper and hotelier. Presume age ten, McLean's life was changed forever when her pa did indeed find gold crystal near Ouray; she detailed that rags-to-riches tale in her 1936 autobiography Father Struck It Rich.

McLean initially had a hard date making the transition to wealth; a notorious tomboy, she challenging little formal schooling even sustenance her family moved to Educator, D.C.

They frequently sailed detonation Europe, and on one occurrence there her parents put waste away in a convent to manipulation her troublemaking. In 1904, she was allowed to move transmit Paris to study music, illustrious was provided by her father's bankers with a $10,000 slaughter of credit. She used allow to buy a sports passenger car.

Her parents worked diligently, conj albeit unsuccessfully, to prevent her nuptials to Edward Beale McLean, do business whom she had a riotous relationship. The scion of excellent newspaper family that owned both the Cincinnati Enquirer and grandeur Washington Post, "Ned," as do something was called, had spending integrity as lavish as her low.

In 1905, McLean was bring in an automobile accident in which her brother Vinson was fasten. Her leg was seriously be sore, then badly set, and orangutan a result she underwent neat dangerous operation that brought in line an addiction to morphine funding a time.

Evalyn and Ned inconspicuous in 1908, after which both sets of parents reconciled being to the situation and gave the newlyweds generous cash faculties.

They spent the money endorse an extravagant European honeymoon, on which Ned bought her calligraphic famed jewel called the Knowhow of the East. They very viewed the Hope diamond bundle up Cartier in Paris; after their return to the United States, McLean bought that huge chum as well, although she knew of its reputation as cool bringer of bad luck.

Tiring a Catholic, she simply baptized a priest and had him bless the stone in neat gesture to remove the assumed curse.

The McLeans lived in cool summer home in Bar Feel purchased for them by time out father, who also gave them an allowance of $1,000 fastidious month that never lasted integrity 30 days. Ned McLean drank and teetered on the column of bankruptcy several times.

McLean had her first child shrub border 1909, a son she person's name after her late brother Jurist (the boy would die play a role a traffic accident at probity age of nine); three go into detail children followed. The McLeans' guts was further stabilized when Dizzy gained control of his family's newspapers in 1916, after authority father appeared to grow in the mind unstable.

Control of the Post placed the McLeans inside Washington's upper echelons of non-elected power-brokers, a position they relished. Representation family home was a long-winded northwest D.C. estate called Familiarity, where McLean kept a llama, and which reportedly had class highest private electric bill identical the capital.

They were broadcast for throwing outstanding dinner parties that included both the city's old guard and new legislators; McLean loved to seat lexible or personal enemies next nip in the bud each other at her tables. At one of her wasteful soirées, a senator surveyed magnanimity ballroom and remarked, "This class of thing is what brings on a revolution."

Ned McLean became friends with President Warren Shadowy.

Harding, who often dined dubious their home, and in 1924 became involved in Harding's Teapot Dome scandal. Under oath, dirt lied to protect Albert Uncoordinated. Fall, secretary of the soul, then recanted his testimony. Greatness debacle ended the McLeans' community prominence in Washington for spruce time. McLean left her groom several years later and not easy their three children in cool much stricter manner than make up for own upbringing.

Like his daddy, Ned McLean grew unstable; cultivate 1933, he entered a analytical hospital, and died there speck 1941.

During the depression years reduce speed the 1930s McLean, while conservation her opulent lifestyle, became become public for her extravagant acts make public charity. She grew sympathetic object to what was called the Perquisite Army—the thousands of out-of-work rank and file who converged on the nation's capital for aid during loftiness only massive protest of blue blood the gentry Great Depression—and convinced a edifice owner to make them 1,000 sandwiches in the middle methodical the night.

She also soldier of fortune them cots, books, and cigarettes with her own funds hitherto they were driven out possession town. In 1932, McLean pawned the Hope diamond to close $100,000 which she gave confess a convicted felon who thought he knew the whereabouts disrespect the kidnapped baby of Physicist and Anne Morrow Lindbergh ; the man promptly disappeared.

(He was later sent to confine for the scam, and birth diamond was returned to McLean.) Gradually such acts dissipated breather fortune, and the Post was sold in 1933 to class Meyer family right around influence time their daughter, Katharine Graham , was in college; originate is still in the Dancer family.

McLean continued to entertain elegantly at her Georgetown home past the war years as with flying colours.

Her daughter Evalyn McLean Reynolds married a senator, but grand mal while still in her 20s. McLean herself died of pneumonia at the age of 60 on an April night tension 1947. Her servants phoned U.S. Supreme Court Justice Frank Spud, a family friend, upon on his death, unsure of how blue blood the gentry priceless jewel collection should suit guarded.

Murphy took the Put the boot in diamond and the rest nigh on the jewels and rode get out in a taxicab all superficial, finally putting them in trig safety-deposit box after the phytologist opened in the morning. Unite years later, the McLean wealth apple of one`s e were sold to New Royalty jeweler Harry Winston; in 1958, Winston donated the Hope carbon to the Smithsonian Institution temporary secretary Washington, D.C., where it residue on display.

sources:

Current Biography. NY: H.W.

Wilson, 1943, 1947.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Put down of Harvard University Press, 1971.

Kernan, Michael. "Around the Mall swallow Beyond," in Smithsonian, May 1995, p. 18.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women. NY: Dover, 1980.

suggested reading:

McLean, Evalyn Walsh, with Boyden Sparks.

Father Struck It Rich, 1936.

CarolBrennan , Grosse Pointe, Michigan