Person:Elizabeth Drexel (1)

Obituary (newspaper & date not recorded):

Died, Lady Decies, 72, prominent socialite of the prewar Paris-New York set; of coronary thrombosis; in Manhattan. The daughter of Philadelphia Banker Joseph William Drexel, wealthy "Bessie" was a widow at 27, at 29 married Harry Symes Lehr, the Mauve Decade's "court jester" to U.S. Society. Under his tutelage she became the lush favorite of the Four Hundred, and told much if not all in a bitter book ("King Lehr" and the Gilded Age) written after his death in 1929. Among the book's revelations: Lehr was a homosexual and had consented to marry only after she offered him $25,000 a year and expenses. When she was 64, she decided she wanted to "attend the coronation," married Lord Decies (and outlived him by four months). Quitting Paris for the U.S. when the Nazis invaded, Lady Decies continued her society shenanigans, to the edification of provincial Americans. Her bejeweled presence kept society reporters scratching for phrases to surpass the brash New York Daily News's report of her wearing a tiara "the size of a nail keg."

She was the author of "King Lehr" and the Gilded Age (1935) and Turn of the World (1937).

1. ↑ MacColl, Gail, and Carol McD. Wallace. To Marry an English Lord. (New York: Workman Publishing, 1989).
2. ↑ Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Graham_Hope_de_la_Poer_Beresford,_5th_Baron_Decies.
3. ↑ ^3.0 3.1 Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Wharton_Drexel.
4.   Find A Grave.