The Temptress: The Scandalous Life of Alice De Janze and the Mysterious Death of Lord Erroll (2 page)

A
LICE DE
J
ANZÉ WAS BORN
A
LICE
S
ILVERTHORNE,
at home in Buffalo, New York, on September 28, 1899. Home was an apppropriately extravagant and elaborate setting for the arrival of this little heiress who would one day grow up to become a countess. The year before her birth, Alice’s father, the Buffalo millionaire William Silverthorne, had bought a brand-new three-story redbrick Georgian Revival mansion on Delaware Avenue, also known as Millionaire’s Row. It was here that Alice was born and spent her early years. The house—designed by the preeminent Buffalo architects Esenwein and Johnson—was ostentatious, even by the standards of Millionaire’s Row. There were large Doric pillars around the main doorways, a maze of vast and elegant rooms inside, and stables and servants’ quarters at the bottom of a five-acre garden. William had made his fortune in the lumber trade and was eager to be counted among the most powerful in newly thriving Buffalo. His wife, Juliabelle Chapin, was a Chicago society beauty from one of the richest families in America, and she had brought to her marriage a considerable dowry and pedigree. The house was a monument to William’s successes, both financial and social.

Alice was christened at the local Presbyterian church two weeks after her birth. Her parents had been married and childless for more than seven years prior to Alice’s birth, and they were overjoyed by the arrival of their much-longed-for child. Such doting, wealthy parents ensured that their daughter’s very early years were marked by an extraordinary degree of privilege. From the beginning, the attention of an army of nurses and nannies was lavished upon Alice. William and Juliabelle were determined that their daughter would never want for anything in life, and they set about providing her with the very best that money could buy. Baby clothes were made especially in expensive fabrics imported from Paris. Juliabelle would take regular shopping trips to Chicago, New York, and Boston, where she would purchase vast quantities of gifts and toys for her little girl. As Alice grew from infant to child, her parents supervised her education at home, employing private governesses who instructed her in French, German, reading, writing, and basic arithmetic. For her seventh birthday, Alice was given her own pony and trap. There is a delightful photograph in existence of a seven-year-old Alice dressed in a short jacket and smock with a straw boater, sitting proudly in the wicker trap and holding the reins of the small black pony. By all accounts, the very young Alice was a carefree and affectionate child who adored her parents and was devoted to her pets.

Even so, the union between Alice’s parents was far from easy. Juliabelle and William had always been something of a mismatch. William was robust, energetic, and careless. Juliabelle was more fragile, physically and emotionally, and prone to prolonged periods of sadness. What’s more, they were both from very different social backgrounds. William was born in Pleasant Prairie, Iowa, on February 3, 1867, the third of seven children born to Albert David Silverthorne and Clara Frances Hodgkins, a solidly “merchant class” couple. William’s father had made his money in the lumber business in the period after Chicago’s Great Fire of 1871, when construction materials were at a premium. William himself had gone into the family business at a young age, working his way up through the ranks from the most menial of positions to the highest of managerial levels. He quickly proved himself to be a natural and talented businessman with a powerful drive for financial gain in this most socially and professionally mobile of cities. He was good-looking and popular, made friends easily, and enjoyed socializing, carousing, playing cards, and chasing girls.

Born on August 14, 1871, Juliabelle was the youngest daughter of the union between two of the most powerful and elite Chicago families of the nineteenth century, the Armours and the Chapins. Her mother, Marietta Armour, was the sister of the famous Chicagoan Philip Danforth Armour, who is still listed as one of the forty richest American men of all time. Thanks to her father, Emery David Chapin, Juliabelle was related to the Springfield Chapins, founders and benefactors of Springfield, Massachusetts. Her paternal grandfather had made his money from investing in the railroads in Springfield, but the Chicago faction of the Chapin family was also associated with the meatpacking industry, much like their friends and colleagues, the Armours. When Juliabelle’s parents married, the Chapins and the Armours were united by wedlock, and not for the first time. In fact, there had already been several weddings between Armours and Chapins in Chicago, and by the late nineteenth century, the two families had become the city’s equivalent of royalty: Society columns were full of gossip about the family and their appearances at weddings, debutante parties, and other social events.

From birth, Juliabelle had been groomed to marry a wealthy and influential husband. Needless to say, when William Silverthorne began to pursue her, the Armours and Chapins were far from impressed. Despite William’s quite significant wealth and promising career as an entrepreneur, the Armours and Chapins considered him a highly inappropriate match for one of the most eligible heiresses in Chicago. Even though William could trace his ancestors back to their arrival in Virginia from England in 1656, the Silverthornes had become affluent through business endeavors, such as making felt and selling lumber, and were therefore deemed socially inferior. Furthermore, the Armours and Chapins wholeheartedly disapproved of William’s reputation as a drinker, gambler, and ladies’ man. Undeterred, William courted Juliabelle relentlessly, pursuing her with the same zest, determination, and enthusiasm that he usually reserved for his business deals. Eventually, his good looks, charm, and persistence won the day and he quite simply swept Juliabelle off her well-heeled feet. The undivided disapproval of her family notwithstanding, Juliabelle and William were married in Chicago on January 8, 1892. It was a modest affair by Armour and Chapin standards, with only close family in attendance. Shortly afterward, the couple left for Buffalo, where William and his brother Asa had recently purchased their own lumberyard.

At the time, Buffalo was the eighth-largest city in the United States. By the early 1900s, it had a population of close to 400,000. Its proximity to Niagara Falls made it a popular tourist destination, and as a railway hub, it was an appealing and efficient center of commerce for the many entrepreneurs—William and Asa included—who flocked to the city in the 1890s in the hope of making their fortunes there. Juliabelle began setting up house, but William was doggedly determined to build up his business and was often away for long periods at a time, traveling across the country as far afield as Arkansas and Missouri in order to open new sawmills and set up plants. The seven years in which the couple failed to conceive a child were a period of enormous loneliness for Juliabelle, who found herself living far away from her home and family and with a husband who was frequently absent. Although the eventual birth of her daughter brought her a degree of fulfillment, it could not mend her fractured marriage.

In the years after Alice’s birth, Juliabelle and William were unable to conceive another child, and although Juliabelle adored her only daughter, she continued to feel dissatisfied with her life in Buffalo. To make matters worse, her health was failing: She was weak and permanently tired. Meanwhile, William continued his regimen of working and heavy socializing. He was drinking, gambling, and spending more and more time in Chicago. There were rumors that he was having affairs, possibly even one with Juliabelle’s cousin Louise Mattocks (a member of the Chapin clan). By the early part of 1907, Juliabelle was beside herself with unhappiness. She was now convinced that her husband and cousin were having a relationship. Gathering up her courage, she confronted William. What followed was a vicious argument, which culminated in William’s locking her out of the house at night in the middle of the icy Buffalo winter. Juliabelle was not readmitted until the morning. Shortly afterward, she was diagnosed with vascular laryngitis. She died six months later, on June 2, 1907, at the age of only thirty-five. William had his wife embalmed with surprising speed, and she was buried two days later, on June 4, 1907.

William now found himself living alone with a young and very unhappy daughter. Juliabelle’s death was a crushing blow to Alice, who was deeply attached to both parents but who had always spent so much time with her mother. To a seven-year-old girl who woke up one morning to find her mother gone, it was little compensation that Juliabelle had willed an enormous inheritance to her daughter, placed in trust until she reached the age of eighteen. The trustees of the will were Juliabelle’s father, her mother’s elder brother, Simeon B. Chapin (Uncle Sim), and her mother’s elder sister, Alice (Mrs. Francis May, known as Aunt Tattie). Meanwhile, in an effort to ease Alice’s confusion and moderate his feelings of guilt, William redoubled his efforts to spoil his only daughter completely. He fawned on Alice, taking her with him everywhere he went. After Juliabelle’s death, they traveled to Chicago together and on a whirlwind tour of Europe, with William continually showering his daughter with gifts and indulgences. A dangerous expectation was being established between father and daughter—one that would forever complicate Alice’s relationships with men in the future. Whenever she wanted something from William, she was immediately and elaborately appeased.

There can be little doubt that William adored Alice, but it has to be said that he recovered from Juliabelle’s death with remarkable ease. Barely a year later, he remarried. As it turned out, Juliabelle had been correct in her suspicions that William and her cousin were having an affair. His bride was none other than her cousin, Louise Mattocks. The wedding ceremony took place at the American Church on the quai d’Orsay in Paris on July 8, 1908, with Alice and two witnesses in attendance. It is likely that William proposed to Louise before he left for Europe but that the engagement was kept secret in order to stifle the growing rumble of rumors back in Chicago. After the wedding, Alice accompanied her father and new stepmother on their lavish honeymoon around Europe. The Silverthornes traveled in the luxurious compartments of first-class train cars. They ate at the finest restaurants and stayed in the most well appointed of hotels. If William had set out to distract Alice from the death of her mother and to win over the heart of his new bride, this trip was certainly very successful, if fantastically costly.

For her part, Alice was developing an early and extensive knowledge of the great European cities. Before she was twelve, she had visited London, Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, and Rome. She was a precocious child, and it seems she appreciated both the sights and the culture on offer. Throughout her life, she would continue to travel, always feeling more at home when abroad. During the honeymoon, Alice charmed her stepmother, and the pair developed a genuine soft spot for each other. In this difficult period after her mother’s death, the relationship with Louise must have been a welcome and stabilizing one. But William’s latest conquest only served to redouble his problems with the Armours and Chapins. He had married into their ranks for a second time, an unforgivable outrage. The two families also believed, possibly with some justification, that William was an inadequate father. By parading Alice around the best hotels and restaurants in the world, they believed, he would damage her development and reputation. They were horrified by William’s excesses and feared he would ultimately diminish Alice’s chances of being accepted in society.

William, of course, carried on after his own fashion. On returning from Europe with his daughter and new bride, he set about looking for a new home. William and Louise decided to leave provincial Buffalo for New York City, where William bought a house at 40 East 60th Street in Manhattan; he also purchased a weekend retreat in Sharon, Connecticut. Over the coming years, Louise had several children by William, only two of whom survived to adulthood, Bill, born in May 1912, and Patricia, born in July 1915. Despite these new arrivals, Alice remained her father’s particular favorite. At the age of twelve, she crossed the Atlantic in his company from New York to Cherbourg on the
Aquitania,
the magnificent Cunard liner. Alice liked to dress beyond her years, and William did not deter her. Even at twelve, she could pass for seventeen, and she relished wearing silk dresses and makeup. Everyone she met on the
Aquitania
treated her as an adult. Word reached the Armours and Chapins that William would deliberately fail to introduce Alice as his daughter, with the result that many aboard the ship assumed that this beautiful young woman was his companion. Although it is likely that the relationship between Alice and her father remained innocent, Alice’s relatives on her mother’s side found William’s approach to parenting distasteful and even outright obscene.

By 1913, William’s fast lifestyle and ever-increasing expenditures were beginning to catch up with him. Some of his investments were failing, but despite this, he continued to spend beyond his means. He had a reputation for extravagance and was determined to live up to it. In 1913, he bought himself a top-of-the-line Stoddard-Dayton motorcar with a six-cylinder, 8.6-liter Knight engine, hiring a uniformed chauffeur to drive him around town in it (his daughter would later inherit his taste for luxury American cars). No expense was spared to feed his appetite for ostentation; it is suspected—although not proved—that William was dipping into Alice’s trust fund in order to help with his business debts and to keep himself in the manner to which he had become accustomed. He was also drinking heavily and was almost certainly an alcoholic.

Then, in 1913, some kind of traumatic incident (or possibly an accident) involving William and Alice took place. Although we do not know the exact nature of the incident, we do know that it galvanized the Armours and Chapins. They became determined to act. That year, Juliabelle’s brother, Uncle Sim, decided to take action against William Silverthorne, applying for Alice to be made a ward of the court. Uncle Sim was a Wall Street broker, and a Chapin to boot. He could use his considerable influence and money to put forward the notion that William was an unfit father, that he had a reputation as a drinker and gambler, that he was failing to educate Alice properly, and that he was embezzling funds from her inheritance. The court in New York ruled in Uncle Sim’s favor. William lost custody of his daughter. Legal guardianship of Alice was awarded to Alice’s aunt Tattie. Juliabelle’s family had achieved their intended revenge: They had taken from William his most precious possession, his daughter.