Jeannette Bennett Bell

Jeannette as widow

Jeannette spent at least the next 9 years in society mainly in New York and Newport, perhaps the next 12. At some point between the death of her father-in-law in 1897, and the year of death of her mother-in-law, 1901, Jeannette’s 47^th year, she left New York, taking the children to Europe. Her 19- and 20-year-old daughters lived with her in Paris, where they entertained American, British and French members of the rich and mobile cosmopolitan set who read her brother’s Paris-based international daily, the New York Herald European Edition. The girls made their début in society. Their mother’s mission seems to have been to ensure her children marry, and marry well. In this she quickly succeeds, at least for the two girls. This meant appearing in society.

In March 1903 Jeannette and “Miss Bell” are presented at court to Edward VII and Queen Alexandra. The

New York Times

reported:

The receiving party included the Prince and Princess of Wales [George, Duke of York & Princess Mary of Teck, Duchess of York] and other members of the royal family. The King and Queen remained seated throughout the ceremony, except when receiving members of the Diplomatic Corps. The American presentees included: Mrs. Isaac Bell of New York, sister of James Gordon Bennett, in a cream satin brocade gown, edged with sable and trimmed with old lace caught up with diamond studs, with a train of silver lace and wearing a diamond tiara and pearls and sapphires. Miss Bell, in white tulle, embroidered with chenille, over white satin, train of white satin, and silver-spangled veil, and wearing pearls²⁵“Mrs. Bell presented at court—COURT AT BUCKINGHAM PALACE—Article Details. Mrs. Isaac Bell, Miss Bell, Mrs. Sidney Appleton, and Mrs. Rowena Stephens Among Americans Presented”, New York Times, March 21, 1903, p. 8..

It was not mentioned that the King, while Prince of Wales, had been her brother’s yachting acquaintance and sometimes rival.

Later the same year Jeannette’s younger daughter Henrietta married Comte Paul d’Aramon, a member of minor, but old European aristocracy and whose mother – not unusually for the time – was American, related to the Astors, therefore not without means or status himself.

In 1904 Norah married Major Wilfred Ricardo, who had ridden and won a big National Hunt race for amateur jockeys, and was well known in the shires’ hunting sets. The wedding was in London.

Jeannette’s eldest child, Isaac, “Ikey”, by 1907, aged 28, was a well-known Master of Foxhounds in Ireland (the “Galway Blazers” pack) – his position must not be considered as that of a lackey. On the contrary, it gave him access to a range of gentry and minor and sometimes major aristocracy, hunting being a site of important social get-togethers, where the Master of Foxhounds is the centre of attention. Ikey was making a name for himself too as a fine horseman, like his uncle James Gordon Bennett, and was becoming a celebrity as a polo player. However, from his mother’s point of view, he should have been making more of an effort to find a bride. Mrs Bell, took the matter in hand and in July moved to London where her son spent his summers playing polo, that very exclusive sport that his uncle had imported into America. The Times (of London) had regularly reported Ikey’s polo matches in the summer of 1905. In 1906 the newspaper speculated on whether he would be leaving the “Blazers” for a position in the English shires or in Kilkenny. The Washington Post commented jocularly on Jeannette’s movements:

Mrs. Isaac Bell formerly Jeanette Bennett only sister of James Gordon Bennett has taken Combe Lodge Kingston Hill England for the season in order that young Isaac Bell her son may play polo at Hurlingham. Young Mr. Bell is considered a great catch in the matrimonial market and is much angled for by calculating mammas but he is devoted to his mother and scorns marriage. Mrs. Bell is a charming woman. She is devoted to outdoor life and is an accomplished horsewoman. [she had turned 50] Her late husband Isaac Bell was American Minister to The Hague. Besides Isaac the only son, there are two married daughters the Countess d’Aramon and Mrs. Ricardo. Next week there is to be a family reunion in Combe Lodge. Mrs. Bell has announced her intention of giving up her winter residence in Paris. She is now looking for a suitable residence near London which she proposes to buy. She is very popular and is a devotee of the automobile which she drives herself. She dresses smartly and is versatile speaking several languages. Among her personal friends is the Rev Father Bernard Vaughan to whom she recently presented a billiard table costing $230 for the use of his parishioners in the East End slums.

There is a lot to deconstruct about Jeannette in this social column. Ikey did marry – in late 1914, the bride being Evadne Cane (usually referred to as ‘Dolly’). He did not father an heir – an heiress, yes, eventually. Socially, he went on to mix with aristocracy and win sailing cups – like his uncle.

In July 1918 Jeannette’s brother, James Gordon Bennett junior, dies and leaves money to Jeannette in his American will: a $50,000 single sum since “she is amply provided for”); an annuity of $30,000 to his nephew Isaac Bell [Ikey]; an annuity of $10,000 to his “niece Norah personally, wife of Major Ricardo”; an “annuity of $10,000 to niece Henrietta personally, wife of Count Paul d’Aramon”; an “annuity of $20,000 to step-son Ronald de Reuter”; and a number of other annuities, mostly to assorted women²⁶New York Times, 4 July 1918, p. 11; and ‘HEIRS OF BENNETT'S SISTER GET $691,634; Dispute Over Trust Fund Held by Late Owner of Herald Is Settled.’ June 13, 1922, p. 1.. The New York Times comments that “the gift of $50,000 to his sister, was unexpected, because the two had quarreled seriously nearly a generation ago and had had no communication in recent years.” However, Jeannette goes to law to get what she deems still owed to her from her father’s will, which she felt had been dealt with cavalierly by her brother as Trustee of her part of the will. This legal case was to drag on until 1922 when judges found in her favour, the money going to a trust for her seven grandchildren²⁷See ‘HEIRS OF BENNETT'S SISTER GET $691,634; Dispute Over Trust Fund Held by Late Owner of Herald Is Settled.’ New York Times, 13 Sept. 1922, p. 39.. She also contested her brother’s French will – he was a French resident when he died and had – against all expectation – got married, in 1914, to a much younger woman, Maud, Baroness de Reuter. Maud was born American, a Potter from Philadelphia, whose husband (of the news agency family) had died. Maud was to outlive Jeannette, dying on 4 February 1946, at her home in Paris on Avenue d’Iena, aged “about 80 years”²⁸‘MRS. J.G. BENNETT SUCCUMBS IN PARIS; Social Leader Was Married to Herald Owner in 1914--Once Baroness George de Reuter’, New York Times, 5 Feb. 1946, p. 21..

Jeannette continued to reside quietly in London. If she did make the news it was relatively uncontroversial, as in 1931, when she endowed a prize – bearing her name (“Mrs. Isaac Bell’s prize”) – of £5 for the Pekinese breed at the Ladies' Dog Show at Olympia. She lived to see her son Ikey elected to membership of the Royal Yacht Squadron (Cowes) in 1934, a confirmation among other things of his social status. She died in February 1936 aged 81, never having remarried.

Conclusions

These bare facts about Jeannette’s life beg a few questions. How did she regard herself and who did she see when she woke up in the morning and looked in the mirror? Where did she think she was from? Who did she want to be?

It appears that she wanted to be accepted in society, high society, be it in America or Paris or London, or indeed all three. Her father and brother had wanted something similar without ever really managing it, except maybe her brother, in the Mediterranean. But, the name Bennett was not borne easily, certainly in New York, where the father and brother had ruffled a lot of feathers, to say the least. If she could never throw off the family link, she was determined at least to manage her children’s social status through good marriages, and to that extent to manage her legacy and her grandchildren’s trust. She died in her 82nd year, so had plenty of time to consider it.

A final question has neither been posed nor answered by historians – who in fact have ignored her as a historical personage in her own right. Where was the final resting place of this very well-travelled cosmopolitan? And what might that tell us about her identity as she saw it. She was born in France and so had a right to French nationality. Did she see herself as a member of the Scottish diaspora through her father and paternal grandparents, or perhaps a member of the Irish diaspora, via her mother, whom she spent much more time with? She had also spent a significant part of her life – for good or ill – in the United States, whose nationality her children and her brother bore. But, there again, she did not get on with her brother. Once free of all other ties or duties, she had spent the last part of her life in England in the London area.

To answer these questions of identity, it took the discovery of her burial stone, not in London, not in Paris’s Passy cemetery where her brother lay, nor in Dublin where her mother’s family were from, nor New York, where her father and maternal grandmother lay buried in Brooklyn’s Greenwood cemetery, but in the burial ground of the Auld Kirk in Keith, Banffshire, in the very ‘lair ’ assumed to have been bought by her grandfather James Bennett and where he and Jeannette’s paternal grandmother, Janet Reid, were buried along with their two daughters, Margaret and Ann (or Annie), Jeannette’s aunts. She lies therefore in the shadow of the memorial stone erected by her father James Gordon Bennett to the memory of his mother and father.

Jeannette’s burial stone bears this inscription:

HERE RESTS
JEANNETTE BELL
GRANDDAUGHTER OF
JAMES BENNETT
AND DAUGHTER OF
JAMES GORDON BENNETT
1854-1936
IN DEO FIDEMUS

Cosmopolitan she may have been; however, Jeannette Bennett was a second generation immigrant, one for whom it did not work out and she went elsewhere when she could or had to. Her father James Gordon Bennett had the strength and talent to stay in in America and succeed as a newspaper baron, financially but not socially. His wife Henrietta, the immigrant from Ireland, felt in danger in New York and moved to Paris taking her children with her. Jeannette was born in France, she had spent her formative years there, her middle years after marriage in New York and Newport society, half the time as a widow, and almost her last 30 years based in England. She still travelled too, but in the end, when she had done her maternal duty to her children, she discovered an identity she had never really had. She found some roots. Her children had no reason to feel American – they lived their lives one in France, one in Ireland and one in England. Did they feel at all Scottish? Almost certainly not. When Jeannette looked in the mirror and could not say she was American, nor French, nor Irish, nor English; all she had left was that she belonged to the Scottish diaspora, coming from a little, but important Catholic enclave in the north-east of Scotland – which reclaimed her.

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