IYKYK: Mixing It and Making It in the Gilded Age
We Present These Beverages and Sandwiches to Fin-De-Siècle Women as a Solution to that Gastronomic Problem: The Labyrinthian Way to a Man’s Heart
Mrs Alexander Orr Bradley, Beverages and Sandwiches For Your Husband’s Friends, 1893
The cocktail and sandwich book, Beverages and Sandwiches for your Husband’s Friends By One Who Knows, by Mrs Alexander Orr Bradley, from my collection of women-authored cocktail books and featured in Chapter Two of The Cocktail Parlor - The Lady Hostess - is one that has always fascinated me. Published in 1893, in Chicago, during the year of the great Columbian Exposition, it reflects the excitement of the moment when the city was buzzing with innovation, and new foods and drinks were being debuted every day.
It was a time where fortunes were made and lost as anyone could make it if only they hit oil or found a way to produce the raw materials needed to support the massive growth in urbanization, transportation, and infrastructure happening at the time. It was also a time when a new generation of women – the so-called fin-de-siècle ladies, or New Women – was starting to find its voice, stepping out into a whole new world of work, politics, and public life. At the highest level, the women who threw the biggest and best parties drew the attention and adoration of all society.
Mrs Alexander Orr Bradley was one such hostess. Born into a fairly ordinary family in the mid-1800s, she married the son of an ambitious New York City industrialist looking to make his name and fortune on the new frontier of America. They found each other in Chicago where they used his business fortune and her hospitality connections to carve out a niche for themselves as some of the most admired hosts in the city. Because during the Gilded Age, it was not just about what you knew, but who you knew, and as it turned out, Mrs Alexander Orr Bradley was one who knew.
From the Shores of Lake Ontario to the Banks of Lake Michigan
Born in 1852, Delia S. Payne, later known as Delia Mountjoy Bradley or Dell to her friends, was raised in the small town of Hounsfield on the shores of Lake Ontario in Jefferson County, New York. She was the middle of five children with older brother and sister, Frank and Fanny, and two younger siblings, Adelaide and Augustus. Her family lived a fairly modest life. Dell’s father, Horace Payne (1804-1866) was a farmer, and her mother, Salina Colburn Payne (1819-1906) took care of the home. Dell’s great grandfather, Amos Colburn of New Hampshire, was a decorated war hero having served as a lieutenant in the Third Regiment of the Continental Line during the Revolutionary War[1],
Mayor Eli Bradford Ames of Minneapolis, MN. Source: Freemasons Grand Lodge of Illinois
Dell’s father passed away in 1866 when she was just 14, and by the time she was 18 she had already left home. In the 1870 census she is recorded as living and keeping house in Minneapolis in the home of a close relative, perhaps an aunt or cousin, by the name of Delia Payne Ames. Delia was the second wife of Judge Eli Bradford Ames, a wealthy insurance executive and politician who also served as the fourth mayor of Minneapolis from 1870 to 1872. It is in Eli and Delia’s home where Dell’s first introduction into the customs of high society would likely have begun.
By the next census of 1880, Dell had moved out of the Ames house and had found her way to Chicago where her younger sister Adelaide was by now working as a cashier at the luxurious Palmer House Hotel. Three years later, in 1883 the 31-year-old Dell would be married to the New York industrialist, Alexander Orr Bradley.[2]
From the Hoop Skirts of Manhattan to the Windows of the White City
Dell’s new husband, Alexander Orr Bradley (1847-1911) was born and raised in New York City. From the age of 14 he had studied at the prestigious Free Academy (later the City College of New York, now part of City University of New York), one of the first free public high schools in the United States. Alexander’s father, Joseph West Bradley, was the President of West Bradley and Carey Manufacturing Company, a manufacturer of hoop skirts for the fashion industry[3]. Alexander had three younger sisters - Anna Josephine, Phebe and Jessie, although seemingly of the three only Anna lived to adulthood. During his school years, the Bradley family resided at the luxury Gramercy Park House in New York City, a massive residential hotel erected directly opposite the grand mansions of Gramercy Park in 1854.
Gramercy Park House, New York City, c 1854
Alexander had deep colonial blood that ran back to some of the earliest settlers of the United States. Through his father, Joseph, he was a direct descendant of William Bradley, an immigrant from England who had settled in the town of New Haven, Connecticut during the 1640s. And on his mother Anna Maria’s side, he was connected to both the German Schuneman and Dutch Schurman lines, the latter being one of the original aristocratic Knickerbocker families of New York. During the late nineteenth century, the Bradley family tree was extensive and included many prominent figures, including Supreme Court Justice Joseph Philo Bradley.
Interestingly, after graduating school, Alexander chose not to follow his father into the hoop-making business and instead entered into the fire and life insurance business which was booming alongside the second wave of industrial growth. In the early to mid-1870s, he was Director at the Phenix Insurance Company[4] and then the American Popular Life Insurance Company in New York.[5] This period post-civil war, however, was also extremely economically volatile. A mass failure of the banking system in 1873, known as the Great Financial Panic, had led to a sustained period of economic depression during which many companies went out of business. Indeed, Joseph West, Alexander’s father, filed for bankruptcy in 1877, reportedly owing more than $130,000 (approximately $4 million in today’s money) in debt.[6]
With the markets in disarray, Alexander took his business interests west and travelled all over the Midwest from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, including to St Louis, Cincinnatti, and Memphis. In 1882, his arrival at the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago would prove to be particularly auspicious as one year later he would go on to marry Miss Delia Payne in that city.
Could Dell’s sister, Adelaide, have introduced her to Alexander at the Palmer House? Might Dell have also been working at that hotel? Or, just as plausibly, could Alexander have already met Dell through his insurance connections to Mayor Eli Ames in Minneapolis?
We may never know, but what we do know is that the Bradleys had arrived and they were about to become the latest name on the Chicago social circuit, with Dell one of its most enthusiastic hostesses.
The Hospitality Connection
The Grand Dining Room and The Grand Parlor at The Palmer House Hotel, c 1880
Source: Chicago Tribune
At the same time as Dell got her social break, her sister Adelaide also climbed her own way up to the top levels of hospitality. During the five years that she had worked at the Palmer House Hotel she had already risen to the rank of Head Cashier; however, she had also fallen in love with one of its junior managers, a man by the name of Copeland Townsend.[7]
Copeland Townsend hailed from a notorious hospitality family. His father, Copeland Townsend Sr, was the highly respected owner-proprietor of the Townsend House in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, one of the main vacation destinations for Chicago society during the summertime. Copeland grew up working every job in his father’s hotel - from window washer to laundry man, groundsman to bellboy – and it was through his father’s connection to Potter Palmer, the owner of Palmer House, that he had got his first the job at that hotel. Potter Palmer was one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Chicago and took the young Copeland under his wing putting him on the fast track to management at the Palmer where he remained for eight years.
Not long after their marriage, Copeland and Adelaide relocated to New York City. For the next 30 years, Copeland Townsend would go on to become one of the most influential general managers and hotel directors in the United States, if not globally, and be associated with such New York City landmarks as The Savoy, Hotel Majestic, Hotel Imperial, Fifth Avenue Hotel, Park Avenue Hotel, as the well as the Fairmont in San Francisco.[8]
As the wife of a high-profile GM, Adelaide would have known everything going on behind the scenes at his hotels including what was served at the many lavish parties and grand receptions held by the hostesses of the day, as well as being a frequent guest of honor at such events herself. Useful information that no doubt she would have passed on to her sister, Dell.
Copeland Townsend press photo, c 1917
Source: Ebay/Historic Images
The Rise of the Orr Bradleys
Late nineteenth century Chicago was the perfect environment for an ambitious couple like Dell and Alexander Orr Bradley to reinvent themselves. Unlike New York, where the old-money families still pulled the strings of the social scene, Chicago’s high society was mostly built on the new money that was flowing liberally from its place as a growing industrial, commercial, and tourist hub.
In the late 1800s, Chicago was the fastest growing city in the country. The population doubled from around 250,000 to 500,000 from 1870 to 1880, and again to more than 1 million in 1890. This combined with the great fire of 1871, which had destroyed a large part of the city, resulted in an unprecedented construction boom as demand for housing and services escalated. Alexander must have seen the opportunity to capitalize on this boom, because in 1885 he quit his insurance business to start the Bradley & Potter glass company which would be engaged in the “manufacturing buying selling and dealing in mirror plates and metal work”.[9]
Images from the Chicago World’s Fair including the world’s first Ferris wheel, 1893
Source: Bettman / Getty / Chicago History Museum
Alexander’s business took off and likely gained even greater momentum five years later when, in 1890, Chicago beat out New York City and Washington D.C. to host the 1893 World’s Fair, a massive exposition to commemorate the fourth centenary of Christopher Columbus’ arrival in the United States. Construction of the park took two years and involved the erection of more than 200 new buildings across 600+ acres of the city. More than 27 million people visited Chicago’s “White City” for the Columbian Exposition of 1893, which was hailed as a triumph of American architecture, art, and industrial innovation and put Chicago firmly on the world map.
Women were central to the successful execution of the Fair. Potter Palmer’s wife, Bertha Palmer, chaired a high-profile committee of women – known as the Board of Lady Managers – tasked with overseeing the construction of a Women’s Building to showcase women’s achievements across a range of fields including architecture, art, science, and innovation.
New foods and drinks were also a big part of the Fair experience. Several now famous foods made their debut at the Fair, including Aunt Jemima Pancakes, Juicy Fruit chewing gum, shredded wheat cereal and the Chicago-style hot dog. Bertha Palmer herself tasked the pastry chef at the Palmer House Hotel with creating a portable chocolate dessert that Fair visitors could take with them in a boxed lunch, and so the world’s first ever brownies were baked in the hotel kitchens that year.
A cookbook commemorating the food of the Fair was also released, compiled by Carrie V. Shuman and titled Favorite Dishes: A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book. Over three hundred autograph recipes, and twenty-three portraits, contributed specially by the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbia Exposition. Notably, Bertha Palmer contributed her personal Punch à la Romaine recipe to the book, which also included recipes for Kirsch Punch and Claret Punch.[10]
Officers of the Board of Lady Managers, 1893
Source: The Field Museum
With excitement around the Fair reaching fever pitch in the early 1890s, events on the Chicago social calendar would have been coming thick and fast. While Alexander had been busy building the Bradley name through his glass business, Dell was cementing her reputation as a society hostess. For example, one newspaper report from that year revealed her to be a guest of honor at the tea table of a reception with more than 500 guests, including Bertha Palmer.[11]
Dell may not have made it to the level socially where she would be invited to the Board of Lady Managers, or to contribute to its recipe book. However, she still took advantage of the marketing opportunity of the World’s Fair to publish her own book of party food and drink that year, titled Beverages and Sandwiches for Your Husband’s Friends by One Who Knows, alongside the well-known book retailer and publisher, Brentano’s.
Beverages and Sandwiches For Your Husband’s Friends
BSFYF is one of the first books dedicated to alcoholic beverages to be published by a woman during the Gilded Age and marks the beginning of a trend in dainty entertaining that would continue to be promoted by women over the next two decades.
Punches and cups form the majority of the 31 alcoholic drink recipes that feature in the book, alongside several single serve cocktails such as a julep, cobbler, and toddy. The opening punch recipes commemorate the Fair with Colonial Punch (“As served by our Ancestors in ‘76”) and Columbian Punch (“An old Punch under a new name in honor of ‘93”). Among the 27 sandwich recipes, quite a few are unique to the book including a hot sausage sandwich called the Pompadour and the first ever example of a tuna sandwich made with imported tinned tuna, the Thon Mariné. It’s also fun to see a few suggested drink-sandwich pairings in the book, such as Champagne Punch with Breast of Woodcock Sandwich, Moselle Cup with Oyster Crab Sandwich, and Fruit Punch with the sweet Raisin Sandwich.[12]
In the book, Dell briefly addresses the differences between punches and cups, the latter of which were becoming increasingly popular at social events during this time. The chief difference, as she explained, being that spirit-based punches required lemon and sugar and usually had to be made hours to days in advance, whereas wine cups needed less sugar and could be assembled shortly before serving.
That modern hostesses should embrace the cup as the new trend in drinking was clear from the subtext of Dell’s book, which she dedicated to “Fin-De-Siècle Women as a Solution to that Gastronomic Problem: The Labyrinthian Way to a Man’s Heart”. Earlier in 1884, Mary Sherwood – another influential hostess – had written in her own entertaining guide, Manners and Social Usages, that “Every lady should know how to mix cup, as it is convenient both for supper and lawn-tennis parties, and is preferable in its effects to the heavier article so common at parties – punch.” She also explained that cups such as Claret Cup, Moselle Cup, and Champagne Cup “were not until lately known in America, except at gentleman’s clubs and on board yachts” but were now “gaining in favor” at a wide range of society events from garden parties to balls, lunches, and tea receptions.
Fin-de-siècle women, like Dell and Mary, were bringing drinks like the cup out of the male-only gentleman’s club and serving them at receptions in their home parlors. In so doing they were ushering in a new era in the cocktail, and in society more generally, where women were taking a lead in the fun and men were happily participating. A trend that would be repeated many times over as the cocktail evolved over the next century.
A Fatal Twist
As a hostess extraordinaire with experience of hospitality at the highest level, Dell’s drinks and sandwiches no doubt made Alexander – and his friends – very happy. However, like any Gilded Age power couple, Alexander and Dell’s life was not all Champagne cups and rose candelabras.
Indeed, it seems that Alexander and his father, Joseph, were estranged. When Joseph died in 1889 he wrote Alexander, his first born son, out of his will and instead left his entire estate to Alexander’s unmarried younger sister, Anna Josephine Bradley, on the proviso that she was to share one third of it with Alexander only in the event of her own marriage. Somewhat cryptically, Joseph also instructed Anna Josephine to “remember very liberally, my grand daughter, Adele Bradley, daughter of my said son Alexander O. Bradley and Annie Ellers Bradley daughter of Mrs Jennie Ellers” in her acceptance of his estate.
Sadly, I have been unable to find any record of Alexander’s daughter, Adele, or of her mother. Perhaps she was from a previous marriage, or perhaps she was born out of wedlock? As far as I am aware, Dell and Alexander did not have any kids, although there is mention in a later census of a child born but no longer living, which could have also been a reference to Adele. That there could have been some kind of rift in the Bradley family is further evidenced, however, by Joseph’s divorce from Alexander’s mother, Anna Maria, in 1883 - the same year that Dell and Alexander got married. The charge for the divorce made by Joseph was of Anna Maria’s “desertion over three years”.
In addition to familial strife, Alexander’s glass business was not without its controversies. During the 10 years or so he was in business his company was the subject of multiple lawsuits ranging from patent infringements to partner disputes, the worst of which by far was a negligence suit filed in the Appellate Court of Illinois in 1894 by the mother of a 12-year-old boy who had been killed while working in his glass factory.
Not long after this incident, Alexander and Dell returned from Chicago to New York City where Alexander worked the remainder of his career in the life insurance business where he had first got started. They continued their busy social lives in New York – Alexander as an active club man, and Dell leaning into her maternal lineage to become a charter member of the newly formed Daughters of the American Revolution. According to the US Federal Census of 1910, the couple were resident in the luxury Marie Antoinette Hotel in Manhattan.
In 1911 Alexander retired and the couple decided to move to California. Tragically though, Dell fell ill on the train journey and passed away not long after they arrived in San Francisco. Grief stricken Alexander died two days later of a heart attack. He was 64, she was 59.
In their joint obituary in the New York Times, the couple are described as being “prominent in social circles of New York”. Dell is remembered, not as an author of a hospitality guide, but as “a sister of Mrs Copeland Townsend, whose husband owns the Imperial Hotel” while perhaps more fittingly, Alexander was said to be “well known in New York and the East as a bon vivant and entertainer of a host of friends.”[13]
IYKYK.
Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell and Morgan Spector as George Russell in 'The Gilded Age' Season 2
Source: Barbra Nitke / HBO
Post-Script
I have tried in vain to find a portrait or photo of Alexander and Dell Bradley. Since they had no living children at the time of their death, it’s likely that their estate passed to a close relative such as Dell’s sister, Adelaide. Adelaide and Copeland eventually retired to Los Angeles where Copeland passed away in 1929, and Adelaide in 1949 at the grand old age of 92. However, no living descendants were reported at their deaths either.
So, Dell’s trail effectively goes cold, and sadly with it her contribution to cocktail history.
In my mind’s eye, I picture the pair to be like George and Bertha Russell of the HBO television show, The Gilded Age – the new money couple who use their wealth and ancestral title to break into polite society. Perhaps they were not as grand or as rich as the Russell’s, but I like to think they were equally as ambitious and certainly as glamorous. What do you think?
Sources:
[1] Seymour, Jane; Lineage Book: National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Volume 10 (1895); Harrisburg Publishing Company; Page 5
[2] The Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL); July 1st, 1883; Page 16
[3] Documents of the Board of Education of the City of New York for the Year Ending December 31st, 1862; C.S. Wescott & Co. Printers
[4] Brooklyn Eagle (New York, NY); May 2nd 1874; Page 1
[5] New York Tribune (New York, NY); October 2nd 1877; Page 2
[6] The New York Times (New York, NY); July 31st, 1877; Page 7
[7] Chicago Tribune (Chicago, IL); July 3rd, 1885; Page 8
[8] “A Start for Success” by Arthur Woodward; The Rotarian (Chicago, IL); December Issue, 1915; Page 523
[9] Certificate of Limited Partnership of Bradley & Potter, as signed by Alexander Orr Bradley, Robert H Potter and George F Kimball, August 15th, 1885; Cook County Court Records, Chicago, IL
[10] Schuman, Carrie V; Favorite Dishes: A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book. Over three hundred autograph recipes, and twenty-three portraits, contributed specially by the Board of Lady Managers of the World's Columbia Exposition; R. R. Donnelley & Sons Co.; 1893
[11] The Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL); January 15th, 1893; page 3
[12] Bradley, Mrs Alexander Orr; Beverages and Sandwiches for Your Husband’s Friends By One Who Knows; Brentano’s; 1893
[13] “FOLLOWS WIFE IN DEATH.; A.O. Bradley Expires Two Days After His Wife in Santa Barbara.”; New York Times (New York, NY); December 22nd, 1911; page 2