Whitney Straight

1

New York

Outside on the streets of New York, horseless carriages were vying for supremacy over horse-drawn buggies. Inside the five-storey townhouse on East 67th Street, near the corner with Madison Avenue, Dr Cragin's attempts to induce the baby had failed. It was clear now that the expectant parents would not get their wish - their first child would not be born on election day. Nor would their great friend, Theodore Roosevelt, be returning to the White House. His decision to run against its current occupant, William Taft, had split the Republican vote and assured Woodrow Wilson of becoming the twenty-eighth president of the United States. An anxious night ensued, and it was not until 4.45 the following afternoon, Wednesday, 6 November 1912, that the baby arrived, weighing 7lb 14oz. He was nicknamed 'Bill' but at a simple service, held at home in the new year, he was christened Whitney Willard Straight. In the tradition of the time, his given names were drawn from each side of his family - Whitney was his mother Dorothy's maiden name, and Willard the first name of his father.

Dorothy Whitney's christening, twenty-six years earlier, had been a much grander affair. It was held in Washington's St John's Church, across Lafayette Square from the White House. Among the congregation of 500 sat President Grover Cleveland and his entire cabinet. Dorothy's father, William, had been influential in Cleveland's presidential campaign, and at the time of her birth was busy rebuilding the US fleet as secretary of the navy. When Cleveland was defeated in the 1888 election, William left politics and the family moved to New York, where he invested in railroads. Young Dorothy and her friend Gladys Vanderbilt chatted on a private telephone line rigged up between their nurseries on opposite sides of Fifth Avenue.

She was just 6 when she was told she was going on a journey, and led in to say goodbye to her mother, Flora, who lay reclining on a sofa. Only later did she learn that Flora had died while she was away. In January 1904, William was taken ill at the opera. He failed to have his appendicitis treated until too late, and died five days later of peritonitis. Dorothy, aged 17, became one of New York's most prominent heiresses, and moved back to her childhood home on Fifth Avenue, now owned by her brother Harry. Just two years later, she established her own household at Applegreen, a large, three-storey, shingle-style house on her late father's estate at Old Westbury, on Long Island's North Shore. Harry had recently become vice president of Long Island Motor Parkway Inc. When the road opened in 1908, it passed south of Applegreen, and Dorothy lived in rural splendour with her companion-cum-chaperone, Beatrice Bend, daughter of the late George Bend, who had served on the governing body of the New York Stock Exchange.

Dorothy exploited her independence to the full. Away from the usual dinners, theatre visits and book clubs, she studied political economy at Columbia, left Applegreen at 5 a.m. to take her seat in the grandstand for a Vanderbilt Cup race and enjoyed a grand tour of Europe with just Beatrice and Beatrice's mother Elizabeth for company. She was clear in what she expected from marriage. She had seen many 'matches' result in unsatisfactory unions, and was confident about what ultimately counted: 'Perfect faith in each other - that above all things is the truest, surest foundation, and I can't imagine anything more wonderful than this sort of understanding between two people. Nothing then could really go wrong.'1 Thus far, none of her suitors, whether from the New York world of politics and the professions, or among the lords and counts across the Atlantic, had come close to meeting her criteria.

In January 1909, she was invited to Washington to attend the social events marking the end of Roosevelt's second term in office. Sitting next to her at dinner one evening was someone quite unlike the other young men she had met. His name was Willard Straight. He had been born in January 1880 in Oswego, on the New York shore of Lake Ontario. His mother, Emma Dickerman, had met Henry Straight while teaching at the Nebraska school where he was principal. Sadly, Henry contracted tuberculosis and died in 1886, and Emma suffered the same fate four years later. Aware that her condition was terminal, she arranged for Willard and his sister Hazel to be raised by friends of hers in Oswego.

Willard found the arrangement frustrating and ended up being expelled from school, but a year at a military academy in Bordentown, New Jersey, helped him adopt a more disciplined approach to life, and he went on to read Architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, some 200 miles north-west of New York City. After graduating in 1901, he joined China's maritime operations, helping to maintain an orderly customs function and manage commercial traffic along the coast and on the Yangtze River. He took on direct representation of America's overseas interests in 1905, when he became a vice consul, first in Korea, and then in Cuba. There, he formed a lifelong friendship with an architect, Bill Delano, and took personal responsibility for arranging the honeymoon of Roosevelt's daughter Alice and Nicholas Longworth, a future speaker of the House of Representatives. Alice's father took note, and influenced Willard's next role, supporting US trade in what was then Manchuria, as Consul-General in Mukden, modern-day Shenyang.

Now fluent in Mandarin, Willard's engagements with China grew more commercial and, shortly after meeting Dorothy in Washington, he became the representative of a group of US banks negotiating a large international loan to China. The objective was to make the country more resilient to Russian and Japanese influence, and more receptive to trade with the West. In May 1909, while in New York for meetings with the banks, he saw Dorothy again, and she invited him out for an afternoon riding at Applegreen. She was fascinated by his work and his tales of the Orient, and he was delighted to learn that she would be visiting China on her forthcoming world tour. They agreed to meet in Beijing. Dorothy's intrepid band of women on the tour comprised her maid, Louisa Weinstein, and Beatrice and Elizabeth Bend. They sailed from San Francisco to Japan, and when they reached Seoul, Willard took responsibility for their safe passage to Beijing. He sent two of his staff to translate and cook for them in a private railway carriage, and he and his housemate, a diplomat named Henry Fletcher, moved out to the US legation and made their home available to Dorothy and her party.

A blissful fortnight of walks, rides, dinners, late-night conversations and serenading ensued. Dorothy was swept along by it all, and when she wrote to thank Willard, it was in the most glowing of terms. 'Oh Wise Man of the East,' she began, and wrote of 'two of the happiest weeks I have ever known'.2 But she bid him 'goodbye' more than once and, in wishing him 'true happiness in the future, for you deserve the best there is',3 she had no expectation that she would be part of that future. Willard, however, was in no doubt where his future lay, and four months later, when Dorothy and her party arrived in Cairo, she was greeted by thirty of his letters that made his feelings for her quite clear. While in Cairo, she met Roosevelt and his family, who had arrived from a hunting trip, and when Willard came up in conversation, she learned that the former president rated him highly. It left her hoping that Roosevelt would serve a third term, and make Willard his secretary of state. As things stood, however, Willard could hardly be considered a suitable match. When he saw her briefly, on his way to London to update banker J.P. Morgan on the state of the loan negotiations, she rejected his marriage proposal.

But Willard kept up his long-distance campaign, and his prospects brightened considerably when he returned to New York in the spring of 1911, having played a significant role in the successful conclusion of the loan negotiations with China. Now he had the status and respect to complement the trust that had shone through in his many letters. When he next proposed to her, Dorothy accepted. The engagement was only announced after the couple had sailed from New York, in the company of both Bends, and the wedding took place in Geneva, far from the prying eyes of the New York press corps.

They honeymooned in Venice, then travelled up to Paris to begin the two-week rail journey to Beijing. They arrived on 11 October, the very day on which the city of Wuhan, 700 miles to the south, fell to revolutionaries - 2,000 years of Chinese imperial rule was drawing to a violent end. An early visitor to their first marital home was a major with the local contingent of US marines, with a present of two revolvers. By the beginning of March 1912, looting and executions had become commonplace in Beijing, but Willard and Dorothy still felt safe enough to dine one evening at the nearby home of George Morrison, Chinese correspondent of The Times. Violence erupted outside, and Willard dashed back to rescue Dorothy's maid, Louisa, and bring her to Morrison's house. It took twenty marines to escort the group to the safety of the US legation, Dorothy in a rickshaw, with Louisa in her lap, and a few belongings tied on behind.

With the international loans signed, there clearly was little value in Willard and Dorothy continuing to live in such danger, and they set off for London in late March. Dorothy found the Trans-Siberian Railway more arduous this time. She was...