âPARA {PAR@ ` ½TEXT ` ¥McLean, Evalyn Walsh1886╨1947socialiteBorn in Denver on August 1, 1886, Evalyn Walsh grew up in various Colorado towns as her father, an Irish immigrant, moved from business to business. In 1896 he struck it rich in the Camp Bird gold mine near Ouray, and two years later the family settled in Washington, D.C. Young Evalyn was privately educated and grew up accustomed to fabulous wealth. She was a carefree, occasionally reckless young woman; a Paris sojourn in 1904, supposed to be devoted to the study of music and French, was instead a series of escapades. An automobile accident in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1905 killed her older brother and left her permanently lame and for a time dependent on drugs. In July 1908 Walsh eloped with Edward B. McLean, son of the publisher of the Cincinnati Enquirer and the Washington Post. The marriage, opposed by both families, united two fortunes and two stormy temperaments suited principally to dissipating their inheritances. Their fascination for the sensational press was boosted by Evalyn McLean╒s purchase of the Star of the East diamond while on her honeymoon in Paris. Soon after their return to Washington she also bought the Hope Diamond, which she had blessed by a priest in order to offset the legendary curse attached to the stone. (The Hope was bought by a dealer after her death and in 1958 was given to the Smithsonian Institution.) Their first-born, Vinson, destined to die in an automobile accident at the age of nine, was dubbed at birth in 1909 the ╥$100,000,000 baby.╙ At Friendship, their sumptuous Washington, D,C., estate, the McLeans entertained lavishly, becoming the center of social life among old Washington families and the Republican establishment. Their influence reached its zenith during the administration of President Warren G. Harding. Edward McLean was particularly close to the President and to Albert B. Fall, secretary of the interior. When Fall was being investigated for complicity in the Teapot Dome scandal, McLean perjured himself in claiming that he had loaned to Fall the $100,000 that was the cause of suspicion surrounding the Cabinet member. Edward McLean became increasingly careless of money and less frequently sober during the 1920s. In 1928 the McLeans separated; in 1933 he was confined to a mental institution in Maryland, where he died in 1941. Evalyn McLean continued unabated her life of lavish entertaining and impulsive amusement during the Depression. Several of her more spectacular or bizarre whims attracted heavy newspaper publicity, especially two in 1932. In that year she paid $100,000 to the notorious swindler Gaston B. Means in the vain hope that he would be able to locate the kidnapped infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. In the same year she took it upon herself to distribute food, cigarettes, books, cots, and other amenities to the members of the ╥Bonus Army╙ encamped on Washington╒s Anacostia Flats. She prevailed upon the manager of Child╒s Restaurant to open up at 2 A.M. to prepare a thousand sandwiches for the marchers. For some time beginning in 1938 she wrote a daily column for the Washington Times. During World War II she gave frequent parties for soldiers and nurses; among the latter she often distributed some of her huge collection of jewels, to be worn for the duration of the party and collected again afterward. In her autobiography, Father Struck It Rich, with Boyden Sparks, 1936, McLean expressed the philosophy that actuated her life. ╥The one continuing problem in my life has always [been]: What amusing thing can I do next?╙ she wrote; also ╥of all things in this world I hate boredom most.╙ She died in Washington, D.C., on April 26, 1947. ₧styl ` ! ¬ 5¬ 5¬ * !I ╧ 5¬ ╨ !I !I 0 !I 9 !I H !I E 5¬ F !I
