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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (Aug. 27, 1922)
!THE OREGON,: SUNDAY JOURNAL, PORTLAND, SUNDAY ORNINOa AUGUST.2192 : r : ; i J! 111 : v ?A fr 4vT ' y j Ty '"' 4tf ' fTlre Former Lydia Helen White, Now the Bride of Wealthy Young Si&iu Ferryboat Ride to Staten Island and Return, but It Seemed Like Fairyland to the Demure Little Beauty, Just Married Into the "400" THE honeymoon trip of the sweet Cin derella of this story cost her rich; g Fairy Prince just 10 cents. f Her -wedding coach was only a Staten Island ferryboat, swarming with tourists, laborers, immigrants, East Side mothers, 'crying babies, peanut shells and banana akins. Yet the Fairy Prince was a mil lionaire's son, and Cinderella told him she was Just as happy as though he'd handed her Into a silken palanquin drawn by - white mice! V t Cinderella was winsome little Lydia yrhite, chauffeur's daughter, art student and struggling costume designer. She lired in a Bronx flat ana worked in a Fifth ayenue shop. The Fairy Prince was Mynhart Boisseyain, young, rich and blue blooded. He lived in a J50-a-day suite at the Vanderbilt Hotel and wrote poetry. They were married on Staten Island, July 3, and nobody knew anything about It for weeks and weeks, because Mynhart hesitated to tell his father, Louis B. Boissevain, president of the Hilliard Hotel Company, Beau Brummel of New York so ciety, and one of the richest men In America. r y. . Mr. Boissevain wanted his son to marry In his own set. He had picked out a Prin cess for the Prince. He couldn't see why Mynhart, who had the Boissevain wealth and the Boissevain prestige behind him, didn't "go in" for f society like his younger brother. Jack. But Mynhart was cut from a different pattern. He liked books, music; fishing and lumber camps. He preferred a dream er's bench jin Central Park to a dance at the Rita. He went to the conservatory Instead of Yale. He roughed It for two years In (Colorado oil camp when he might have been summering at Newport. Richard Wagner meant much to him? Bans Wagner nothing. When he Quoted Swinburne to debutantes, they were bored t and a little bit shocked. So Mynhart renounced society. He took a job with a New York trading company, tut most of the time he shut himself up In the Boissevain apartments at the Vanderbilt and scribbled poetry, gig family, never, saw It except hlsj Mynhart Boissevain, Scion of the "400," JVho Lived in a $50-a-Day Suite at the Vanderbilt Until He Eloped with the Chauffeur's Pretty Daughter, The Former Lydia Helen White, Now the Bride of Wealthy Young Mynhart Boissevain. The White Mice of Romance Drew Her and Her Prince Charming in a Ferryboat Chariot to the Altar. mother. She Is separated from Mr. Boisse vain. Mynhart would go to see her and read her his verses. She encouraged him to write.- So did the new friends Mynhart began to make among the studios of Greenwich Village. While Mynhart was dodging debutantes and hacking out hexameters, the daughter of James White, chauffeur to Miss Annie Stone, of Rldgefield, Conn., decided she was going to "live her own life." Though her father had a nice position and their home was pleasant. Hiss Lydia Helen White saw no hope for herself in Rldgefield. She had graduated from Washington Irring High School, where she developed. a talent for drawing. With a little money she' had saved and the reluctant consent of her parents, she moved to New York. On Honeywell avenue, in the Bronx, she settled down in a one-room walk-up. Dur ing the day she worked as a designer for several shops. At night she studied at art school. So there was Mynhart, shut up in bis millionaire suite on Park avenue, mutter ing of silver dawns and. purple sunsets. .And there was Lydia, shut ap in her flat in the Bronx, painting dream landscapes when she should have been finishing an order for . a new pattern in opera capes. And somewhere there was a Fairy, Godmothe who leaned out of the stars Cop7iibVX22 tv XateastioBalTeatare or dodged up from the subway, perhaps and waved a fairy wand or it might have been a : traffic whistle and ordered Cin derella to get up from the hearth and be take herself to the grand balL j The ball was really just a little dance given by one of the friends Lydia had met at art school.. The record does not show that she dropped a silver slipper and Myn hart picked it up. It does show, however, that shortly thereafter Lydia wrote to a friend in Rldgefield, Tve met a boy named Mynhart Boissevain and I'm just crazy about him. Also, that about the same time, Mynhart broke out with this: . r AT A DANCE. w took my arm, ana tide ly tide tee . walked , -Within the ancient, hi ffh-ioaUed Bpanith fort. About many people toftly talked. And from the tea the cooling night wind brought The pungent tcent of rock-strewn teaceed Irpvm. We panted to gaze acrott the- rampart toide v : - , For out upon t he tea, then o'er the town Our eye -were turned, "where good and had abide, '-''-'k The peace of night was tudden broken rude. And to an end our conversation come, " When harsh, shrill tones, and. harmonic more crude, purst. forth upon the air like utadienlngt Gnu SiiUte Xljfctr SMerreV Then turning round I saw some one ad vance With rapid ttride,. to claim you for the dance. Mynhart and Lydia, in brief, fell madly in love. Mynhart wanted to get married right away. They .would go to Paris she to study art, he to write poetry. Their life would be one long honeymoon. But Mynhart knew his father. He kept his romance secret. Every night he would skurry downstairs at the Vanderbilt and mail a special delivery letter to Lydia, who had no telephone. Every morning she would hurry to the nearest booth to, call him over the Vanderbilt wires. . The. oper ators at the Vanderbilt smiled. The clerks chuckled. Even the bell boys looked wise. Everybody seemed, to know Mynhart . was In love except Father Boissevain. Mynhart's mother was among the, first to know it. He took Lydia to lunch with Mrs. Boissevain and Mrs.. Boissevain ap proved. But he Just didn't have the heart to tell Mr. Boissevain, an aristocrat of the aristocrats, that his, eldest son wanted 'to marry a chauffeur's daughter. Instead, he married her and' broke; the news afterward. -With Lydia's brother and one of her girl chums they subwayed to the Battery and caught the ferryboat to Staten . Island. There a? minister droned the ceremony that made Lydia White, cos tume, designer, Mrs.' Mynhart ' Boissevain, -wife f a scion of the New York "400." And bacJc thej 3tt ja tie ferryboat to " New York,'" It was Jammed with, people some of them unwashed and most of them having a wonderful time eating peanuts, and tossing the shells on the deck. But Mr. and Mrs. Mynhart Boissevain .cared not at all. Mynhart bought peanuts and they ate them like the rest. They stood at the prow of the boat and watched the Manhattan skyline gleam closer through the sunshine. The ferryboat shook witti the grind of the propeller. The -water slapped the sides. The . sun shone. The babies cried. And Mynhart Boissevain, millionaire's son, put his arm around his Cinderella wife, just like the tourists from Kokomo beside them, and whispered in he? earThe wilderness is paradise enow!" tt Mynhart Went to' the home of his grand mother in Watklns, N. Y., and wrote to his father, Tm married-T And the elder Mr. Boissenvain, just as Mynhart had ex pected, wrote back to him, "You can paddle your own canoe, then," or words to 'that effect.- , ,' " ' ; - "I'm sorry,;said Mynhart when he read the letter. T love him and I,wanted hha to approve. But, of course, It Isn't gbipg to make any dJLfference. I've got .a litjls income of my own and I'm golng.-to get: a job. Z hope I never see Newport again. When I can I will 'write -poetry.' - Lydia will go on with her art. And we'P'be happy ever after J ' ; . .:-; , ; "And that, If . you remember, la the rejy three1 words that end the" stprx eT'ClSiis ' !S)ltaa4'llit-Ia4ry.JrJniaJ,- X:
