Portrait of a Lady

Between the world wars, a beautiful, artistic woman named Bobsy Goodspeed stood at the heart of Chicago's social and cultural scenes. Now, prompted by a salacious if glancing remark in a recent book, this forgotten woman re-emerges and opens the door on a vanished era peopled by painters and pianists, plutocrats and politicians—and an irresistible force named Gertrude Stein

By Geoffrey Johnson

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A party at the Goodspeeds': (from left) Bobsy; Stein; the Tribune literary critic Fanny Butcher; Butcher's husband, Richard Bokum; Alice Roullier (a Chicago gallery owner); Toklas; and Thornton Wilder

In 1916, the year Elizabeth Fuller married Charles Goodspeed, the well-heeled son of a rich and inventive Ohio industrialist, Chicago had seven major daily newspapers. In the days before TV and radio, most Chicagoans religiously followed at least one of these papers to learn about the latest happenings in politics, business, sports, and the arts. An essential part of this mix was the society pages, which minutely chronicled the lives of the city's elite: their parties, their favorite causes, their exotic travels; their clubs, their domiciles, their clothes. Interest in these stories, written by women whose identities were cloaked in suggestive pen names—Pandora, Cousin Eve, Madame X—extended beyond the upper class. One has only to recall the broad appeal of the elegant Depression-era movies starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers to understand the fascinating spell once cast by stories depicting the fairy-tale world of high society.

The society pages, however, could be terribly one-dimensional. In that domain, husbands were virtually nonexistent, their being confirmed only in the names borne by their wives. As I read through pages and pages (and years and years) of society columns, I began to wonder if Bobsy's father—Dr. Charles Gordon Fuller, a specialist in diseases of the ears and eyes at several Chicago hospitals—had died prematurely. For though I would regularly spot Mrs. Charles Gordon Fuller (Bobsy's mother) at different events around town, I despaired of ever catching sight of her husband. Only at Bobsy's wedding does Dr. Fuller briefly emerge, blowing kisses to the bridesmaids from the aisle of Michigan Avenue's Fourth Presbyterian Church. And only at her death do we learn the first name of Bobsy's mother: Isabella.

Good-looking, smart, and preternaturally chic, Bobsy frequented those pages as often as the city's brighter lights—among them, the second and third generations of Armours, McCormicks, and Palmers. Born in 1893, she grew up in a big house on the Evanston lakefront with her sister, Dorothy. (Dorothy's September 1910 wedding, on the terraced lawn of Daniel Burnham, the Fullers' friend and neighbor, occasioned Bobsy's first mention in the press.)

Educated at the Villa Dupont in Paris—a boarding school for American girls run by her aunt and namesake, Elizabeth White—Bobsy acquired an early appreciation of the arts and a love for Europe, predilections she would nurture throughout her life.

Bobsy returned from Paris in the summer of 1913 and continued her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. She made her formal debut in 1914. By then the Fullers had left the Evanston house and resided at The Virginia, the sumptuous hotel at Rush and Ohio streets where Harriet Monroe, the founder of a new magazine called Poetry, also lived. Like her mother, a onetime president of the Friday and Fortnightly clubs—influential ladies' groups that sought to refine Chicago's rough edges—Bobsy took an active role in the local women's organizations. The "acknowledged belle" of North Side society (according to the Chicago Tribune), she also found time to act and dance, performing Ivan Caryll's Pink Lady Waltz at a May 1915 benefit for the field hospitals in war-torn France or starring in Cousin Jim, a locally produced movie whose premiere raised about $18,000 for the American Red Cross.

Following her November 1916 wedding to Charles Goodspeed, Bobsy and her husband resided at 191 East Walton Place (today, the address is a hotel loading dock). After the United States entered World War I, Barney shipped off for France as a captain of infantry. With the armistice—Bobsy appeared as New France at a December 1919 victory ball at the Palmer House—the Goodspeeds, who never had children, settled into a routine of travel, charitable benefits, and social events. Barney, who maintained his connections to his late father's Ohio steel company, served on the boards of the University of Chicago, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Art Institute, Presbyterian Hospital (a forerunner of Rush University Medical Center), and other organizations. He was also a stalwart of the Republican Party, serving as its national treasurer during the 1936 and 1940 presidential campaigns.

As for Bobsy, the newspapers regularly tracked her public appearances: at the symphony, say, in a gown of pink embroidered crêpe draped over pink charmeuse, or gracing a performance of the Ballets Russes, a corsage of white camellias setting off her dress of coral velvet and tulle. But her sense of social obligation also compelled Bobsy toward a life of service, though she may have defined that term broadly. She played a major role with the Arts Club of Chicago—she served as its president from 1932 to 1940, even redesigning its Wrigley Building headquarters—and she was an enthusiastic member of the Junior League. The Tribune deemed her management of the 1924 Billboard Ball, which raised more than $50,000 for the Illinois Children's Home and Aid Society (one of Bobsy's favorite causes), "the greatest financial success in Chicago's history of charitable affairs."

The epicenter for Bobsy's activities was her home. Around 1927, after a decade on Walton Place, she and Barney moved into the 18-story building at 2430 North Lakeview Avenue in Lincoln Park (the building survives). Adorned with paintings by Picasso, Calder, and Matisse—as well as with two gorgeous paintings of Bobsy, one by Bernard Boutet de Monvel and another by the American impressionist Martha Walter—the elegant apartment served as a command post from which Bobsy organized her own affairs and others'. "'Bobsy' Goodspeed is the busiest person in town," insisted the Tribune. "She has two telephones beside her bed, and both are in use constantly from 8:30 until 11 every morning."

Bobsy's home also served as a showcase for her latest artistic discoveries. Years later, Fanny Butcher, the Tribune's literary critic, remembered with obvious fondness the pleasant times she had spent there. The guests varied—on one occasion, Butcher got a cryptic call from Bobsy that led to a private dinner with the French writer André Maurois and the former U.S. president Herbert Hoover—but Butcher reserved her most rapturous recollections for the musicians who visited, among them the pianists Artur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz, who gave his first Chicago performance at a private concert arranged by Bobsy. Invited to the Goodspeeds' home, George Gershwin was making small talk with Butcher when Bobsy floated into the room wearing a white crêpe de Chine dress that was more negligee than tea gown. "The apparition, I felt, was not what Gershwin had expected," wrote Butcher in her autobiography, Many Lives—One Love. "Before my eyes I saw the internationally famous composer turn into a young man dazzled."

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Photography: (Image 1) Charles Goodspeed/Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Tolkias Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library