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The massive grey stone house on Lake Shore Drive, with a cone-topped tower that she called the "bastion," was not a wedding gift from her father. Harold McCormick bought it, and later she bought it from him. Late in her life the bastion was one of her favorite haunts. The other was a group of trees on her lawn which she called the "bosky." New, lusty Chicago loved display. Edith McCormick fed her guests off Napoleonic gold plate. She brought grand opera to Chicago, spent $5,000,000 keeping it alive. When her eldest son died of scarlet fever she gave the John McCormick Institution for Infectious Diseases. The scarlet fever germ was isolated there. Upon retirement of beauteous Mrs. Potter Palmer, Mrs. McCormick with her $2,000,000 string of pearls became Chicago's social dictator. Before the opera she served 35-minute dinners, timing each course by a jewelled clock beside her plate, allowing the men ten minutes for coffee & cigars. She opened conversation at her table by asking someone : "What has been interesting you lately?" After the opera she drove home always by the same route. Her chauffeur had police orders never to vary the route and to drive last. She was the first woman in Chicago to wear an anklet.
In 1911 she recalled 120 invitations to a cotillion without an explanation. Then Chicago heard she had had a nervous breakdown. With her husband she went to Italy, moved up to Switzerland. In Zurich she became a pupil of Psychologist Carl Jung, conceived the notion that her mission was to teach psychoanalysis. She claimed Jung had thrice cured her of tuberculosis through psychoanalysis. To practice humility she scrubbed the floor of her hotel. She took 99 patients, one of whom was her small, plump gardener, Edwin D. Krenn. Krenn improved his position, returned with her to the U. S. in 1921. When she landed she announced that her husband was coming by another boat.
But Harold McCormick had spied Ganna Walska on another boat, bet Alexander Smith Cochrane he would meet her first. Cochrane won the bet, married Walska. When Mr. McCormick reached Chicago he went to his Lake Forest home and announced to the Press: "Mr. & Mrs. McCormick are not living under the same roof." Edith Rockefeller divorced him on grounds of desertion. Later Walska divorced Cochrane. Harold McCormick had a gland operation by Dr. Victor Lespinasse and married her.