(2 of 2)
Poor, Dismal Russians. She flaunted her wealth, but she was never underhanded or petty, seldom lost her rowdy sense of humor. When she dyed her hair, which was often, she called her friends to announce the event. She never tried to hide her age, nor the wilder episodes of her life, published the facts about both in a garrulous, ghosted autobiography, Father Struck It Rich. Once she made a trip to Communist Russia and wore her jewels at Moscow nightclubs. "They hated me," she said later, "but it was the first thrill those poor, dismal Russians had had in ten years."
Her fabulous Washington house, Friendship, matched her personality. It was furnished in a style reminiscent both of Versailles and a fancy bordello. She slept between pink silk sheets which cost $4,000 apiece, and kept a magnifying glass as big as a dinner plate, with which she inspected her collection of paperweights and ore samples. Friendship was the scene of her triumphs. Homely, over-rouged, and clanking with diamonds, Evalyn McLean hypnotized and dominated generations of officeholders and nouveaux riches, the generals, admirals, Senators, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and ambassadors who make up the capital's complex and varied social whirl.
Mixed Guests. Her parties were frequent and mammoth—she rarely invited fewer than 100 people, often entertained two or three hundred, and spent as much as $50,000 on a big affair. They were wonderful shows. They were charged with undercurrents of excitement, generated in part by her prodigal distribution of champagne and in part by her habit of mixing up her guests to see what would happen. She seated Republicans with Democrats, put gossip columnists near their prey and often asked John L. Lewis in to glower or quote Shakespeare, as the spirit moved him. She entertained as lavishly as ever during World War II; she thought the capital's morale would suffer if she stopped her parties. Few generals refused her caviar.
Seven months ago, the McLean parties finally stopped for good. Her 2 5-year-old daughter Evalyn, fifth wife of North Carolina's aging ex-Senator Robert R. Reynolds, died of an overdose of sleeping pills. Then, last week, after 60 years of fabulous living, Evalyn Walsh McLean came down with pneumonia.
An oxygen tent was set up in her room at Friendship, but she died 24 hours later. Even in death she was surrounded by celebrities. The Rev. Edmund A. Walsh, vice president of Georgetown University, administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Ex-Trust Buster Thurman (The Folklore of Capitalism) Arnold, Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy and Mrs. Eleanor ("Cissie") Patterson, owner of the Washington Times-Herald, were at her bedside.
* Some of the diamond's former owners: Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette, both beheaded; Lord Francis Hope, whose wife ran off with a U.S. Army officer; Habib Bey, drowned; Prince Ivan Kanitovsky, murdered by revolutionists; Lorens Ladue, murdered; and Sultan Abdul. Hamid, who was deposed by the Young Turks.