In 1893, lawyer, author, socialite, and polo expert Thomas Nelson Page gave up a successful law practice in Virginia and moved to Washington. That year he had also married Florence Lathrop Field, a Washington, D.C. native and widow of Henry Field, the grandson of Marshall Field and heir to the Chicago mercantilist’s fortune. This was also Page’s second marriage, his first wife having died in 1888.
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| Thomas Nelson Page. From Frances Benjamin Johnston's The World's Work, 1903 |
Page's marriage to Florence Field certainly provided the necessary means for him to build a mansion in Dupont Circle and establish himself in local society. Three years after moving to Washington, architect
Stanford White of the architectural firm of McKim, Mead & White designed a Georgian/Federalist–style mansion for the Pages on a prominent corner on New Hampshire Avenue and R Street at 1759 R Street Northwest. After settling into his new house and now longer needing to earn a living, Page devoted himself almost entirely to his writing, and his home became the center of Washington literary life.
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| 1759 R Street, NW. Photo: AgnotisticPreachersKid |
Page was one of the best-known writers of his day. In addition to fiction, he wrote prolifically about history, politics and social mores of the time. His fictional works were often characterized by a distorted and nostalgic view of the old South in which the slaves were happy and simple and grateful for the care their masters provided for them. His book "Two Little Confederates" (1888) was meant to be a "heart warming" account of two ten-year-old boys' adventures while living in rural Virginia during the Civil War. Yet, his nostalgic warmth for the South also had a much darker side on matters of race. In his 1904 essay, “The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem,” he defended the white man’s right to lynch for the crime of rape, claiming that black people were ultimately responsible for lynchings at that time because they did not attempt to punish alleged black rapists themselves.
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| Illustration from Page's essay "The Negro: The Southerner’s Problem," 1904. |
Thomas Page had an opinion on almost everything and was not afraid to share it. He was a self-appointed monitor of good taste, class, society, morals, race, art and diplomacy. He had a disdain for the smart set, both that in New York and what he thought to be its humble imitator in Washington, and went so far as to say that he thought that the ostentatious Beaux-Arts-style homes of his neighbors in Dupont Circle were un-American. It is therefore ironic that Page selected Stanford White as the architect for his DC home. White was a leading Beaux-Arts architect, whose morals and behavior were anything but those that Page would have approved of.
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Illustration from Page's Marse Chan: The slave boy Sam, the narrator of the story, "is allowed to hold his newborn “master” while his owner and a dozen other faithful slaves look on in admiration."
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The Pages had a particularly strong dislike of divorcés and claimed that divorced and doubly divorced people were leading New York and Newport society. Florence Page said that she had never received a divorcée in her home, nor had she ever called on one. She even carried her disdain of divorcées on to her daughters when they were young, as they were not allowed to associate with other girls whose parents had been divorced. But as the old saying goes, the chickens always come home to roost. In 1907, Page’s own stepdaughter Minna Field, the eldest daughter of his wife Florence, from her previous marriage to Henry Field, filed for divorce from her husband, charging him with cruelty and seeking custody of their child. She then moved back in with the Pages. The Page’s efforts that same year to exclude his own neighbor Perry Belmont and his previously divorced wife from official society were still fresh in the minds of Washington society.
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Thomas Nelson Page in 1916. Library of Congress.
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Page’s controversial opinions on race, which today would certainly keep anyone out of public life, had little effect on his career, especially as far as another prominent Virginian was concerned. President Wilson appointed Page U.S. ambassador to Italy for six years between 1913 and 1919, after which time he returned to Washington to resume his writing career and died just three years later. His grand Georgian home now serves as the headquarters for the American Institute for Cancer Research.
The Thomas Nelson Page House at 1759 R Street, NW was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1975. It is designated as a contributing property to the Dupont Circle Historic District, listed in the DC Inventory of Historic Sites.
Copyright (c) 2020. Stephen A. Hansen. All Rights Reserved.
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