Big Bosses

A Working Girl's Memoir of Jazz Age America

Althea McDowell Altemus, Robin F. Bachin

• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9780226423760
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

“Dishy, witty and a ton of fun . . . [a] document of everyday life and work in 20th century America from a perspective that is all too rarely seen” ( Chicago Tribune ).
 
In her memoir, Big Bosses, Althea Altemus vividly recounts her life as a secretary for prominent—but thinly disguised—employers in Chicago, Miami, and New York during the late teens and 1920s. Alongside her, we rub elbows with movie stars, artists, and high-profile businessmen, and experience lavish estate parties that routinely defied the laws of Prohibition.
 
Beginning with her employment as a private secretary to James Deering of International Harvester, whom she describes as “probably the world’s oldest and wealthiest bachelor playboy, ” Altemus tells us much about high society during the time, taking us inside Deering’s glamorous Miami estate, Vizcaya, an Italianate mansion worthy of Gatsby himself. Later, we meet her other notable employers, including Samuel Insull, president of Chicago Edison; New York banker S. W. Straus; and real estate developer Fred F. French. Altemus was also a struggling single mother, a fact she had to keep secret from her employers, and she reveals the difficulties of being a working woman at the time through glimpses into women’s apartments, their friendships, and the dangers—sexual and otherwise—that she and others faced. Throughout, Altemus entertains with a tart and self-aware voice that combines the knowledge of an insider with the wit and clarity of someone on the fringe.
 
“ Big Bosses stands as a real contribution to our understanding of the history of working women in Jazz Age America.” — The Wall Street Journal
 
“Remarkable . . . Altemus recounts the wildest indiscretions of her employers between 1918 and 1925.” — Booklist

32,000 words

Mrs. Althea Altemus

63 S.E. 6th St.

Miami, Florida.

BIG BOSSES

BY

A PRIVATE SECRETARY

CHAPTERS

PREFACE

WEALTH

CHICAGO

PIERRE DUVAL

SLEUTHS

PHYLANDER & COMPANY 1f

COUNTRY

NEW YORK

S. W. STRAUSS & COMPANY

PIGEONBLOOD RUBY 2f

FRED F. FRENCH & COMPANY

MIAMI

BISCAYNE BAY

FOOTNOTES

(Sketch A)

PREFACE

A STORY OF ACTUAL HAPPENINGS

With the exception of names, which are mostly fictitious, these few chapters portray incidents in the life of a private secretary, viz. the authoress, who at twenty years of age was left a widow with infant son.3f

Rather than assistance from either parents, or parents-in-law, she chose a business career and independence, and it is hoped that the following resume of her adventures, friendships, laughter and heartaches, during the successive ten years, may be of interest to readers of this booklet.

(Sketch B)

All drawings in this book by

Phineas E. Paist, Arch etc Viscaya

Supervising Arch Coral Gables Fla 1925-1930

" " City Hall

" Miami Post office

Artist - Paris, N.Y. Miami.4f

SKETCHES A AND B5f

Architects of Viscaya6f

F. Burral Hoffman N.Y.

Paul Chalfin "

Associate Arch. Phineas Paist N.Y.

Accountants - Viscaya

Haskell & Sells - Chicago

Miami Corporation - "

Secretaries - Viscaya

Mary Northwood Chicago

A MacDowell Altemus " & Miami

Roger Conant Miami & N.Y.

Bookkeeper & Acct. at Viscaya

1916 – 1923

A MacDowell Altemus

Decorator - Interior at Viscaya

Phineas E Paist

Paul Chalfin

Elsie de Wolfe (occasionally)

Bob Chandler N.Y.

Superintendents Viscaya

Mr. Sturrock

" McGinnis

Gardener - Alec Donn – Exotic Gardens

WEALTH

Neither beautiful nor dumb I had received my first assignment as private secretary to probably the world’s oldest and wealthiest bachelor playboy.

With the mature judgment of twenty lovely summers and fewer winters, fortune had come my way following three years of the now elapsed matrimony which bequeathed unto me a tiny liability of the stronger sex. It was 1922, America had been at war, money was tight, work was scarce, and years loomed ahead in which to furnish the wherewithall for cute little Tidbits.7f

I wasn’t hard to look at, i.e. if you didn’t look too hard, and here was opportunity as secretary to the Ex-President of Teaser and Reaper, Inc.8f

Now this big boss had retired from active work and although his past was rumored as a panorama of living dramas, comedies and what-have-you, nevertheless he had decided to gracefully and quietly drift into the decrepit years, peacefully alone in a seven million dollar villa not far from Palm Beach, with only a couple hundred servants, three yachts, four cruisers and a few other necessities of modern comfort.9f

First I must tell you that he was a Beau Brummell of three score and ten, tall and distinguished, always perfectly groomed and a patron of art and French classics. In fact he adored anything and everything French.

His salon was Louis XIVth, his bedchamber Louis XVth, his bath an embroidered tent ala Louis XVIth, and his sleeping couch a copy of Napoleon’s from the Petit Trianon.

To describe his villa, Eden, would only bore you with its voluminous detail.10f Enough to say that the greatest talent and genius of the day had been commissioned to bring to reality on the beautiful shores of Biscayne Bay the atmosphere of old world culture and art. It had taken five years to build this estate and though occupied was still incomplete.

My duties started at 10 A.M.

(Sketch 1)

SKETCH 111f

Beau, we’ll call him for short, was very prompt in all things, and after a plunge in the marble and gold pool - in his embroidered tent - and a hearty breakfast of calomel and seltzer, was always on the job promptly at ten.12f

Five minutes were alloted to sort the mail - five groups in all - business, social, love, foreign and miscellaneous.

Most important were the dear messages of love and passion. This group was always a delight to me with its dainty envelopes of violet and jade, lovely pastel yellows, shell pinks, baby blues, now and then a grey and always a white. Delicate lilac to sensuous scents of the Orient wafted from this group.

Only the lonely white missive seemed to be in a world apart, as Beau always picked up this precious document first. It did not take me long to know that this white message, with its strange scrawl, was not for even a secretary’s eye to gaze upon. My youthful training warned me that curiosity killed the cat but I wondered what made the cat curious and intended to find out. One day I peeked over Beau’s shoulder and there was that adorable phrase on the white note “With all my love, Nan”. That little white envelope arrived every morning for several years and was never answered in my presence - it found a resting place in an inside pocket of Beau’s beautifully embroidered waistcoat.13f

With love letters out of the way, and calomel in the way, Beau would rush into his embroidered tent, thus giving me time to enjoy the dear little picture postals just in from Paris.

Next came the daily requests for money, arriving all the way from the far east to the golden west, and varied in sums from ten to a hundred dollars. These were sent by colored preachers, misunderstood wives, students, doll-babies in need of operations, cripples, the aged and infirm, schoolmarms, nurses, waitresses and any others you can think of. These letters we answered with a “nay” except the colored pastors, they always received a check.

The higher requests for loans of five hundred to a hundred thousand arrived mostly from France, the elite and the theatrical contingent of our country; huge amounts were necessary to finance coming out parties of debs, whose parents had probably met Beau somewhere and inasmuch as he was a bachelor they thought he would be delighted to furnish the funds for such a worthy cause. Even a former Director of Teaser and Reaper, Inc. needed one hundred grand and got it.

Invitations came in for third inspection. These were easy inasmuch as Beau had experienced and tired of all the thrills of modern society. The slim and stupid debutante failed to register, dyed in the wool phrases of the fat and forty madame were lost completely, and the repartee and allure of the charmer were just so much time wasted.

(Sketch 2)

SKETCH 2

We had stock regrets always on file and for the soirees of the Palm Beach group we sent replies of ten words - no more no less - “So sorry, but I have lost the effervescence of youth” - a plausible excuse, n’cest pas?

By this time it was most necessary that Beau make another dash for his Luis XVIth, after which the valet would serve several little nips of Chapin & Gore and then we were ready to take up the business of the day.14f

Appointments with House Manager, Captains, Architects and Artists, Lawyers, Professors, Organists, Golf Pros and others, at fifteen minute intervals kept us busy until luncheon.

Our House Manager, according to her opinion was the only remaining descendant of the Mayflower, and any other pretenders should immediately be exterminated. Her Englishlike abhorrence of any tendency to earn one’s living must have caused her real pain when obliged to spend a few minutes daily at the arduous task of O.K.’ing a few bills.

To her the entire place and contents were bourgeois and really to speak to this lofty dowager was a favor one could not forget. She came, she saw, but she didn’t conquer because her reports were firstly nonplus, secondly non-legible and thirdly only once-in-a-while. She didn’t make good with Beau and we were all happy to have her depart for wherever she came from.

Architects and artists were still engaged putting the final touches to this gorgeous Eden. They came from everywhere - some appeared in Fiats with Chow dogs, blue denim pants and apricot sashes - others with great flopping Panamas and goatees came in Fords or on bicycles. All had work to do at this unfinished Paradise. One very ladylike old dear lived in a houseboat - which he called the Blue Pup - with his boy friend and Chows. Beau’s sheckles financed for two years these dear boys during their sojourn to bring aesthetics to our country seat. And if you don’t think the parties given on the Blue Pup were unique, ask the actress I am sketching herewith, for believe me she knows.15f

(Sketch 3)

SKETCH 3

**********************************

Now Beau thought Eden wouldn’t be complete without at least one decoration by the great and famous “Who’s Looney Now”, so along came this monstrous goof and enjoyed himself immensely for a couple of months.

If he didn’t happen to be rhapsodizing with four or five native beauties he had sent over from Cuba, he could usually be found up in the towers sleeping with the peacocks he would inveigle up the winding stairway.

Beau asked Bob one day about his ten day marriage with the gorgeous Lina, and Husky replied “It cost me a million but it was worth it”.16f

**********************************

Just about this time we had an uninvited actress visitor from New York. She was a lovely blonde with a peaches and cream complexion and a slight lisp. She announced herself - Mary Davis.17f

Mary arrived sans baggage and thought it would be nice to spend sometime in this Eden. She told the butler she had just left Palm Beach where she received a ten thousand dollar diamond ring and he told her he hoped her present visit would be equally profitable.

Beau didn’t know why she was with us but said it likely that she had had a tiff with her boy friend, a big publisher whose name was something like William Bamdolf First, and wanted to make him jealous.

We put Mary in the Chinese room and the housekeeper gave her the very nicest nightie in her hope chest. Beautiful Mary hung around a couple of days and apparently had no intention of departing so we arranged a little cruise on one of the yachts, named from a drug supposed by the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Sample Pages from Althea Altemus’s Original Manuscript
• A Note on the Transcription
• BIG BOSSES
• Afterword: Chronicling the Clerical Life of Althea Altemus
• Acknowledgments
• Historical Annotations
• Endnotes