Elizabeth Wharton Drexel

Elizabeth de la Poer Beresford, Baroness Decies (April 22, 1868 – June 13, 1944) was an American author, philanthropist, and Manhattan socialite. Her paternal grandfather was the son of Francis Martin Drexel, the immigrant ancestor of Anthony Joseph Drexel who founded present-day J.P. Morgan & Co. and was influential in developing the private banking system of the United States. Thomas Wharton Jr., the first president of Pennsylvania was her mother's great-grandfather.

Career Drexel was an author who published two books, King Lehr and the Gilded Age (1935) and Turn of the World (1937). The first, published after the death of her second husband, tells the story of her unhappy marriage to Henry Lehr, which was referred to as a "tragic farce" of a 28-year marriage. Time magazine described it as: A bitter, disillusioned book, 'King Lehr' is memorable for the lurid light it throws on U. S. Society of the Gilded Age, may confidently be opened as one of the most startling and scandalously intimate records of life among the wealthy yet written by one of them. At her home, she hosted receptions, including for Prince Christian of Hesse and his American wife, the former Elizabeth Reid Rogers.

Personal life First marriage On June 29, 1889, Elizabeth married John Vinton Dahlgren (1869–1899), a graduate from Georgetown University and the son of Admiral John A. Dahlgren (1809–1870) at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City. Together, they had two sons:

Joseph Drexel Dahlgren (1890–1891), who died as an infant John Vinton Dahlgren Jr. (1892–1964), who married Helen Broderick in 1946, was a graduate of Harvard and Georgetown.

During this marriage, she made generous donations to Roman Catholic charities and to Georgetown University, including funds for the construction of Dahlgren Chapel, which was named for her first son. Georgetown University asked for her portrait, which was painted in 1899 by the Swiss-born American artist Adolfo Müller-Ury (1862–1947).

Dahlgren died August 11, 1899, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he had gone in hopes of recovering from tuberculosis.

Second marriage In June 1901, Elizabeth married Henry Symes Lehr (1869–1929), aka Harry Lehr. The marriage was never consummated. According to her, on her wedding night, her husband told her that he loathed her and could not stand the thought of touching her ever, although he wanted her to understand she was to be cordial to him in public and he might in turn occasionally call her "darling". He had, he admitted, married her for her money because poverty terrified him.

In 1915, the Lehrs were in Paris, and Elizabeth worked for the Red Cross. They remained in Paris after World War I, where they bought in 1923 the Hôtel de Cavoye at 52, rue des Saints-Pères in the 7th arrondissement. Harry Lehr died on January 3, 1929, of a brain malady in Baltimore.

Third marriage On May 25, 1936, she married The Rt Hon. The 5th Baron Decies (1866–1944), a widower and Anglo-Irish peer who had previously been married to Helen Vivien Gould (1893–1931). Upon this marriage, she became The Rt Hon. Baroness Decies.

Lord Decies filed suit for divorce in 1942, which Lady Decies contested. In 1943, she appeared in the photograph "The Critic" by Weegee.

Lord Decies died on January 31, 1944, at his Ascot home.

Death Elizabeth, Lady Decies, died at the Hotel Shelton in Manhattan, on June 13, 1944. She was buried in the crypt below Dahlgren Chapel at Georgetown University, which she and her first husband had built as a memorial to their first son, Joseph Drexel Dahlgren, who died in infancy.

Published works "King Lehr" and the Gilded Age (1935) Turn of the World (1937)