F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” — which was published 100 years ago today — might not have happened without “The Big Four.”
Born in the late 1890s, the four Lake Forest daughters of prominent families — Ginevra King, Edith Cummings, Margaret Carry and Courtney Letts — grew up together and were bestowed the nickname on account of their beauty and popularity. Many of their activities were captured in the society pages of the Tribune. They were almost never out in public without a chaperone, be it a mother or friend to escort them, as young women of their pedigree were expected to be. They gathered at Onwentsia Club for golf and tennis matches, luncheons and dances. They went to the opera and celebrated the holidays by hosting guests from out of town.
Yet the women Fitzgerald met when they were teenagers and who inspired characters in “The Great Gatsby” had full lives. They put aside their debutante ways — including their grand coming out to society parties — to help gather supplies and funding for the American forces fighting in World War I. Each married and set off on adventures. Three out of the four had children of their own.
Here’s what we found about them in the Tribune’s archives. For more details, visit “Behind the Glamour: Inside and (Outside) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Lake Forest,” a new exhibition at the History Center of Lake Forest-Lake Bluff.
Chicago’s connection to ‘The Great Gatsby’
Fitzgerald distilled real-life experiences into characters moving through scenes he’d witnessed in Lake Forest and in his interactions with those from the city. Thanks to Fitzgerald’s meticulous record-keeping, we know the route the novel’s protagonists, under the aliases Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, took to the story’s Long Island setting.
Fitzgerald kept a ledger book in which he listed his literary earnings and daily routine. At the top of page 169, he recorded Daisy Buchanan’s conception by noting: “Met Ginevra.”
Ginevra King
Fitzgerald’s young love for Ginevra inspired him to create Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby.” They met at a party on Jan. 4, 1915 — just weeks after she attended a party at the residence of the Mitchells, her future in-laws. Yet her connection to Fitzgerald and the book wasn’t written about in the Tribune until 1965.
The comings and goings of Ginevra, whose father was a stockbroker, were well-documented in the Tribune. She danced, sang and played instruments. Her travels home from Westover boarding school in Middlebury, Connecticut, were reason to celebrate. Her family threw parties at their sprawling Lake Forest mansion on Ridge Road.
During World War I, she took classes on food rationing and sold flowers to aid war funds and families of British and Canadian soldiers. Instead of donning an Easter bonnet in 1918, she was given a uniform to wear in her work with the State Council of Defense.
Her wedding to Ensign William H. Mitchell on Sept. 4, 1918, at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church in the city was the social event of the year. From the Madame X column on Sept. 8, 1918: “ … the extreme youth of the bridal couple, their gay and gallant air, their uncommon good looks, the distinguished appearance of both sets of parents, the smart frocks and becoming uniforms, all made an impression of something brilliant, charming, and cheerful.” Her sister Marjorie married one of Mitchell’s brothers in 1924.
Her beauty continued in the 1920s when, then a mother of three, she was interviewed by columnist Antoinette Donnelly, who wrote, “She does not sit down to be waited upon. She keeps moving in lively fashion to answer the phone, to recover a stray toy for the young son, and, as I remarked before, she is an early riser with much to do in her busy world.”
During a gathering at their home in November 1931, robbers broke in and held Ginevra and eight others captive for 20 minutes while they robbed them of $150,000 in jewelry. Most of the items were recovered and three of the robbers were captured.
The marriage didn’t last and Ginevra traveled to Reno, Nevada, for a divorce. On April 7, 1942, she married John T. Pirie Jr. — a grandson of the founder of Carson Pirie Scott & Co. and chairman of the board at the company — quietly at her parents’ Gold Coast apartment.
Ironically, there was a connection between Ginevra’s second husband and actor and Winnetka native Bruce Dern, who played Tom Buchanan in the 1974 movie “The Great Gatsby.” Dern’s grandfather Bruce MacLeish was also previously chairman of the same company’s board.
Ginevra, who founded the Women’s Board of the American Cancer Society, died on Dec. 13, 1980 — a month after her second husband. She was 82.
Edith Cummings
Edith, who met Fitzgerald, was his inspiration for golfer Jordan Baker in “The Great Gatsby.” Indeed Edith’s earliest mention in the Tribune was for a competition. The decorated cart she rode in as a toddler for Owentsia’s open-air horse show in 1904 won second prize. It was the first of many epic competitions for the talented golfer — and though golf was the focus of her 20s during the 1920s, it was not the entirety of her life.
Inheriting a love of golf from her banker father, Edith commonly was listed as the winner of summer competitions on Tuesdays — ladies day — at Owentsia’s course. While her friends were on their first or second husbands, Edith was focused on the sport. By 1921, she and her mother set sail for Europe, where she was one of seven women selected by the U.S. Golf Association to play in Scotland. Winters soon became dedicated to golf in California, Florida or Europe. In October 1923, Edith won the U.S. women’s amateur golf championship in New York. Upon returning to Lake Forest after clinching the award, Edith was presented with an honorary lifetime membership to Owentsia — the first woman given the distinction. She followed up her national championship by winning the Western Open here in August 1924.
Just a year or so later, however, Edith’s name disappeared from the results pages. By July 1927, the Tribune society page wondered if she had given up the sport altogether. By December of that year, she gave friends notice that she was moving to New York to pursue a career in interior design. She was back in Lake Forest by the spring.
Edith traded golf for horseback riding, then hunting. Almost out of nowhere, her engagement to Curtis B. Munson of New York was announced on Jan. 15, 1934. The Tribune described Munson, who later penned the Munson Report, as “Charming, but nearly always away.”
Edith was a bride in a “severely simple white satin gown” at her mother’s home on 1550 N. State Pkwy. in the city on April 7, 1934. It was a second marriage for Munson, who had three daughters.
They stayed married and moved to Washington, D.C., during World War II. He was later cited for courageous conduct and she served in France for the Red Cross. He died in 1980 after a stroke and she followed on Nov. 20, 1984.
The Edith Cummings Munson Golf Award is presented each year by the Women’s Golf Coaches Association to a NCAA Division I student-athlete.
Margaret Carry
Though the Tribune once described her as “one of the prettiest and most popular girls in the younger social set,” Margaret rarely garnered headlines of her own. Like her friends, Margaret’s name was frequently listed as being in attendance at Owentsia, but she often was no more than just another face in the crowd.
Her father was president of railroad car manufacturer Pullman Co. and also served as director for a variety of banks, building and utility companies. During World War I, he moved the family to Washington, D.C., where he served as chairman of the Shipbuilding Labor Adjustment Board and director of operations for the U.S. Shipping Board. That’s also where Margaret made her debut in November 1919.
The biggest headline of her life was the announcement of her engagement in December 1919 to 34-year-old Edward A. Cudahy Jr. — vice president of his family’s meat packing company. Cudahy had been kidnapped and held for ransom 19 years earlier when the family lived in Omaha. He was released unscathed after his family paid a $25,000 ransom.
The Catholic couple was married on Dec. 27, 1919, at Holy Name Cathedral with Ginevra, Edith and Courtney Letts as bridesmaids. They sailed to Cuba for their honeymoon.
Despite having three children together, the family was fractured after Margaret divorced her husband on March 6, 1942. Just three months later she died unexpectedly at her home on 377 Woodlawn Ave., Lake Forest. No cause for her death was listed in the Tribune.
Courtney Letts
Like the other three women of The Big Four, Courtney grew up in Lake Forest, then attended boarding school at Westover. One of the earliest stories about her in the Tribune noted that she was rushed home from the Connecticut school in February 1915 for emergency surgery to treat appendicitis.
Her father was a prominent food distributor who also owned vegetable canning plants and coffee roasters. His work directing supplies for the American Red Cross took the Letts family to Washington, D.C., during World War I. That’s also where Letts was introduced to society during an afternoon reception hosted by her parents in December 1918.
What makes Courtney stand out among her friends is that she lived the longest, married the most husbands and hobnobbed with a U.S. president, ambassadors from around the world and once was seated next to a real-life prince during his visit to Chicago.
Her first marriage was to “childhood chum” Wellesley Stillwell. With Ginevra as matron of honor and Edith as a bridesmaid, the couple wed on Jan. 10, 1920, at St. Chrysostom’s.
Their union, however, didn’t last long. Courtney sailed for Europe with their two children in December 1923 before their divorce was finalized in late 1924.
“The real cause of Mrs. Stillwell’s divorce, other than general incompatibility, has never been revealed, as it was granted on the technical ground of desertion in Paris,” the Tribune reported on March 3, 1925.
Courtney’s mother let the cat out of the bag that her daughter was engaged to be married for the second time. John Borden was an explorer who family made its fortune by mining for silver in Colorado and invested in the Chicago Yellow Cab Co. Borden’s refined tastes included playing polo and yachting. During World War I, he converted his 475-ton pleasure craft into a submarine chaser for the American army.
The couple wed in a simple ceremony on March 14, 1925, in Washington, D.C. As a wedding present, Borden bought Courtney the Astor Street home formerly occupied by Ginevra’s family.
Courtney gave birth to a baby girl, and Borden wanted to name her Courtney, like her mother. Courtney already had a daughter named Courtney with her first husband, but Borden insisted the child be named in that way. So, Courtney then had two daughters named Courtney.
The Bordens traveled to Alaska — where she shot a polar bear — among other locales, which inspired her to write “The Cruise of the Northern Light” and “Adventures in a Man’s World: the Initiation of a Sportsman’s Wife.”
Courtney left her husband for Reno, Nevada, in May 1933 and was granted a divorce there on July 1, 1933. Borden married his 21-year-old secretary two weeks later.
Before the month was over, Courtney married Argentinian ambassador to the United States Felipe A. Espil in Washington, D.C. The Tribune reported that she visited the White House and met President Franklin D. Roosevelt twice. But when Espil was called back to Argentina in 1943, Courtney accompanied him to Buenos Aires. After stints in Madrid and Sao Paulo, Courtney published two books in Spanish. She remained with Espil until his death in 1972.
Courtney married for the fourth time in 1974, after she returned to the U.S. She died at 95 in Washington, D.C.
Want more vintage Chicago?
- Become a Tribune subscriber: It’s just $1 for a six-month digital subscription.
Thanks for reading!
Subscribe to the free Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter, join our Chicagoland history Facebook group, stay current with Today in Chicago History and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago’s past.
Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Kori Rumore and Marianne Mather at krumore@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com
