Word: evalyn
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FATHER STRUCK IT RICH-Evalyn Walsh McLean-Little, J5rown...
Bret Harte might have written the story of Evalyn McLean. This tale of a prospector's daughter whose father struck it rich would have been just his ticket. But he would have fictionalized it, added some homespun sentiment; and he would have stopped the narrative before it became too true to be funny. Evalyn Walsh McLean tells her own story (with the ghostly aid of Boyden Sparkes) with no regard for her readers' feelings. She simply sets down the blatant facts, and though the facts are increasingly adorned with pearls and bristling with diamonds, she never succeeds...
...Evalyn's father, Thomas F. Walsh (not to be confused with Montana's late Senator) was an Irish immigrant who drifted to Colorado, left his carpenter's trade for prospecting. He ran a store in Deadwood, owned Leadville's most respectable hotel during the boom there. Evalyn's mother, known to Leadville as "a rather refined lady" because she changed the name of one of her husband's strikes from Sowbelly Gulch to St. Keven's, had gone West to be a schoolteacher. Evalyn was born in 1886, can still remember...
...good time and become real ladies & gentlemen. That was easy. Father built an $835,000 house on Massachusetts Avenue, entertained lavishly, tipped right & left. When they went abroad King Leopold I of Belgium was his pal, tried, unsuccessfully, to interest Father in a little proposition in the Congo. Writes Evalyn: "It makes me happy to remember now that, after years and years of hard knocks and worry, my daddy was so quickly recognized, when he had riches, as more than just a man with gold." He had a lot of Government bonds...
...Evalyn was growing up, and there was just no holding the girl. She was high-spirited, and that was a fact. Father chuckled and said she was a caution. They could not keep her in school, she did not seem to like school, but she got all the education money could buy. In Paris, for instance, the Walshes got clubby with Chicago's Mrs. Potter Palmer, and Evalyn was allowed to touch her stomacher. When they let Evalyn go abroad on her own to study French and art and music she had a wonderful time buying clothes and automobiles...