The Ephemera
Photo - Flickr/Bustbright
Fortune, December 1938:
About this time every winter in New York, if you happened to pass the Ritz toward eleven o’clock of a December evening, you would notice at the usually dark and deserted Forty-sixth Street entrance a swarm of limousines and taxis busily unloading a crowd of top hats and ermine coats. If you joined the little band of late strollers and office-building scrubwomen from the Grand Central zone, already watching at the edge of the bright marquee, you would see at once that the top hats belonged to crew haircuts, and the ermine coats, which sometimes were only bunny, to adolescent faces masked with skin-deep sophistication.
Thus begins Fortune‘s article, “The U.S. Debutante,” wringing its hands over this society’s vanishing culture, “leaving the debutante all dressed up with no place to go.”
Featured among debutantes from Charleston, Detroit, Chicago, and Baltimore was a woman named Alice V. Westfeldt.
Who Is She? What Happened to Her?
According to the New Orleans Social Register 1922, she appears to have been born to Wallace and Alice Westfeldt, who married in 1916. Mr. Westfeldt was a 1912 graduate of Tulane University.
A fairly pleasant, patrician street in 1922, Sycamore Street hasn’t fallen into utter decay–perhaps due to the stabilizing influence of its proximity to Tulane and Loyola Universities.
Alice’s house may have been carved up into apartments and inhabited likely by students and young professionals. For instance, one unit was occupied by Spencer Horchler, who attended Loyola University as an undergrad from 2002 to 2007, and currently is a pantry cook at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Orleans Parish Property records do not list a 7910 Sycamore. Likely her house was one of these located on the even-numbered side of Sycamore.
Alice Marries Troup
After her coming out in the 1938 season, Alice married Troup Howard Mathews in February 1942.
Mathews led an interesting life. Mathews’ obit says:
Fluent in French, he became the editor of the French section of the voice of America, and became one of the targets of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who at the time was conducting his notorious investigations. Mr. Mathews demanded a public hearing but McCarthy ignored the request (New York Times, February 27, 1953 and March 1, 1953). A widely published photograph showed Mr. Mathews, standing on crutches in front of the Federal Courthouse in Manhattan with Senator McCarthy. Ultimately, the charges evaporated. Mr. Mathews taught school for 20 years at Rockland State Psychiatric Hospital. In the early 1970’s he studied to become a teacher of the Alexander Technique, a form of neuromuscular training used by musicians and actors.
Alice and Troup later divorced.
“Vairin”?
It’s an interesting side note that Alice’s middle name is “Vairin.” Why?
It appears that the Westfeldt family owned an important painting by Jean Pierre Vairin. Frick says that the painting’s current repository is with “Mrs. Troup H. Mathews, Nyack, New York.” It’s not clear if the painting stayed with Troup after the divorce or if Alice (who kept the Mathews name) kept it.
Vairin has stuck with the family. One of Mr. Mathews’ daughters was named Vairin (now Vairin Henshaw).
“Long…Line of Divorcers”
Actor and writer Jennifer Westfeldt says that she “descends from a long, long, long line of divorcers. In fact, you might say the Westfeldts were divorce pioneers.”
Even Alice’s parents, George and Alice ended up divorcing in 1940.
Jennifer says that “the second Alice, was a divorcée, and she had four daughters, all of whom divorced.”
Jennifer Westfeldt is behind hit movies such as Friends With Kids and Kissing Jessica Stein. She has been in a relationship with Jon Hamm of Mad Men since 1997.
Alice’s Death
After her divorce from Troup, Alice appears to have remained in Rockland County, NY. She retained her Mathews surname. It’s not clear if she remarried.
St. Mary’s College of Maryland is looking for lost alumni from 1971, and they list an Alice Vairin Mathews. Alice would have been an improbable 51 years old at the time, but she could have been a graduate student (none of her daughters are named Alice, so it wouldn’t be a daughter).
She worked at the Rockland County Mental Health Center, retired in 1976, moved to Vermont, and then back to Nyack (Rockland County) in 1996.
She kept an active life and became a second degree Reiki practitioner.
Alice Vairin Mathews died May 2, 2008 at the age of 90.
