Henry Symes Lehr
| Henry Symes Lehr | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | March 28, 1869 |
| Died | January 3, 1929 |
| Spouse(s) | Elizabeth "Bessie" Wharton Drexel |
| Parent(s) | Robert Oliver Lehr |
| Relatives | Alice Lehr Morton; and a brother Louis Lehr |
Henry Symes "Harry" Lehr (March 28, 1869 – January 3, 1929) was an American socialite during the Gilded Age.
Henry Symes Lehr was born on March 28, 1869. His father, Robert Oliver Lehr, was a tobacco and snuff importer who became the German consul in Baltimore. He was the fourth child in a family of seven. He had a sister Alice Lehr Morton; and a brother Louis Lehr, who was a physician.
He attempted to establish himself as successor to Ward McAllister, arbiter elegantiarum of New York's Four Hundred, the collection of Knickerbocker and industrial families he created as a bulwark against the new wealth of the Gilded Age. He was known for staging elaborate parties alongside Marion "Mamie" Fish, such as the so-called "dog's dinner", in which 100 pets of wealthy friends dined at foot-high tables while dressed in formal attire At a later party, he impersonated the Czar of Russia, and was henceforth dubbed "King Lehr".
Lehr was never accepted as an equal by high society. Grace Graham Wilson, wife of Cornelius Vanderbilt III, who assumed the throne of Mrs. Astor after her death, had little regard for Lehr's antics. When his patron Mrs. Astor died, Lehr allied himself with Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish of New York and Newport. Together, they bucked the formality and rigidity that characterized social life in Gilded Age New York. The result was practical jokes and entertainments that brought disgrace onto "The Four Hundred" and caused their rebuke in the nation's pulpits and periodicals.
He was married to heiress Elizabeth "Bessie" Wharton Drexel. He refused to sleep with her on their wedding night. She stayed in a loveless, unconsummated marriage for 28 years, not wishing to upset her conservative, staunchly Catholic mother, née Lucy Wharton.
He was diagnosed in 1923, and had a brain tumor removed in 1927. He died on January 3, 1929 of a brain malady at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
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