A Perfect Love Never Loves
Part 1: The World's Most Patient Bridegroom
The engagement announced that February was a conventionally fine match.
She, Mary, born 1901, was the artistic type, publishing a book of epigrams before age 20 and occasionally performing as an exhibition ballroom dancer. She was also the younger of two daughters for lawyer-turned-stockbroker Alfred Landon Baker, a transplant from Boston to the booming city of Chicago characterized in one local history as “a loyal, appreciative, and public spirited citizen.” Mother and namesake Mary was a member of the Corwith family, a name associated in Chicago with a rail yard and an early twentieth century society architect.
He, Allister, the youngest of three boys, born in 1891, was something of a hero—a dashing aviator in the Great War that had ended three years prior. His family, the McCormicks, were Chicago royalty, having founded the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in the early nineteenth century and subsequently producing diplomats, philanthropists, and married-in aristocrats. Allister’s father, Leander Hamilton McCormick, was himself an inventor, art collector, government consultant, and amateur phrenologist.
A 10-year age difference notwithstanding, the two were referred to by one media source as “childhood sweethearts,” sharing an affection for theater, tennis, and car rides1, and by early 1921, a formal arrangement between the two was, it seemed, considered a bit overdue. Reporting on the Rex ball—a New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition appropriated by the Chicago elite—Town & Country wrote, “Dancing together most of the evening were Miss Mary Landon Baker and Allister McCormick, whose engagement, about which everyone has been speculating a long time, was announced a day or two later.”2
The engagement was intended to be brief. The wedding was set for springtime—a May affair—until it was not. Though contemporaneous accounts are difficult to find, one April 1922 piece would attribute this first delay to “nervous collapse.”3 For whatever reason, the ceremony was postponed until the following January, shortly after the new year.
So on January 2, 1922, Mary and Allister’s families and social peers gathered at the grand Fourth Presbyterian Church—still active today at its Michigan Avenue/Delaware Street/Chestnut Street location—for their union. Then, in lieu of a bridal march, the announcement from clergyman Dr. John Timothy Stone:
“Owing to the sudden indisposition of Miss Baker, the marriage is postponed. There will be no ceremony today.”4
The news was compelling enough to hit wide outside the Chicago press circle. The New York Times weighed in with a quote from Mary’s father, offering assurance that the delay was simply due to an ailment for Mary, while McCormick pater stressed Allister's own good health—and lack of contact with Mary, who was “too ill to see him.”5
But as with any story of such significance, conflicting or incomplete reports, along with a dose of rumor, quickly arose. The New York Evening Telegram insisted that Allister, too, had been taken by a vague illness.6 It was the Times again, meanwhile, that was left to serve up a small but quite relevant bit of backstory missing from other early reports: “The announcement of Miss Baker’s engagement to Allister McCormick, who served as an aviator during the war, was no surprise to her friends who knew the close friendship between the two families. But Miss Baker’s persistent postponing of the wedding made it necessary last May for members of both families to deny rumors of a broken engagement.”7
Though no consensus would emerge on Allister’s state, it wasn't long before the nature of Mary’s woes was expanded upon, “nervous collapse” more likely than a mundane physical ailment. Per her father, “she was prepared for the ceremony to the point of having dressed in her wedding gown, when she broke down and took to her bed.”8
Ultimately, Mary would, it was announced, be prescribed “a complete rest and change”9—new scenery and a revised spring date for the wedding, a more opportune, less anxiety-ridden time. A little more than a week later, platonically accompanied by his would-be best man (and Oxford matriculant) Henry Channon, Allister set sail to London on a honeymoon cruise via the White Starliner Baltic, happy to share all the pressing details with the wire services while bearing the kicky new nickname “Almost Groom.” Mary, he reported, told him in an intimate phone call “that she was pleased with the arrangements for our wedding the latter part of March.” This wedding was set for fine English surroundings, courtesy of Allister’s brother Edward. Mary would prepare by journeying first to Santa Barbara, California, only a little ways off from the expected route. “Her farewell was a devoted wish for a safe voyage,” assured Allister, who also officially attributed his fiancée’s illness to an overabundance of social activity.
But it’s here that an unnamed reporter, injecting him- or herself into the proceedings, decided to introduce a new and needlessly salacious element to the story: “Did you hear that Miss Baker’s interest in an actor was responsible for the postponement?”
“News to me,” replied the bridegroom, and to the rumor pages it was assigned.10
The promised March date was, perhaps, given in error, for the couple’s official February 5 announcement—accompanied by a two-column headshot of Mary and issued “6,000 miles apart”—proposed an April wedding. It also helpfully included a detailed reminder of the prior nuptial debacle.11
With the duo elsewhere through February, the gossip pages found the Chicago society scene considerably duller. The obvious solution was simply to produce new speculation about the previous month’s mishap. “Perhaps the rumor that she had not sufficiently recovered from a merry little party the night before is the one that is most credited,” teased society journal Town Topics,
but this knocks out the story of the telephone message an hour before the wedding, when Mary is supposed to have told Allister that he need not expect her at the church. To which he replied: “I shall certainly expect you.”
Still, concluded this contribution from 1922 Gossip Girl, Allister’s “’expectations’” for matrimony remained.12
But an April 2 article by Edward M. Thierry of the Chicago-based Newspaper Enterprise Association was conjured up to cast considerably more doubt upon the affair’s likelihood. “Two continents are watching to see whether the world’s most patient bridegroom will be rewarded next month,” Thierry opened understatedly. Not only did the piece include a cartoon detailing the many dips in the Baker/McCormick matrimonial roller coaster, it also elaborated upon one sordid rumor—the involvement of actor Barry Baxter:
Gossip hinted that Mary was in love with Barry Baxter, English actor, and she had sent him this telegram: “When I put on my wedding dress I found that I could not go through with it.”13
A few days later, society reporter and wire correspondent Patricia Daugherty made a counterpunch with an up-close-and-personal meeting with Mary aboard the California Limited en route to Chicago. Her sober interview opened thusly:
Secret telling time when the lights are out and your mother has called “the fourth and last time” to “stop your chattering and go to sleep” and you go right on, only in a whisper and tell your chum the rest—why you like the boy next door, what you are going to do when you grow up—everything.
Do you remember—of course you do if you ever were a little girl and had secrets—and Mary Landon Baker, despite all that has been said and written, is just a little girl, and everyone will admit she has had secrets. And so we lay in her compartment on the California Limited and she told them to me.
Daugherty’s clear journalistic disinterest is to be applauded, as is her ability to document the hard facts—“her [pajamas] were pink silk trimmed with lace.” Mary reiterated Allister’s social exertion assertion, with dancing, dressmakers, and rehearsal dinner all consuming her fragile resources. Allister, in fact, insisted on a postponement more than once; it was Mary’s own stubborn will that resulted, she claimed, in a good three-and-a-half hours of unconsciousness. “At 3:30 as I went from my bedroom to the drawing room to have my wedding picture made,” she said, “I collapsed—wedding gown, veil, flowers and all: and the next thing I knew it was 7 o’clock, Jan. 2 and I wasn’t married.”
The stress was indeed more than most could bear. “I collapsed from the strain of fitting on clothes and going to parties all season,” she said, “and that’s the only reason I didn’t marry Allister on Jan. 2.”
(Daugherty’s enthusiasm, sadly, appears to have impaired her ability to conclude an article and sentence: “And so, when Mary Landon Baker leaned over and kissed me goodnight—which is unusual for me.”)14
Almost two weeks later, Mary’s departure for England aboard the Aquitania was worth a photo blurb—and the reminder that, counting the little-covered May 1921 mishap, “Contrary Mary” had actually “thrice” failed to wed Allister. “The fourth time shall not fail,” assured Mary.15
Never one to let a potential Byzantine maze turn linear, Mary would not wait out the final engagement month in London. The International News Service (INS) found her instead in Paris, a short hop away from her fiancé, with whom she shared one rendezvous “of a few hours.” Mary’s friends were quick to deny any hints of quarrel between the lovers. Sensitive to the porcelain nature of her nerves, Allister was wholly accepting of Mary’s weeks-long Continental recuperation. And Mary’s fragility, fortunately, proved no hindrance to her enjoyment of “the famous ‘Apple Blossom Time in Normandy,’” nor her adventures with Chicago-born pal the Countess De Janze, nee Alice Silverthorne, with whom she planned to stay for an indeterminate time. “When she leaves, however, she expects to go to London and meet her fiancé there,” concluded the INS optimistically.16
Mary’s carefree delights would last for about a week. By April 25, a mere five days after the initial update, INS correspondent Alice Langellier led an investigation into the Count and Countess’s evidently false claims that Mary remained at their Normandy estate. “Tired of the countryside,” revealed Langellier, “she has suddenly dragged her cousin, Adele Kimball, with her back to Paris.” The intrepid Langellier tracked down Mary, mother, and Adele at a Parisian hotel, bypassing orders given to employees to protect the troupe’s privacy, and facing down a threat from “Rum, Mary’s formidable watchdog.” But it was all to little avail. After being told “grumpily” by Adele that Mary was sleeping, Langellier was forced to retreat, prevented from seizing on any greater scoop than the reveal that the McCormick brothers were registered at the same hotel.17
Was this proximity, then, the first sign of truly forward momentum for Mary and Allister’s nuptial plan? Alarmed by the possibility that this storyline might fizzle out with a tedious small wedding, fate struck another scandalous blow. On May 27, two news stories broke: yet another postponement—and the death of Barry Baxter.
Next time: Was Barry Baxter felled by a broken heart? Can a few more weeks in Europe soothe Mary’s ragged nerves and restore Allister’s public dignity? And who will outpurple the prose of Patricia Daugherty?
Thierry, Edward M. “Most Patient Bridegroom Waits Fifth Time for Wedding,” Newspaper Enterprise Association/The Bisbee Daily Review, April 2, 1922.
“The Week in Society,” Town & Country, March 1, 1921.
Thierry, “Most Patient Bridegroom.”
“Baker-McCormick Wedding Is Called Off As Chicago Society Folk Wait at Church,” New York Times, January 3, 1922.
“Baker-McCormick Plans: Joined as Soon as Her Health Permits, Family Says,” New York Times, January 4, 1922.
“Both Parties to Wedding, Called Off, Are Now Sick,” New York Evening Telegram, January 3, 1922.
“Baker-McCormick Wedding Is Called Off.”
“Bride Collapses; Wedding Postponed: McCormick-Baker Nuptials Are Held Up,” Southeast Missourian, January 4, 1922.
Thierry, “Most Patient Bridegroom.”
“Almost Groom Sails for London,” Milwaukee Sentinel, January 15, 1922.
“Girl Who Halted Wedding to Marry Abroad, in April,” St. Petersburg Times, February 5, 1922.
Town Topics, February 1922.
Thierry, “Most Patient Bridegroom.”
Daugherty, Patricia. “Mary Landon Baker Says Physical Collapse Caused Postponement of Marriage,” International News Service/Chicago Evening American, April 4, 1922.
“Contrary Mary Off to England to be Married,” St. Petersburg Times, April 16, 1922.
“Girl Who Twice Failed at Altar Meets Her Fiance,” International News Service/Deseret News, April 20, 1922.
Langellier, Alice. “Mary Landon Baker is Living in Paris, Not in Normandy,” International News Service/Pittsburgh Press, April 25, 1922.