88 Facts About Caresse Crosby

Caresse Crosby's mother was the daughter of Civil War General Walter Phelps, and she had two brothers, Leonard and Walter "Bud" Phelps Jacob.

Caresse Crosby was nicknamed "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother.

Caresse Crosby's family divided its time between estates in Manhattan at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, in Watertown, Connecticut, and in New Rochelle, New York, and she enjoyed the advantages of an upper-class lifestyle.

Caresse Crosby attended formal balls, Ivy League school dances, and received equestrian training at a horse riding school.

Caresse Crosby studied dance at the studio of composer and society tastemaker Allen Dodsworth, attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, and then boarded at Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut that later merged to form Choate Rosemary Hall, where she played the part of Rosalind in As You Like It to critical acclaim.

Caresse Crosby's brother Len was boarding at Westminster School, and Bud was a day student at Taft School.

That same year, Caresse Crosby prepared to attend a debutante ball one evening.

Caresse Crosby was mobbed after the dance by other girls who wanted to know how she moved so freely, and when she showed the garment to friends the next day, they all wanted one.

Caresse Crosby knew then that this could become a viable business.

Caresse Crosby filed for a patent for her invention on February 12,1914, and in November that year the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted her a patent for the 'Backless Brassiere'.

Caresse Crosby likened her design to earlier covers over the bosom when a woman wore a low corset.

Caresse Crosby's design had shoulder straps to attach to the garment's upper and lower corners, and wrap-around laces for the lower corners which tied at the woman's front, enabling her to wear gowns cut low in the back.

Caresse Crosby's design was a sensation at the Great Exposition of 1900 and became a fast-selling design among wealthy Europeans in the next decade.

Caresse Crosby later sold the brassiere patent to The Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut, for US$1,500.

Caresse Crosby found Peabody's temperament to be far from her own.

Caresse Crosby concluded that Peabody was a well-educated but undirected man, and a reluctant father.

Caresse Crosby became a Captain in the United States Army's 15th Field Artillery, 2nd Division, American Expeditionary Force.

Caresse Crosby suffered from his war experiences and returned to heavy drinking.

Caresse Crosby found he had only three real interests, all acquired at Harvard: to play, to drink, and to turn out, at any hour, to chase after fire engines and watch buildings burn.

Caresse Crosby's life was difficult during the war years, and when her husband returned home, significantly changed, her life soon changed abruptly, too.

Caresse Crosby confessed his love for her in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park.

Caresse Crosby pressed her to see him alone, an unthinkable proposition for a member of Boston's upper class.

Caresse Crosby had planned a trip to France to tour battle sites.

Caresse Crosby's parents supplied a small living allowance and Dick, Polly, and the two children moved into a three-story tenement building.

Caresse Crosby pursued Polly, and in May 1921, when she would not respond to his ardor, Caresse Crosby threatened suicide if Polly did not marry him.

Caresse Crosby pestered Polly to tell her husband of their affair and to divorce him.

Caresse Crosby was the first to assert there was no cure for alcoholism.

Caresse Crosby's book became a best seller and was a major influence on Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson.

Caresse Crosby had been working for eight months at Shawmut National Bank.

Caresse Crosby went on a six-day drinking spree and resigned.

Polly had previously traveled to England to visit her cousins, so Caresse Crosby visited her there.

Caresse Crosby was the niece of Frank Crowninshield, editor of Vanity Fair, and had been married to American diplomat Ray Atherton.

Caresse Crosby loved anything risky and was addicted to gambling.

In Morocco, during one of their trips to North Africa, Harry and Caresse Crosby together took a 13-year-old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them.

In 1927, in the midst of his affair with Constance, Harry and Caresse Crosby met the Russian painter Polia Chentoff.

Caresse Crosby rowed home alone, and in her swim suit her generously endowed chest drew whistles, jeers, and waves from workmen.

Caresse Crosby later wrote that she thought the exercise was good for her breasts, and she enjoyed the attention.

Caresse Crosby made a sensation when she arrived, because she had been ready for bed when Constance knocked, so she quickly put on a dress, but wore nothing underneath.

Caresse Crosby bought hats from Jean Patou and dresses from the fashion house Tolstoy's.

Caresse Crosby wore a sheer garment that only came up to her waist, a huge turquoise wig, and nothing else.

Caresse Crosby was known to slip rare first editions into the bookstalls that lined the Seine.

Caresse Crosby took on lovers of her own, including Ortiz Manolo, Lord Lymington, Jacques Porel, Cord Meier, and in May, 1928, the Count Armand de La Rochefoucauld, son of the duke de Doudeauville, president of the Jockey Club.

In 1931, two years after Harry's suicide, the end of his affair with Caresse Crosby left Cartier-Bresson broken-hearted, and he escaped to Ivory Coast of French colonial Africa.

Caresse Crosby's writing matured somewhat, and the book was more creatively organized than her prior efforts.

In 1928, Harry and Caresse Crosby changed the name of the publishing house to the Black Sun Press, in keeping with Harry's fascination with death and the symbolism of the sun.

Caresse Crosby is twenty and has charm and is called Josephine.

Caresse Crosby lay next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple.

Caresse Crosby welcomed Billy home when another friend brought him from boarding school, and the family and friends spent some time at the Mill.

Caresse Crosby broadened the scope of the Black Sun Press after Harry's death.

Caresse Crosby established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture to publish paperback books when they were not yet popular, which she named Crosby Continental Editions.

Caresse Crosby picked the former, which was less well-received than The Sun Also Rises.

Caresse Crosby was unable to persuade US publishers to distribute her work, as paperbacks were not yet widely engaged, because publishers were not convinced that readers would buy them.

Caresse Crosby wrote a never-published play, The Cage, transparently based on their relationship.

Caresse Crosby was always asking her for money, he crashed her car, he ran up the telephone bill, and he used all her credit at the local liquor store.

Caresse Crosby invited him to take a room in her spacious New York apartment on East 54th Street, where she infrequently lived.

Caresse Crosby accepted, although she did not provide him with money.

Caresse Crosby got a US$750 advance and persuaded the oil man's agent to advance him another $200.

Caresse Crosby was preparing to leave on the trip but still had not provided the work promised.

Caresse Crosby was already pitching ideas and pieces of writing to Anais Nin's New York City smut club for fun, but not for money.

Caresse Crosby wrote at the top the title given her by Henry Miller, Opus Pistorum, and started right in.

Caresse Crosby churned out 200 pages, and the collector's agent asked for more.

Caresse Crosby's smut was just what the oil man wanted, according to his New York agent.

Caresse Crosby had grown up amid the social constraints imposed by her upper-class family in New York.

Caresse Crosby maintained a doomed and troublesome romanticism about Harry Crosby, nurtured or inflamed by having participated in a decade or more of taking both intellectual and physical lovers in Paris during the 1920s.

Caresse Crosby extended an invitation to Salvador Dali and his wife Gala, who became long-term guests, during which he wrote much of his autobiography.

Caresse Crosby had a brief affair with Fuller during this time.

Caresse Crosby was already a collector of American artist Joseph Glasco's works and she approached Glasco's art dealer Catherine Viviano to include fourteen works by Glasco with 100 other drawings by Miro, Picasso, Calder, and others.

Caresse Crosby printed issues 1,3, and 5 in the US The second issue was published in Paris in December 1945, less than seven months after the end of World War II.

Caresse Crosby printed the magazine on a variety of different sizes, colors, and types of paper stock printed by different printers, stuffed into a 11.5 inches by 14 inches folder.

Caresse Crosby printed 1,000 copies of each issue, and as she had done with the Black Sun Press, giving special treatment to 100 or so deluxe copies that featured original artwork by Romare Bearden, Henri Matisse, and others.

Civilian travel was still very restricted after the war ended, and Caresse Crosby reached out to her friend Archibald Macleish, now Assistant Secretary of State, who helped her make travel arrangements and obtain a visa.

Caresse Crosby traveled aboard a military British Overseas Airways Corporation flying boat as the sole civilian passenger, hand-carrying her Elsa Schiaparelli hat box that contained Pietro Lazzari's drawings of horses and Romare Bearden's Passion of Christ watercolor series.

Caresse Crosby learned after the war that Nazi troops had set up base in her home, Le Moulin du Soleil.

Caresse Crosby was most upset when she learned the German troops had painted over the wall that had doubled as her guest book.

Caresse Crosby became politically active again and founded the organizations Women Against War and Citizens of the World, which embraced the concept of a "world community," something other activists such as Buckminster Fuller supported.

Caresse Crosby continued her work to establish a world citizen's center in Delphi, Greece, where in 1942 she bought a small house that overlooked the Grove of Apollo.

In 1953, Caresse Crosby wrote and published her autobiography, The Passionate Years.

Caresse Crosby crafted it mostly based on her personal recollection rather than a specific set of sources.

Caresse Crosby traveled to Paris for his funeral, yet somehow making time for appearances at colleges where she gave talks about her life and the Black Sun Press.

Caresse Crosby paid to electrify the castle, and thus brought electricity to the neighboring village.

Caresse Crosby told a reporter that the castle had 320 rooms, or "at least that's what the villagers tell me," and the deed actually did list 180 of them.

Caresse Crosby used the castle to house various artists, and she held poetry seminars.

The short film, Always Yes, Caresse took the viewer on a tour of the castle, led by Crosby.

Caresse Crosby put Rocca Sinibalda up for sale in 1970, shortly before she died.

Caresse Crosby died of complications from pneumonia in Rome, Italy on January 24,1970, aged 77.

Caresse Crosby had lived long enough to see many of the aspiring writers she nurtured in the 1920s become well-known and even canonical authors.

Caresse Crosby was survived by her daughter Polleen Peabody de Mun North Drysdale and two granddaughters.

Caresse Crosby was buried in the Cimetiere de l'Abbaye de Longchamp, in Boulogne, departement de la Vendee, Pays de la Loire, France.