MRS. POTTER PALMER. Bertha Honore Palmer, daughter of Henry H. and Eliza Dorsey (Carr) Honore, wife of Potter Palmer, merchant and leading citizen of Chicago, died at her Florida estate at Sarasota Bay, Sunday evening, May 5, 1918. Few American women, if any, have in modern days appeared in the public eye in as distinctive a way as Mrs. Palmer. She was born in 1850 in Louisville, Ky., descended on her father's side from and old and distinguished French family and on her mother's from an old Maryland family. She made her debut in Chicago, where her father, Henry H. Honore, had come to engage in business. The young southern girl was married in 1871, just before the Chicago fire, to Potter Palmer, many years her senior, who was then known as friend and associate of Marshall Field, Levi Z. Leiter and other Chicago pioneers. He became famous as a State street merchant, and as a builder of the Palmer House, Chicago's first really great hotel. From the time of her marriage she began to mount the rungs of the social ladder. Her grasp on the social reins was tightened when in 1891 she was elected president of the board of lady managers of the World's Columbian Exposition at Chicago. Because of her success, President McKinley appointed her as the only woman on the national committee for the Paris Exposition in 1900. She was awarded a decoration of the Legion of Honor, which she declined, saying she did not believe an American woman should accept a foreign decoration. She also made it possible for women to have the first distinctive building they had ever had at an American exposition, and she gathered about her women who made that building and its contents among the most conspicuous and attractive of things on the fair grounds. Her appeal went to all classes. While keeping a controlling hand upon the purely fashionable elements, Mrs. Palmer did not neglect the powerful influences of the Women's Clubs. These institutions she built into her social frame-work in a way that no one has been able to do since. She built bulwarks about her position by her grasp of the charitable enterprises of the city and made the Charity Ball the supreme social event of the season. For years there was no real revolt against her social dictation. In 1904 she left America for the courts of Europe, going to London and taking a great house. For some years, however, she returned for two months around Christmas to preside over the big charity ball and keep her hold on social affairs in Chicago. In 1910 and in 1911 she established the great Florida estate at Sarasota Bay, where she died. She played a large part in the management of her large real estate holdings. Two sons, Honore and Potter, Jr., survive Mrs. Palmer, and six charming little grandchildren, of whom she was very fond. Included in the party who accompanied the body of Mrs. Palmer to Chicago were her sister, Mrs. Frederick Dent Grant, and her daughter-in-law, Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant III; Mrs. Palmer's brothers, N. K. and A. C. Honore; her sons, Honore and Potter, Jr., and their wives; Princess Cantacuzene, Mrs. Grant's daughter; Prince Cantacuzene and their two children, Michel and Bertha, and Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Fenley of Louisville, Kentucky. ART COLLECTIONS LEFT BY MRS. PALMER. Mrs. Palmer's interest in art has been shown not only through her collections, but in the offering of the Potter Palmer gold medal, which was inaugurated seven years ago and which carries with it a $1,000 cash prize for the best work shown by an American artist at the annual exhibition at the Art Institute. Mrs. Palmer's collection at the gallery in her Chicago house included representative pieces from the works of Corot, George Inness, Jules LaPage, Gari Melchers, Jean Millet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre Pauvis de Chavannes, Anders L. Zorn and many others of national and international note. The funeral services for Mrs. Palmer were held at the family residence, 1350 Lake Shore drive at 3 o'clock Friday afternoon, May 10, the services were private and conducted by the Rev. James S. Stone, rector of St. James Episcopal church. The music was by the Imperial Quartet. The pallbearers were C. L. Hutchison, John S. Runnells, Edward Blair, James B. Waller, H. H. Kohlsaat, F. B. Tuttle, Watson F. Blair, M. A. Ryerson. Mrs. Palmer was buried by the side of her husband in the family mausoleum in Graceland Cemetery. |