Art: Doge of Elmhurst

A sad-eyed Negro in blue stood on a velvet-draped stage of the American Art Association, Anderson Galleries in New York last week with his arms full of Sardinian snaphaunces. The auctioneer droned along in his pulpit: “Five, do I hear seven-fifty? Five, do I hear seven-fifty? It’s against you in the back of the room. Seven-fifty, do I hear ten” Seven-fifty, do I hear ten—?” All over the room the well-dressed crowd of dealers and socialites signalled their bids with the twitch of a pencil, the jerk of a head. For six days the sale went on: rapiers, helmets, cannon, snaphaunces (immediate ancestor of flintlock muskets), silver candlesticks, paintings, ivory carvings, gilded chairs, diamond brooches, jade-handled daggers, bottles of perfume, all the opulent impedimenta of one of the most amazing families in the U. S.

Giovanni Pertinax Morosini was born in Venice nearly 100 years ago when the city belonged to Austria. Who his parents were the record does not say, but he always liked to believe that he was descended from the magnificent Doge Francesco Morosini (1618-94), Commander-in-chief of the Venetian Navy

scourge of the Turks—a relationship which the present impoverished Contessa Morosini never acknowledged. Doge Francesco would have chuckled over Giovanni Pertinax’s career.

The Austrians smelt in his Venetian nostrils. As a boy he fled south, joined the bearded Garibaldi’s redshirts and took part in their march on Rome. Back in liberated Venice stocky young Morosini was lounging along the narrow calle one day when he saw a gang of roughs attacking a young tourist and his tutor. Giovanni Morosini snapped open the stiletto he always carried and dashed to the rescue. The young tourist was the son of Jay Gould. Tycoon Gould, then secretary of the Erie Railroad, promised young Morosini a job should he ever go to the U. S.

Giovanni Morosini worked his way over as a deck hand on a sailing ship. Jay Gould kept the bargain, gave him a job on the Erie at .$30 a month, from which he rapidly skyrocketed to be general auditor of the road. Hulking young Morosini with his flamboyant manner, his bullet head, his colossal mustaches (alia Vittorio Emmamiele} and his stiletto was the kind of man Gould, the unscrupulous railway pirate, could understand. Before long he was Gould’s “secretary” (armed bodyguard), finally a full fledged Gould partner—and then how the money rolled in! He married, built a great rambling mid-Victorian palazzo at Riverdale-on-Hudson known as “Elmhurst.” This he crammed from cellar to garret with costly knicknacks. There were gold plated bathtubs, tables of green malachite, huge bronze angels in the hall clutching armfuls of electric bulbs; paintings, tapestries, cabinets of jade and precious stones.

Giovanni Morosini always loved the feel of a good knife. He built a special armory near the main house and filled it with morions, pikes, arquebusses, rapiers, burganets, daggs, arbalests, cabassets, lobstertailed salades, crossbows and Courlandish tschinkes. His stable was the pride of the Hudson. To the day of his death the Doge of Elmhurst cursed the automobiles that frightened his horses and sent his smart Brewster phaetons into ditches.

Like most men who lead violent lives, Morosini’s artistic taste was that of a bright 15-year-old boy. He loved to play soldier. Besides his valuable armor, Elmhurst was littered with Napoleonic shakos, sword belts, sashes, gold epaulets, bits of uniform. In last week’s sale were a dozen battle scenes painted with iron hard detail and Noah’s Ark color by 19th Century followers of Meissonier and Detaille: cavalry charges, artillery duels, the Battle of Wagram, Franco-Prussian war scenes, Renaissance gallants dueling, George III in full coronation robes, Louis XIV taking all his mistresses for a ride. There was also a barroom nude by Charles Landelle nearly six feet long. The valuable pictures Morosini owned were all 18th Century views of Venice.

Giovanni Morosini was too lusty a personality to peter out in one generation.

His children were just as colorful. Handsome Son Attillo snatched the great-great-grandniece of George Washington, Mary Washington Bond, from the hands of Sir Thomas Lipton and the brother of the Khedive of Egypt (to whom she was successively reported engaged) and married her. Wasp-waisted Mary Bond was the most beautiful debutante in New York, referred to by Portraitist Richard Hall as ”the perfect woman, nobly planned.” Daughter Victoria Morosini eloped with the family coachman and was disinherited. Nobody but the immediate family ever saw Daughter Amelia. According to Riverdale gossip she was horribly mauled by a pet bear as a child, disfigured for life, always lived shut up in a special apartment at the top of the house.

Daughter Giulia was the old Doge’s pet. Beautiful, wild and wilful, she was a magnificent horsewoman and used to spend $200,000 a year on her clothes. At one horse show she wore 17 different costumes. Newspapers once published her dress budget. It included 365 pairs of gloves. She would never wear a pair twice.

Giulia Morosini was the only woman allowed to drive three horses abreast in Central Park. They were hitched to a high blue dogcart. She wore a blue driving habit and their harness was of blue kid to match, trimmed with solid silver. One day a saddle horse bolted with her in the Park. She was rescued by Mounted Policeman Arthur M. Werner, whom she promptly married. In 1916 ex-Policeman Werner tried to make her raise his allowance from $75,000 to $100,000 a year. She kicked him out of the house, had the marriage annulled.

To Giulia Morosini went all the old Doge’s treasures. In her last years she became a recluse, kept Elmhurst locked to all but a few intimates though she was always extremely generous to charities. Last February she died, leaving ample bequests to her brothers & sisters and a dozen institutions, and the pick of her father’s armor collection to the Metropolitan Museum. To settle the residue of the estate, one auction of furniture and household effects was held at Elmhurst last spring. There was still enough left to keep auctioneers busy for six days last week. All Miss Giulia’s jewelry was sold with the rest. Besides her famed four-strand pearl necklace and her 25-carat Ceylon sapphire there was a box full of diamond brooches in the shapes of cow, crescent, rooster, grasshopper, wild duck, beetle, bee, donkey, horse & cab, the U. S. flag, lizard.

Only a few weeks ago representatives of Central Hanover Bank & Trust Co. found still more treasure at Elmhurst. Half a dozen heavy wooden boxes were up in the attic. They were full of gold. Transferred to the vaults of the bank they were looked over by expert numismatists who announced that the Doge of Elmhurst had apparently assembled one of the finest collections of gold coins in the country. Here were medals and coins that the real Morosini doges knew well: Venetian ducats, Spanish doubloons, Dutch thalers. by the fistful.