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Caresse Crosby (born Mary Phelps Jacob; April 20, 1891 – January 26, 1970) was the first recipient of a patent for the modern bra,〔 an American patron of the arts, publisher, and the "literary godmother to the Lost Generation of expatriate writers in Paris." She and her second husband, Harry Crosby, founded the Black Sun Press which was instrumental in publishing early works of many authors who would later become famous, including Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, Robert Duncan, Anaïs Nin, Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller. Crosby's parents, William Hearn Jacob and Mary (née Phelps) Jacob, were both descended from American colonial families, William from the Van Rensselaer family and Mary from William Phelps. In 1915, she married Richard R. Peabody, another blue blooded Bostonian whose family had arrived in New Hampshire in 1635. They had two children, but following Richard's service in World War I, Richard became a drunk who loved to watch buildings burn.〔 She met Harry Crosby at a picnic in 1920 and they had sex within two weeks. Their public relationship scandalized proper Boston society. Two years later Richard granted her a divorce and Harry and Mary were married. They immediately left for Europe, where they joined the Lost Generation of American expatriates. They embraced a bohemian and decadent lifestyle, living off of Harry's trust fund of US$12,000 a year (or about $ in today's dollars), had an open marriage with numerous ongoing affairs, a suicide pact, frequent drug use, wild parties, and long trips abroad. At her husband's urging, Mary took the name Caresse in 1924. In 1925 they began publishing their own poetry as ''Éditions Narcisse'' in exquisitely printed, limited-edition volumes. In 1927 they re-christened the business as the Black Sun Press. In 1929 one of her husband's affairs culminated in his death as part of a murder-suicide or double suicide. His death was marked by scandal as the newspapers speculated wildly about whether Harry shot his lover or not. Caresse returned to Paris where she continued to run the Black Sun Press. With the prospect of war looming, she left Europe in 1936 and married Selbert Young, an unemployed, alcoholic actor sixteen years her junior. They lived on a Virginia plantation they rehabilitated outside Washington D.C. until she divorced him. She moved to Washington D.C. and began a long-term love affair with black actor-boxer Canada Lee, despite the threat of miscegenation laws. She founded Women Against War. She continued after World War II to try to establish a Center for World Peace at Delphi, Greece. When rebuffed by Greek authorities, she purchased Castello di Rocca Sinibalda, a 15th-century castle north of Rome, which she used to support an artists' colony. She died of pneumonia related to heart disease in Rome in 1970. ==Early life== Born on April 20, 1891 in New Rochelle, New York, she was nicknamed "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother. She was the oldest daughter of William Hearn Jacob and Mary Phelps, and had two brothers, Leonard and Walter "Bud" Phelps. Her ancestry included a knight of the Crusades and the Allardyce family in the War of the Roses. Her family was descended from a prominent New England family,〔 Puritans. On her mother's side her seventh great-grandfather, William Phelps,〔 departed from Plymouth, England in 1630 and founded Dorchester, Boston. She was the granddaughter of General Walter Phelps who commanded troops at the Civil War Battle of Antietam.〔 On her father's side she included among her ancestors Robert Fulton, developer of the steamboat, and the Plymouth Colony's first governor, William Bradford,〔 Polly's family was not fabulously rich, but her father had been raised, as she put it, "to ride to hounds, sail boats, and lead cotillions," and he lived high. In 1914 she was presented to the King of England at a garden party.〔 She grew up, she later said, "in a world where only good smells existed." "What I wanted", she said of her privileged childhood, "usually came to pass." She was a rather uninterested student. Author Geoffrey Wolff wrote that for the most part Polly "lived her life in dreams." In keeping with the American aristocratic style of the times, she was even photographed as a child by Charles Dana Gibson. Her family divided its time between estates in New York at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, in Watertown, Connecticut, and in New Rochelle, New York. She enjoyed the advantages of an upper-class lifestyle. She attended formal balls, Ivy League school dances, and formal horse riding school. She took dancing lessons at Mr. Dodsworth's Dancing Class, attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, and then boarded at Rosemary Hall, a prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut, where she played the part of Rosalind in ''As You Like It'' to critical acclaim.〔 After her father's death in 1908,〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=William Hearn Jacobs )〕 she lived with her mother at their home in Watertown. That same summer she met her future husband, Richard Peabody, at summer camp. Her brother Len was boarding at Westminster School and Bud was a day student at Taft School. Approaching her own debut, she danced in "one to three balls every night" and slept from four in the morning until noon. "At twelve I was called and got ready for the customary debutante luncheon."〔 She graduated from Rosemary Hall prep school in 1910 at age 19. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Caresse Crosby」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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