I absolutely LOVE this photo!

Mrs. H.P. Whitney from The Library of Congress from Flickr

At first glance, it looks like yet another Library of Congress photo from the Bain Collection, but this one is SO much more than that. Who is this Mrs. H.P. Whitney? Look at the photo closely. I’m certain she just said something incredibly witty.

Look at them laughing. It just makes me want to be friends with that group. I especially like how disapproving these two are.

She must have said something TERRIBLY scandalous!

Her full name is Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney and she showed some dahlias at a flower show once in 1918:

• DAHLIA SHOW IS OPENED.; Judge Marean, Mrs. H.P. Whitney, and Others Am… – Article Preview – The New York Times

She established a field hospital in Paris during World War I:

• MRS. H. P. WHITNEY BACK.; Called from War Zone by Illness of Her Daugh… – Article Preview – The New York Times

She even founded the Whitney Museum of American Art:

• Whitney Museum of American Art

All this insistence on calling her by her husband’s name, however, hides who she is. Her given name was Gertrude Vanderbilt. She was involved in a famous case when she sued to get custody of her granddaughter, Gloria Vanderbilt. She was even portrayed in a television mini-series by Angela Lansbury. Here’s the trailer for it:

I didn’t know ANY of this when I first saw that photo. I just saw the laughing eyes and the disapproving looks and I wanted to know more about her. So much more than the allotted thousand.