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“I was ready for brunch which I ate at the Maxwell House Coffee and Mayfair Drug on the corner of Broadway and 45th. This I have always wanted to do.”

Letter from Mabel Cheek to her daughter, Huldah, New York City, Dec. 10, 1933

Holiday shopping took Mrs. Leslie Cheek—Mabel—to New York City from Nashville just a year after their family had moved to their newly-completed estate, Cheekwood. Her spirited letter from the Savoy Plaza Hotel reported several “finds” in the department stores, plus a museum visit, Broadway plays, and a Prohibition-era confession to her daughter: “I will have you believe, I went to a speak-easy.”

Mrs. Cheek did not reveal what cocktail she imbibed at the risqué after-hours oasis, but her brunch beverage was surely the signature drink largely credited with the founding of Cheekwood: Maxwell House Coffee. Her husband Leslie’s investments in the coffee business first established by his father’s cousin became enormously valuable when the coffee surged as a well-known and respected brand. Blazoned in azure blue cans with burnt-orange lettering, Maxwell House was welcomed nationwide, perhaps inspiring Irma S. Rombauer to observe in 1931 in her bestselling, The Joy of Cooking, “Thanks especially to vacuum-packed cans, making good coffee at home has become a surefire delight.”

With patents and trademarks, companies could guarantee quality and reliability. Quaker Oats and Gold Medal Flour kept company with Maxwell House Coffee when, according to historian Don Doyle, the company “introduced a prepared coffee already roasted, blended…and canned, ready for home use.” “It would cost more than rival brands,” Doyle adds, “but Cheeks sought a prestige market,” and “Maxwell House Coffee eventually captured one-third of the American coffee market.”

Blog post provided by Cheekwood’s Writer-in-Residence, Cecelia Tichi, Ph.D.

Cecelia Tichi is an award-winning author and Professor of English and American Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Her books span American literature and culture from colonial days to modern times, but her recent work draws upon the Gilded Age (post-1870) that prompted her book on Jack London and another on seven activists in that tumultuous era.

Cecelia’s research and teaching inspired What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age, followed by Gilded Age Cocktails and Jazz Age Cocktails , which set the stage for her mystery crime novels that boast “Gilded” in each title.

Cecelia can be followed on her website: https://cecebooks.com/

The 1896 Nashville Blue Book listed eminent families and their clubs, but the directory was nowhere in the mind of Miss Mabel Wood of Clarksville, Tennessee, when she wed Mr. Leslie Cheek in that same year, 1896, and moved to their new home in Nashville. The new Mrs. Cheek, who had been educated in Baltimore, set about homemaking for her successful businessman husband and, soon enough, cared for their children, Leslie, Junior, born in 1908, and Huldah in 1915. This busy wife and mother, an avid reader, might have been aware of the Nashville Society Blue Book (1900) and also of Mrs. William W. Geraldon’s Social Directory (1911), which included the names of debutantes and eligible sons of the city’s leading families. Mabel Cheek, however, had no need of such directories to verify her place in Nashville or the modern world, not when her family resided in the architect-designed Italianate house on West End Avenue, nor when the well-traveled family moved to their country house estate in 1932—Cheekwood.

The Cheeks’ prominence was gainsaid, and Mabel a leading figure in the vibrant art and culture of her adopted city. Periodically, she opened the estate to large gatherings. For instance, in 1933, when the Tennessee State Legislature named the iris the floral symbol of the state, Mabel invited the membership of the Iris Society, “more than one hundred-fifty strong,” she recalled, to stroll the Cheekwood gardens and enjoy fruit punch and cake on the loggia.

Of the diverse organizations in which Mabel Cheek took an active part—from the Ornithological Society to the Review Club—first and foremost for her was the Centennial Club. Organized in 1894 “on a statewide basis for public work,” the club had first planned a Woman’s Building for the upcoming Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 and supervised “all exhibits and projects pertaining to women’s work.” By the 1920s, when Leslie, Jr., and Huldah were in school, Mabel found time for active involvement in this dynamic club that now was organized in departments.

Mrs. Leslie Cheek’s name soon suffused the Centennial Club programs. In June, 1920, she presented Travels in China, Japan, and Korea, illustrating her talk with “projected colored post cards on the screen.” Three years later, she presented a book review of Visiting in China, and in 1928, “India—Travel Talk by Mrs. Leslie Cheek.” Her name appears, in addition, on the governance roster, as a “2nd vice-president” for 1921-23 and as a director in 1935.

Mabel’s letters to her daughter Huldah, who was attending Bryn Mawr College outside Philadelphia, open a window onto the seriousness of her presentations. Among numerous travels, she detailed her visit to Mexico, first in a private Pullman car, then by motor “to inspect a cocoa factory” and “a tile factory,” all the while dazzled by the plethora of camelias cleverly “refrigerated” with banana stalks. (“Mexico is very interesting….we went to a bull fight….the spectacle of the crowd was wonderful…. Cortez Place is also there with its celebrated [Diego] Rivera murals.”)

As Mabel wrote to her daughter, “I have tried to see everything and remember it, for I will need it all for my paper on Mexico for the Review Club.” The “paper” became a serious endeavor, and we imagine Mabel composing it at her desk in the Cheekwood Library.

A short letter to Huldah from her father, Leslie, remarks, “Mother will entertain her Review Club on May 14 [1935], when she will deliver her talk on ‘Mexico.’” He adds, “I will be relieved when it is over—mother just puts too much of herself into these efforts.”

Surely not so, for Nashville’s art, culture, and generosity of spirit abided in such women as Mabel Wood Cheek who committed their intelligence and unflagging energies to “The Athens of the South.”

Blog post provided by Cheekwood’s Writer-in-Residence, Cecelia Tichi, Ph.D.

Cecelia Tichi is an award-winning author and Professor of English and American Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Her books span American literature and culture from colonial days to modern times, but her recent work draws upon the Gilded Age (post-1870) that prompted her book on Jack London and another on seven activists in that tumultuous era.

Cecelia’s research and teaching inspired What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age, followed by Gilded Age Cocktails and Jazz Age Cocktails , which set the stage for her mystery crime novels that boast “Gilded” in each title.

Cecelia can be followed on her website: https://cecebooks.com/

Costume parties had been a longstanding Nashville social tradition when Leslie Cheek, Jr., let his imagination conjure summer evening galas at the family’s newly completed country estate, Cheekwood. The guests would be required to arrive en déguisement, a festive custom the Cheek family well knew from the Dinner Club’s annual “Costume Ball” held downtown at the Hermitage Club, the old Renaissance-Revival building located between Church and Union Streets. Some Nashvillians ordered costumes from dressmakers, but others enjoyed cobbling together a patchwork of wearables to suggest western ranch wear, nautical garb, or Sherwood Forest’s own Robin Hood. In any case, the photographers and reporters for Nashville’s Tennessean and Banner newspapers were on hand to memorialize the evening.

Leslie Cheek, at twenty-four years of age, imagined his costume parties based on distinct historical periods so that guests would coordinate and complement one another’s appearance. The young man might have recalled other such historically themed parties, especially those honoring President George Washington, for Washington’s Birthday prompted elaborate national celebrations from schoolrooms to ballrooms, and social occasions that ranged from afternoon teas to formal balls. (In 1925, the Finitimus Club of East Nashville held a banquet in which “The George Washington Birthday motif was featured in every appointment…and club members were appropriately dressed in colonial costumes.”) Annually in February, the gentlemen’s powdered wigs and knee britches, together with ladies’ floor-length gowns with snug sleeves commemorated the first President and his lady, Martha Washington. The year 1933 was just after the bicentennial of Washington’s birth, and thoughts of eighteenth-century costuming apparently gave young Leslie Cheek his idea for a party centered on a distinct historical era.

The “Victorian Stable Party” on July 18, 1933 asked Cheekwood’s guests to don the gowns and formal evening suits of Queen Victoria’s era, then to enjoy the informality of the setting, the Cheekwood stable where refreshments were served near the stalls where horses and automobiles kept company. The guests happily complied with the request that they step into history in their clothing, for photographs show gentlemen in top hats and formal (swallowtail) coats, while ostrich plumes waved on ladies’ broad-brimmed hats, and their gowns reached to the floor, since no Victorian lady dared bare an ankle. Leslie’s guests might not have imagined that the festive Victorian Stable Party was not to be their only occasion for historical costuming at Cheekwood, for their host would soon summon friends and family for a second evening of historical costuming, one vastly different from the era of Queen Victoria.

Leslie reached much deeper into the past for a party the next year. On July 10, 1934, the mansion’s Loggia and Swan Lawn were transformed into a Greek acropolis for the costume ball whose theme was Greek and Roman mythology. In their invitations, guests were assigned either a Greek or Roman god or goddess, and they were expected to arrive in costume for the evening, as they did. We imagine the partygoers congratulating one another on their classical apparel. Among the Cheeks, Mrs. Cheek’s mother went as Ceres, the goddess of agricultural bounty. Leslie Sr. was Zeus, the mighty ruler, and Mrs. Cheek (Mabel) was Hera, the goddess of motherhood and marriage. Huldah was Athena, associated with wisdom, crafts, and warfare. Leslie had designed the invitations and assigned himself the identity best suited to the host. A student of architecture, he came as Iktinos, the architect of the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. The architect of two successful summer parties, Leslie well deserved the honor.

Blog post provided by Cheekwood’s Writer-in-Residence, Cecelia Tichi, Ph.D.

Cecelia Tichi is an award-winning author and Professor of English and American Studies Emerita at Vanderbilt University. Her books span American literature and culture from colonial days to modern times, but her recent work draws upon the Gilded Age (post-1870) that prompted her book on Jack London and another on seven activists in that tumultuous era.

Cecelia’s research and teaching inspired What Would Mrs. Astor Do? The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age, followed by Gilded Age Cocktails and Jazz Age Cocktails , which set the stage for her mystery crime novels that boast “Gilded” in each title.

Cecelia can be followed on her website: https://cecebooks.com/