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"Cape Centaur,"
House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
Perhaps none of Talbot County's baronial residences has provoked more speculation than Cape Centaur, a tile-roofed, Spanish-style villa whose 275-acre grounds wrap around 5 miles of Leeds Creek and the Miles River.
The so-called "Pink Castle" has been the subject of endless gossip — oft-told tales of German submarine sightings at its shore, of gold and silver coins stored in secret chambers, of huge medieval-like moats, impregnable doors, steel shutters and air-raid sirens. According to the 1977 book "Wye Island" by Boyd Gibbons, Centaur was built in 1922 by a U.S. diplomat named Glenn Stewart, who was convinced someone was trying to kill him. He was so fearful that he and his bodyguard and estate manager, Adolph Pretzler, slept with Colt .45s under their pillows, the book says. "I met Glenn Stewart several times, and he was what you'd call paranoid ... weird." says Mary Donnell Singer Tilghman, who grew up not far from Centaur. "The place was surrounded by a security fence, and there were dogs inside. The place had a guarded entry house."
Buster Miller, an Easton cab driver who worked Centaur's huge entrance gates in the '50s. will say only that "Mr. Stewart always treated me very well."
His wife, Jacqueline Archer Stewart, was a wealthy dog lover from Ireland and the godmother to Gloria Vanderbilt. Legend has it that she dyed her French poodles to match the interior of her latest Cadillac.
Are all the rumors true? the Pink Castle's current owner is asked.
Ello Pretzler simply smiles and says: 'Totally untrue. It just makes a good story."
Stewart may have been eccentric. Pretzler says, but "Mrs. Stewart was kindly and a devout Christian person. I still have her Bible." She was the type who would have her chauffeur stop to rescue strays, not dye dogs.
Pretzler, 58, has her own story. Once a secretary, she came to Centaur 35 years ago as the young bride of Adolph. the estate manager. When Stewart's widow died in 1964, Adolph inherited the property.
"My husband was like an adopted son to the Stewarts." Pretzler says.
Adolph — "he was one fine, honest gentleman"— died in 1992, and his widow inherited the estate, assessed today for tax purposes at $2 million. She also has other real estate investments. She lives in the main house. Not far away, in a cottage, is her daughter's family.
The Pink Castle's red-clay tiles project above the tree line, creating the impression of a Castilian palace that improbably turned up amid the loblolly pines. Its squarish tower could pose for the cover of a Gothic novel. There's a Latin inscription on the entry pillar by the gatehouse. Loosely translated, it says: "Honesty is the best policy."
Pretzler shows visitors the azure blue and yellow tiles from Tunis inset in the stucco walls, its fountains and boxwood gardens. She says the roof tiles came from Cuba.
'This is a warm and sunny Mediterranean house — there is nothing dark about it," she insists, and adds: "The house really isn't pink. The color is 'desert dawn.'"
Inside, the house shares a passing resemblance to the set of "Sunset Boulevard," with a massive painting of a Spanish senorita, large antique upholstered furniture and lamps dressed in heavy shades. The floors are tiled, and the heavy doors are latticed with inset panels.
From secretary to estate owner, "God brought me here." Pretzler says. She is now a grandmother whose joys are simple, like strolling the estate with her granddaughter.
She takes a seat on the sunny terrace and becomes philosophical: "A gorgeous mansion is no good unless you possess inner contentment and happiness."The Baltimore Sun 08 Nov 1998
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
THE "'Eastern Shore" of Maryland, long famous for the ancestral homes of southern planters is taking on a fresh flavor. A new architectural note has crept in, the very antithesis, as it were, of the manorial type of the sunny South, yet, strange to say, as compatible with its environment as any of the notable shrines of pre- or post-Revolutionary days, whose box-bordered paths lead down to the edge of the Potomac or the shores of Chesapeake Bay.
The early dwellings, following English or Dutch precedent, have gradually been replaced by various types of Old World architecture and English, French, Italian and more recently Spanish, have been adapted to our needs, but Moorish design has practically no place in our category of domestic dwellings, for the reason, no doubt, that it seemed to be least in accord with our native taste.
But the recent acquisition, in a heretofore virgin field, of a marvelously lovely example of Moorish architecture in Cape Centaur, the Maryland home of Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Stewart, designed by Bradley Delehanty, architect of New York, is indicative of the fallacy of this reasoning, for far from its presenting an incongruous note in the landscape, it is an acceptable innovation and carries with it an air of serenity nowhere so adequately expressed as in the Spanish homes of Moorish heritage, and is superlatively manifest in the Alhambra, in the feeling of which certain unusual details were patterned.
Having the air of the Spanish feudal castle, erected as protection against invasion, a style, by the way that persisted long after the need existed, the design of Cape Centaur preserves many interesting traces or Moorish elegance to be noted in the engaging roof levels, the light and fragile colonnade, in the belt of battlements about the square tower, and, particularly, in the extreme beauty of the dominating feature itself, suggested by the graceful Tower of the Angels in the Alhambra.
The Glenn Stewart estate, comprising 2,000 acres lying along Chesapeake Bay, has a coast line indented by many arms of the sea, one of which, the Miles River on the east, is a deep waterway, allowing the owner to land from his yacht in his own garden. This stretch of country is generally flat with groups of tall pines and cedars whose dark masses bring into bold and striking relief the salmon-hued stucco walls, the variegated Spanish tiles in burgundy, light red, straw color with a small percentage of dark blue, covering the pitched roofs.
Built of steel and reinforced concrete, the structure partakes of the solidity and strength imparted by the early Gothic and Romanesque designs of French and English cathedrals. The stucco is applied semi-smooth with just enough texture to give the effect of age, but is kept simple in general tones, leaving to the concentration of brilliant masses of color formed by Tunisian tile, striking notes of interest. The joints of the tile are slushed up with cement to give a pictorial effect, but, in particular, to hold them in place, as the house is located in the hurricane belt and subject to severe wind and rain storms which sweep the coast with terrific force.
Mr. Stewart, who has been in the diplomatic service for a number of years, serving successively in Latin America, China, Spain and Austria, secured a wealth of valuable material, much of which is embodied in the structure or is included in the furnishings of the house. Among his wide and varied collection of art objects are antique chalices, not a few studded with jewels; rich brocades and rare textiles; however, in the entire group none is of greater import than the priceless kakemono Mr. Stewart brought from China which now hangs on the wall of the great hall, and for which this majestic apartment was, to all intents and purposes, designed. Its history involves a tragedy, for it took the entire lifetime of the weaver to complete it and he lost the use of his eyes in the process. Being an Imperial treasure, it was naturally difficult to bring out of the country and not until two years had elapsed was it possible to do so.
Cape Centaur and its appendages is not easily comprehended at a glance for the several groups of buildings, the two important ones ranged about a quadrangle, stretch over a great expanse of territory. The first group, about a mile from the house, is reached by an underground passage or vaulted tunnel; the two other guest houses, one a studio also used as a garden pavilion, with the garage for the main group, are in fairly close contact, while a third group, about a mile further on, includes the dog kennels where Mrs, Stewart raises her famous wolf hounds.
The west facade of Cape Centaur expresses the only formal note in the whole composition, the loggia with its very lovely colonnade, and gracefully designed columns, the capitals of which, richly carved, are antiques, some 1,000 years old. The floor of the loggia, made of Prussian blue tile with a Tunisian tile base, projects out beyond the face of the building in a semicircle. The east terrace with three similar doors or windows opening onto it is of brick design with the occasional introduction of variegated slate to lend interest. Projecting out on either side, the terrace has an intimate air, quite in keeping with its use as an al fresco dining-room or for serving afternoon tea.
The square vestibule, having a slightly vaulted ceiling with elliptical arches, entered from the walled enclosure, is rich in decorative feeling. Both walls and ceiling are done in antique gold, the floor of red tile, stained and waxed ; red lacquer doors, striped with gold and studded with wrought iron nails in accord with which are the furnishings including a sumptuous red lacquer escritoire as the piece de resistance among the furnishings.
In the great hall, a majestic apartment, rising two stories with a vaulted ceiling, having a water vista on both sides, runs the length of the main portion, brilliantly effective in its Moorish treatment of Tunisian tile. The influence of the Alhambra pervades this glorified living-room.
Adding to the gaiety of the great hall is the large fireplace with octagonal hood, carried on stone brackets, the hood being partially treated in Tunisian tile. The raised hearth also is bordered with the tile. The corresponding alcove at the other end holds a magnificent Spanish bookcase and boasts of a rare carved wooden ceiling, comparable to those seen in side altars of a church. The space between the niches is occupied by the very famous Chinese kakemono of tragic history.
Beside those rooms, there are the tower rooms, one of the library and a very unusual bedroom ; the latter with windows on all sides is flanked by columns and the main decorative feature is an eight foot square bed of Spanish walnut with carved wooden posts, and hanging from the domed ceiling is a richly wrought iron lantern. The marvelous richness of detail; the minutiae of design into which is woven all the mystery and magic of the Alhambra makes a tremendous appeal to the decorative sense, and its graceful application, in the hands of Mr. Delehanty, to the American home must forever banish the prevailing notion of the style being unsuitable or out of harmony with our native taste in architecture and art.
Boyd Gibbons book about Wye Island is mainly about the Rouse Companies attempt to subdivide the island in the 1970s, but it includes stories from former farm tenants about what life was like on Wye in the early part of the 20th century until the eccentric Stewart family bought much of the property on Wye Island in the mid 1930s and slowly evicted all of the tenant farmers.
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Not all the rich, however, were welcomed by the natives, nor all the natives by the rich. In purchasing their vast estates, the wealthy were buying privacy and, in a sense, walling off themselves. They do it today on the Shore, as do others not-so-rich who retire or own second homes there. As do most people in this country who buy land. For reasons good or ill, owning land is the most effective way in which people keep their distance from others. Land is the ultimate means of exclusion. And to Wye Island in the 1920s, long before Jim Rouse tried to breach a broader wall of resistance, there came a man and a woman who used their dazzling wealth to serve an almost macabre exclusivity. They gradually bought up most of Wye Island and evicted the tenant farmers.
For more than forty years the brooding presence of Jacqueline and Glenn L. Stewart hung over Wye Island and their nearby castle. To many natives of the upper Shore, it remains today. "Mrs. Stewart? Sure, I remember her. She was one tough woman! Glenn Stewart was big. Wore a black patch over one eye. Had a big scar on his face... told me he got that in a duel in Heidelberg, or somewhere over there. He was an important diplomat with the government. Jesus, did they ever have the money. Never mixed much with the local people here, though. Understand they entertained a lot of dukes and princes down at their castle on Miles River neck. But folks here never saw much of him. He spent most of his time on his yacht—a real romantic adventurer. I think he was afraid someone was after him. They didn't want no one down on Wye Island." Thus go the typical recollections of those who came in rare contact with the Stewarts.
Jacqueline Archer Stewart was born in Ireland. She attended private schools in Paris and moved to Manhattan as a young woman. Jacqueline was apparently wealthy in her own right when she met and married Glenn Stewart. Stocky in appearance, she wore her hair in the fashionable bob of the twenties era, wrapped herself in furs, and bejeweled her ample bosom. She loved money, dogs, and horses, in roughly that order. To her marriage with Stewart, Jacqueline brought her money and the family coat of arms, a centaur firing an arrow over its rump.
Glenn L. Stewart was born in Pittsburgh in 1884. From his parents he inherited a fortune. He dabbled at Yale and Harvard, caromed about the world for a while, and went into the Foreign Service in 1914. He was a large man—six-feet-four, weighing 250 pounds—who affected a long gold cigarette holder and a pointed moustache like that of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. He had a patch over one eye and a scar across his check, but neither was received in a duel. They were the result of a bomb—Stewart's own bomb, in fact. While at Yale, he was maddened to discover that some girls whom he had invited to a party had decided to attend another party out of town. Stewart constructed a bomb. He intended to blow up the tracks before the girls' train departed, thereby hoping to divert them to his affair. Fortunately, for both the girls and the railroad, but unfortunately for Stewart, the bomb exploded prematurely, blinding him in one eye and scarring his face.
Glenn Stewart's diplomatic career was anything but that. He held minor positions as a fourth-class secretary to the U.S. legations in Havana and Guatemala and the embassy in Vienna. Despite his low rank, Stewart free-wheeled as an ambassador-at-large. When he arrived on station, his first act was to go off on ship cruises for a month or two, or three. For an entire year an exasperated State Department did not know his whereabouts. It is difficult to understand how Stewart stayed in the foreign service as long as he did, for he was not only blinking in and out of view like the Cheshire Cat (mostly out), but it is not clear how he earned his pay. A report he wrote on Guatemala was passed along by his supervisor to the head of Latin American affairs at State with this covering note: "This contains no information, whatever, of value to the department other than that which it has known for some time, with the possible exception of one or two of the tabulated enclosures, which bear the earmarks of being parts of consular reports.... It is without exception the most careless and almost illiterate document I have ever seen."
About his own financial affairs Stewart was similarly loose, and his creditors fruitlessly chased him by mail from legation to legation. For his steamship fare home from Austria, Stewart put the touch on the American minister to Switzerland. The minister soon joined the creditors' posse. But Glenn Stewart was cool under fire. At the very time the State Department was being hounded by his creditors, Stewart wrote the secretary directly, demanding full reimbursement for his travel expenses home, given the exigencies of World War I, rather than the statutory five cents a mile. In 1920, having shown a patience that is nothing less than remarkable, the State Department sacked him.
On their honeymoon around the world, the Stewarts stopped over in Granada, Spain, to soak up the exquisite Moorish architecture of the Alhambra palace. They liked the Alhambra (and royalty in any form) so much, in fact, that they decided to build their own castle and live in it, which was precisely what they did.
In 1922 the Stewarts moved down to the Eastern Shore and bought a point of land on the Miles River across from Saint Michaels. The Stewarts renamed the land Cape Centaur, and on it began to construct their not-so-little replica of the Alhambra. They imported Tunisian tiles for the castle interiors and large roofing tiles from Cuba. For authenticity, the plasterers had to hand-rub the stucco into the walls and vaulted ceilings, much the way the slaves constructed the Alhambra for Mohammed ibn-al-Ahmar and his successors in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The floors were fastened with wooden pegs. Glenn Stewart was fond of telling visitors that the floors had been walked upon by almost every famous person in the world, an assertion of some truth since Stewart had got the flooring out of the popular old Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Jacqueline's large bathroom was papered with eighteen-carat gold leaf. Affixed to her bedroom walls was a continuous canvas mural, painted by Victor White and once displayed in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, depicting the bloody adventures of Cortez. In the Cortez room Jacqueline was somehow lulled to sleep by gazing at scenes of horses and soldiers falling over cliffs and Aztecs holding the dripping organs of human sacrifices high in the air.
Centaur Castle never quite captured the delicate arabesque of the Alhambra. Instead, there was about the place, and the Stewarts, a darkness that suggested something fearful. This may be due in part to their taste in interiors. However, it is more probably because what the Stewarts built at Cape Centaur was less a romantic castle than it was a fortress, a place to hide. Glenn Stewart was convinced that someone was trying to kill him. While stationed in Guatemala, the Stewart's quarters had been burglarized eight times. One of their dogs was killed, and two were stolen along with their chickens, tools, and most of the machinery out of the pump house. One midnight, awakened by an alarm, Stewart, clutching his pistol, stumbled into the pump house to find four Guatemalans trying to remove the pump itself. Two of the men fled, but the others came at him with a knife and an iron bar. Stewart killed both. Stewart was advised that blood revenge was a common practice in Central America, and that unless he caught the next boat out he might be ambushed. Glenn and Jacqueline Stewart were on the next steamship.
The Stewarts were obsessed with making Centaur Castle an impenetrable stronghold—so much so that they allowed no workman to do more than a small segment of the construction. The doors were of half-inch steel plate sandwiched between thick slabs of solid oak, and secured by large Fox police locks. One entire wall of Glenn Stewart's dressing room consisted of drop-hinged cabinets, each drawer with a separate lock. Most of the castle windows were narrow slits about four feet high—just enough space through which to poke a rifle. The spacious arched windows were protected by interior shutters of quarter-inch steel, which could be swung into place and locked; a narrow steel panel in each shutter could be snapped open and fired through. The walls were almost three feet thick. On the roof Stewart installed an air raid siren, which could be activated from the tower. It once went off accidentally and spooked the neighbors. The county made Stewart disconnect it.
But the Stewarts were still fearful, so to further seal themselves off from attack, they added a three-story tower to their bastion, which was connected to the main hall by an arched passageway. On the top floor of the tower, among a museum full of Chinese antiques, slept Jacqueline (when she was not inclined to slumber with the battling Aztecs and Spaniards in the Cortez room). Glenn Stewart dozed fitfully on the second floor. On the main floor of the tower was Adolph Pretzler, their Austrian bodyguard, Glenn's personal secretary, and general manager of the Stewart holdings. Both Stewart and Pretzler slid loaded Colt .45 revolvers under their pillows. Each evening, Glenn Stewart opened a compartment in the wall of the circular staircase outside his bedroom, reached in, and switched on a concealed motor. The tower hummed and clanked, and, from his cot below, Pretzler watched a huge portcullis of bolted, grid like four-by-fours descend through a shaft in the archway until the pointed ends rested on the floor. In this medieval manner the Stewarts retired for the evening, nagged by the thought that a team with grappling hooks and rope ladders might yet breach their last circle of defense. If during the night Glenn Stewart heard a noise, any noise, he would arouse Pretzler, lift the portcullis, and send him into the night. While Prectzler stumbled about in the dark with his flashlight and pistol, Stewart, clutching his trusty Colt, climbed to the ramparts leading to his turreted study over the roof. He would call to Prctzler far below: "See anything?" Pretzlcr never saw anything—no Guatemalans in muffled canoes, no commando teams with grappling hooks, nothing. Pretzler would grumble an all-clear and head for his cot. But he had to wait for Stewart to raise the portcullis. Pretzler's job had certain drawbacks, but he was patient. And his patience did have its rewards.
Around Cape Centaur the Stewarts threw up their outer defense perimeter. At the road entrance they built a pair of heavy, timbered gates, duplicates in strength and appearance to the port-cullis. The gates were padlocked by a heavy iron bar when closed—which was all the time. An armed sentry guarded the gate from a brick turret. No one was allowed in or out of Cape Centaur without a written invitation and exit card, dated and time stamped. The guard once prevented a tractor salesman from leaving because the time had elapsed on his exit card, and he was sent back to the castle to have his card properly stamped. A high, wire fence encircled the estate. Within it a wide strip was cleared of all foliage and trees. Large Irish wolfhounds and stern men on horseback, cradling shotguns in their laps, constantly patrolled the fence line. It was widely believed among the neighboring shoremen that if you touched the fence, it would fry you like a potato chip.
The closest that the Stewarts ever came to an attack on Cape Centaur occurred when two dark figures quietly swam around the fence and crawled onto the beach. A police whistle shrieked from the tower, and two wolf-hounds—a species bred, since 300 B.C., to dismember timber wolves—pounded across the cornfield. One of the saboteurs sprinted to the water and swam safely away. The other leaped for the fence, vaulted it, and fled through the trees like a panicked deer. The two were twelve-year-old Boy Scouts, intrigued about the mysterious Stewarts and looking for a way to spice up their camping trip. The one who had demonstrated that the fence was not electrified was the champion of last tag: Jimmy Rouse.
Jacqueline Stewart was never without her dogs. In her arms she carried two poodles whose coats she dyed each year to match her latest Cadillac's interior. At one time her kennels on Cape Centaur held thirty-six Irish wolfhounds (she gave two to Rudolph Valentino). Jacqueline's kennelmaster lived in a specially built home in the middle of the kennels; he fed the dogs about 175 pounds of beef a day, along with immense amounts of cornmeal, homemade bread, and rice. Jacqueline wrote (in the American Kennel Gazette, June 1925) that the wolfhound "is a rich man's dog.... A poor man should not attempt his care, any more than he would try and keep a Rolls Royce on a Ford car income." Her favorite was a 190-pound giant called Bally Shannon, the largest Irish wolfhound bred in modem times. Jacqueline bought him for $1,250 and immediately hired him out, charging $500 for stud service. It was generally accepted among dog breeders then that good old Bally Shannon was hauling down a higher stud fee than any other dog in the country. He made $10,000 for Jacqueline before he rolled over and died seven years later. Jacqueline Stewart had him stuffed and shipped to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He was displayed there for years, along with five other wolfhounds who gave up the ghost at Cape Centaur. Today Bally Shannon is only pieces of skin kept in a large plastic bag in the museum's storage area.
After Jacqueline Stewart ran out of Irish wolfhounds, she bought (in China) some muscular, unfriendly chows. As a boy, Jim Rouse remembers seeing the Stewart's Stutz Bearcat parked outside the bank in Easton. He peered through the windshield. Fortunately for Rouse the windows were bulletproof, because what next exploded against them were the fangs and purple tongues of two roaring chows bent on pulling their small inquirer into an infinite number of pieces. One of the chows went everywhere with the Stewarts—and the Stewarts went everywhere. They spent less time on the Shore than away from it. Not about to crate it in the baggage car when she traveled, Jacqueline dressed the chow in children's clothes, bundled it in a blanket, and had Glenn carry it like a snoozing child into the Pullman. For their silence, the porters made a small fortune in tips from the Stewarts.
Pretzler accompanied them on most of their trips, not just for protection but to carry emergency provisions as well. He carried these in an aluminum suitcase. Four holes were drilled in the bag to keep the contents from generating combustion and catching fire. The contents of the bag, the emergency provisions, consisted of cold cash, more than $500,000 on one trip. The Stewarts wanted to more than $500,000 on one trip. The Stewarts wanted to be able to dip into it should the castle be attacked in their absence, forcing them to flee with only their journey bags. But this was chicken feed compared with the amount they stashed about at Centaur Castle: at one time no less than $1.6 million in paper currency and silver and gold coins.
Among the fantasies that fluttered through Glenn Stewart's mind was the vision of one day owning the entirety of Kent Island. "I am the Duke of Kent," Stewart would say, as Pretzler chauffeured him about in the Duesenberg. Stewart would refer to Pretzler as the Crown Prince or the Count of Leobenn. (That was the town near Vienna where Pretzler was born.) Stewart never fully realized his feudal, or futile, dreams, but he and Jacqueline did not do badly. In addition to Cape Centaur and their castle, they bought four more farms on Miles River neck and a 3,500-acre cattle ranch near Conifer, Colorado, converted an old Easton hotel into an office building, and gradually began buying up Wye Island.
Unlike Judge Bordley, the Stewarts knew little about farming, and, given their propensity to travel for months at a time, they had difficulty bringing off their various agricultural plans for Wye Island. They tried raising Percheron horses. That failed. They next shipped in three thousand sheep from Montana and hired a university professor to manage the considerable flock. They lost money on the sheep. As a last resort, Jacqueline Stewart trucked in Hereford cattle to Wye Island from Colorado and Kansas City (it appears Glenn had little interest in running anything), and she hired western cowboys as herdsmen. With the purchase of each farm on Wye Island, Jacqueline's cowboys would strip out the hedgerows, fence the fields, and run the cattle in. The cattle stayed.
Glenn Stewart enjoyed gunning, not ranching, though he sometimes wore a white linen suit and cowboy boots. Stewart looked upon Wye Island as his sporting hideaway, as well as another hiding hideaway. On Granary Creek, he had constructed a brick hunting lodge and paneled it in knotty pine. He called it the Duck House.
The Duck House was no ordinary shooting lodge. But then Glenn Stewart was no ordinary marksman: he had already bagged two people. Stewart considered the possibilities of a night raid on the Duck House. The thick oak doors and window shutters, like those in Centaur Castle, were bulletproofed with steel plate. A large cement basement was built under the Duck House, but it had no windows, no doors, and no stairs—offering no evidence to the outside world that there was anything under the Duck House except solid earth. Access to the basement was possible only through a false floor in front of the living room fireplace. In the same secretive manner that he had constructed the castle, Stewart divided the Duck House work crews, sending Pretzler out to get a large hydraulic lift from a filling station for raising and lowering the floor section (and the foot-thick cement slab that it rested on). As Hitler rolled over Czechoslovakia and Poland, Stewart's fears of Guatemalan ambush grew into a terror of panzer invasions of the Eastern Shore. Me prepared his basement for a long siege: he stocked it with a twelve-month supply of food and staples, a flour mill, a bed, ample clothing, and plenty of ammunition. He painted the roof of the Duck House and the walk around it in mottled camouflage to blend with the surrounding trees. Dive-bombing Stukas would have a hard time finding Glenn Stewart.
For all this effort Stewart never stayed in the Duck House, preferring, instead, the mobility of his shadowy yacht. Jacqueline and Glenn tended to go their separate ways, and during much of the Stewart reign on the Eastern Shore Glenn Stewart was off sailing in South American waters, trying to trace Columbus's voyages. The yacht Centaur was no small sailing vessel. It was an eighty-foot schooner. It was painted black. To captain the Centaur, Stewart hired Al Capone's skipper. All that it lacked was a skull and cross-bones. Glenn kept Jacqueline fearful. As they walked around the shoreline, he would muse aloud, "You know, my dear, a body could be slipped into one of these coves and never be found."
To Jacqueline's relief, one day Glenn Stewart sailed away to Nassau and never returned. The Stewarts later divorced, and Jacqueline gained all the Eastern Shore property. (Glenn Stewart remarried and is thought to have died in the 1950s.) But long before Glenn Stewart at last drifted off, Jacqueline was in command of their vast estate. Her armed horsemen and fleet wolfhounds patrolled Wye Island constantly, and from the day Jacqueline first set foot on the island word passed quickly up Wye Neck that trespassers were unwelcome.
Jacqueline's vise gradually tightened. Some local watermen, Sam Whitby included, had been mooring their workboats in a cove behind Drum Point, to be nearer the mouth of the Wye and Eastern Bay beyond. But when Mrs. Stewart—the local people knew her by no other name—bought the Drum Point farm, she closed off the farm lane that connected the cove to Wye Island's only public road and threw the watermen out. Enraged, the watermen hired lawyers and sued to open the lane, but the court had no choice—Mrs. Stewart owned the land—and the watermen were evicted. Then she shut down the Drum Point rope ferry, and even tried, unsuccessfully, to close the island's county road. By the mid-1930s Jacqueline had evicted most of the tenant farmers on the two-thirds of the island she had acquired. The schoolhouse on Dividing Creek stood empty. She bought it from the county and filled it with hay.
Sam and Lillian Whitby were now virtually alone on Wye Island, farming the Whaley place on Bigwood Cove. When Mrs. Stewart bought that farm, she told the Whitbys that they could stay there but no longer farm it. Sam and Lillian moved to the last place left, a small farm nearby.
The Whitbys could feel Mrs. Stewart closing in. "I have money. I have power!" she warned Sam.
Her presence was almost palpable, for Jacqueline Stewart splashed herself with a perfume that spread like a tainted fog. One afternoon Sam was driving a team of mules down the island into the teeth of a wind so fierce that it soon obscured the road in billowing dust. Through the dust Sam caught the scent of Mrs. Stewart's perfume. It grew so pungent that he was afraid the blinded mules were about to run her down. He halted the mules, and suddenly the wind shifted and blew the dust across the field. Jacqueline Stewart was standing in the middle of the road. Three hundred yards away. "That's how strong her perfume was!" Sam said to me one morning, as we drove up to the Duck House. Hardy leases the Duck House each year to Rockwell International, who brings customers and government officials down to shoot geese on Wye Island.
When Sam and I arrived, some of Hardy's farmhands, who guide Rockwell's shooting parties, were carrying goose decoys down a stairway that Hardy had built into the basement. Sam had never been there. We descended into had never been there. We descended into Glenn Stewart's never-used bunker and stood in a semicircle around a glistening steel cylinder that reached from the basement floor to the concealed floor section over our heads. I asked one of the men whether he remembered Mrs. Stewart. "Oooh, yea," he laughed. "Indeed I do! You could smell her a mile away!"
Sam swung around to face me, his account of Mrs. Stewarts powerful perfume confirmed. "See there?" he said.
For the Whitbys, life on Wye Island had become a tense drama. Jacqueline Stewart was mercurial; she would be friendly one day, and on the next, confronting Sam in the field, would say to him, "We're going to buy that farm and you're going to work for us." Sam told her he would not work for her, and he continued plowing. "I'll get you off!" Jacqueline warned. She bought the farm that Sam was renting and told him to get out. Sam told her that sort of thing was not done on the Eastern Shore, that unless the lease had been cancelled before January a tenant could stay on the farm until the end of the year. She threatened suit, and Sam hired a lawyer, but he felt all alone. "She was one very ornery woman. She didn't want no friends. All she wanted was her money. Her lawyer tried to collect half my wheat. But there was just me and her cowboys living down here at that time, and I was afraid I might get killed. That's when I left for good."
Jacqueline Archer Stewart died in 1964, leaving behind a tangled estate worth millions. In probate Adolph Pretzler produced a handful of papers signed by Jacqueline leaving virtually all of the estate to him. The court refused to accept the unwitnessed documents as proper wills, but Jacqueline's nieces and nephews finally agreed with Adolph to settle. Pretzler got 28 percent of the estate, including Cape Centaur, where, with his lovely German wife, he lives today.
The appraisers went to the castle and began compiling their lists: sable and mink coats, gold watches, gold penknives, a live-steam toy locomotive, Tiffany bowls, a framed mezzotint, hundreds upon hundreds of pieces of silver flatware, trunks full of jewelry, diamonds, emeralds, a '31 Duesenberg convertible, a '24 Packard straight eight, three more cars, a sleigh, a Steinway grand player piano, a crossbow, and on and on. A rumor came to the appraisers that there might be more. They asked Pretzler whether they had missed anything. Pretzler showed the appraisers into Glenn Stewart's dressing room, and opening a cabinet, he manipulated some concealed levers. Suddenly, a section of the floor yawned open to reveal a basement stairway. The men walked down the stairs. In the basement they found bushel baskets and grain sacks full of jewelry and coins, over $6,000 of silver dollars, fifty-cent pieces, quarters, dimes, and pennies—tipping money. But the find that took their breath away was a pile of ten-
and twenty-dollar gold pieces—more than four hundred gold coins in all—some minted as far back as 1850. When all the cash found in the castle, including the basement bundle, was totaled, it came to $160,000—and that at gold prices far lower than today's.
The Stewart portion of Wye Island was sold at a sealed-bid auction in 1965 to Frank and Bill Hardy. The Stewart era was ended.
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"Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| Cape Centaur, the Glenn Stewarts's Moorish home on Chesapeake Bay, suggests the grandeur of the Alhambra, which to some extant, influenced the design drawn by Bradley Delehanty, architect of New York |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| Detail, Entrance, "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| Detail, "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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Deep ivory walls of antique smooth plaster with dado, alcove, and fireplace covered with Tunisian tiles in green, yellow. blue, and chocolate.
Detail, Great Hall, "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
The walls of the living-room in these illustrations are of deep, ivory plaster, with an antique finish. A tiled dado, headed by a design of regularly recurring pointed teeth, runs around the base of the walls. At one end of the room is an alcove entirely covered with tiles of a grayish ground with inset panels bearing large Persian flowers. This is balanced at the opposite end by an alcove paneled in walnut in Spanish Gothic style.
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| Fireplace, Great Hall, "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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MRS. STEWART AND HER CHAMPION
Hanging in the great hall is this handsome picture of the chatelaine of Cape Centaur House and Ch. Bally Shannon. The picture was painted by Beltran-Masses, court painter of Spain. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
Brilliant Murals for Maryland Home These Colorful Murals Painted by Victor White are for a Tower Room in the House of Glenn Stewart, Cape Centaur, Maryland, The House is Spanish, Influenced by the Moorish and has some of the Most Beautiful Tiling in America. Very Skillfully Adapted by the Architect, Bradley Delehanty
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md. |
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| Much imagination and ingenuity have been shown in bathrooms in the Glenn Stewart house. The tubs are sunk below the floor level, and the walls are decorated with wainscot and panels of Persian tiles. The Spanish feeling of the entire house is carried out in detail, even in these small and intimate rooms. |
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CH. BALLY SHANNON
The king of the pack at Centaur is this magnificent Irish wolfhound. In spite of his great weight, he looks as alert as a terrier. |
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Garage, "Cape Centaur," House, Mr. Glenn Stewart, Easton, Md.
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| RUDOLF VALENTINO |
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KENNEL TOWER AT CENTAUR
No expense has been spared in making the kennels at Centaur ideal for Irish wolfhounds. They cover five acres and more of ground. |
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SINN FEIN AND HER MISTRESS
Mrs. Glenn Stewart takes a personal interest in everything connected with her kennels. Among her favorites is this handsome bitch, who is here seen with three of her two-week-old puppies. |
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OVERLORD AT CENTAUR
The tremendous size of Ch. Bally Shannon is well illustrated in this picture. The dog weighs one hundred and eighty-five pounds. He was bred by the Rev. Hildebrand, and born in Essex, England, on October 14, 1919. |
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IRISH WOLFHOUND FANCIERS
Mr. and Mrs. Reginald C. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Glenn Stewart all love these handsome dogs. The Vanderbilts recently purchased Bally Shamrock for $3,500, the animal seen in the picture, together with his father. |
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| One of the few photos ever published of him in a 1928 newspaper article showed him standing next to his $20,000, four-ton, 24-foot-long motor home that was said to be one of the most luxurious in the country. |
DIVORCE SUIT ACCUSES WIFE AND SERVANTGifts of $100,000 in securities and homes at Cape Centaur, Md. and Miami Beach, together with trips to Europe "spoiled" his wife. Glenn Stewart, stock operator, alleges in court. He also charges in his divorce action filed Thursday in Dade county circuit wife gave her affections to the family chauffeur.
Stewart, who gave his residence as Volusia county (Daytona Beach) and New Providence island, Bahamas, instituted the action against Mrs. Jacqueline Archer Stewart of 5100 La Gorce drive, Miami Beach.
While the Stewarts were touring Europe in 1929, Stewart says, he decided suddenly to come home because of stock market conditions, and asked Mrs. Stewart to accompany him. She declined, he relates, asking to be allowed to remain in Europe with their chauffeur, Adolph Pretzler. Later he learned, he alleges, that she purchased formal clothes for the chauffeur and that they dined and danced together. After her return to America, he claims, she insisted on Pretzler's moving out of the servant's quarters into a wing of the house she and her husband occupied and sought to be constantly in the chauffeur's company. The Miami News 16 Jun 1944
