Louis Agassiz Shaw II

Louis Agassiz Shaw II (1906-1987) was an American socialite and writer.

Biography

Louis Agassiz Shaw II was born to Robert Gould Shaw II and Mary Hannington; the Shaws were a wealthy and influential Boston family. His father was a cousin of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, noted for leading the first African-American regiment in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Louis Shaw attended private school and Harvard University, where he graduated in 1929. Like Robert Gould Shaw, Louis was a member of the Porcellian Club, a men's-only final club at Harvard. Upon graduation, he published a novel, Pavement (1929), under the pen name Louis Second, his nickname.

After graduation, Shaw lived in a sprawling 15-room mansion in Topsfield, a town founded by the ancestral Gould family. An eccentric snob, he kept a copy of the Social Register next to the telephone, instructing his staff not to accept calls from anyone not listed on the register. He often rode his horse along a bridle path from his estate, and through the area now known as the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, in order to reach the Myopia Hunt Club. Property belonging to future General George S. Patton's (1885–1945) was also situated on this route.[1]

Like his elder half-brother Robert Gould Shaw III, Shaw struggled with depression and alcoholism.[2] After confessing to strangling his maid in 1964 he was committed to McLean Hospital, where he lived for 23 years.[3][1] Much of his art collection, which he wanted to donate to the Fogg Museum, was found to be fakes.[4]

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 Beam, Alex (2001). "Chapter 9: Staying on: the elders from planet Upham". Gracefully Insane: Life and Death Inside America's Premier Mental Hospital. New York: Public Affairs. pp. 169–90. ISBN 978-1-58648-161-2.
  2. ↑ Marlowe, Derek (1982). Nancy Astor: The Lady from Virginia. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.
  3. ↑ Ruth La Ferla, "Where the Upper Crust Crumbled Politely", The New York Times, 28 July 2002
  4. ↑ Beam (2009), p. 182
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