One hundred years ago this morning, September 4, 1924, Edward the Prince of Wales wearily returned to the James Burden estate after a night of gayety that included a stag dinner party followed by dancing until dawn at the home of Joshua S. Cosden.
As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that day, “It was another dancing party which kept Wales out all night, this time at the home of Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Cosden at Sands Point. The party was a small but jolly one. Other guests included Lord and Lady Mountbatten, Lord and Lady Milhaven and the Hon. Mrs. Richard Norton.”
Reporter Frank Getty was keeping close tabs on the prince that morning, writing in the Brooklyn Daily Times, “‘Please use the rear entrance,’ was the unwritten order at the James A. Burden estate today. In one of the bedrooms in the front of the big red brick house a young man was sleeping. He needed to. He had been out all night for the third time in three days. Edward, Prince of Wales, kept his fair curls tight on the pillow all morning. Downstairs, menials and secretaries tip-toed about. At the gates to ‘Woodsides,’ the gray-clad troopers shooed visitors around to the back door.
“Last night, after a dinner at the Piping Rock Club, the Prince, together with Lord and Lady Mountbatten and the Marquis and Marchioness of Milford Haven, went off to a dance at the Long Island home of Joshua S. Cosden. It lasted until 5 A.M.”
The New York Daily News reported, “Before going to the Cosden manor the prince attended a stag at the Piping Rock club…. After the stag the prince went to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joshua S. Cosden, where he danced until morning.”
Grace Robinson wrote about the morning of September 4, “Before inspecting his third Long Island sunrise from the Cosden manor, the prince had been with the Piping Rock club at a gay stag…. After the stag, the prince went to the Cosdens where he danced until morning.”
Robinson also detailed how reporters assigned to follow the prince struggled to adjust to his brutal schedule. “The prince, having slept all of five hours, was at the private polo field of John S. Phipps promptly at noon. Reporters who went there were amazed to find him in tan jersey and Indian polo helmet cavorting about on his favorite mare, Kitty. He seemed fresh and eager for the sport, while the journalists were still nursing headaches following all night duty on the Piping Rock dinner and the Cosden dance.”
Following the “small but jolly’ Cosden party, there is clear consensus among reporters regarding the prince’s activities and whereabouts the previous evening and through the night until dawn. There is no confusion, no conflicting reports coming from the gaggle of reporters assigned to follow Wales. Nowhere in any of the contemporary accounts of the prince’s actions that night is there even a hint that Wales made a new friend at the Cosden party, and the pair motored to Broadway to go on a speak crawl.
Yet, fast forward a hundred years and that is exactly what a former journalist and current writing professor would have us believe. And if Dean Jobb, author of A Gentleman and a Thief, had presented his book as a work of historical fiction, he could be congratulated for authoring a damn fine story. But he claims it’s a work of creative non-fiction. In a note to readers, he writes, “No quotations have been altered; no details have been added or embellished. All scenes and events unfolded as described. Where there were differing accounts of conversations or what happened, I relied on what was said at the time, rather than what Barry and others remembered or asserted long afterward.”
In the words of Colonel Sherman T. Potter, “Horse Hockey!” Jobb clearly read at least some of the accounts I just presented, because he refers to the Cosden party as a “‘small but jolly’ gathering.” Yet he ignores “what was said at the time” in favor of the much later recollections of a thief and a con man. The book is full of these poor choices. As a work of historical fiction, it’s a great story. As a work of history, it’s severely lacking.
If there is something 