Linda Lee Thomas

Linda Lee Thomas (1883 – 20 May1954) was an American socialite, the wife of musical theatre composer Cole Porter.

A descendant of the Virginia Lees, Linda Belle Lee was, in her youth, a noted beauty, though she achieved wealth only through marriage. She was introduced by friends to Edward R. Thomas, a son of Union general Samuel Thomas, and owner of the "New York Morning Telegraph" (and who later became the first American to kill someone in a car accident), and married him in 1901 at Newport, Rhode Island, when she was seventeen. They lived a life of luxury, with houses in Palm Beach, in Manhattan, and in Newport. It was said that her favorite "department store" was Van Cleef & Arpels. Edward was said to be cruel, aggressive, sexually demanding, and unfaithful. The couple drifted apart, with a brief reunion in 1908 when she nursed him through a leg injury; ultimately they divorced in 1912.

Linda and Cole met on 30 January 1918 at the wedding of railroad heiress Ethel Harriman and Henry Potter Russell at the Hôtel Ritz Paris. (Under the names Ethel B. Borden and Ethel Russell, the bride went on to become a Hollywood screenwriter after her 1925 divorce, credited with the films "They Wanted to Marry", "The Woman I Love", "I Live My Life", and "After Office Hours".)

Linda and Cole were married on 12 December 1919 in the city hall of the 18ème arrondissement of Paris. It was a marriage of convenience: by marrying, Cole Porter increased his allowance from his parents, and Linda, adrift since her divorce, acquired a husband who was becoming well known. Linda's close friends, including Elsie de Wolfe, Anne Morgan, and Elisabeth Marbury, were lesbians, and it is generally thought that Linda was bisexual (Veronica Balfe, Mrs. Gary Cooper, endorsed this view), though some have doubted it, saying she married a gay man because she had been abused by a heterosexual one. From 1920 to 1937, the Porters lived at 13 rue Monsieur, a house next door to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and with a garden adjoining the future residence of Nancy Mitford.

The Porter marriage, overromanticized in "Night and Day", was stormy, with the couple remaining close friends, dependable in times of stress, such as Cole's leg injuries, but often other times at odds.

Linda died from emphysema in the couple's apartment in the Waldorf Towers, leaving an estate of over one and a half million dollars in which Cole Porter had a lifetime interest. She was buried in the Cole plot at Mount Hope Cemetery in Peru, Indiana.