Plump as a partridge, with a voice like a dove, Lillian Russell was a celebrated singer and actress of the late 19th century. This was not the Great Gatsby era, when the idea was to see a girl's collar bones jutting out of her skin. A little padding was required before you made hearts flutter. And Lillian did have half the hearts in America fluttering for her golden voice and her significant curves. and her jewels of choice? Pearls, naturally.
Alas, perhaps hearts were fluttering a little too much. Her first husband was hauled in for bigamy. Let's not worry about how Husbands 2, 3, and 4 went their way. She finally met her match in Diamond Jim Brady, a snake oil salesman who amassed an ill-gotten fortune from shady dealings, and took his amusements in super-sized portions. He accumulated an enormous jewelry collection, no doubt to keep Ms. Russell in pearls. And he was also said to eat meals that would put Paul Bunyan down for a nap. Rumor has it that Lillian was no slouch in the snack department herself. But that was the beauty of the 1800s. As long as you had a sturdy corset to launch yourself into an hour-glass figure, there was no reason to hold back on the ice cream sundays. It is for that reason, along with my love of the pearls, that I often wonder if I wasn't born in the wrong century.
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