Caresse Crosby - Marries Again

Marries Again

While taking her daughter Polly to Hollywood where she aspired to become an actress, Caresse met Selbert "Bert" Saffold Young, an unemployed aspiring actor and former football player 18 years her junior. When he saw her staring at him in a restaurant, he immediately came over and asked her to dance. She described him as "handsome as Hermes" and "as militant as Mars." Her friend Constance Coolidge described Bert as "untamed" and "entirely ruled by impulse."

Without a job, he convinced Caresse he just wanted to own a farm and they decided to look for land on the east coast. They drove into Virginia looking for an old plantation house smothered in roses. When their car broke down, she accidentally discovered Hampton Manor, a Hereford cattle farm with a dilapidated brick mansion on a 486 acres (197 ha) estate in Bowling Green, Virginia. It had been built in 1838 by John Hampton DeJarnette from plans by his friend, Thomas Jefferson. John Hampton was the brother of Virginia Legislator Daniel Coleman De Jarnette.

On September 30, 1936, she wrote to the New York Trust Company and instructed them to send 433 shares of stock that she used to buy the property, which was in need of renovation. They were married in Virginia on March 24, 1937. Bert was always asking Caresse for money, he crashed her car, ran up the telephone bill, and used all her credit at the local liquor store. Bert ended one bout of drinking with a solo trip to Florida and did not come back to Virginia until the next year.