Henry Symes Lehr (March 28, 1869 – January 3, 1929) was an American socialite during the Gilded Age who was dubbed "America's Court Jester".

[2] He attempted to establish himself as successor to Ward McAllister, arbiter elegantiarum of New York's Four Hundred, the collection of Knickerbocker and industrial families he created as a bulwark against the new wealth of the Gilded Age.

[7]They stayed in a loveless, unconsummated marriage for 28 years, as Lehr benefited from her wealth, she from his social connections and her strong wish to not upset her conservative, staunchly Catholic mother, Lucy (née Wharton) Drexel.

[1] At the time of his death, Bessie was in France staying at the home of Alva's daughter Consuelo Vanderbilt and her husband Jacques Balsan (after her divorce from Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough).

[17] Lehr was,[18] in fact, gay and rumored to have had a longstanding relationship with friend and fellow Newport cottager Charles Greenough.

[7] Lehr owned, and hung in his bedroom, a nude painting by R. G. Harper Pennington of Robert Gould Shaw II as the character "Little Billee" from the bohemian novel Trilby (1894) by George du Maurier.