Photography by Schweig Studio, courtesy of the Missouri History Museum
Mary Plant and Leicester Faust with their wedding party. Wedding took place on 14 January 1922. Photograph by Schweig Studio, 1922 Missouri History Museum Photograph and Print Collection. Portraits n35157
This skinny, jittery groom is Adolphus Busch’s grandson. His other grandfather was Adolphus’ best friend, Tony Faust. Leicester Faust was far more retiring than either of his grandfathers; Tony made an international name for himself with his eponymous restaurant, where Adolphus often held court with other top-hatted businessmen—and many bottles of wine (not beer!) on the table. Faust’s was famous for its “Lucellian [sic] feasts”—one man ate 256 oysters in a row, chased with “a porterhouse steak, potatoes au gratin, and a stein of beer.”
At midnight, actors from the nearby Olympic Theatre streamed in for late supper, keeping cooks busy not with multiple courses but instead with persnickety requests. One asked for “quail with silver kraut,” which wasn’t on the menu and stumped the kitchen—but became a signature dish. Things often got so exciting, drunken brawls spilled into the street; one guy even clocked his drinking companion in the face with a hose fitting.
Leicester went to Yale and followed his father, Edward, into the business world but eventually bought 200 acres in Chesterfield and farmed. So he was probably a bit relieved when a society newspaper column about his “brilliant” society wedding virtually ignored him. “The bride wore a gown of heavy white crepe, embroidered with crystal beads,” the anonymous reporter gushed, then went on for several florid sentences describing her court train (“rose point lace, lined with tulle”), her coronet of pearls and orange blossoms, and her bouquet (“a shower of lilies of the valley”).
It was almost as if the reporter were describing a floating dress with no woman inside. As low-key Leicester’s betrothed, perhaps Mary Plant was shy enough she didn’t mind taking second billing to her gown; in any case, she was no Eva Gabor to his Eddie Albert. They were still happily married in 1968, when they donated their farm to St. Louis County—and it became what we now know as Faust Park.
