Henry Hermann Mumm Thornton

Henry Hermann Mumm Thornton (born 1932) was a prominent banker and businessman whose young adulthood was detailed in the journals of his stepfather Edmund Wilson, the noted essayist and scholar.^[1] Henry was also mentioned frequently in the correspondence of Wilson with other literary notables, such as Vladimir Nabokov.^[2]

Henry H.M. Thornton

Edmund Wilson's journals

In the journals, Wilson wrote a detailed, uncensored account, including rather graphic descriptions of his sex life with wife Elena Mumm Thornton Wilson. Wilson did not spare Henry, of whom he was reportedly very fond. Wilson reflected on Henry’s difficulty in providing adequate income to support a ‘society’ family, Henry’s wife Daphne’s anti-Semitism, and the strained relationship of Elena and Daphne.^[3] How much of this was Wilson’s perception of reality or reality has never been determined. A copy of Henry H.M. Thornton’s birth certificate and Thornton family correspondence are stored with the Elena Wilson Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale Collection of American Literature, Yale University.

Education / career

After graduating from St. Paul's preparatory school in Concord, New Hampshire and serving two years in the US Armed Forces, Henry H.M. Thornton entered Columbia University, graduating in 1958. He spent the next 30 years in banking: By the mid-1980s, Henry was senior vice president of First Jersey National Bank, Jersey City, New Jersey.

Family

Henry H.M. Thornton was the son of James Worth Thornton and Elena Mumm Thornton, a German-Russian aristocrat and partial heir to the Mumm champagne fortune. Henry was the grandson of Sir Henry Worth Thornton. In 1946 James and Elena divorced, and Elena Mumm Thornton married Edmund Wilson in Reno, Nevada. Henry has a half-sister from Elena’s second marriage: Helen Miranda Wilson b. 1948.^[4]

In 1957 Henry married Daphne Sellar,^[5] from a prominent Newport, Rhode Island, family. Henry and Daphne had three daughters: twins, Sandra Christine and Elena Martha, and Nina Rosalie. In 1986 Sandra Thornton married Sheldon Whitehouse, who currently serves as US Senator from Rhode Island.^[6] In 1985 Elena Thornton married Michael Case Kissel,^[7] a producer and musician and 3rd-great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. In 1973 Henry subsequently married Deborah Speno, granddaughter of Frank Speno,^[8] inventor of a ballast cleaning mechanism, and founder of Speno Railroad Ballast Cleaning Co. from Ithaca, New York. Henry and Deborah had one son, James Speno Mumm.

Notes

1. Wilson, Edmund. The Fifties. Leon Edel (editor).
2. Wilson Edmund and Simon Karlinsky. Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971. University of California Press, 2001.
3. Wilson, Edmund. The Sixties: The Last Journal, 1960-1972. Lewis Dabney (editor)
4. Dabney, Lewis M. Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature. Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. New York; 2005
5. New York Times (Society Desk): June 9, 1957.
6. New York Times (Society Desk): Sept. 21, 1986
7. New York Times (Society Desk): June 30, 1985 (pg. 43).
8. See Speno patent information: www.freepatentsonline.com/3900392.html