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Authors: Jed Rubenfeld
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she was only a sixteen-year-old
unmarried showgirl rather than the respectable Mrs Harry Thaw. Others opined
that this jury was especially disinclined to convict, having received too great
a sum from Thaw's attorney to feel free, in conscience, to reject his closing
plea.
In the summers, Manhattan's rich
repaired to marble palaces in Newport and Saratoga, where yachting, horsing,
and cardplaying were the principal occupations. In those days, the leading
families could still demonstrate why they were their country's finest. Young
Harold Vanderbilt, who grew up at 660 Fifth Avenue, would successfully defend
the America's Cup three times against British assault. He also invented
contract bridge.
As September approached in 1909, a
new season was about to begin. Everyone agreed that the crop of debutantes that
year was among the choicest in recent memory. Miss Josephine Crosby, the Times observed, was a particularly handsome girl, gifted with a beautiful
singing voice. The shapely Miss Mildred Carter had returned with her father
from London, where she had danced with the king. Miss Hyde, the heiress, was
also to debut, as were Miss Chapin and Miss Rutherford, who was last seen as a
bridesmaid to her cousin, the former Miss White, at the latter's marriage to
Count Sheer-Thoss.
The inaugural event of the season was
a charitable ball, thrown by Mrs Stuyvesant Fish on Monday night, August 30, to
raise funds for the city's new Free Hospital for Children. It had become
fashionable at that time to hold parties at the city's grand hotels. Mrs Fish's
party was to take place at the Waldorf-Astoria.
That grand hotel on Fifth Avenue and
Thirty-fourth Street stood on the spot where Mrs Astor had lived a quarter
century earlier, when she was bested by Mrs Vanderbilt. By comparison with the
gleaming Vanderbilt mansion, the Astors' fine old brick townhouse had suddenly
looked small and drab. Therefore Mrs Astor unceremoniously razed it and built
herself a double-sized French chateau - not in the Loire style but in the more
dignified Second Empire fashion - thirty blocks north, with a ballroom big
enough for twelve hundred. On the land vacated by Mrs Astor, her son erected
the world's largest and the city's most luxurious hotel.
Society entered the Waldorf-Astoria
through a wide, three-hundred-foot-long corridor off Thirty-fourth Street,
known as Peacock Alley. On the occasion of a fancy ball, blue-stockinged doormen
would greet the carriages as they drew up, and Peacock Alley would be lined
with hundreds and hundreds of spectators, an audience of groundlings for the
procession of wealth and importance making its stately way inside. The Palm
Garden was the Waldorf's massive domed and gilded restaurant, walled in glass
to ensure continuing visibility to the outside world and paneled everywhere
with full-length mirrors to ensure that the ladies and gentlemen of the inner
world saw even more of themselves than outsiders could. To accommodate her
party, Mrs Stuyvesant Fish had booked not only the Palm Garden but also the
Empire Room, the outdoor Myrtle Room, and the entire orchestra and company of
the Metropolitan Opera.
It was the strains of this music that
greeted Stratham Younger as he strolled the length of Peacock Alley, his arm in
the grasp of his cousin Miss Belva Dula, a half hour after his European guests
had departed for their dinner at the Brills'.
My mother was a Schermerhorn. Her sister
married a Fish. These two majestic genealogical facts got me invited to every
royal ball in Manhattan.
Living in Worcester, Massachusetts,
supplied an excuse sufficient to dodge most of these engagements. But I had to
make an exception for parties thrown by my outr é Aunt Mamie - Mrs Stuyvesant Fish - who, though
not really my aunt, has insisted on my calling her so since I was little, when
I used to spend summers in her Newport house. After my father died, it was Aunt
Mamie who
unmarried showgirl rather than the respectable Mrs Harry Thaw. Others opined
that this jury was especially disinclined to convict, having received too great
a sum from Thaw's attorney to feel free, in conscience, to reject his closing
plea.
In the summers, Manhattan's rich
repaired to marble palaces in Newport and Saratoga, where yachting, horsing,
and cardplaying were the principal occupations. In those days, the leading
families could still demonstrate why they were their country's finest. Young
Harold Vanderbilt, who grew up at 660 Fifth Avenue, would successfully defend
the America's Cup three times against British assault. He also invented
contract bridge.
As September approached in 1909, a
new season was about to begin. Everyone agreed that the crop of debutantes that
year was among the choicest in recent memory. Miss Josephine Crosby, the Times observed, was a particularly handsome girl, gifted with a beautiful
singing voice. The shapely Miss Mildred Carter had returned with her father
from London, where she had danced with the king. Miss Hyde, the heiress, was
also to debut, as were Miss Chapin and Miss Rutherford, who was last seen as a
bridesmaid to her cousin, the former Miss White, at the latter's marriage to
Count Sheer-Thoss.
The inaugural event of the season was
a charitable ball, thrown by Mrs Stuyvesant Fish on Monday night, August 30, to
raise funds for the city's new Free Hospital for Children. It had become
fashionable at that time to hold parties at the city's grand hotels. Mrs Fish's
party was to take place at the Waldorf-Astoria.
That grand hotel on Fifth Avenue and
Thirty-fourth Street stood on the spot where Mrs Astor had lived a quarter
century earlier, when she was bested by Mrs Vanderbilt. By comparison with the
gleaming Vanderbilt mansion, the Astors' fine old brick townhouse had suddenly
looked small and drab. Therefore Mrs Astor unceremoniously razed it and built
herself a double-sized French chateau - not in the Loire style but in the more
dignified Second Empire fashion - thirty blocks north, with a ballroom big
enough for twelve hundred. On the land vacated by Mrs Astor, her son erected
the world's largest and the city's most luxurious hotel.
Society entered the Waldorf-Astoria
through a wide, three-hundred-foot-long corridor off Thirty-fourth Street,
known as Peacock Alley. On the occasion of a fancy ball, blue-stockinged doormen
would greet the carriages as they drew up, and Peacock Alley would be lined
with hundreds and hundreds of spectators, an audience of groundlings for the
procession of wealth and importance making its stately way inside. The Palm
Garden was the Waldorf's massive domed and gilded restaurant, walled in glass
to ensure continuing visibility to the outside world and paneled everywhere
with full-length mirrors to ensure that the ladies and gentlemen of the inner
world saw even more of themselves than outsiders could. To accommodate her
party, Mrs Stuyvesant Fish had booked not only the Palm Garden but also the
Empire Room, the outdoor Myrtle Room, and the entire orchestra and company of
the Metropolitan Opera.
It was the strains of this music that
greeted Stratham Younger as he strolled the length of Peacock Alley, his arm in
the grasp of his cousin Miss Belva Dula, a half hour after his European guests
had departed for their dinner at the Brills'.
My mother was a Schermerhorn. Her sister
married a Fish. These two majestic genealogical facts got me invited to every
royal ball in Manhattan.
Living in Worcester, Massachusetts,
supplied an excuse sufficient to dodge most of these engagements. But I had to
make an exception for parties thrown by my outr é Aunt Mamie - Mrs Stuyvesant Fish - who, though
not really my aunt, has insisted on my calling her so since I was little, when
I used to spend summers in her Newport house. After my father died, it was Aunt
Mamie who
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