New York Society in the Gilded Age: Background information when reading A Well-Behaved Woman

New York Society in the Gilded Age

This article relates to A Well-Behaved Woman

Most of the first half of Therese Anne Fowler's A Well-Behaved Woman focuses on Alva Vanderbilt's efforts to break into New York society, which was ruled by a small group of families during what is known as the Gilded Age (1870s-1900). The doyenne of New York society at the time was Caroline Astor who, aided by Ward McAllister, a Savannah-born self-appointed arbiter of high society, not only codified what was considered proper behavior but also who was acceptable in their high society. Ward McAllister is best remembered today for coining the term "The Four Hundred" when he declared that there were "only 400 people in fashionable New York Society." This made me wonder about the rivalry between Alva and Caroline, and the criteria for getting accepted into this exclusive club?

The original name for New York was New Amsterdam, which is the first clue to understanding the origins of the era's high society – being a direct descendant of one of the first Dutch settlers was the primary requirement. The list of gilded families included the Schuylers, Stuyvesants, Van Dusens, Beekmans, Roosevelts and Van Burens. The Schermerhorns were another such family, and Caroline Astor was a Schermerhorn by birth, giving her the right to claim her ancestral superiority. The Astor family, on the other hand, were of German origin, and came to America after the Revolutionary War where they made their fortune initially in furs and later by investing in New York real estate. So, although Caroline had the superior pedigree, the Astors already had considerable social standing in the city due to their money and the number of generations the family had been in America.

And here is the crux of why the Vanderbilts were deemed lower class, even though they were of Dutch origin themselves. Despite their wealth, the family had not been in America long enough to be considered sufficiently "blue blooded" for Caroline. Alva Erskine Smith, on the other hand, despite coming from the South (Mobile, Alabama) did have the required generations in her ancestry, as well as some connections to European royalty. Even so, her wedding to William Vanderbilt wasn't enough to raise the family to an acceptable level in Mrs Astor's eyes.

As Fowler describes in the novel, the turning point for the Vanderbilts was the famous costume ball Alva threw in her newly built mansion, which she called the Petit Chateau at 660 Fifth Ave. While researching this, I found a marvelous blog that has pictures of the famous party. From this and other accounts, it seems that this was not only the event that built bridges between the Vanderbilts and the Astors, but also paved the way to allowing many more families to be accepted into the "crème de la crème" of New York's society. Within a few years, Ward McAllister's original list of 400 had expanded to thousands – which, incidentally, did not include McAllister himself, who died alone having fallen precipitously from favor after publishing a revealing memoir Society as I Have Found It.

Today, while some of these families are still remembered, others have fallen into obscurity. Vanderbilt isn't one of the latter, in fact all you have to do is turn on CNN, where you can find Anderson Cooper, son of Gloria Vanderbilt. As for the Astors, their descendants are still very much around with several titled Astors also living in the UK. The name also lives on through the many Waldorf-Astoria hotels across the world.

Caroline Schermerhorn Astor
Alva Vanderbilt, costumed for her 1883 ball
Home of Alva and William Kissam Vanderbilt, 660 Fifth Avenue, New York City, June 5, 1886

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to A Well-Behaved Woman. It originally ran in October 2018 and has been updated for the October 2019 paperback edition. Go to magazine.