Gilded Age New York was all about flaunting your money. And no one did it better than the first families of excess, the Astors and the Vanderbilts. Part one of a multi part series, today we’re looking at the life of Caroline Astor, the “Mystic Rose” and arbiter of taste in New York Society. You’ll want to listen to the episode to get primed on the new HBO series, The Gilded Age. Tune in!

HISTORICAL FICTION

The Social Graces by Renée Rosen

PODCASTS

The Astors and the Waldorf Astoria by The Bowery Boys

The Real Mrs. Astor, Ruler or Rebel? by The Gilded Gentleman

The Mrs. Astor by The History Chicks

NONFICTION

Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor by Greg King

When the Astors Owned New York by Justin Kaplan

Society as I Have Found It by Ward McAllister

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Happy New Year my dear Storical listeners! It’s 2022 and that means Storical has been around for 3 years! To think I was nervous about starting this podcast! Thanks for coming with me on this journey and sticking around during my hiatus.

I am here today to help you start 2022 off strong with some tales of glittering diamonds, mansions on 5th avenue, but most of all, society gossip. If you’re listening to this podcast chances are you enjoyed shows like Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. Well my friends, we’re gonna get American with this and talk about some of the movers and shakers of Gilded Age New York. I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a soft spot for New York City history because I was born there but grew up on the west coast so anything where I get to kind of learn about my birth city is exciting.

At the end of this month, a new show called The Gilded Age is coming to HBO and it was created by Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey and screenwriter of Gosford Park. I figured you’d want to get jazzed for the show so let’s get to it!

To kind of orient you in this time period, the Gilded Age coincided with Belle Epoque (Belle Eh=Pawk-a) Paris and the Late Victorian and very early Edwardian eras. What you need to know about the era was that it was the time of the robber barons, in fact one of the families we’re going to discuss further was one of the big 4. It was also a time of rapid industrialization and expansion westward.

Some of the ways that people that are important to this story got rich was through the railroads, real estate, and early investing. In case this sounds familiar at all to you, people were getting obscenely wealthy while the disparity between the working class, the impoverished, and the newly arriving immigrants were all struggling. Especially when you throw into the mix the devastation of the civil war which ended in 1865 – the solid middle of the Gilded Age Era.

The last thing you need to know about the Gilded Age more broadly is how it got its name. There are a few times in history that come to mind when you think of the term Golden Age. Elizabeth I, Golden Age of Hollywood, basically any time period of creativity and prosperity. Gilded Age was actually coined by Mark Twain and it wasn’t a compliment.

We think of gilded and we’re like oh that sounds fancy! But what Mark Twain meant in his book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today that he cowrote with Charles Dudley Warner, was that this time period had a veneer of gold but it was really just gilding – gilding meaning a very thin coat of gold. The book was a satire against the robber barons and corruption of the time. And it was only written in 1873 - the most opulent days were still ahead.

Ok so that’s the gilded age in a nutshell. Let’s move on to New York City specifically and the scene of our story for today.

Chapter 1 The Knickerbockers

Dutch settlers arrived in what is now New York City in the 1600s and established the colony of New Amsterdam on Algonquin land. They were there for the fur trade.

Fast forward to 1783 and a German immigrant named John Jacob Astor moved to New York and after hearing about how awesome the fur trade was on the ship ride over, he made it his career once he made it ashore. He traded with the Native Americans and then sold the fur for exorbitant prices in London and made a literal fortune.

For my west coast friends, Astoria Oregon is actually named for Astor because it was there that he had his west coast fur operations. And he was also friends with none other than Washington Irving you know writer of a little story you may have heard of called the legend of sleepy hollow, anyway he asked Irving to write about John Jacob Astors sojourn to Oregon and that book was also called Astoria.

Alright from there John Jacob Astor was like this money is great and all but what I’d really like is some more of it and so he started buying up all the real estate in New York that he could get his hands on- even getting a large amount from one Aaron Burr who had to skip town on account of ya know murdering Alexander Hamilton.

Ok so that was how the Astor family laid down their mark in New York and how they got all their money. We’re going to skip ahead through the generations now to get to our subject for today. All you really need to know is that the Astor family was not known for creative naming so all the men in the family are named either John Jacob or William Backhouse. What you also need to know is that this is 3 generations of this family – keep that in your back pocket for later.

Alright so the person we’re talking about today is Caroline Astor, The Mrs. Astor. She was born Caroline Webster Schermerhorn in 1830 and was known by her family as Lina but I’m gonna call her Caroline because this woman was so known for her formality I just feel weird even in death calling her by a nickname.

The Schermerhorn family was Old New York Dutch. They were descended from the original Dutch settlers and her family was very well off on account of the family’s success in the shipping industry. Being a wealthy descendant of the original Dutch Settlers meant you had a special nickname which was also coined by Washington Irving, The Knickerbockers! This episode is so fun because there are so many historical easter eggs if you have even a passing knowledge of New York.

The word knickerbocker was a play on the pants the old Dutch settlers wore that went to their knees and that word eventually became knickers. So, in Gilded Age New York if you were a Knickerbocker, it basically just meant that you were Old Money.

When she was 23 years old Caroline married William Backhouse Astor Jr. who was the grandson of the John Jacob Astor that we began with. He was also a middle son. His older brother of course was named John Jacob Astor III, the second JJA was in their father’s generation and did not receive the fortune because he had a mental illness. The United States was still a young country and quite frankly we didn’t have much culture the way a city like London or Paris did so this aristocratic class basically just copied European culture. And please note I am talking about white European culture – there was a rich native American culture already here.

So, because of this even though this is America they were doing the whole “the fortune gets passed down to the first born son and that son is also head of the family.” As the middle son this meant that William Backhouse had pretty much zero responsibility so he just messed around with women on his yacht called the Ambassadress - sidenote all these dudes had pleasure yachts - and he drank a ton of alcohol and just didn’t pay attention to Caroline or his children.

They had five children, the most famous of which was John Jacob Astor IV which is the Astor who died on the Titanic. Getting ahead of ourselves though back to Caroline.

Chapter 2 The Social Graces

During the first decade of their marriage, Caroline was consumed with raising her children and running her household. It wasn’t until her daughters were getting ready to come out in society so they could be married off that she got involved in society making. And she didn’t just get involved, this woman was like yeah I’m actually just going to run things.

Here’s how it went. In 1845 there were only 10 families in New York City that had hit that millionaire level. They were private and insular, didn’t draw attention to themselves. Starting in the 1860s after the conclusion of the civil war, all these people from the west and Midwest started flooding New York. These were the nouveau riche, the people that had made obscene fortunes from ACTUAL WORK and were just completely distasteful to old knickerbockers like Caroline Astor.

So she wants to marry off her daughters but she also wants to ensure that her daughters don’t marry railroad money. How to do this?

In 1872 a Southern lawyer who made a modest fortune out west in the California gold rush decided he wanted to become a society kingmaker. His name was Ward McAllister and after embarking on a grand European tour in which he studied the culture and mannerisms of nobility, and then married a reclusive heiress, he caused a social stir in Newport, Rhode Island.

This was to become the summer haven for the mega rich. In Gilded Age New York Society, the social season went from November to Lent in the city and then everyone would pick up the season again and summer in Newport Rhode Island. Which I mean I get it. New York is really hot and muggy in the summer.

After creating an exclusive social network in Newport he set his sights on New York City. He met Caroline Astor in 1872, unclear exactly how but he was a distant cousin of Caroline’s husband. McAllister founded The Society of Patriarchs, with Caroline kind of acting behind the scenes. The society of patriarchs was an ultra exclusive committee “representative of men of worth, respectability, and responsibility.” So basically he and Caroline made a list of 25 wealthy Knickerbocker’s of which her husband was conveniently on the list. Each one of those men was allowed to invite 4 men and 5 debutantes to the yearly Patriarch’s Ball at a famous New York restaurant called Delmonico’s.

The purpose of these balls was essentially a marriage mart and if you were not invited, you were nothing in society. By making something so exclusive, it of course ups the social currency and McAllister and Caroline became the leaders and tastemakers of New York City. McAllister also saw himself as something of a society mentor and he would consult with women and advise on the best ways to dress and refine their daughters to really make a mark.

Caroline was known for her January balls and let’s just go into what a typical party was like. First off you had to go to the Academy of Music to take in an opera. You were expected to pay court to Mrs. Astor at her private box. From there, you would go to Mrs. Astor’s mansion on 5th avenue which would be decked out in flowers, particularly American beauty roses. And if you’re like what that doesn’t sound so impressive, 1. Roses in the dead of winter 150 years ago would have been ridiculously expensive and she filled her mansion with them and 2. Her mansion was literally where the Empire State Building stands today.

Supper wouldn’t be served until midnight – 9 courses. Your place setting at the table would have a cigarette rolled in a hundred dollar bank note. You’d dance until 4am and you’d leave with parting gifts such as golden snuff boxes, actual sapphires, and ivory fans.

To greet her guests, Mrs. Astor would stand under a huge painting of herself which now hangs in the metropolitan museum of art and she would be wearing a diamond tiara, triple stands of diamonds around her neck AND a diamond stomacher that belonged to Marie Antoinette. It was remarked that she looked like a “walking chandelier.” Which is really funny when you think about it because her whole thing was understated elegance she hated the nouveau riche because she found them tacky and vulgar yet here she is swallowed whole by diamonds.

Anyway, she’d pass the evening sitting on a red velvet divan and if you were lucky she’d allow you to come sit and talk a while. Interestingly, she never really gossiped or confided in anyone publicly. For all her exorbitant wealth and glamour, she wasn’t a known beauty. She was short and kind of stocky and refused photos and paintings unless she had artistic control. In her later years she wore a wig, she was a deeply insecure woman which I mean if my husband was constantly out on his yacht hooking up with every woman that crossed his path, I’d probably have big feelings too.

Ward McAllister called Caroline his mystic rose which was an homage to Dante’s Paradise. Part of why they were such good friends is not only were they both super snobs, Caroline’s husband was too busy messing around on his yacht to ever attend society functions so Ward McAllister was basically her permanent escort. If you were a lady, you had to show up with a gentleman.

So Caroline and Ward held court in New York and people lived and died by these invitations. Ward also liked attention and would court the press. He once quipped to the New York times:

“There are only about four hundred people in fashionable New York society. If you go outside that number you strike people who are either not at ease in a ballroom or make other people not at ease… these people have not the poise, the aptitude for polite conversation, the polished and deferential manner, the infinite capacity of good humor and ability to entertain or be entertained that society demands.”

According to legend, this is likely untrue, but he got the number the 400 because that was the number that could fit into Mrs. Astor’s ballroom. More on that shortly though.

Now part of the criteria to be a member of the 400, at least in Caroline’s mind, was you had to be 4 generations removed from where your family got its money. Which was the case on the Schermerhorn side but she overlooked that the Astors were only 3 generations out.

What she could not deal with however, was the Vanderbilts. I’m not going to get too into it now because part two of this series is going to be the Vanderbilt’s time to shine but Caroline refused to acknowledge the Vanderbilts even though they were by far eons more wealthy than any of the knickerbockers, including the Astors who had at one time been the richest family in the world.

As they inched closer to the new century, Caroline was still the head of New York Society, but her balls were downright quaint when compared to what was to come. In fact, despite the frenzy for invitations to Mrs. Astor’s balls, people actually found them quite boring. They were very strict you could basically only arrange marriages and talk about the weather. That doesn’t sound fun but I will take my sapphires to go.

Vanderbilts aside and like I said I’m saving that whole storyline for part two, in 1890 she had a falling out with Ward McAllister. He got a bit too cocky and actually gave a list of the 400 to the New York times. Only it was 300 at best and had many of the names were misspelled and there were people who had died decades earlier on the list.

Then he wrote a book that is still online and you can find it, called Society As I have Found it. It didn’t name names but he told all the secrets from his wealthy friends and everyone was thinly veiled at best so you knew exactly who he was talking about – Caroline included.

These gilded age megamillionairess were basically the celebrities of their day, and fiercely valued their privacy. McAllister was immediately cast aside, a pariah. His invitations dried up and people no longer sought his society counsel. He died in 1895 while eating dinner at his club. Caroline did not go to his funeral, instead she threw a dinner party that evening.

Chapter 3 The Queen is Dead, Long Live the Queen

In the later years of her life she was still either respected or feared depends how you look at it but the newly wealthy families like the Vanderbilts, Roosevelts, Rockefellers and the Gould’s were all able to integrate into society and kind of took over.

Caroline also had a lot of turmoil in her later years. Her husband died unexpectedly, her daughter went through an infamous cheating and divorce scandal, and two of her children died.

Her nephew Waldorf owned the house next door to her mansion where she lived with her son John Jacob Astor the IV. Waldorf was now the head of the Astor family as his father had been the first-born son. Now get ready for some petty the likes of which the world will never see again.

Since Waldorf was head of the family, his wife should have been referred to as Mrs. Astor and Caroline should have been referred to as Mrs. William Astor. Except Caroline was like um no Im the only Mrs. Astor anyone cares about so she actually had her calling cards changed to read The Mrs. Astor with The in italics. Like she actually emphasized it. And that was it. That was all that was on her calling card and people of course just knew it was her and that’s how she received her mail.

Waldorf was super pissed and ended up demolishing his house next door and building a 13 story luxury hotel called the Waldorf. It completely dwarfed her mansion and to really pile it on he had it designed so a blank wall with no windows or courtyard faced her house.

She was kind of like ok sure lets play and had a stable erected to stink up the area for his guests. Though her son ended up being the voice of reason and they ended up demolishing their house and putting up a rival hotel called the Astoria. So maybe you see where this is going, many years later the two hotels were joined and became the Waldorf Astoria. Fun little story there. Though Waldorf for his part was so pissed about what happened that he moved his family to Europe and basically never returned.

Mrs. Astor also had a rift with her cousin’s daughter, Edith Wharton, over a little book called House of Mirth. In 1905 Caroline threw her last great party and after that she went into mental decline. It is said that she suffered from dementia and spent her time reliving the glory days writing out invitations, dressing for balls that never happened, and riding in her carriage to make calls to long dead friends.

Alright that is the story of The Mrs. Astor so here are some recommendations I have for you to check out if you’re interested in learning more.

The Social Graces is a historical fiction that reimagines the rivalry between Mrs. Astor and Alva Vanderbilt. I just loved this book, I went into it blind and had no idea who either of them were and it was captivating, I loved it.

That led me to going down some rabbit holes and listening to podcasts about her life from The Bowery Boys, a new podcast called the gilded gentleman, as well as a podcast from the history chicks. All of these episodes are linked in the shownotes.

If you’d like some nonfiction reading, the two books I leaned on for this episode were Season of Splendor: The Court of Mrs. Astor and When the Astors Owned New York.

And of course, you’ll want to check out The Gilded Age on HBO when it comes out at the end of this month. Nathan Lane will be playing Ward McAllister and more perfect casting couldn’t exist.

I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I had fun making it. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts to help others find the show, and join me next time for Part 2 when we take a look at the life of the force of nature that was Alva Vanderbilt.