#492 How Mamie Fish Partied Her Way to Gilded Age Power

Introducing Mamie Fish

0:00Today on The Bowery Boys. There's a great story where apparently Mamie was out on the terrace at one party, and she started coughing, and Stuyvesant came over and said, dear, may I get you anything for your throat? And she said, yes, that necklace I saw in the window at Tiffany. And everybody laughed, but the next week she was wearing the necklace that had been in the window at Tiffany. Well, she knew what she needed. Episode 492 of The Bowery Boys. How Mamie Fish partied her way to Gilded Age power.

0:33Hey, it's The Bowery Boys. Hey.

0:48Hello, and welcome to The Bowery Boys. I'm Tom Myers. Greg Young is off this week, but it is my pleasure to be joined today by Jennifer Wright, author of Glitz, Glam, and A Damn Good Time. How Mamie Fish, Queen of the Gilded Age, partied her way to power. Jennifer, so nice to have you on the show. I am so happy to be on the show. I love The Bowery Boys. Oh. And I can't wait to talk about Mamie Fish. We love Mamie Fish on this show, as do, I'm sure, our listeners, especially those who have watched and rewatched and rewatched seasons one, two, and three of HBO's The Gilded Age, which is back, of course, on November 1st, 2026, for season four.

1:33For those of you who have somehow missed out on this, Mamie is one of the leaders of New York society on the show, right up there with Mrs. Astor, and alongside the fictional Agnes Van Ryn, Ada Brooke, and Bertha Russell. But like Caroline Astor, Mamie Fish really existed, and she is played with perfect devilishness on the show by the actress Ashley Atkinson, who really captures Mamie's fun and mischievous spirit.

2:05And by the way, Ashley also narrated the audiobook for you, Jennifer. It was a brilliant casting. Yes, she was so wonderful. We were so lucky to get her, and I'm so happy she was able to narrate this book. Oh my goodness, so much fun to spend that time. You feel like Mamie is telling you this story. I was hoping that today on the show, we could start things out by you actually reading from your book on the life of Mamie Fish. You start the book by telling a story about a dinner party that Mamie threw in Newport in the summer of 1902.

2:39More than a dinner, really. This was big. And I think it speaks volumes about who Mamie Fish was by the summer of 1902. Would you mind reading that passage for us? I will not do it as well as Ashley Atkinson, but I would love to.

The Prince Del Drago Party

2:54It was official. The Prince Del Drago was coming to Newport. In the summer of 1902, it seemed like all of Rhode Island was buzzing with anticipation after hearing rumors that an exotic nobleman was headed to their fair city. Could a prince really be on his way to visit them? Then again, it must be true. After all, Mamie Fish, the supreme arbiter of society, had sent out party invitations to anyone who was anyone in Newport, corralling the toniest of the tawn, the very highest of high society, together to welcome him.

3:33For the wealthiest families in Newport, the prince's impending arrival signified more than just fun and festivities. It was the dawn of a new century. One hundred and twenty-five years after the country's founding, perhaps Americans were now finely sophisticated enough to be considered equal to Europeans. Princes would mingle with their daughters, never mind that their American grandfathers had fought against princes and kings. Let bygones be bygones. Though some American families had amassed riches beyond riches at this point, there was still one thing money couldn't buy, a title.

4:10And for that, these eligible American bachelorettes were paired up with European noblemen, who found that U.S. dollars went a long way in restoring their dilapidated estates. The highest goal of many wealthy American families was to marry their daughters not merely into nobility, but into royalty. And who could possibly be a better matrimonial target than an actual prince, said to be en route to Newport from Corsica? This was no dour English duke.

4:41Ladies did not want to end up in a humorless, perpetually damp castle like Consuelo Vanderbilt, who had married the Duke of Marlborough and claimed that she spent her days staring longingly at a frigid lake on her estate, where a butler had committed suicide. This man might even have a castle in a sunny climate with a fun, suicide-free lake. The possibilities! A word of caution, though, according to Henry Harry Lair, a close friend of the hostess, the prince could be inclined to be wild.

5:15Furthermore, he could not have too much to drink, because anything goes to his head, and then he is apt to behave rather badly. However, amid this corseted, constrained, and utterly prim and polite society, that too might have seemed alluring. And so, the lucky few invited to Mrs. Fish's dinner were positively aflutter. They discussed their curtsies, unmarried women primped desperately, patting their faces with powder, and pinching their subtly, rouge cheeks. They were ready to fall in love with whoever arrived.

5:48They only hoped that he would love them back. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the air, ladies already bobbing into curtsies, eyelashes fluttering down appealingly, as the wealthy Chicagoan, Joseph Leiter, walked into the room with the prince in hand. No, literally in hand. For the illustrious Prince Del Drago was actually a monkey dressed in a tuxedo.

6:14This is the kind of joke that made me loved playing on people. This really happened. It's very typical to her. This really happened. The prince Del Drago was unfortunately given champagne and began swinging from the chandelier and pelting guests with light bulbs. In her memoir, Elizabeth Drexel, who was at the party and married to Harry Laird, said that he did behave better than some princess that she had met. So, he was keeping with the standard. But Mamie Fish loved playing jokes like this.

6:48And unlike most of her fellows in Newport, she was not really enchanted with this idea that Americans should always be striving to impress Europeans. And I think that is exemplified very well by this party. Right, right. And so, that is where Mamie Fish had arrived in the summer of 1902. She had so much power that she was able to pull off, like, an incredible practical joke for other members of high society who might not have immediately found that funny.

7:22I mean, it was risky behavior. So, who was Mamie for our listeners who don't know her?

A Working Class Upbringing

7:30And how big was she here at her peak in society? Well, I think it's interesting that certain newspapers recounting her story later said that she came from such a well-to-do family that her ascent into society was inevitable. And that's not really true. Her father was a very successful lawyer. However, when she was a teenager, he suffered a significant reversal of fortune. He lost most of the family's money. And then when he died, it meant that while she had grown up in wealthy Gramercy Park in Manhattan, she and the rest of her family had to move to Astoria, which at the time was mostly known for factories.

8:12It smelled famously bad. She had a younger brother who had to go to work selling dry goods when he was 15. She had an older sister who is constantly being described as really sporty, which is a polite way of saying that this woman was a lesbian, like she was not going to marry and get the family out of this. Everything really fell to Mamie at that point where if she wanted to get back to the position her family had been born into, she was going to have to marry very well.

8:44And just to pin a date on this, she was born Marion Graves Anthon, or Mamie, in 1853. And the family goes through these hardships. They move out to Astoria, which was not trendy or cool at the time. It was very working class. How was she able to... How did she get her claws into Stuyvesant? But are you suggesting that Mamie knew that she had to find a man with money here in the 1870s, despite the fact that she was off in Astoria?

9:19Yes. Unfortunately, Mamie was not a beauty. She was also almost completely uneducated, which was not entirely surprising at the time. Mamie would say later that she could barely read and write. I think she was underplaying her abilities a little bit. We have letters from her. She is a remarkably bad speller. She did not have a formal education. But that wit. But that wit. But that wit. And that was something that was becoming really important in New York society at that time.

9:54Suddenly, the fact that she was subversive, she was a little bit rebellious, she was funny. These were becoming qualities that people were beginning to really appreciate in women. And certainly, Stuyvesant Fish, who would become her husband, really appreciated those qualities.

Marriage to Stuyvesant Fish

10:14And Stuyvesant Fish was a big catch. Stuyvesant was a huge catch. Stuyvesant Fish was one of the newspapers said that he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth large enough to be a ladle. That, unlike Mamie's lawyer father, who had done really well and then, like, lost the money and died, Stuyvesant's father had been a United States senator. His name was Hamilton Fish because his grandfather was a close friend of Alexander Hamilton. His mother's family owned, like, half of New York.

10:46Right. Knickerbocker New York society. Yes. So, Stuyvesant had enough real estate holdings that he was going to be set for life almost no matter what. Now, I have an incredible affection for Stuyvesant because Stuyvesant was expected to follow in his father's footsteps. His father wanted him to study law. Like, the hope was that eventually Stuyvesant would become a senator as well. And Stuyvesant didn't want to do that. Stuyvesant wanted to get into railroads. And this was a time when railroads were opening up the entire country.

11:20They were exciting the way going to the moon would have been exciting in the 1960s. It would be like a young man wanting to be an astronaut. But this is, we're talking about the mid-1870s. So, right. Something cool. There are railroad races to connect the coasts. I mean, it's an exciting time. There are these incredible races. And it changes what it means to travel. That up until this point, if you said, if you grew up in New York and you said, well, my family, I think I'm going to go west to seek my fortune.

11:52They would say, well, like, the trip's going to take a year. You're probably not going to make it. You're probably going to die en route. But, like, if you make it, perhaps you'll journey back once again in this lifetime. Like, maybe we'll see you when one of our parents dies. But, like, probably never again. Meanwhile, suddenly you've got railroads and you can take these cross-country journeys within a matter of weeks. Suddenly people start saying, well, come back for Christmas. Like, we'll see you again. And that changes what it means to travel.

12:23It changes the possibilities of growing up in one place and thinking, well, I think I'd like to live someplace else. I think I'd like to try my hand at living in San Francisco. And that's very, that's such an easy way for us to think about travel today. But it would be an entirely new way to think about travel in this time. And an incredibly exciting way to think about travel. So, of course, Stuyvesant wants to get into railroads. Railroads are awesome. Stuyvesant's father says, well, if you want to do that, you're doing it on your own.

12:55So, Stuyvesant goes off and becomes a clerk. Like, he's making, like, some really paltry amount. And he has to walk, like, two miles to work every day. And he talks to his father about, like, do you think I should, like, use a little bit of money on the streetcar on, like, days when it's raining? And his father is like, no, no. Like, I think you might wear out your shoes. But, like, probably that won't cost as much to buy new shoes as you would spend on the streetcar. So, Stuyvesant, like, to the extent that somebody from this family can say, like, I did it on my own.

13:31I think Stuyvesant did, like, experience some hardships early in his life. He moves to London where he is kind of hoping to find a wife. He also gets scammed during his early years living in London. The rooms that he is renting are freezing. And he says he has a roommate where they kind of wore out all their conversation the first week of living together. That happens. But hold on. So, he does wind up back in New York. And so, what I want to know is how does Stuyvesant, as he's building a career, which would obviously become very successful in railroads, how does he meet Mamie?

14:09Well, he moves back to New York. He has very bad luck with women in London. But he comes back and he meets his childhood friend Mamie Fish. And they are in love instantly. And so, they, I'm sorry, they had been friends because she grew up around Gramercy Park. She grew up in a wealthy neighborhood. And I think memorably on her birthday, she writes Stuyvesant and tells him that he forgot to send her flowers. And Stuyvesant was like, oh, I'm really sorry about that.

14:40And she says, don't worry, all your friends did. Okay, subtle. It's subtle. So, Mamie is an incredibly comforting young woman. For someone who has no money and is not attractive. Stuyvesant goes to visit her constantly in Astoria. He says that the trek from Manhattan to Astoria is killing him. He proposes to her. And his family is not, like, super excited about this because she's broke and living in Astoria.

15:11Like, she's from a good family. It's fine. And Stuyvesant goes on to be so incredibly devoted to Mamie that it is stunning. He keeps all her letters. He presses a rose that was in her bouquet on their wedding day in his personal diary. He keeps it for the rest of his life. He's also the only husband in this period that doesn't cheat on his wife. I was just going to say, I mean... Or at least there's no record of his... Everybody has a mistress. It's pretty much a given, except for Stuyvesant Fish.

15:41And everybody says that he is like a knight who would ride into battle at Mamie's slightest word. Oh, wow. And it's very touching. There's a great story where apparently Mamie was out on the terrace at one party and she started coughing. And Stuyvesant came over and said, dear, may I get you anything for your throat? And she said, yes, that necklace I saw in the window at Tiffany. And everybody laughed. But the next week she was wearing the necklace that had been in the window at Tiffany.

16:13Well, she knew what she needed. She did. Yeah. And I think she was also incredibly devoted to Stuyvesant. I think they loved each other very much. They were married in 1876. I love that you were writing about their wedding at the little church around the corner, which is such a special place. They did then start a family. They, over time, had a total of four children. The first child died, which was, as you know, an incredibly common experience at this time. And it does kind of stagger me the amount of grief that was normal and expected in terms of family raising children.

16:52In 1900, 30% of deaths in the United States were children at the age of one to five. For comparison, in 2000, that accounted for about 1.4% of deaths. So, yeah, it was very common to lose a child. And Mamie and Stuyvesant were not spared that. Right. You also write about how Mamie, as a young mother, or a mother with young children, was actually somewhat unusual in that she wanted to spend time with her children.

17:22I mean, she was spending time with her children. Which does contrast with Mamie the socialite in later years. I wonder how much time she was spending with her children then. I will say, as a mother myself, we do have letters from Stuyvesant saying, like, Mamie is mother of the year. Like, there has never been, like, a more beautiful angel caring for my children. I do think we have to take Stuyvesant's account of Mamie with a grain of salt. Because he loves her to a truly insane extent.

17:53But, yeah, Mamie was considered to be a good mother. That said, being a good mother at this time, if you were wealthy or even upper class, meant that your children woke up with their nurse or their governess. And then at 10 o'clock, when you were brought breakfast in bed, the children would be brought into you. So you could play with them as they kind of cavorted with you in bed. And you ate their breakfast.

18:24And, you know, you cuddled and you talked about their day. For most of us, that is something we get to do on Mother's Day. And the rest of the time, your child wakes you up at 5 o'clock in the morning and demands pancakes. But Mamie's future as a socialite is not really assured yet. And Stuyvesant is also the second son in this family. He has an older brother who is already married. His older brother's wife is from a very good family. She's very well musically educated.

18:55When Mamie was asked if she played any musical instruments, she used to joke that she could play a comb by, like, zinging the tongs back and forth. It's a party trick. Yeah, she was incredibly bored by the opera. Like, a lot of the refinement that would have been expected to be in the toolbox of a socialite at this time are just, they're not in Mamie's toolbox. And she doesn't care about them. She doesn't want to go to the opera. Right. So, the expectation is that, like, they would probably live quietly in Gramercy.

19:28And, you know, maybe if railroads, like, really took off, which they were doing, then Stuyvesant would do pretty well. And Stuyvesant, spoiler alert. And Stuyvesant's doing well. Did really well. He became the president of the Illinois Central. Of the Illinois Central Railroad. Stuyvesant does astonishingly well. They are never as rich as a lot of their friends, though. Their fortunes are still a lot lower than, like, the Astors and the Vanderbilts. So, they never are really the empire builders that some families in this period are. But Mamie makes up for that by being creative and being quimsical.

20:02So, did she attempt to break into society?

The Infamous Duck Pond Dinner

20:06Did she attempt to, like, throw parties or dinners? She did attempt to break into society. And at this time, if you were going to society parties, they were very staid. They were very formal affairs. But people would sit at dinner for about three hours. So, these would be very long, very formal, very dull dinners. Especially if you were a young person. Right. Sure. And Mamie was young, by the way. Mamie was young and Mamie hated being bored. So, she started to think about, like, what can I do other than dinner?

20:39And a big thing that would be on her invitations would be that, come to this party, there will be something other than dinner. And one of her first kind of famous forays into the social scene was her duck pond dinner. And she transformed her dining room to look like a duck pond. She filled the room with flowers, she selected green place settings, and she completed the look by putting a glass tub down the middle of the table that featured baby ducks paddling around as a centerpiece.

21:11She didn't serve duck, I'm hoping. Or did she? She might have. She might have. It seems like the kind of thing she would do. She would think that was really funny. But this was not in keeping with social arbiters who dictates. And Ward McAllister, especially at this time, who wanted everything to be very, very English and very European and very formal, and for New York to have the same social hierarchy that you would have seen in London, absolutely hated this. And newspapers said that he was horrified by the duck pond dinner and he read Mrs. Fish completely out of the society.

21:46And usually Ward McAllister's dictates stuck. If he told socialites, and he was a very, very close friend of Mrs. Astor, that this person is unacceptable, this person is trash. People took it seriously and they just never went to that person's parties again. Well, he certainly helped her make her own guest lists for her famous balls and dinner parties. So, yeah, he was the social arbiter of the whole scene. He is also a character on the Gilded Age.

22:18Right, based on a real person. And in fact, as you're talking about him, I'm sure that many of us are imagining Nathan Lane. It's kind of hard not to. Who is doing a fabulous Ward McAllister. That is exactly the way I imagine him. So Ward slash Nathan doesn't care for Mamie here in the late 1870s or so. So she's not really in. And yet you write in the book that Mamie and Stuyvesant attend Alva Vanderbilt's famous 1883 ball. The big ball. They do.

22:49To open up her new petit chateau. I think the interesting thing is that there are a lot of people who heard about the duck pond dinner and said, like, I know Ward McAllister thinks it's trashy. But like, that sounds kind of fun. People might have been having fun. That sounds interesting to me. So despite Ward McAllister's reaction to her, she does start to become a more prominent socialite to the incredible displeasure of Stuyvesant's older brother and his wife, who really expect to be leading the social scene here.

23:19And his wife has a much better pedigree to be doing this. But Mamie just keeps proving that she is capable of making her own fun and she's capable of making things fun for others. And newspapers say during this time that she's a certain French daring the conservative New Yorkers of her set did not know. So Mamie is starting to get noticed. We will watch Mamie get noticed in Newport and then New York City right after this. So, Jennifer, just back to Alva's Ball for one second, because you do mention in the book that Stuyvesant was mentioned in the press coverage of Alva's Ball in 1883.

24:04But Mamie, or at that time she would have been called Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, was not mentioned in the article. And I thought that was very fascinating. Well, that is a real shift from how newspapers will mention them later in life. I find it fascinating that in his obituary, Stuyvesant Fish, head of the Illinois Central Railroad, the peak of railroad empires, is mentioned primarily as being the husband of Mamie Fish. So times will change here in a couple of decades.

24:36So I'm very curious about when Mamie starts really getting the attention that she's after and that she deserves, of course, and how she pulls it off, especially with Ward McAllister firmly not on her side.

Ousting Ward McAllister

24:50Okay. In 1887, the fish are really able to turn the tables on Ward McAllister, that Stuyvesant is asked to be on a committee for a very prominent ball that Ward McAllister is also on. And ever since the duck pond dinner, Stuyvesant has been absolutely determined to destroy Ward for what he did to his wife. And from the outset of the planning of this ball, there was a shared sentiment that Mr. McAllister was doing too much lofty boasting.

25:23And Stuyvesant started rallying all the other members of the committee, and they managed to kick Ward off of the committee. And ostensibly, this was because Stuyvesant disagreed with Ward about the 16 ladies that Mr. McAllister had selected to lead an opening dance. But the disagreement was really born out of the fact that Ward had been mean to Mamie. And newspapers noted that usually you would just resolve this by talking to other members of the committee and you'd come to a consensus.

25:54But the Brooklyn Daily Eagles said, like, no, they ganged up and forced Ward McAllister to resign. And Ward McAllister was pretty upset about this. Right, because people didn't typically kick Ward McAllister off of anything. And he told the newspaper, sometimes it happens that you have men on a committee with you who are woefully ignorant of the work they have undertaken to superintend, who in one breath tell you, I know nothing about this business, and in the next, criticize, discuss, and deluge you with worthless and useless suggestions.

26:24And then Stuyvesant responded with maybe the meanest thing I have ever read about anyone by saying, the committee is not one that can be bossed around by any demagog, big or little, young or very old. Then he said, who is Ward McAllister anyway? McAllister was our major domo, our master of ceremonies, our caterer. As such, he is not acceptable to us, and we told him his services were no longer required. Ms. Callister is a discharge servant, that is all.

26:57And scene. And that's the end of Ward McAllister. Ward McAllister proceeds to make a lot of other errors. He writes a book about life in New York, which other socialites are horrified to read. They do not want their fun little foibles mentioned in Ward McAllister's book. They don't want to be mentioned at all. Then he writes a newspaper article on who the 400 in New York are. And I think there is sometimes a historical misrepresentation that people didn't like this

27:31list because they weren't on it. People on this list were horrified by it. They found it really embarrassing. In the way you would find it embarrassing if somebody in high school wrote an article about who the 40 most popular kids were and ranked them all. It's cringy. Yeah, everybody knows, but it's weird and dorky to write a list about it. Right, and it makes you, the writer, look uncool, too. It makes you look incredibly uncool. It makes you look uncool. And also, he could only find like 230 names. He could also not find 400 names.

28:02Yeah. Right. So, it was just, the whole thing was just embarrassing. The whole thing was just cringy and everybody was embarrassed for him. Mrs. Astor stopped hanging out with him, which is really sad because he had been a genuinely wonderful friend and supporter of hers. It gets sad. It's just sad. It gets so sad. So, the beginning of his downfall begins with Stuyvesant Fish telling people this is a discharge servant, like nobody has to listen to him ever again. So, Mamie had managed to turn the tables on Ward McAllister.

28:38McAllister, by the way, died in 1895. So, as Mamie was sort of hitting her prime here, he was really just kind of passé. And as we, as many people know, Mrs. Astor still did not cancel her previously scheduled dinner party for the night of his funeral. Well, now, to be fair, Ward McAllister felt like parties should never be canceled for any reason. Well, he did write that. That's true. I believe that that is straight out of society as I have found it. Yeah. Okay.

29:08So, Ward has been sidelined. Is she making a name for herself first in Newport or in New York? She is making a big name for herself in Newport. And she and Stuyvesant are leaving the children with their grandfather, who is a terrible caretaker of these children. They remember their times at their grandfather's farm incredibly happily. But he would do things like just give them a horse and be like... Have fun. Well, off you go. Have fun. And they would fall off the horse. Oh, gosh. Like, suffer incredible scrapes.

29:41See, she was a perfect, ideal mother. She was an ideal mother.

Newport Theme Parties

29:45Who could take issue with that? And their parents are off in Newport hosting balls that are going to get Mamie really, really noticed. And again, none of these balls are things where people are just going to sit quietly for three hours. She hosts this incredible harvest ball where people are taken to the house in carriages filled with hay. They all eat in big picnic tables in the backyard. There are maples. Everybody's encouraged to dress up in, like, country attire.

30:19Stuyvesant dresses up like a farmer. So, she starts doing these themed parties that they're also given, like, golden pitchforks at the end. Mamie always gives away incredible goodie bags at the end of these parties. There's photography that is starting to exist where, like, it's very fun that you can get your picture taken, not only in, like, your formal finery, but also in this funny costume that you were to a party. So, Mamie's immediately starting to defy convention in a way that people really like

30:53and really appreciate. And if you have gone to five very formal dinners that week, you really welcome the opportunity to have a party where there are farm animals running around, where all the women are encouraged to pet baby goats. And it's worth saying that, you know, theme parties are a thing today. Yeah, and they're a thing because of Mamie Fish. That's incredible. Yeah. But they were so novel at the time, and they were even shocking to people that they would

31:25be asked to dress up in this way and to play these parts. Well, for a long time, even masquerade balls were illegal in America because the idea was that they would allow so much licentiousness on the part of women. And in Venice, like, very overtly, the idea of a masquerade ball was you can behave with more sexual freedom. You can go off and canoodle in the corners and people don't know who you are. And then it's like it never happened. And, you know, there was a puritanical sensibility in America that made this very unacceptable.

31:59And for a while, when women attended masquerade balls, you would see that their names would not even be written in the newspaper. They would maybe be referred to by an initial. So they had plausible deniability that they were there. Oh, wow. But Mamie is really turning that on its head and saying, like, don't you want to behave a little less stiffly, a little less formally? And she also has a never-ending supply of ideas that she starts having parties like the doll

32:31party, where everybody has to dress up as a baby doll and speak in baby speak, a party where everybody wears their clothing backwards. Right. I thought you were going to say she has a never-ending stream of money as well, because this all sounds incredibly expensive. She does not. She and Syvesant have, like, a few million dollars. They're doing very, very well. They are fine. They're all going to be okay, Tom. I'm sure. I was really worried there. You were worried. Yeah. They're going to be fine. But there are families like the Astors and Vanderbilts who have infinite money to throw

33:06at this. And Mamie never does. Mamie really relies on her creativity. And when she builds her home, these are things that happen after the couple accumulates new money. She builds a beautiful new townhome in New York. She makes sure that it has a theater in it. And the first night, she has a roast of all the prominent families in New York. She puts on a play where the play is called The Gold Diggers, which is a reference to the Yukon Gold Diggers that's going on.

33:38But it's one of them making their way to New York and meeting with all the prominent families and making fun of all the prominent families at this time. And they love it. It becomes an honor to be roasted by Mamie Fish. One of her signature lines was, make yourself at home. Nobody wishes you were there more than I do.

33:57Right. She, again, back to the wit that really defined her. And by the way, just taking us back up to Newport for a second, because I read in your book that their first summer there was in 1889, but she would also later have help with a friend, a great pal of hers named Harry Lair. Can you reintroduce us to Harry Lair? Well, Harry Lair was the anti-Warsman cast. Harry Lair came to New York with very little money.

34:27He worked selling champagne and wine, which gave him a little bit of an entree into high society. He also had some relatives who helped him enter into high society. And Harry Lair did not want everything to be stiff and formal in European. He was very different. And he also started making his way in high society, not by being deferential to socialites the way Ward McAllister had been, but really by making fun of them.

34:58While Ward McAllister had reverently referred to Caroline Astor as his mystic rose, Mamie asked Harry Lair, what kind of rose would you describe me as being? And he said, like, maybe a climbing rose. A social climber. Yes. As was he. As was he. Yes, as was he. And he had also married very well.

Harry Lehr and Elizabeth Drexel

35:23Yes. And he married Elizabeth Drexel, who wrote a wonderful memoir about Harry Lair and their time in New York. And it was something of a tragic marriage because Elizabeth Drexel was very wealthy. She was still very young. Elizabeth Drexel was widowed at the time, and she was very, very lonely. And I always feel like it's notable to me to point out that you read a lot of descriptions of society beauties during this time. And then you look up photographs or paintings of them, and you're like, oh, okay.

35:57Yeah. Like, everybody has a different conception of beauty. Dental care was bad. But Elizabeth Drexel. Elizabeth Drexel. So one woman that you look at a picture of, and you think, put her on the cover of Vogue tomorrow. A knockout. Like, this woman is a knockout by modern standards. So just absolutely gorgeous. And Harry Lair convinces her to marry him. Partially because he's, by that point, so well-connected, right? He introduces her to Mrs. Astor and to Alva Vanderbilt.

36:29And Mamie Fish. Right. And they all approve. They all love her. And then on her wedding night, she's pretty excited for the consummation of her marriage. And Harry Lair comes into the room and says that he wants her to know that she disgusts him, that many, many men enter into the wedding chamber in exactly his frame of mind. And, like, at least he has a courtesy not to lie to her. He is gay. He is never going to touch her. And Elizabeth Drexel, who had a pretty sheltered life, later says, like, she did not even know

37:02that would be a possibility. Like, she had no idea that that would be the case. And later, people like Alva Vanderbilt say, well, get a divorce. You should get a divorce. And she was very Catholic. Like, she did not really feel like that would be acceptable. She was very ashamed of this situation. And Harry Lair goes on to be pretty mean to her. Like, he is very unkind. He says horrible things. He says horrible things to her about, like, how she embarrasses him and how she's not dressed properly. She's so beautiful.

37:33She's the most beautiful woman in New York. Well, she would later on, after his death, she would remarry. And then she would, of course, write this tell-all memoir, which was somewhat shocking at the time, called King Lair, L-E-H-R, about their life together. And it's just notable, I'll throw it a little aside there, that so many of the anecdotes that we know and that so many people use, you know, in their research come directly from Elizabeth Drexel Lair. Absolutely. It's a fantastic memoir.

38:04It is a joy to read. It's very funny. It's a very fast read, if you like reading books from this period. And very sad. It's horrifying what he tells her. And yet they somehow also manage to have this kind of partnership. They do. I would say that he has a much better partnership with Mamie Fish, that Mamie Fish seems to be the one where there is obviously no sexual pressure. There is no feeling on his part that he has failed by being a gay man. Mamie doesn't care. And they love doing things like going to options together and pretending that every item is so horrible that they're just gagging when they see it.

38:46They're ordered out of an auction. And Mamie Fish and Harry Lair go outside and they scream, oh, God, there's about to be a horse accident. That horse is going to be killed. And everybody runs out of the auction house to see what's happening on the street. Yeah, they take over a streetcar. They pay off the streetcar conductor so they can drive the streetcar and drive it while screaming, everybody en route to the cemetery. So they walked around with a fake baby or pretending that they were holding a baby.

39:20They walked around with a fake baby. Yeah. They did really weird and hilarious, inappropriate things. They did weird. They found each other so funny. They had such an amazing time. So Harry Lair was dreaming up these ideas, some of these outlandish themes that Mamie would throw as parties at her house in New York or her place in Newport. We should add that in 1898, her big Newport cottage, as they call them, Crossways, was finished.

39:50And that place is legendary. Yes. And it was done in a very American style at a time when a lot of these, again, took a lot of pride in seeming very European and having things shipped over, maybe really wanted her place to look like a quintessential American colonial house. And I think that's, again, a reminder of her incredible contempt for her contemporaries who were trying to cozy up to European royals. And Harry Lair actually plays an important role in one of her parties.

The Fake Czar of Russia

40:22This was during a time when the Grand Duke Boris of Russia was visiting Newport. And he was staying with Mrs. Goulet, who was a friend and contemporary of Mrs. Fish's. And one day, while Mamie Fish was out on a yachting party with the Grand Duke's friend, the Baron Greaves, she said, Well, I know why the Grand Duke is here in Newport. And the Baron Greaves said, I don't know what you're talking about, madam. And Mrs. Fish said, well, I know that he's here to marry Mrs. Mary Goulet.

40:56Like he was a fortune hunter. Yeah. Yes, that would be impossible. The Grand Duke could not marry anybody who is not from the royal family. And Mamie replied, but, you know, she's one of our greatest catches. And the Baron was not swayed. He asked her to please stop talking in this manner. And she said, oh, nonsense, Baron Greaves. You know as well as I do. He's here to catch a rich girl. You know, he's a very dissipated young man. He must manage somehow to repay his debts. And at this point, despite his grand gambling losses, the Grand Duke was estimated to be worth $10 million.

41:31So this wasn't the case, but it was very insulting on her part.

41:37The Baron stalks away from this, absolutely horrified. And Mrs. Fish later claimed that she was just trying to make conversation. A bit aggressive. Yeah, she was just very, very aggressively trying to make conversation. And Mrs. Goulet said that Mrs. Fish could not be invited to a party for the Grand Duke because she'd been very insulting and called him a fortune hunter. And Mrs. Fish was infuriated by this.

42:08Could not believe that this was happening to her. And consulted with Harry Laird. And first of all, they bemoaned the fact that everybody in Newport was uniformly stupid. And they were all just crazy about dukes and such things. And they decided that they would have a party for the Grand Czar of Russia. And people believed that this was going to happen. They held it on the same night that Mrs. Goulet was holding the party for the Grand Duke.

42:40So, not only was she not invited to the Grand Dukes, but somehow she had somehow snagged the Czar. Snagged the Grand Czar of Russia. Which, again, not impossible. Like, she is very well known by this point. And then she had this party. And when she introduced His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor of Russia, it turned out to be Harry Laird, who was sporting a tinfoil crown and holding a scepter.

43:12And also wearing her opera cloak. And meanwhile, people caught on to the joke in varying ways. The ladies nearest the entrance, in varying degrees of hesitance, had been sunk in court curtsies, only to recover themselves with shrieks of laughter when they realized that they were paying homage to Harry Laird. The whole room rippled with merriment, as in his royal robes. He made a solemn circuit on the arm of his hostess, pausing here and there to talk to people in exact imitation of a stately royal progress.

43:46And he behaved with all the grandiosity of a monarch in a comic opera. So this was kind of, it was also, it was funny, but it was also actually kind of risky, given that there was Russian nobility. Yeah, yeah. How did it go over with the actual duke? It went over with the Grand, pretty well with the Grand Duke. He met Harry Laird later, and he said that I heard that you did a pretty good imitation of me. Like, the Grand Duke was pretty fine with this. Okay. So this is high frivolity. This is Harry Laird and Mamie Fish throwing theme parties, duping their guests.

44:19By the way, there were some really, like, important people at that czar of Russia dinner party, including J.P. Morgan, who was completely duped into thinking that he was going to meet the czar. So we're talking about the very, very top of society. Mamie in Newport, and then she gets back to New York as well. But, in the first decade of the 20th century, her pedestal, as you write, starts to wobble, and something is happening. We'll follow Mamie into the 20th century, right after this.

44:53Jennifer, in your book, Glitz Glam and a Damn Good Time, it seems like things start taking a turn a bit after she and her friend Harry Laird decided to throw a very unusual dinner party for their canine friends. Tell us about that, and I guess also tell us what were they thinking?

The Controversial Dog Dinner

45:17Well, Mamie Fish was visited by one of her many male friends, who says that women in Newport just seem to have no interest in being courted by men. He's being rejected. He says they all just prefer their lap dogs now. And Mamie immediately says, well, if that's true, I'm going to have to start throwing parties for them and their dogs rather than them and men. And it inspires the idea for the dog's dinner, where Mamie Fish invites all of the dogs of prominent socialites in Newport to a very formal dinner for them, where they are served chicken fricassee and, like, lovely milk bones.

45:59And they all sit at a table outside. They're served by waiters, along with their female companions. And the dogs are very dressed up for this. It's reported that Mamie's own dog wears a diamond collar. And I think this, to my mind, is not her most shocking party or her most provocative party. I think it's a pretty funny idea. It seems kind of tame-ish today. It seems kind of tame-ish to me as a modern person.

46:30But it's a really funny party. People really enjoy it. But it is also reported on in the newspaper. And this is a time when people seem to be remembering that poor people exist and that's bad. So people start reporting on this. And tales of it grow in the telling, that all the dogs are wearing diamonds. They're being served foie gras. Why are these dogs being served foie gras while your children in the garret are starving to death? You can't afford milk. This is disgusting.

47:02And I think in any time, sometimes it is easier to get mad at rich men's wives for throwing parties than it is to get mad at rich men and politicians who are actually creating economic disparity that exists. So rather than getting mad at men who should be passing laws that allow for, say, forming a union, which they were not doing, or factory owners really should be paying people something that means that they can afford milk for their children. Right. Or not employing children in factories.

47:34That would be great. People get very, very mad at people like Mamie Fish of how dare these socialites spend so much on clothing? How dare they have silly parties like this? This is embarrassing for volatility. So American society is actually starting to change as well, right? That argument is coming out in a way that it hadn't been necessarily back in the 1880s. Absolutely. And it becomes very fashionable among socialites at this time to take up a cause. Alva Vander Belmond starts supporting the cause of women's suffrage, holding parties in her backyard where women can pay a little bit and they can come and picnic in her yard while suffragettes speak about the cause.

48:14So a lot of women during this time are starting to do things to support the poor. And Mamie does this a little bit. Mamie involves herself in a seamstress strike where seamstresses in New York are striking for better wages. And Mamie goes and she meets with the seamstresses and she is horrified by how little they're being paid. She talks about how she pays all of her servants more than this. That it seems very unfair to her that 15-year-old girls are standing out in the cold because they can't afford winter coats.

48:48And then Mamie gets a letter from owners of factories being like, actually, lady, you need to stay out of this. You need to stay out of this. We're going to figure this out on our own. And she's like, oh, I was informed that actually I don't know anything about this. Maybe I should stay out of this. Then she goes back to like, but I still think you should pay the seamstresses a little bit better. So she's sort of behind a cause here, the garment workers. But nothing like Alva, who was like firmly out there marching with suffragettes. Not carrying the torch for the suffragettes and saying, like, I'm stamping my name on this cause.

49:23So then back to the dog dinner. So this is happening at all about the same time, the first decade of the 20th century. So press coverage, which could have been exciting to her decades earlier, for the first time it was like the press was turning against her. Yes. Yes. She is now seen as frivolous and wasting money when all the money should be going to factory workers. And obviously that's not going to happen. But it is understandably upsetting that if you were somebody living in a garret at New York at the time, you would not like the idea that dogs are dining better than you in Newport.

50:03Right. And all of this is also happening at a dicey time for her husband, Stuyvesant, and his career as the president of the Illinois Central Railroad. Because in 1906, he has this big feud with a fellow railroad director, E.H. Harriman, who really ends up forcing Stuyvesant out of his position as the president of the Illinois Central. How does that affect Mamie or the story? Do they they still have plenty of money?

50:34They still have plenty of money. And the root of the feud between E.H. Harriman and Stuyvesant Fish is that Harriman wanted to get his daughters into society. And Mamie had one of his daughters to one party and said, that woman is really boring and I am never inviting her to another party. And I think this was a little unfair. Like, I think Harriman's daughters seem to do a lot of good charitable works. I think if you were of a contemporary mindset, she was taking up a lot of social causes.

51:05She probably was a woman for this new era. But Mamie found her really boring and was never going to hang out with her again. And so her husband, the railroad director, gets pushed out of his job. And hated this. He was furious. And he went to the wives of all of the other directors at Stuyvesant's Railroads and says, Don't you hate Mamie Fish? Isn't she kind of mean to you? Does she say mean things to you? She said mean things to my daughter. And a lot of people were like, Mamie Fish is kind of mean to me.

51:35And he was like, you know what we should do? You should tell your husband to vote to get Stuyvesant off the board of the railroad. And it worked. It worked. It worked. It worked. So Mamie, who had, you were writing about how she also had actually helped her husband's career in many ways, right? There was a positive influence here because she was throwing parties that everybody wanted to come to. And that could only help him. It could also turn against him and her.

52:06She could actually hurt his career. And Mamie Fish was a little too mean and a little too rushed to too many people.

The Mother Goose Ball

52:12Right.

The Mother Goose Ball

52:13And it's also interesting, you know, because in 1908, on October 30th, Caroline Astor died. So there is this sort of opening. Even at that point, she had sort of passed the baton a bit. But there are questions about who's going to be the leader of society. And yet, I mean, into the, let's say, the early 19-teens, as Mamie is in her 50s and early 60s, it seems like she is making some moves.

52:43Still having parties, still having balls. But she's making some moves that make her seem kind of old or outdated or just suddenly uncool. And that is different, right? Absolutely. She used to be very cool. She used to be so cool. Which of the balls would you say sort of exemplify that? I think you're leading me right into the Mother Gooseball. Her anti-suffragette ball. And, look, personally, I don't think Mamie probably had strong opinions about suffrage.

53:14I have nothing to evidence that. But Mamie seems like someone who led a pretty independent life. I will say that Mamie maybe didn't understand why suffrage was so important. Because she was not a poor woman working in a factory who needed to be able to use some political power in order to get decent wages. And also, like, she did point out, like, my husband does exactly what I say. Like, if I told him to vote for someone, he'd vote for them. That's how our marriage works.

53:45She was fortunate that way. That's so nice for you. Maybe that's not how most people's marriages work. No. So she has a ball, the Mother Gooseball. So she has an anti-suffrage Mother Gooseball where she says she revisited the Mother Goose stories. And she thought that women were getting away from what was really important, which was being a mother. And I am inclined to think, like, Mamie Fish's children were very fond of her. They seemed to have, like, a very happy childhood. But I do always think that Mamie Fish spent, like, maximum maybe four hours a day with her children.

54:22But Mamie hosts a Mother Gooseball where everybody is expected to dress up as a character from the Mother Goose rhymes. And, again, this is a fabulous idea for the costume party. Mamie herself dresses up as Mother Goose. It's a very well-liked, well-attended party. It is on the wrong side of history. It is an anti-suffrage party about how wouldn't it be nicer for women to just live in a fairy tale world where they get to be Mother Goose or a little Bo Peep.

54:52And society is becoming much more realistic. Like, society is starting to see that, like, actually, there are women standing outside in the cold with no coats because they cannot afford them and they are 15 years old. So I'm going to put one checkmark here in the uncool column. That was 1913. The next year, 1914, she does help organize and host a fashion show to support French orphans in the very early years of World War I.

55:23And we, unfortunately, don't have much time to get into that story. But it does show yet another side of her that is definitely, it seems that she's on the right side of history here. Absolutely. And this fashion show was also incredibly controversial at the time because it meant that high-class women would be mingling with models afterwards. That they'd be mingling with designers, people who worked in trade. So this is a real shift. So time to change. Time to change. And it turned out that socialites who were invited to this party loved hanging out with models.

55:57They loved hanging out with the fashion designers and drinking champagne with them afterwards and toasting the show. And it started to be the shift of wanting to mingle with regular people who were in creative industries. Was it also a shift to wanting to attend something that, at its core, was supportive of a cause? Absolutely. It was partying for a cause. That parties stopped being about a rich person showing off how much money they can have. They have that they can have a ball. To the way that you host parties like a dog's dinner without getting in trouble for how frivolous you are in this unfair world.

56:33Is you saying all the proceeds are going to go to a pet shelter. That people are going to pay money to attend and we're giving all the proceeds to a pet shelter. And then you can still have your ball. And you can still have the ball. You can still have the dog's dinner and the newspapers will not get mad at you for it. And I think that is something that is shifting around this time. And could that be one of her legacies? Yes, absolutely. Yes, that and theme parties. I think mingling with people from different parts of society. Mamie was very good friends with actresses.

57:05She was good friends with comedians. And this was a time when it was very scandalous to socialize with actresses. Even if they had married into society, it was still considered scandalous. And Mamie was very generous to those people. She was very enthusiastic about musicians, about fashion designers. And she liked talking to them. She liked talking to anybody who wasn't going to bore her. And I think that mixing of creative professionals with old society was something that Mamie really led the way on.

57:35And that was in 1914.

Legacy of a Gilded Age Queen

57:37Mamie died the next year. She did. She passed away at her family's estate. It was while she was planning yet another party. She suffered a stroke. Her children rushed home and were at her bedside. And Stuyvesant was by her side when she died, as he had been for her entire life. And when she died, newspapers as far away as Kansas reported that the ruler of the 400 is dead. And while newspapers had been a little critical of her up until this point, they were very kind.

58:12They talked about how one of her chief objects in life had been to give pleasure to others, that she had a very kind heart. It was not only for those to whom she was under social obligation that she was thinking out plans for pleasure. She was equally kind to people who had been born to positions less fortunate than hers. And I think the truest one might come from the Boston Daily Globe that said that she always delighted in doing things that were just a little bit different than her associated equals.

58:43That would be an understatement. Yeah. I think she taught people that you can be a little bit more daring, that you can veer less towards gravitas and more towards making sure that people have a good time. And I think that is a nice idea. Your book is called Glitz, Glam, and a Damn Good Time, How Mamie Fish, Queen of the Gilded Age, Partied Her Way to Power. It was published in 2025 by Grand Central Publishing. I've been joined by Jennifer Wright.

59:13It has been so much fun talking about Mamie Fish with you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Truly a damn good time. Thank you for having me. And thank you for joining us today. You can see much more of Mamie Fish over on HBO's The Gilded Age Season 4, which starts back up again on November 1st, 2026. And then you can join me, along with my co-host Alicia Malone, on HBO's official Gilded Age podcast, where we break it all down and we also talk to the cast and crew.

59:49That is available wherever you get podcasts, or you can also watch the video version on HBO Max and other streaming platforms. A huge thank you to our patrons who support this show at patreon.com slash Bowery Boys. Your small monthly contributions make this show possible. We could not do it without you, which is why we record a very special patron-only show called Side Streets. We also release ad-free versions of the show and have lots of other goodies for our Patreon community.

1:00:26We'd love to have you join us over at patreon.com slash Bowery Boys. And if you loved hearing about Mamie, how would you like to see where she lived on the Upper East Side and where she hosted some of her most famous dinner parties? That is on our Gilded Age Mansions of Fifth Avenue walking tour at Bowery Boys Walks. You will stand across from her mansion and many, many other mansions on the Upper East Side.

1:00:57You can book a spot on that tour and dozens of others, or you can book a private tour for your family, a group of friends, or a work group. Our officially licensed New York City tour guides are just waiting to walk you and your group through New York's history. Join us over at BoweryBoysWalks.com. And today's show was edited and produced by Kieran Gannon. Thanks, Kieran. So have a great New York week, whether you live here or not.

1:01:31See you real soon. We'll see you real soon.