WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN THE NOBS SAY NO

 

Imagine you are a Gilded Age society lady. You have a ball to attend and your husband is... making even more money, or smoking cigars at his club with other rich men, or sailing his yacht with his mistress. You cannot arrive unattended, but you cannot go with just any other man, lest the next day drawing room whispers cast aspersions against your character.  You need a walker; a gentleman of your social set who will escort you without the faintest cause to rumor. Ward McAllister was just such a man, devoted platonic side piece for Mrs. Astor (see above re : mistresses and yachts.) Mrs Astor and Ward McAllister were tried and true until they weren't. The bloom was off the companion for his Mystic Rose due to Ward's Icarus like assurance that the sun would always shine and he would always soar above the fray of Gilded Age society.

If you were ever shunned by the popular kids at your high school for something like wearing Reeboks instead of Nikes, blame Ward Mcallister. Inventing nobs, swells and The 400, Ward McAllister brought snobbery to an art form. He told Gilded Age society how to dress, eat, decorate their homes, who to bless, who to blame, and if you were not in with his in crowd, well you could pay to be.  But Ward McAllister schemed, shunned, and sucked up to hold sway over Gilded Age New York. He lost everything with a few strokes of a pen, and society, for good or bad, was never the same again.

Samuel Ward McAllister was born December 28th 1827 in Savannah, Georgia. Coming from a family of Southern lawyers Ward was expected to choose the law as his profession. He studied at Yale and in 1850 traveled west to the Gold Rush with his father. In 1853 he married Sarah Gibbons, a Southern girl from a prominent family. Sarah did not care much for society life unlike Ward.

In fact, Ward McAllister loved society so much he made a study of it. His family had some northern roots, as an uncle married his sister of William Backhouse Astor. Ward traveled to Europe and studied "court manners, architecture, fashion, food, drink, watering spots, dances" {1} and passed that knowledge on to the upper echelon of society.  Society ladies consulted Ward McAllister on throwing dinner parties, hosting balls, and decorating their homes. Caroline Astor consulted Ward on her daughter's debutante ball and a friendship of snobbery was born. Ward McAllister called Caroline Astor his Mystic Rose and for many years they arbitrated society - dictating who was acceptable and what was fashionable.

They created "The 400"-  and no, that is not the number of people who could fit into Mrs Astor's ballroom. The 400 were Old Dutch names from the Knickerbocker days of New York city. Ward McAllister dubbed them "nobs" and the new money hopefuls "swells." The rule was only people who are comfortable in a ballroom and no one who might make someone uncomfortable in a ballroom. Caroline Astor thought that the list should be finite - fixed in stone with no additions. But Warren McAllister argued new people needed to be added.  Ward McAllister was smart to see Alva Vanderbilt was never going to accept being left off the list and tried to convince Caroline Astor that if they admitted the Vanderbilts their lives would be easier (he was a little bit correct.)

The answer was The Society of Patriarchs. Founded it in 1872 the Patriarchs were 25 upstanding men, pillars of society. Every year the Patriarchs held a ball and were allowed to invite nine people they thought were society worthy. That way new people were folded into society with time to let them adjust (that means learn to live by Caroline Astor's rules.) Caroline Astor and Ward McAllister continued their reign of snobbery until 1890 when Ward McAllister, in need of money and more fame, wrote Society As I Have Found It, an early celebrity tell all. Ward McAllister sort of invented being famous for being famous. An expose on how the haves lived would surely fly off the shelves.

And indeed the book flew off the shelves and into the hands of the very people Ward McAllister had written about. He was classy enough not to name names, but given that New York City Society was its own protected enclave, everyone reading new who was who. After having offended Mamie Fish by criticizing a dinner he had attended at her home, Ward McAllister began to become persona non grata. The book was his coup de grace, hoisted by a petard written in his own hand. Maimie's husband Stuyvesant Fish called him "a dismissed servant." Even Caroline Astor, his Mystic Rose, turned her petals away from him, and the society sun no longer shone on Ward McAllister. In 1892 he published The 400 in the New York Times. Ward McAllister died in 1895. Caroline Astor did not attend his funeral. The man who perfected shunning was shunned in his last moments on earth.

SOURCES : 

Ward McAllister. Wikipedia.

Cooper, Anderson / Howe, Katherine ~ Vanderbilt : The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. {1}

Raymond, Carl, host. "The Education of a Snob : Ward McAllister's American Aristocracy." The Gilded Gentleman, Episode 9, Bowery Boys Media, 14 February 2022. 

VIDEOS : 

The Gilded Age