Ward McAllister, the character of “The Gilded Age”, really existed. He was an impostor

Reading time: 8 mins

“Make sure you make it a success, says Aurora Fane (Kelli O’Hara) to Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) in the sixth episode of The Gilded AgeHBO’s hit series. He won’t give you a second chance.Ward McAllister, arbiter of the elegance of New York high society, invited himself to lunch with the Russells, a couple of new rich who wish to be accepted. Upon entering their abode, McAllister, played by a Nathan Lane with a mustache, does not fail to remark to their butler (who is, in fact, not truly their own): “An English butler! It’s a good start!»

But who was the real Samuel Ward McAllister (1827–1895), the essential arbiter of the elegance of New York good society during this “golden age” which followed the Civil War? A small gourmet, he inherited more than one nickname in his time. If socialite Elizabeth Lehr had baptized him “shepherd of 400»the wealthy heir Stuyvesant Fish described him as “demagogue”.

But my favorite nickname McAllister was given to him in a poem written for him by a friend, after a dinner he had orchestrated at the Delmonico, when he was at the height of his influence. McAllister even quoted him in his memoirs, published in 1890, Society as I Have Found It. So we imagine that he liked it:

There ne’er was seen so fair a sight
[Jamais on ne vit un spectacle aussi beau]

As at Delmonico’s last night;
[Que celui donné hier chez Delmonico]

When feathers, flowers, gems, and lace
[Plumes, fleurs, pierres précieuses et dentelles]

Adorned each lovely form and face;
[Ornaient les visages et les formes les plus belles]

A garden of all thorns bereft,
[Aucune épine dans ce jardin]

The outside world behind them left.
[Le monde extérieur semblait si loin.]

They sat in order, as if “Burke”
[Assis en ordre, comme invités]

Had sent a message by his clerk.
[Par “Burke” et son huissier.]

And by whose magic wand is this
[Et à quel magicien]

All conjured up? the height of bliss.
[Cette réussite, la doit-on?]

‘Tis he who now before you looms–
[Devant vous, il se tient:]

The Autocrat of Drawing Rooms.
[C’est l’Autocrate des Salons.]

“The Autocrat of the Salons” is a quintessentially American character: a man who has managed to trade his influence and assert his good taste (or, perhaps, his willingness to declare that his taste is the best?) as far as possible. He wasn’t rich – at least not rich like, say, his client Caroline Astor. Historian Cecilia Tichi wrote about McAllister that his father was “generous but penniless”.

The fascination of the rich

The family was originally from Savannah, where little Ward grew up in the pre-Civil War years. They spent their summers in Newport, a marina in the state of Rhode Island, which served as a refuge for southerners escaping the heat before the place became a favorite vacation spot for wealthy New Yorkers, who built their holiday “cottages” (another example of how the fortunes of the North and the South intersected and intertwined in the 19^and century).

If he was constantly preparing and organizing receptions, he was doing it totally alone.

Perhaps this explains why McAllister was fascinated very early on by the very rich. As a young man, he moved in with a wealthy relative in New York, hoping to inherit her fortune. Unfortunately for him, when she died, she only bequeathed him $1,000 in her will, all of which he spent on buying a suit for just one evening (it was a very important ball, you know). He just let those present (who thought he was going to inherit everything) come to their own conclusions.

Professionally, McAllister was a lawyer. He began his career in San Francisco during the Gold Rush era, when he began to study the art of “giving dinner parties”. Around 1852 he married Sarah Taintor Gibbons, a woman “withdrawn”according to Cecilia Tichi, who only appears once or twice in her memoirs.

If Sarah did not share his taste for social events (how could a “withdrawn” woman have endured all the lunches, banquets, picnics and charity dinners he describes in Society as I Have Found It?), this makes McAllister’s quest even more singular, since one imagines that if he was constantly preparing and organizing receptions, he was doing it completely alone.

After their marriage, he and Sarah traveled to Europe, where he truly fell in love with the “high society” he discovered there, not to mention the food and wine. He did not really reveal himself to the world until he returned to New York, around 1872–1873. Cecilia Tichi attributes her rise to the uncertainty in New York at the time about the criteria to be met in order to be considered “high society” or not (uncertainty which is, of course, the basis of the plot of The Gilded Age).

Patriarchs and hierarchies

Based on this uncertainty, McAllister sought to establish hierarchies. His first attempt was the creation of a club of twenty-five (and later fifty) men called “The Patriarchs”. This club was made up of people with names like Astor, Gracie, Schermerhorn or, of course, McAllister. They watched each other how each used their wealth.

“For examplewrites Cecilia Tichi, if a patriarch found himself temporarily short of money and decided to rent his private box in the very chic Golden Horseshoe at the Metropolitan Opera, to a family deemed unsuitable, he was invited to speak to another patriarch, for example at the club, and one asked him to change his mind as soon as possible.

Society journals began to describe the parties, indicating who of “McAllister’s 400” was present and who was not.

By inviting Caroline (Mrs. William) Schermerhorn Astor to advise his “patriarchs”, McAllister laid the foundations for a long collaboration between the two, since Caroline Astor (played by Donna Murphy in the series) granted herself the role of socialite the most influential in New York.

Together they founded the concept of the “Four Hundred”, a figure first discussed in 1888, when McAllister said, as an aside, to a journalist: “The prominent New York company has only about 400 people. If you exceed that number, you end up with people who are either uncomfortable in a ballroom or who make others feel uncomfortable. You understand?” (in English “See the point?a vaguely British crutch that McAllister apparently used very often, so much so that people started to make fun of his twitch on his back—particularly later, after he fell.)

Historian Clifton Hood writing than “the number 400 rapidly grew in importance, eventually reaching totemic status”, long before McAllister followed up on his remark by compiling a list (which took him a few years). Society journals began to describe the parties, indicating who of “McAllister’s 400” was present and who was not. A family used 400 roses as a symbolic adornment of their home on the occasion of the entry into the world of their daughter. Other cities followed New York and came up with their own “400 list.”

It was McAllister’s judicious use of advertising that kept the concept alive. Among those not on the list were big names, such as John D. Rockefeller or J. Pierpont Morgan, and newspapers loved that detail, reporting information from dubious sources about people hurt by their exclusion.

Unstable Illusion

Curiously enough, throughout the period he orchestrated the social relations of wealthy New Yorkers, McAllister lived in what Cecilia Tichi describes as “a rather modest house” in West 36^th Street. But he had found ways to deceive him. His memoirs are filled with little moments in which he dwells on his superior taste, such as when he describes having dined with the Prince of Prussia and discovering that he was not “a good wine connoisseur”because he “swallowed it” instead of tasting it in small sips. (By contrast, the prince had a much more laudable habit of taking two-hour walks along McAllister’s favorite route: “It was with pleasure that I bowed respectfully before him day after day.”)

He prided himself on throwing the most stately picnics in Newport, a bucolic place where he could rely on his organizational and managerial skills to lead a group of well-bred people aboard a boat. to an orchard, where they could revel in the pleasures of nature.

Once, President Chester A. Arthur went to one of his campaign parties and had a great time. “Grand and refined entertainment is often not so pleasant as banter in the countryside”, McAllister said. A very practical idea for a man who could not afford to organize a grand and refined ball in his own home.

Society as I Have Found It for example, is teeming with racist ideas towards the “dark” and “colored” people of Savannah.

McAllister considered elites, prominent people, to be like him. In a memorable passage from his memoirs, he defends the existence of the rich. “The mistake made by the world in general is to think that the most prominent people are selfish, frivolous and indifferent to the welfare of their fellow men, which is a popular misconception, which stems simply from a lack of knowledge of the true state of affairs”he wrote.

High profile people, he insisted, are job creators who “carry out the expenditure of money and allow its distribution”. These people were patrons of the arts and prevented the United States “to settle down into a monotonous routine and become a nation of people just trying to make and save money, doing nothing to brighten up their lives”. But this supposedly charitable meritocracy of taste turned out, of course, to be only a kind of fiction, concealing in reality incitements to all sorts of exclusions.

Society as I Have Found It swarms, for example, with racist ideas towardsdark» and the people of «colorby Savannah, and the reader will appreciate (or not) the many statements about the “cooks of color” who, although possessing natural aptitudes, could not compete with the French chefs, who are “artists”.

The decline

McAllister’s influence did not last. The publication of his memoirs in 1890 angered many of his old friends. Like many people who have climbed the social ladder, it would seem that the publication of his work was a real turning point, triggering countless grudges that people had accumulated against McAllister over the years.

The memoirs flaunted too much dirty laundry and made McAllister pathetic. After their publication, Town Topics magazine, which had previously reported rumors about the Four Hundred, began to nickname McAllister “Mr. McHustler” (Mr. McArnaque). When he died in 1895, writes Cecilia Tichi, “McAllister and Mrs. Astor had long parted. So she didn’t have to cancel her dinner to attend his funeral.

The Gilded Age perhaps doesn’t have the elbow room enough to portray the true pathos of McHustler’s story. But at least the actor who plays Ward McAllister has understood. In an interview for Town and Country, Nathan Lane said about this wretched character: “He didn’t leave a big mark in history, thank God. Can’t we stop judging each other?!”