Welcome to The Gilded Hour, a podcast about the real-life people, visual culture and history of the 1880s, inspired by each episode of the HBO streaming television series “The Gilded Age.”
This is our first episode, and inspired by one of the show’s main characters, Bertha Russell’s, failed evening soirée, we look into the wild, glamorous, and at times unhinged real-life parties that the Gilded Age New York City elite would host to dazzle society, New York, and the world.
About “The Gilded Age” Episode “Never the New”
The episode of “The Gilded Age” that our episode is based on is the premier of this streaming television series, originally airing back in January of 2022. The show’s premier served to introduce audiences to the vast cast of characters and historical realities of Gilded Age (1880s) New York.
This episode begins with two sisters, Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Brook, who are welcoming their niece Marian, a young woman leaving Pennsylvania after her father’s death when she was left with no inheritance. By chance, she meets Peggy Scott, an apparently well-educated young woman who helps her when Marian’s purse and train ticket are stolen. When Peggy can’t make it the rest of the way home to Brooklyn after their long journey, she stays with Agnes and Ada and Marian at their lush home on 61st street. Agnes later offers Peggy a job as her secretary. This causes waves with the van Rhijn house staff, some of whom are not used to working with a black woman.
Meanwhile, a wealthy business owner (and apparent robber baron) George Russell moves into an elaborate, brand-new mansion across the street from the van Rhijn house with his socially ambitious wife Bertha and their young adult children Larry and Gladys. It is clear through several conversations that they are considered “new money” and therefore lesser in status by the established social elite like the van Rhijns.
Agnes’s son, Oscar, meets Larry Russell at a party hosted by a real life Gilded Age socialite, Mamie Fish. Upon his return to New York, they meet Marian.
Bertha Russell tries to break into high society by hosting a lavish “at home” party; Marian secretly attends, knowing Agnes, who considers Bertha inferior in status to such an extent that she refuses to socialize with her, will disapprove. No one noteworthy shows up from society; especially not the leader of society, Lena Aster. Bertha vows to still prove herself and “make everyone sorry” for excluding her.
What Inspired our Episode?
The show’s episode ends with Bertha Russell’s failed party when no one showed up, serving to teach her just how hard it was to crack into high society.
We wanted to look into what, exactly, Gilded Age parties were all about, and the truth is wilder than anything that has been shown on this television series so far! We chat about the incredible and over-the-top – some would say ostentatious – parties that the society elite would hold.
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Oh, would I could describe these conceptions, could impress upon paper all that is living so full and warm within me, that it might be the mirror of my soul, as my soul is the mirror of the infinite God!