WHAT WOULD MRS. ASTOR DO?: The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age, about serious party people

WHAT WOULD MRS. ASTOR DO?: The Essential Guide to the Manners and Mores of the Gilded Age
CECILIA TICHI
NYU Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This illustrated Gilded Age etiquette guide offers "proof that sliding around the naughty edges of society can be as informative as it is entertaining." (Alida Becker, The New York Times Books Review)

Mark Twain called it the Gilded Age. Between 1870 and 1900, the United States' population doubled, accompanied by an unparalleled industrial expansion and an explosion of wealth. America was the foremost nation of the world, and New York City was its beating heart. There, the richest and most influential—Thomas Edison, J. P. Morgan, Edith Wharton, the Vanderbilts, Andrew Carnegie, and more—became icons, whose comings and goings were breathlessly reported in the papers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. It was a time of abundance, but also bitter rivalries. The Old Money titans found themselves besieged by a vanguard of New Money interlopers eager to gain entrée into their world. Into this morass of money and desire stepped Caroline Astor.

An Old Money heiress of the first order, Mrs. Astor was convinced that she was uniquely qualified to uphold the manners and mores of 19th century America. "What would Mrs. Astor do?" became the question every social climber sought to answer. This work serves as a guide to manners as well as an insight to Mrs. Astor's personal diary and address book. Ceceilia Tichi invites us on a beautifully illustrated tour of the Gilded Age, transporting readers to New York at its most fashionable.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: So much beauty and opulence shoved up to the surface by so much greed and theft.

Let's not go there this close to the leanest Yule in many a long year. We're not remotely out of the woods economically, but this book is about a time where the economic situation was far, far worse. It's discussed in here, though not exhaustively. It's a social history, it's about how etiquette came to matter so much, which of course requires we know a bit about how the men, all men, stole...made, sorry...so very much money to support the women's social construct.

the lady herself, in her finery painted for posterity

The very idea of entertaining at home was made aspirational by the "Four Hundred" (the number who could fit in Mrs. Astor's ballroom); as late as the 1960s, the idea was prevalent, and while the means changed, the manners barely did.

my generation certainly heard Emily Post's name, same woman and mostly the same advice

Lina Astor was an insufferable snob. Her ballroom was for "the best people," whose money was so old no one living could remember the hustler who got it. Nouveau riche industrialists' wives need not apply. It was a world she ruled, but it was a reign of terror that had to be agreed to; there was nothing forcing anyone into this restrictive social contract except made-up ideas like prestige.

two robber-baron "homes," Manhattan and Newport

Oh, and money of course. Lots and lots and lots of money.Author Tichi does not bear down heavy on the whole "robber baron" thing. There's no way around the money ocean they swam in. It's rather the point of a beautiful, illustrated book about luxury.

smart excessories...I mean accessories!...for Madame and Sir

It's astonishing what boredom does to a person. This time period, up to then the richest in world history, led to wealth disparities but also to the cementing of the idea that one could live a life not mere have an existence. Vacations to exotic places, to different places than you frquented as usual anyway, and recreational shopping (a Georgian idea embraced effusively by the Astor set) became ordinary for these wealthy folk:

shopping and sitting, two "fun" things

What I enjoyed most about this read was the way Author Tichi left it to me to judge, presenting facts and showing (as you see) examples and artifacts for me to decide what I thought about. We are in a new Gilded Age of wealth disparity, and at an economic crossroads, just like these folk were. We need to think carefully about what we individually do, because that becomes by default collective action.

The gifting season should be replete with beautiful tokens of love and affection; that doesn't mean they can't be thought-provoking, interesting, and relevant, too.

then, a residence; now a museum

A CRIME OF SECRETS (A Donner & Longstreet Mystery #1) lesbian-led Gilded Age New York series you need to read

A CRIME OF SECRETS (A Donner & Longstreet Mystery #1)
ANN APTAKER
Bywater Books
$9.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: New York City, 1899.

A city on the cusp of a new century. A city growing taller, faster, a city of new inventions, new ideas—and old dangers on its shadowy streets where crime, misery, and murder lurk.

When Pauline Godfrey, a young woman embodying the coming modern age, is viciously murdered, her throat cut, private inquiry agents Finola “Fin” Donner and Devorah Longstreet must navigate a world of violence and passion, lust and betrayal, where duty is twisted into bitter obedience and love is soiled.

Fin, a tough survivor of the dockside slums, and her beloved companion, the elegant, intellectual socialite Devorah, probe deep into the festering secrets of a family, the rot and corruption of the police department, and the sinister world of the city’s thieves, whores, and thugs to find the killer.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Sapphic sleuths in Gilded Age Manhattan? ANN APTAKER penned?! Sign me right the *bleep* up! Do I particularly care whose murder this concerns? Nope! I want the pleasure of watching as Author Aptaker upends the worldview of the hoi polloi with two people who decline to participate in their tedious little black-or-white, top-or-bottom nuanceless tosh.

That, comme d'habitude, she does. *happy sigh*

A new historical fiction crime series is always a welcome development for me.I like the QUILTBAG worlds that they inhabit to come back alive and crack the false front of heteronormative society's homogeneity without our homosexuality into flinders. Author Aptaker has done this before with the Cantor Gold Crimes series in New York's pre-Stonewall art world. They're refreshingly nonconformist and still part of the long mystery novel tradition of upholding ma'at.

I don't use "law and order" here, because cruel, immoral laws are passed daily all over the world, and vicious repressive order maintained by the small-souled pursey-lipped fear-driven fools that abound in every single time period of human history. Ma'at means something altogether more agreeable to me (and I suspect to most others): The rightness and fitness of things in the world; the always joyous sense of your world running well. Ma'at herself is the center of the Afterlife as the one who weighs the dead person's heart against her feather; if the heart is heavier than the feather, that person is utterly expunged; is prevented thereby from participating in an eternal existence of harmony and pleasure. I wonder often how many righteous crusaders for Truth God and Justice will pass this test....

Certainly the outwardly, conformally Proper and Good Citizens in this story won't. How this series will take that inner-vs-outer duality ball and run with it is set up with clarity and simplicity in the choice of main charcters. Fin and Dev are from wildly different milieux, one a rough-and-tumble survivor of the wild and violent streets and the other a Lady of Quality. Very much like Nick and Nora, Author Aptaker's couple are beautifully suited in ways they continue to discover as their time together expands and their experience of each other's kindness and blindness deepens. In this initial outing, the glossy surfaces are just not quite ever matched by smooth underpinnings. Rough exteriors can, and most likely will, smooth out. Long-unquestioned shibboleths fall, leaving no thick coatings of dust just light blurrings of their outlines. It's a gift to be allowed to see a character's growth instead of meeting them fully formed here in the first book. Well chosen, Author Aptaker!

The web of lies and vileness that Fin and Dev unravel in 1899 Manhattan is nothing if not relevant to today's world where misery is considered the proper condition of the poor, the disabled, the Other. The horrible perpetuators of that misery appall and offend these upright people, who subscribe to the ma'at I described above. The fact that they come at it from very different starting points gives rise to some of the most relatable conflicts in the story: Dev feels, for example, the ugly gnaw of jealousy; Fin the hollowness of insecurity. These being inevitable in any long-term relationship, it's good to see them here, and see them seen off by the women...together.

What I most needed on a hot July weekend when going outside was, for multiple reasons, not a great idea. It kept me engaged in, interested by, rooting for, our ma'at-maintaining duo. There's not a lot stronger recommendation I can give you.

2015 Nebula Award Finalist: Novelette THE LADIES' AQUATIC GARDENING SOCIETY

THE LADIES' AQUATIC GARDENING SOCIETY
Henry Lien
Online free read

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Plot Synopsis: In an alternate Gilded Age, two outsiders clinging desperately to their places in Newport society, as controlled by Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt. The competition between Mrs. Howland-Thorpe, Boston born and bred, and Mrs. Fleming, née Contessa Contarini, is fought in the form of gardening triumphs. Each lady tries to outdo the other with more and more exotic types of garden until the Law of Unintended Results takes calamitous hold.

My Review: What a hoot! Lien made me laugh at least four or five times as much as I'd dared to hope. The title, after reading the tale, rings a tocsin instead of a laugh. This funny, accurate take on Gilded Age life contains a serious warning to the inattentive majority about the consequences of meddling with the natural world. Humans as a species have been altering and destroying wide swaths of the planet, often simply for our own gratification, often simply through ignorance of the consequences our actions have. Look at the Monte Carlo aquarium's generation-long release of a seemingly harmless kind of underwater grass: It resulted in a very large part of the northern Mediterranean Sea losing all of its native flora and fauna. All because there was no awareness of what a non-native species would do in a new environment, so no precautions were taken to confine it.

The American South is gradually being eaten alive by a Japanese plant, kudzu, as the heat and humidity of the place seems to be kudzu's idea of Paradise. Then there's Australia's rabbit apocalypse. Central Texas's juniper bush debacle. Florida's hydrilla emergency. All caused by inattentiveness or ignorance of what happens when something is taken away from its native place.

Lien's funny take on the sad, sad tale also has a second axe-blade aimed at the reader: The relegation of women to a position of uselessness. The strenuous efforts of each of these women to outdo the other in garden beauty is the sole acceptable outlet for their considerable talents and intelligence. Mrs. Fleming even says:

I have not spent my time here in meaningful endeavor. But there is so little of seriousness that women are suffered to do with their lives. I thought it would be different in this country. We should be urging each other towards useful works. Women can do Great things together.

Sadly, her call to sisterhood in action is unheeded. Happily, Lien uses that as a launching pad for a denoument that will leave you gasping...from laughter heavily shadowed by horror.

A delightful hour's read. Go investigate, step outside your normal reading habits!