We understood that the highest realms of New York society were guarded by the women. Not just any women, mind, but the wives and daughters of a small set of families referred to as the Knickerbockers. These families were the descendants of early Dutch settlers who’d amassed modest fortunes in trade, and their women were eager to keep at bay those made newly wealthy by oil, the railroads, and the stock market—like the Carnegies—particularly if they were immigrants as well. Not that Andrew or his equally ambitious mother would give up before trying.
