Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

by Anderson Cooper

Ward McAllister was the first and greatest of what would later be called a “walker,” a gentleman friend whose special skill lies in escorting society ladies whose husbands have other interests or limited time and yet whose comportment does not leave the ladies vulnerable to intimations of scandal. He was married and had produced three children, though his wife, Sarah Gibbons, was rumored to be an invalid and was never seen in society. She presided neither at his farm dinners in Newport nor his smart evenings in New York, but her invisible existence was enough to render McAllister socially safe for squiring Caroline Astor or the subsequent ladies who might have wished to enlist his help. The right walker, after all, can make or break a woman in society, and Ward McAllister was the original. His death meant that the Four Hundred—all three hundred of them—would never be the same.