Alva Erskine Smith? In 1883, on the night of her infamous ball, to which around thirteen hundred invitations were issued and which she deliberately scheduled after Lent, so there would be no competing balls or entertainments to distract public attention from her bid for social domination—traditionally, Lent brought the city’s high social season to its end, but Alva had very little patience for tradition—Alva was known as Alva Vanderbilt. The wife of William Kissam Vanderbilt, one of the two surviving sons of Billy the Blatherskite and a grandson of the Commodore, she was mistress of a
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