initiated its fall, by inaugurating the Vanderbilt siege on the gilded gates of New York society that ushered in the truly astonishing excess for which the Vanderbilts would become famous. In the Gilded Age—the name given by Mark Twain to the glittering years from the 1870s until around 1900—New York society was personified by two inscrutable consuls, leaders elected by their own guile and consenting to reign together, ruling over the patricians who cowered at their feet: Caroline Astor and Ward McAllister. They were the keepers of the gates, the makers of the taste, and the arbiters of who
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