The practice of paying calls was one of the more arcane, time-consuming instances of social theater practiced by upper- and upper-middle-class women in the Gilded Age. Women maintained visiting lists of people on whom it was appropriate to pay calls—in effect, Ward McAllister’s “Four Hundred” was a codified, publicized version of such a list—and passed set times in the afternoon creaking along in landaus from brownstone to brownstone, as often as not sending a footman to the door to leave cards on behalf of themselves, their husbands, and their children without
