In the summer of 1902, all of\u00a0Newport\u00a0was buzzing: a European prince was coming to town, and\u00a0Mamie Fish\u00a0\u2014 one of the reigning hostesses of American high society \u2014 was throwing a dinner in his honor.<\/p>\n
The young ladies practiced their curtsies. But what walked through the door that night was no prince, but did tell you everything about who Mamie Fish was.<\/p>\n
She hadn\u2019t started anywhere near the top. Raised in the\u00a0Gramercy Park<\/a>\u00a0neighborhood in the 1850s, she watched her family\u2019s fortune vanish and they relocated to the working class neighborhood of\u00a0Astoria<\/a>. She was barely educated, no beauty, and armed with nothing but a wit that could cut glass. It was enough to win\u00a0Stuyvesant Fish, heir to one of New York\u2019s oldest names and a future railroad president, who adored her for the rest of his life.<\/p>\n Mamie essentially invented the theme party at a time when New York society under\u00a0Mrs. Astor<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Ward McAllister<\/a>was incredibly dull. Mamie\u2019s response was to make it fun: live ducklings paddling down the dinner table, a harvest ball with golden pitchforks, a formal dinner for the dogs of Newport, and a party for the Czar of Russia who turned out to be her partner in crime,\u00a0Harry Lehr,\u00a0in a tinfoil crown.<\/p>\n Then the world changed around her \u2014 the press turned, her husband lost his railroad in a boardroom feud, and her\u00a01913 Mother Goose Ball\u00a0landed her on the wrong side of history.<\/p>\n