Friday, December 15, 2017

King Lehr and the Gilded Age by Lady Decies

King Lehr and the Gilded Age: With Extracts from the Locked Diary of Harry Lehr by Lady Decies and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr
Published by: Applewood Books
Publication Date: 1935
Format: Paperback, 330 Pages
To Buy

"Again, memoir, inherently suspect, blah blah. But I couldn’t resist Elizabeth Lehr’s gossipy account of her double life with the man who replaced Ward McAllister as the man about town, Mrs. Astor’s right hand man. The Lehrs were in the thick of the New York and Newport social whirl—and also just about the same age as my main characters. There are also other reasons that the Lehrs interested me, but we won’t get into those just now." - Lauren Willig

The official patter:
"Harry Symes Lehr was born in 1869 into a family that was neither wealthy nor socially prominent. His natural gift for entertaining and his penchant for hobnobbing with the very rich earned him entry to the powerful circle of the New York and Newport social elite, where Harry clowned his way to a position of prominence. One of his admirers and patrons, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, introduced him to a young widow, Elizabeth Wharton Drexel. Elizabeth was smitten with young Harry, his elegant dress, and outrageous behavior. They were soon married. But King Lehr had a secret―he was not what he seemed. On their wedding night he cruelly dictated to his new bride the rules of their strange bedfellowship. For twenty-three years, Mrs. Lehr protected his secret and remained in a loveless and abusive marriage. After Harry’s death, Elizabeth remarried, to the Baron Decies. Lady Decies wrote down her secret story in 1938, incorporating Harry’s most intimate diaries, and told all in this scandalous tale of power, desire, and deception."

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