an elusive dress owner parts curtain on Gilded Age

Elsie Whelen Goelet Clews

Today I saw an interesting blog entry on the search for the owner of several dresses in the Gilded Age collection of the Costume and Textiles Collection at The Museum of the City of New York. Phyllis Magidson, Curator of Costumes at the museum, and others, often mulled over the "Elsie" whose trousseau lingerie was unidentified in the collection for  quite some time. Turns out the owner may have been none other than Else Whelen Goelet Clews, a turn of the century debutante in New York. They decided as much when they studied a 1906 summer white cotton dress on a mannequin. A window on Clews' turn of the century life was thus opened.

The topic resonated because the students enrolled in "The Nineteenth Century City" at the University of Alabama are presently attentive to the Gilded Age, which, generally speaking, marked a historic moment of wealth for some, although not all, in the United States. Indeed, the very word "gilded" references the veneer, or gold covering on some of the more grim social realities. A lot of those realities, of course, were in urban spaces, as the nineteenth century came to a close.We need only remember the photographs of Jacob Riis.  Mark Twain tackled this issue in his 1873  The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which is a satire on problems during this period no matter the wealth in view. Yes, the term "gilded age" can be traced to Twain.

As we complete our look at Clarence King and Ada Copeland King in Martha Sandweiss'  study on love in the Gilded Age, we can see that things are not always as them seem. From the looks of  the blog posting on Clews  and our recent look at the lives of those in the high life via mid-nineteenth century hairdresser Eliza Potter's memoir, mystery and beauty often accompanies many an urban tale.

Elsie Whelen may have worn this 1906 dress.

As Phyllis Magidson writes, the twice-married Clews, was an intriguing woman. It is worth it to juxtapose her life experiences against what we have learned thus far about the lives of the rich and famous. For example, Magidson mentions Newport, Rhode Island, a favorite resort town that was not unfamiliar to either Clarence King or Eliza Potter. Clews apparently met her marine painter and sculptor Henry Clews, Jr., her second husband, there while attending a dog show. How do we find meaning in her life when we consider it alongside the many things we are learning about the Gilded Age in Sandweiss study? Is it possible to see how the issue of money, or class, has across time and across space resonances especially when we turn to The Commitments, a 1991 motion picture, which takes us to working class Dublin in another century?

How does the idea of class change when we step outside the Gilded Age and the United States? Is race still front and center? We should be prepared to have a thoughtful discussion on this issue tomorrow.

To learn more about the Costume Collection at the City Museum, read more on Magidson's blog. Meanwhile, here is a photo that Emily Chadwell, one student in this course, took last week at the Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society's Annual Banquet.

Voni Cook, AJ Estep, Will Jones, Emily Chadwell and I pose with Dr. Rachel Stephens.