Episode #89: Gossip Girl: Gilded Age Socialite Elizabeth Drexel Lehr Tells All
Elizabeth Wharton Drexel was a quintessential ingenue of the Gilded Age. Eventual heiress to the Drexel banking fortune, elegant and sophisticated, she married but was widowed unexpectedly. Elizabeth married again, this time to Harry Symes Lehr, a bon vivant and social playboy. However, she soon learned her life was to become a reality far from what she ever expected.
This episode tells the story of Elizabeth Drexel and Harry Lehr along with the world in which they lived. In 1935, after Harry’s death, Elizabeth wrote what we would perhaps today call a “tell all” memoir “King Lehr and the Gilded Age” recounting the challenges of her marriage but also the frivolity and froth of the Gilded Age from her own observances as an up-close participant.
Her observations are some of the most acute and incisive of the period.
LISTEN NOW: Gossip Girl: Gilded Age Socialite Elizabeth Drexel Lehr Tells All
Related Podcast:
The Education of a Snob: Ward Mcallister’s American Aristocracy