Gossip Girl: Gilded Age Socialite Elizabeth Drexel Lehr Tells All

The Gilded Gentleman

Elizabeth Wharton Drexel was a quintessential ingenue of the Gilded Age. Eventual heiress to the Drexel banking fortune, elegant and sophisticated, Elizabeth married but was widowed unexpectedly. But she married again, this time to Harry Symes Lehr, a bon vivant and social playboy.

But 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 observances are some of the most acute and incisive we have on the period.

Visit the Gilded Gentleman website for more information and episodes

This episode was edted by Kieran Gannon