The Real-Life Socialites and Historical Figures Who Inspired the Characters of The Gilded Age

Last year, audiences were introduced to Julian Fellowes’s The Gilded Age, a grand, guilty pleasure which chronicles the colorful lives of New York’s upper crust during the 1880s. Set amidst a rapidly changing social and industrial landscape, the story is centered around an epic old-money-versus-new-money feud between Mrs. Bertha Russell (played by Carrie Coon), the nouveau-riche wife of a controversial railroad tycoon, and Mrs. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor (played by Donna Murphy), the de facto queen bee of the city’s elite.

Returning to HBO on October 29, The Gilded Age’s second season sees the two leading ladies battle it out as the splashy new Metropolitan Opera, largely funded by the Russells, and the prevailing Academy of Music share the same opening night, forcing society to pick sides. Heightening the drama is an expanded cast, many of whom play characters that were either actual historic figures (à la Mrs. Astor), or, like Mrs. Russell, heavily inspired by them.

“Real-life historical figures are a hugely important part of our Gilded world. These characters not only serve to give a fuller sense of what it might have been like to live during this time, but also help to highlight some of the debates that real people were having,” says David Crockett, the show’s Executive Producer. Women’s rights and integration in schools are among the key issues explored in season two. Incorporating real historic figures “helps to give proper context and ups the stakes for our fictional characters as they navigate their own journeys.”

Wondering who’s who? A breakdown of The Gilded Age characters and their real-life counterparts, below.

Season One

Julian Fellowes doesn’t mask the true identity of Donna Murphy’s character in The Gilded Age: Mrs. Astor was, indeed, a real person and the queen bee of New York society. Although other women had the same family name, there was only one who was considered the Mrs. Astor: Caroline Schermerhorn. Frank Crowninshield, a Vogue society writer who knew Mrs. Astor, described her power as “absolute” and “long continued” in a 1941 issue.

Coming from an old Knickerbocker family—the descendants of the wealthy Dutch class that settled New York—Caroline Schermerhorn married William Backhouse Astor, whose grandfather had amassed a fortune through fur trading and real estate. Her husband’s extreme wealth, combined with her social pedigree, allowed her to reach and remain at the top of the upper echelon.

And Mrs. Astor was set in her ways: “Her taste was always for old families, old ways, old servants, old operas, old lace, and old friends. She tried always to keep society in bounds, to see that it was decorous, elegant, and select,” wrote Crowninshield. “Certainly, no subsequent period, or group of fashionable people, in American life has been so decorous or so admirably kept in hand.” Together with Ward McAllister, she developed Mrs. Astor’s 400—the 400 socially acceptable New York families. (Four hundred, by the way, was the number of people who could fit in Mrs. Astor’s ballroom.) In 1892, the list was even published by The New York Times.

Yet as American wealth exploded in the late 1880s and 1890s, her power began to wane. She eventually accepted the presence of the Vanderbilt family and several other industrialist families—whom she had previously excluded—because their wealth was greater than hers. Eventually, she could no longer be the sole social gatekeeper: “When the century turned, the task became too onerous for her. A thousand newcomers were at the gates; her strength waned, rituals became relaxed; other queens were in the making,” wrote Crowninshield.

The socially ambitious and ostentatiously rich Bertha Russell is a fictionalized version of Alva Vanderbilt, the wife of railroad tycoon William Kissam Vanderbilt. At first, the family remained on the fringes of New York society and were considered nouveau riche. (It didn’t help that their newly built mansion, called the Petit Château, was considered garish at the time.) Yet they knew the one thing that could break down any walls in their way: money, and lots of it.

Vanderbilt spent lavishly. A party for her daughter, Consuelo, cost millions of dollars—and caused Mrs. Astor to allow Vanderbilt into her ranks as she realized her family faced social irrelevance if they did not attend. “The wealth of the Vanderbilt family had become so powerful in New York, so many enterprises depended on financial support from the Vanderbilts, the fortunes of so many of the old families were subject to injury of promotion through the enmity of favor of the Vanderbilts, that the oldest Knickerbocker families were gradually forced to surrender,” The New York Times reported on the couple’s legacy in 1899.

Sweet, meek Gladys Russell (Taissa Farmiga) is a sure stand-in for Consuelo Vanderbilt, the daughter of William Kissam and Alva Vanderbilt. Whereas the young and impressionable Consuelo was eager to marry for love, her mother had visions of a stratospheric social match. Against her wishes, Consuelo was married to the ninth Duke of Marlborough.

It was a loveless marriage. The duke had only money on his mind, making the Vanderbilts pay him a dowry of two and a half million dollars to wed their daughter. (Adjusting for inflation, that would be over $75 million today.) “The bride’s unhappy father was obliged to sign a contract, the sealing of which the prudent Duke had, from the very first, insisted upon. The contract involved, among other sundries, the payment to His Grace of two and a half million dollars, a sum so tidy that the Most Noble Charles Richard John, etc., was able not only to renovate Blenheim, his historic palace near Oxford, but to build, as well, one of the most prideful residences in London—Sunderland House, at the end of Curzon Street, in Mayfair,” Crowninshield wrote in a 1940s issue of Vogue. Consuelo was 20 minutes late to her own wedding ceremony and cried behind her veil. They would divorce years later.

Already, Gladys in The Gilded Age seems destined to follow her inspiration’s path: Like Consuelo, her parents dismissed her first love, an affable American who, albeit from a good family, would have done nothing to advance the family’s position.

Like with Mrs. Astor, Julian Fellowes doesn’t bother renaming Nathan Lane’s character in the Gilded Age: Ward McAllister was, indeed, a real person and social arbiter during the 1890s. Lane also injects his character with a number of McAllister’s signature traits: McAllister did indeed have a Southern accent and an impressive handlebar mustache.

Originally from Savannah, McAllister was the right-hand man of Caroline Astor and “remained Mrs. Astor’s principal aide-de-camp until his death in 1895,” wrote Crowninshield in Vogue.

By Crowninshield’s accounts, McAllister was an incredibly cultured man: In an essay about Mrs. Astor, Crowninshield claimed that “whatever knowledge she had mastered of good cuisine was mainly derived from Ward McAllister, who, for one thing, knew more about terrapin than any cordon bleu that ever lived.” McAllister is also credited with turning Newport, Rhode Island, into the lavish summer social mecca frequented by the wealthiest families in America.

Yet, unlike Mrs. Astor, McAllister eagerly embraced the new-money industrialists like the Vanderbilts and the Morgan family—paving the way to make them palatable by the old guard.

Remembered for her doll tea party in season one and with an increased presence in season two, Mamie Fish (Ashlie Atkinson) was also a real-life socialite. Known for her quick wit and outrageous parties in New York and Newport, she may have not been the wealthiest member of the society set, but she was known as the most fun. Some more fun facts? She was one founding member of Vogue—and a patron of New York’s annual doll show. After Mrs. Astor’s death, Fish, along with Alva Vanderbilt, became a leader of New York society.

Sylvia Chamberlain (Jeanne Tripplehorn)—the wealthy Gilded Age widow with a scandalous past—has several similarities to Arabella Huntington. Like Chamberlain, Huntington was the second wife to an extremely wealthy American industrialist, Collis Huntington. Their love story was a complicated and, at the time, controversial one: She married Huntington nine months after his first wife died of cancer. “The newlyweds moved to Fifth Avenue, but even that address could not overcome Arabella’s mysterious past and Huntington’s ruthless dealings—notable even in that rapacious age. The Astors and Vanderbilts barred them from New York society,” the Los Angeles Times reports. Like Chamberlain, the new Mrs. Huntington also had a son born out of wedlock. (Although whether Huntington, or another man named John Worsham, was the father is still up for debate.) After Huntington’s death, Arabella married her late husband’s nephew, Henry.

Both the real-life and fictional women were great patrons of the art. Much of Arabella Huntington’s collection, in fact, was later given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mr. and Mrs. Russell’s palatial home is practically a character itself, epitomizing the nouveau-riche’s ascension. Its designer, Stanford White (introduced in the first episode and played by John Sanders), was a partner of one of the Gilded Age’s most influential firms, McKim, Mead & White. Known for emulating opulent classical European architecture replete with details and textures, White was the architect behind both Astor and Vanderbilt mansions, as well as myriad New York landmarks and institutions, including the Washington Memorial Arch in Washington Square, the Metropolitan Club, and the Veterans Room at the Park Avenue Armory. White was also a prominent architect in Newport, Rhode Island (he designed Rosecliff mansion after the Grand Trianon), as well as in Boston, where his contributions include the Boston Public Library and Symphony Hall.

It remains to be seen, however, if The Gilded Age will tackle White’s disturbing legacy. In his so-called “secret life,” he seduced many young women and minors, including model and actress Evelyn Nesbit, around 16 at the time of their encounter. Years later in 1906, Nesbit’s husband, Harry Thaw, shot White to death while attending a performance at Madison Square Garden, which the architect also designed. The legal proceedings would became known as the “trial of the century,” though Thaw eventually would be found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Peggy’s editor, T. Thomas Fortune (played by Sullivan Jones), was, indeed, a radical real-life journalist, publisher, and civil rights leader with an inspiring story. Born into slavery in Florida, Timothy Thomas Fortune was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and worked his way up to studying law and journalism at Howard University in the 1870s. During his career working at America’s leading Black newspapers, including Washington, D.C.’s The People’s Advocate, The New York Age, and The New York Globe, as well as authoring books and speaking independently, Fortune established himself as one of the most influential Black voices of the 19th and 20th centuries.

Anticipating movements and equal rights organizations, such as the NAACP, Fortune co-founded the Afro-American League in 1890, and continued advocating for Black rights well into the 1920s. Fortune was also an advisor to Booker T. Washington, who appears during season two of The Gilded Age, and edited his first autobiography.

Heroic philanthropist, nurse, and teacher Clara Barton (played by Linda Emond) is introduced early in season one when the “old New York” women wish to raise money for the American Red Cross, which Barton founded in 1881. As a hospital nurse during the Civil War, Barton earned her reputation as the “angel of the battlefield,” and with permission from President Lincoln, she opened the Office of Missing Soldiers, helping to reconnect more than 20,000 soldiers with their families. In 1869, Barton traveled to Switzerland and was inspired by Europe’s humanitarian effort to provide aid and relief to wounded soldiers. This not only prompted her to volunteer during the Franco-Prussian War, but also to establish an American branch of the Red Cross, of which she also became its first president—a position she held for 23 years.

Season Two

Hailing from Sweden, Christine Nilsson, also called Christina Nilsson (played by Sarah Joy Miller), was one of the most in-demand operatic sopranos during the 1860s through 1880s. She spent much of her career in Paris, where in 1868, she joined the Paris Opera and created the role of Ophélie in Hamlet. One of her most famous roles was Marguerite in Charles Gounod’s Faust, a role she’d reprise with the Paris Opera, as well as in her North American debut in Boston in 1871 and many times throughout her career.

Nilsson’s first operatic performance in New York City took place at the Academy of Music in 1871, and she became closely associated with the renowned opera house, a high society mainstay. Adding to the dueling opera house drama of the 1883-1884 season, Nilsson performed Faust at the Met’s first-ever opera, held in the original building on 39th and Broadway—her participation was considered a major win for the new house, and a snub for the Academy.

Nilsson’s reputation preceded her. The New York Times wrote of her: “Christine Nilsson, the Met’s first diva in 1883, could not only stipulate by contract her choice of roles, but could prohibit their performance by any other soprano in the same season.” Proving her lasting mark on culture, Edith Wharton’s 1920 novel, The Age of Innocence, opens with Nilsson’s performance of Faust at the Academy. The soprano is also believed to have inspired the character of Christine Daaé in Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, The Phantom of the Opera.

When Oscar Wilde (Jordan Sebastian Waller) embarked upon an American lecture tour in the 1880s, he had yet to pen his most famous novels, however, he was already singing the praises of Aestheticism. With his celebrity growing in Europe and abroad, the Irish poet and playwright was as known for his wit as his dandy attire, making it no surprise that his debut play, Vera or, The Nihilists, a melodrama set in Russia, drew a full crowd when opening New York City’s Union Square Theatre in 1883. Unfortunately the play, which the New York Herald called a “long-drawn dramatic rot,” was considered a failure and closed early.

William Perzel, who purchased the rights to the play, “implied that Mr. Wilde had declined his proposition to render the play more attractive by appearing himself in some way, by lecturing between the acts or otherwise,” wrote The New York Times. “The distinguished aesthete himself seemed disinclined to say much on the subject of his play yesterday. A reporter found him smoking a cigar, but Mr. Wilde, who looked quite conventional with his short hair and a pair of white duck trousers, declined to say a word. He merely remarked ‘Ah, but I am eating my breakfast, don't you see?’”

Like T. Thomas Fortune, Booker T. Washington (played by Michael Braugher) was born into slavery, yet went on to become a leading figure in the Black community and the Black elite—so much so that the period between 1880 to 1915 has become known as “the Age of Booker T. Washington.” In 1915, The New York Times suggested Washington’s talent be likened to “genius”: “It is doubtful if any American, within the forty years of his active life, has rendered to the nation service of greater or more lasting value than his.” As an author, educator, and advisor to several American presidents and powerful white politicians and philanthropists, Washington strove to improve working relationships between races, as his famous 1895 speech, known as the “Atlanta Compromise” stressed. Many Black activists, particularly in the North, however, critiqued his approach as accommodationist.

During season two, viewers get a glimpse into the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial School Institute (now Tuskegee University), a historically Black school in Alabama, which Washington founded and became president of in 1881. At the time, the school trained teachers and students with an industrial-vocational approach, in which men and women learned traditional academics, as well as trade skills—students literally built the school from the ground up and also maintained a farm on site, for example. In The Gilded Age, Black leaders in the north and south debate the ideal education for uplifting and integrating their community, and how aggressively the status quo should be challenged.

To seal the deal for determining the winner of the dueling operas, there’s one guest Mrs. Russell and Mrs. Astor are vying for: the Duke of Buckingham (played by Ben Lamb). Mrs. Russell, of course, has an even bigger goal in mind: finding a proper suitor for Gladys—and if history reveals anything, she’ll likely get her way. The Duke of Buckingham appears to be inspired by Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, who after inheriting his position in 1892 in a dire financial situation, sought to marry “new money” American wealth. The opportunity for Mrs. Vanderbilt’s daughter to have a title, was especially enticing to the family.

In November 1895, the Duke of Marlborough married Consuelo Vanderbilt in New York City, and The New York Times wrote a detailed article praising the floral decorations, bridesmaids’ gowns, musical program, and more: “The wedding yesterday was, without exception, the most magnificent ever celebrated in this country… It was an event for a great outpouring of fashionable society, and the stalls of St. Thomas’s were filled with the wealthiest and most distinguished members of society in New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities.” These included Mrs. Astor.

The duke’s and duchess’s partnership, however, was notoriously loveless and exceedingly difficult. While the couple shared two children, the marriage ultimately ended in annulment in 1921.

Born in Cold Spring, New York, Emily Warren Roebling (Liz Risan) was a brilliant woman best known posthumously for her instrumental role in the making of the Brooklyn Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge at the time. Many in real life and The Gilded Age referred to it as the “eighth wonder of the world.” Construction lasted from 1869 to 1883 and was met with several challenges, which consequently allowed Mrs. Roebling to rise to the occasion.

When the chief engineer for the project, Washington A. Roebling, fell ill and became bedridden, Mrs. Roebling eventually took over the management of the project on behalf of her husband, doing everything from negotiating materials and resolving technical challenges to visiting the construction site.

In 2018, Roebling was featured in the launch of The New York Times’ “Overlooked” project, which chronicles the lives of extraordinary women. The article recalls an 1898 letter that Roebling wrote to her son: “I have more brains, common sense and know-how generally than have any two engineers, civil or uncivil.” Roebling later obtained a law degree at 56 and championed many causes, especially women’s rights, throughout her life.

Another trailblazing real-life figure to enter season two of The Gilded Age is Sarah Jane Smith Thompson Garnet (Melanie Nicholls-King), the first Black woman to become a principal in the New York City public school system. Born in Brooklyn to successful farmers, Garnet began teaching during the 1850s when public schools were racially segregated. Over nearly 50 years, she advocated for rights for both students and teachers, as well as women in general. An ardent suffragette, she founded the Brooklyn suffrage organization, Equal Suffrage League, during the 1880s, and served as the head of suffrage for the National Association of Colored Women. Her sister, Dr. Susan McKinney Steward, was also a suffragette, as well as the first Black woman in New York state to earn a medical degree.