Marion Graves Anthon Fish


Marion Graves Anthon Fish was an American socialite and self-styled "fun-maker" of the Gilded Age. She and her husband, Stuyvesant Fish, maintained stately homes in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island.

Early life

Marion Graves Anthon, as she was called, was born in Grymes Hill, Staten Island and was the daughter of Sarah Attwood Meert and the esteemed Gen. William Henry Anthon, a successful lawyer and Staten Island assemblyman. Her paternal grandfather was jurist John Anthon. Mamie was of Dutch, English, French and German ancestry. She grew up on Irving Place in Manhattan and only received a rudimentary education and, by her own admission, could barely read and write.

Society hostess

Mamie ruled as one of the so-called Triumvirate of American Gilded Age society, known as the "Four Hundred", along with Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and Tessie Oelrichs. She became a notable leader of high society by virtue of her quick wit and sharp tongue. Grandees attending her dinner parties would be greeted with the occasional insult, "Make yourself perfectly at home, and believe me, there is no one who wishes you there more heartily than I do." One man was greeted with "Oh, how do you do! I had quite forgotten I asked you!"
In collusion with her antics, Harry Lehr often served as a co-planner of outrageous parties, such as the one given in honor of "Prince Del Drago of Corsica", who turned out to be a well-dressed monkey. At another of her parties, dancers holding peanuts would feed an elephant she rented as they danced by it.
Mrs. Fish's cattiness respected no rank, for when Theodore Roosevelt's wife sought to keep a frugal household, "Mamie" Fish was quoted as condescendingly saying of Mrs. Roosevelt "It is said dresses on three hundred dollars a year, and she looks it."

Personal life

On June 1, 1876, she married Stuyvesant Fish, the director of the National Park Bank of New York City and president of the Illinois Central Railroad. He was the son of Hamilton Fish. Together, they had four children, three of whom lived to adulthood:
She died on May 25, 1915 and is buried near Glenclyffe at the Church of St. Philip-in-the-Highlands. Her Newport "summer cottage", Crossways, is now a condominium.