Doers & Dowagers, Signed by Felcia Warburg Roosevelt (Elsie Woodward)
[Signed by Felicia Warburg Roosevelt] Roosevelt, Felicia Warburg. Doers & Dowagers. First Edition. 1973. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Book is signed "Felicia W Roosevelt" on the flyleaf.
HBO’s The Gilded Age and FX’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans are both set in New York City, but they are eight decades (and a million light years apart). One of the twenty women profiled in this chatty, intimate book bridged the gap. She was of both worlds, and fascinatingly so. Elsie Woodward (mother-in-law to the scandalous Ann) was an Edith Wharton character come to life. Born in 1882 and one of the famed Cryder triplets, Elsie’s family had lineage but lacked money and suffered for it. Mrs. Astor’s ballroom was closed to them, as was Alva Vanderbilt’s. Elsie made a brilliant marriage anyway. But, as this book relates, money and status never made her happy. She was bored. Finally, when her husband of fifty years died, she tossed out her copy of the Social Register and joined the jet set. As Felicia Warburg Roosevelt observes, Elsie’s eighties and nineties were the happiest years of her life, and it wasn’t because she doted over her brood of grandchildren, whom she saw little, even on family holidays (which she detested). Elsie preferred Andy Warhol. Other chapters in the book are just as appealing, most particularly those on Rose Kennedy, Peggy Guggenheim, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth.
“Elsie Woodward is having more fun at ninety-three than she ever had at any point in her life. In fact, her current life style is quite shocking to what is left of Old Guard society in New York, which doesn’t bother her one bit.”
--Felicia Warburg Roosevelt