The History Behind The Devil's Asking Price

The Devil’s Asking Price runs from February 21 to July 22, 1911, in New York and Newport. Every date in it falls on the right day of the week. Here is the history underneath it, where we drew the line between fact and fiction, and a quiz at the end to test which is which.

The calendar

We built the book on the real 1911 calendar. Easter fell on April 16 that year. The Saturday of the opera, the Thursday of the dinner on Fifth Avenue and the Friday the Sidneys arrive in Newport all fall on their real weekdays.

Easter on Fifth Avenue

On Easter Sunday, Society walked up Fifth Avenue after church, past St. Patrick’s, to see and be seen. The Easter parade was a fashion show in all but name, and by 1911 the bonnets were enormous. Two of them matter in our April columns, which is why one goes out to be retrimmed.

What she wore

The fashionable line of 1911 was slim and high-waisted, with a skirt that narrowed toward the ankle and a hat that did not. The hobble skirt was at its height, narrow enough at the hem to shorten a woman’s stride. Our heroine dresses for that year and no other.

Mourning

The book opens with a death, and everything afterward happens inside mourning. In 1911 a family in deep mourning wore black, withdrew from Society, paid no calls and went to no public amusements for months. That is why a card left by a man in mourning can set the whole town talking, and why a widow who opens her opera box after eight weeks is saying something.

Calls and cards

A gentleman did not simply drop by. He left an engraved card, with a corner turned down if he brought it himself, and it went to the lady of the house and her daughters together. He could not leave one for a younger daughter alone. Every card in the book obeys those rules, and the plot bends around them. More on calling cards.

The Mall in Central Park

The Mall, the long avenue of elms in Central Park, was where Society walked and drove in fine weather. A carriage on the Mall was seen by everyone, and so was whoever was inside it.

The opera

The Metropolitan Opera House on Broadway at 39th Street, its horseshoe of boxes, and the custom that ladies sat in front and gentlemen behind are all real. So is the opera. On Saturday, April 15, 1911, the Met gave Tosca, with Antonio Scotti as Scarpia, and the Ainsleys are in the house for it.

More on the Diamond Horseshoe and that night’s cast.

Dinner and precedence

A formal dinner was seated by rank, and everyone at the table could read the seating. When the prequel puts an unmarried girl at the host’s right hand, above her own mother, the period would have taken it as a public statement. It was meant as one. More on precedence.

Newport

Thornfield is our invention, but its neighbours are not. The summer colony on Bellevue Avenue, the morning round of rides, tennis at the Casino and Bailey’s Beach, and house parties that ran for a month are all taken from the record. More on Newport.

The gardenia

Gardenias are not hardy outdoors in Rhode Island, so the one in the book comes from the Thornfield glasshouse, as it would have had to. The flower books of the period list it as Cape jasmine, and give it the meaning “I am too happy.” The man who gives it knows exactly what it means.

The photograph

By 1911 the New York papers sent photographers to society parties, with cameras fast enough to work outdoors in daylight without any flash. A photograph in the morning paper was harder to take back than any announcement.

What we invented

The Ainsleys, the Sidneys, Thornfield and the Ainsley shipping concern are fiction. So is the brownstone on East 62nd Street, and so are the men who meet in it. Any resemblance to a real New York fortune is a compliment to the fortune.

Where to start

The Devil’s Asking Price is free to newsletter subscribers. Read the content notes first, then follow the reading order.