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Season 3/Episode 7: “Ex-Communicated”

Amid the release of a salacious book, Mrs. Astor confides in Bertha. Armed with updates from Arizona, Larry returns home to troubling news.

In this episode …

Mansions FeaturedThe Elms, Chateau-sur-Mer

Ward McAllister (Nathan Lane), center, finds himself barred from entering a society event hosted by Mrs. Astor at a New York hotel. (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO)

Portrait of Caroline Astor — Portrait of Caroline Schermerhorn Astor by Adolfo Müller-Ury, currently on view at Rosecliff as part of the “Richard Morris Hunt: In a New Light” exhibition. PSNC.11697, The Preservation Society of Newport County collection.

Despite revealing devastating secrets about his peers in his book “Society as I Have Found It,” Ward McAllister believes he is owed a place in the society he created and feels that he owns. Mrs. Astor, on the other hand, believes she is owed the right not to be humiliated in the press by her former friend.

“Society as I Have Found It” was published a little after the setting of the show, in 1890, and as it is in the public domain, you can read it for free at Project Gutenberg or the Internet Archive.

McAllister book — Copy of “Society as I Have Found It” (1890) by Ward McAllister in the Preservation Society of Newport County’s collection.

McAllister’s book was a memoir, not solely a book of gossip, but the show incorporates the scandals and secrets of its fictional characters into the real book. Members of society, feeling betrayed, resolve to freeze McAllister out of their sphere and to try to overcome the gossip. While in the episode Mrs. Fish claims she has read the book twice, in real life she had received only a basic education and claimed she was barely literate.

The staff of the Russell household find the truth through gossip, planting a false story to catch lady’s maid Andre in the act of leaking secrets to the press. Andre is unrepentant, explaining that while she likes her coworkers and the Russell family, “money is money.” The other staff, and the Russells, see this as a betrayal of the pseudo-familial ties in the household, but Andre frames her actions as business.

Carrie Coon as Bertha Russell (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO)

Bertha Russell declares that only truth can overcome the gossip that her marriage is struggling. Her proposal to appear with her husband publicly as a united front is not truth, however, but artifice.

The Russells briefly face the threat of financial ruin for part of the episode before Larry returns from Arizona with the news that the copper mines in Morenci will replenish their fortune. This development echoes the success of the Comstock Lode in Nevada earlier in the 19th century, whose silver mines made the fortunes of James Graham Fair, father of Rosecliff’s Tessie Fair Oelrichs.

Before George knows he has a way out of his financial woes, he expresses his frustration with Bertha’s continued concern with society, gossip and balls. As writer Zeba Blay writes in Harper’s Bazaar, Bertha’s behavior mirrors our own as an audience; “The Gilded Age” and shows like it “delight in the aesthetics of wealth, but their narratives are all about distraction as survival and what it looks like when people use glamour to distract themselves from the end of a relationship, a life, a world. They are, above all, shows about escape.”

Gilded Age Season 3_Ep7_louisa-jacobson-cynthia-nixon — Louisa Jacobson as Marian Brook and Cynthia Nixon as Aunt Ada (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO)

The people around Marian tell her she owes Larry Russell an explanation for why she broke off the engagement, and when he confronts her, she tells him that he owes her a relationship free of lies.

Larry and George blame Bertha for Marian breaking off the engagement; for once she is blamed for something she did not do. Her social ambition is, to the rest of her family, unbecoming, but she reminds her husband that they are both ambitious.

Bertha’s crime is stepping past the desires of her loved ones, who push her aside in disgust. Blay writes of Bertha and characters like her, “These are women who have arrived at the summit of every choice they’ve ever made, only to find they have everything yet nothing at all.” Bertha recognizes this, too, commenting to McAllister, “Nothing is more perilous than to overestimate your own power.”

John Adams, having oddly prepared to die in a freak accident, leaves a farewell letter for Oscar and secretly wills his summer house in Livingston Manor to him. Both Adams’ sister and Marian are understanding of what they know of the relationship between the two men. Coincidentally, Livingston Manor is tied to the Brook ancestry, and Mrs. Foster of the New York Heritage Society seeks financial support from Agnes to celebrate this history. Agnes tires of the obligation to contribute, perhaps weighed down by her family’s lofty legacy.

Near the end of the episode, the show revisits Jack Trotter, looking at buying a house of his own in the company of his former employer, Marian. The idea that he would have his own staff amuses him, since he was so recently a member of staff himself. The scene returns to a theme of the season premiere: What makes a good life? Jack will own a house and be financially independent, but will be separated by distance and class from the people who were closest to family for him.

Outside forces threaten the growing love between Peggy Scott (Denée Benton) and Dr. William Kirkland (Jordan Donica). (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO)

Dr. Kirkland tells his mother he owes it to Peggy to hear from her the truth about her child and former marriage. This plot point has gone unmentioned since the beginning of last season. A few years earlier, Peggy eloped with a man and they had a baby, who was put up for adoption without her knowledge; Peggy was told the baby died. The marriage was annulled, and the baby died of scarlet fever. Gossip twists the tragedy at the heart of the truth into something ugly and scandalous.

Filming locations: The Elms (kitchen as the Russells’ kitchen; third floor as Russells’ staff rooms); Chateau-sur-Mer (great hall and dining room as Mrs. Fish’s New York House; library as lawyer’s office). Thanks to Collections Technician Brooke Borsberry for location details.