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Florence Twombly

Widow of Hamilton McKown Twombly (1849-1910), railroad executive and director of fifty-nine corporations. Elegant, proud, and vastly rich; supreme hostess of New York aristocracy's golden era. Who, along with her sister, Emily Vanderbilt Sloane White; her sister-in-law, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt II; and friends Mrs. Ruth Livingston Mills, and Mrs. Elbridge T. Gerry, came to exercise complete dominance over "Old Guard" New York and Newport Society. Insisting, as did her siblings, on such architectural glories as a forty-room seaside mansion at Newport, Rhode Island; a vast country estate, "Florham", at Convent Station, New Jersey, and a New York townhouse at 1 East 71st Street - a noble palace designed by Whitney Warren, that was the last great private home to be built on Fifth Avenue. Her fleet of elegant motorcars, as well as the livery of her servitors, was in the very color (maroon) of the House of Vanderbilt. Florence Vanderbilt Twombly secured the talents of that utmost chef, Joseph Donon; pupil of Escoffier, and who was the master of Mrs. Twombly's kitchens for four decades. She did nothing to restrain her chef and his efforts were elevating; the service at table was exquisite. Her superbly run household, managed by her capable daughter, Ruth Vanderbilt Twombly, who, as well, shared an affection for the lavish, ran effortlessly. Happily the farm and glasshouses at "Florham" provided the produce, meats, and flowers upon which the ultimate hostess insisted. Her fortune, providing attractive dividends from railroads and mining, permitted such luxuries during that golden evening of affluence. A way of life that is gone now, forever. Nor will it return, for the past returns not, but must live on in the perpetual inventory of wonderful things remembered.