A couple of months ago I flew to Newport, Rhode Island, summer home of the most famous American dynasties and a symbol of the country’s gilded age, to write a story about the last bastion of American high society, as a new book on the place is published. Henry James and Edith Wharton drew on their experiences as residents of the Rhode Island enclave to write their chronicles of late 19th Century society, and @anewportsummerbook reveals that much of the pageantry that Wharton and James documented still takes place to this day. It offers a glimpse of what goes on behind the high gates and clipped croquet lawns: a season of balls and gala dinners, swimming, sailing; of picnics and recitals; of odd, eccentric customs. It’s a place of immense privilege and social protocol, ghostly mausoleums, local schisms and cost-of-running upkeeps requiring astronomical bills. It’s a world in which some families still summer in the houses, still sit around the same imitation Louis XIV dinner tables and eat with the same custom Tiffany cutlery, overlooked by the same John Singer Sergeant portraits as their great ancestors once did. All in all, one of the weirdest, most fascinating places I’ve ever been. Huge thanks to @jellison22 as always and @mariashollenbarger for helping to make it happen. Link in bio to read the story about summer in Newport🏛 Cover image from @anewportsummerbook by @nickmelephotography and @sommersruthie published by @vendomepress, Orchard House, Marble House, Cliff Walk, mosaics inside Marble House, Doris Duke’s Rough Point by Nick Mele, guests arriving for a party at Marble House by Nick Mele, sailor’s cottages in The Point, downtown Newport