Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia

by James Fox

Overview

The author of the bestseller White Mischief tells the story of the beautiful Langhorne sisters, who lived at the Pinnacle of high and powerful society from the end of the Civil War through the Second World War. Making their way across two continents, they left in their wakes rich husbands, fame, adoration, and scandal.
Lizzie, Irene, Nancy, Phyllis, and Nora were born in Virginia to a family impoverished by the Civil War. Their father remade his fortune by collaborating with the Yankees and building rail-roads; the sisters became southern belles and northern debutantes. James Fox draws on unpublished correspondence between the sisters and their husbands, lovers, children, and the powerful and glamorous of their day to construct a plural topography with the scope of a grand novel and the pace of a historical thriller.
At its center is the most famous sister, Nancy, who married Waldorf Astor, one of the richest men in the world. Heroic, hilarious, magnetically charming, and a bully, Lady Astor became Britain's first female MP, championing women's rights and the poor. The beautiful Irene married Charles Dana Gibson and was the model for the Gibson Girl. The author's grandmother, Phyllis, married a famous economist, one of the architects of modern Europe.
Fox has written an absorbing and spirited, intimate and sweeping account of extraordinary women at the highest reaches of society, their adventures set against the background of a tumultuous century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780743217002
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	02/21/2001
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	496
Sales rank:	385,138
File size:	659 KB

About the Author

James Fox was born in Washington, D.C., in 1945. He worked as a journalist in Africa, and later at the Sunday Times in London. He is the author of the bestselling White Mischief.

Read an Excerpt

The Cast of Characters CHISWELL DABNEY LANGHORNE (1843-1919), known as "Chillie," pronounced "Shilly"; patriarch of the Langhorne family; railroad entrepreneur, sometime tobacco auctioneer. Husband of Nanaire.

NANCY WITCHER KEENE LANGHORNE, "Nanaire" (1848-1903), wife of Chillie Langhorne, whom she married in 1864.

Their children in order of age:

LIZZIE (1867-1914) married Moncure Perkins in 1885; three children: Chiswell (Chillie), Nancy, Alice.

KEENE (1869-1916), married Sadie Reynolds.

IRENE (1873-1956) married the artist Charles Dana Gibson (1867-1944), creator of the Gibson Girl; two children: Irene (Babs) and Langhorne.

HARRY (1874-1907) married Genevieve Peyton.

NANCY (1879-1964) married Robert Gould Shaw II of Boston (1871-1930), divorced 1903; one child: Bobbie Shaw. Married Waldorf Astor, later 2nd Viscount Astor (1879-1952); five children: Bill, Phyllis (Wissie), David, Michael, John Jacob (Jakie).

PHYLLIS (1880-1937) married Reginald (Reggie) Brooks November 1901; two children: Peter and David (Winkie); separated in 1912, divorced 1915. Married Robert Henry Brand (Bob) in 1917; three children: Virginia, Dinah, Jim.

WILLIAM (BUCK) (1886-1938) married Edith Forsyth; five children: Dabney, Phyllis, Harry, Keene, Douglas.

NORA (1889-1955) married Paul Phipps in 1909; two children: Joyce (later Grenfell) and Tommy; divorced 1931. Married Maurice Bennet Flynn ("Lefty") in 1932.

Other main characters, in the order that their names first appear in the book:

ALICE WINN (b. 1902), younger daughter of Lizzie.

BOB BRAND (ROBERT HENRY BRAND) (1878-1963), later 1st LordBrand of Eydon. Member of Milner's Kindergarten and the Round Table, economist and banker, married Phyllis in 1917. Grandfather of the author.

BOBBIE SHAW (ROBERT GOULD SHAW) (1898-1970), only son of Nancy and Robert ("Bob") Shaw of Boston.

CHARLES DANA GIBSON (1867-1944), artist and illustrator, creator of the Gibson Girl, married Irene in 1895.

DAVID ASTOR (b. 1912), Nancy and Waldorf's second son, later editor of the Observer.

DINAH BRIDGE (1920-1998), younger daughter of Phyllis; mother of the author.

HENRY DOUGLAS PENNANT (1876-1915), the "Captain." Soldier and trophy shooter, younger son of Baron Penrhyn.

JIM BRAND (1924-1945), only son of Phyllis and Bob Brand.

LEFTY FLYNN (1880-1950), former Yale football star, silent screen actor, and Nora's second husband.

MICHAEL ASTOR (1916-1980), Nancy and Waldorf's third son, author of Tribal Feeling.

MONCURE PERKINS (1861-1914), Lizzie's husband, father of Nancy Lancaster and Alice Winn.

NANCY LANCASTER (1897-1994), Lizzie's eldest daughter, gardener and decorator, who married (1) Henry Field, (2) Ronnie Tree, and (3) Juby Lancaster.

PAUL PHIPPS (1880-1953), Nora's first husband, father of Joyce Grenfell and Tommy Phipps.

PETER BROOKS (1902-1944), eldest son of Phyllis and her first husband, Reggie Brooks.

PHILIP KERR (1882-1940), later 11th Marquis of Lothian. Member of Milner's Kindergarten and the Round Table; British Ambassador to the United States, 1939-1940.

REGGIE BROOKS (1876-1945), Phyllis's first husband; father of Peter and Winkie Brooks.

WINKIE BROOKS (1910-1936), Phyllis's second son with Reggie Brooks.

WISSIE (PHYLLIS) ASTOR, later Countess of Ancaster (1909-1975), only daughter of Nancy and Waldorf.

Copyright © 2000 by James Fox

Table of Contents

Contents

The Cast of Characters

The Langhorne Family Tree

1 The Langhornes

2 Mr. Langhorne's Rock

3 Mrs. Langhorne's Violet Lunch

4 Mr. Shaw and Mr. Brooks

5 Going Back in the Boats

6 Nancy and the Astors

7 Nancy the Good

8 Conquering Society

9 The Marriage of Nora

10 The Returning Pilgrim

11 Phyllis and the Captain

12 Bright Young Men

13 Fly Sickness

14 Outbreak of War

15 Trenches

16 Dear Mr. Brand

17 The Men in the Room

18 Writing from School

19 The Right Honourable Nancy Astor, MP

20 Nancy the Ringmaster

21 The Boy Problem

22 Nora's Garden of Roses

23 Winkie and the Jazz Age

24 Nancy to Moscow, Bobbie to Jail

25 Papa Wants a Little Gun

26 Scott Fitzgerald's Intimate Strangers

27 A Shovel in the Post

28 Alone in the Universe

29 Cockburn's "Cliveden Set"

30 Fort Augustus

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Dominick Bunne

Oh, how I loved taking my time reading James Fox's book Five Sisters... The Langhorne sisters fascinated their contemporaries on two continents. Now one of the sister's grandsons has written their tales and shown us their world with enormous style.

Gloria Vanderbilt

James Fox drives us intimately into a domain of wealth, glamour, politics, and tragedy. One is bedazzled and withheld and ultimately bewitched by the relentless narcissism, selfishness, and cruelty of the amazing Langhorne sisters. A mesmerizing book.

Editorial Reviews

Lizzie, Irene, Nancy, Phyllis, and Nora Langhorne were born in Civil War-devastated Virginia, but the five sisters seem not to have suffered much from their youthful poverty. After their father recovered his wealth, the daughters went off to marry. Some of them did exceedingly well: Nancy wed Lord Waldorf Astor, considered the richest man in England. Espoused to artist Charles Dana Gibson, beautiful Irene became immortalized as the prototype of the Gibson Girl. Phyllis Langhorne, the author's grandmother, became the wife of a prominent European architect. The story of stay-at-home Lizzie and promiscuous Nora are no less engrossing. James Fox , who grew up in the mythos of this high-strung and notoriously clannish family, has culled thousands of personal documents to present a coherent image of his forebears.

Fox (White Mischief) turns to his family lore and newly discovered letters to bring the Langhorne sisters back into Anglo-American consciousness. Fox traces their lives from their Virginia births, to the dark days of post-Civil War poverty, to the years after their father made a fortune in railroads and they "came out" into New York and English society. And come out they did. Nancy became the most famous Langhorne after her marriage to Lord Waldorf Astor; as Lady Astor, she advocated for women's rights and became the first woman MP in Parliament. Irene, who married Charles Dana Gibson--creator of "The Gibson Girl"--won her own following as the embodiment of wholesome glamour for a generation. Phyllis, who remained in Virginia, presided over the family estate. With genius and grace, Fox tells their stories, revealing, along the way, the many sinews of culture that bound together the Anglo-American upper-class mystique. This book is what the English call "a rollicking good read" in every sense. For all public and academic libraries.--Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

At its best this volume reads like Pride and Prejudice as recast by Margaret Mitchell. The tale of these belles is a decidedly unpretty one, a stone-cold romance with a colossally selfish heroine at its center. Fox approaches it clearheadedly, prying life from artifice, blessedly free of the illusion that all family histories command happy endings.
—The New York Times Book Review

Schiff

Fox brings intimacy to these semi-public personalities, elevating a century's gossip and legend into absorbing history.

The New Yorker

Jay Strafford Richmond Times-Dispatch As a family history, Five Sisters is compellingly readable....As a portrait of a faded society, it is a social study at its best....The Langhornes come alive again in a book the reader will linger over, find ultimately moving, and finish with regret.

Stacy Schiff The New York Times Reads like Pride and Prejudice as recast by Margaret Mitchell.

Robert Skildelsky The New York Review of Books James Fox has written a psychological masterpiece....[he] has, with consummate artistry, constructed a work that is witty and sad, affectionate but just. It is impossible to put down. One wishes it would never end.

Sophy Burnham The Washington Times This book has everything everything: wealth, privilege, politics, and clandestine love affairs — the golden dance of goddesses and the slow, inexorable decline into tragedy.

Dominick Dunne Oh, how I loved taking my time reading James Fox's Five Sisters, absorbing the sort of dazzling details of privilege and class that made his White Mischief so utterly perfect. The Langhorne sisters fascinated their contemporaries on two continents. Now one of the sister's grandsons has written their tale and shown us their worlds with enormous style.

John Richardson The most fascinating chronicle of American highlife I have ever read. James Fox deftly steers us from Margaret Mitchell country, via Henry James's New York and London, to a wonderful Evelyn Waugh-ish finale that is sad and grand and raffish.

Houston Chronicle Fox has wrestled all the Langhorne myths into coherent whole and shaped them into a rich and instructive portrait of a family and an era.

Gloria Vanderbilt James Fox draws us intimately into a domain of wealth, glamour, politics, and tragedy. One is bedazzled and repelled and ultimately bewitched by the relentless narcissism, selfishness, and cruelty of the amazing Langhorne sisters. A mesmerizing book.

Charlottte Grey The Toronto Sun A compelling portrait of high life in the most glamorous era of the British Empire....A wonderful story.

London Observer [Five Sisters] is not just a study of a family, or of an age, it is a living, breathing re-creation of a singular way of life....Fox has done more than create a monument to his family — he has captured a fading impression and made it flow. The Langhornes are alive again.

From the Publisher