Marion Graves Anthon Fish (June 8, 1853 – May 25, 1915), often referred to as Mamie Fish or Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, was an American socialite and self-styled "fun-maker" of the Gilded Age. She and her husband, Stuyvesant Fish, maintained stately homes in New York City and Newport, Rhode Island.
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Early life
Marion ("Mamie") Graves Anthon, as she was called, was born in the vicinity of Grimes Hill, New York, which at the time may have been known as Castleton Heights, in Castleton, New York. At the time this was a town in Richmond County, New York. That area, along with the rest of Richmond County of Staten Island, later became part of New York City.
She was the daughter of Sarah Attwood Meert and General William Henry Anthon, a successful lawyer and Staten Island assemblyman, who served during the Civil War. Her paternal grandfather was the jurist John Anthon. Mamie was of Dutch, English, French and German ancestry. She grew up on Irving Place in Manhattan and received only a rudimentary education and, by her own admission, could barely read and write.
Society hostess
Fish ruled as one of the so-called Triumvirate of American Gilded Age society (the "Four Hundred"), along with Alva Vanderbilt Belmont and Tessie Oelrichs. By virtue of her quick wit and sharp tongue, she became a notable leader of high society - in New York City at her townhouse at 25 East 78th Street; at her stately home Glenclyffe in Philipstown, New York; and at her mansion Crossways in Newport, Rhode Island. Grandees attending her dinner parties would be greeted with the occasional insult, "Make yourself perfectly at home, and believe me, there is no one who wishes you there more heartily than I do." One man was greeted with "Oh, how do you do! I had quite forgotten I asked you!"