title: The Lakewood Story
author: Margaret Manor Butler
description: NY 1949 1st Stratford House. Town of Lakewood in Chautauqua county, southwestern corner of New York. Signed presentation copy. 271pp., photo illus., index. VG, no DJ.
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  Prologue
  
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  “Through this atmosphere of torrid splendor moved wan beings as richly
  upholstered as the furniture, beings without definite pursuits or permanent
  relations, who drifted on a languid tide of curiosity…  
  Somewhere behind them, in the background of their lives, there was doubtless a
  real past, yet they had no more real existence than the poet’s shades in
  limbo.”  
  Edith Wharton, from The House of Mirth
  
  Kilberry Manor
  
  Newport, Rhode Island
  
  June 1886
  
  The wedding ball of Katherine Preston to Mr. Frederick Hayes of Boston was the
  first social event to be held at Kilberry Manor, the newest of the Newport
  summer ‘cottages’, since its completion just three months before. The guests
  for the ball numbered five hundred and seventy-two, nearly a hundred more than
  originally invited, making it by far the grandest single social event in the
  history of the social register. It was most certainly guaranteed to be t