The Lady and the Forest

Admit it: you’ve always wanted to live in a castle.

Me, too, of course…we all read history in part to imagine ourselves rich and living in a large, staffed home. To feed the fantasy, this month we seek to explore America’s largest private residence, Biltmore House, through Denise Kiernan’s The Last Castle. The book turns out to be a curious tome: Kiernan tells her tale through the lady of the manor, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser Vanderbilt, with a strong supporting performance by the Pisgah National Forest. The result is entertaining, if slight: frankly, any other month of the year it would not have passed our muster. But this is summer vacation, the mountains are beautiful, and the air is fresh…we might as well look around and see the sights.

Mainly the sight to be seen is Biltmore House. It’s hard to miss. Even today it remains the largest residence in the United States, clocking in at 178,926 square feet; it exceeds its next-largest competitor, Lynnewood Hall in Pennsylvania, by 68,926 square feet. That difference alone is the size of The Breakers, the largest and grandest of the famed Newport “cottages” …so in Biltmore we’re talking a honking big house. It was built by George Washington Vanderbilt II, grandson of “Commadore” Vanderbilt, made enormously wealthy by the railroads. The house was a star production: it was designed by Richard Morris Hunt and the extensive grounds were landscaped by Frederick Law Olmsted. It is sited in western North Carolina, in the Appalachian Mountains, near the French Broad River, which flows through the estate. George created the name, Biltmore, as an homage to his family name, originally spelled Van der Bilt, and “more” as in, “moor,” a heath…Western North Carolina is heavily Scotch-Irish.

Two other details: improbably for the American South, the house is in the style of a French château. And it was built by a bachelor.

Yes, I did say bachelor. Kiernan opens the book with George Vanderbilt’s wife-to-be, Edith, but she does not enter the Vanderbilt orbit until after Biltmore was constructed and decorated. (Hmm.) Edith’s lineage was old New York society, through the Fish and Stuyvesant families, but she and her siblings were orphaned early and raised by their maternal grandmother. Although they enjoyed an upscale life (moving into and out of New York City for the “season,” for example), they had relatively little money by society standards. Certainly their means were modest compared to the Vanderbilts, who were socially nouveau, but oh so rich.

George was the youngest of his siblings, several of whom built large houses of their own. The Breakers, mentioned above, was built by George’s brother, Cornelius II; Marble House, also in Newport, was built by another brother, William K. and his wife, Alva. Why, then, didn’t George just plop his big house down in Newport with the rest of the family? The answer Kiernan gives is that George was slight and easily affected by the cold, so he was unenthusiastic about building in Newport or the other “logical” alternative, Bar Harbor.

George first arrived in Asheville in 1888, traveling with his mother, who was looking to cure a case of malaria. (No, our author does not explain how a New York society matron found herself with malaria.) George fell in love with the region and specifically with Mt. Pisgah, part of the Blue Ridge. He decided to build there, with a view of Pisgah, and started buying land piecemeal to avoid driving up prices. He ultimately amassed 125,000 acres…with a single hold-out, a small lot and cabin owned by one Charles Collins, a former slave, who would not sell at any price. Predictably, the locals sold trinkets showing, “The house Vanderbilt couldn’t buy.” The man finally sold to Vanderbilt in 1905, for about a fifth of what he was originally offered…such is the price of fame.

It was early on, when he held a mere 2,000 acres, that George involved Hunt and Olmsted. Kiernan tells us the three were socially connected, which they undoubtedly were. Hunt, Biltmore’s architect, had already designed several mansions for the Vanderbilt family, in addition to public structures in and around New York. Olmsted was famous for designing and constructing Central Park in New York and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. He, too, had done work for the Vanderbilt family. George was bookish and had several male, intellectual friends including his very close cousin, Clarence. The book does not explore just how deep these friendships were: for Hunt and Olmsted, a sufficiently rich client is always one’s friend. Clarence seems to have been closer to him, although it is about him that we read the least. George later immortalized each man at his death with a stained-glass window in All Souls Episcopal Cathedral, the church Hunt designed and George raised at Biltmore.

Biltmore was conceived as more than just the house itself. The plan (seemingly proposed by Olmsted) was to mimic large English country homes or French châteaux as profit-making agricultural enterprises. The forest was to be scientifically managed (a mantra for Kiernan), the house dairy sold products to the public, a workers’ village was constructed (Pullman and other employers were doing the same thing, of course), and an Arts and Crafts collective, Biltmore Industries, was established.

Construction on the scale of Biltmore drew attention. Locals claimed that soon everything in sight would be named “Biltmore,” even the nearby hamlet of Best, N.C. All of which came to pass.

As the house neared completion, the society pages began to buzz about the estate and its opening. George was 35 and “remained a resolute bachelor displaying little inclination that he would change his status anytime soon.” Just what, the columnists wondered aloud, did a bachelor intellectual, in his mid-thirties, “with no racehorses and no chorus girls” need with an enormous estate? It is a question that posits its own answer…the man may, just may, have been gay. And just when you think our author is set to “out” the man…

In rushes Edith Dresser, to save the day.

Society heaved a sigh of relief, and our author seems to breathe easier as well. Edith and George met on a transatlantic crossing to Paris. It was a meeting specifically engineered by George’s older sisters. George and Edith quickly became an item in the society pages and married after a brief engagement. They held the ceremony in Paris on June 2, 1898, and toured Europe on their honeymoon. Upon their return, the new couple installed themselves at Biltmore, which Edith had not yet seen. George had opened the house for Christmas in 1895, with a party for his family. Edith found a house fully constructed, although with a few rooms yet to receive their finishes. Her own bedroom (we shall come back to the bedroom situation) was already decorated for her, which the author seems to see as an affront…it does have the feel that Edith was the last, needed, bit of furniture. And after ten months, a baby girl, Cornelia Stuyvesant Vanderbilt, appeared on the scene. She was born in the big house, and her arrival predictably generated a great deal of local interest…theoretically, she was one of the richest people in town.

It is at this point in the volume that George largely exits the scene, taking on the silent role of Checkbook and Sperm Donor.

Harsh but true, Kiernan’s focus on Edith largely writes George out of the picture. The difficulty is that we see Edith only from the outside, we get little first-hand insight into her logic or emotions. Edith seemed to have liked Biltmore well enough, and she did take a genuine interest in Biltmore Industries, the Arts and Crafts workshop. (She wore garments from cloth that was homespun on the estate…but Edith was no Ghandi: she had the homespun cut and fit as couture.) A quick look at sources explains the disconnect. Kiernan does not footnote, but she does give us a list of source material for each chapter. From it we find much information sourced from newspapers, society page items that give us a quick, static image before moving on to the next: “Mrs. Vanderbilt wears homespun,” “Mrs. Vanderbilt gives out awards,” that sort of thing. It was, as our author reminds us, a generation who burned their private papers late in life, rather than trying to publish them. But between George’s exit and the snapshot images of Edith, our understanding of their lives is flat.

Shortly after their marriage George suffered business setbacks: first a trust investment gone sour, and then the financial Panic of 1907. Kiernan does not quantify the extent of either loss (there are precious few numbers anywhere in the book), but points to a resulting downturn in the lumber market as the chief source of grief for Biltmore. The couple bought a (much smaller) house in Washington, D.C., and moved their primary residence there, returning to Biltmore for the occasional Christmas or other celebration. It was cheaper that way, although just how much cheaper remains a mystery.

George had the ill fortune to die young, at the age of 51, in 1914, of a heart attack following an appendectomy. He had even worse luck to die the year income tax came into force.

Cornelia inherited Biltmore House; her mother inherited nearly everything else. This resulted in a great deal of income, and a great tax burden. Edith had the sense to retain her husband’s advisors, and the good luck that those advisors were sound. By 1917 she and they had sold off Pisgah Forest to the government, and Biltmore Industries to a private concern. She finally sold Biltmore Village (retaining some lots for herself) in 1921. In 1925, Edith married Peter Gerry, Senator from Rhode Island…you know of him, although you may not realize it: he’s the guy who fiddled election district boundaries to remain in office, giving us the term, “gerrymandering.” It may not have been a step down for Edith…the Vanderbilts themselves were not necessarily beacons of morality in business.

Meanwhile Biltmore House and its immediate grounds (8,000 acres…just so the house didn’t look out of scale) remained. Cornelia received a “finishing” education in D.C., which she left early to marry The Honorable John “Jack” Francis Amherst Cecil. English, the son of a lord and a baroness, descended on his father’s side from Elizabeth I’s lord treasurer and chief minister, Lord Burleigh. Good blood, no mention of money. Cornelia and Jack lived at Biltmore and produced two sons, George and William. When she turned 25, Cordelia gained control of the principal of the trust that had provided her (and Biltmore) income, and in 1930, Cordelia and Jack set Biltmore up as a corporation, with Cordelia the principal shareholder. They opened the doors to the public on March 15, 1930, as a money-making endeavor. All seemed well until Cordelia left her husband and children in 1934, moved to New York, dyed her hair fuchsia, and changed her name to “Nilcha.” Jack continued to live at Biltmore, raising his children there; Biltmore continues to run under the direction of one of Jack’s grandsons. Cordelia ultimately wound up in England, first the mistress of an artist, then remarried. By the time she died (leaving an estate of something over $2 million) she had taken the name “Mary.”

Thoroughly Modern Millie, indeed.

The Last Castle is an enjoyable read, but in the end it does not do justice to either Edith or George. Kiernan tries to cast Edith in the contemporary mold of an active woman involved in the world, which is a mistake…or at least is not borne out by the action reported in the book. Edith had grabbed the gold ring (literally, in matrimony) and was able to engage the world only to the extent that she wanted or that duty required; the rest of the time was hers to enjoy. Don’t condescend: it’s the life you and I fantasize about as we buy a lottery ticket. As to George, houses speak volumes about the men who build them, but we’re left with only vague impressions of the man, and no understanding of how he made the money that made Biltmore — and his family’s lives — possible.

It was fifty years ago this month that the young student Curmudgeon first toured Biltmore, and found the place satisfactory, in general. With due respect to Biltmore’s PR department, the most striking room in the house is not the dining hall (seats 64, for intimate entertaining) or the palm court (bring a machete). It is the master bedroom. This room is just for George, Edith had her own bedroom, half the size, the two separated by a (very) large sitting room. George’s bedroom is large and oval, with dark, polished mahogany and deep-red upholstered furnishings, and the walls of the room are covered in pure, pale yellow silk. In the summer sun the walls glittered with a near-crystalline sheen; by firelight, the entire room would have glowed with the warmth of metallic gold itself.

One word formed on the Curmudgeon’s young lips:

Queen.

It was one of my first adult, fully-formed assessments. I stand by it still.