An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew

by Annejet van der Zijl

the Methodists built the Chautauqua Institution, a kind of permanent summer colony created to promote all sorts of edifying subjects, such as art, science, religion, patriotism, and education.

A fellow heir to a fortune, William K. Vanderbilt, would once comment with a remarkable display of self-knowledge how difficult life was when your father had achieved everything humanly possible and had left you, despite his millions, without any space to do anything meaningful yourself.

For the Victorians, fate was simply something to be borne, and that is what she did, without complaining.

“Take life as easy as you can,”

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, neither is it the most intelligent that survives. It is the most adaptable to change.”