Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty

by Anderson Cooper

For, as William Dean Howells once noted, “Inequality is as dear to the American heart as liberty itself,” and it is only a step from this to arrive at something which passes muster for a Society definition of America: that all men may be born equal but most of us spend the better part of our born days in trying to be as unequal as we can. —Cleveland Amory, Who Killed Society?

I do recall, however, that for weeks after our visit, I was convinced that all grandparents turned into statues when they died.

Whether a servant or the host or some other member of the family sees a guest to the door, the door is never closed until the guest is actually underway, by foot or by car. —Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette: A Guide to Gracious Living, Part III, “Home Entertaining” [1952]

The Breakers is the grandest and most opulent of Newport’s Gilded Age mansions, and it remains the most popular tourist attraction in the state of Rhode Island.

trompe l’oeil

At first blush, a tour of The Breakers might feel like roaming the halls of an American Versailles, if all we notice is the grandeur and expense. But roaming Versailles’s Hall of Mirrors in sneakers, taking pictures with abandon, is a revolutionary act—after all, the French palace, once a center of government and divine-right power, was seized by the people and never given back. The Breakers was the center of attention, the center of fame, and the center of envy without being a center of power. The house stands as a temple to excess.

The people who first come to virgin country usually arrive as workers, for every hand is needed, living facilities are at a premium, and there is little if any of the leisure or money necessary for the immediate development of an aristocracy. That is why all old American families such as mine have strong and simple roots here. —Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette, Introduction

No one could believe that the man who controlled one out of every twenty American dollars in circulation at that time could actually, finally die.

nascitur non fit;

acceptance into society, one must be at least three generations removed from whoever’s hands had been dirtied in the making of money.

each of them a frippery of fripperies.

“In the hidden reaches where memory probes,” Consuelo would write, much later in her life, “lie sorrows too deep to fathom.”

The woman whose single-minded drive to work for women’s equality and who was motivated by her deep-seated, unapologetic contempt for Black people was enshrined in American history by the country’s first Black president, Barack Obama.

noblesse oblige?

“They know the cost of everything and the value of nothing,”

“Love Is All,”

Money bought beautiful things, and those beautiful things made her feel safe, secure, clear . . . until they didn’t and were relegated to the storage vault.

“So many, and then there’s no one left but oneself. Then one knows it’s only the long walk of the blood—one’s children—that endure.”