Last week, Scott and I went to visit my mother and stepfather in Rock Hill, South Carolina to celebrate my stepfathers 80th Birthday. We drove the whole way from Michigan and it took about 14 hours to get there. We were with my nephew, Steven Ryerson and his wife Lacy Hall Ryerson. We enjoyed moms wonderful cooking and had a wonderful time. That Sunday, Steven and Lacy had to return home to Virginia Beach and I have to admit that it was very nice seeing that part of my family. I haven’t seen Steven since 2004, and before that, since he was a little kid, the year itself is rather lost to my foggy memories. I’ve missed out on all of my nephew and nieces lives as children and now know them as adults. It’s quite akin to the feeling you have when a soap opera character you knew as a child has become a young adult in just two seasons. Wow they grow up fast!
That Monday, we all awoke early and loaded into the car and headed to Asheville, North Carolina, about two hours northwest of Rock Hill. We arrived at the Biltmore Estate, which was built in 1895 by George Washington Vanderbilt for his family.
Here is the main structure. To call it a home is rather inaccurate, it is a chateauesque castle! The building is immense and carries with it a presence of awesomeness that simply floods over you and overwhelms your senses. The grounds are impeccable, the building itself has been conserved amazingly well for its age and a majority of the contents have also been conserved (preserved?) expertly by the Vanderbilt family. It is a private residence still, and the fee is rather steep to gain access, an adult pass is $55 for the pleasure of wandering this amazing place, the buildings and the grounds. Upon entry from the front doors you are immediately inundated with the grand scale of it all, especially some of the interior,
This arboretum is where you land after first entering this castle. The room has a glass window cap which floods the entire area in natural daylight. There are hallways that stretch on in every direction from this central arboretum. Once you stop here, you proceed on to the main dining room, then on to the various rooms, bedrooms, and special purpose rooms that populate this castle. Amongst the first things you come across is the Loggia, which runs for a good portion of the rear length of the castle and is a covered overlook to the grounds that are behind Biltmore,
All that you see in this picture was planned. Every tree and shrubbery was put there by human hands. The designer of the landscape, Olmsted knew that the grounds would start with a human-meddling look to them, but he counted on the natural growth and development of this landscape to transform a forest-on-purpose to what looks like a natural forest that just happened to play out behind Biltmore and roll along under the Loggia. The entire property is 8000 acres so pretty much everything you see in the picture above is a part of Biltmore, and so was planned.
When we exited the Loggia, we proceeded through the various rooms and it is obvious that Vanderbilt money was considered inexhaustible. These are after all the royalty of America and they made sure their humble abode shined with every ounce of prize and finery. The library is breathtaking, with two floors joined by a carved wrought-iron spiral staircase and filled with built-into-the-wall bookshelves holding original works in eight languages. As you tour, the impressiveness rots through your mind like drain cleaner. There is so much here to see, so many treasures, so much history. It’s a lot like folding The Louvre Museum and Versailles together and smoothing it out in rural North Carolina.
As I passed through GW Vanderbilt’s bedroom it struck me just how much this “home” is built to overwhelm. It contains nothing that is ugly or unsightly. Everything here is a beautiful treasure, the carvings, the artwork, the tapestries, from the floor to the ceiling and quite often even the floor and ceiling are in and of themselves works of art. Knowing all this, seeing all this, knowing it was open to the public and for a fee you could tour this overwhelming monument to wealth, excess, and ultimately the deadly sin of greed it was both a breathtaking experience of beauty and a gut-wrenching filthy display of greed, vanity, and pride.
I was moved by the artwork, overwhelmed by the library and the dining room. By all the art loaded into this building and while walking through what is called the “Halloween Room” which is actually a part of the basement that was painted by the Vanderbilt children in Halloween motifs a new thought struck me. For all of the amazingness of it, for all the wonder and grandeur, and all the other words that indicate excess and stunning I was assailed by the lesson of Biltmore, for it does have one. That lesson is, “You cannot take it with you.” GW Vanderbilt is dead. He could not take his treasures with him. All the beautiful things that line this place are kept things. Yes, the Vanderbilt family still owns Biltmore, but it has evolved out of being a home and into being a spectacle. It’s a warehouse for sad objects that are kept, the beauty concentrated in this one place and stuffed behind an entrance fee for a for-profit management company.
I earlier made a connection between Biltmore and The Louvre. Both are palaces, grand chateauesque castles. One of them is in the new world and one in the old world. There is a fundamental difference, The Louvre honors what it keeps and is open to the public for the betterment of everyone who visits. Biltmore keeps what it keeps and is open to the public, and benefits the rich family who maintains it. Both are gilded cages for beautiful things, except one shines just a little bit brighter.
In the blazing light of excess and splendor it struck me right between the eyes, the inanity of keeping things. Yes, all of what is in Biltmore is beautiful, impeccably conserved, and it contains many wonderful things, but it in the end turns the stomach. Too much sweetness and wonder all gathered up becomes saccharine and sickening. The flood of overwhelming beauty keeps a lot of this sickness out of your mind while you are actually there, exposed to it all. Eventually when you come down from the high and begin to think about the why and wherefore behind what you experienced, only then do you feel your skin crawl, and then the shame sets upon you. Or at least it did to me. In 1895, and for the intervening years until 1930 this place, Biltmore, was the private residence of people who one could argue fully realized a kind of American Dream.
The Vanderbilts didn’t really earn their vast sums. Many of them inherited their fortunes. This took the vigor out of the family, sapped them of fight, strength, and in many ways, it also sapped them of honor. Yes they were wealthy beyond thought, but they were too comfortable, too couched. Too much. It wasn’t that any of them actually had to start from rags, they stood on a giant moneymaking machine and rode it through to the start of the 20th Century. This Biltmore Estate is a testament to a kind of gut-wrenching disgustingness. All the beautiful things jailed to die very long deaths of monomaniacal keeping. It wasn’t until the cork of the West fell out of the bottom during the Great Depression did the Vanderbilt family decide that Biltmore should be made open to the public. I can only imagine back in 1930, with all the unemployment and all the hungry people, in the face of all that suffering that it had to make their stomachs do backflips when they sat in the Tapestry Room, looking out the windows, past the Loggia, to the 8000 acres of planned woodland. Then they did the only thing they could bear to do with their deep guilt, and that is secure the property and open it up and let the rank and file proles wander through. A little scrap, and an even more abstracted version of “You cannot take it with you”, for as the Vanderbilts died and couldn’t take Biltmore with them, the lame proles who wander through like cattle can’t really take what they see with them, except in their memories.
But for all of this lofty talk, there is more to show. Of course, what castle would be complete without statuary?
During our visit to Biltmore, another hallmark of American Plenty was on display. Tiffany and Company had a display of some of their lamps:
And finally, one last parting glance at Biltmore:
It is a beautiful place, the Vanderbilts should be thanked for preserving such a thing and all the wonders it contains. Most of my comments come from a very deep place that finds this kind of excess troubling. While the Vanderbilts wanted for nothing and arguably couldn’t even get rid of their money if they wanted to, there were millions of others who were clustered around cookfires and standing in long lines looking for work and struggling with the ache in their empty stomachs, while people like the Vanderbilts went for a swim in their indoor lit-and-heated swimming pool. The disparity leads to despair, at least for me. How much good could have been done if Biltmore wasn’t built, but the funds that might have gone into it and all the things in it went to feeding the teeming masses of unemployed hungry? How can anyone with a straight face declare that obnoxious wealth is defensible when there are hungry children clustering around cookfires with their unemployed parents? It’s the heartache of the liberals. This place, Biltmore, is a shining example of why I hate rich people with every single fiber of my being. So wealthy that life lacks any challenge, then faced with people who know nothing but challenge? The question comes in my mind: “How dare you!” and this I like to think will drive the coming conflict between the rich and poor in the coming years. Like all inequalities, it will be resolved with time and suffering. At least Biltmore will stand, perhaps as a place to conserve beautiful things, and maybe as a symbol of wretched excess and the hazards of allowing greed to overwhelm humanity.
