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| Not a bad view: from a terrace at Biltmore House, the mountains. If I'm not mistaken, the highest peak, on the right side of the photo farther back than most of the mountains, is Mount Pisgah |
Anyone know who
“bilt” it? Well, take the first syllable of the name, de-capitalize it and place
it after the first two syllables of prominent American family name and you’ll
have it – Vanderbilt. George Washington Vanderbilt to be exact, grandson of
Cornelius, the self-made man who went from running a small ferry service to
become one of the richest men in the world, making his fortune first in ships
and shipping, then in the railroads which took the shipped goods cross-country.
Cornelius the industrialist tycoon (and probably ruthless and corrupt fellow as
well) was dubious about the talents of his son William (George’s father),
but William excelled instead in the financial world and further increased the
family earnings. By the time George came along, while there might have been
something along those lines he might have done, he had two older brothers who
ran the family business. In naming him George Washington his father might have
dreamed his son would become president. Hell, he could probably afford to BUY
his son the presidency! But instead George turned to culture and art
collecting.
I first pictured
him as one of those wealthy Americans who go abroad, throw money around and act
boorishly or naively (or
both), who encounter all things Europe including of
course the people of Europe who either fall for them or despise them or use
them (or all three). The brief bits I read (in good old Wikipedia mostly)
and heard (from the audio tour at the Biltmore house) about George reminded me
of a character in novels by Henry James or Edith Wharton. Both in fact were
guests at Biltmore – heigh-ho, the Gilded Age!
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| George Vanderbilt, painted by John Singer Sargent |
Whilst in Europe
(do you like the “whilst?” Henry James did, and Dottore Gianni does) young
George bought and bought and bought, amassing a huge collection of arts and crafts.
He was forced to, because he had built/bilt the largest privately owned house
in America, and he had to fill it with something!
Actually, from
my visit to Biltmore and further reading I realized that George had better
taste than many of his fellow Americans who raided Europe for its arts, such
as, for
example, John Ringling. Ringling and his brothers merged their circus
with that of Barnum and Bailey to produce “the greatest show on earth.” And
Ringling made a fortune from it. He and his wife traveled extensively through
Europe, and as Vanderbilt had before him, bought and bought and bought what grew into I
would kindly characterize as a gigantic “eclectic” collection of…well, just
about anything. Art, of course, as well as decorative arts & trinkets, as
well as theatres, hell, even whole cities! Actually I lie about the last, but
not about the penultimate. Part of the Ringling Museum (have you been there?
Sarasota Florida? Dottore Gianni has, of course) consists of an eighteenth
century theatre from a town in northern Italy called Asolo, which Ringling liked,
bought, had it completely dismantled shipped it to the U.S. and re-mantled
(???) it at Sarasota. I shouldn’t knock Ringling, as he did buy some impressive
work, but then he also bought a lot of junk.
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| Nothing to do with Ringling, but a favorite Sargent painting of mine at Biltmore, of George's cousin Mrs Walter Baker, looking saucy in costume! |
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| One group of tourists - I thought at first they were historical re-enactors, but no, the were just eccentrics who dressed in the style of the Gilded Age - were visiting the same day I was |
But George was,
much like Dottore Gianni, a perpetual student. He read philosophy and studied
foreign languages, becoming fluent in eight of them. His family had its own
home in Paris, and George took advantage of it on several occasions. If the
Biltmore House is pretentious (and to a point it is) it is not in my opinion
tacky as is Ringling’s. And it was bilt/built thirty years before the Ringling
house, Biltmore in 1895, the Ringling in 1924. I imagine that Ringling might
well have seen Biltmore on his travels across America. If that’s the case, it’s
too bad he didn’t learn more from it.
Whereas
Ringling’s house is based on the Gothic palazzo in Venice, George Vanderbilt
chose French chateaux as models for Biltmore. And he hired one of the finest and
most
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| A closer look at the architect's work |
influential American architects of the era, Richard Morris Hunt, to design
it. Hunt studied art in Paris and was rewarded in his efforts by being the
first American admitted to the school of architecture at the École des
Beaux-Arts. He worked on renovations for the Louvre, and designed a new
pavilion for it. When he returned to the U.S. with prestigious credits from
France he established the first
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| Sargent's portrait of Hunt |
American school of architecture and the
American Institute of Architects. He was very influential on younger architects
as well, including Louis Sullivan. Probably his best-known work in America is
his elegant design for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he also designed the
pedestal for the Statue of Liberty and several brilliant private homes,
including the Marble House and the Breakers, both in Newport, Rhode Island, as
well as Biltmore. If you take the tour of the house one of the many paintings
that will be pointed out by the audio guide is that of Hunt, painted shortly
before the architect’s death by the great John Singer Sargent.
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| Grounds, and beyond gardens from the entrance of Biltmore |
Displayed in the
same room as the portrait of Hunt is a second painting by Sargent, this one of
the man responsible for the gardens and grounds of Biltmore. Again, Vanderbilt
chose well in naming Frederick Law Olmstd, often thought of as the father of
American landscape architecture. He was a prolific designer, but easily the
most famous and surely the most visited is that of Central Park, in New York
City. Thank the building gods for Olmstead, as without Central Park, New York
would be even less green than it does. In addition to being one of the finest
layouts for any park anywhere, it also functions as the “lungs” of Manhattan.
Of course Olmsted’s gardens at Biltmore, which include those in the French and
English styles, are barren in mid-January, so I did not receive full effect
from them, but they are, I am told, an appropriate complement to Hunt’s French
Renaissance architecture.
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| Sargent's portrait of Olmsted |
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| Garden on the left side of the house as you face it - not much now, but in the spring...? |
George married
well. Edith Stuyvesant Dresser was a descendent of Peter Stuyvesant, first
governor of colonial
New Amsterdam, later, when the British took it over, named
New York. The couple were “progressives” socially, and if not exactly Bill and
Melinda Gates, engaged in a fair share of philanthropic works. Edith sponsored
literacy programs and educational initiatives, and both husband and wife were
ardent conservationists. George ran Biltmore as a self-sustaining estate, and
its forest was the first professionally managed forest in the U.S. In 1898 the
Biltmore School of Forestry, was created. also the first of its kind in the U.S. After George’s
death in 1914, Edith sold 85,000 acres of Biltmore property to the federal
government, which formed a significant part of the Pisgah National Forest.
Don’t worry, today the estate retains 8,000 of what was once a 125,000 acre
property.
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| Edith Vanderbilt, painted by Giovanni Boldini |
So while I came
to Biltmore thinking to see a Versailles “wannabee” and have a good laugh at
the very rich (who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald noted), “are different from you and
me,” I have gradually become fairly impressed with George, Edith and Biltmore.
The highlights
of the extensive tour, for me and Dottore Gianni, were the paintings, not just
by John Singer Sargent (at least four of his were on view) but also two by
Renoir
(which are placed in a spot rather distant from the areas tourists are
allowed to step through), several prints by Claude Lorrain, and paintings by
James McNeil Whistler, from whom George commissioned six paintings, two of
which hang in the National Gallery of Art. The two became quite good friends as
well. Unfortunately, the audio tour
pointed out none of the Whistlers, and I wonder if I passed by any, not knowing
they were painted by one of my favorite American painters (along with Sargent).
Upon reading a guide to the house on line – if you’d like to have a look, here
is the link:
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| Edith Vanderbilt, painted by Whistler |
http://www.romanticasheville.com/Biltmore/biltmoreguide.pdf
– I discovered that indeed at least one Whistler (a portrait of Edith
Vanderbilt) is on view, but as noted above, the audio guide did not mention it, and I missed it.
Brief sidebar on the quality of the audio guide: While
it was a very detailed tour, Dottore Gianni found that it stinted on the
historical/cultural aspect of Biltmore, as does the website for the estate. It seemed to
the good doctor that more might have been said about Hunt and Olmsted
certainly, and also more about some of the works of art we passed. I read in
Wikipedia that among the objects in the house is a chess set owned by Napoleon,
but neither audio guide nor the website mentioned it, though it was mentioned
in the romantic asheville website (see above). The chess set is not of vital importance perhaps, but certainly it’s a point of interest. Ah well! There you
have it! No one (except perhaps Dottore Gianni) is perfect!
The Louis XV and
Louis XVI rooms are impressive, as is the four-storey chandelier in the stair
tower, which as you may
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| The ornate Stair Tower, from the outside |
guess is where the main circular staircase is housed. I
found the Winter Garden, which one sees immediately upon entering, quite
lovely. Next to it is what is very likely an impressive banqueting hall, but on
my visit much of it was covered in scaffolding for restoration, which is
understandable but unfortunate. The library, which houses 10,000 volumes –
George was apparently a voracious reader – is very nice indeed – a room in
which the good doctor finds he could spend some time. Of course he cannot. The
very rich are different from him and me. On the ceiling of the library is a
painting by
Pellegrini, The Chariot of Aurora, taken from the Pisani Palace in
Venice. In addition to collecting books and paintings (and painters) George
also had a passion for prints, etchings and engravings, amassing more than
1,600, many of which are on display here. I noticed two that I immediately
recognized in the billiard room (men only, thank you very much!), portraits of
the English playwrights William Wycherley, the Restoration rogue who wrote one
of the naughtiest comedies of that ere, The
Country Wife, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, who, writing 100 years later,
emulated Wycherley and the other Restoration writers skilled in comedies of
manners in his own works, including The
Rivals and The School for Scandal
– a well-placed juxtaposition! There are also some beautiful sixteenth century
Flemish tapestries on display in a room called, Oddly enough, the Tapestry
Room.
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| Pellegrini on the ceiling of the library |
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| The side of the house, from a terrace on the left side of it |
Well, enough of
the house, which I highly recommend if you can afford the steep price of
entrance to the Biltmore Estate, $50 per person. Dottore Gianni certainly
cannot, which is why he is so grateful to his old friend and former boss, Bruce
Halverson (another Dottore), who gave him a free pass to the estate, handed out
to members of Biltmore (which Bruce and his wife Nancy are) in the slow season,
January and February.
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| The stables area at Biltmore, now shops and eateries |
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| The Stable Cafe at Biltmore |
Because of the
free pass, Dottore Gianni was also able to
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| My Brunswick stew, and tasty brew! |
splurge on lunch, which he et just
after the tour. There are several places to eat at the Biltmore house, all that
I saw in the area that once housed the stables. I chose the Stable Café, pricey
but VERY nice! The service was excellent, the best I’ve had since arriving in
South Carolina more than a year and a half ago, the beer (a pale ale
brewed especially by or for the estate) very tasty and the Brunswick stew
absolute Southern-style food heaven!
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| View of forest and mountains beyond Biltmore |
After lunch I
strolled around the grounds a bit, focused mostly on the backside of Biltmore
house, not so much for itself as for the view from it: hills filled with pine
trees, a waterway (probably the French Broad River, which flows through the
property) and behind them a lovely array of North Carolina mountains, Mount
Pisgah among them. One look and anyone can see why Vanderbilt chose to place
his large estate where he did.
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| A closer look at the mountains near Biltmore - taken with the zoom, it's a wee bit out of focus, but to my mind hauntingly beautiful |
Then I got into
the car – I should say that from the entrance of the estate to the house is a
slow 2 mile ride, and from the
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| From my car window, a quaint bridge across a waterway on the estate |
house through the rest of it to the exit another
two miles. On the carefully managed route from the house to the exit there are
many hiking and biking trails, some horse trails as well with an equestrian
center (special permission only for that) along with a deer park and a
“village” consisting of a few eateries, a winery and a gift shop or two. I
stopped at the last, above which is also an inn for those with the time,
inclination and cash to spend a night or two at this place. I had some time and
a little inclination, but no cash to speak of – for the third time (and the
third is the charm) “the very rich are different from you and me” and even the
slightly rich are different from Dottore Gianni!
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| The village, and above it the inn on the Biltmore Estate |
And that, saving
the drive home, was my day at Biltmore – elegant or wretchedly excessive? I
arrived certain that I would find it the latter, but I left with leanings
toward the former. Thus, a day well spent, thinks Dottore Gianni. And in these matters he is seldom wrong.
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| Dottore Gianni Vanderbilt, proud of his property |
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