“Did you know that Rudyard Kipling wroteThe Jungle Bookhere?” Cornelia asked.
Edith searched her mind, which was racing. “I don’t think I did.”
Cornelia caught her mother’s eye in the mirror. “Are you nervous?”
Edith laughed. Did women in their early fifties still get nervous? She supposed so. “I don’t think nervous is the word for it. Anticipatory, maybe?”
“Tired is probably more like it,” Cornelia said, yawning. “I don’t know why you two insisted on getting married so frightfully early in the morning when we’re all still adjusting to the time change.”
Edith smiled sarcastically. Her daughter knew full well they were getting married so early this morning in an attempt to dodge the press. “I simply could not wait one more moment to become a Gerry,” she said.
“While I,” Cornelia responded, “would have loved nothing more than to have remained a Vanderbilt forever.”
Edith rolled her eyes.
“It’s a shame you aren’t going to wear the family veil,” Cornelia quipped, lounging on her mother’s bed as Edith stood in front of the mirror, fussing with her collar. They both laughed, as that would have been terribly inappropriate for a second wedding.
“Can you imagine the headlines?” Edith asked, rolling her eyes.
Edith smiled, sweet memories of her first wedding day washing over her. She cleared her throat and Cornelia sat up, alarmed at the tears that had come to her mother’s eyes. “Oh, Mother, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. I know how special the veil is to you.”
Edith smiled through her tears, thinking of the veil that linked her to her mother, sisters, and daughter. All of a sudden, going into a new marriage without it made her feel terribly alone. “This was always going to be a difficult day, but I will try to make it a happy one, too,” she said.
Cornelia got up off the bed and opened her mother’s generous traveling trunk, which Emma hadn’t completely unpacked. She ranher fingers across the paint that spelled out the initialsE.S.D. Her mother’s original traveling trunk, from her days as a Dresser girl, was still perfectly intact. Cornelia selected a chic felt hat from atop the purple velvet–lined shelf. Then, just as her mother had done for her only last year, she placed the final touch for the day on her head.
“Ten-twenty-two is the most perfect wedding date I can imagine,” Cornelia said. “It is a date that can’t help but manifest dreams into reality. And here we are.”
Edith tried to stop the alarm bells in her head from clanging—she was none too thrilled with this numerology nonsense Cornelia had found an interest in. It wasn’t uncommon for women of their set to travel often, to set up homes in multiple places, but Edith didn’t feel that Cornelia’s New York friends—her artist set—were the best influence. Still, could a little silliness with numbers be harmful? Well, Reverend Swope, Edith’s—and George’s at one point—most trusted spiritual advisor was concerned. But, wanting to keep the peace, and knowing Cornelia would do what she wanted regardless, Edith took the bait. “And why is that?”
“The combination of one, zero, and a pair of twos means that you are going to be very happy in love. And twenty-two is a powerful indicator of cooperation and balance in a relationship,” Cornelia said as she adjusted the hat on her mother’s head.
In spite of herself, Edith smiled. Itdidmake her feel a little better that the numbers were on her side, whatever that meant.
“There,” Cornelia said, admiring her mother. “All set formeto walkyoudown the aisle.”
When mother and daughter pulled up to the register office less than half an hour later, Peter looked every bit the senator in his refinedderby hat and overcoat. “I’m not going to waste time taking my coat off, you know,” he said as he kissed his bride hello. “I’m not living one more minute not married to you.”
Sweet words from a man whom she truly adored. Edith had waited all morning for thoughts of George to flood her mind, for her sadness to throw her happiness off track. She had even warned Peter of the possibility. And, in true Peter form, he had said the most perfect thing in response: “Dearest Edi, if you weren’t sad for the first man you shared a name with on the day you took mine, I wouldn’t be marrying you. Your kind heart, your willing spirit, and your unfailing empathy are your best qualities. I will gladly share you with the one who came before me if that means that I get to have your hand and at least half your heart.”
Part of the allure of Peter was that Edith had no reason to doubt his motives for their partnership other than pure, unadulterated love. He was vastly wealthier than she, cared little to ever step foot on the Biltmore property unless it was for her pleasure, and was several years her junior. She couldn’t say the same for any of her previous suitors.
And now, he was going to be all hers for the rest of their lives. A few minutes later, at 8:50 a.m. on October 22, 1925, they pulled it off: Edith Dresser Vanderbilt became Edith Dresser Vanderbilt Gerry. She might have a new last name, but she would remain a Vanderbilt, always. And, as Peter and Edith stepped outside for the first time as spouses, Edith felt more grateful and blessed than she had in some time.
She felt happy on the ride to the Chapel of the Savoy, where she and Peter, now that they were married in the eyes of the government, would be joined together in the eyes of God. Edith had changed into a velvet coat trimmed in sable for the occasion, andafter reaching her destination, was now holding her eight-month-old grandson, George, who was gleefully grasping at the fur. Standing in the doorway of the church, studying the vivid blue quatrefoil ceiling and black-and-white-tiled floor, Edith smiled at her beautiful daughter.
“Can you imagine that men and women have stood in this same spot taking these very vows since the 1500s?” she asked Cornelia.
She looked proudly at the beautiful daughter who would walk her down the aisle, the daughter that she adored so fully, that George had understood so well. Edith and Cornelia looked alike and dressed alike, rode horses and fished alike. But it was George who had understood her creative side, her artistic whims, her penchant for wanderlust.
“It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Cornelia asked. “It makes me realize how very new America truly is.”
George cooed, and Edith kissed his sweet, fragrant head. Looking into his wide eyes, she was surprised to find that it wasn’t her husband, their wedding day, or even the wedding veil of her ancestors that she suddenly felt nostalgic for. It was her daughter, or, at least, the baby she had been, the girl she used to be.
Edith smiled at her grandson, his cherubic face, for a moment, morphing into her daughter’s on August 22, 1900, the warm and lovely day on which Cornelia arrived. It was said that the world had a new richest baby. Cornelia had usurped the position from her own cousin, John Nicholas Brown II. Edith had prayed briefly that that wasn’t the headline the newspapers chose and had said so to her husband.
“No, no,” George reassured his wife, sitting at the end of the bed in the red and gold Louis XV suite. He gazed adoringly at hisperfect new daughter, who was swaddled in his protective, fatherly arms. “With Cornelia’s beauty, grace, and health, no one will even be thinking about money. They will proclaim her the world’s brightest baby, the most beautiful—”
“The most adored?” Edith chimed in, smiling at her husband, who broke his gaze with his new daughter long enough to smile back at her.
