“Oh! Is that why you were in New York last week? Tell me all about it. Let me pretend I went with you.”
“I wish you had. I stayed in the newly completed Waldorf Astoria. It was glorious.” She took a sip of tea. “Did I tell you Mother had leased our house in New York?”
Rose shook her head. Telling other friends these details might feel embarrassing. But Cornelia could always be honest with Rose.“And I finally rode down the 600 block of Fifth Avenue, where the Cornelius Vanderbilt II House used to be.”
Rose’s eyes went wide. “And it’s gone? Leveled?”
Cornelia nodded. “The taxes were just too much.” She shrugged. “Maybe it’s for the best. People hate the rich so much now. Those monstrosities were simply taunting them. I think it’s slightly better here, but I hate the idea of what people think about my family and me now.”
“They don’t even know you,” Rose said. “If they don’t like you, they have never met you and experienced your kindness for themselves.”
Cornelia tried to let herself be cheered by her friend’s statement. “Well, at any rate, the house wasn’t ours. But it’s sad to think of it being gone all the same.”
“Just like all the grand estates in Britain that have been leveled to ashes—” Rose abruptly cut herself off.
Cornelia saw the flash in Rose’s eyes that meant she wished she hadn’t said that. Now they were both thinking of Biltmore.
“I’m proud of you, dear one,” Rose said, changing the subject. “You have so much talent, and I know you’ll find your happiness. Now, tell me more about all this time you’ve been spending in New York.”
Looking around Rose’s quaint and cozy home, life in New York seemed a world away. Cornelia shrugged, not wanting to seem like she preferred her life there to her life here. But did she? It was hard to tell. “I’ve been surrounding myself with the most incredible visionaries, Rose. Artists and painters, writers and sculptors, actors and playwrights. And you can’t even imagine all I’ve learned about numerology.” She paused and put her fingerup. “I had a numerologist I met work up your numbers. It is a fascinating and telling report and so spot on, I think. You’ll see.”
Cornelia noticed the bewildered look on her friend’s face and stopped talking. Of course, this was all a lot to take in. It was an entirely different world. Even still, Rose was always her safe place. Like coming home. “Remember those days when we used to run down to the creamery?” she asked, changing the subject. “When our biggest worry was choosing between peach and strawberry?”
Rose laughed. “You know what I think would be rather grand? If we went down to the creamery and got ice cream right now.”
“That’s the most fantastic idea I’ve heard in quite some time.”
After a good afternoon with a lifelong friend—and a great cone of ice cream—Cornelia hoped she would feel cheered. And few things cleared her mind as much as her horse, but the ride from the creamery back home hadn’t quite brought her peace. Instead, Cornelia felt restless as she wandered around the grounds of Biltmore. No,restlesswasn’t the right word for it. Panicked. Trapped. How was it that, surrounded by thousands of acres, one could feel trapped? How was it that a place she had once loved so fully could highlight everything that was suddenly wrong with her life?
Cornelia had hoped the visit with Rose and the ride would clear her head, but her humiliation from her trip to New York the week before kept popping up. Her story of an Elizabethan girl who ventures to North Carolina where she is inspired to take up the arts was a story that Cornelia could write. It was a story she knew. Painting perhaps hadn’t panned out the way she thought it might, but that was okay. Because now she felt in her bones that she was destined to become a great writer, if only she could just break through the trouble she was having finding a publisher.
Her face went hot at the mere remembrance of what had transpired the week before. She had begged her mother to ask one of her oldest and dearest friends, Edith Wharton—one of the foremost women writers in the world, mind you—to help her. And Edith had delivered, procuring a meeting for Cornelia with J. W. Hiltman, the president of the newly merged Appleton-Century Company.
The architecture at 4 Bond Street, the building that housed Appleton-Century, was lovely, Cornelia had thought as she stood in front of the six-story building, with its mansard roof and cast iron façade. She knew from her schooling that it was Second Empire style, with a nod to the Baroque. She smiled, feeling pleased and proud that this, most surely, would be the home of her first published work. She took a deep breath and walked through the door that the doorman was holding open for her. She was guided to a shining brass bank of elevators and escorted to the office of Mr. Hiltman, the publisher. This was certainly treatment the publisher’s newest talent would receive, right?
As she sat across the wide mahogany desk from Mr. Hiltman, looking over his shoulder out the long window at the bustling street she mused that New York really was marvelous. She had once preferred the quiet life of Biltmore, but lately, as a writer, an artist, this was where she felt she belonged. Sure, she hated being in the spotlight, in the papers. But perhaps if it was for herwork, she would feel differently. She would have to, as Edith Wharton had told her. Publicity created book sales. She vowed to spend more time here, study writing. Painting too. She felt most herself, most alive, when she was engrossed in these pursuits.
“Your protagonist is well formed,” Mr. Hiltman began, smoothing his hand from the knot in his tie to the top of his vest over andover again. Was he nervous? Did her literary prowess amaze him that much? “But, I’m afraid to say, Mrs. Cecil, I found—and my staff agrees—that her journey isn’t quite the right fit. There’s something forced about it. The ending lacks believability or, really, a true sense of finality for the reader.”
“Shall I rewrite it with your suggestions?” Cornelia asked, still hopeful.
The look of pity in his eyes nearly broke her. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Cecil.”
Had he been mean to her, ridiculed her, she could have taken it. But nothing had ever wounded her pride quite as deeply as that pitying look.
Now, back at Biltmore, licking her wounds, Cornelia couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of his words. Her journey hadn’t felt quite right either. And perhaps she had been too concerned with creating an ending that she hoped for herself instead of an ending that felt right for her character. Or perhaps it simply wasn’t realistic to feel properly creative when one’s life was in such upheaval. Yes. That was it. She needed to go somewhere else.
She still hadn’t gotten used to the hundreds of people traipsing through her house every day, but as Jack had told her, the income was helping with the day-to-day upkeep of the house. But still, she felt in the marrow of her bones that her home—the home they were trying so desperately to save—wasn’t hers anymore. She had been spending more time in Manhattan, taking trips to Paris, anything to avoid the fact that her house had become something akin to cattle storage. Her recent travels were an excuse to escape. And maybe, she realized, to look for something that was all hers. Not her father’s. Not her husband’s.Hers.
Today, there were no tourists, only Cornelia and her family. Asshe arrived back to the main house she caught a glimpse of her boys tearing through a field—off to the creamery, no doubt—and felt such a surge of love for them that she knew she had to put her own concerns aside to find her roots here again, visitors or no. Shemustbe the mother they deserved. As William called to George “Last one there is a rotten egg!,” Cornelia felt as though her younger self were the one walking these grounds. She used to feel certain that of all the little girls in all the world, she must have been the luckiest.
Papa always told her she could live anywhere she chose. But she loved Biltmore. She couldn’t have put it into words then, but it was her safety, her roots, her home. And, even as a child, she knew down to the very tips of her toes that she would never want to leave.
So why was it that now, all these years later, leaving was all she could think about?
Jack appeared at the crest of the hill then, and her heart surged with love for him, for the boys that looked so much like him. She was very blessed indeed, if only she’d take the time to remember it. Jack kissed her cheek, and Cornelia wrapped her arms around herself. They stood in silence for a minute or two before she said, “The boys love it here so much, don’t they?”
Jack raised his eyebrow suspiciously. The proper schooling of their children was a primary concern these days. Jack had been sent off to school as a small boy, and he wanted the same thing for his own sons—something Cornelia was strictly opposed to. “Are you reminding me so that I don’t bring up their going off to school again?”
