Biltmore, a national treasure

October 2019 marked my fourth visit to Asheville, North Carolina’s Biltmore, the United States’ largest private home. On my first visit, I resisted paying $20 to tour some rich person’s house just because it had an obscene number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Enchanted by a gift shop’s beautiful Belle Époque memorabilia, however, I sprang for the house tour. I think it was the shop’s Victorian music box’s delicate plinking song that finally influenced me to plunk down an Andrew Jackson to go inside the house. The beauty I saw there took my breath away. The history I learned through George Vanderbilt’s vision for technology (mechanical refrigeration, flush toilets, for example), art, and sustainable forestry inspired.

My subsequent tours with different groups of family and friends were no less inspiring. This autumn, our visit day’s torrential rains kept many crowds away, which was to our advantage, but sadly, prevented our touring the gardens and conservatory, so maybe my fourth visit was a tad less inspiring but certainly through no fault of the house. Now admission is just shy of $74. I would have balked at that, but for my eagerness to time-travel to that era’s showcase of beauty, civility, and tranquility. The house tour was four-plus hours, but I have space to share only a few notable impressions here.

 

George Vanderbilt loved Christmas and opened his country retreat, Biltmore estate, to friends and family on Christmas Eve, 1895, after six years of construction. Because Robert and I visited the week before the Biltmore’s two-month Christmas events began, you will see in my pics some Christmas decorations already in place. My post also reflects Vanderbilt’s passions for art, literature, and horticulture.

Vanderbilt’s vision was profoundly inspired by architect Richard Morris Hunt and landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted. Two of famous portraitist John Singer Sargent’s framed portraits hanging in Biltmore house are of these two men. Olmsted’s influence is seen in the forests lining the miles-long, winding entrance road to the estate. Meticulously curated trees of myriad varieties and colors were wondrous to behold. I was so struck by these forests’ unique, majestic beauty, I did not want to take my eyes off them long enough to snap a photo. After George Vanderbilt died at age 51 in 1914, his widow Edith sold to the federal government 86,700 acres of Biltmore estate for a national park. This land became part of Pisgah National Forest in 1916. What a legacy!

In the house hang hundreds of framed prints and woodcuts bought by Vanderbilt. In the array shown here, the farthest right frame contains Dürer’s famous rhino print. In 1515 Albrecht Dürer based his drawing of a rhinoceros on other people’s descriptions of an animal with scales, resembling a tortoise, and well-armored to remain safe if attacked by an elephant. His 1515 woodcut was one of the first to be mass-printed in Europe, and since most people had never laid eyes on a rhino, they believed Dürer’s rendition to be accurate. It wasn’t until 100 years later that people became aware that an actual rhinoceros does not have scales or a shell. Another irony in this is that Dürer’s legacy includes more than 1,000 drawings based on actual observation of the natural world. He usually only represented what he had actually seen. Ironic that this inaccurate one “went viral.”

Vanderbilt ran out of time before reading all 22,000 of his beloved books, but a docent showed us his journal indicating he had read 3,159 books, the last before he died being a history of the United States.

Oh, the stories we heard from our audio guides … Okay, two more. Just in case the Nazis showed up on our soil to pillage our country’s great works of art during World War II, Edith helped the National Gallery of Art hide priceless artworks at the Biltmore. Although George ran a tight ship (All clocks in the house, barns, and out-buildings were synchronized), George and Edith were kind to their servants and families, ensuring their literacy education and health care, bringing food baskets to their homes, and giving generous Christmas gifts to the children. George loved Christmas.