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.

Old-fashioned soda fountain in Asheville art gallery

A 2019 San Pellegrino toast to nostalgia!

Although no longer a five-and-dime store, Woolworth Walk is a worthy destination because today it is the largest art gallery in Asheville featuring only local artists, 170 to be exact. We spent several hours on two different days enjoying artists’ creations on both floors of the huge store. The first day we saw the cool luncheonette counter and came back the second time to see the art again but also to eat lunch.

Asheville’s F. W. Woolworth Building, established in 1938 and restored in 2001, is a nostalgic dip into the soda fountains of my youth. Cherry phosphates were my favorite, and Green Rivers. Didn’t see those the day we ate lunch at Asheville’s counter, and didn’t think to ask. Their Old-Fashioned Soda sign includes Shirley Temples. They serve espresso drinks and curried dishes today, which I don’t remember being popular in the 1950s. Anyway, our lunch sandwiches, including the obligatory dill pickle and coleslaw in oval plastic-weave baskets, were delicious. Gluten-free bread was also not a thing in the ’50s but I’m grateful they have it now.

We learned a sad segregation story. In 1960 African-Americans were allowed to work the luncheonette counter but not to eat at it. Grrr … After one incident, many sit-ins and six months of negotiations resulted in a more equitable policy for Woolworth’s. 

Dawn Rhythms

Tick. Tick. Tick.  I open my eyes at 7:30. From my pillow I see two trees, mountains beyond. The once stately trees have mostly dead branches now but birds seem to love the branches still alive with leaves silhouetted against pale gray sky. So I watch the birds in silence as they flit and flutter. I recognize the shapes of a cardinal couple and a jay. Others I do not know. I get up to open the window. I want to hear their songs. Their chirps and caws chorus with the clock’s ticks, whooss of car tires, dog yips, and voices from houses. Sound carries in a valley.

Standing by the window now, I see “my” horse Pearl grazing below on frosty grass. Behind Pearl’s lea, white frosted rooftops zig-zag up a hill fringed with points of dark green pines. Behind the pines are mountains still brown with the night.

Soon, sun rising behind that massive, undulating brown backdrop turns grays to golds on opposite mountain. Soon a brilliant red cardinal bobs among crimson leaves and a blue, black, and white jay swoops from rust to yellow to reds. He twitches his tail on leaves still glistening with dew. The sky is clear blue. In brighter light, the leafy avian playground empties of activity. Birdsong quiets. Pearl plods from low-lying still-white areas of her meadow to her little knoll now green and gold. More voices rise from the valley. Day has dawned. Time’s a-ticking.

Recess

On a sunny autumn day, a class of seven-year olds run smiling here and there, sometimes in a group loosely following a single white soccer ball, sometimes just willy-nilly pedaling the air for sheer joy. Their brightly colored t-shirts flash by in carefree chaos. In my day, long before soccer’s popularity in the U.S., recess involved controlled games of dodgeball with a large, softish red-brown ball. A girl with blunt blond hair reminds me of younger me, only her round face gaily laughs. All the kids have such body confidence—no fear of hurt while hurtling themselves across the playground. Today, as if they were born knowing how, every child on this playground expertly uses the inside of the foot to kick the soccer ball, which sometimes slams the window of the gym where I plod along, grateful I can still walk, on a treadmill.

I must have glanced away because I do not see what happens outside to change these kids from play to war. Suddenly I see about ten children flogging one boy with their jackets. He presses his back into the window where he cowers and covers his face with his own jacket. A tiny boy in a pale green shirt elbows through the mob and presses his own body into the victim’s in a tight hug until the floggers stop. As the mob disperses, the little one lets go and wipes away the victim’s tears. They split and resume running with the rest of the class. A teacher saunters over but kindness has intervened before authority could.

Quickly covering the playground from one edge to the other, the class continues their jubilant celebration of youthful freedom. I am jealous of the one hot pink and one turquoise bobby sock of a poised girl with brunette pageboy and sunglasses. Why couldn’t different-colored socks have been permissible in the 1950s? Between long kicks sending the throngs chasing the soccer ball the length of the playground, this girl turns constant cartwheels during which her sunglasses stay on, of course. And her Breck-shampoo-ad pageboy falls back perfectly into place, too. In ten years, she’ll be on the cheerleading squad. Homecoming Queen, too, I bet.

At times during their scattershot soccer efforts, a child stops the ball by placing one foot on top of it. After speedy strategic survey of his surroundings, he directs his next kick. These kids’ feet are firmly on top of the world. Though they are too young to know this, I am not.