[Here we present the first installment of a series of posts by Benjamin Railton that originally appeared on his blog AmericanStudies.]

Like so many evocative American places, the Newport, Rhode Island mansion The Breakers contains and connects to numerous histories, stories, and themes worth sharing. So in this series, I’ll highlight and analyze five such topics. As always, your thoughts will be very welcome too!

Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843-1899), the man for whom The Breakers was built (as perhaps the most luxurious “summer cottage” in human history), was named after his grandfather, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), who at his death was the wealthiest man in the United States. Which is to say, young Cornelius wasn’t just born into privilege; he was perhaps the closest thing to the royal baby American society has produced. Moreover, over the thirty-four years between his birth and his grandfather’s death, a period that culminated quite tellingly with the start of the Gilded Age, the family’s fortune only increased further. None of that is young Cornelius’s fault, and if he had decided to give the fortune away he’d have been about the first person ever to do so—but it does make it hard to see him as anything other than the scion of an American dynasty.

Yet as illustrated at length by Cornelius’s entry in Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Biography (1900), the young man’s life did in some interesting ways mirror those of a Horatio Alger, rags to riches, self-made protagonist (without, of course, details like being orphaned or living on the streets). Beginning at the age of 16, Cornelius spent the next five years working as a clerk in two small New York banks, learning the ins and outs of the financial world; he then did the same with the railroad industry in which his family had made their fortune, working for two years as treasurer and then ten as treasurer of the New York and Harlem railroad company. Which is to say, when he became vice president of that railroad in 1877, at the age of 34, he did so after nearly thirteen years in the industry, and more than twenty in financial services; while it’d still be fair to say that he had been destined for the position and role from birth, it certainly would not be accurate to argue that it was in any blatant or nepotistic sense handed to him.

So what? you might ask. Do those years of work make the egregious excess, the truly conspicuous consumption of The Breakers less grating or more sympathetic? Do they in any way complicate Cornelius’ status as the poster boy for Gilded Age inequities? I don’t know that they do—but I do know that they remind us of the complexities, nuances, contradictions, the messy dynamic humanity, at the heart of most every American identity and life, story and history, individual and community. It’s entirely fine—and, I would argue, an important part of a public AmericanStudier’s job—to critique what we see as the worst actions or attributes of historical figures like the Vanderbilts. But it’s not at all okay to do so by oversimplifying or mythologizing (in positive or negative ways) lives and identities, by turning the past into the black and white caricatures that such myths demand. Cornelius Vanderbilt II was a scion of privilege who built one of the most garish mansions in American history; he also worked, and apparently worked hard and well, for forty of his fifty-six years of life. That’s all part of the story of The Breakers for sure.

Next Breakers story tomorrow,

Ben
PS. What do you think?

Henry Voigt


On New Years Day of that year, De Lessep symbolically began work on the canal by digging the first shovel of sand and dumping it into a Champagne box. Transoceanic waterways were regarded as essential to expanding free trade, and this was reflected by De Lesseps’ family motto Aperire Terram Gentibus, meaning “To Open the World to all People.” This motto, which was adopted by the Compagnie de Suez, appeared on the menu, as well as the admission ticket shown above. Although the United States liked the idea of free trade in theory (and in practice when it favored the country), the prospect of a French canal in the Western Hemisphere caused consternation in Washington. Remembering that it had only been a decade since Napoleon III tried to make Austrian Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian the emperor of Mexico, President Rutherford B. Hayes was suspicious of this project, bluntly declaring that “a canal across any part of the Isthmus is either a canal under American control, or no canal.”

Despite the political posturing, the banquet for De Lesseps was fully subscribed by 250 wealthy and powerful men, including the industrialist Andrew Carnegie. Constructed in a manner befitting this august assembly, the bill of fare was engraved on a gilt-edged card that was then attached to a fringed swatch of satin with a silk ribbon.3 This expensive menu design, which was in vogue in New York for about five years during this period, was reserved for only the most important banquets. The blue menu shown below is in the NYPL collection.




The menus at the dinner appeared in various colors, as evidenced by this brown card tatted on maroon satin in my collection.



The lavish bill of fare includes some of the typical American foods that were de rigueur in the nineteenth century, such as oysters, and Canvasback duck which invariably appeared at the finest banquets. In addition to these customary fixtures, there are several particularly rich dishes that were seen much less often. One example is supremes de volaille Lucullus, a chicken entree named after Lucius Licinius Lucullus, a prominent epicurean of the late Roman Republic. After baking a buttered chicken breast in paper, this entree was garnished with truffles, “tongues balls” (comprising half-inch spheres of finely-chopped beef tongue), and capon kidneys, mixed with a béarnaise sauce that was finished with meat glaze.



Another calorific dish is filet de bœuf Rossini. Named after the opera composer Gioachino Rossini, this was a filet of beef topped with hot foie gras and a slice of truffle, and served on buttered spheres of bread with a truffled Madeira sauce; it was the sauce that gave these dishes a dimension now called “big flavor.” This classic dish, known as tournedos Rossini in the twentieth century, became a standard at French restaurants in the United States during the 1950s, and stayed in fashion until the mid- to late-1970s, when sauces were lightened in accordance with the dictates of nouvelle cuisine.4

Following the usual protocol, dinner was served over the course of two and a half hours, beginning at 7:00 in the evening. At 9:30 PM, the six long tables were cleared of the large decorative sculptures of confectionery that had been skillfully crafted for this occasion, depicting Monsieur De Lesseps and the triumphal moments in his life. Once all the diners had an unobstructed view of the dais, except for the haze of wisteria-colored cigar smoke that typically hung in the air at these convivial gatherings, it was time for the speeches to begin.

Shortly after this banquet, De Lesseps went to Washington to meet with President Hayes and testify before Congress. His canal project proceeded, but eventually failed, devastated by epidemics of malaria and yellow fever and recurrent landslides. The bankruptcy sparked a scandal in France. De Lessep was ordered to pay a fine and even came close to being thrown in jail. He died in 1894, a few months after Chef Ranhofer published his 1183-page cookbook, revealing how he prepared the grand banquets of the Gilded Age.5

This originally appeared on September 30, 2013 on Henry Voigt's blog The American Menu.

Notes
1. Charles Ranhofer, The Epicurean (New York, 1894). 
2. New York Times, March 2, 1880.
3. The menus were probably made by Borden & Cain, a downtown stationer at 46 West Broadway that coincidentally printed the daily à la carte menus for Delmonico's.
4. New York Times, February 28, 2012.
5. Fifteen years after the De Lesseps banquet, the bill of fare was reproduced again in the New York Times, appearing in a Sunday article titled "Fine Dinners in New York" on November 10, 1895.

Steven Cromack

I just completed teaching a unit on the Gilded Age. Information wise, the Gilded Age can be soporific—railroads, oil, Stalwarts, Mugwumps, and Half-breeds. Who cares, especially if you are 16 and have just gotten your learner’s permit? Instead of teaching content, therefore, I decided to teach concepts. I took a risk, and, as a result, a classroom experiment that could have gone horribly awry not only intrigued students, but also forced them to reflect on their roles as citizens and to face their own sense of morality.

At the heart of the Gilded Age was the question of wealth. What, if anything, do the rich owe society? I began one class by having students choose a card from a prearranged deck stacked with twos, threes, and fours and four kings. I then gave each student the number of Hershey kisses on their card. The kings, however, got “King Size” Kit Kats. There was outrage. I immediately had the students write and reflect. How did it feel to have the wealth of the classroom concentrated in the hands of a few? Their answers included discussions of fairness, chance, and justice. These were the themes discussed and debated during the Gilded Age by the Populists, millions of immigrants, the wealthy, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Homework assignments forced students to reflect on deep philosophical questions: make them squirm and think. Here is one example :

Is it just that you live in a house, apartment, or condominium while another lives in a refugee camp? Is it just that you have food in excess while others are starving? If there is indeed injustice in the world, who is responsible for its rectification? 

One can use Jacob Riis to teach empathy, Michael Moore to teach muckraking, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to teach happiness, and the abuse and personal strength of Julia Ward Howe to hook students as to why history really, really, really matters. In the end, all of the content humanized history.

These assignments and classroom topics were unlike anything students had experienced before. Their reflections of the unit and its content were overwhelmingly positive—they liked concepts versus facts and dates. For the students, this approach was far more useful. Here is what one of them wrote:

“I feel it is only this year that I’ve realized the importance of our past in connection to our future. Though I have been attending public school for eleven years now, Mr. Cromack is the first teacher to start dissecting terms such as: injustice, fairness, citizen, and responsibility. The discussions are rigorous, the class engaging, and the material is suddenly compelling.”