A Look into the Privileged World of the American Aristocracy of the Early Twentieth Century Flora Miller Biddle was born a blue-blood. The granddaughter of the Whitney museum founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, her childhood played out in a sort of Wharton landscape as she was shielded from the woes of the world. But money itself is not the source of happiness. Glimpses into the elegance of a … into the elegance of a Vanderbilt ball thrown by her great-grandparents and the yearly production of traveling from her childhood home on Long Island to their summer home in Aiken, South Carolina, are measured against memoires of strict governesses with stricter rules in a childhood separate from her parents, despite being in the same house, and the ever-present pressure to measure up in her studies and lessons. As Flora steps back in time to trace the origins of her family’s fortune and where it stands today, she takes a discerning look at how wealth and excess shaped her life, for better and for worse.
In this wonderfully evocative memoir, Flora Miller Biddle examines, critiques, and pays homage to the people and places of her childhood that shaped her life.
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Touching review of an exceptional childhood.
Flora Miller Biddle recounts the days of her childhood, the granddaughter of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, in a rambling, stream of consciousness style that is part memory, part therapy, and part apology. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t this.
Detailing a childhood where she was virtually ignored by her parents (as they had been ignored by their parents), she recounts all of the various ways she felt she was found lacking, and all the various ways she tried to fit in and capture her parents attention. The closeness came as she grew older, but I think that’s the same for everyone.
While her branch of the Vanderbilt family tree wasn’t as wealthy as others, she did lead an extremely sheltered, and pampered life until she got married. On the family payroll were maids, nurses, governesses, laundry women, a riding instructor, cooks, maids, etc. There was the difference between the white and black servants, along with the unspoken racism of the south during the 1930s & ‘40’s. She makes an apology for not recognizing the discrimination, but she would not have known it as anything other than “that’s just how things are.”
Family activities centered around dove shooting and fly fishing, both things she became a unite accomplished at. Biddle then goes into another apology for ruthlessly taking the lives of innocent animals.
Once Biddle was in her teens, the family moved to New York to better help with the war effort, and the shy girl who’d been raised in rural Aiken, North Carolina was unceremoniously dropped into the bustle of New York City. She was such a misfit in that surrounding that the head of the girl’s school recommences that she be sent to a boarding school in the country where she would be in a more familiar setting. She describes the excitement of making her debut into society, and the disappointment when the dances stopped and boys found her too shy, too quiet, and too serious. She blames this on the way she was raised by British and French nannies and governesses, saying she still struggles with expressing her feelings.
Throughout this book, Biddle seems to be constantly apologizing; for the inherited wealth and the lifestyle that went with it, for not recognizing discrimination and segregation for what they were, for being involved in sporting events that PETA would not approve of, etc. It all makes the book somewhat of a chore to read.
Like I said, I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. The book might serve as a good secondary source for a research paper on what happened to lesser known branches of New York’s infamous 500 Club, but I would not recommend it for leisure reading.
Not GREAT literature but absorbing and informative….what a family to grow up in!
Recommend with reservation. Was mildly interesting, confirmed my disdain for the truly idle rich. Could have used a good editor. Read if nothing better at hand and you desire a book easy to put down so you can get your chores done.
Disappointed. Not well written, boring.
Too genealogical for me – spent more time telling who all the people were and how they were related than telling the story. I did not complete the book.
All the while apologizing for being elite and then telling more pluses for being elite