I toured the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina yesterday. This is not just some Southern mansion with columns calling to mind women in antebellum dresses, fanning themselves under giant hats. It's a house with over 175,000 square feet designed by a New York architect in the European chateau style. When you round the bend in the bumping trolley van, if you have a heart in you at all, it skips a beat at the sight of this massive residence, front lawn spreading wider than a football field, allowing for ample imposition of the house upon the sense of sight. It's flat-out amazing. You expect the dad-blamed queen of England to come prancing out of those main doors, paparazzi shooting away and screaming her name. Instead, you'll find (if you go during Labor Day weekend like I did) the sweating hordes of visitors eager to stream through the parts of the home that are open to the public. Just appreciating the architecture and the grandeur of the home would be enough, but the place is a trove of international treasures, from rare tapestries to family portraits painted by John Singer Sargent (can you even imagine)! My favorite thing in the house is Napoleon's chess set, which is set up in the library. George Washington Vanderbilt II, the young man who built the house for himself and his even younger wife Edith, owned Napoleon Bonaparte's chess set. Let that level of wealth (and influence) sink in for a moment. As I passed through all of that opulence, mindlessly flooding Facebook with images of my tour, a tea set (see photo) caught my eye. It was a slice of elegant, refined living in minature. It had even been staged with real cookies! I wanted to yank the rope down and play house with the set! Just kidding. An upstairs room connecting Mr. and Mrs. Vanderbilt's room was, according to my tour booklet, the place where they met with the head housekeeper to plan the day's events. That's where my desire to have lived her life went straight out the window. I would want to be on horseback, flying though the gorgeous, forested property! Let someone else plan the dern meals! Then I could return to the library and read the night away in front of the massive fireplace after eating FAR too much in that massive dining room, where I would regale my guests with stories of my wildlife encounters while on horseback that day! I'd have them laughing!
We went back to our hotel to rest before dinner, my head spinning with all I had seen and experienced at the Biltmore Estate. The images of such refined, elegant living were so soothing! When we stepped out onto a terrace, the sweeping view of the mountains took my breath away. I could not even begin to imagine living in such a heavenly residence. How would it be possible for the massive fireplaces, the exquisite oil paintings, the hand-carved furnishings, the coffered ceilings to become commonplace over time, even invisible to the daily resident? I'm sure, on some level, they did. When their only daughter had her first crush, or cried herself to sleep, or fell ill, the Vanderbilts wouldn't have been comforted by all of that velvety excellence in decorating. They were people just like the rest of us.
Last night, as we left our hotel room for the very posh restaurant downstairs, I realized that all I had in the room with me in the way of footwear was the cushy pair of flip flops I'd toured the house in. Of course, since my car had been valet-parked, I shrugged my shoulders and flapped my way to the restaurant. I was hungry.
I guess the waiter did not notice my pool shoes, because he schmoozed for a tip, declaring with arched eyebrows that every single thing we ordered was EXCELLENT and HIS FAVORITE. I was waiting for him to come back with the water pitcher and declare that it was the best plain water he had ever heard tell of.
This story has absolutely no moral, except that I'm now considering beginning an antique tea cup collection. Seriously. I'll sit at my formal dining room table barefoot and drink coffee out of them. I sure will.
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