On whether a child of privilege can also be a Horatio Alger story.
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’ 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 reasurer 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?
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