Durant Family Saga
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Trilogy Summary
  • Contact
  • Author Biography
  • Events
  • Copyright

Mining for Rubies in the Sand

4/2/2021

 
Picture
The term the 'Gilded Age' actually comes from a novel written by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner in 1873. I never knew that until recently. I started to read the book online and found it, like a lot of stories written back then, verbose. The storyline however is very interesting. A family seeks their fortune from 75,000 acres of land they own in Tennessee, believing it will bring them great wealth one day as mining, railroads, and people flock to the area. The story also satirizes political corruption at the time: one of the family members tries to lobby the U.S. Congress to buy the land. It all sounds so familiar!!!

This book was written at the beginning of what is historically called the Gilded Age in America. A time when political corruption was rampant, and a period of conspicuous  consumption. That term, was coined in 1899 by economist Thorstein Veblen, in a book titled The Theory of the Leisure Class. The theory, in a nutshell, is that people of the time were consuming goods not for want or need but purely to show off to their friends that they could afford such things as yachts, jewels, and lavish homes. 

My research helped me understand the motivations of the characters in my Durant family saga. Along the way I picked up a book at a library book sale titled: Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: the Story of a Daughter and Mother in the Gilded Age, and I am shocked at the excess. One passage in particular caught my attention: after her divorce Alva Vanderbilt stays in Newport where the Vanderbilt mansion, the Marble House, was located. There, she "withdrew to a life of extravagant vacuity", inviting guests to dig for party favors of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds with silver spoons in a stream that ran through the center of the dining table.

Jeesh, my dinner parties would never pass the muster in this time period. Our idea of entertainment is letting go of sky lanterns on a quiet summer night.

Sealed Divorce Cases in History

12/19/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Gruger, Frederic Rodrigo, Artist. I Guess He’s Going in for a Little Alimony. [1914] (U.S. Library of Congress)
My guest blog on the history of sealed divorce cases on Medium. Click here
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Author

    Sheila Myers  Professor at Cayuga Community College in Upstate New York.

    Subscribe to blog

    RSS Feed

    Follow me on Facebook or Twitter!

    Categories

    All
    Adirondacks
    Alvah Dunning
    Anne Thackeray Ritchie
    Arpad Gerster
    Awards
    Camp Kirby
    Coffee
    Collis Huntington
    Divorce
    Dr Thomas Durant
    Editing
    Egypt
    Ella Durant
    England
    Gilborn
    Gilded Age
    Giveaway
    Great Camps
    Green Wood Cemetery
    Hell On Wheels
    Heloise Durant Rose
    Historical Fiction
    Hochschild
    Huntington
    Isle Of Wight
    J.P. Morgan
    Julia Margaret Cameron
    Last Of Mohicans
    Lillian Tiffany
    Marketing
    News
    Ozymandias
    Pine Knot
    Poultney Bigelow
    Research
    Sagamore
    Sarah Bernhardt
    Tea
    Uncas
    Utowana
    Vanderbilt
    Verplanck Colvin
    William West Durant

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.