I have met my share of disgustingly wealthy people, throwing catered Super Bowl parties in their in-home theaters, sending their kids to junior year in a BMW, and allowing their wives to inject themselves with more plastic than a recycling plant. They followed me from their mothership on the east coast to college in Indiana, where they were frequently overheard screaming at “daddy” on the phone and “doing brunch”. The people who owned the newspaper I worked for were so stupidly rich that an anonymous fellow employee once told me she overheard Lady Macbeth order a swath of mirrors to surround her indoor pool. Like crystal-studded roaches, they are fucking everywhere.
When the Tumblr page Rich Kids of Instagram popped up on the internet, filled with images of the lifestyles of the rich and wish-they-were famous youth of the world, viewers straddled between disgust and envy. Their memetic delusion, while clearly derived from popular culture and their parents’ own behavior, gauges how few steps society has taken to shedding the facade of great wealth. Sure, I’m going to laugh at the 17-year-old douche bag, posing in front of his new Mercedes because he totaled the last one drunk driving, but hell, if this little prick deserves a new car, why don’t the rest of us?
Because we clearly don’t feel bad enough about ourselves, Newport, Rhode Island, the rich person’s playground of yesteryear, is open for public viewing. We took the Cliff Walk behind a group of teenage girls carrying Polar Pops, which highlighted homes that blur the line between functional abode and asshole insanity. With the wash of sea spray against your face, forced to examine your own pedigree, you realize how low on the socioeconomic food chain you really are and the entire alternate strata of human species designed specifically to keep you there. The caste system is alive and well, and living in Newport.
The largest coastal home in Newport, The Breakers, would cost nearly $331 million if built today. Constructed for major American industrialist Cornelius Vanderbilt II, the 70-room mansion is the peak of Gilded age architecture, reflecting trends of the British aristocracy and the American wealthy’s desire for that lifestyle.
In Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner’s book The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, the authors compare the time of splendor to nothing more than serious social problems, thinly coated in gold. While the divide between the haves and the have-nots may have widened since the time when the Vanderbilt’s called Newport home, the essence is the same.
As we rounded a corner on the half-mile trail, between two luxurious mansions was an old school. Etched into the brick wall on the side of the building was the W.B. Yeats quote “But I, being poor, have only my dreams.” It was so perfect I wanted to hug the smug genius who scrawled it. Walkers paused to stare at the graffiti, some aware of its profound nature and simple irony. The teenage girls dropped their Polar Pops to take a picture on their phones.
The homes really are beautiful architecturally, which makes for an even more confusing experience. Lined up in a row, against cliffs that drop straight into the Atlantic, with no other homes in site, you feel a little less like you’re in present time, always a welcome feeling.
As per the old adage “You can’t take it with you,” Vanderbilt only lived in the home for a year before his early death at age 55. Now, for a small fee, the home is open for the public to enjoy — a sight that, had the tycoon witnessed, may have hastened his death. The visage of these monstrously large Gilded Age homes makes for an interesting site. On the one hand, the architecture is majestic, and yet neither of us could shake the image of these mansions being stormed by a mob armed with torches and pitchforks.
“Castles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually.”
- Jimi Hendrix
No comments:
Post a Comment