Sweet words from a man whom she truly adored. Edith had waited all morning for thoughts of George to flood her mind, for her sadness to throw her happiness off track. She had even warned Peter of the possibility. And, in true Peter form, he had said the most perfect thing in response: “Dearest Edi, if you weren’t sad for the first man you shared a name with on the day you took mine, I wouldn’t be marrying you. Your kind heart, your willing spirit, and your unfailing empathy are your best qualities. I will gladly share you with the one who came before me if that means that I get to have your hand and at least half your heart.”
Part of the allure of Peter was that Edith had no reason to doubt his motives for their partnership other than pure, unadulterated love. He was vastly wealthier than she, cared little to ever step foot on the Biltmore property unless it was for her pleasure, and was several years her junior. She couldn’t say the same for any of her previous suitors.
And now, he was going to be all hers for the rest of their lives. A few minutes later, at 8:50 a.m. on October 22, 1925, they pulled it off: Edith Dresser Vanderbilt became Edith Dresser Vanderbilt Gerry. She might have a new last name, but she would remain a Vanderbilt, always. And, as Peter and Edith stepped outside for the first time as spouses, Edith felt more grateful and blessed than she had in some time.
She felt happy on the ride to the Chapel of the Savoy, where she and Peter, now that they were married in the eyes of the government, would be joined together in the eyes of God. Edith had changed into a velvet coat trimmed in sable for the occasion, and after reaching her destination, was now holding her eight-month-old grandson, George, who was gleefully grasping at the fur. Standing in the doorway of the church, studying the vivid blue quatrefoil ceiling and black-and-white-tiled floor, Edith smiled at her beautiful daughter.
“Can you imagine that men and women have stood in this same spot taking these very vows since the 1500s?” she asked Cornelia.
She looked proudly at the beautiful daughter who would walk her down the aisle, the daughter that she adored so fully, that George had understood so well. Edith and Cornelia looked alike and dressed alike, rode horses and fished alike. But it was George who had understood her creative side, her artistic whims, her penchant for wanderlust.
“It boggles the mind, doesn’t it?” Cornelia asked. “It makes me realize how very new America truly is.”
George cooed, and Edith kissed his sweet, fragrant head. Looking into his wide eyes, she was surprised to find that it wasn’t her husband, their wedding day, or even the wedding veil of her ancestors that she suddenly felt nostalgic for. It was her daughter, or, at least, the baby she had been, the girl she used to be.
Edith smiled at her grandson, his cherubic face, for a moment, morphing into her daughter’s on August 22, 1900, the warm and lovely day on which Cornelia arrived. It was said that the world had a new richest baby. Cornelia had usurped the position from her own cousin, John Nicholas Brown II. Edith had prayed briefly that that wasn’t the headline the newspapers chose and had said so to her husband.
“No, no,” George reassured his wife, sitting at the end of the bed in the red and gold Louis XV suite. He gazed adoringly at his perfect new daughter, who was swaddled in his protective, fatherly arms. “With Cornelia’s beauty, grace, and health, no one will even be thinking about money. They will proclaim her the world’s brightest baby, the most beautiful—”
“The most adored?” Edith chimed in, smiling at her husband, who broke his gaze with his new daughter long enough to smile back at her.
“You have outdone yourself, Edi,” George said.
She felt the slightest pang for her parents. Even now, even all these years later, she wished that they could be there to meet her baby daughter inside this intricately designed room with a view of the esplanade unrivaled anywhere in the house. She wanted them to see how she had grown up, where she had ended up and, most of all, that she was okay.
“What do you think she’ll be like, George?”
He stroked his daughter’s small cheek. “I think she will be headstrong yet kind, willful yet wise, strong and energetic but with a true soft spot for the less fortunate and aggrieved.” George turned to smile at his wife. “In short, my darling, I think she will be quite like her mother.”
It warmed Edith’s heart, as George handed the tiny child back to her, that her husband thought those things of her. More than anything during her time at Biltmore she hoped to show her husband—and the whole world, really—that her soft spot was not only for Biltmore Estate but also for its people. Building a lasting legacy had meant everything to George; now it meant everything to her, too. And she had to think that this new baby was another step toward that goal.
It was clear, from the moment she was born, that Cornelia was not only the child of Edith and George Vanderbilt but also a daughter of Asheville, North Carolina. The people of the town had claimed her from conception, and there was something incredibly calming in that fact. They would watch out for her and love her always. The Charlotte Observer had already gone so far as to publish a poem about “Tarheel Nell’s” beauty, charm, and grace.
George kissed his wife. “I’ll call Nanny in. You need your rest.”
“Not yet,” she whispered, almost uncertainly, as though she were a child asking a parent for more time to play before dinner.
George patted Edith’s leg and simply said, “Whatever you’d like.”
When he had left, closing the door behind him, Edith looked down at her new little girl. “See all that out there, outside that window?”
The tiny infant yawned, which Edith took as a yes. “That is your home. More than inside this house, more than your bedroom or the great hall or the banquet hall, these woods, this land, these mountains are yours. They will become a part of you, just as they did your father, just as they have me, and no matter where you go or what you do, they will always beckon you back home.”
As Edith stared down into the face of her daughter, she already understood that she would never have another worriless day, that she would never stop wanting the best life had to offer for Cornelia. She prayed quickly, silently, that this place, this house, this land, would always call her daughter home, back where she belonged.
George must have held the same prayer in his heart. Because, some two months after Cornelia’s christening, George arranged another special ceremony for his daughter, a baptism of a different kind entirely. Whereas she had been baptized in the church by holy water, now it was time for her to be washed in mountain air and soil and foliage, to not only be marked as Christ’s own forever but also Asheville’s. George erected stained glass windows at All Souls for many of the people he wanted to honor, but for Cornelia, he instead planted a tree.
The mountain magnolia, with its broad, flat leaves, seemed quite a good fit. It was a hearty tree, one that would take root in the soil and, though twelve feet tall now, likely reach five times that height in its lifetime. It grew quickly and gracefully, as George and Edith hoped Cornelia would. Its blooms, while fragrant, possessed a more down-to-earth beauty than the full and flowing perfection of its southern magnolia counterpart—a fitting symbol, it seemed to George, of the luxury and ruggedness that would form Cornelia’s childhood.