Murder at Wakehurst
Page 28
Cornelius Vanderbilt II, grandson of the first Cornelius, who had been known as The Commodore, died on September 12, 1899, from a cerebral hemorrhage. He had suffered multiple strokes since 1896, the same year his son and namesake, nicknamed Neily, married Grace Wilson, of whom his parents did not approve. Although I set the reading of the will in New York the morning after the funeral, the actual reading took place at The Breakers a month later. The family had waited for Alfred to return from a world tour to celebrate his graduation from Yale University. For all practical purposes, Cornelius disinherited Neily, except for half-a-million dollars and the income from a 1-million-dollar trust fund. However, as in the story, Alfred, the brother who took over as the primary heir, reinstated approximately 6 million dollars of Neily’s inheritance. Alice Vanderbilt blamed her son for her husband’s untimely death, and they would not truly reconcile for nearly three decades.
Grace Vanderbilt was pregnant in September 1899, but gave birth that month, rather than being at the beginning of her pregnancy, as I have it in the story.
Being an old Dutch family who made a fortune in New York real estate, Schuyler is a prominent name in New York’s history. However, the branch of the family in the story is fictional. Felix Mathison is a fictional character as well.
The incident in Carterville, Illinois, culminating in several deaths at the terminal of the Illinois Central Railroad, took place on September 17, 1899. It involved union and nonunion miners, divided by race, with Black nonunion workers fired upon while waiting to board their trains to exit the town at the end of the workday. Was this an act spurred by racial tensions, or one of union rights over nonunion rights? Given the circumstances, it was probably indicative of both. The incident was decried in the newspapers as “prearranged, preconcerted, premeditated murder,” with local officials calling in troops to restore peace and bring the culprits to justice. The reaction in the story of Stuyvesant Fish, who was the president of the Illinois Central Railroad at the time, is my own invention.
This story marks Emma’s first trip to Castle Hill, the estate owned by Dr. Alexander Agassiz, scientist, engineer, surveyor, and director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. I have not been inside Castle Hill in a good number of years, and the floor plan proved to be an elusive subject, with very few pictures available in either books or on the internet. With the COVID-19 pandemic prohibiting travel, there was no trip to Newport in the summer of 2020. Many thanks to Lisa Stuart, friend and member of the Newport Point Society, who came to my rescue with photos of every room and a hand-drawn diagram of the layout. Castle Hill is now an inn and restaurant.