Getting There

Horse Power

“Living machines” filled the streets of Gilded Age New York, for horse power was the culmination of centuries of technical advance. Mastering the animals, the harnesses, carriages, and sleighs inspired innovation over centuries. Teamsters and coachmen alike held the reins in the Gilded Age city. By 1900, “there were horse-cars on many thoroughfares,” observed Albert Stevens Crockett in Peacocks on Parade. “It was impossible to keep the streets clear,” and “if the visitor traveled on a Madison Avenue car, the overpowering barnyard odor in the Park Avenue tunnel made a lasting impression on him.” The livery stables “thrived” by renting a variety of vehicles whose models denoted social significance, utility, and capacity, but the names have long vanished in the era of the automobile (“coupé” an exception). The stables rented “broughams, landaulettes and victorias” and “four-wheelers” usually called “hacks.” A “hansom cab furnished transportation to the more luxuriously inclined,” Crockett said, but “ancient hacks” called “‘night-hawks’ plied the darker streets or lurked under elevated stations.”

Stables and carriage houses of the Gilded Age superrich boasted numerous privately owned “turn-outs” for all occasions. A Society family might count twenty-five vehicles drawn by the finest horses that Europe or Kentucky could breed. They included “light phaetons for morning,” a “one-horse victoria driven by a coachman” for shopping, and for state occasions, the grand landau that seated four passengers on two facing seats, a high front seat for the coachman, and liveried footmen perched behind. Afternoons, whether in Central Park or Newport in the summer season, saw long carriage processions. (In winter, of course, the horses were harnessed to sleighs.)

Whatever the horse-drawn vehicle, rules of etiquette applied. “A gentleman in assisting a lady into a carriage will take care that the skirt of her dress is not allowed to hang outside,” advised Richard Wells in Manners, Culture and Dress. Wells urged a “carriage robe” for protection from mud and dust and insisted that a gentleman hold the lady’s “parasol, fan, and shawl” or fur muff until she was seated, then “provide” these accessories before taking his seat. A buffalo robe was standard equipment for sleighing in winter. The gentleman’s main obligation: “make certain that she is in every way comfortable.”

Motor Cars

Horseless carriage, machine, automobile, or motor car—the names jostled with the fits and starts along the streets of New York (or Newport), where it was every driver for himself. Or herself. In the last decade of the Gilded Age (1900–1910), equine transport competed with new motor cars powered by steam, by gasoline, or by the electric batteries thought to be safer for ladies (no explosions under the hood). Stables became garages. To ride was to go “automobiling” or “motoring.” In 1900, some eight hundred automobiles were manufactured in the US at an average price of $1,000 (nearly $28,000 today). Two years later, the output increased to eight thousand vehicles, and prices were dropping. Boasted Munsey’s Magazine of 1903, “Whatever the horse can do, the automobile can do a hundred times better.”

Mrs. Astor’s circle, the New York Four Hundred, need not choose between the horse and the motor car. Both were attractive and, needless to say, affordable. Coaching, riding, sleighing—these were seasonal highlights. The motor car, too, was the novelty that became a necessity. Society had its choice of the finest of motors. Edith Wharton chose the French-made Panhard, while US president William Howard Taft in 1909 ordered the first official White House cars, two American-made Pierce-Arrows. The German-made Mercedes-Benz was a favorite of Society, as was the new luxury brand from General Motors, the Cadillac.

Motoring required a wardrobe. A lightweight cotton coat or “duster” protected a passenger from roadway grime, but fashionable and colorful kid-leather coats for occasions such as the theater soon adorned milady, who also furnished herself with a winter theater coat of mink or chinchilla. Warm feet in a motor car in winter required a foot muff, a fur wrap placed over the feet. Gentlemen might take the wheel themselves in winter, and a “must” was a fur topcoat.

With the motor car came the chauffeur. One haughty guide of 1910 declared that “the possession of a reliable chauffeur” was “the first thing necessary for the full enjoyment of motoring.” A new occupation was launched, since not all coachmen could easily swap the reins for the steering wheel, and a chauffeur was expected to drive expertly and to maintain the machine inside and out. Just as coachmen were uniformed, so was the chauffeur according to the season. An advisory of 1902 recommended a “regulation auto cap” for summer, plus “a khaki suit with trousers cut on the cavalry order.” In winter, the uniformed chauffeur wore flannel- or corduroy-lined black calfskin, but the “pliable” and preferable hide was “kangaroo.” Other equipment included “an automobile cap,” “goggles,” and “a pair of earmits . . . to keep any head comfortable during fast going on cold days,” plus “fleece-lined buckskin gauntlets with cuffs wide enough to take the sleeve and hold it in.” For warmest footwear, chauffeurs were advised to lace up the boots favored by “the men employed in the ice-harvesting business on the Great Lakes.”

For the chauffeur or the automobile owner who took the wheel, The Happy Motorist (1906) offered “Tips for Motoring”:

1. Don’t overload it.

2. Don’t drive it continually at its highest speed, which is probably about thirty miles per hour. It strains the engine.

3. Keep it well cleaned. . . . A dirty motor-car is a disgrace to its owner.

4. Use only the best oil and spirit, and never start out . . . without a full supply of both.

Other “tips” warned against speaking to “the man at the wheel,” especially “when turning a sharp corner,” and urged that emotions be kept in check. (“It is wrong for the motor passenger to express emotion of any kind, either by facial contortions or bodily wrigglings.”)

The “man at the wheel,” however, was often female. Numerous advertisements featured women driving or cranking the car for ignition. “If a woman wants to learn how to drive and understand a motor-car,” wrote Dorothy Levitt in The Woman and the Car (1909), “she can and will learn as quickly as a man. Hundreds of women have done and are doing so.” For under-the-hood repairs, her “deft fingers can remedy a loose nut or a faulty electrical connection” at twice the speed of a “professional chauffeur.” Levitt offered instructions for the treacherous, stiff cranking that started the engine. Gripping the handle at the front, the lady was urged to pull upward but never down: “If it is pressed down . . . a broken arm may result.” The moment the engine begins to run, “You can get in the car and start driving.” (One suggested automotive accessory for a woman driver was the speedometer, “which is very interesting . . . for it tells you exactly the pace at which you are traveling.”)

The rules of the roadways were murky. Antispeed legislation was proposed by 1903 but denounced as the work of “unmitigated cranks” who had “not passed through the exhilarating experience which comes with the successful handling of a steering wheel for the first time.” One tip of 1909: “Drive slowly past any one driving or riding a restive horse. . . . If it should be a lady or a child driving, stop the engine.” The horn (a “hooter”) was to be sounded on curves or at busy intersections. (“Many accidents may be averted by taking this precaution.”) Accidents in Society are on record. A newspaper referred to “the accident to Mr. W. K. Vanderbilt’s auto,” and Evalyn Walsh’s beloved “red Mercedes” blew a tire in Newport in 1905 with fatal consequences. She recalled that when returning from luncheon at the Clambake Club with several guests, her brother took over the wheel from the family’s French chauffeur. Recounted Evalyn, “We were going fast when I heard something like a pistol shot and the Mercedes began to sway and pitch. . . . I heard the chilling sound of splintering wood. . . . I remember hearing my own groans and those of others, then a voice of some man saying, ‘God! She’s under the car.’” Evalyn endured radical surgery and spent months immobilized in traction. When her survival was assured, her parents at last broke the news that her brother had not survived the accident.

At times, Gilded Age etiquette guides spoke strictly from Society to Society. With tongue in cheek, Frank Crowninshield’s Manners for the Metropolis warned the hostess at a country house to avoid inviting the bachelor guest whose belongings “looked like those of a traveling theatrical company and included one forty-horse power Mercedes car.” The same hostess, however, was encouraged to provide “liquors, cigars, food, carriages—and motors in condition” and also to supply every guest with “a pair of motor goggles.” Over cigars after dinner, the gentlemen must know that the only approved topics were “stocks and motor cars,” and the valid excuse of the late-arriving guest was arrest “for speeding your motor.” As for automobile travel abroad, Emily Post’s Etiquette was encouraging: “Motoring in Europe is perfectly feasible and easy. A car has to be put in a crate to cross the ocean, but in crossing the channel between England and France, no difficulty whatever is experienced.”

Post anticipated her reader’s question: “‘Etiquette,’ you ask?” Her advice: do not hog the road or piggishly leave roadside trash from your picnic. Her summary: “There is no etiquette of motoring that differs from all other etiquette.”

Private Rail Cars

Elizabeth Lehr described how she felt when she was invited to tour in a private rail car: “endless fascination . . . watching the ever-changing panorama of scenery whirling by while we sat in our comfortable drawing-rooms.” She enjoyed “the long hours thundering over the iron roads”: “I loved the variety of small towns and village stations at which we stopped, with their platforms decorated with flags and garlands in honor of our visit.”

The honoree at every station was Mr. Stuyvesant Fish, president of the Illinois Central Railroad for nearly twenty years (1887–1906). He and Mrs. Fish invited their friends the Lehrs to join them for Mr. Fish’s inspection tour of his rail line. Along the way, the two couples also enjoyed the view from the “platform of the observation-car” but otherwise retired to a drawing room or one of the two parlors. They no doubt enjoyed meals in the dining compartment at a table with linen napery, cut flowers, and decanters. Each multicourse meal was served by an English butler and produced by a chef in a full-service kitchen with a coal-fired range and an icebox (blessedly out of the passengers’ sight). At nightfall, with the window curtains drawn, illumination was provided by a patented gas system (the new electric lighting sadly unreliable). After a foursome at bridge, the ladies retired to their dressing room(s) while the gentlemen enjoyed cigars and cognac. Each man then joined his wife in a commodious bed chamber and, preparing for the nighttime hours, availed himself of the washroom that was paneled in satinwood with silver fixtures and featured a face bowl inset in a countertop of rare imported marble. (Mrs. Lehr did not say whether her host’s private car had a bathtub, but wood-sheathed tubs were featured in cars of the late 1880s.) Ample hot and cold running water was a given, and the staterooms (perhaps his and hers) had oversize brass beds with linens of the highest quality.

America’s great age of rail following the Civil War both enabled and coincided with stupendous wealth, and the rail executives—such names as Vanderbilt, Hill, Harriman, Gould, Huntington, and Stanford, among numerous others—were perforce among the richest in the US. The first private rail cars were designed to carry heads of state (William Henry Harrison was transported to his 1841 presidential inauguration in “a distinct car”), but the postwar custom was a custom-designed business rail car for railroad moguls and their guests.

Ostentatious travel by business executives was not necessarily the intention. Andrew Carnegie might be en route to the dedication of a library donated in his name, and J. P. Morgan might be bound for a convocation of Anglican clergy. Mr. Fish was inspecting his capital and pondering the value of the rolling stock. These men’s wealth nonetheless mandated luxury. The age did not favor the ascetic. Two companies, American Car and Foundry and Pullman Standard, led the way in producing the fifty-eight-foot, ninety-ton cars of welded steel and rivets. Interior décor was as palatial as the homes on Fifth Avenue or the steam yachts at anchor in New York Harbor or Mediterranean ports. The costs ranged from $20,000 in the early 1870s to $50,000 by the turn of the century (nearly $400,000 to $1.45 million today).

The private cars, more recently dubbed “mansions on rails,” were coupled onto trains on established rail lines whose schedules suited the travel plans of the owners. (Amtrak currently offers this service for private car owners, with varying costs according to the route, the rail line, the season.) The cars of the Gilded Age were christened according to the owners’ fancy, perhaps for a fondly remembered birthplace (Henry M. Oliver’s Tyrone) or a name with a Native American twist (Charles Crocker’s Mishawaka) or a suggestion of leisure time (William K. Vanderbilt’s Idlehour) or outright homage to oneself (Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Vanderbilt was drawn by an engine likewise named Vanderbilt). The interiors were adapted to changing Gilded Age fashions. The Eastlake furnishings of the early 1870s became the French Empire sofas and chairs, tasseled draperies and curtains (and cuspidors) of the 1880s. The Gothic enjoyed its moment. The accessories evolved too, as silver fixtures became gold, onyx was preferred to marble, and ample button-back sofas replaced Louis Quinze settees and wicker chairs. The constants, however, were intricately inlaid woods, rich fabrics, crystal in profusion, and flatware of heavy silver or gold. Henry James quipped that nowadays the country somehow “exists” for the railroad cars “and not the cars for the country.” Well equipped and beautifully appointed, the Four Hundred rode the rails—in private.

Steamships

“I was thinking that my six voyages and varied experiences on Cunard, Inman, and White Star steamers entitled me to consider myself ‘quite an old traveler,’” wrote the British journalist Emily Faithfull of her arrival in New York in 1872. Naming the three major shipping lines of the Gilded Age, she lamented the “miseries” of her seasickness and confessed to “a mental irritation” on board the Oceanic, a White Star vessel on the forefront of modern steamships that replaced the clippers from the days of sail. Her return voyage on the City of Rome in 1884 redoubled her mal de mer (and perhaps its antidote, chicken broth), but Miss Faithfull’s stateroom was pleasing, and the “stewardess” was her best friend for the crossing. She marveled at “the number of steamers now crossing the ocean” but cautioned about the danger “in the increasing demand for speed.” The chairman of the Cunard line, she added, “had resolved to enter the lists for speed,” though the line “hoped to retain its reputation for caution and safety.” By 1884, she extolled the modern steamship of all three lines, Cunard, White Star, and Inman: “these splendid specimens of marine architecture fitted up with engines of enormous power.” She termed them “racers on the Atlantic.”

Mrs. Astor was silent on the subject of her annual springtime crossings, as were others in her set. It was imperative annually to visit friends in England and to go on to Paris to be fitted for new gowns at the couturier Worth, before returning to New York in advance of the summer season in Newport. With a call at the Irish port of Queenstown, the voyage between New York and Liverpool was to be endured, lightened only by the social cheer among fellow passengers of her acquaintance—assuming spring storms spared them. Perhaps they commiserated about the four or five days at sea while making the best of it with cards, teatime, amusing reading matter, and evenings of light orchestral music. Members of the Four Hundred reserved first-class suites for their ocean voyages, of course, though the suites were far from roomy (less space than a private rail car). Their maids unpacked the steamer trunks and saw to the daily ensembles and personal needs from morn to night. In calm seas, mealtime was a pleasure, the chefs as creative as those in Paris or along Fifth Avenue. The Cunard line promised speed (twenty-four knots on the Mauretania), the White Star comfort (sixteen knots on the Celtic). One’s own schedule might determine the choice. (There was no need for Mrs. Astor or her fellow first-class passengers to be mindful of the immigrant hordes on decks far below in steerage, though a fortunate few of them might soon find employment in service on Fifth Avenue, hired by the butler or housekeeper or head of the stables, never by the master or mistress of the house.)

Mrs. Astor and her friends tried not to think of such liners as the Atlantic that ran ashore on the Nova Scotia coast in 1873, much less the City of Brussels, which met its fate in 1883 when entering the Mersey in a fog. Mrs. Astor was four years in her grave when her son John Jacob Astor IV perished in 1912 in the sinking of the ill-fated White Star “unsinkable” ocean liner Titanic.

Yachts

“You can do business with anyone, but only sail with a gentleman,” advised J. P. Morgan of the New York Yacht Club. The city’s harbor boasted schooners, sloops, and steamers owned by members of the club. At anchor in 1873 were Gordon Bennett’s Dauntless, A. S. Hatch’s Calypso, George A. Osgood’s Fleetwing, and fifty-two other vessels. As of 1868, the members had enjoyed a “villa-like” clubhouse with a restaurant, bar, and billiard room. The summer season signaled the club’s northward migration. “One of the events of the yachting season,” recalled May Van Rensselaer, “is the cruise of the New York Yacht Club to Newport.” “Yachts of all kinds” filled the harbor and launched the racing season. (“When a regatta is being sailed it is difficult to imagine a more picturesque scene” than “these vessels with their snow-white sails.”)

A warm August day in Newport meant “the little house of the New York Yacht Club, with the . . . blue-and-red burgee flying from the flag-pole” and “crowded with men in yachting dress” and “picturesque women.” (The recommended ladies’ attire was a “prettily trimmed” suit of navy, blue, or white flannel, together with “a large parasol . . . necessary for comfort.”) An afternoon aboard, say, Fred W. Vanderbilt’s Conqueror might include a champagne luncheon for a dozen guests as the vessel steamed from the Newport harbor into the open sea before looping back in ample time for the guests’ preparations for an onshore evening. A daylong cruise, on the other hand, might mean racing or fishing or a “magnificent entertainment” for the “smart set, when the cabins are given up for feasting and the decks for dancing.”

A sleek schooner under sail in a brisk wind was the glory of the Gilded Age, and the New York Yacht Club, its hub, was led by the wealthy daredevil Gordon Bennett, who was elected commodore in 1871. Known as “a capital sailor” and “thorough sportsman,” he raced his schooners Henrietta and Dauntless until 1882, when he joined the ranks of those who favored steam yachts. As of the 1880s, a new race for speed coupled with luxury at sea was full steam ahead—not a moment too soon for the ladies (and certain gentlemen), for whom the variable winds plus the pitching and the side-to-side yawing of the vessels under canvas made travel onboard a trial. Steam yachts revolutionized the waterborne experience, whether for oceanic travel abroad, for workday commuting from a suburban waterfront home, or for half-day excursions.

For the yachtsman who might work in the city but live up the Hudson River, the summer months provided a prime opportunity to start the day with a short swim to his offshore yacht and a shower onboard as the vessel weighed anchor and got under way toward lower Manhattan. Refreshed, he would dress and enjoy breakfast, his last drop of coffee savored just as the motor launch arrived at the gangway of his stilled yacht to ferry him to the dock within a short walk of his office. (For such commuting, a small yacht would serve, about seventy-five feet, manned by a crew of four or five from the captain to the steward and one or two seamen—its cost: $10,000 to $25,000, or $236,000 to $590,000 today.)

An oceangoing steamer meant a different order of magnitude. For oceanic or Mediterranean cruising, a steam yacht must measure at least 150 feet at the waterline, its basic price before furnishing about $150,000 ($3.5 million today). The vaulting ambition of the ultrarich yachtsmen was measured by the length of their vessels at the waterline. Mrs. Astor’s husband, William, and their son, John Jacob, enjoyed the 221-foot Nourmahal (on whose decks Mrs. Astor never once set foot). Howard Gould’s Niagara, completed in 1898, ran 247 feet from stem to stern. Gordon Bennett’s 217-foot Namouna was followed by his 285-foot Lysistrata. All were outmatched when, at a cost of $1 million ($2.4 billion today), J. P. Morgan’s third black-hulled Corsair yacht measured 254 feet and cruised at nineteen knots, close to the speed of an ocean liner of the era. (Yachtsmen in this cohort could expect a payroll of over $3,000 for a five-month season, or about $100,000 today, for a captain, mate, engineer, chief steward, fireman, and seamen. Maintenance, supplies, and equipment were extra, as were food and beverages under the supervision of the chef, whose salary was a well-kept secret, “which the cook is too discreet, and the master too ashamed, to disclose.”)

Each sumptuous vessel was furnished with suites for the owner and immediate family, a spacious saloon, and deckhouses for dining and socializing for the guests who occupied the several staterooms. Custom interiors matched the deluxe furnishings of the mansions and private rail cars of the owners. The coffered ceiling of the main saloon in Commodore Vanderbilt’s 270-foot North Star signaled spaciousness, and the rosewood paneling meant the warmth of entitlement. The North Star was furnished with Louis XV sofas and chairs, the cushions velvet. The ten private staterooms had bed “sheets of finest Irish linen” and blankets “bound in silk.”

All vied for the latest luxury, often combining modern technology with inflections of the past. Gordon Bennett’s Namouna featured electric chandeliers, while Howard Gould’s Niagara provided a photographic darkroom for camera enthusiasts such as himself. Jay Gould’s Atalanta offered music from an electrically operated “orchestrion,” but the Atalanta also boasted tapestries of the European medieval era, just as the Niagara pleased guests with its Renaissance Revival drawing room complete with a library of matched leather-bound volumes. William K. Vanderbilt’s Alva favored Oriental rugs for lounging, and guests on Anthony Drexel’s Margarita enjoyed a crackling fire from an actual fireplace. Gordon Bennett, for his part, guaranteed himself and his guests fresh milk and cream from the dairy cow kept onboard while under way.

Speed was a necessity, not an option. (J. P. Morgan’s second Corsair, at 204 feet, was called “in every respect an ocean greyhound.”) Observed the yachtsman Edward S. Jaffrey (grandfather of Daisy Harriman), “In this happy country, we are nearly all men of business, and we have neither the time nor the inclination to be becalmed on the glassy ocean for hours and days, or to creep along at three knots indefinitely. . . . Steam yachtsmen can go where they please and when they please, and what is more important, they know when they will get back.”

“To him who can afford it, it is worth every penny of the cost,” wrote the journalist Frank S. Arnet of the “fortunate few.” Perhaps Arnet was aboard a cutter that passed astern or leeward of one such vessel when he wrote those words in 1902. If so, he inhaled the aroma described by the yacht designer L. Francis Herreshoff: “new varnish, linseed oil, brass polish, Havana cigars, and champagne, all mingled with engine room smells and the slight odor of teak and other exotic woods.” Such was the scent of the Gilded Age yacht.