The Wedding Veil(102)

I almost looked back, to see its glorious tulle blowing in the wind one last time. But the women who wore that veil? We weren’t the kind to look back. No. We kept moving forward, pressing into the future, into the unknown, into an endless night and a sky bursting with stars, full of nothing but possibility.





AUTHOR’S NOTE


My cousin Sidney Patton got married in 2019, and I, her matron of honor, stood with her in a bridal suite in Cashiers, North Carolina, in those final moments before she had a new last name. As I placed the mantilla that had been in my husband’s family for generations on her head, I was struck, as I often am, with a book idea. The next day I called my agent and told her I wanted to write a novel about a fictional family wedding veil and the stories of all the women who had worn it. I would call it, simply, The Wedding Veil.

She loved the idea but asked, “What if you wrote about a real, historical veil?”

I remember pushing the idea aside because what were the chances I could find a real, historical wedding veil owned by a woman so interesting to me that I wanted to spend a year researching her life? A few months later, unable to sleep one night, I got up and got on Google. I remember where I was sitting, on a barstool at a house we were renting while our home was in month eight of renovations from damage caused by Hurricane Florence. When my family had evacuated for the storm, we left the coast for Asheville, North Carolina, only a few hours from where I grew up.

My husband and I wanted to take our son to Biltmore Estate, and, though I had been many times before, I had never once considered until that trip that George Vanderbilt died too early, leaving behind a young widow, a thirteen-year-old daughter, and America’s largest home. I had never before wondered how this woman, in a time when women couldn’t even vote, managed to hold on to this expansive property with its unimaginable upkeep. I knew then that, one day, I wanted to tell her story.

So, that night as I sat awake, considering crumbling 120-year-old molding and mold-covered furniture, feeling downtrodden that the historic home we had completely restored not six years earlier was having to be redone all over again, I decided to focus on my next book. On a whim, I Googled “Edith Vanderbilt wedding veil.”

What I found was a flurry of articles about the creation of a reproduction of the Vanderbilt veil. The original was worn by Edith Vanderbilt, her mother, her sisters, and her daughter, Cornelia—and then disappeared.

I sent a link to my agent with the heading: Sometimes the Stories Write Themselves.

As a contemporary fiction author, I knew I wanted to write a present-day storyline alongside the tale of two remarkable Vanderbilt women who saved America’s largest home against incredible odds. The veil became a touchstone that connected four generations of women—and a physical symbol in the novel of letting go of expectations, something that I had to do many times while writing this book.

When I decided to dive into this story in early 2020, I had visions of driving across the state, burning up my Biltmore Annual Pass with tour after tour, interviewing guides and experts on site and rummaging through library documents to glean all the details about Edith and Cornelia Vanderbilt. I don’t think I need to tell you what happened next, but, just in case, only two months later, the world as we knew it shut down. Life was canceled; my book deadline was not.

And so, I decided to power through with the help of some truly amazing librarians, former and current Biltmore staff—most notably Will Morgan and Michelle Kreitman—my newspaper.com account, the Biltmore blog, every single book I could find that so much as mentioned the name “Vanderbilt,” and even a few sources who asked not to be named. I was drowning in details and brimming with stories. The Wedding Veil was born. (So many thankyous to all who helped! Your knowledge was invaluable—and all mistakes are mine alone!)

I had been taught how to research in journalism school and had learned that primary sources are the ones that matter. But, wow, did I have a rude awakening. One of the first newspaper articles I was so excited to find—one that talked about Cornelia Vanderbilt’s time at my alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—quoted her father talking about his pride in his daughter. At the time the article was published, George Vanderbilt had been dead for almost seven years, making a quote from him… unlikely. And, after some very deep digging by UNC staff, no one could find any evidence of Cornelia ever actually attending the school.

This is a small example, but an example all the same of what it was like to research two women whose lives were intimately covered in the media, often by gossip columnists or sources who, needless to say, weren’t fact-checking. Quite often, I found, in writing, sources that confirmed two very disparate ideas: On Edith’s wedding day, for example, some newspaper and magazine articles waxed poetic about her dripping jewels, gifts from George. Other sources were firm that she wore no jewelry at all. Similarly, sources differ widely about whether Cornelia first moved to England, France, or Switzerland after leaving Biltmore.

I’ll be honest: when in doubt, I went with the source that fit my novel best, and, quite often, relied on a story from a Biltmore guide, even if I didn’t have proof in print. Oral history has been so important to North Carolina’s preservation that it seemed necessary to honor that. But despite my research, this is, through and through, a work of fiction, and much of the story that I couldn’t find I dreamed up as best I could. How Peter Gerry and Edith Vanderbilt began their courtship, for example, is a detail I could never confirm. But the Helen Keller speech in Washington, D.C., where I placed them was real, and is an event that would have been reasonable for either of them to attend.