On my way into the office the other morning, I was reflecting on my family’s past and how it compares to my lifelong crazy love affair with the Gilded Age. I have always been fascinated with the era and as a young girl, I longed to be a part of those grand families, to live in a mansion amidst fine art and fabrics and to have servants cater to my every whim. On the surface, it appeared almost like living in a grand fairy tale. Of course the older I’ve become, the wiser I’ve become, as the adage goes. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m still drawn to and fascinated by those beautiful homes and lifestyles, I just see things with a more cynical eye. I’ve spent a lot of time researching the many wealthy New York families over the years as I’ve worked on characters for my stories, and I have found most of the people on the upper end of that dichotomous spectrum were as gilded as the time period they were a part of: there is little substance beneath the shiny surface.
As my mind wandered this path, I began thinking about my family and their experience of that era. I was lucky to have my paternal great-grandparents in my life until I was in my early teens. Grandpa and Grandma Tompkins were born in 1896 and 1901, at the tail end of a time described in most history books as a vast divide within the American experience: one small group of people made millions and lived extravagantly, while most everyone else barely survived.
Crazy things run through my mind as I drive down Route 9 in the mornings, and this particular thought stream was a mini-epiphany. On the one end of the contradictory spectrum of time lies the families and people within Jacob Reis’ How the Other Half Lives: his pictures exposed the pain of those who lived in squalor with cities and spent their lives just trying to survive. On the opposite end were the opportunists, the robber-barons and those that considered themselves American Aristocracy: their coffers were overflowing with money and lavish, extraordinary possessions which they flaunted mercilessly. Yet, somewhere in the middle of the two extremes are the families we rarely hear of: the emerging middle class. They were not destitute and they had no aspirations to be excessively wealthy. Instead, they took pride in working hard and enjoying the simplistic life they created.
My great-grandparents didn’t have a mansion on 5th Avenue nor in Newport, and they certainly didn’t travel to Europe to buy their clothes from the House of Worth. They didn’t grow up impoverished either, crammed into a tiny room with no light and rampant disease. Instead, they both grew up on family farms in Putnam County, New York and after they married, my great-grandfather built the house in Granite Springs where they raised their six children. They lived in that house until they passed away almost seventy-five years later.
Grandma and Grandpa Tompkins lived very simply and within their means. There were no extravagant tapestries, china or gold leaf in their house. Instead, there were narrow, sloping hallways, tons of books and magazines, and a garden where you could find the best green beans growing on the vines. My great-grandfather always told the best jokes and great-grandma always had enough food on the table to feed an army because “you never knew who would be walking through the kitchen door”. My best memories are filled with the love and warmth that permeated around them. In fact, there was so much love surrounding them that you couldn’t help but feel light and joyful in their presence.
As I look back, I am grateful that I wasn’t born into the Livingston, Astor, Vanderbilt or any other upper New York family as I’d once wished. I’ve learned that it could be a lonely, cold life at the top when status, money and possessions were valued over everything else. I’m equally grateful that my great-grandparents weren’t impoverished from working long hours in a factory, barely able to afford a room in a tenement, or worrying where their next meal would come from. I’m fortunate to have come from somewhere in the middle of that conflicted era. The legacy my great-grandparents left was the love for their family, cultivated in that little white and green house in Granite Springs. I am truly lucky to have been built from that long line of love.
Evelina Wood 