I swear to you, as God is my witness, I WILL live in a palatial estate the likes of these one day. I’ll probably live there with an MC Hammer style entourage, but whatever, it’ll still be palatial.
Welcome to my mahogany smoking chamber, friends. Please, remove your shoes, hand them to any number of the staff and they will be sure to shine them for you while we eat, sitting on their bent, tired backs. Aah, I love the good life.
Seriously, I want this house. There are some bigger homes in Newport, but I think I could survive with The Elms. It feels like walking into a French Palace, without the French. Score? I don’t know. Depends on the Frenchman.
This home actually inspired a novel I will one day write. I might actually call it the Elms, though probably not. I find that too declarative. And besides, I don’t want them to feel obliged to sell my epic romantic tale in their gift shop. That would be weird for me.
Why?
It just would.
The interior of the home is gorgeous as I said, but after touring through the upper apartments, a step through a side doorway and suddenly you’re accosted with the working man’s quarters. Literally, there was a sewing room, followed by a corridor of white tile. It was the floor, ceiling, walls – white tiles, hundreds of thousands of tiny white squares along every inch. I found it strange.
Still I enjoyed the small china cabinet that was larger than my bedroom with a walk in safe.
That was pretty stellar.
Then the tour recording informed me (yes, my tour was given by a set of headphones. Nothing wrong with that. Let’s me meander at my own breakneck speed) that the tile hallways were made that way in order for the ‘help’ to have the ability to ‘hose them down.’ It was considered more sanitary.
Oh the things that will happen in that hallway in my novel. You needn’t know now, but someday not long from now, perhaps you will read a book that includes said hallway, and said things I allude to will happen. Suddenly you’ll think, “I feel like I knew this, though not really quite this, was coming.”
Perhaps you’ll feel joy. Or perhaps just confusion as to why the hell and where the hell you heard anything about the damn hallway in the first place and “I don’t bloody well care! Why can’t I just read the damn book?”
Sorry about that.
Thank you for reading my book though.
Anyway, moving on.
Waking up to a ceiling like this?
It’s my fate. I know it is.
This was either a bedroom or an office or a parlor, or even a breakfast nook, I have no idea, the gold filigree was too distracting for me to pay attention to the damn headphones.
Oddly enough, despite a tendency I’ve had since the dawn of my time, I did not, in fact, ask any of the guides whether the ‘palace’ was haunted. That’s normally the first thing I do. I guess I’ll have to find that out the next time I visit, eh?
Be that weirdo.
The Elms wasn’t the only one of the mansions we visited that day. Though the Newport Mansion Conglomerate offers a three house ticket for cheaper than the price of three separate entries, we only had time to visit two of the homes. As I was told before heading down by avid Newport fans, I had to visit “Breakers.”
So, I did.
But on my way, I found this bad larry.
It looked as abandoned as any French Chateau in Rhode Island can look. I wondered what was going on within its walls, given the two stray cars that were parked near the building. As a part of the initial greeting we received whilst buying our tickets, we were informed that the mansions were ‘acquired’ by the conglomerate for a fucking song.
No I’m serious. These are worth nigh on one hundred million or more I would think. The Mansion Tourist Group bought them from the families for one million. Maybe even less. I can’t quite remember.
This notion exasperates me.
Honey, if this Chateau is going to sell to anyone for that low a price, I’ll fucking come up with that money. I swear on all that is holy that I would find a way!
Though, let’s be clear. There are sneaky loopholes in place for the families that sold them. For example, in “The Breakers” there is a skylight on the second floor looking up at the sky. Or so one would think, but in fact it is a glass floor installed so the rich could feel the joy and airy feel of a skylight. The skylight was actually located in the floor of the cramped and miserable servants’ quarters hallways. Often times, they said, one could look up and see the servants walking across the skylight (there was one at “The Elms” as well). I found that amazing, and as before in “The Elms” I wanted to explore the servants area – be inspired by the rooms in which my characters might have slept.
Yet this part of the house was not on the menu.
Why, you ask?
Now we come back to that loophole I was telling you about.
Apparently the families still, technically, own the houses – in some manner of speaking. The third floor servants’ quarters have been turned into family apartments for the still hoity toity.
Bastards!
And just on a side note, when I belched a second ago, it tasted like sushi. I love me some sushi, but I think I can do without the after taste.
Moving on.
The reason they named Breakers – well, the Breakers – is because it is perched on a cliff over looking the water. You can hear the waves crashing from anywhere on the property. It is stunningly beautiful.
I’ve visited a similarly gorgeous expanse of the Gilded Age in Essex, Massachusetts. The Crane Estate is very grand in its expanse as well, yet it sits alone on a gorgeous rolling hillside, not amongst equally astounding monoliths such as these.
I’ve never been inside that house. Perhaps I should remedy that.
Maybe they’ll have servants quarters I can bloody well visit! The fire needs fodder, damn it!
Anyway, to close out the post, I will add a few shots to appease the eye and bid you adieu.
It’s a vase, people. Get with the program.
Hidden driveway so that guests wouldn’t see something so appalling as deliveries being made. How thoughtful…
Insert child-riding-a-goat joke, here.
