Biography
Gertrude Vanderbilt was born in New York City on January 9, 1875. She was the eldest surviving daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt II (1843–1899) and Alice Claypoole Gwynne (1852–1934) and a great-granddaughter of "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt.
Gertrude Vanderbilt spent her summers in Newport, Rhode Island, at the family's mansion, The Breakers, where she kept up with the boys in all their rigorous sporting activities. Educated by private tutors and at the exclusive Brearley School in New York City, at age 21 she married the extremely wealthy sportsman Harry Payne Whitney (1872–1930).
A banker and investor, Whitney was the son of William C. Whitney, and his mother was the daughter of a Senator, and sister of a Standard Oil Company magnate. Harry Whitney inherited a fortune in oil and tobacco as well as interests in banking. Gertrude and Harry Whitney had three children, Flora (1897), Cornelius (1899), and Barbara (1903).
Read more about this topic: Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney
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“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)
“Had Dr. Johnson written his own life, in conformity with the opinion which he has given, that every man’s life may be best written by himself; had he employed in the preservation of his own history, that clearness of narration and elegance of language in which he has embalmed so many eminent persons, the world would probably have had the most perfect example of biography that was ever exhibited.”
—James Boswell (1740–95)
“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)