#Rosecliff manor game series#

Two of the social gatekeepers, Mamie Fish and Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, hosted a 'Dogs' Dinner' garden party for 100 canines. He had earlier inherited $65m from his father, so perhaps it didn't seem very much at all and - when it sank in a fog off Nantucket a few years later, he commissioned an even more opulent replacement. It cost half a million dollars and had a crew of 27. While the women made their social calls, the gentlemen spent their time on the waves, in a vain attempt to compete with William K Vanderbilt, who then owned the world's biggest yacht, the Alva, called after his wife. In the Gilded Age, being a member of the New York Yacht Club was a sign that you had been accepted. Rivalry for invites was fierce, and it was not unknown for some who had been excluded from a particular guest list to swiftly arrange a trip to Europe as the reason for their absence. One family, the Pembroke Jones from North Carolina, budgeted $300,000 for the Newport season, while society hostesses, Mrs Ogden Mills and Mrs Elbridge Gerry, boasted that they could put on a 10-course dinner and ball for a hundred guests without engaging any extra staff! Such lifestyles required a never-ending pot of money and ensured a continuous supply of scandal and gossip. Much of the furnishings and fittings were sourced and manufactured in Europe, with chandeliers of Bohemian and Murano glass, marble from Carrera, staircases from French oak and brocades from Italy. The cottages - often a third or fourth home for their owners - were opulent, ostentatious and often quite eccentric and their architects were the superstars of the Gilded Age. To the manor: Muriel Bolger at The Elms in Newport, on the ServantsвЂ™ Life tour Keeping up appearances took on a whole new meaning, as these people vied to outdo each other in every possible way. They only came here to their 'cottages' for six to eight weeks every summer, bringing with them armies of servants. These were the railway magnates, fur traders, property developers, bankers, newspapermen and some plantation owners from the south, who fled the heat and the smells of the cities for the fresh sea air. Instead, I'd probably have been below stairs in service, among the countless other Irish girls who had 'taken the boat' to a better life in America in the decades following the famine years.Д«y the 1880s, the town of Newport on Rhode Island had found favour with the wealthy of New York and Boston. Of course, the reality would in all probability not have seen me at the receiving end of gilt-edged invitations from the Vanderbilts and Astors, reclining on a chaise while a parlour maid poured my coffee. That was over a decade ago, but the memories of those grandiose mansions of a bygone time, with their opulent ballrooms, Gatsby-like marble staircases, orangeries, tea houses and columned loggias, never left me. 'About this title' may belong to another edition of this title.Did you ever feel you were born in the wrong age? That you should have been around in the days of servants and barouches, lady's maids and butlers? Well, that's how I felt the first time I visited the mansions in Newport, Rhode Island.

#Rosecliff manor game series#

Roadkill - New Release! - USA Today Bestseller About the Author:Д¬heryl Bradshaw is a New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author writing in the genres of mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, and paranormal suspense.Stranger in Town (Sloane Monroe mystery series book 4) was a Shamus Award finalist, and I Have a Secret (Sloane Monroe mystery series #3) won best thriller of the year from eFestival of Words. Hickory Dickory Dead - USA Today BestsellerД¤.

Sloane Monroe Stories - Mystery Novella SeriesДЈ. Smoke and Mirrors - August 2019 New Release! Stranger in Town - Shamus Award FinalistД§. Belle Manor Haunting - Coming February 2020Д¤.