# Vanderbilt Tags: #literature ## Metadata * Author: [Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe](https://www.amazon.comundefined) * ASIN: B08R3WD7WD * ISBN: 0063249936 * Reference: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08R3WD7WD * [Kindle link](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08R3WD7WD) ## Highlights “Gilded sin is so much more interesting than ragged sin,” she reflected. “Scandal dressed in ermine and purple is much more salacious than scandal in overalls or a kitchen apron.” — location: [2100](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08R3WD7WD&location=2100) ^ref-56862 --- Truman’s great insight in planning the Black and White Ball was to understand that the guest list made the party, even more than the music, the liquor, the theme, or the food. — location: [3322](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08R3WD7WD&location=3322) ^ref-14613 --- But exceptional moments are not often what matter most to us, when we reflect on the lives we have lived. Alva Vanderbilt Belmont, for instance, recalled in the notes for her memoir lazy summer afternoons with her children digging in the garden at their summer house on Long Island. They planted flowers and vegetables and kept a little rowboat on the pond nearby, to which was added a small mast and sail when the children were big enough. Harold, her baby son, the great America’s Cup defender, had his first sail with his mother and sister, Consuelo, as a tiny boy on a calm summer pond in a rejiggered rowboat. That’s what Alva remembered. Her memoir doesn’t include her costume ball at all, not even a passing mention of it. — location: [3605](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08R3WD7WD&location=3605) ^ref-45733 --- As Gloria wrote in her journal in 1971, reflecting on the deaths of people she knew and loved, “So many, and then there’s no one left but oneself. Then one knows it’s only the long walk of the blood—one’s children—that endure.” — location: [3814](kindle://book?action=open&asin=B08R3WD7WD&location=3814) ^ref-55259 ---