COME WITH ME AS I SEARCH FOR JAY GATSBY
Off to a Great Gatsby themed party in London
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
Noting that this is the centennial year of the publication of F Scott Fitzgerald’s acclaimed Jazz Age/Roaring Twenties masterpiece, The Great Gatsby, I set off in search of the charismatic, elusive Mr Gatsby and his lost love, Daisy Buchanan.
Being based in London my obvious first stop was The Coliseum, home to a musical version of the novel. The staging was spectacular, the cast’s beautiful and powerful voices were almost operatic and the dancing impressive if not overly frenetic. However, the lyrics and intense story trajectory overwhelmed Fitzgerald’s poignant search for the American Dream, social acceptance and a lost love. And where was the flawed but somehow appealing Jay Gatsby I had long been enthralled by?
Jamie Muscato and Frances Mayli McCann and as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in the London Coliseum musical The Great Gatsby
Robert Redford and Mia Farrow as Jay and Daisy in the 1974 film
DiCaprio and Mulligan in the 2013 adaptation
Jamie Muscato in the title role produced a powerful performance as did Frances Mayli McCann as Jay’s youthful but now long-lost love Daisy Buchannan, but where was the sense of vulnerability, instability and thwarted aspirations so movingly depicted by Robert Redford and Mia Farrow in the 1974 film version? (Far superior in the minds of myself and others to their portayals’s by Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan in the 2013 version).
To at least understand the lifestyle that Fitzgerald depicted for his returned World War I veteran antihero as he transformed himself via devious means from former poverty to great wealth on the ‘Gold Coast’ of New York’s Long Island I decided to head across the Atlantic.
Although a logical person would have travelled out to the island by a 60-minute Long Island Railroad ride from Penn Station after partying in Manhattan, I, like Gatsby, Daisy, her faithless husband Tom and the chronicler of their fate, her cousin Nick Carraway, headed out the island by car .
The destination for me and New Jersey-based friends Rose Gilbert, who had co-authored a book on Long Island, and John Savittieri was Great Neck, the still affluent community where Fitzgerald, his flamboyant wife Zelda and infant daughter ‘Scottie’ lived in 1922-23 while mixing with the glittering nouveau rich set who were later to be depicted as the denizens of fictional West Egg in his novel.
The Gateway Drive house, which they rented, still exists but is not open to the public so held no clues for me of his life there. However, to get an idea of the grand lifestyle that he depicted in the novel we headed to The Sands Point Preserve. Set on the tip of the nearby peninsula jutting out into Manhasset Sound it is part of the novel’s East Egg, home to the exclusive ‘old money’ set, among them Daisy Buchanan, who Gatsby had loved and lost in his youth. (In the novel– and the London and Broadway musicals – he is seen gazing longingly across the water at the green light on the end of the Buchanans’ pier which symbolizes the love and life he is unable to obtain in spite of the great wealth he has acquired, largely through Prohibition-busting bootlegging and other illegal activities.
Hempstead House on Long Island’s ‘Gold Coast’ (Photo:Jean Marie Possner)
Now the 216-acre site is home to four garden- and park-surrounded mansions: French country style Falaise, once home to the fabulously rich Daniel and Florence Guggenheim, whose guests included famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and which was the setting for a key scene in The Godfather film; Hempstead House, also owned by the Guggenheims; small, waterfront Mille Fleurs, and Castle Gould, modeled on Ireland’s Castle Kilkenny Castle and once the home of Howard Gould, son of railroad tycoon Jay Gould. Featured in such films as The Scent of a Woman and such TV series as The Gilded Age, and only offering limited access to the public they still exude the ambience of the life that Gatsby was largely excluded from.
With Rose and John at Old Westbury Gardens
The sitting room at Old Westbury Gardens
To visit the home, among others, which might have inspired the one inhabited by the Buchanans we headed south-east to Old Westbury’s Old Westbury Gardens. At the heart of its lovely 200 acres of lawns and gardens we entered the tasteful English manor house style mansion built in 1906 for steel millionaire John A Phipps and his British born wife Margarita, a Grace Shipping Company heiress who grew up in Britain’s historic Battle Abbey.
Adorned with elegant antique furniture, some comfy with floral patterned upholstery, Chinese silk wallpaper and photos of the Phipps’ four handsome children, the property also features some surprises. In the grand entry hall a display case features a stuffed Bengal tiger brought back from the Phipps’ Indian honeymoon, and the massive glass windows surrounding the side porch can during good weather slide down under the floor.
As a child, daughter Peggie Phipps Boegner was given a cottage on the grounds as her playhouse; later she oversaw the transformation of the estate into a nonprofit foundation offering tours from April through October.
For more flamboyant insight into the glittering nouveau rich life indulged in by Jay Gatsby we headed east to Huntington’s majestic, French chateau style Oheka Castle. Constructed for what was then a stunning $11 million in 1911-12 for Manhattan-based, German-born railroad magnate Otto Hermann Kahn, the 127 room mansion is the second largest private home in the USA (after George Washington Vanderbilt’s Asheville, North Carolina’s Biltmore House) . Built on a huge earthen mound constructed from soil brought in from the excavations for Manhattan’s subway system the spectacular structure was conveniently sited close to both the train station served by a line Kahn had rerouted from Manhattan and the Cold Spring Harbor Bay where he kept the 735 ft yacht he used to commute into his office in the city.
Oheka Castle, known for its spectacular parties and fireworks
With Rose, John and Bianna at Oheka Castle, now a hotel and resort
An Oheka Castle tour guide with a photo and painting of its millionaire founder Otto Hermann Kahn
A Charlie Chaplin photos on the wall of his namesake meeting room
The 443-acre property also encompassed beautiful gardens, a swimming pool and an 18-hole golf course and was the site of its owner’s renowned lavish parties, hosting the likes of Enrico Caruso (Kahn was a major benefactor of New York’s Metropolitan Opera), Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin and staging spectacular fireworks.
Whether Fitzgerald actually attended these parties is unconfirmed, but he certainly knew about them and hobnobbed socially with flamboyant party host and ‘gentleman bootlegger’ neighbour Max von Gerlach, thought to be the inspiration for
Jay Gatsby, even as his Manhattan-based mobster colleague, Arnold Rothstein, was thought to be the inspiration for Meyer Wolfsheim in The Great Gatsby.
In 1984, facing hard times, Oheka was rescued by Long Island developer Gary Melius who spent $40 million transforming it into the Oheka Castle Hotel and Resort, a member of the Historic Hotels of America and on the list of The National Register of Historic Places.
It now features 34 uniquely decorated guestrooms and suites as well as tours of some of the suites, the splendid library ,where a portrait of Kahn hangs over the fireplace, the meeting room dedicated to guest Charlie Chaplin and adorned with his photos, the well-stocked bar and the elegant dining room where we shared champagne toasts and a delicious meal with Brianna McEnroe, the Vice President of Brand and Innovation at Discover Long Island.
We next headed back toManhattan where I linked up with local author Kevin Fitzpatrick who hosts both Gatsby themed boat tours of Manhasset Bay and Long Island Sound and walking tours of Manhattan. The boat tours, he said, are scheduled for June 1, July 6, August 3 and September 7 with the July one encouraging guests to arrive in vintage attire. (He was particularly thrilled to recently have the great granddaughter of Scott and Zelda on board one of his boat tours.)
Kevin Fitzpatrick leading a Great Gatsby-inspired Manhattan walking tour
Passengers on a Great Gatsby-inspired boat tour of Long Island’s ‘Gold Coast’
As for the Secrets of Scott and Zelda walking tours, they include some 20 sites associated with the Fitzgeralds, the Jazz Age and The Great Gatsby. Among them are Times Square’s Hotel Knickerbocker where Scott and Zelda met in 1912 as fledging short story writers, the Algonquin, a literary hub where the Fitzgeralds visited their witty writer friend Dorothy Parker, who was a fixture of the renowned Algonquin Round Table, and, most notably, the grand Plaza Hotel where a key confrontation between Jay Gatsby and Tom Buchanan is depicted in the novel and where the Fitzgeralds reputedly leapt fully clothed into the splendid Pulitzer Fountain when overnighting, dining and/or drinking in the grand Palm Court (where I too have had tea and far more than a sip of champagne). In fact, you too can stay in the splendid Fitzgerald Suite, designed by Catherine Martin, the Oscar-winning production designer for Baz Luhrmann's 2013 Great Gatsby film.
For our own special tribute to Fitzgerald and Gatsby my friends and I ended up toasting each other and them with vodka-based Gatsby Cosmos at Gatsby’s Landing restaurant in the charming Long Island town of Roslyn.
As we sat overlooking the moonlit local pond our waiter, obviously a Gatsby fan, suggested that a green light should be installed on the opposite shore indicating the often unobtainable dreams most of us sometimes have. Then, as we left, I noticed inscribed on the entry glass door the final line from The Great Gatsby: “And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” It was, later I discovered, inscribed on Fitzgerald’s tombstone in the Rockville, Maryland cemetery where both he and Zelda are buried. He died, like Jay Gatsby at an early age (44), once again like Gatsby, disappointed by what he considered to be a failure of his dreams of success.
STILL IN SEARCH OF GATSBY? HERE ARE OTHER PLACES TO VISIT
An opulent ballroom in Newport, Rhode Island’s Marble House (Photo: Gavin Ashworth, The Preservation Society of Newport County)
Newport, Rhode Island – Although The Great Gatsby was set on Long Island its opulent lifestyle was also manifested in the splendid Gilded Age mansions lining Newport’s Atlantic seafront Featured In the 1974 film version of The Great Gatsby were both Rosecliff, inspired by the Petit Trianon in Versailles and home to silver-mining heiress Theresa Fair Oelrich and her husband Hermann, known for their flamboyant Gilded Age parties, and Marble House, built in the late 19th century for William Vanderbilt as a birthday present for his wife Alva. To discover how you can tour both plus other historic so-called ”cottages” visit Newport Mansions.
Louisville, Kentucky – Not only did Fitzgerland spend time in fun-loving ‘Bourbon City’ when he was stationed at nearby Camp Taylor during World War I, it was Daisy’s hometown, where she first met Jay Gatsby and where she and Tom Buchanan were married in the grand ballroom of the city’s oldest still-operating hotel, the Hilton Hotel Seelbach. Its Prohibition-busting Rathskeller was a favourite hangout for Fitzgerald, who spent much time drinking and gambling there as did such notorious gangsters as Al Capone, Dutch Schultz and Lucky Luciano – possibly inspiring Fitzgerald’s understanding of Gatsby’s shadowy other life. For full immersion stay in the Great Gatsby Suite – the ‘new money’-inspired Gatsby Salon includes a photo of Fitzgerald and other memorabilia; there is a green light outside Daisy’s ultra feminine ‘old money’- inspired bedroom.
Daisy’s bedroom in the Hilton Hotel Seelbach’s Great Gatsby Suite, Louisville, Kentucky.
A photo of Scott Fitzgerald and a symbol of his aspirational East Egg in the Great Gatsby Suite
The green light outside Daisy’s door
Meanwhile, here’s a link to Essentially America magazine, UK, the latest issue of which includes my feature on American Adventures on Vintage Trains. Just tap into www.essentiallyamerica.co.uk, selecting Magazines and you can not only browse though back issues but also subscribe to the magazine.
And check out my book of travel and lifestyle anecdotes, Goodbye Hoop Skirts – Hello World! The Travels, Triumphs and Tumbles of a Runaway Southern Belle.
