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Now onto today's video, Who Was The Real Mrs Chamberlain?
HBO's The Gilded Age is full of so many characters and season one is only just getting started on
flushing out the lives of those who lived the good life at the turn of the century in New York City.
I have covered several of the women characters in the show
in my previous videos, so if you are curious to know more about the characters
including who they were inspired by in history or whose lives they may closely parallel,
then be sure to check out my videos on the Gilded Age and join the discussion by leaving comments.
In today's video, you will discover the most likely real life historical person
who inspired the character, Mrs. Chamberlain.
It took some digging but I finally found several resources that suggest that Mrs
Chamberlain's real-life inspiration for the character, is based on Arabella Huntington.
Let's start with a brief recap of what the show has revealed about Mrs Chamberlain so far.
In an early episode, Mrs Chamberlain, or Sylvia Chamberlain,
is introduced to us as a social outcast in high society when she first meets Marian.
Marian is told that being seen with Mrs Chamberlain in public, let alone speaking to her,
is frowned upon. According to her HBO character description, Mrs Chamberlain is a master in
creative art and a renowned art collector, despite her standing, or lack thereof, in society.
In episode 4, Gilded Age fans discover a little more about Mrs Chamberlain, who was revealed to
have been Mr Chamberlain's mistress and lived with him and his wife until the 1st Mrs C died.
Somewhere along the line, Sylvia had become pregnant when Mr Chamberlain was still married,
and he was good enough to welcome the child out of wedlock into his home
while Sylvia was living there (under what circumstances, we do not know).
Following the death of Mr Chamberlain's 1st wife, he marries Sylvia and tries to pass
the boy off as his adopted son to, supposedly escape embarrassment. When asked about the son,
Mrs Chamberlain said he no longer lives in New York and lives in Chicago instead.
Now, let's take a look at the life of Arabella Huntington.
Arabella's early years are a bit of a mystery. She must have wanted it that
way because before she died, she had most of her personal papers destroyed.
Arabella Duval Yarrington was most likely born in Richmond Virginia,
circa 1850 to Richard and Catherine Yarrington. There is no birth certificate, and she had always
been evasive about her age. In 1850, her parents migrated from Alabama to Richmond,
where her father worked as a machinist until he died in 1859. After his death, Arabella's mother
managed a boarding house on Main Street along the James River to support her five children.
It wasn't the most desirable neighborhood in town, and these were the years of the Civil War.
The city of Richmond grew in population,
and it became a tough place to live so we might guess that Arabella learned early on
how life how to make the most of what she had. And what she had was a statuesque beauty.
One account that I read claims that Arabella's mother was shrewd and new the value of her
daughter's beauty. The family was poor so the only road for advancement was through sex and intrigue.
The boarding house that Arabella grew up in was nearby to a gambling establishment
and it is said that the wealthy industrialist, Collis P Huntington,
was an intrepid card player as well as a shrewd and ruthless business man.
He had a wife named Elizabeth who, by all accounts,
was plain and childless, was living quietly in a mansion on New York's
Park Avenue while Mr. Huntington made frequent business trips to Richmond.
It is unclear exactly how their paths first crossed but what we do know is that Arabella,
age 19, married John Worsham, age 45,in 1869 and they immediately moved to New York City.
Arabella's mother and siblings followed the newlyweds to New York,
and Arabella's son Archer Milton Worsham was born the following year.
According to some accounts, John Worsham died that same year,
while others stories imply that he already had a wife in Richmond to whom he quickly returned.
According to Arabella's son Archer,
she met the wealthy railroad magnate while he was staying at the Yarrington boarding home,
and he took her to New York to assist him care for his ailing wife. They fell in love,
produced a child, and Archer's birth was legitimized through the Worsham marriage.
The son Archer, insists that his birth father was the wealthy Collis Huntington but it has
never be fully substantiated as true; though Arabella's appeal for assistance
from Collis while she was pregnant does seem to hold up in the research.
He not only supported her, but also moved Arabella, her new born son, and her family
into nicer living accommodations. According to Shelley Bennett, author of "The Art of Wealth:
The Huntingtons in the Gilded Age," Arabella, under her mother's shrewd guidance,
and with Huntington's money, began to buy and sell houses in the bursting city of New York.
It was even reported that she purchased a property which was later sold to John D
Rockefeller, garnering a tidy sum in the transaction.
Collis himself was from a poor and somewhat destitute background,
and most likely was able to empathize with the plight of Arabella's family before he came along;
and it does appear that he must have been fully devoted to the young beauty.
Huntington, in an effort to bring himself up society, began to seriously collect works of art.
Arabella followed suit, studying French and gathering her own collection of highly
valued artwork. Before long, she became an expert in both real estate and high culture.
Not that it did her much good. Even after Huntington married her when his wife
died in 1884, Arrabella was not accepted into New York high society.
Rumors and gossip suggest that Huntington masterminded the sham marriage to get Arabella
established discreetly near him in New York. And people always wondered whether little
Archer Worsham was actually the railroad magnate's illegitimate son. These questions and insinuations
were never were answered, and Arabella spent a lifetime making sure they never would be.
The most the world would know was that Huntington legally adopted Archer aftey they were married
(he was 14 years old by that time); and that Arabella and Archer inherited his full estate.
She is said to have inherited more than 50 million dollars.
At this point, it must surely seem likely that Mrs Chamberlain in The Gilded age TV show
is the fictional counterpart to Arabella Hungtington.
Please be sure to let me know what you think in the comments below this video.
Collis Huntington died in 1900 and by that time, one of the most mysterious women in the world had
become its richest. And it was not without futher scandal that Arabella's real life story continues.
But wait! There is more......
During the course of her relationship and marriage to Collis,
Arabella became friends with her husband's nephew, Henry Edward Huntington. They were closer in age
than the married pair and Henry worked closely along side of his uncle in his business.
He also shared an interest in European art as did Arabella.
And Edward, as he was called, always had been sweet on his uncles' beautiful wife.
It also turns out that he inherited one third of his uncle's estate.
Arabella had a friendly connection with Henry Edwards Huntington's family during her marriage to
Collis, but by 1908, the women in Henry's family had developed an intense dislike for Arabella.
Henry met with Arabella and Archer frequently as his uncle's trustee to discuss and handle
the inheritance they shared. Their encounters were pleasant and soon spawned suspicions of a romance,
which Arabella and Henry flatly denied as long as they could.
A few years later, Henry’s daughter-in-law Leslie wrote
to his daughter Elizabeth that father was “ madly in love” with Aunt Belle.
In March 1906 Henry’s wife Mary filed for divorce,
claiming desertion. A few months later Henry followed Arabella to Europe where he and Arabella,
both in their 60s, were married at the American chapel in Paris in July 1913.
They remained married till her death on September 16th, 1924.
She is buried at the Huntington Library's Mausoleum in San Marino,
California where Henry had built a legacy for himself prior to their marriage. Henry
Huntington was buried three years later, next to the woman he had loved for so much of his life.