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Season 3/Episode 3, "Love Is Never Easy"

George holds tense negotiations with the Duke of Buckingham. Larry and Jack meet with a potential investor. The Scotts meet the Kirklands in Newport.

In this Episode…

Mansions FeaturedThe Elms

Painting Futures

By Genna Duplisea, Preservation Society Archivist

At the opera, Gladys Russell expresses her preference for Italian operas for their romance, to which Mrs. Fish quips, “I don’t think poor Anne Boleyn would agree.” This hints at the evening’s performance being Gaetano Donizetti’s “Anna Bolena,” which had its New York debut in 1850. The opera was not performed in America again until 1957 and was not performed at The Metropolitan Opera until 2011.

One of the operas The Metropolitan performed in spring 1884, approximately during the time of the episode, was Charles Gounod’s “Roméo et Juliette.” The reference to Anne Boleyn, therefore, is a deliberate shift from historical fact, perhaps reinforcing the idea pushed onto Gladys that romance can lead to ruin.

Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon as George and Bertha Russell (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO)

Bertha Russell argues that social and business success are intertwined, which the episode demonstrates in the negotiations for Gladys’ dowry. (The marriage settlement of Consuelo Vanderbilt, on whom Gladys is based, included her husband the Duke of Marlborough receiving $2.5 million in railroad stock and her receiving $100,000 annual allowance – in 1895 figures.) George Russell pushes his wife out of these negotiations, declaring them a business enterprise. His insistence on Gladys having her own allowance, and his wife’s reassurance to Hector, Duke of Buckingham, that their assets will be shared, illustrates the dispossession of women in this era. As theoretically wealthy as Gladys was and could become, she would likely own nothing for herself.

In this spirit, Marian Brook comments that she is glad she has nothing financial to offer a marriage. All she has to offer in the marriage market is her person and her reputation, which Larry Russell repeatedly threatens with physical affection deemed inappropriate for an unmarried woman.

Glass plate negative of the Cliff Walk at Forty Steps, ca. 1890-1895. PSNCA.H.016.59, Deveau Collection, The Preservation Society of Newport County Archives.

As Peggy Scott visits Newport, she goes for a stroll with Dr. William Kirkland along the seaside cliffs. Today, the rocky shoreline along the Ocean Drive and the Cliff Walk remain popular attractions for residents and visitors.

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Historically, the first physician of African descent to work in Newport was Dr. Marcus Wheatland, who arrived in 1896. The city of Newport named a street after him in 1994.

In the episode, Dr. Kirkland praises Newport and the opportunities it offers to Black Americans. The Kirklands own a house on Poplar Street in The Point neighborhood, an area that was home to Black residents in this era. The Washington, D.C., publication The Colored American, which ran from 1893 to 1904 (one of several different publications with that name published in the 19th and 20th centuries), regularly published updates on Black society in Newport and surrounding communities.

Peggy and Dr. Kirkland’s interest in one another faces the obstacle of colorism and classism in their community, particularly his mother looking down on Peggy’s father as a formerly enslaved person and wanting her grandchildren to stay out of the sun, presumably to keep their skin from getting darker.

Artist John Singer Sargent (Bobby Steggart) and George Russell (Morgan Spector) unveil Sargent’s portrait of George’s daughter, Gladys. (Photograph by Karolina Wojtasik/HBO)

The episode concludes with the unveiling of Gladys’ portrait by John Singer Sargent, shortly after her engagement to the Duke, an orchestration that echoes Consuelo’s engagement at a party in 1895. Attempting to comfort Gladys, her parents both tell her that she will have the power to change the world and yet insist that they cannot change it so that she may pursue her own happiness. Sargent comments that to paint a young woman is to paint her future. Gladys can only watch anxiously as the rest of her life is committed to canvas by other people.

The Elms Butler’s Pantry is the setting for the scene where Chef Borden grieves for his estranged wife who has died. Mrs. Berwind’s bedroom in The Elms is shown several times as Gladys Russell’s room.