Tulas ad: The Richest Woman in Early America 👆

You won't believe what Edith Vanderbilt, one of the richest women in America, wore around her neck for 44 years straight. I give tours of the Biltmore for a living. If you don't know it, the Biltmore is the largest private home ever built in America. 250 rooms. 35 bedrooms. 65 fireplaces. 43 indoor bathrooms with hot and cold running water in 1895, back when most of America was still using an outhouse. George Vanderbilt built it in the mountains of North Carolina at a time when the Vanderbilts were the richest family this country had ever produced. I walk people through that house eight times a day. And after four years of doing it, I can tell you the thing that stops every single group in their tracks is not the paintings, not the ceilings, and not the 250-room floor plan. It's a small glass case on the second floor. And inside it is one fine gold necklace. That necklace belonged to Edith Vanderbilt. George's wife. She wore it every single day for the last 44 years of her life. Here's the story, and I promise it goes somewhere I did not expect. Edith Stuyvesant Dresser married George Vanderbilt in 1898. They had one daughter, Cornelia. They lived in that 250-room house on 125,000 acres. They hosted presidents. They threw the kind of parties you read about in Edith Wharton novels. In March of 1914, George died. He was 51. She was 40. Edith outlived him by 44 years. She died in December of 1958. And around her neck for every single one of those 44 years — through the settlement of the estate, through the sale of most of the land to the federal government, through the eventual reopening of the Biltmore to the public in 1930, through her own second marriage in 1925 which she never once took the necklace off for — was a fine gold chain with a pattern of tiny gold beads and thin gold lines running along it. For years, tourists have stopped in front of that glass case and asked me what the pattern meant. And I used to tell them the same thing everyone told me when I started the job. That it was a decorative Gilded Age piece. That Edith just liked the design. I was wrong. Very wrong. I found out because of a tour I gave last February. There was an older woman toward the back of the group. Well dressed. Quiet. She kept looking at that case longer than everyone else. After the tour ended and the group scattered, she came up to me. She told me her name and I recognized it. She is one of Edith Vanderbilt's great-granddaughters. She said she comes to walk through the house alone maybe once a year. She pointed at the necklace in the case and said, "You know what those beads spell, don't you?" I said no. She unbuttoned the top button of her shirt and pulled out a fine gold necklace of her own. Almost identical to the one in the case. Small beads. Thin lines. Delicate. "Morse code," she said. "The one in the case says George Vanderbilt's full name. Edith had it made about a year after he died. She had one made for each of her daughters and granddaughters over the years. Mine is her name, and my husband's. He passed in 2019." She said Edith wore hers because she could not bear another day of women grabbing her hands at social functions with wet eyes, asking her how she was "getting on." She said her great-grandmother once told her sister that after George died, being a widow in public was like being pulled apart every time she left the house. And the necklace was the only thing she had ever found that let her keep him with her without paying that toll. She said the tradition never actually died. It just went quiet. I asked her, a little embarrassed, if it was something you could still get made. She smiled. She said her granddaughter had ordered hers from a brand called Tulas. That they hand-code any name, any date, any message you want into Morse code along a fine gold chain. That from the outside it looks like ordinary jewelry. That nobody in the world can read it but the person wearing it. She said, "It's the same thing Edith wore. We just call it a different name now." That sentence sat in my stomach the rest of the day. It's the same thing Edith wore. I went home that night and looked them up expecting the necklace to be $5,000. But to my absolute surprise they were less than what I spend every time I refuel my car. And the chain is 14k gold-filled. It doesn't tarnish. The clasp is small and tight and doesn't loosen. The beads are welded to the chain so nothing slips off. You can shower in it, sleep in it, swim in it, wear it every day for the rest of your life. The exact spec of the piece in the glass case, made today. I ordered one for my mother. My father died six years ago. She has never worn a memorial piece for him. When I've asked her why, she has said the same thing every time. "I don't want to be that widow at Kroger." I put his first name on the necklace. Michael. And the year they were married. It arrived eight days later. I brought it to her on a Sunday and set the box on her kitchen counter and told her she could open it whenever she wanted. She opened it in front of me. She lifted the chain out and turned it over in her hand and looked at me like she was waiting for me to explain what she was looking at. So I told her. I told her the beads and the lines were Morse code. I told her that spelled along that chain was Dad's name and 1979. I told her nobody in the world would know what it said. Not the checkout girl. Not her sister. Not her book club. She could wear it to the store and to church and to Christmas dinner, and nobody would ever grab her hands with wet eyes. She held it against her chest with both hands and she started crying. My mother is not an emotional woman. She has not cried in front of me in years. She cried in her kitchen for about ten minutes. She put it on that night. She has not taken it off in six months. She showers in it. She sleeps in it. She told me last week she catches herself touching it about a hundred times a day without thinking about it. Her hand just goes to her chest, finds his name under her thumb, and something in her chest unclenches for a second before she goes back to whatever she was doing. My aunt visited her in April. She saw the necklace and cried in the same kitchen. She ordered one for herself for her own late husband, and one for her sister-in-law who lost her partner two summers ago. My mother-in-law ordered one for her own mother, who has been widowed for eleven years and never talks about my grandfather-in-law out loud. Every single one of them has said the same thing. "Why did nobody tell me about this sooner?" Here's what I think about now, on every single tour. I stand in front of that glass case on the second floor and I say Edith Vanderbilt wore this necklace every day for 44 years. And I used to say the number the way I used to say 43 bathrooms — like it was a Gilded Age curiosity. 44 years is not a curiosity. 44 years is the number of years she needed him with her, in a code only she could read, on her body 24 hours a day. She was not being morbid. She was not being dramatic. She was solving a problem every widow still has today. The Biltmore is for the tourists. That necklace was for the nights. You don't need 250 rooms. You don't need to be a Vanderbilt. You don't need the largest house in America. You just need what Edith wore under her collar. The brand is Tulas. They hand-code every piece to whatever message you want — his full name, your anniversary, a nickname only the two of you used, the last thing he said to you. It only ever means what it means to the person wearing it. Right now they're doing buy 2, get 1 free, with free shipping worldwide. Because every piece is hand-coded to your exact message, it takes a few days to make. The sooner you order, the sooner he's with you. If you're the woman who has been trying to keep your husband close in every way you can think of — this is the one you can wear out in the world without paying the toll every time somebody notices. Or if you know someone who has gone through a loss recently — this is what you give her. Edith Vanderbilt wore hers for 44 years. My mother is going to wear hers for the rest of her life. Link’s below: tulas.co/products/morse-code-necklace