Meet Arabella Huntington, the “Real” Sylvia Chamberlain from HBO’s The Gilded Age

Did you know that Sylvia Chamberlain from HBO’s The Gilded Age is based on an actual person? Her name was Arabella Worsham Huntington (Belle for short) and this is her closet. So often when we visit historic houses or period rooms in museums, it’s easy to forget that someone actually lived there. Arabella’s closet, aka her dressing room, is installed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art where it provides some clues to who she was. Let’s meet Arabella Huntington, the real Sylvia Chamberlain.

Like the fictional Mrs. Chamberlain, Arabella had a scandalous past. As a young girl, she caught the eye of a self-made, uneducated railroad magnate, Collis Huntington, who was 32 years her senior. Collis met Arabella at her mother’s boardinghouse in a rough neighborhood of hotels, brothels, gambling dens and slave auction houses in Richmond, VA. When Arabella was 19, she left Richmond and traveled to New York as the pregnant wife of a man named John Worsham. John lived with her in New York for one year. But then he died (or so Arabella claimed) leaving her with an infant son. History reveals that John Worsham returned to Richmond to his wife Annette to whom he was legally betrothed the entire time. Arabella strived the remainder of her life to keep these details secret.

After John Worsham left, Collis set the “widow” Arabella up in a series of fine homes, including the one on West 54th Street with the dressing room now installed at the Met. Arabella had to forge a new identity for herself as a lady of the finest breeding and, given the period’s societal restrictions —depicted well on the HBO show, it could not have been easy. She gutted the home. Every design choice she made had to be impeccable. When decorating, Arabella followed the lead of recognized tastemakers of the day and embraced the designs of the Aesthetic Movement. The dressing room is a quintessential example of this style. As a woman determined to completely reinvent herself, Arabella peppered her dressing room with subtle symbols of refinement. The marquetry with highlights in mother-of-pearl depicts the grooming tools and jewelry that only women of the highest class would own. The stenciled walls are accented in gold and silver leaf, topped by a frieze hand painted with putti holding her beloved pearls.

Detail of the stenciled walls and marquetry in Arabella Worsham Huntington’s Dressing Room

Hand painted frieze in Arabella Worsham Huntington’s dressing room.

4 West 54th Street, Arabella Worsham’s home, c. 1864.

Shortly after Collis Huntington’s first wife died, he married Arabella and adopted her son, Archer. Collis and Arabella had already been a couple for 14 years. People described the boy as Collis’ splitting image and widely believed Archer to be Collis’ son. When they wed, Arabella was 34 and Collis was 62. When Collis was away, Arabella busied herself with self improvement. She taught herself French, studied architecture and art history and, like Sylvia Chamberlain, she became an avid art collector. The Huntingtons eventually moved to Park Avenue and sold the West 54th Street house to John D. Rockefeller. Later it was razed to become the site of MOMA.

The Library at 4 West 54th Street. The dressing room is just beyond the open doorway.

Like HBO’s Sylvia Chamberlain, Arabella became a widow. Collis died at age 78 and left two thirds of his estate, $150 million (more than $3 billion today), to Arabella making her then one of the wealthiest women in the world. She was never received in society by the Astors or Vanderbilts.

Arabella later in life. Her love of pearls was legendary. She purchased four strands from Tiffany in February 1902 alone.

Arabella did not remain a widow forever. Thirteen years after Collis’ death, at age 63, she married his nephew (and heir to the remaining third of Collis’ estate), Henry Huntington. Henry lured Arabella to California by building her the grand Beaux Arts estate that is now part of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens. Despite its lavishness, Arabella never spent more than a couple of months at a time at the California estate. Many said she preferred Paris, the city where she married Henry.

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The drawing room at Arabella’s home in California, now part of the Huntington Library complex.

A terrace of the Huntington Art Museum which was once Arabella’s home in California.

Credits: All photos of Arabella’s dressing room and home in New York from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photos of her home in California by Lynn Byrne