47 pages • 1-hour read
The Rainbow Comes and Goes: A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss
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Introduction-Chapter 1Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
Anderson Cooper begins by stating that he had always perceived his mother as being from a world that no longer exists. He explains that his mother is Gloria Vanderbilt and that he always tried to hide his Vanderbilt heritage; he wanted to be known for his own achievements and did not want the demands and burden of the Vanderbilt name. However, his mother’s life was not like others might expect. Vanderbilt, having been famous from birth, faced loss, abuse, and hardships. Despite this, she has allowed herself to remain vulnerable and sensitive, and she has done many things in her life, including acting and design. Cooper then states that she is now 92 but has been healthy all her life, up until she developed a respiratory infection in 2015 and was hospitalized. Cooper did not know about her hospitalization because he was covering a story abroad, and he did not learn about it until his assignment was over and she had come home.
Afterward, Vanderbilt had asthma and a recurring respiratory infection, which made her think about her mortality for the first time. With her 91st birthday approaching, Cooper realized he wanted to learn more about his mother and her life because they were the only ones still alive in their immediate family and Vanderbilt never talked about her past. He also explains that he did not tell her many things about himself. Thus, Cooper and Vanderbilt decided to talk to each other about their lives and relationship through email over the following year. Cooper reveals that the first email Vanderbilt sent him was on her 91st birthday, a short email contemplating the purpose of life in three questions. Cooper says that the conversation this email started has allowed him to better understand his mother and the decisions she made in her life, including those when he was young. He expresses the idea that it is always possible for people to better understand their loved ones and improve their relationships with them. Cooper then invites the reader to contemplate their relationships with their loved ones and talk to them about each other and their lives.
Chapter 1 Summary
Early in their year-long conversation, Vanderbilt begins an email by telling Cooper of a flashback she had about meeting with her boyfriend on her 17th birthday. She remarks on how she never thought about aging when she was younger and how quickly the years passed. She wonders what memory she will leave behind in the last years of her life. Vanderbilt then explains the terror she has felt following her infection, as she struggles with illness and difficulty breathing. She quotes a poem by Algernon Charles Swinburne before explaining that death awaits all people, including her. She believes that she will likely die in her sleep and recalls an amusing story of how her grandmother Laura Delphine Kilpatrick “Naney” Morgan wanted two nuns to stand by her coffin shortly after her death to make sure she was dead. She then tells Cooper not to worry about her because she is feeling better. Cooper finds the story about Naney amusing and tells her that he is trying to grapple with turning 48 and that he had this assumption that he would die at 50 like his father, despite his doctor assuring him he would live much longer. He says he does not share Vanderbilt’s or Naney’s optimism and wonders why she did not tell him about her childhood with Naney.
Vanderbilt tells him that she has struggled to articulate her feelings about her past to others. She reveals that in 1960, she visited a psychiatrist and was given LSD, under which she revisited the day her father died in 1925, when she was a baby. She struggled to reach him but could not, causing her to scream and cry in distress as her grandmother and governess tried to comfort her. This allowed her to confront her sense of loss and reconnect with her mother.
Cooper then tells the reader about his mother’s family history, including the arrival of the first Vanderbilt in America, Jan Aertson, and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s rise from poverty to create a railroad empire. Vanderbilt’s father and Cornelius Vanderbilt’s great-great-grandson, Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt, suffered from alcoholism and died from cirrhosis of the liver when Vanderbilt was 15 months old. Her mother, Gloria Morgan, married Reginald and gave birth to Vanderbilt as a teenager. Cooper then states that his mother’s most beloved person was her governess Emma Keislich, whom Vanderbilt called “Dodo.”
Vanderbilt reveals that she did not miss her father until she realized most other children had fathers. Cooper then notes that Vanderbilt often uses a Mary Gordon quote to explain the uncertainty and sense of danger Vanderbilt had growing up without a father. Cooper relates to this as well; after his father died, he did not feel safe in the world. Vanderbilt repeats the quote and says it reflects her life and her attempts to find the security she always lacked in the men she liked. They connect over their imaginings of their deceased fathers, leaving them letters, with Cooper finding a radio interview with his father from 1976 and recalling his anger at his father’s death. Vanderbilt tells him that his father was in his life for the first 10 years, but the photograph she has of her father with her as an infant is her only experience of him. Cooper then explains that after Reginald’s death, New York Surrogate Court Judge James Foley took control of Vanderbilt’s trust fund, as her mother was too young to be her legal guardian. Vanderbilt and her mother then moved to Paris with Naney, Dodo, and Gloria’s twin sister, Thelma.
Over the following years, they traveled throughout Europe. While Vanderbilt’s mother failed to connect with her, Dodo and Naney became parental figures to Vanderbilt. They even conspired to take Vanderbilt back to America to live with Reginald’s sister, Gertrude. Vanderbilt says that her mother wanted to marry a German prince and take her to live with them, but Naney wanted Vanderbilt to be raised American. Cooper asks why Naney would betray her own daughter, and Vanderbilt says Naney had always valued money and social status as the daughter of a Civil War general and a woman from an affluent Chilean family. Naney married Gloria’s father, Harry Hays Morgan, and had four children with him, including Gloria and Thelma. She valued her granddaughter’s attachment to the Vanderbilt name and, supposedly, also worried about the trust fund, leading to her plot against Gloria. Cooper reveals that Gertrude was a sculptor who founded the Whitney Museum. In America, Vanderbilt struggled to feel like she belonged in the family but found Gertrude to be a pleasant guardian. After Naney’s other daughter, Consuelo, suggested getting rid of Dodo, Vanderbilt became distressed, but Dodo brought her to Gertrude’s home in Greenwich Village, where Gertrude assured Vanderbilt that she could stay with her.
Introduction-Chapter 1 Analysis
The Introduction supports the main narrative points of the memoir by establishing the reason Cooper and Vanderbilt are discussing their lives. It also establishes that, although Vanderbilt is a loving and supportive mother and Cooper is a proud and caring son, they both have had difficulty understanding and getting to know each other throughout the years. Chapter 1 starts with the root of Vanderbilt’s insecurities and fears: her father’s death when she was an infant. Vanderbilt starts her story at the beginning to show Cooper and the reader that this event and her mother’s neglect of her led her to make certain decisions, right or wrong, wise or unwise.
The memoir stresses The Importance of Strong Parent-Child Relationships by emphasizing how Cooper was not as close to his mother before her illness. For example, he compares the vast amount of knowledge he has about his father’s past with the minimal knowledge he had about his mother’s past, something Vanderbilt confirms. Chapter 1 also explores this theme through the absence of Vanderbilt’s parents. She longed for a father, which would later result in her seeking a good male role model in the men she dated as a teenager and adult. Her mother’s disinterest in her led her to find a maternal figure in Dodo, reflecting not only the strong mother-child bonds financially privileged children often develop with their governesses or nannies but also the extent of her mother’s lack of preparedness or interest in being a mother. She also formed a parental bond with Naney, which would eventually help Naney turn her against Vanderbilt’s mother.
The section also introduces Healing From Loss, showing Vanderbilt’s struggle to cope with her father’s death as a lifelong journey. Her exploration of her grief leads Cooper to open up about how he also has spent years working to heal from the death of his father, as well as the death of his brother in his early adult years. The section establishes that their healing would take many decades and that even with healing, the absence of their loved ones is always there, as explored in later chapters.
Furthermore, Chapter 1 introduces photographs and portraits as a symbol representing Vanderbilt’s memories of her loved ones. In her childhood, she lamented that the photograph of her and her father shortly after her birth was the only memory she would ever have of him. Photographs would become her way of keeping those she loves with her in her mind. The photograph of her with her father also acts as a motif that drives the importance of strong parent-child relationships, as she never felt safe with him gone and would go on to date dangerous men to feel loved and protected, as Vanderbilt explains in Chapter 3.
Chapter 1 introduces many of the literary devices and techniques that Cooper and Vanderbilt use throughout the memoir, including the change in font that distinguishes Cooper’s perspective from Vanderbilt’s perspective. Cooper also uses a second, separate font style when he is providing historical context to the reader. Cooper and Vanderbilt also use foreshadowing by mentioning more recent events—such as Wyatt and Carter Cooper’s deaths—early in the book, connecting them with the earlier events that took place in Vanderbilt’s life.
Another literary device used in this section is metaphor when Vanderbilt compares herself to a changeling. She explains to Cooper, “That I have the name Vanderbilt has always felt like a huge mistake. I felt like I was an imposter, a changeling, perhaps switched at birth, intruding under false pretenses. For me, this feeling has never gone away” (38). This metaphor highlights The Pitfalls of Growing Up in a Wealthy Family, as Vanderbilt struggled to feel like a true Vanderbilt. Later in her life, her desire to demonstrate her talents and form her own path also shows how she did not feel, and perhaps no longer needed to feel, like she belonged in the Vanderbilt family.
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