Footnotes to the TV series
JOE: It’s Joe . . . Joe Mastoni from the Deer Hill Lodge …
SOOKIE: Joe and I worked together one summer up in the Berkshires.
The Berkshires, previously discussed.
Deer Hill Lodge is probably inspired by historic Deer Hill House in West Cummington, Massachusetts, a small town in the foothills of the Berkshires. First built as a hotel in 1832, it has since been an inn, a dance, and a café. It is now an Airbnb property, made into four separate apartments for rent.
JOHN: Now this is a lovely property that has just become available right outside of Litchfield.
SOOKIE: It’s a sales pitch?
LORELAI: They spend two hours telling us nothing, then try to sell us lame property?
SOOKIE: We already know the place we’re buying.
LORELAI: I know.
Litchfield, previously discussed.
Lorelai and Sookie say they already know the property they will buy (the Dragonfly Inn), but the owner (Fran Weston) has refused to sell it to them. Is it really such an insane idea that they might look at some available real estate that somebody actually wants to sell, if only to give them some idea of the market? Maybe they could actually use a couple of business classes.
Also, the one day seminar that Lorelai talked about seems to have ended up being the two hour class Michel derided after all. I guess Lorelai meant “one day” as in the entire course takes place on only one day, rather than over several weeks.
PARIS: Wadsworth Mansion is owned by the Connecticut Daughters of the Mayflower. Most of those biddies couldn’t negotiate an icy sidewalk much less a contract. Took me about five minutes on the phone to get them down to half their asking price.
The Connecticut Daughters of the Mayflower is a fictional organisation. The nearest real world equivalent would be the The General Society of Mayflower Descendants, commonly called the Mayflower Society. It is a hereditary organisation of individuals who have documented their descent from at least one of the 102 passengers who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Society was founded at Plymouth in 1897, and there is a Connecticut branch in Hartford, which has both male and female members.
In real life, the Wadsworth Mansion is owned by the city of Middletown, and there is no negotiation of fees for the venue.
MICHEL: It was one of the premiere hotel schools in the world. You two, on the other hand, are going to take a two-hour course at the Radisson.
Radisson Hotels, international hotel chain headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota. The first hotel was opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1909, by Chicago heiress Edna Dickerson. A high-end luxury hotel, it was bought by the Carlson Company in 1962, and the chain had 32 locations by 1982, becoming one of the top hotel chains by 2013. It was bought out by Choice Hotels in 2022.
The Radisson Hotel in Hartford [pictured] is at 50 Morgan Street South, and it hosts conventions and other events. Does this mean The Learning Center holds it classes at the Radisson, or just this one? Somehow, Michel has turned a one-day course into a two-hour course.
LORELAI: Why are you being such a snob about this? You went to hotel school.
MICHEL: I attended the Ecole Hôtelière de Genève.
The Ecole Hôtelière de Genève is a Swiss tertiary-level school in a 18th century mansion in Geneva, dedicated to hotel and restaurant management. It was originally the Ecole Cafetiers-Restaurants, founded in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1914. It moved to the Geneva property in 1951, and its current name dates to 1996. It is ranked in the top ten of the best hotel schools in the world.
Michel said that he left France at the age of 18, and presumably it was to study here in Switzerland. The diploma course lasts for three years, so Michel would have graduated when he was around 21.
EMILY: If you pay for first class and the airline sticks you in coach, people expect you to be upset. No one calls you demanding or unreasonable. And yet here is this woman whom I pay more than she can get anywhere else in Hartford, whose severance package could finance a summer cruise down the Rhine, dragging me into court saying that I was unfair.
The Rhine, the second-longest river in Central and Western Europe, at 1230 km (760 miles). It rises in the Swiss Alps, flows predominantly through Germany, and ends in the Netherlands, where it empties into the North Sea. It has been a vital waterway since the days of the Roman Empire, and cities along it include Basel, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Strasbourg, and Rotterdam.
Cruises down the Rhine are expensive, around $5000 per person for even a modest one. As Emily’s maids never seem to last more than about a week, it seems implausible they could have a generous severance package such as she describes.
EMILY: Gerta, the one from Hamburg, Germany.
Hamburg, the second-largest city and third-largest port in Germany, with a population of 2.5 million, while the overall urban area has more than 5 million people. Situated on the River Elbe, it was a sovereign city state until the 1871 unification of Germany. The modern city has suffered disasters, including a fire, a flood, and World War II bombing raids, but has bounced back from each one.
FRANCIE: The Wadsworth Mansion has just had a cancellation, which means that we can get it for prom, if we move quickly.
The Wadsworth Mansion at Long Hill Estate is a real historic venue in Middletown, Connecticut, about 16 miles north of Hartford. Built in 1911 for businessman Colonel Clarence Wadsworth, it is now owned by the city of Middletown, and is open to the public. After extensive renovations, it became possible to hire it out in 1999, and today it costs around $5000 for an evening, but catering costs extra (about $100 a head). Rory is concerned about it being too expensive, but it is used as a senior prom venue. Perhaps by schools that didn’t blow their budget on an expensive telescope.
EMILY: So, Mom, if you’re going to be here for awhile, I can plan some things for you to do, some outings you might enjoy.
TRIX: Like what?
EMILY: Like the arboretum.
Emily may possibly refer to the Kim Arboretum in Elizabeth Park in West Hartford. It only received official arboretum status in 2019, but the trees themselves were planted more than a century before, with some trees growing naturally even earlier. Could it have been referred to as the arboretum even before official status was conferred, I wonder?
DEAN: Yeah. You know, um, I wanted to tell you I applied to Southern Connecticut State …
RORY: Wait a minute, you do know that Southern Connecticut State is a four-year college?
DEAN: Yeah, I read that in the brochure.
RORY: But what happened to ‘I’m going to community college’?
Southern Connecticut State University, previously mentioned. It is located in New Haven, the same city as Yale. It feels as if the show was setting up a future plot line where Rory and Dean were both at university in the same city, but nothing ever came of it. Perhaps Dean changed his mind, or perhaps Jared Padalecki’s commitments to filming Supernatural meant that this idea fell by the wayside.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 