Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt Read online

  Consuelo’s initial feeling was one of relief ‘that the sinister gloom of their relationship would no longer encompass me’.39 It was only later that she realised how little she would now see of her father and the extent to which Alva would come to dominate her life. In the short term nothing changed. After their yacht moored at Nice on 24 February 1894, Alva took Consuelo to Paris, as she had so often done before. Both Vanderbilts remained in Europe for the rest of the summer, leaving the American press in something of a bother about where they were. Town Topics sneered derisively at newspapers alleging that the Vanderbilts were simultaneously in Newport, New York and Marseilles, asserting confidently that they had left America for three years and had leased a deer forest in Scotland. There was a calm interlude of several weeks before the press grasped what had actually happened.

  Meanwhile, Consuelo’s experience of Paris during the late spring of 1894 was happier than it had ever been. She and Alva moved into the Hôtel Bristol. ‘I can still see the view over the Tuileries Gardens from our windows, still enjoy our walks under the flowering chestnuts of the Champs Elysées and our drives in the Bois de Boulogne in our carriage and pair. Every day there were visits to museums and churches and lectures at the Sorbonne, but the classical matinées at the Théâtre Français were my greatest pleasure.’40 It was only with hindsight that she realised that her mother spent the early summer of that year preparing her for an aristocratic setting. Alva chose Consuelo’s dresses from the great French dressmakers – Worth, Doucet and Rouff – and she arranged for her to have elocution lessons, in French, with an actress from the Comédie Française, where there was a long tradition of perfect diction. It seems likely that Alva arranged these lessons to prepare her daughter for a public life such as that of Lady Lansdowne’s, where good voice projection was required when opening bazaars and returning speeches of welcome. ‘Whatever her motive, the lessons produced a voice that carried,’ said Consuelo. (Alva was later frustrated by her own fear of public speaking, brought up in a world where, in the rare event that a woman wrote a speech, she would hand it over to be read by a man.)

  While they were in Paris, Alva also commissioned the portrait of Consuelo that now hangs at Blenheim, by Carolus-Duran. Alva’s choice of artist was significant for Carolus-Duran was a fashionable painter particularly renowned for his portraits of aristocratic women. In an early exercise in branding, Alva requested that the background of red velvet which Carolus-Duran normally used should be replaced by a landscape in the classical style of the English eighteenth century, wishing Consuelo to ‘bear comparison with those of preceding duchesses who had been painted by Gainsborough, Reynolds, Romney and Lawrence’.41 On its completion, Alva arranged for it to be shipped to America and hung in the Gold Room at Marble House.

  Consuelo made her Paris debut that summer at a ball given by the Duc and Duchesse de Gramont for their eldest daughter; she wore a dress of white tulle by Worth. ‘It touched the ground with a full skirt, as was the fashion in those days, and it had a tightly laced bodice. My hair was piled high in curls and a narrow ribbon was tied round my long and slender neck. I had no jewels and wore gloves that came almost to my shoulders. The French dubbed me La belle Mlle. Vanderbilt au long cou.’42 The party was a bal blanc, as parties for debutantes were known, where all the young women wore white. Elisabeth de Gramont remembered Consuelo as ‘a tall girl whose small head with retroussé eyes like a Japanese, drooped languidly over her shoulder. She possessed great charm.’43 Such evenings were misery for ‘wallflowers’ for whom any help from artifice was banned. ‘Good girls were dressed in light, insipid colours and the poorest of materials, and all the touches that give “tone” – diamonds, powder, paint and perfume – were rigorously forbidden.’44 The aces of the period, the grand ‘marrying men’, would sometimes look in briefly at these social gatherings, at the rows of nervous, perspiring debutantes lined up like cattle for their inspection. (On one occasion Elisabeth de Gramont heard one say: ‘This place stinks of armpits, let’s go to Maxim’s.’45) There was little opportunity for conversation because permission to dance had to be sought from the young lady’s chaperone and as soon as the dance was over, she was led straight back to her mother.

  There was no shortage of partners for a seventeen-year-old American heiress, however, and by the end of June, Consuelo had received five proposals of marriage. ‘When I say I had, I mean that my mother informed me that five men had asked her for my hand … She had, as a matter of course, refused them, since she considered none of them sufficiently exalted.’46 Consuelo was only allowed to consider one: Prince Francis Joseph, a German prince who was the youngest of the four Battenberg princes, and at the centre of an intrigue to elect him ruler of Bulgaria. Confronted with the prospect of a royal crown rather than an English ducal coronet, Alva seems momentarily to have wavered from her original plan and Prince Francis Joseph was allowed to present his case to Consuelo. She was horrified both by the idea and by the Prince to whom she developed an immediate aversion. Alva too had second thoughts, unsure whether the intrigue would succeed. Nothing more was heard from her on the subject, though news of this potential engagement eventually reached Town Topics in New York who asserted (correctly this time) that: ‘There is a general feeling that the report is not based upon facts, at this time at least.’47

  In June, Alva took Consuelo to England. ‘[Alva] did not let her dally long in the drawing-rooms of Paris,’ wrote Elisabeth de Gramont. ‘She intended [Consuelo] for the English aristocracy, which she deemed more advantageous.’48 Here Alva rented a house at Danesfield near Marlow and asked her old friend Mrs William Jay and her daughters to join them. The weather was so cold that they only went to Danesfield at the weekends and spent the rest of the time in the warmth of a London hotel. Consuelo described it as ‘frowsty in the true English sense’,49 and thought with longing of their lovely hotel in Paris beside the Tuileries Gardens.

  In England, Alva made use of her networks. The two people whose help she enlisted in the summer of 1894 were Consuelo Yznaga, now Duchess of Manchester, and Minnie Stevens, now Mrs Paget – pre-eminent figures in English society, favourites of the Prince of Wales and leading lights of his circle known as the Marlborough House Set. Consuelo did not care for Minnie Paget (later Lady Paget) one jot, however. ‘Lady Paget was considered handsome; to me, with her quick wit and worldly standards, she was Becky Sharp incarnate … Once greetings had been exchanged I realised with a sense of acute discomfort that I was being critically appraised by a pair of hard green eyes.’50

  Such scrutiny was all too familiar. In an age when young women were commodities on the marriage market, they were forced to become accustomed to such analysis, which is not to say they enjoyed it.* ‘I was particularly sensitive about my nose, for it had an upward curve which my mother and her friends discussed with complete disregard for my feelings,’ wrote Consuelo. ‘Since nothing could be done to guide its misguided progress, there seemed to be no point in stressing my misfortune.’51 In London, Minnie Paget expressed her views forcefully. ‘The simple dress I was wearing, my shyness and diffidence, which in France were regarded as natural in a debutante, appeared to awaken her ridicule. “If I am to bring her out,” she told my mother, “she must be able to compete at least as far as clothes are concerned with far better-looking girls” … It was useless to demur that I was only seventeen. Tulle must give way to satin, the baby décolletage to a more generous display of neck and arms, naiveté to sophistication. Lady Paget was adamant.’52

  Minnie Paget was once described by Town Topics as having ‘watchful eyes ever on someone with money to burn’,53 and was rumoured to accept a fee for this kind of help. Having made over Consuelo to her satisfaction she arranged a dinner party to which she invited the young Duke of Marlborough. By now Alva’s plan was becoming clear, even to her daughter. Minnie Paget placed the Duke to her right with Consuelo on his other side – ‘a rather unnecessary public avowal of her intentions’ Consuelo thought afterwards. ‘He seem
ed to me very young, although six years my senior, and I thought him good-looking and intelligent. He had a small aristocratic face with a large nose and rather prominent blue eyes. His hands, which he used in a fastidious manner, were well shaped and he seemed inordinately proud of them.’54

  They only met once during Consuelo’s visit to England, and it seemed at the time that nothing would come of the matter, to Consuelo’s great relief. Behind her back, however, English tongues were already wagging. Mrs Paget (later described by George Cornwallis-West as the worst gossip in London) was unable to keep quiet about the plan. On 19 July, the Duke’s grandmother, Frances, Duchess of Marlborough, wrote to her daughter-in-law Lady Randolph Churchill that she was ‘amazed at the news … [of] Marlborough’s marriage. Mrs Paget has been very busy introducing him to Miss Vanderbilt and telling everybody she meant to arrange a marriage between them, but he has only met her once and does not seem to incline to pursue the acquaintance.’55

  One reason that the introduction may have stalled was that the American press had finally picked up the scent of the Vanderbilts’ separation. By 1894, the dark side of the Faustian bargain between the press and newer members of high society was all too obvious: socialites who had courted publicity now found themselves the captives of its machinery. It had become big business too. By the early 1880s most newspapers in New York responded to demand and carried social columns, while magazines devoted entirely to society matters began to appear. Both were aimed at two audiences. The first was a wider readership well outside the social elite, and included those who simply enjoyed society sagas as entertainment, nosey servants and those who worked in society’s service industries for whom information was power, such as Mrs Heeney in Edith Wharton’s The Custom of The Country (the ‘society’ manicurist and masseuse whose alligator bag was always filled with newspaper clippings). The second audience was high society itself and those who aspired to it. Here, the position of its members was reinforced and legitimised by constantly seeing their names, clothes and parties in print. ‘If one’s social goal was to force an entry into the most exclusive circles, half the satisfaction of achievement would have been lost if one’s erstwhile acquaintances had not been able to read all about it,’56 writes Ruth Brandon.

  In some cases, newspaper editors were society figures in their own right, like James Gordon Bennett Jr of the New York Herald, or the society columnist George Wetherspoon who wrote for The New York Times. Though the social elite sometimes claimed to be irritated by comment in such publications, it generally remained on the right side of intrusive. Oddly, the two publications where it was most important to be ‘seen’ were the two which explicitly held the Four Hundred in the greatest contempt. One was the New York World after 1883, when it was bought by Joseph Pulitzer, who combined formidable liberal campaigning with a keen sense of the aspirations of his poorer female readership, and reconciled the two by covering the activities of high society in sensational and barbed detail while stopping just short of pouring unmitigated scorn. The other key publication was Town Topics, which changed the whole nature of society journalism after it was purchased by the piratical Colonel D’Alton Mann in 1891. When he took over ownership of the magazine that year he wrote: ‘The 400 of New York is an element so absolutely shallow and unhealthy that it deserves to be derided almost incessantly’57 – an editorial philosophy he pursued with great ebullience until a court case in 1905 exposed the seamier side of his methods. Colonel Mann paid for stories from a wide network of clubmen and other members of society down on their luck for his information, as well as servants and suppliers, which then became part of his weekly ‘Saunterings’ column. As a weekly magazine, Town Topics harassed society’s elite week in, week out using a well-placed network of spies so that long-running plot lines emerged for the initiated, which often turned out to be accurate because his informants were so close to the heart of society. Colonel Mann was known to accept money from society figures in return for pulling unflattering stories; and it would later emerge that he had a group of eminent ‘immunes’ whom he blackmailed into handing over large sums of money in exchange for soft treatment.

  One of Mann’s favourite tricks was to place paragraphs in his column that described reprehensible behaviour on the part of anonymous individuals, giving the readership the fun of decoding his allegations (this was often easy because he frequently placed another paragraph describing quite innocuous activities by the named individual close by). On 19 July 1894, Town Topics leapt into print with a story of ‘a most offensive liaison going on in high life between a man who has been conspicuous in society and … the wife of a millionaire that moves in the same set’. It had long been thought that this relationship would become a scandal. ‘But with a great deal of manoeuvring some sort of treaty of peace was patched up.’ Much to Town Topics’ sorrow however, ‘the shameful affair had continued without abatement’, the lover in question was now in Europe with the married woman, and the husband’s reputation had been ‘recklessly besmirched’. The names of two honourable families were about to be ‘dragged in the dust, all to gratify the passions of a pair that have renounced the thousand legitimate delights at their command to embrace the one that is forbidden and reprehensible’.58

  But there was another twist to the story. It would appear that the husband in the case had inexplicably forsaken the moral high ground by taking up with an inamorata of his own in Paris, a demimondaine whom he was entertaining in ‘the fashion of Lucullus of old’. By the following week Town Topics had stopped bothering to keep up the fiction. William K. Vanderbilt was in Paris flaunting his relationship with one Nellie Neustretter, a very grand courtesan – ‘one of the prettiest and nicest of the high-class horizontales’.59

  Alva seems to have decided to sit the publicity out in England, staying on after the London season and all suitable aristocrats had dispersed to the grouse moors of Scotland. It is unclear whether Town Topics was correct in maintaining that Oliver Belmont joined her, but it is quite likely. Alva and Consuelo returned to New York on 28 September 1894 on board the Lucania, arriving in Newport well after the season closed on 29 September. Alva now prepared to implement a three-point plan. She would divorce William K. for adultery, ensuring that she could have custody of the children; she would place Consuelo in an English aristocratic setting; and she would regularise her own position with Oliver Belmont. These three objectives would become intricately entangled in the months ahead.

  After the amusements of Paris, Consuelo looked forward to a winter season in New York, well away from Europe and threats of international marriage. She and Alva settled back into 660 Fifth Avenue. William K. was banished to his club. (Dissatisfied with the configuration of space he called in workmen to knock down partition walls and redecorate. ‘When at the club Mr Vanderbilt can entertain at dinner forty friends on the same floor upon which his rooms are and be sure of no intrusion,’ insinuated Town Topics silkily.60) It was reported variously that his brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II had rushed to Paris in the summer for crisis talks and that the Vanderbilts had met for a family caucus in Boston. Whether or not these family conferences took place, the Vanderbilts now rallied firmly behind William K., because, according to Town Topics, Alva had condescended to them all in the most supercilious manner for years.61 There was certainly tension. As far as Alva was concerned they were either with her or against her. She broke off relations with every one of William K.’s siblings and anyone else who failed to offer her unconditional support. As a result, Consuelo’s hopes of a New York debut were dashed. ‘During the following months I was to suffer a perpetual denial of friendships and pleasures, since my mother resented seeing anyone whose loyalties were not completely hers,’62 she wrote.

  Disliking scandal and controversy, William K. did his best to dissuade Alva from pressing for a divorce. However angry he may have felt, he was concerned that given the double standards of the day, disgrace would rebound on her alone. Well into the autumn, Alva’s lawyer, Joseph Choate, did his
best to dissuade her, pointing out that her close circle would regard her as a traitor for drawing scandalous attention to the lives of the ultra-wealthy. ‘He saw immense fortunes in the hands of a privileged few. He knew the inevitable social unrest which would result from such a condition. If Wealth laid itself open to attack from any source its throne was weakened.’63 When that failed to have any effect, Choate tried to warn Alva that by insisting on divorcing William K. Vanderbilt for adultery, she would be pitting herself against the vested interests of American male wealth. ‘He knew better than I did the power and influence of wealth. He knew its sway over Courts of Kings and Courts of Law … prelates and laymen … even those who called themselves “friend”.’64

  Choate argued that the punishment meted out to women daring to challenge male hegemony would be so harsh that even Alva would not be able to withstand it. Reflecting on the episode, Alva once again presented her reaction as heroic: ‘My argument in return was that I believed it was necessary for some woman to blaze the way for a just recognition of her own personality.’65 Later, though, she also said that if she had known how difficult it would be, she might have thought twice about going into battle alone. The problem which Alva never mentioned was that it was one thing to sue for adultery (and this was courageous); but it was quite another matter to survive the battle when the world knew that she had a lover of her own whom she wished to marry. Once Joseph Choate assured her she would have custody of the children, however, Alva determined to press ahead regardless. ‘The legalized prostitution that marriage covers is to me appalling … If marriage is a protection for the woman against many wrongs, divorce is also an escape from many degrading evils,’66 she said to Sara Bard Field.