The Glitter and the Gold Read online

  Our cruise that year ended at Nice, where we arrived in time for the carnival and all its grotesque and riotous gaiety. We took part in the Battle of Flowers and greatly enjoyed throwing what in time became rather dusty nosegays at passers-by. Suddenly a well-meant but clumsily aimed package hit me in the eye. Neither the chocolates it contained nor the compliment attached to it, "Pour la jolie petite fille," were allowed to console me, for my mother, fearing that compliments might lead to conceit, said, "It must have been meant for Harold." Harold, aged three, was I admit a beautiful child; still I hoped he had not been mistaken for a girl, and had doubts of my mother's veracity.

  From Nice we went to Paris, where in recurrent years we spent the months of May and June at either the Hôtel Bristol or the Continental. When I think of spring it is of Paris, with its sweet scents of budding chestnut trees and flowering lilac, and of the lilies the hawkers vend in the streets, those sprigs of muguet one wears on the first of May. The lovely city has for me a beauty that makes my heart ache. The gracious harmony of its ancient buildings, the shimmering lights, the soft green of the trees, and the fast flowing Seine glowing red in the evening sun, all nurture a sad and tender reverence. For the beauty of spring is evanescent and loveliness is a fragile thing.

  When I was a child, Paris in springtime was a happy place. At the carrousel we rode wooden horses to gay waltzes. We loved the Punch and Judy shows in the Champs Élysées, and in the little booths we bought pails and shovels to play with on the sand piles, or boats to sail on the round basins in the Gardens of the Tuileries. There was a small band of us who met there for several years running when our parents went abroad to race at Longchamp, to shop, or simply to have a good time in the easy carefree way of the nineteenth century. I remember Waldorf Astor, now Viscount Astor, and married to Nancy Langhorne, first woman member of Parliament. He was a serious little boy, very good looking, with the remarkable sense of fairness that has inspired all his actions to this day. There was also May Goelet, who was bright, amusing and quick, the three natural attributes of an American girl. She was to be my bridesmaid and later to marry Marlborough's cousin, the Duke of Roxburghe, himself a fine man and a great gentleman. She became a Scottish chatelaine and lived at Floors Castle in the lovely border country where England and Scotland meet. Her chief interests were needlework, salmon fishing and bridge, which she played well enough to rank with Lady Granard, another compatriot. To these diversions she devoted a good brain which might perhaps have been used to better purpose.

  And there was Katherine Duer who married, first, Clarence Mackay and then, after divorcing him, Dr. Joseph Blake, the great brain surgeon who rendered such service to France at his hospital in World War I. Katherine was very handsome, with a straight nose, and a shock of dark hair that swept back from a low well-shaped forehead. Her dark eyes flashed with ardor and the love of life. She wanted to dominate us all; she was one of those who assumed it to be her right. She was always the queen in the games we played, and if anyone was bold enough to suggest it was my turn she would parry, "Consuelo does not want to be Queen," and she was right. These days of early spring were the precursors of others that during the summer months we spent at Newport. Here our little band would meet again. My happiest memory is of a farm in the surrounding country where we went for picnics and played at Indians and white men, those wild games inspired by the tales of Fenimore Cooper. Wriggling through thorns, scrambling over rocks, wading through streams, we were completely happy—though what sights we looked in torn clothes with scratched faces and knees as we drove home to the marbled halls and Renaissance castles our parents had built.

  In the autumn my family would return to Idlehour and then to New York, where the winter routine would resume. As I grew into my teens, I began to study at what was known as the Rosa classes. My class consisted of six girls and was held at Mrs. Frederick Bronson's house. Mr. Rosa managed to cram such various subjects as English, Latin, mathematics and science into two hours; but if our knowledge was elementary at least our interest was sharply awakened. Mr. Rosa was especially successful with history and literature, or perhaps it was because they were my favorite subjects that I thought so. We were given essays to write, and pages and pages on the Punic Wars are still treasured among my earliest literary efforts.

  Mrs. Bronson lived on Madison Avenue near Thirty-eighth Street, which was then a fashionable residential part of the city. Every morning I walked there with my governess. Fifth Avenue had but very few shops in those days. The big Hotel Windsor at 571 Fifth Avenue, later destroyed by fire, was, with the churches, one of the few large edifices to interrupt the even flow of private mansions. The buses were still drawn by horses and there were many elegant carriages with a coachman and groom on the box seat. I liked these walks better than the return home in my father's brougham which called for me at one o'clock.

  In addition to the Rosa curriculum I had French, German and music lessons with various governesses, and an hour or so of exercise in Central Park.

  In the eighties the foundations of education were laid young. We were not encouraged to consider self-expression more important than the acquisition of knowledge, and, if like children the world over, we painted crude and grotesque pictures, they were not considered to possess artistic merit. At the age of eight I could read and write in French, German and English. I learned them in that order for we spoke French with our parents, my father having been partly educated at a school in Geneva. We had then a German governess at home; the French governess came in for an hour a day, and I prepared my lessons for her under the supervision of Boya.

  There was, because of our travels, a long procession of governesses in my life, and when I grew older there were two so-called finishing governesses in residence, one English and one French. How difficult it was to please them both. What tact and patience it required! It may have taught me to see both sides of a question, for whatever opinion was held by one was invariably contradicted by the other. The English governess remained with me to the day of my wedding. She was one of the best friends I ever had.

  Reading early became my favorite recreation. What untold hours of happiness were spent in the company of Les Petites Filles Modeles, Le Bon Petit Diable and other creations of Madame de Segur, whose sympathies with errant childhood I found more to my taste than the sentimental yearnings expressed in a series of German books that also came my way about that time. I remember one entitled Zwei und Vunjzig Sonntage from which I gathered that German children, rather like me, regarded Sunday as a day of liberation from a too-encompassing discipline. The books I read in those early days were chiefly French and German. There were fairy tales, Hans Andersen's and Les Contes de Perrault, and La Fontaine's Fables which I had to commit to memory. In a German book there was a grotesque creature called Strubble Peter whose escapades Willie and I thoroughly enjoyed. Later Robinson Crusoe, Swiss Family Robinson and Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking tales inspired the games we played. There were in those days fewer books written for children. I am bewildered by the choice with which I am now confronted. It was perhaps for this reason that we read what might be described as the Classics. It was only later when Willie went to a day school and I was left alone that my books became sentimental, and Queechy with The Wide, Wide World brought tearful hours. And there was Miss Alcott whose Jo and Meg and Beth and Amy must be household names in every American family. At the age of thirteen I became acquainted with the loves of the gods in a lovely book on Greek mythology, and with Charles Lamb's Adventures of Ulysses, Henty, Marriot and Jules Verne went on voyages of discovery. The Scottish Chiefs I knew practically by heart and Robin Hood was also a favorite hero. It was about then that Plutarch's Lives inspired a Spartan austerity which in contrast to the cushioned comfort of my life I found appealing. Unbeknown to my governess—for by then I had been moved to a room near my mother's—I determined to sleep on the floor without a blanket; but a heavy cold soon put an end to that short-lived experiment. The next step in my literary experiences
was the discovery of Ivanhoe, Kenilworth and Woodstock, and Dickens's novels which held me spellbound. Later came Thackeray's Henry Esmond and The Virginians. Vanity Fair I was not allowed to read. For water nymphs I developed a special tenderness in Ondine and Kingsley's Water Babies and I recited "Die Lorelei" with genuine emotion. Our games of croquet became hilarious when Alice in Wonderland and its sequel came our way, and frequent references to "Off with her head" would annoy our adversaries when we croqued their balls out of bounds. But the real emotional crisis was reached when in the yacht's library I found the Mill on the Floss and my dreams became interwoven with the romance of Stephen and Maggie Tulliver. In addition to these, my personal books, I read with my governesses biographies of the great English and German poets together with their works; from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Spenser's Faerie Queene I turned to the Niheliingenlied and Wallenstein, from Milton's Puritan idealism to Klopstock's German lyricism—from Shakespeare to Schiller and Goethe. I knew far more of Goethe's loves than my mother surmised, but love was a legendary word and meant to me only what in his lovely poem he describes as "Himmelhoch jauchzend zum Tode hetruht—glücklich allein ist die Seele die liebt." I read voraciously of the German classics with a governess who so inspired a love of German poetry and philosophy that after my marriage I read the books hitherto forbidden—Faust in its entirety—Heine, with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. For the heavier philosophies of Kant and Hegel I had no liking and wasted no time in cudgeling the little understanding I had of them. But Nietzsche had the inevitable appeal of poetic vision combined with madness. In Vienna years later, on one of those sad pilgrimages to restore my hearing, I had dreams of translating "Also Sprach Zarathustra"—a dream which ended when on inquiry at a bookshop I discovered there were already some twenty-seven such translations.

  The deepest emotion of my young life was born in my confirmation. Bishop Littlejohn, then the Bishop of Long Island, was our house guest, and the service took place in the church at Islip which my father had helped to build. As I knelt at the altar rails I felt as if I were dedicating my life to God's service and, had anyone suggested my becoming a nun, I might indeed have considered changing the white muslin and veil I was wearing for the more sober garb of the convent. Preparing for this sacrament at a time when the widening rift between my parents was causing me sorrow rendered me peculiarly susceptible to the emotional appeal of Christianity.

  In my sixteenth year my family acquired a new 2,000-ton yacht, the Valiant. It brought my father from Birkenhead, where she was built, to Newport in seven and a half days. His journey was short and uneventful compared to my great-grandfather's on the S.S. North Star which sailed on the twenty-second of May, 1853, from Sandy Hook and took ten days, eight hours and forty minutes to reach Southampton. In a contemporary magazine I found the following description which may amuse my readers:

  Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt built the S.S. "North Star" for his pleasure. Her size was: 200 feet length of keel and 270 feet overall, with 38 feet breadth of beam. It was the largest yacht that had ever been constructed for a pleasure voyage, and when she had been finished and sumptuously furnished he started on his holiday trip to the Old World with all his numerous family of 18 on board—his sons and daughters and wives and husbands and children, and a great retinue of servants.

  The Commodore and his companions were received with distinguished marks of consideration wherever they went and in Southampton a public dinner was given them by the civic authorities, the day on which it took place being kept a holiday by the citizens.

  After a fortnight's sojourn in England, the "North Star" took her departure for Cronstadt, where she arrived safely and the Commodore with his family and followers were hospitably entertained by the Czar and his Court. It was the year before the Crimean War and Russia had not experienced any of the mortifying disasters which broke the heart of the Emperor and caused his premature death.

  After enjoying a succession of brilliant feasts and receptions in St. Petersburg the "North Star" left for the South visiting Havre; the principal ports of the Mediterranean, in Spain, France, Italy, Constantinople, Malta, Gibraltar, Madeira and returned to New York in September. And wherever they went, the Commodore and his companions were treated like princes.

  The cruise of the "North Star" still remains unparalleled. No similar excursion has ever since been undertaken either in this country or in Great Britain; and the Commodore's holiday excursion remains like his whole career, by itself and not likely to be repeated.

  My father’s journey, if less eventful, at least had a brilliant ending, for when he arrived at Newport, our new and magnificent home awaited him—Marble House on Bellevue Avenue. This, my mother's second architectural achievement in cooperation with her architect friend Richard Hunt, was inspired by the Grand Trianon in the park of Versailles. Unlike Louis XIV's creation, it stood in restricted grounds, and, like a prison, was surrounded by high walls. Even the gates were lined with sheet iron. But it cannot be gainsaid that Marble House both within and without impressed one with its splendor and grandeur. The hall and staircase were built of yellow marble, and there were fine tapestries flanking the entrance depicting the Death of Coligny and the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve which always gave me a momentary chill. The beautiful dining room, built of red marble, gleamed like fire.

  Upstairs my own room was austere. It was paneled in a dark Renaissance hoiserie. There were six windows but at best one could only glimpse the sky through their high and narrow casements. An unadorned stone mantel opposite my bed greeted my waking eyes. To the right on an antique table were aligned a mirror and various silver brushes and combs. On another table writing utensils were disposed in such perfect order that I never ventured to use them. For my mother had chosen every piece of furniture and had placed every ornament according to her taste, and had forbidden the intrusion of my personal possessions. Often as I lay on the bed, that like St. Ursula's in the lovely painting by Carpaccio stood on a dais and was covered with a baldaquin, I reflected that there was in her love of me something of the creative spirit of an artist—that it was her wish to produce me as a finished specimen framed in a perfect setting, and that my person was dedicated to whatever final disposal she had in mind.

  On the ground floor just undermine a Gothic room held a collection of majolica, cameos, and bronzes which a French connoisseur, Gervais by name, had brought together. It was our living room, but stained-glass windows from some famous church kept out the light, creating a melancholy atmosphere in which a della Robbia Madonna suggested the renunciation of a worldly life. It was here that Marlborough later proposed to me, and that I accepted a sacrifice that, in obeisance to the dictates of my upbringing, I felt was foreordained.

  It was not strange that, intuitive and sensitive, I should have been introspective. My life was a solitary one in which my brothers, both younger, one markedly so, because of their schooling took little part. We never shared our lessons, and during the holidays as they grew older they partook of sports and games in which I was seldom allowed to indulge.

  The restrictions of my girlhood may appear strange to modern young women accustomed to the freedom that is theirs. But in my youth there were no telephones—no cinemas—no motor cars. Even our clothes prevented the relaxed comfort we now take for granted. When I was seventeen my skirts almost touched the ground; it was considered immodest to wear them shorter. My dresses had high, tight, whalebone collars. A corset laced my waist to the eighteen inches fashion decreed. An enormous hat adorned with flowers, feathers and ribbons was fastened to my hair with long steel pins, and a veil covered my face. Tight gloves pinched my hands and I carried a parasol. Thus attired I went to Bailey's Beach for a morning bathe. There, clad in a dark blue alpaca outfit consisting of a dress under which were drawers, and black silk stockings, with a large hat to protect me from the sun, I bobbed up and down over incoming waves. Needless to add that I was never taught to swim. Tennis and golf played no part in my education, but lessons
in deportment cultivated a measured and stately walk. How full of tedious restraint was this artificial life! It was not surprising that I disliked our sojourn at Newport and longed for the greater freedom Idlehour brought me. As I grew older discipline increased. I then saw little of my contemporaries, and spent my days at my studies. My mother disapproved of what she termed silly boy and girl flirtations, so the picnics at the farm ceased and my governess had strict injunctions to report any flighty disturbance of my thoughts. Luncheon, which was served in the red marble dining room where the heavy bronze chairs required a footman's help to get them near the table, was my only social distraction.

  My mother always lunched at home to be with her children; it was the only meal we had with her. One of my most vivid memories of her is at the head of the massive oak table in our New York house, at which places were invariably laid for six or eight guests who would drop in informally. It was then the fashion for women to drink tea or chocolate with their midday meal. In front of my mother's place there was a sumptuous silver tray on which stood a tea service and a chocolate pot. They were large and heavy and were embossed with scenes from Flemish life recalling those in the tapestries on the walls. They seemed to me much too heavy for my mother's delicate hands to lift.