Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter in the ‘Gilded Age’

Alva left nothing to chance and a good deal to shameless suggestion where her central campaign was concerned. The portrait of Consuelo in duchess mode by Carolus-Duran hung above the fireplace in the Gold Ballroom. The Duke of Marlborough stood beneath it, beside Mrs Jay, ‘viewing the pretty women with interest’,14 the only barbed note in reports of the evening’s entertainment. The Newport Mercury thought that Mrs Vanderbilt and the Duke were the ‘cynosure of all eyes’.15 ‘It was a perfect night’, Alva told Mary Young, ‘and the house and grounds [looked] lovely in the moonlight, provid[ing] a setting of almost unreal beauty for one of the most beautiful balls I have ever seen.’16 It was less amusing for William Gilmour. The ball ended at 5 a.m. and according to his notebooks, ‘some had to be taken home as their navigation was somewhat uncertain, especially the gentler sex’.17 He finally went to bed about 6 a.m., ‘tired out’, though he was luckier than the policemen stationed at the gates whose cab at daybreak collapsed after just a few yards, compelling them to walk home.

Alva, meanwhile, was almost certainly lying in bed, staring up at the Goddess Athene on the ceiling and basking in triumph. Town Topics concluded that the ball had been just as significant a social event as the great Vanderbilt ball of 1883. ‘The Marble House ball of 1895 put the seal of fashionable approval upon that lady and all her doings, and was in its way, quite as remarkable and significant an entertainment as the fancy ball. The presence of the Duke of Marlborough – if not an acknowledged suitor for the hand of Miss Consuela [sic] Vanderbilt, certainly a suspected one – was of itself a successful stroke of diplomacy on Mrs Vanderbilt’s part, and when was added to this a dance marked by the richest and most beautiful favors bestowed at an entertainment in years, and every appointment that taste could suggest or wealth provide, the success of the entertainment as a whole may be easily imagined.’18

Immediately after the Marble House ball, there was a momentary setback when Oliver Belmont collapsed from exhaustion. This meant that his much-anticipated house-warming ball at Belcourt had to be postponed until the following Monday, whereupon it clashed magnificently with a musical evening at the Cornelius Vanderbilts’. Faced with this social emergency – a gap in the collective party schedule – Mrs Robert Goelet rallied nobly and threw a ‘surprise’ party, which, of course, gave her an opportunity to entertain the Duke too. When it finally took place, Oliver’s Bachelor’s Ball (which simply meant that he received his guests alone) demonstrated the architect Richard Morris Hunt’s ability to follow his clients into a marked degree of eccentricity when required.

Inside an exterior inspired by a Louis XIII chateau, Oliver, who was famous for his love of horses, had instructed the architect to build palatial stable accommodation on the ground floor. ‘It is a most singular house,’ wrote Julia Ward Howe to her daughter, ‘with stalls for some thirteen or more horses, all filled, and everything elaborate and elegant. Oh! To lodge horses so, and be content that men and women should lodge in sheds and cellars!’19 The residential part of the house was on the first floor, in Gothic style, but even here Oliver had had two of his favourite horses preserved by a taxidermist and placed at one end of the large salon.

The Bachelor’s Ball was another splendid event, where the favours included small riding whips to reflect the masculine tenor of the invitation. Consuelo, Alva and the Duke of Marlborough were also entertained by the John Jacob Astors on their yacht the Nourmahal, and by the Goelets on the White Lady, though the Duke – who must have been feeling the pace by now – declined further invitations to cruise on the grounds that he was a bad sailor. ‘How leisurely were our pleasures!’, wrote Consuelo later. ‘In the mornings, with my mother, we drove to the Casino in a sociable, a carriage so named for the easy comfort it provided for conversation. Face to face on cushioned seats permitting one to lean back without the loss of dignity, we sat under an umbrella-like tent. Dressed in one of the elaborate batistes my mother had bought for me in Paris, with Marlborough opposite in flannels and the traditional sailor hat, we proceeded in state down Bellevue Avenue.’20 Oliver Belmont was often in attendance: ‘Sometimes he drove us to the Polo Field, where the young Waterbury boys were giving early proof of the dash and skill that later placed them in the team known as the Big Four.’21

The Duke of Marlborough had been invited to stay for the America’s Cup races, but everyone knew that this was not the real reason for his visit. The days passed, and then a week, but there was still no announcement of an engagement, although the Duke was frequently seen having tennis lessons at the Casino. The social campaign at Marble House, meanwhile, continued unabated. On Saturday 31 August, Alva gave a dinner ‘in honour of the Duke of Marlborough … among her guests being Mr and Mrs John Jacob Astor, Mr and Mrs Victor Sorchan, Miss Burden, Miss Post, Mr and Mrs T. S. Tailer, Miss Wilson and Mr Sidney Smith.’22 This guest list also included Edith and Teddy Wharton, who were on the outer fringes of Alva’s social circle and had based themselves largely in Newport since their marriage in 1885. The next day, Consuelo gave a party of her own at Marble House. Mr Gilmour noted: ‘Sunday September 1st/2nd Miss V. had a huge reception in the afternoon. 3 Hindoos performed tricks for the guests.’23 The New York Herald called it: ‘the society event of the afternoon’,24 (which was hardly top billing), and mentioned that two new English arrivals were present, the daughters of Lord Dunraven, whose boat the Valkyrie would shortly compete for England against America in the America’s Cup race.

On Thursday 5th and Friday 6th September, there was a sudden exodus from Newport to New York where the America’s Cup races were to be held. Just as suddenly, society’s focus swivelled away from Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough to the race itself, leaving Newport ‘as if stricken with a pestilence’ and at the mercy of a few ‘hen’ dinners organised by women in desperation at having been left behind.25 According to William Gilmour’s notebooks, Alva, Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough joined many other spectators on the 1.20 train to New York on Thursday 5 September, and watched the races from the Astors’ yacht the Nourmahal.

In the event, the America’s Cup of 1895 became mired in one of the more acrimonious controversies in the history of the race. Although William K.’s yacht, Defender, won the America’s Cup with a 3–0 victory over the Valkyrie, it only won the first race on water. At the start of the second race, the Valkyrie’s boom hit Defender’s topmast stay and broke it. Although Defender’s crew made emergency repairs, they were unable to overcome the handicap, and the race committee reversed Valkyrie’s win by disqualifying her. Lord Dunraven, patron of the Valkyrie, reacted furiously and defaulted from the third race to challenge the decision that he had lost the second. He blamed the large fleet of small spectator boats crowding the starting line, until it was pointed out that this had affected Defender too. Then he alleged that Defender had been illegally ballasted. His protest was disallowed, but he continued to make it so indignantly that he was stripped of his membership of the New York Yacht Club, causing such a breach that England made no further official challenge for the America’s Cup until 1934.26 The controversy had serious implications for Consuelo too, for just at the moment when she might have found an opportunity to talk to her father, William K. was caught up in the furore which threatened to bring the America’s Cup race to a premature end, and a row which called into question the honour of his captain, and his own.

Unlike many other members of society, Alva, Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough returned to Newport on Sunday 8 September. There had been rumours that the Duke was planning to proceed from New York to Lenox, a smart resort in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, but the press noted with interest that this plan had been set aside. The days came and went. Nothing materialised. Impertinent speculation continued. ‘The lingering of the Duke of Marlborough at Marble House must mean something,’ thought Town Topics, ‘and his daily drives with the fair daughter are, in the minds of Newport gossips, convincing proof that America will have another Duchess, and a reigning one of the house of Spencer-Churchill at that.’27 By now, the magazine was explicitly linking the presence of the Duke of Marlborough to Alva’s relationship with Oliver Belmont. The Duke of Marlborough, the magazine remarked, ‘seems to be the exclusive property of the Marble House Vanderbilts and the Stone Stable Belmonts’.28 Moreover, every step was being taken by the aforementioned working in tandem to give the two young people time alone together. ‘While the Duke and Miss Consuela [sic] are driving, you may meet any morning, and again in the afternoon, Mrs Willie and Mr Oliver Belmont wheeling or walking.’29

As speculation reached fever pitch, another week passed. It is possible that the Duke of Marlborough, who had an obstinate streak, may have disliked the idea that he was being pressured into a proposal and refused to be rushed; by now he may have noticed that the ferocious Mrs William K. Vanderbilt always succeeded in getting her way and suspected that he was being used as a weapon in her armoury. He may have felt that it was undignified, given Consuelo’s wealth, to propose to her too quickly; and on closer inspection he may have found Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt most difficult to read. For what is one to make of Consuelo?

There were no newspaper reports that she looked unhappy during this courtship, though public sulking and failure to rise to the occasion would have been regarded as almost as insubordinate as eloping with Winthrop Rutherfurd. There were no reports of her looking radiantly happy either, however. In fact there was very little discussion of Consuelo’s demeanour at all. Her name was often misspelt, even by newspapers that had spent weeks tracking every move. There were philosophical debates such as ‘Why Do Women Crave Titles? Are They by Nature Imperialists and Enemies of Democracy?’30 Otherwise, it was as if Consuelo scarcely existed. Perhaps that is what she felt too, for Consuelo later spoke of being frightened of risking her mother’s displeasure and of being ‘disciplined and prepared’31 for the Duke’s arrival. For his part, the Duke may have found her so inscrutable that he began to doubt whether they were remotely compatible, for even marriages of convenience require a degree of mutual understanding to make them work. The difficulty was that the longer he stayed, the more awkward the position became.

Years later, Alva gave evidence to the Rota – the Catholic court in Rome – that she had precipitated the engagement by announcing it in the newspapers. The Duke of Marlborough told his hosts that he intended to depart during the week beginning 16 September and Alva may have applied pressure by issuing a formal denial of an engagement knowing that he was about to go. ‘New York papers insist upon the engagement of Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough. Mrs Vanderbilt said to a reporter of the Daily News that evening “Miss Vanderbilt is not engaged to the Duke of Marlborough. I regret that the papers so often see fit to connect her name with different friends of ours”,’ wrote the Newport Daily News on the morning of Wednesday 18 September. This could have had the desired effect on the same evening, for according to William Gilmour’s records, Alva made a dash to New York on Thursday 19 September, returning the following day.32 She almost certainly went to New York to put matters in hand for the formal announcement of Consuelo’s engagement on Friday 20 September.

When it came, the proposal itself was undramatic. After dinner on the night before he was supposed to leave, the Duke of Marlborough took Consuelo into the Gothic Room at Marble House, which she famously described as ‘propitious to sacrifice’, and asked her to marry him, saying that he hoped he would make her a good husband. Consuelo ran upstairs to break the news to her mother. ‘There was no time for thought or regrets,’ she said. ‘The next day, the news was out.’33 These two short sentences may disguise a moment of real maternal cruelty by Alva however. It is possible that when she told her mother of the Duke’s proposal, Consuelo was still hesitating over whether or not to accept. It is equally possible that Alva simply ignored her daughter’s obvious doubts, and chose to regard the engagement as a fait accompli, leaving for New York as soon as she could to arrange for the announcement. The reaction of Consuelo’s twelve-year-old brother, Harold, did not help. He looked at her calmly and said: ‘He is only marrying you for your money.’ ‘With this last slap to my pride,’ wrote Consuelo, ‘I burst into tears.’34

As soon as the engagement was announced a fierce battle began for control of the narrative. The formal announcement on Friday 20 September 1895 immediately triggered a convulsion of publicity. Initially, much of the coverage was deferential, although Alva’s successful direction of the matter attracted some snide remarks. The ‘short but decisive campaign of General Alva’, was congratulated by Town Topics.35 ‘It was a Famous Victory,’ crowed the World, quoting Southey on the triumph of the 1st Duke of Marlborough at the Battle of Blenheim, in an unexpected outbreak of erudition.36 Newspapers dedicated several column inches to profiles of the young Duke, ‘Blenheim Castle’ and the Spencer-Churchills, and apart from remarking that he did not seem particularly clubbable, the commentary was superficially polite. Consuelo was described as sweet and cultivated though her ‘youth’ and ‘simplicity’ were consistently underlined. Sometimes this went a little far. As the Newport Journal remarked: ‘Her picture as a girl of ten or twelve years old, wearing a tucked guimpe and a childish gown of white muslin and lace with a baby sash is made to do duty in a full page reproduction as “The Fiancée of the Duke of Marlborough” … and some of the papers are indulging in ill-natured criticism.’37 Suspicion about the Duke’s motives was never far from the surface either, even in those newspapers who claimed to despise such cynicism. ‘All doubt as to what impelled the Duke’s visit to this country is dissipated by the announcement of his engagement,’38 opined the New York Herald, immediately planting seeds of doubt by mentioning it, and failing to explain why becoming engaged to an heiress in any way cleared the matter up.

Once excitement about the engagement subsided, public attention turned to the scale of the deal. There was a short delay until the Duke of Marlborough’s lawyer arrived from England. ‘The marriage settlements gave rise to considerable discussion. An English solicitor who had crossed the seas with the declared intention of “profiting the illustrious family” he had been engaged to serve devoted a natural talent to that end,’39 wrote Consuelo. Although wild sums were discussed in the press – $10 million according to one source, plus an additional $5,000 to pay off the Duke’s creditors – the eventual settlement to the Duke was $2.5 million in $50,000 shares of capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company, on which an annual payment of 4 per cent was guaranteed by the New York Central Railway Company, giving him an annual income of $100,000*. This income, which was very similar in structure and total to Alva’s divorce settlement, was the Duke’s for life, and was guaranteed even if his marriage to Consuelo ended. In a most unusual arrangement, however, which may have reflected some unease on the part of William K. about the motives of his daughter’s fiancé, a comparable sum was settled on Consuelo. William K. agreed to pay her $100,000 a year in four equal quarterly instalments, a sum which almost certainly took account of $50,000 already paid to Alva annually for Consuelo’s upkeep which was now transferred to her on marriage under the terms of the divorce settlement.40

There was some delay in the negotiations until Consuelo proposed that the final sum should be split between them ‘in equal shares, at my request’.41 It is interesting to note, in view of the later charges of coercion, that Consuelo herself came up with the proposal that finally unlocked the problem, for failure to find a compromise could have resulted in the engagement coming to a premature end. She may have felt, however, that matters had proceeded too far for her to back out. Later, Blanche Oelrichs remembered Newport servants gossiping that Consuelo cried all night at the conclusion of the settlements between the Duke and her father. ‘What were these settlements that tied people up in them against their will? For what did they barter this mysterious something which they cared for enough to cling to with tears? I put a few leading questions to my sister, a great friend of Consuelo’s … to be angrily told that if I went on playing with “street children” I would never get “anywhere”.’42

After the first flush of enthusiasm, the attitude of the American press became much more ambivalent, as if the editors were responding simultaneously to a sentimental desire to see the engagement as a love match and to widespread cynicism about the Duke’s motives. In the World, which had both a political agenda and a wide female readership, both interpretations of the story appeared on the same page. Consuelo wrote later that the Duke went off on a tour of America shortly after the engagement was announced, but this is not true. Soon afterwards, Oliver Belmont arranged a coaching trip to Tuxedo for Consuelo, the Duke, Alva and the Jays, which lasted a few days. While the Duke was still – to all intents and purposes – Alva’s guest, criticism by the flock of journalists who followed him was muted. On the return of the coaching party to New York, however, this changed when the Duke took rooms at the Plaza Hotel. From the moment that he ceased to be Alva’s house guest the press declared open season. The Duke was quite inexperienced in dealing with this kind of publicity, accustomed to a far more deferential press in England. At the same time, however, he clearly lacked Alva’s instinctive grasp of publicity as an instrument of social power. Shortly after the engagement was announced, for example, he let it be known that the marriage had been ‘arranged by his friends and those of Miss Vanderbilt’,43 a most unfortunate turn of phrase which would be held against him for a very long time.

The Duke cannot be held responsible for all criticism, however, for some of it was politically motivated. Joseph Pulitzer at the World, in particular, had a longstanding objection to the manner in which ‘our vulgar moneyed aristocrats’ were prepared to buy ‘European gingerbread titles’44 for their daughters. He thought it was deeply unpatriotic and objected just as strenuously to the European nobles who came hunting for American bounty. The day after the coaching trip, when the Duke was joined from England by his cousin Ivor Guest (who would be his best man), they departed for a short excursion to look at the famous blood stock of Kentucky, followed by a bevy of reporters. Such a trip does not seem wholly unreasonable given that the Duke had been staying with the Vanderbilts for several weeks and that Mrs Vanderbilt was on the point of moving into the new house at 72nd Street and Madison Avenue from which Consuelo would be married. Indeed, he may have felt that his presence would have been a burden at such a time.

The Duke must soon have regretted the decision to strike out alone, however, for the World in particular was determined both to poke fun and to show him in the worst possible light. In common with other newspapers, it particularly objected to the fact that he measured just over five foot two inches and that Consuelo stood taller than him at five foot eight. He was accused of discourtesy at a Kentucky racecourse when he picked up a glove; he showed excessive enthusiasm for Kentucky whisky; and in Louisville he was spotted with various sporting friends, at a performance of a high-class comedy “The City Club of Gay Paree” at the Buckingham Theatre. At this point, the World’s reporter thought he had a scoop, maintaining that the Duke had been spotted giving ‘the glad hand and the cheerful word’ to Miss Sophie Erb who had played the role of Tottie Coughdrops.45 Miss Sophie Erb told the reporter that she had been ogled throughout her appearance as a living picture in ‘The Birth of Venus’ by a sporty-looking man who later sent word that he was the Duke of Marlborough and asked her for supper – an invitation she indignantly refused saying that she didn’t care if he was the Prince of Wales. Since ‘sporty-looking’ is an adjective that no-one else has ever applied to the 9th Duke of Marlborough, it seems likely that he was the victim of a prank, but the Tottie Coughdrops incident was soon picked up by other more sober newspapers including the New York Tribune.46

The World then proceeded to print an exceedingly unflattering profile of the Duke, describing him as ‘no credit to his tailor … hollow-chested … with queer hats … very short of stature and some people say of money’,47 and was unable to understand why this had no influence over certain young ladies who, after his return to New York, took to hanging round the foyer of the Plaza Hotel. ‘They want to speak to the Duke, to touch him, to cut off a piece of his coat tails or in some other way to obtain a souvenir of the affianced husband of Miss Vanderbilt. The faithful attendants with difficulty preserve the amiable and ingenious duke from their clutches,’ wrote the World on 15 October. Almost certainly acting on Alva’s advice, the Duke sent for a reporter from the World on his return from Kentucky, his trip having lasted no more than five days. In an attempt to set the record straight he said rather plaintively: ‘They’ve told so many lies about me that really I hardly know myself any more. I’ve become a sort of stranger to myself don’t you know … You Americans seem to like to amuse yourselves at the expense of the English, isn’t that so?’ He offered to tell the reporter anything he would like to know about arrangements for the wedding; but his hazy grasp of the wedding details did little to help his case. He was then reported as having asked the journalist: ‘Why are you people are so fond of interviews with Englishmen? I suppose your American men never give interviews?’ When told that, on the contrary, they were very fond of being interviewed, the Duke was said to have replied incredulously: ‘No, really? They can’t be such flats.’48

No sooner had the readership put the Tottie Coughdrops affair behind it than the Duke of Marlborough was arrested for ‘coasting’ on a bicycle in Central Park with his feet on the handlebars. This might be considered rather to his credit, but not by Policeman Sweeny. Said by his admiring colleagues to be capable of ‘arresting anything’, Sweeny had already ordered the Duke off the grass and moved him on, when, to his horror, the felon re-appeared ‘scorching’ down Block House hill, his feet elevated on the handlebars of his bicycle at a rate of at least twenty miles an hour. Policeman Sweeny marched the Duke to the police station, where he confessed his ignorance of park regulations and pointed out that there was no sign warning innocent scorchers that they were in breach of the law. There was considerable embarrassment when the Duke’s identity was discovered, but since a crowd had gathered, ‘it was too late to recede’.49 The distinguished visitor was reprimanded, ‘discharged’, and proceeded on the offending bicycle back to the Plaza. This time the story appeared in The Times in London, though all mention of feet on handlebars was respectfully omitted.

As these stories appeared, there was a counterblast in different mode. The Sunday edition of the World began to print a weekly ‘Diary of the Most Interesting Couple in America’. The newspaper was watching every move made by the Duke and Consuelo and was perfectly capable of fabrication, but there is also a strong possibility that it was being fed information by Alva in an attempt to manage criticism of her future son-in-law. Alongside impolite press coverage of the Duke, a different voice stressed his painstaking attentions to Consuelo, described by the World as ‘in many ways more entertaining than one of Ouida’s novels of high life and far more instructive to aspiring duchesses – for it is fact’.50 He showers her with roses; she carries three of them to a soiree; she wears a fetching gown of white mousseline de soie with a jewelled buckle; she breakfasts late with her mother; she steals a rest on a veranda as she receives the congratulations of friends; when he hears that Miss Vanderbilt is slightly indisposed, he sends more roses; she selects the most beautiful and wears it in her hair, etc.