The Glitter and the Gold

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by Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan


  It is often forgotten that Curzon was nurtured in what essentially was a mid-Victorian vicarage; its floors may well have been of opus alexandrinum and its columns of alabaster; yet Kedleston was none the less a vicarage; there was more than a breath of Calvinism in the air; and Curzon's childhood was thus disciplined, narrowed, intimidated, uncomforted and cold.

  It may also have had roots in the tortures he so gallantly suffered from curvature of the spine, for the hourly nag of pain breeds a nervous irritability that may well find an outlet in constant if unnecessary work. Be that as it may, even in the days of his hardest political battles he would choose the bill of fare and go over the household accounts.

  In 1917, after Mary's death, he married another beautiful woman, Grace, the widow of Alfred Duggan of Buenos Aires. I well remember my amusement, visiting Hackwood for the first time after his second marriage, when Lady Curzon pointed to a neat pile of books near my bed and laughingly remarked, "George has chosen them, so you will like them. I had myself" she added, "selected the books to be placed in every visitor's room, but when George inspected them he decided that I had not correctly assessed the literary tastes of our expected guests and after sending a footman with a tray to collect the books he made a new selection."

  We traveled out to India in a P. & O. liner—some sixty guests, friends of the Curzons. Among others were the Duke and Duchess of Portland, Lord and Lady Derby, Lord and Lady Crewe, Mr. and Mrs. Laurence Drummond, Lord Elcho and a host of other pleasant and agreeable people. From the moment of our arrival in Bombay, where Marlborough and I were guests of the Governor, events as glamorous and gorgeous as those narrated in the tales of The Arabian Nights enchanted us. His Excellency the Viceroy had surpassed even royal tradition in his desire to impress the native rulers and princes. Pomp and splendor were visual signs of the trouble he had taken to stage the pageant; but when one considers the difficulties which, in India, the provision of fresh meat, chickens, milk, butter and eggs represented, one realizes the miracle of organization such a camp for sixty guests, supplied as they were with every luxury must have been. For the actual Durbar a special train brought us to a great camp which had been built near Delhi to accommodate the Viceroy's guests. A double row of beautiful tents lined a central avenue. We had a salon as anteroom, two bedrooms behind, and a smaller room which held a round tub. Marlborough's valet and my maid lived near by and a native servant brought hot water for our ablutions and breal
  The Viceroy lived in secluded grandeur. Even Their Royal Highnesses, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, who were among his guests were never allowed to forget it was Lord Curzon and not the King's brother who represented the King-Emperor. We usually dined in state with him, and on one occasion there was a ball for which we donned our most sumptuous gowns and wore our finest jewels. Lady Curzon was a vision of beauty in a marvelous dress embroidered in a design of peacock feathers emblazoned with semiprecious stones, but I heard ominous whispers of the bad luck associated with those feathers. It was only a few years later that she died in the prime of her youth and beauty. We had been told not to dance with the native princes since their wives were not allowed out of purdah and such intimacy might be misconstrued, but I heard complaints from the maharajahs that the Viceroy disdained them. They also resented his numerous legislative reforms, which curbed their power.

  At the Military Review, Bikaneer's Camel Corps with its fine discipline and the beauty of the well-groomed perfectly appointed beasts impressed me most. The procession of native princes who came to do obeisance, fantastically gorgeous in dress and jewels, was another unforgettable sight. There was a moment of shocked surprise when one of the maharajahs, with an insolent turn, refused the obeisance he owed his Emperor. Lord Curzon paled, but with the studied diplomacy the English invariably show on such occasions, he continued the ceremony which was completed without further incident.

  There was also a purdah party to which Lady Curzon summoned the European women to meet the native maharanees and princesses; men were rigorously excluded. The young women were lovely, with the pure beauty of a Persian cameo, and seemed to me like a bevy of imprisoned children or a swarm of bright butterflies who were destined never to fly. When one reflects that it was only in 1829 that suttee was abolished under Lord William Bentinck's administration, one realizes how precariously their lives depended on their husbands. Further measures for their welfare were taken by Lady Duflerin in providing better medical treatment which Lady Curzon in turn fostered and encouraged.

  One of the Viceroy's aides-de-camp invited me to a falcon hunt and I was given a mount on a spirited horse. I still remember that early morning gallop on the Indian plains with the sun rising in the distance. Above my head an unhooded falcon soared in circles waiting on her game. I watched as she climbed immense heights to get above the bird she wished to strike. It seemed remarkable that a falcon should have the power and speed to travel 150 miles an hour, and that the distance between Fontainebleau and Malta, which is not less than 1,350 miles, should have been covered by one in twenty-four hours.

  I have one overpowering memory of India. It is not of the lovely rose-colored town of Jaipur where the Maharajah's immense pink coral palace stands seven stories high and stretches for half a mile through the town. It is not of Benares, or of its burning ghats, or of the funeral processions with the dead carried on open litters. It is not of the corpses of babies floating down the Ganges with men, women and cows all bathing in happy proximity. It is not of the lepers who thrust their mutilated hands at us. It is not of the fortress palaces built in red sandstone or in marble, or of their high cool rooms, or of the inner courts where streams are channeled through marbled ways and arabesques of flowers. Nor is it of the Taj Mahal under the moon's silver light nor of the Queen's tomb covered with freshly strewn tuberoses.

  The unforgettable memory India gave me is of the intensity of human emotion produced by mass psychology. It was on the night of the Durbar during a display of fireworks. I was taken to a high seat, if I remember rightly, in a tower of the great Mosque in Delhi. It was so still up there I knew nothing of the crowds below. But with the flash of the first rocket an immense sigh was wafted up to me and looking down I saw a multitude so closely packed that only their dark upraised faces framed by their brightly colored turbans could be distinguished. As far as the eye could carry they were massed, their faces upturned in ecstasy as each new light blazed in the sky. The restraint of their pleasure, the depth and dignity of their emotion were truly impressive. And those multicolored turbans framing dark faces suggested a great bed of tulips with their black hearts upturned to me.

  The Qjieen Is Dead, Long Live the King!

  A few days later we took leave of our hosts and embarked on a P. & O. for Marseilles. On reaching home I was overjoyed to find my children. I had never been away from them for so long, and often in India I had longed to be with them. Christmas especially had seemed a sad time, parted from them as well as from my family in America. Blandford was now six and Ivor five and although still in the nursery they had lessons with their French governess with whom they also went for walks, talking French all the while. What between the governess, the head nurse and the groom with whom they rode their ponies, there seemed little time left for mother. Nevertheless they came down while we breakfasted. My mornings were always occupied with household duties and village affairs and there was also a voluminous correspondence to maintain, for in those days we wrote letters as we now talk on the telephone. The children joined us for luncheon, and if free of more serious duties I would take them for drives in my electric car, a perilous performance, with one eye on the road and another on Blandford to watch that he did not fall out. They le
arned to wield a cricket bat and also how to box. In the evenings, dressed in velvet suits, they came down to tea and I read to them or we played games of the Old Maid variety, for having changed into a lace tea gown I could hardly romp and run. But the best part of the day came at six when together we went to the nursery where a bath and supper awaited them; then they said their prayers as I tucked them into bed.

  During our visit to Russia the year before, I had caught a cold that had left me slightly deaf. Recently I had begun to notice that the deafness was becoming more pronounced. I was finding it difficult to hear conversations, which the English are apt to carry on in subdued voices. There are certain people who consider any tone above a whisper ill-bred, especially when addressing a more exalted person, and in spite of my repeated requests to speak louder they would drone on quite oblivious to the fact that I did not hear them. This was not only tiring but also exasperating, not to say humiliating, and was causing me a great deal of anxiety, for to be cut off from human intercourse at so early an age appeared to me catastrophic. When an English specialist advised me to learn the lip language I felt doomed. I decided to try a cure I had been told about in Vienna and set out on the long journey accompanied by my children, their two nurses and my maid.

  The Austrian specialist informed me that the cure would take six weeks and did not disguise the fact that it would be painful. Social distractions were therefore welcome, and provided with the letters of introduction kindly given to me by Count Mensdorff I was received into the younger cosmopolitan set with utmost friendliness. Frequent visits to the opera, or to one of the numerous gay operettas Vienna was famed for, and supper at the Hôtel Bristol after the performance were pleasant episodes in a gay informal life; the Vienna season with its balls and receptions had not begun. There was, however, a party at the Hofburg given by the Emperor Francis Joseph in honor of the engagement of one of the archduchesses. When I was presented to the Emperor, he welcomed me to his capital in French, for he did not speak English. Small and insignificant next to the tall good-looking archdukes, he seemed sad and withdrawn, with a chilling manner which I ascribed to the murder of his wife and the loss of his only son.

  On Maundy Thursday I saw the Emperor once again at the medieval function known as the fusswaschung. Only the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Emperor of Austria, as titular head of the Holy Roman Empire, continued this act initiated by Our Lord. Originally intended as an act of humility, it had become, when I saw it, a scene of splendor in which arrogance masqueraded in spurious simplicity. Twelve of the oldest and poorest men in Vienna were seated on a bench just in front of the tribune from which, clad in prescribed mourning, I watched the scene. They had been carefully washed and scented so that no unpleasant odor should offend the Imperial nostrils. I was told that on one occasion such precautions had been neglected, and that the Emperor of the time had been nearly overcome as he knelt to wash the filthy feet extended to him. The feet now were faultlessly clean—one might almost say manicured—and each man in turn placed a foot in perfumed water. When the Emperor reached the last man he raised his weary eyes in which I saw disillusion shine cold and bleak. Then rising he returned to the archdukes, who were dressed in gorgeous uniforms and stood in line facing us. The great doors were flung open and a procession of lackeys entered bearing twelve trays heaped with delicious viands which the twelve archdukes ceremoniously deposited before the twelve elders. But to my dismay the trays were then immediately removed by the lackeys. My escort reassured me that the food would be sent to their homes, explaining that when they used to eat it at the ceremony the Emperor and the archdukes grew weary of waiting and the men themselves invariably suffered from indigestion. It saddened me that an act of Christian humility such as the washing of the beggars' feet should have become an operatic scene shorn of all spiritual meaning.

  I remember a very different occasion when I was shown the Emperor's famous cream-colored horses in the Imperial Riding School. As we stood round admiring them one of the horses relieved himself and a groom rushed forward extending a basket to receive the offering—whether out of respect for the immaculate tan that covered the ground or to teach the horse better manners I never knew. I remember blushing scarlet, much to the delight of the blasé Viennese.

  In 1904 Vienna was still an eighteenth-century capital. It had an antique elegance and an archaic respect for tradition and birth. The beau monde was still that of the rich and the well born. World War I had not yet taken its holocaust of lives; its leveling process was in the future. Breeding gives a distinction perhaps beyond its value. A thoroughbred, be it among animals or men, is generally more physically favored, and the aristocratic Austrians I met looked like greyhounds with their long lean bodies and small heads. A polished education tends to bestow a certain ease of manner, and this these Viennese possessed to an eminent degree. It sometimes helped one to forget that they were as a rule more educated than intelligent. It was, I thought, a pity that they could express their thoughts in so many different languages when they had so few thoughts to express.

  I returned to Vienna for repeated treatments but they never effected a cure, and I was beginning to find conversation exhausting. There were so many hiatuses that had to be filled in, so many half-tones that had to be divined, so much intensive guesswork toward significance, that even when the portent had been grasped the end barely justified the trouble. And later, when loved voices grew dim and I saw the flicker of annoyance that follows an unappreciated jest, I became withdrawn and lived in a world peopled with characters of my own choosing, at once apprehensive and apprehending. Solitude can become fiercely possessive, and I loved to walk alone, for then nature spoke to me through the soughing of wind in the trees and the songs of birds and the hum of bees which, though unheard, created in my consciousness a lovely harmony, as with musicians who can no longer hear but in whom melody is still conscious. It became a solace for me to remain what Lord Curzon called "a black swan," aloof in soundless shadowed waters where I could choose the mirrored scene.

  I have often been asked how I could sit on committees and do the work I did, handicapped as I was. I had some help from an instrument I wore under my hat, but it was mainly an effort of concentration. In preparing a subject on which I was to speak I invariably had answers ready for the questions that I thought might be asked. When I went to live in France the dry air improved my hearing; French voices are clearer, their accents sharper, and I could once again join in conversation. But it was only with the perfectioning of modem electrical instruments that I enjoyed normal hearing again. Surely a monument should be erected to the patient scientists who have achieved what no aurist has so far accomplished—to give hearing to the deaf.

  And so the years went by—in England coping with my work and private problems—in France on visits to my father. I loved France, that country of changing lights, of smiling plains, of innumerable rivers. I loved the poplar-lined canals, the discreet villages where life was lived behind walls. I loved the wheat fields where peasants garnered life's sustenance. I never tired of her varied landscapes, from the orchards of Normandy to the dour hills of Auvergne, from the lazy Loire to the rapid Rhone. I loved her acacias and planes and lindens, the tapering cypresses and squat gray olives of Provence. I loved the scent of flowering lavender and thyme and the sweet gray smoke of woodland fires. I loved Brittany, with its verdant landscape and cloistered domains. I loved the orchards and lovely towns of the !le-de-France. And oh the excitement after a night on the train to waken on the Cote d'Azur with the snow-capped Alps behind and the sea before, glittering like a gigantic sapphire in the brightest of all suns, and its rich red earth which seemed to hold the tenseness and ardor of life. But I lived in England, a land of half-tones and shades, of mists and fleecy clouds, of damp and rain.

  Visits to my father were particularly pleasant, for I rejoiced in the happiness he had found in his second marriage. My stepmother had a gay and gentle nature. Entirely engrossed in her husband and the four children two
previous marriages had given her, she lived the life that suited my father. It was a quiet and domestic life within a small circle of devoted friends. In Paris or in New York my stepmother worked in the clinic my father had founded, or at some other philanthropic enterprise. My father had his racing stable and a small house at Poissy, a short motor drive from Paris. We sometimes spent the night there and in the early morning went out to his private track to see his horses gallop. As my father clocked them I would visualize them winning the Grand Prix, the Prix du Jockey Club and the other classic events he successfully competed in. His judgment was good and when after his death the stable was bought by Mr. Macomber, Duke, his trainer who went with them, said to me, "Those horses will never run again as they did for Mr. Vanderbilt." And they never did.

  During the summer of 1905 Marlborough decided to have our portrait painted. He wished to have a family group as a pendant to Sir Joshua Reynold's portrait of the fourth Duke and his family. In the first years of the twentieth century John Singer Sargent had gained a distinct ascendancy over contemporary artists in England; his portrait of Lord Ribblesdale, his groups of the three lovely Wyndham sisters—Lady Elcho, Mrs. Adeane and Mrs. Tennant—and of the Wertheimer family were shown at the Royal Academy. They were always the most startling and most discussed pictures, and were usually surrounded by crowds in violent disagreement over their merits. In spite of the fact that he was an American Sargent had become a resident of London and had taken a studio in Tite Street where Whisder had painted before his time. When Sargent came to Blenheim at my husband's invitation and was told that he was to paint a pendant to a picture in which there were eight persons and three dogs, he seemed in no wise daunted. "But," he exclaimed, "how can I fill a canvas of this size with only four people? I might, of course," he added facetiously, "add a few Blenheim spaniels!" When, however, he realized that there was no choice he began to study a composition that would place us advantageously in architectural surroundings. We were therefore depicted standing in the hall with columns on either side and over our heads the Blenheim Standard, as the French Royal Standard captured at Blenheim had become known. I was placed on a step higher than Marlborough so that the difference in our height—for I was taller than he—should be accounted for. He naturally wore Garter robes. For me Sargent chose a black dress whose wide sleeves were lined with deep rose satin; the model had been used by Van Dyck in a portrait in the Blenheim collection. For my elder son he ordered a costume of white and gold. Ivor in blue velvet played with a spaniel at my side. Sir Edgar Vincent, who took great interest in the portrait, asked Sargent whether he was going to accentuate the slightly Japanese or Spanish Infanta accent of my type. "The Infanta, of course," Sargent answered, for he was a great admirer of Velasquez. He had, moreover, a predilection for a long neck which he compared to the trunk of a tree. For that aesthetic reason he refused to adorn mine with pearls, a fact that aggrieved one of my sisters-in-law who remarked that I should not appear in public without them.

 

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