He took a house on Fifth Avenue, New York, opened a bank, and concentrated on the re-establishment and construction of Southern railways. In a mysterious manner, known only to financial wizards, he made much money by “the securing and exploitation of the street railway and other franchises” of Detroit, which an unfriendly authority described as “a solid chapter of the most flagrant fraud.”{30} Naturally he experienced ups and downs of fortune, sometimes owning more millions than he knew, sometimes being reduced to just a few, though at no time would his fellow citizens have considered him hard-up.
But there was a fly in the Wilson ointment. They could not get into society, and for many years their hospitality was lavish but unavailing. At last a chance came and they took it. For a while it was only a chance, but they were in luck. Ogden Goelet fell in love with their daughter May. The Goelet family was well up in the social scale, and Ogden’s uncle was as rich as Croesus, but there was no certainty that Ogden would benefit by it; indeed his expectations had not influenced any girl to bank on them, and as he was short of stature and not very bright in conversation, his female acquaintances did not regard him as an attractive investment. Nevertheless the Wilsons nobbled him on account of his superior social status, and the marriage took place in 1877. Soon afterward Ogden’s uncle died and left all his money to be divided between Ogden and his brother. The newly married pair promptly went to Europe, hired a yacht, and sailed to all the places where the rich and titled congregated, including Cowes. As we have seen, in Europe at that time there were no class distinctions where Americans were concerned. If they were rich, they were welcome; if they were poor, they remained in America. The idea that upper, middle and lower classes existed in New York or any other part of the United States would have been greeted with indulgent laughter by the aristocratic residents on the Riviera, and the Goelets were received in a free and easy manner by the Prince of Wales’s circle.
Class distinctions were however of grave importance in New York, and none knew this better than the Wilsons, who were doing their utmost to break into the closely guarded ring which enclosed the monarch of the social world, Mrs. W. Astor. Their efforts were rewarded by success, because seven years after their daughter May’s marriage to Ogden Goelet their son Orme married Carrie Astor, whose mother’s regnancy in New York society was acknowledged throughout the States, if unknown at Goodwood and Cowes. Needless to say many obstacles had to be surmounted before the Wilsonian consummation was achieved, not the least being the sum of half a million dollars which they were compelled to produce as capital for their son, equal to the dowry put up for the Astor daughter, their momentary difficulty occasioned by a serious loss of money on Wall Street that year.
The Wilsons were now going from strength to strength. Four years after the Astor union, their daughter Belle married into the English aristocracy, the bridegroom being the Hon. Michael Herbert, brother of the Earl of Pembroke, who regularly entertained the Prince and Princess of Wales at the family seat, Wilton House near Salisbury, where Shakespeare had once acted—though it is improbable that the Wilsons thought as much of the poet as they did of the Prince. Michael Herbert was attached to the British Legation at Washington, and by a stroke of luck became the temporary ambassador just after his marriage to Belle. The episode that made him so has become famous. In 1888 the British Minister, Lord Sackville, foolishly suggested to a correspondent that in the forthcoming election he should vote for Cleveland, the Democratic candidate for the Presidency. The Republicans made full use of this letter, fulminated against British interference with the domestic policy of the U.S., and got their candidate elected. In the decorous language of diplomacy Sackville was “handed his passports”; in other words he was kicked out, and young Herbert took his place. Fourteen years later, in 1902, Sir Michael Herbert was made British Ambassador at Washington, and Belle as his wife reached a social peak that her parents could only have conceived in dreams or with the aid of alcohol.
Eight years after Belle became a Herbert another Wilson daughter, Grace, married Cornelius Vanderbilt Junior, whose father strongly objected to the union and cut Cornelius off with a million dollars; but as the lad received a five-million-dollar legacy from his grandfather and was presented with six million by his brother, there was no danger of immediate starvation. Grace also got half a million in trust from her father, and the pair was not badly off, though Cornelius must have sacrificed at least fifty million by obeying his instincts and disobeying his father. Like the other Wilson children, Grace left America with her husband, and we hear of her entertaining the Kaiser of Germany as well as members of the Russian Royal Family, besides wearing diamonds worth a million dollars.
The Vanderbilt wedding took place in 1896, by which time the daughter of the Ogden Goelets, named May like her mother, was old enough to be considered for matrimony. She was in a much better position than her mother, her aunts and her uncle had been, their pioneer work having made her way plain. With an Astor, a Vanderbilt and a Herbert in her family, she seemed destined for at least a prince. By now the origins of the Wilsons were wrapped in mystery or completely obliterated, and her social station was impregnable. So thought Kim, the 9th Duke of Manchester, who perhaps was not wholly uninfluenced by the Goelet cash and was extremely attentive to May when the family visited England in 1897. He even went so far as to have his engagement to the girl reported in the press. But he reckoned without his presumptive father-in-law, Ogden Goelet, who echoed Shylock’s sentiments, “I would my daughter were dead at my foot...and the ducats in her coffin,” rather than see her married to the Duke of Manchester. On hearing this Kim thought it good policy to get in first and denied the newspaper report before Ogden did so with greater emphasis. But the mere hint of such an espousal may have hastened Ogden’s end, for he died soon afterwards leaving some thirty million dollars, most of which was eventually inherited by his two children.
May’s future was still undecided, and the merits of various princes, dukes and earls were passed under review, one of them being the future Queen Mary’s brother, Prince Francis of Teck. When the Boer War broke out in 1899, Viscount Crichton was in the running and in the forces, a gossip paragraph in the World asserting that May Goelet “pines for a Victoria Cross, but it must be pinned by the Queen on the breast of her suitor”; but as it also stated that two months earlier she had lost her heart to Captain Oswald Ames of the Horse Guards (six foot eight inches tall), her true emotions remained obscure.
At last her mind was made up. She met the Duke of Roxburgh, and felt an immediate affinity with him. Her money was not an essential factor, as he had enough. His dukedom was not indispensable, as she had rejected more imposing titles. What drew them to each other was a feeling of sympathy and understanding, plus admiration on her part for a gentleman; on his part for intelligence. They were married in 1903, and passed a tranquil existence at Floors Castle, near Kelso, where domesticity satisfied her. The Duchess of Marlborough visited her there, and thought that May was vegetating: “Her chief interests were bridge, needlework and salmon fishing. To these diversions she devoted a good brain which might perhaps have been used to a better purpose.” But this was the opinion of an unhappily married woman on one who had found happiness in marriage.
Some quality that went deeper than sympathy must have driven Florence Gamer to the altar. She too had a remarkable grandfather, Thomas Garner, who had left England for America in the early part of the nineteenth century and made a fortune before his death in the sixties from the sale of cotton prints. The son, William Garner, father of Florence, inherited his father’s ability in addition to his wealth, which continued to augment, and at the age of thirty-four William had made a great reputation as a money-magician. Then a very strange thing happened. William was Vice-Commodore of the New York Yacht Club, and one July day in 1876 he and his wife entertained some friends on his recently built schooner Mohawk. They were anchored off Staten Island. The sails were fast. Preparations were being made for an afternoon trip when a squal
l hit them and the boat capsized, trapping the party below deck. All were drowned except two guests who managed to scramble through a skylight. Though many people thought the accident due to wanton carelessness, the captain of the boat said that it was an unavoidable disaster.{31}
Their parents having died, the three Gamer girls were put under the guardianship of an aunt, who looked after them well and arranged titled marriages for the lot. But in the case of Florence, something excessively unpleasant occurred after she had become engaged to Sir William Gordon-Cumming, Bart., Lieutenant-Colonel in the Scots Guards. Sir William was a rich Scottish landowner, famous for shooting tigers on foot in the Indian jungles. He was conceited, rude, unpopular, and said things to sting which stung. A remark he made to Louise, Dowager Duchess of Manchester, may have led to his disgrace and certainly contributed to it. After the death of the 7th Duke of Manchester his widow became the mistress of a leading politician, Lord Hartington, known familiarly as “Harty-tarty,” afterwards the 8th Duke of Devonshire. One day Gordon-Cumming asked her casually, “When is Harty-tarty going to make an honest woman of you?” It was a most expensive question.
Early in September 1890 there was a house party at Tranby Croft, the home of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Wilson. The Prince of Wales was staying with them. On two evenings some of the guests played baccarat, and one of them, Gordon-Cumming, was accused of manipulating counters in his own interest. He denied the charge, repeating the denial to the Prince of Wales in the presence of Lord Coventry and General Owen Williams. But after a long discussion he agreed to sign a document in which he solemnly undertook “never to play cards again as long as I live” in consideration of a promise by those cognizant of the accusation that they would preserve silence on the subject.
But this was too tasty a titbit to remain unrevealed, no husband being capable of keeping it from a suspicious wife, and no woman being averse to passing on a deadly secret which did not reflect on herself. The good news was spread abroad next day at the Doncaster races, and the Dowager Duchess of Manchester did not fail to overhear it. She made a point of retailing the facts to as many members of Gordon-Cumming’s clubs as she knew, and very soon he found himself being cold-shouldered or ignored by his friends, which compelled him to bring an action against those who had accused him of cheating. The Baccarat Case in the first week of June 1891 was the sensation of the day. The Prince of Wales was slated by the press for the company he kept (“Woe to the monarchy,” said the Daily News, “when it can no longer perform what may fairly be called its last surviving use”), and Queen Victoria thought he had better relinquish his succession to the throne. In the course of Sir Charles Russell’s cross-examination, Gordon-Cumming was asked why he had signed the document swearing never to play cards again:
“You pointed out to Lord Coventry and General Williams that it was virtually an admission of guilt?”
“I said it was virtually an admission, and they agreed that it would be.”
“Sir William Gordon-Cumming, why did you, as an innocent man, sign that paper?”
“Because it was put to me by these two friends of mine, on whom I placed implicit reliance, that I had no chance of clearing myself; that however often I reiterated my innocence, I had no chance of proving it against five witnesses. I was told a horrible scandal would follow, in which my name, my regiment and everything would suffer, unless I signed that paper.…”
“And to avoid that scandal you signed that paper?”
“Yes, to avoid the scandal I signed that paper, and I have never ceased to regret that I did so.”
The jury found for the defendants, though Gordon-Cumming’s counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, maintained to the end of his life that Sir William was innocent of the offense with which he had been charged.
On the day following the verdict Gordon-Cumming was removed from the army, “Her Majesty having no further occasion for his services”; and on the same day, in the teeth of her family’s opposition, Florence Garner married him, each of them being accompanied to the church by a single friend.
Malicious gossip had done its worst, and the prime tattler was made an honest woman by Harty-tarty, now Duke of Devonshire, in 1892. At one time she had been the leader of the smart set which outraged mid-Victorian propriety, but as Duchess of Devonshire she became eminently respectable, ending up as a rather alarming old hag with a painted face. As for the Duke, he remained aloof from all gossip. Indeed, his attitude to everything was so detached that once, when making a speech, he found himself yawning in the middle of it from sheer boredom.
The sacrifice made by Florence Garner may have been the gesture of a rebel or a martyr, but as she bore five children to her husband, and lived in apparent harmony with him in Scotland to escape social ostracism in London, the strong probability is that she simply believed in his innocence, commiserated his lot, and refused to let her course be dictated by English social prejudice.
Most of the territorial magnates of England and Scotland were, like Gordon-Cumming, men of a solid, conventional, unimaginative nature, both Whig and Tory aristocracy having little in common with the enthusiastic American women who brightened the social world of the eighties and nineties. But in a few cases each found his or her complement in another human being of a different nationality, and when this happened the relationship turned out to be more than usually amicable, partly because of the absence of passion and the difference of temperament. It was certainly so in the case of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, the last of the great Whig politicians. His first wife had died, leaving him a son called Loulou to whom he was devoted. He had served in various ministerial posts under Gladstone, but his was an extremely independent and overbearing nature and he frightened both parties with his cutting comments.
When not enraged by hostility to his views, his disposition was benevolent, and in private life he seemed a different man. Women liked him as much as he liked them; but apparently their intellectual qualities failed to arouse his admiration because when asked to support a movement for the higher education of women he refused, saying that women’s charm, influence and force depended on their dissimilarity to men in modes of life, action and thought. All the same a fairly intelligent member of the sex began to attract him strongly some ten years after the death of his wife.
He had long known John Lothrop Motley, the historian of the Dutch Republic and Minister for the United States first in Vienna and then in London, an imposing and picturesque figure who reminded one observer of a magnificent Vandyke portrait. Motley’s daughter, who lived chiefly with her father on the Continent and at Washington, was a pretty young widow named Elizabeth Cabot Ives. Her quiet sense of humor made an instant effect on Harcourt, who was captivated by her unobtrusive charm and unassisted beauty. They were on terms of friendly banter almost at once, and soon he was just as anxious to protect her as she was solicitous to look after him. Their marriage took place, December 1876, in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey.
The Harcourts began their honeymoon at Strawberry Hill, once Horace Walpole’s villa at Twickenham, and in the eighteen-seventies belonging to the leading hostess of the Liberal Party, Countess Waldegrave, whose political salon and weekend gatherings there had been notable. Afterwards the wedded pair went to Paris, accompanied by Loulou Harcourt, who had acted as his father’s best man.
Reformers can seldom be reformed, and marriage had no effect on Harcourt, who continued to be the ungracious fellow with a caustic tongue whose elephantine proportions had earned him the nickname of “Jumbo.” He sulked when he could not get his way, and even Gladstone felt a bit uncomfortable when his Chancellor glared at him. Harcourt inspired little affection because his kind actions were unaccompanied by friendliness, which may have been due to the internal discomfort of fighting a losing battle as the last of the Whigs. For a while in the early nineties his intense individualism drove him to side with a capricious fellow like Labouchere against an imperialistic clique in the Liberal Party led by Rosebery and Asquith. But “Hell woul
d be pleasant compared to the present situation!” he exploded, and when Rosebery succeeded Gladstone as premier, Harcourt resumed his post as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Political life, especially when wedded to Labouchere, may have been worse than hell, but Harcourt’s private life was more like heaven. His wife, whom he called Lily, produced their eldest son Robert in 1878, and three years later he told her: “I don’t think any man was ever more completely happy in his wife and children and his home.” When apart from one another he sent Lily long chatty letters. Staying at Balmoral as Minister in Attendance, he reported that the Queen had prayers said in the dining room to escape the mob of tourists who inspected her through opera glasses at the church, that he indulged in baby-talk with the Duchess of Connaught to whom he had lost his heart and played with her baby, that he had galloped 26 miles on a hill pony and felt “rather achy” after the experience, that men wore trousers, not knee breeches as at Windsor, and that when he went to church in a gray frock coat he received a message from Sir Henry Ponsonby, private secretary to Queen Victoria, “We don’t like gray on the Sabbath”—which much amused Lily.
But though his feelings toward his second wife were wholly affectionate, his deepest emotions centered on the son of his first wife, Loulou. When the family were on holiday on the west coast of Scotland in 1880, he wrote to Loulou: “As I visit each of our old haunts, the first thought in my mind is ‘Oh, if only Loulou were here, how much more could I enjoy it!’” a sentiment that might have disconcerted Lily had she been conscious of it. But she was an unsophisticated soul who could write to her sister that Mr. Gladstone had poured out his mind to her on every subject “in a way that makes me wish I had the pen of a ready writer to write it down and record it”—a phrase her father might have criticized.
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