Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt

by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

  Alva, however, consistently rebutted this kind of criticism even after her conversion to the suffrage cause. In 1917, Sara Bard Field was most curious to see how Alva would justify her role in Consuelo’s marriage. Any expectations that her employer might now claim it had been a love match were dashed, for Alva did nothing of the kind: ‘I am perfectly willing to admit my own part in consummating Consuelo’s marriage,’ she told her, in an unsettling turn of phrase. ‘To leave marriage to chance is a sin.’ While she was ‘perfectly aware of the feeling that exists in certain classes of America about alliances of rich American girls with the foreign nobility,’ and was ‘just as ready to admit that there is abundant cause of much of the censure of such alliances’, she refused to accept that Consuelo should have had the right to choose her own mate. ‘Happiness is the most uncertain creature in the world,’ and it was a major parental responsibility to prevent mistakes for ‘nature will have her way among any group of young people thrown together’. For this reason, she had been most anxious to prevent Consuelo from coming into contact with too much ‘nature’: ‘I was careful that my daughter should not meet men for whom she might have a youthful and passing fancy that would lead her into a marriage where there was no opportunity for self-growth through public ministry.’86 This was easier in Europe, said Alva, for the young men came to her to discuss their chances with her first.

  Sara Bard Field was fascinated by these conversations with Alva. ‘There are phrases vivid and I believe universal,’ she wrote to Charles Erskine Scott Wood. ‘She herself little knows the import of much she is uttering. In that respect she is like the Oracle of Delphi.’87 Field seems to have understood that when large transfers of property took place on marriage, it was normal for parents to play an important role in the choice of a child’s spouse, though she certainly did not approve.

  In this case, however, she thought that much of Alva’s compulsion to marry off Consuelo was driven by her ‘will to power’.88 This is also what Alva implied herself when discussing her relationship with Consuelo at the time of her engagement. ‘Consuelo’s marriage was of scarcely less importance to me than it was to her. She was my oldest child and my only daughter … To her mental and spiritual equipment I had given the most earnest attention and in her own future my own was in a sense wrapped.’89 The decision about a suitable husband was based first and foremost on Alva’s analysis of Consuelo’s character. ‘She was far less rebellious and covetous of the freedom which I had taken at any cost to myself. She was docile and tractible [sic] and rather conservative in her attitude toward life,’ said her mother. ‘She had a good mind and loved learning. When she reached young womanhood she was tall and slender and her face radiated certain spirituelle graces which were not belied in her manner or her approach to people. She had character and culture, a high moral sense of service and mentality to direct it.’ Given these characteristics, Alva argued, it was essential that Consuelo should be placed in a marriage where ‘she was given the widest possible field for serious activity … I did not want it dissipated in an environment that asked only frivolous amusement of a woman.’90

  Like Lily Bart in Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth, Alva was all too aware that marriage to a rich American in the Gilded Age meant nothing more than life inside a ‘great gilt cage in which they were all huddled for the mob to gape at’.91 Alva’s own experience of marriage to a rich man had taught her that marriage into an American ‘dynastic’ family brought frivolous amusement and nothing more, and that such a wife ceased to have any important role from the day of her wedding. ‘What an ash heap of too early discarded females there is … strong women at the very prime of life with empty hearts and vague bitterness for the meagre return life gives them, sit and knit out their useful years,’92 she said.

  Alva’s analysis of the position of the wealthy American wife was echoed by Edith Wharton some years later: ‘It is precisely at the moment when her experience is rounded by marriage, motherhood, and the responsibilities, cares and interests of her own household, that the average American woman is, so to speak, “withdrawn from circulation” … On her wedding-day she ceases, in any open, frank and recognised manner, to be an influence in the lives of men in the community to which she belongs.’93 Alva herself was the first to admit that her first marriage had brought ‘bitter disillusion’ after the first ten years. ‘By the time she [Consuelo] was grown I had learned that happiness is seldom found through personal romance but through practical usefulness and I was eager to see Consuelo placed where the heart emptiness which comes when romance fails, as it generally does, could immediately be refilled by the stream of engrossing thought for others.’94

  Given this embittered analysis, it was hardly surprising that Alva was horrified by the idea of Consuelo marrying Winthrop Rutherfurd. Here, however, she may have had a point. Having failed to secure Consuelo’s hand, Rutherfurd waited seven years before marrying another heiress with social cachet, Alice Morton (whose father was Levi P. Morton, vice-president of the United States from 1889–93, Governor of New York and guest of honour at Consuelo’s wedding). When Alice Morton died, Rutherfurd married a second pretty and socially prominent woman, Lucy Mercer. On 18 January 1902, the year of his first marriage, the society magazine Town and Country described him as ‘a graduate of Columbia ’84; a member of the Union, Raquet, Meadow Brook, and Westminster Kennel Clubs’, and noted that he owned ‘the Rutherfurd Kennels at Allamuchy, Hackettstown, one of the most picturesque places in New Jersey. The estate covers several thousand acres, is beautifully laid out, and preserved with many kinds of game.’95

  When Winthrop Rutherfurd died in 1944, his obituarist struggled to find something interesting to say, and was reduced to pointing out that Rutherfurd had been the ‘owner of fox terrier kennels known the country over, a leader of society and member of a noted family.’96 Alva may have been right in feeling that Consuelo deserved more, and that if she allowed her to proceed she would be simply consigning her daughter to life inside ‘the great gilt cage’ where ‘most of the captives were like flies in a bottle, and having once flown in, could never regain their freedom’.97 After many years of international travel, Alva thought that the kind of female influence she sought for her daughter was only possible in Europe, and above all England where ‘position entailed such obligations and responsibilities on the wife as American women of the leisure class never know’. Unlike the aristocracies of France or Germany, the English nobility enjoyed stability, great prestige and political power vested in the House of Lords. In America, social responsibility was optional for the rich. In England, it was expected: ‘An old family whose history has been part of the national life for many centuries and whose present actions are to make the recorded history of the future cannot run away from the duties of their office.’ Alva then went on to say: ‘My idea was that Consuelo should take a place in a life of whose firm establishment there could be no question. It was such a position that the House of Marlborough offered her through the present Duke at that time a young man of promise.’98

  If this sounds like self-serving justification invented for the benefit of Sara Bard Field, a fellow feminist, it should be noted that Alva’s defence of her role in arranging Consuelo’s marriage was known to Town Topics as early as 1906, two years before Alva took any interest in female suffrage or began to clothe her arguments in feminist language. In 1906 the marriage of the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough was once again the focus of public attention and an anonymous correspondent was able to summarise Alva’s reasons for arranging her daughter’s marriage to the Duke in precisely the same vein: ‘Three or four years ago the mother of the Duchess of Marlborough – who has, in her day, been considered a great general in social campaign – gave out for public reading her reasons for marrying her daughter, Consuelo Vanderbilt, to the greatest eligible title in England. She was reported to have said “that the American husband – the one who selects a rich wife – is not as he is represented; that he expects his wife to sit down and
admire him; that he lives from New York to Newport and back again on her money;” that she preferred a career for her daughter’. As reported in Town Topics, this was a career of ‘going to public functions; going to court; going to the laying of cornerstones, and having estates and tenants to think about, and responsibilities and children, and a life so full there could be no time for mischief’.99

  In the end, it seems, Alva arranged for Consuelo what she would really have liked for herself: a great house by a great architect, a position of power, in Europe rather than America, where there was no question of becoming a ‘spectator in the theatre of life’ and where there seemed to be abundant ‘vivid action’.100 Alva did not deny that she arranged her daughter’s marriage. On the contrary, she was proud of empowering her. She had a Utopian streak and a taste for the role of fairy-tale heroine throughout her life. All would be well, she seems to have told herself, if she could only arrange marriage with a Vanderbilt, or build a fairy-tale palace, or marry Consuelo to a duke. In all three instances, the fairy tale was closely bound up with exploiting others. Alva certainly used the Duke of Marlborough’s presence in Newport and his subsequent engagement to Consuelo as a means of restoring her social preeminence after a scandalous divorce.

  Alva’s motives were, as Sara Bard Field might have said, a ‘pathetic mixture of good and bad’ but social ambition, as commonly understood, was not her most important impulse. She had no intention of aristocratising the Vanderbilts, and did everything in her power to prevent her daughter’s marriage to the Duke from being interpreted in this way by excluding them from the wedding. Conventional social ambition could be more appropriately ascribed to William K. Vanderbilt, born on a Staten Island farm, but now one of the richest men in America. Indeed, his apparent delight in such an advantageous match (shared by most of New York’s elite) may have deterred Consuelo from making her reservations known. It is possible that Consuelo, who adored her father, sensed how much pain it would cause him if she confessed her true feelings. It was perhaps significant that William K.’s wedding present to his daughter was a particularly fine tiara.

  A question remains, however, about Consuelo’s own feelings, for she has been accused of distorting what happened in her memoirs, written many years after divorce and annulment proceedings. The story of her marriage to the 9th Duke of Marlborough has, of course, been distorted and exaggerated by others. Consuelo is a shadowy figure throughout this period and scraps of evidence are open to interpretation. At least one writer, Elizabeth Eliot, was told that Consuelo was ‘mad for the Duke’ but that this came from someone who may have wanted Winthrop Rutherfurd for herself.101 Given the extent to which it was Alva and not Consuelo who controlled communication with the press, it would be dangerous to rely on newspapers for accounts of her emotional state, but there is little to suggest that she was in love or even that she regarded the business of snaring the Duke as some kind of game (unlike her bridesmaid May Goelet a few years later when she became engaged to the Duke of Roxburghe). Consuelo admitted that she proposed the solution that unlocked a deal-breaking problem in the marriage settlement negotiations, but there was also servant gossip that she cried. It emerged later that there was enough gossip about coercion at the time to make the Rector of St Thomas Church seriously concerned. When he made checks he was reassured, but we do not know when he made them or to whom he spoke.

  When Consuelo’s cousin, Adele, wanted to marry a man her parents thought unsuitable, there was a complex emotional negotiation to persuade Adele such a marriage would never make her happy; while Adele would never have married anyone of whom her parents violently disapproved. In the end, however, Adele was allowed what might now be called ‘ownership’ of her decision to marry James Burden. Consuelo was never permitted ownership of the decision to marry the Duke. There was no complex emotional negotiation here, for it was not in Alva’s nature. After the battle over Winthrop Rutherfurd, Consuelo found herself isolated from anyone prepared to probe her real feelings; surrounded by those who shared her mother’s view of an advantageous match; and was made to feel that the happiness of others, her mother above all, was her responsibility. After Alva won, Consuelo was simply too intimidated to discourage the Duke and too young and disoriented to seek help. As soon as she did what everyone wanted and accepted the Duke’s proposal, there was no way back, for the publicity that engulfed them both made sure of that.

  The period from the Duke’s arrival in Newport on Saturday 24 August to the announcement on the 20 September was very short indeed by modern standards and the wedding itself took place six weeks later. Consuelo cannot have been exaggerating when she spoke of being steered into a vortex. At best, her feelings can only have been mixed. The prospect of life with Alva after refusing the Duke of Marlborough may have seemed unpalatable. Marriage may have represented some kind of escape from her mother’s overbearing will, a chance to run her own version of the playhouse, and to fill a role of social service which certainly interested her. There may have been moments when she was caught up in the excitement. There were other moments when she was beset by doubts. It seems perfectly possible that she both helped to break deadlock over the marriage settlement and cried all night when it was finally resolved. Attributing consistent feelings to anyone facing an arranged marriage is perhaps unwise. Even when she was at her most optimistic, Consuelo could still see the union for what it was – a marriage of convenience, which had been devised by her mother and which she would not have chosen for herself.

  Alva would almost certainly have tried to arrange a great marriage for Consuelo whatever her own circumstances. Such a campaign appealed to her highly competitive instincts. She would always have been determined, in an age of international marriages, that her daughter should win a great prize. The impact of slavery on Alva’s view of human relations, the fear of exclusion and loss of control that had fuelled many of her actions since her teenage years and her deeply ambivalent feelings about late-nineteenth-century America all played a part. Under these circumstances, Alva would have settled for nothing less for Consuelo than a position of power and influence. It was Consuelo’s misfortune, however, that she reached marriageable age in 1895, when Alva’s recent divorce had left her with such a dismal view of marital happiness that she felt it was barely worth attempting. It was even more unfortunate that the Duke of Marlborough was available in 1895, for they both became pawns in Alva’s campaign to reassert her social power. After the visit to Lord and Lady Lansdowne in India in January 1894, Alva may have felt compelled to move quickly because such an eligible young man would not stay unmarried long; but the multiple pressures on her that year tipped her instinct for control into a kind of compulsive frenzy.

  So why did Alva cry? Consuelo knew she could not be weeping tears of regret. But perhaps she underestimated the extent to which her mother’s life had been bound up with her own. As Alva had put it to Sara Bard Field: ‘To her mental and spiritual equipment I had given the most earnest attention and in her own future my own was in a sense wrapped’102 – so wrapped, perhaps, that she was ill-prepared for the emotional impact of Consuelo’s departure. The wand had been waved. The princess had suddenly disappeared with her prince. It is one of the ironies of this story that as her frightened daughter prepared for her wedding night and a powerful social position, Alva turned for comfort – and love – to Oliver Belmont; and withdrew to a life of extravagant vacuity in Newport – where a stream flowed down the centre of one banqueting table and ‘vivid fish swam pleasantly’,103 and guests took little sterling silver shovels and dug desperately in sand for favours made from rubies, sapphires, emeralds and pearls.

  * approximately $7.1 million today

  PART TWO

  5

  Becoming a duchess

  HISTORY HAS NOT ALWAYS been kind to the stranger to whom Consuelo now found herself married. Some who met Charles Richard John Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, maintained that, detached from his title, he was a person of little significance and c
onsiderable ill-humour. The historian, Maurice Ashley, who worked as Winston Churchill’s research assistant soon after taking his Oxford degree, described him as ‘an inspissated little man’ with a truly appalling attitude to the ‘lower orders’. ‘I remember standing with Churchill and the Duke in one of the courtyards where they were discussing the rising unemployment figures. The Duke said disagreeably that he hoped they would reach two million. Churchill saw me visibly blench and hastened to assure me soothingly afterwards when the Duke had gone, that his cousin had not really meant what he said.’1

  The title of the immediate heir to the Duke of Marlborough is the Marquess of Blandford; the heir’s son is known by the courtesy title of Earl of Sunderland; and guides at Blenheim are not the only people to remark that the 9th Duke was known to his circle as ‘Sunny’ because it was short for Sunderland and not because he was blessed with a cheery disposition. A typical verdict can be found in Jerry E. Patterson’s book The Vanderbilts: ‘The Duke’s only distinction was his ancestry. He was surly, critical, suspicious and without intellectual qualities.’2

  There are other voices, however. A much more sympathetic portrait of the Duke emerged from a study of the Churchills by A. L. Rowse, who wrote: ‘Fastidious and fussy – for at bottom he was an aesthete, with a cult of perfection, whether in riding or architecture, buildings, landscape, dress or women. In him the taste, the connoisseurship of his Spencer ancestors burned bright and clear.’3 Even his father, the 8th Duke, who was not generally noted for paternal sensitivity, seemed to have noticed that his son was clever and sent him to Winchester rather than Eton. By the time the Duke arrived in Newport in 1895 he had already published an article in Pall Mall Magazine entitled ‘Blenheim and Its Memories’, which attracted considerable attention. Drawing extensively on letters between the Marlboroughs in the Blenheim archives, it was certainly not the work of an ill-educated boor. Neither was the care and attention he gave to Blenheim throughout his life, for, as Winston Churchill commented in his funeral address, the state in which the 9th Duke left his palace was a great deal finer than the state in which he found it.4