Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt

by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

  The men were rather more active for they had come to shoot (the only exception being Arthur Balfour who detested both shooting and dawdling, and explored the park on a bicycle instead.) On Tuesday morning the Duke escorted his guests to part of the estate known as High Park where eight guns shot over two thousand rabbits. On Wednesday the party went to North Leigh where eighty beaters were on hand in light brown Holland smocks and red caps to assist with the bagging of over a thousand birds. By the end of the week it was reported that eight guns had bagged an average of two thousand a head, though this did not come near the record set in Consuelo’s time of around seven thousand rabbits bagged by five guns in one day. In every one of the outlying villages visited by the shooting party there was bunting, arches of evergreen and peals of bells when the ladies joined the guns for lunch. On Thursday morning Consuelo took the Princess of Wales and other ladies of the party to Oxford where they toured the Bodleian Library and Magdalen College, before going to the deanery at Christ Church for lunch. When they returned to Blenheim the royal party planted commemorative trees with spades, which, like the table linen, had been specially commissioned for the occasion.

  On Thursday evening there were public celebrations. Extra trains brought thousands of people to Woodstock to watch the fireworks. The arrival of a procession of thirty cyclists carrying Chinese lanterns in front of the palace triggered the lighting of a huge bonfire up at the Monument, so large it lit the countryside for miles around. While the royal party watched from the terrace along the north front of the palace, the cyclists took up positions round the great courtyard dressed as Robin Hood, Buffalo Bill and ‘Country Milkman’. The waiting crowd was then treated to the ‘largest pyrotechnic display ever produced outside the precincts of Crystal Palace’. Aerial maroons, bombshells filled with stars, rockets fizzing in tens, fifties, hundreds and thousands, Roman candles, electric spray, tourbillions and diamond dust lit the night sky ‘some of the effects exceeding in brilliance the most powerful electric light’.47 Afterwards a procession of 800 torchbearers carrying Bengal lights of red, white and green snaked its way down from the Monument, across the bridge and up to the north front of the palace, an effect ‘pretty and fantastic beyond description’.48 On their arrival they were given refreshments and Woodstock rang with sounds of merriment until the small hours. It is not impossible, as Marian Fowler hazards, that there were sounds of tiptoeing and creaking floorboards in aristocratic bedrooms too.49

  On the last night of the Prince’s stay there was a reception followed by a concert to replace the county ball. There were over five hundred guests including masters and presidents of the Oxford colleges, as well as local gentry and aristocracy. The Duchess was said to look particularly beautiful in a costume of white velvet trimmed with sable, the front of the bodice embroidered with magnificent black lace. ‘A diamond belt encircled her waist, while in her hair was a tiara, the jewels of which, together with those of the necklace she wore, sparkled and glittered under the glow of the incandescent lamps.’50 The reception rooms were filled with malmaisons and orchids, in ‘rare china and golden vases’.51 The concert began at 11.30 p.m. At the special request of the Prince of Wales it included glee singing from lay clerks of the Oxford colleges.

  As discussed with Lord Knollys, many of the gentlemen wore military uniform that evening – scarlet tunics, gold epaulettes, bright sashes and swords, stalwart figures arrayed in the uniform of the Hussars and Highlanders and Dragoons and Royal Artillery. Some came in hunting costume, ‘scarlet and white-faced coats predominating’. The dinner beforehand was an unforgettable sight for Gerald Horne, who was allowed to peep down from the balcony. ‘There it was, all gleaming with wealth. I think the first thing that struck me was the flashing headgear of the ladies. The Blue Hungarian was playing and there was the Prince himself looking really royal and magnificent in military uniform. The table was laid of course with the silver gilt service, the old silver duke busy writing as usual in the very middle of it all and the royal footmen waiting side by side with our own.’52 Even Town Topics commented on the scene, reporting in a ‘circumstantial’ account that the Prince of Wales was so stout that he made the Duke look even more of a slip than usual. It reserved its praises for Consuelo, who, it said, looked beautiful but pale. ‘Everyone was saying how charmingly she bore herself. Amid many praises, the quietly spoken encomium of the Princess of Wales did her, perhaps, the greatest honour. “She is a sweet girl, I like her,” said our rather undemonstrative Princess; and the more vivacious Princess Maud chimed in with “She’s a dear.”’53

  To the great relief of their nineteen-year-old hostess, the royal party departed on Saturday 28 November, leaving by carriage for Oxford station. The only hitch of the visit occurred in Oxford when one of the Duke’s horses took fright at the cheering crowds and slipped at Carfax, causing Prince and Princess Charles to enter another carriage, and slightly injuring the postilion. The incident created a considerable sensation but Oxford’s Town Council was held to be responsible for its ill-surfaced roads rather than the Duke of Marlborough. (His postilion was wholly exonerated by the royal party though they were much more concerned about the horse.54)

  The whole week had been a ferocious ordeal for Consuelo. On top of constant anxiety about arrangements she was obliged by protocol to have the Prince of Wales as her neighbour at dinner every evening, and she worried about boring him ‘since he liked to discuss the news and to hear the latest scandal, with all of which at that age I was unfamiliar’.55 The Princess of Wales was a great deal easier. In spite of everything, however, the royal visit impressed on Consuelo that ‘the Crown stood for a tradition that England would not easily give up’.56 The success of the visit was a great achievement for a nineteen-year-old American newcomer obliged to entertain distinguished guests who were not only royal, but twice her age. Lady Randolph Churchill wrote to Winston in India that everything had been ‘wonderfully done’ and that Sunny and Consuelo had been ‘quite at their best’.57 “The whole business appears to have been very satisfactory – and bound to do Marlborough a great deal of good,’ Winston wrote back on 23 December from the Continental Hotel, Calcutta where he had been scanning newspaper reports of the visit. ‘There is always a great name to be made by the judicious application of wealth – and he is just the person to do it.’58

  Hard on the heels of the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales came Consuelo’s first Christmas at Blenheim. The party included the Dowager Duchess Frances, and Consuelo’s least favourite aunt by marriage, Lady Sarah Wilson. In the best tradition of family Christmases, the Dowager Duchess proved ‘somewhat of a trial’ by constant carping. It was particularly irritating when Consuelo was trying to do her duty in other ways, ‘seeing to it personally that everyone in the villages belonging to Blenheim had a blanket or a pig or a ton of coal or whatever they wanted’, according to Gerald Horne.59 But while he may have remembered her generosity to everyone on the estate, it cut little ice with the Dowager Duchess who characterised Yuletide generosity as extravagance and thought that Consuelo’s behaviour was insufficiently duchess-like. The criticisms still rankled over fifty years later. ‘Trailing her satins and sables in a stately manner, she would cast a hostile eye upon my youthful figure more suitably attired in tweeds, and I would hear her complaining to my sisters-in-law that “Her Grace does not realise the importance of her position.” She did not perhaps realise that a little relaxation was necessary after my lengthy conversations with her, which were rendered difficult by being conducted through her ear-trumpet.’60

  Consuelo was not alone in finding the Dowager Duchess extremely difficult. On a freezing cold Christmas Eve another house guest, Lady Randolph Churchill, wrote to Winston in India that the Dowager Duchess was ‘not making herself pleasant to me and we have not exchanged a word – but I do not mind – & perhaps it is as well. To the world we can appear friends – anything of the kind in private is impossible.’ Otherwise the party was pleasant enough and Sunny and Consuelo were
‘charming in their own house’.61

  From the family’s point of view, however, Consuelo’s greatest achievement was to become pregnant that Christmas, though the enforced lack of activity which followed meant that she had far too much time to contemplate the gloom of her English surroundings. Early in 1897, she went with Sunny to Sysonby Lodge near Melton Mowbray for the hunting. ‘Whenever there was a frost Marlborough went off to London or to Paris, but since it was considered inadvisable for me to travel in my condition I remained alone. From my window I overlooked a pond in which a former butler had drowned himself. As one gloomy day succeeded another I began to feel a deep sympathy with him.’62

  Being pregnant meant that she could not ride with the hunt, but she was sometimes driven to the kill by the Master of the Quorn, Lord Lonsdale, in a buggy. She found this manner of hunting fun but uncomfortable, and possibly just as nausea-inducing. Consuelo decided to discontinue these excursions until she could hunt in person and amused herself by hiring a teacher from London with whom she could read German philosophy. Such behaviour was regarded with great suspicion by the hunting set of Melton Mowbray, who then consigned her to the category of bluestocking. Observing the reaction of this circle, it appeared to Consuelo that Alva had greatly over-educated her for the job of English duchess. ‘I realised that I had shown more courage than tact in advertising my preference for literature. Only this interest, however, got me through the first depressing winter, when my solitary days were spent walking along the high road and my evenings listening to the hunting exploits of others.’63

  Advancing pregnancy meant that Consuelo’s involvement in the great season of 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, was less frenetic than it might otherwise have been, though she appeared tightly laced at the Duchess of Devonshire’s ball at Grosvenor House – a ball as symbolic of English aristocratic ascendancy as Alva’s Vanderbilt ball had been of plutocratic change in 1883. The Duke went to Jean Worth in Paris to have his costume made. Worth acceded after some protestations and ‘got to work on a Louis XV costume of straw-coloured velvet, embroidered in silver, pearls and diamonds … Every pearl and diamond was sewn on by hand, and it took several girls almost a month to complete this embroidery of jewels … When I came to make out his bill, I was almost afraid to begin it. But at last when I got it totalled it came to 5,000 francs.’64 Once again, however, Town Topics’ London spies reserved their praise for Consuelo. “The young Duchess of Marlborough is orienting her way through the maze of English society in a manner that commands admiration and that is astonishing in so young a girl. Everyone has a good word to say for her absence of “side”, her quiet dignity, her simplicity, and her talent for saying the right thing.’65

  Alva came to England in September, staying with Consuelo at Spencer House by Green Park, which had been taken by the Marlboroughs for the confinement. A bedroom was created for Consuelo in a corner drawing room, where she sometimes felt a sudden cold draught ‘as if a presence had glided through the room’. Alva claimed to have seen a ghost, which could hardly have made for a calm atmosphere since, unexpectedly, she had a neurotic fear of the supernatural. (Alva’s enthusiasm for building new houses was partly ascribed by Elizabeth Lehr to her fear of living in a house where anyone had died.) Despite Alva regarding the obstetrician who attended Consuelo as unutterably inept, the Duchess gave birth to a healthy boy, who was named John Albert Edward William but was known as Blandford, in line with family tradition. For almost a week after the birth, Consuelo slipped in and out of consciousness, giving considerable cause for alarm; but she soon recovered, and found herself basking in universal approval. Even the Dowager Duchess was pleased for she lived to see the ‘little upstart Winston’ officially displaced. The news was broken to him in a most casual fashion in a letter from his mother on 21 September 1897, in which she remarked en passant: ‘Duchess Rose – Consuelo Marlborough – has had a son – If you write to Sunny you might congratulate him – He is very fond of you.’66 If this gave Winston Churchill a pang of disappointment at the time (and there is no sign that it did) it freed him for a great political career, and it has been pointed out that as a nation, Britain ought to be grateful to Consuelo for this if nothing else.

  Back at Blenheim the news that there was another ‘link in a chain’ resulted in a celebration remarkable even then for its feudalism. ‘You can imagine what a day it was then when we heard that an heir – Lord Blandford – had been born in London,’ said Gerald Horne. “The steward and his staff at once climbed to the palace roof and fired a salute; and at night a ball was given for the servants and the people of Woodstock and the rest. The menservants wore dress clothes with special buttonholes. I was in my morning suit (but I managed the buttonhole all right; I doubt if any man’s was larger) and danced with the maids, who looked very nice and graceful in their long black dresses … We danced to the organ as well as to a string band. All the elaborate refreshments were prepared in the palace kitchens and then passed from hand to hand by a row of waiters reaching from the kitchen to dining-room. Free beer, free everything flowed like milk and honey.’67

  The weeks and months after the birth of Blandford in 1897 were the high-water mark of the Marlborough marriage. Sunny had now assured both the future of the Marlborough dynasty and put in hand a new Golden Age for Blenheim. He had brought home a beautiful duchess who had charmed society and was idolised by the people of Woodstock and the Blenheim estate. Consuelo would have seemed happy too, for even she admitted that the happiness the baby brought her ‘lightened the gloom that overhung our palatial home’.68 She may have shouldered much of the work of visiting the poor, but during this period there were numerous glimpses in the local press of Sunny rushing about on ducal visits, opening technical schools, presenting prizes to boys in Burford, and even showing duke-struck lady journalists round the improvements at Blenheim for an article in Woman and Home.

  After the uneasy years of the ‘Wicked Duke’ and the impulsive Lord Randolph Churchill, the Marlboroughs basked in the sunshine of royal approval. In another demonstration of esteem, the Prince of Wales offered to be the baby’s godfather (hence the name of ‘Albert’, which Consuelo writes that they ‘vainly tried to eschew’.69) He smiled with ‘gracious urbanity’ as the christening took place in the Chapel Royal, St James’s, where the ‘sun streamed through the oriel window, touched the gold vessels on the altar, the white lilies round the font and the scarlet tunics worn by the royal choristers’.70 William K. Vanderbilt, godparent as well as a grandfather, must have reflected happily on the distance travelled from the farm on Staten Island as he stood beside the Prince of Wales at the font. On a rather different note everyone tried not to laugh at the consternation of Lady Blandford’s sister, the Duchess of Buccleuch, as she puzzled over the identity of a mystery lady – (Mrs Ryman, the housekeeper) who had been ushered (accidentally) into the same pew, it being inconceivable to the Duchess that anyone of lesser rank should be seated beside her.

  There was more joy when another son, Ivor, was born in October 1898. Consuelo was exceedingly fortunate in producing an ‘heir and a spare’ so quickly (a phrase she is said to have coined) for she would otherwise been obliged to continue becoming pregnant until she succeeded. Instead, she was given credit for giving birth to two sons in such a professional manner. This time, the Marlboroughs took Hampden House from the Duke of Abercorn for the confinement, and as Consuelo lay recovering, Lady Blandford swept in and remarked: ‘You are a little brick! American women seem to have boys more easily than we do!’ The only tussle took place in the class-conscious nursery where the head nurse argued forcefully that she should be allowed to continue looking after the eldest, rather than the new baby, because he was a marquess and Lord Ivor was not.

  Although Consuelo often wrote of ‘gloom’ in relation to life at Blenheim, her account of life there belies the assertion that it was always wreathed in miserablism. Each year, the Oxfordshire Hussars spent three weeks under canvas training in High Park a
nd there was often fun to be had: ‘I remember an exciting paper-chase which I won on a bay mare, thundering over the stone bridge up to the house in a dead heat with the adjutant.’71 She was a good horsewoman, and loved her daily gallop across the park in the company of Mr Angas, the estate steward. ‘Those were wonderful days,’ wrote George Cornwallis-West. ‘Taxation and the cost of living were low; money was freely spent and wealth was everywhere in evidence.’72 Consuelo’s success – as a society beauty, a hostess, and a mother of sons – vastly increased her confidence, and Vanderbilt cousins who stayed at Blenheim thought that there was much about being a duchess that Consuelo enjoyed. When visitors arrived they would be received in the Italian garden where tea tables had been laid, and they then strolled through the gardens and park until it was time to dress for dinner. ‘We had an Indian tent set up under the cedars on the lawn, where I used to sit with our guests. We always brought out The Times and the Morning Post and a book or two, but the papers were soon discarded for conversation,’ she recalled. ‘Sometimes we played tennis or rowed on the lake, and in the afternoon the household played cricket on the lawn. The tea table was set under the trees. It was a lovely sight, with masses of luscious apricots and peaches to adorn it. There were also pyramids of strawberries and raspberries; bowls brimful of Devonshire cream; pitchers of iced coffee; scones to be eaten with various jams, and cakes with sugared icing. No-one dieted in those days.’73

  There were plenty of interesting visitors, some more agreeable than others. Some of the least interesting arrived as ‘glorified tourists’. One such was the German Emperor, brought down for the day by his uncle, the Prince of Wales. ‘His conversation was self-centered, which is usual with kings’ and his desire to impress was quite comic. He was delighted to see the Imperial standard on the Blenheim flagpole and by the hastily arranged recital of German music given on the organ by Mr Perkins. Consuelo’s two little boys were brought downstairs by their nursemaids, ‘just the sort of occasion Nanny enjoyed’.74