Long stays with Alva did allow Doris to see her vulnerable side, however. ‘I was on demand as companion in her 51st Street home, often spending the night with her, when she said she was lonely for companionship.’ It became clear that Alva was much more fearful than she first appeared. ‘She was often afraid to go alone with her chauffeur at the wheel, to a friend’s house for example, for dinner. She would ask permission to bring me along. She was afraid, she said, she might be robbed of her jewels.’32 As Alva grew older her fear of situations she could not control grew worse. One of Doris’s tasks was to pilot Alva through crowds which ‘she feared with a deadly fear; she always thought even a small crowd was equivalent to a mob which might attack her’.33 Alva always disliked staying in houses where she thought someone might have died, and according to Elizabeth Lehr, she also developed a terrible fear of cellars or anything subterranean. This phobia became so bad that on her way to the villa at Eze, Alva would always leave the train at a station north of Lyon, drive through the town and catch it again a few miles down the road to avoid the Lyon tunnel.34
Between 1920 and 1923, however, Alva hit on a new idea that for three years became the focus of her restless energy. Across America the end of the suffrage campaign brought the movement to a crossroads. Many women simply saw winning the vote as the end of a long battle. Carrie Chapman Catt stepped down from the National American which re-created itself as the League of Women Voters to provide civic education for women. The National Woman’s Party, on the other hand, decided not to disband for it collectively regarded the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment as the beginning of a new battle, though here there was disagreement about the nature of the battlefield. Alice Paul – who had given up ideas of doing another law degree – thought the NWP should now focus on the issue of equal rights for women which, it transpired, were rather more equal in some American states than others. Alva had an entirely different vision. She was determined that the NWP should do nothing less than turn itself into a third American political party, of which she would be president. This new third force in American politics would form a wedge between the Democrats and Republicans, representing the interests of newly enfranchised women and holding the balance of power.
The idea of becoming a third political force in American politics was ambitious; but the implications of her next suggestion were even more extraordinary. After involving herself in the suffrage campaign for over ten years, Alva announced that until the NWP could reconstitute itself as a third American party, it should be telling newly enfranchised women not to vote. ‘The vote is only the beginning of what we need – it is only our tool, our new broom, our pick, our shovel, our axe,’ she wrote. ‘But we have no intention of seeing these excellent utensils put in a museum.’35
There was a certain ruthless logic to her position. Men had been in charge for hundreds of years and made a mess of things. Existing political parties had been evolved by men entirely in their own interests. Women should not waste their precious new vote on bolstering support for decaying, archaic, male institutions which would simply continue to work against women’s best interests. ‘Personally, I think it would be far better for women to stay out of all parties and away from all elections, if they can find no other medium of expression than the existing decrepit man-dominated parties,’ she wrote in an article called ‘Women as Dictators’ in September 1922, which appeared in the Ladies’ Home Journal, sandwiched between advertisements for ‘Fuller Brushes Sold by 3,500 Courteous Men’ and ‘Let’s Make the First of Our Fall Hats’. ‘The day is not far off when the Woman’s Party, of which I am president, will be strong enough to impose any measure it may choose,’36 Alva declared.
When it came to outlining what the National Woman’s Party would actually do when it became a third force in American politics, its president-in-waiting was rather vague: ‘I hope that one of the first acts that women will try to pass will be an act providing that the people who govern them shall be normal.’37 Not that she was against older people becoming involved in politics, she hastened to add. ‘But fitness is not determined by years. Man has taken the position that he never grows old. When women grow old they are neglected.’38 More generally, women would bring new standards into public life with immediate benefit for future generations. ‘Men have paid great attention to the breeding of horses, dogs, cats and pigs. They have paid no attention to the breeding of the human race. Women will do their utmost to change this state of affairs. When we put up our standards, men will have to put up theirs. They will have to change … There is nothing so stimulating as opposition.’39
Needless to say, Alva’s separatist manifesto attracted immediate attention in the press. ‘As long as the voting women of America are content to remain in their husbands’ and brothers’ political groups, this condition will continue. That is why we will urge the women to affiliate with us,’40 she told the New York Journal in October 1922. The New York Times paid her the compliment of analysing the views she set out in ‘Women as Dictators’ carefully and at some length: ‘Mrs Belmont sees more barriers than are visible to some of us: but she is perfectly clear, comprehensive, logical and determined. Women had better stay out of politics if they are simply to imitate men in politics. Better have no vote, she says, than “scramble for jobs instead of fighting for principles”.’ The problem, the paper continued, was that this was a counsel of perfection: ‘Much might be said for the view that men have made a mess of the world, and that government by women or even by children couldn’t be worse and might be more intelligent.’ The New York Times was also prepared to concede that women had had a raw deal from male politicians. ‘It will be admitted by politicians in their frank private moments and is visible to clear-sighted women that, so far as politics is concerned, the cheese is for men while to the woman is graciously left the rind.’ But all this was going to change now, according to the paper, and its correspondent remained unconvinced that a third political party led by Mrs Belmont was really the best way forward. Indeed, the prospects for poor old men were quite terrifying if her vision ever became reality. But there was a glimmer of hope. It lay in ‘the most fortunate peculiarity of the Woman’s Party which, like the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Boston, consists entirely of officers. It is all leaders and no led.’41
Behind the scenes, Alice Paul privately agreed with this. She did not believe that the National Woman’s Party had the resources to become a third force in American politics and as fast as Alva promoted the idea Alice Paul tactfully downplayed it, trying to refocus attention on an equal rights campaign where she thought the NWP could make an impact. In this she had the support of most of her colleagues. In May 1923 one life member of the NWP, Mary Winsor went as far as describing talk of a woman’s party as ‘extraordinary nonsense’.42 Part of the problem was that Alva had, quite simply, become too extreme even for her own radical colleagues and was years ahead of her time. Much later, in the 1970s, Alice Paul told an interviewer that in retrospect, they should have taken the idea of becoming a third party in American politics much more seriously.
In 1922, Alva became president of the NWP after she gave it money for new Washington headquarters which she continued to hope would serve as a women’s parliament. Alice Paul, meanwhile, accepted the post of vice-president and proposed that the focus of the new fight should be an equal rights amendment (ERA). With remarkable tact and diplomacy, Alice Paul slowly persuaded Alva to drop the idea of a third party and throw her weight behind the amendment, making her one of the very few people who ever persuaded Alva to change her mind. Alva gradually came to see that lack of enthusiasm for her grand plan made it unworkable and it was in this spirit that she led the first ever ERA deputation to the White House and presented it to President Coolidge in November 1923.43
Although Alva supported the campaign for an equal rights amendment she was concerned about its exclusively American focus. Between 1924 and 1926 she slowly found a way of resolving her disappointment over the future of the National
Woman’s Party by becoming more involved in the issue of international women’s rights. Spending less and less time in America after 1923, she began to argue that women must be ready for the time when the United States joined the League of Nations. Feminists round the world should get themselves organised, she thought, so that when international conferences were set up to draw up codes of law, they could ensure that women had equal status and in 1926 she formed the International Feminist Committee (which became known as the International Advisory Committee of the NWP) to monitor international agreements and make sure that women’s interests were protected.
The problem was that her old enemy, Carrie Chapman Catt, had the same idea and old battle lines were suddenly redrawn. Much of the new bitterness was focused less on international rights than Alice Paul’s equal rights amendment, but the two soon became closely intertwined. Championship of ERA involved dismantling protective laws for women as the weaker sex. This was fiercely opposed by moderate suffragism in its new incarnation, the League of Women Voters backed by Carrie Chapman Catt. This battle would tear American feminism apart for nearly forty years and would only finally be resolved by the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 which extended protective legislation to men, but in 1926 the schism was already beginning to show and it was not long before the brand new battle extended to the arena of international women’s rights as well.
Although she was now seventy-three, the first part of 1926 represented a return to form for Alva. Her appetite for belligerence showed no sign of slackening and after a long silence she started writing articles again. In Paris she invited French suffrage groups to the house she had bought at 9 Rue Monsieur, frustrated by their inability to collaborate. In June 1926 Alva decided that her NWP international rights committee should affiliate with the larger and more powerful International Woman Suffrage Association, the announcement being made at a conference in Paris. She dispatched her delegation from New York with a great send-off dinner, only to learn that their request for affiliation had been rejected – and that the person behind this was none other than the old foe, Carrie Chapman Catt. By the time she arrived in Paris herself, Alva discovered that Catt had been working behind the scenes to exclude the National Woman’s Party on the grounds of their ‘aggressiveness’ and their championship of the equal rights amendment.
Alva erupted at Carrie Chapman Catt in the press: ‘I worked with Mrs Catt for years. I took her out of obscurity. During those years, I always believed in unity, and that we should accept each others views as best we could but I always objected to her idea of what was wise. I did not leave Mrs Catt until it seemed the better for woman suffrage. This is the first time since 1909 I have said anything against Mrs Catt. I wish to make it clear however, that Mrs Catt has not failed to oppose me on every occasion. In the present cause her hand is evident.’44 Alva then said she would take the money she had pledged to the International Women’s Suffrage Association elsewhere. None of it had any effect on the Association. Although she kept up a brave front, and was heralded by The New York Times as one of the three main leaders of the international suffrage campaign in the press that summer, Alva was deeply irritated by Carrie Chapman Catt’s victory for she realised she had been wholly outmanoeuvred.
Alice Paul was already increasingly concerned by Alva’s commitment to the NWP, fearing that at seventy-three, with houses in France, she might be losing her appetite for American politics and could withdraw her financial support. Sensing Alva’s discouragement after the upset with Catt, Alice Paul urged NWP members to write to their president and ‘really work on reviving her interest’.45 Alice Paul even organised a banner-waving delegation to meet Alva when she arrived back in New York in October 1926. Jane Norman Smith was part of the dockside reception committee and after it was over she wrote to Alice Paul in some dismay. Alva had not been herself at all, she said. In fact, she looked haggard. ‘When she got off, she simply greeted us and then said she would “see you tomorrow; I have relatives waiting for me” and then turned aside to greet her two sons!’46 Four days later, Jane Norman Smith met Alva again. Her demeanour was just as alarming. She was suffering from high blood pressure and was extremely irritable. To the relief of the NWP’s members, however, it soon emerged that Alva’s black mood had nothing to do with them.
In September 1926, Clementine Churchill was staying with the Balsans at Grantully Castle in Scotland when Consuelo gave her some startling news. Clementine was so taken aback by what Consuelo had to say that she conveyed it to Winston in a note marked ‘Private’ and told him to burn it ‘becos of les domestiques’. ‘Consuelo tells me that her marriage to Sunny has been annulled by the Pope!’ she wrote. ‘I was so staggered that I lost the chance of cross-examining her about it. It reminds me of the opening lines of the hymn: “God moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform”.’47
Clementine’s astonishment was understandable for she clearly assumed that the only grounds for annulment of a marriage by the Vatican were non-consummation of the marriage. Consuelo and the Duke not only had two sons but had recently become grandparents: the Blandfords had produced two daughters, Sarah and Caroline, in 1921 and 1923, and the Marchioness had given birth to another link in the chain, John George Vanderbilt Henry – the future 11th Duke – a few months beforehand in April. It was, therefore, a difficult concept for anyone to grasp. But Clementine regained her equilibrium sufficiently to probe Consuelo just a little further to discover there were other grounds entirely. ‘After I had recovered from my embarrassment I asked her on what grounds she had suggested to His Holiness that He should operate the miracle – And she replied “Coercion, being under age at the time”.’48
Clementine’s attempt to keep the news secret was soon overtaken by events. Within a matter of weeks a furore erupted over the Marlborough annulment which lasted almost as long as newspaper coverage of the original wedding preparations. At one point bitterness became so intense that the Duke felt obliged to deny that it had ever been his idea, issuing a statement through his solicitors that the application for the annulment had been made by Madame Balsan and not by him. Clementine Churchill’s note to Churchill bears this out. ‘She says Sunny is enchanted as rumour has it that he is to be received into the Church of Rome & will then be able to marry Gladys properly – I suppose Jacques’ family suggested it as they are strict Catholics & consider him to be living in sin with Consuelo.’49 This summed up the position neatly. Requesting an annulment six years after a legal divorce and five years after remarriage may seem odd, but in 1926 it suited both the Duke and Consuelo to go through the process for very different reasons.
The Duke’s reasons were religious. Although he had started life as a ‘total pagan’ he had slowly been drawn to the Roman Catholic faith and had begun instruction three years earlier with the Jesuit Father Martindale, a fashionable priest responsible for a number of high-profile conversions during the 1920s. Because the Duke had been married before, Father Martindale could not agree to receive him formally into the Church, but the Duke had taken to attending Mass at St Aloysius Roman Catholic Church in Oxford as a non-communicant. The Duke’s move towards the Church of Rome was partly driven by fury with the Anglican Bishop of Oxford (or the ‘Burgundy Burge’ as Gladys called him), after he barred the Duke from attending the Diocesan Conference in 1922 on account of his divorce and re-marriage to which the leaders of the Anglican Church were still deeply opposed. The Duke had been accepted as a communicant in local churches throughout Oxfordshire and in London; he had never wished to attend the conference in the first place (he was an ex-officio member as Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire); and he was embarrassed by unpleasant publicity for weeks afterwards. But both Father Martindale and the Duke’s friend, Shane Leslie, believed that beneath his complex and difficult exterior the Duke had a profoundly religious temperament. Without an annulment to wipe out the ‘stain’ of divorce, becoming a full member of the Catholic Church remained impossible.50
Consuelo’s reasons for seeking t
he annulment related entirely to Jacques. ‘Sanctified as our marriage had been in an Episcopal Church, it was to me completely valid; and I would have been content to ignore the ultra-religious views that prevented the orthodox Catholics from recognising it,’51 she wrote later. The difficulty was that orthodox Catholics who felt strongly about this were not simply confined to a few grand French families, but included Jacques’ immediate relations such as his aunt, the widowed Madame Charles Balsan, who was head of the family and ‘ensured the traditional discipline of the Catholic Church’.52 Jacques’ own divorce from his earlier civil marriage posed no problem; but his second marriage to the divorced Consuelo could only be recognised if she remarried Jacques according to the rites of the Catholic Church. This in turn was only possible if she voided her first marriage through an annulment. In the first months of marriage the attitude of Jacques’ family did not disturb either of them, but by 1926 Consuelo was anxious to take steps to heal a family rupture of which she was inadvertently the cause. It then transpired that the only way of doing this was to prove that one party in the Marlborough marriage had been coerced into marrying. Under Catholic ecclesiastical law this was enough to declare it invalid and have it annulled.
‘It pained me to approach my mother for her consent, but on learning that the proceedings were entirely private we agreed to take the necessary steps,’53 wrote Consuelo. Though there was pressure for an annulment, it was not critical to anyone’s happiness. Had those involved been able to predict the storm of publicity ahead it seems likely that they would have hesitated and possibly desisted. As it was, the assumption that the annulment proceedings would remain private was perfectly reasonable. Witness statements were heard in private by a tribunal in the Roman Catholic diocese of Southwark in London. These statements were so confidential that any priest who divulged their contents risked excommunication. The tribunal’s findings would then be forwarded for consideration by the Rota, the Catholic court in Rome, for final approval. In the event that this was granted, a summary of the judgement would be published in Acta Apostolicae Sedis in Latin, apart from quotations from witness statements which appeared in French. Since the press were not in the habit of scrutinising Acta Apostolicae Sedis, and most of them would not have understood the Latin text even if they had, everyone could proceed with a reasonable degree of confidence, provided the news did not leak in any other way. As it turned out, this possibility should have been given more thought for though the annulment proceedings themselves would remain private, the steps that the Duke and Consuelo had to take afterwards would not.
Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt Page 46