Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt

by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

  Consuelo’s only surviving aunt, William K.’s sister Florence Twombly, was also fading and finally died in 1952 aged ninety-eight. William Henry Vanderbilt’s favourite daughter, she made her own contribution to The Glitter and the Gold by supplying her niece with details of where Consuelo was born, important because there was no other record on account of the vexatious missing birth certificate. Florence Twombly’s passing marked the end of an era, for she was the only surviving Vanderbilt to have started life on Staten Island, not that one would ever have imagined this to look at her. From the age of ten, when the family moved to Manhattan on the Commodore’s instructions, she never lived anywhere but Fifth Avenue and her country estate, Florham, where there were still thirty gardeners, four footmen, and eight housemaids at the time of her death. She never gave interviews, writes Jerry Patterson, but ‘her arrival at the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera in her maroon limousine with maroon-liveried attendants was watched with closer attention than the proceedings on the stage’.39

  Between 1950 and 1951, feeling that the life of her youth was changing irrevocably, Consuelo started jotting down some notes about the past. One person with whom she first discussed the idea of a memoir was the young lawyer, writer, friend and relation by marriage, Louis Auchincloss, then at the beginning of a literary career that would produce more than fifty novels, short stories and other works. ‘I suggested that she open her book with a chapter on a picturesque and opulent American childhood in the eighteen-eighties and nineties, with sylvan scenes in Newport and a Prendergast picture of Central Park and its baby carriages and starchily uniformed nurses; then move swiftly on to dancing classes and balls in gilded ballrooms, and last – bang – hit her reader with a chapter called “The High Price of Dukes”.’ This did not appeal, however:

  She didn’t like the idea at all. When I pointed out that there had been many books about American heiresses marrying European nobles, but that hers would be the most dramatic of all, involving as it would the greatest heiress and the greatest duke, she protested that, as her title would imply, Blenheim Palace was just the glitter and her real life, the one devoted to social work and to her second husband, Jacques Balsan, the gold. Well, that of course was her prerogative, and it would have been ungracious of me to insist that Blenheim Palace was what the public really wanted to read about. ‘And of course I can’t put in a book what a beast Marlborough was,’ she added pensively.40

  Consuelo persevered and sketched out a book plan of her own which was accepted for publication by Harper & Brothers. Since it first appeared in the US in 1952, critics of The Glitter and the Gold have described it ‘ghostwritten’41 but the correspondence between Consuelo and editor Cass Canfield makes it clear that this was not the case. From the outset Consuelo made it clear that she would not accept a ‘ghost’. ‘I would not like it to become a book written by a professional such as the Duke of Windsor’s,’ she wrote to him, ‘for with all its faults it is a personal story and memoirs to me lose their interest if the writer’s way of seeing and saying things is not adhered to.’42 Cass Canfield agreed and assigned an editor to the book, Marguerite Hoyle, with whom Consuelo formed a warm relationship and who provided outstandingly tactful editorial service. Miss Hoyle’s impact can particularly be seen in the later chapters for when Consuelo was trying to finish the book in the autumn of 1951 she fell ill, was admitted to hospital and ran out of energy. Miss Hoyle stepped in to help – one of her contributions was to restructure Consuelo’s account of her life in France round each of her houses. But when the book was ready for publication Cass Canfield suggested that it should be described as ‘autobiography’ rather than ‘memoirs’ because ‘the former clearly indicates that you wrote the book, as you did, instead of a ghost.’43

  The Glitter and the Gold changed focus as she wrote it. Consuelo had originally envisaged a series of pen portraits of a vanished age, but was encouraged to write a more personal story by her publishers who sensed, correctly, that this is what the public would want to read. She always felt uneasy about this; and it was not long before art began to imitate life as she found herself having to negotiate a path between competing forces while insisting that her story remain her own. Some suggestions were straightforward and helpful. The art critic Stuart Preston pointed out that many people would be interested in her impressions of Edith Wharton. Others were more difficult to accommodate for even comments from her publishers were contradictory. Cass Canfield was taken aback at the contrast between the warmth and charm of the elderly lady in his office and the embittered tone of an early draft of her manuscript and encouraged her to emphasise ‘the pleasant and gay times you enjoyed’,44 while Marguerite Hoyle wanted to learn more about her disagreements with the Duke. Consuelo protested at the idea of writing about this at all, but then went much further than she originally intended.

  Consuelo wrote to Cass Canfield that she wished the main theme of her memoir to be the ‘drive to democracy’ which ‘as far as I can remember always possessed me together with a restless desire to work – so much more satisfying than the perpetual round of a mundane existence’.45 This inevitably meant suggesting that the Edwardian aristocratic world was a feudal anachronism; and that meant upsetting her son and daughter-in-law, the 10th Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. The Duchess was shocked by what she felt was the anti-English tenor of The Glitter and the Gold and criticism of his father would have been far worse, the Duke told David Green, if he had not ‘blue-pencilled freely’.46 The person to whom the difficult task of reading the manuscript for errors in good taste, spelling and grammar was finally entrusted was Lord Ivor Churchill who also saw the book through further changes required for the English edition. Consuelo herself remained extremely sensitive to criticism that in publishing a memoir that described her life at Blenheim she was somehow being vulgar. One symptom of this was a furore over the issue of the cover design with Consuelo sending the telegram: ‘Am distressed and surprised to hear from Adelaide Leonard that jacket has been decided without consulting me stop combination of jacket photograph in coronation dress and name glitter and gold strike me as most unpleasantly vulgar, stop, excuse my frankness stop know that in England effect would be deplorable, stop, refuse to have my photograph on jacket which I would like simple and plain.’47

  Just before the memoirs were published in the States, Cass Canfield wrote to Winston Churchill at Consuelo’s suggestion asking him if he might provide a foreword, or even a favourable endorsement which could be printed on the book jacket. Churchill never responded directly to either suggestion, although he did write to Consuelo that The Glitter and the Gold ‘was a graceful and readable account of a vanished age’ which he was sure would ‘command wide attention and interest’. He suggested that the chronology needed more attention, felt that ‘the pack could be shuffled with advantage’ in places, and remarked that ‘chronology is the secret of narrative’. Though he thought that the account of the Balsans’ escape from France made a moving end to the story, and that the title (which was suggested by Harper & Brothers) was ‘brilliant’, he was greatly concerned about references to the Asquiths which he felt would cause their children pain and anger. ‘I would not put in the story of your dining with him [Asquith] so soon after Raymond was killed in action, nor do I think you will want to leave in the account of Margot’s behaviour when she was your guest at Eze.’48

  Consuelo immediately removed any mention of dining with Asquith after Raymond’s death, but the story of Margot’s behaviour when she was newly widowed remained, with a note of explanation about the idiosyncratic nature of grief. Churchill wrote a separate letter to Cass Canfield, returning the proofs where he had marked a few points that had occurred to him. ‘I do not, however, wish to be quoted,’49 he said firmly. The reason for this, though he did not say so, was that Churchill was deeply unhappy about the way Consuelo had ‘blackened’ Sunny’s name – a reaction that cast a shadow over the friendship between Churchill and Consuelo for quite some time.

 
; The American edition of The Glitter and the Gold attracted favourable reviews which commended a fascinating story, well told, by an author with a keen eye. It stayed for over twenty weeks on the US bestseller list, though it never rose higher than third place in the face of competition from the actress Tallulah Bankhead’s autobiography – which contained the startling revelation that she only lost her virginity when she was thirty-five – and the Bible in the Revised Standard Version. Meanwhile, some changes for the British edition were insisted upon by English lawyers. Consuelo’s description of Brown’s Hotel as ‘frowsty’ and miserable compared to the great hotels of Paris was considered libellous. Gladys Deacon was changed to a ‘young American girl’ in the story of the visit of the Crown Prince to Blenheim and alterations were made to avoid any suggestion that she had pursued the Crown Prince or pressured him into giving her his ring. ‘You will be amused to know that all references to Gladys Deacon as regards the Crown Prince story will have to be omitted in England because the lady in question sued a paper before the war as it contained a cartoon in which a vicar was discussing his rose gardens with his gardener and suggested putting the Duchess of Marlborough in the same bed as the Reverend Wilkes,’ wrote Consuelo to Marguerite Hoyle. ‘As she is now rather mad one must be careful.’50

  Consuelo’s great-granddaughters were always struck by the fact that she never had any photographs of Alva on display, and that the only record of their great-great grandmother was a portrait that hung on one staircase at Casa Alva. Perhaps Consuelo did not need mementos of her mother to remember her, for the only criticism of The Glitter and the Gold that truly stung was directed at her treatment of Alva. ‘I am being very much criticised for what I have said of my mother which is causing me pain,’ she wrote to Miss Hoyle. ‘People evidently do not recognise that she was a “personality” and to be judged as such.’51 Marguerite Hoyle wrote a long and sensitive letter in response:

  I am distressed that you are being hurt by criticism for what you said of your mother. It seemed to me that you showed great understanding of her point of view, and sympathy for her as a person (what the psychiatrists call ‘sceptical empathy’ and a difficult thing to achieve). Certainly your affection for her is apparent throughout, and she emerges a very vivid and remarkable character. Friends with whom I have talked, and who are reading the story … have invariably spoken of the good taste and dignity with which you handle some very difficult personal relationships. I think the important thing is that you yourself know you were objective and that in treating her as a personality in her own right you were paying her a compliment that she herself would have appreciated. Also, I think, you find reassurance in the fact that your own family – Lord Ivor, for instance, of whose sensitive taste and good judgement you can have no doubt – saw no cause for criticism.52

  This did not reassure. Consuelo combed through what she had written in an attempt to head off such criticisms for the English version. She removed all references to the installation of a bowling alley at Augerville clearly feeling that an affectionate story sounded like callous mockery of the infirmity of old age – Alva had commissioned it when she could no longer walk and the only people who used it were her nurses. To ensure that no-one thought that she was poking fun at her mother’s feminism, Consuelo amended her description of Alva’s funeral, adding: ‘It was only fitting that such tribute should be paid to the courage she had shown in braving popular prejudice and established custom to secure better conditions for women the world over.’53 However, she made no changes at all to the early part of her memoir in which she recounted her childhood, her romance with Winthrop Rutherfurd and the circumstances leading up to her marriage to the Duke, which, she repeated, was ‘forced upon me’.

  When the book was published in Britain in 1953, comment was generally favourable though opinion was more divided than it had been in America. One camp of criticism was represented by Katherine Whitehorn, writing in John O’London’s Weekly: ‘It seems harsh to remark that the book would have been better if she had given us rather less discreet portraits of her husband and late Victorian personalities.’54 Another faction was represented by those close to the Churchills. Lord Birkenhead (son of F. E. Smith) had often spent Christmas at Blenheim as a child after the Marlboroughs separated and while he commented favourably on Consuelo’s depiction of ‘An extraordinary world … which proves its author to be a woman of wit, observation and strong character’, he thought that her portrait of her first husband was a serious breach of good taste. The point was put even more forcefully by Randolph Churchill in Punch. ‘Madame Balsan indulges herself in many criticisms of a man who has been dead for twenty years, and who was the father of her two sons; and it is painful to record that after a lapse of nearly sixty years, and in the sunset of her life, she finds it decent to criticise even his table manners.’55 Randolph Churchill then went on to query just how ‘democratic’ life had ever been in Newport, and commented that ‘it is scarcely to be wondered at that she found fault with the plumbing at Blenheim, or complained that there were “only six housemaids”’ – entirely missing the fact that Consuelo never claimed that life in Newport was democratic, and that low staffing levels at Blenheim were hard on the housemaids, not her.

  Indeed, some of Randolph Churchill’s sallies demonstrate with startling clarity the complacent hauteur of the English – and particularly the English male – that Consuelo had encountered as an eighteen-year-old and to which she had so frequently objected. Castigating her accounts of ‘elegant slumming’, Randolph Churchill remarked with lofty disdain that it was a bad American habit to present oneself as an innocent victim of a corrupt Old Europe; asked British readers to bear in mind the (vulgar) American public for which it was written; and finished by damning the memoir with faint praise, saying that it was well-informed and lively ‘as one would expect from a beautiful and cultivated American woman who had the advantage of living for nearly half a century in Europe’.56

  Though The Glitter and the Gold has been reprinted since the 1970s, it has fared less well since its initial reception. It is undoubtedly uneven. Its early chapters are animated by descriptions of Alva, life at Blenheim, her bitterness towards the Duke and Consuelo’s dislike of the inwardness of the English aristocracy, all conveyed with a strength of feeling that may have surprised even its author. The book’s energy runs out towards the end though it flashes back into life with her account of the Balsans’ departure from France in June 1940. Even the early chapters go in and out of focus, at some moments remarkably outspoken, and at others frustratingly reticent. It suffers from being passed through too many hands, as if too many competing voices have – at least in places – drawn its sting. Like all memoirs, its view is partial and there are places where friends and supporters – like Paul Maze in 1940 – should probably have been given more credit. Its historical accuracy is sometimes questionable, as Consuelo herself candidly admitted: ‘I would not have been likely to forget my conversation with the Czar,’ she said to one interviewer. ‘And then I found I remembered the trend of things, if not the exact thing.’57 Although Consuelo did have a streak of a vanity that surfaces from time to time throughout the memoir, Daphne Fielding points out that the inclusion of observations like J. M. Barrie’s ‘I would stand all day in the street to see Consuelo Marlborough get into her carriage’ are in the Edwardian tradition of ‘dew drops’, exquisite compliments collected in the manner of Fabergé eggs,58 rather than rampant narcissism; and it is unreasonable to expect such a memoir to be frank about love affairs.

  The most serious accusation directed at The Glitter and the Gold, however, is that in presenting herself as the victim of her mother’s wiles, Consuelo simply recycled lies about coercion told at the time of the annulment. Leaving aside the judgement that the allegation of coercion was not based on a lie, this is a most peculiar allegation for it is difficult to understand why she should have taken such a step in the first place. If Consuelo knew that the annulment proceedings had been ‘cooked up’
she would have insisted on keeping to her original plan for a series of vignettes, or never embarked on a memoir at all. It is more likely that in writing The Glitter and the Gold she decided it was time to tell a story that had become part of her persona in her own words, and in less colourful language than the version that appeared courtesy of the press in 1926.

  In one important respect, however, Consuelo exacerbated the effect of the annulment proceedings on Alva’s reputation – by failing to offer any serious analysis of her reasons for overriding her daughter’s feelings in marrying her off to an English duke. Though she mentions more than once that it all seemed quite rational to Alva who was only thinking of her daughter’s happiness, Consuelo never explains why Alva took such a step, perhaps because she never quite believed her mother’s reasons in the first place. Consuelo spends more time – understandably – outlining why she felt compelled to obey Alva. Readers are therefore left with the strong impression that Alva’s behaviour over Consuelo’s first marriage was the result of nothing more complex than overweening social ambition. When The Glitter and the Gold was published this instantly became the version of the story that reviewers repeated and one that remains in circulation to this day – even the current jacket cover of The Glitter and the Gold describes Alva as ‘almost certifiably socially ambitious’.59