Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt
Page 58
12 Cornelius Vanderbilt to Frank Armstrong Crawford, 24 October 1868, Vanderbilt family folder, VP, New York Historical Society.
13 F. Crowinshield, ‘The House of Vanderbilt’, Vogue, 15 November 1941, p. 38.
14 A. T. Vanderbilt, Fortune’s Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989), p. 26.
15 Quoted in Vanderbilt, Fortune’s Children, p. 15.
16 Vanderbilt, Fortune’s Children, p. 40.
17 Quoted in Vanderbilt, Fortune’s Children, p. 55.
18 F. L. Ford, ‘The Vanderbilts and The Vanderbilt Millions’, Munsey’s Magazine, Vol XXII (No. 4, January 1900).
19 J. Foreman and R. P. Stimson, The Vanderbilts and The Gilded Age: Architectural Aspirations 1879–1901 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 28.
20 C. V. Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold (Maidstone: George Mann, 1973; first published 1953), p. 4.
21 Quoted in The New York Times, ‘The Vanderbilt Will Case’, 6 February 1879.
22 Quoted in The New York Times, ‘Vanderbilt Will Case’.
23 Quoted in Vanderbilt, Fortune’s Children, p. 87.
24 P. Geidel, PhD thesis: ‘Alva E. Belmont: A Forgotten Feminist’ (Columbia University, 1993), p. vi. He points out that even scholars have difficulty spelling Alva’s name correctly.
25 Balsan, Glitter, p. 4: ‘Her father, who owned plantations near Mobile, was ruined by the liberation of the slaves.’
26 Belmont Memoirs (Field): CESWP, Huntington Library, San Marino, California, p. 1. This first set of memoirs was ghostwritten by Sara Bard Field after conversations with Alva in Newport, August 1917. Sara Bard Field’s papers include notes of conversations with Alva and a first draft. The project was never completed.
27 SBF to CESW, 29 July 1917, CESWP.
28 E. S. Martin, The Unrest of Women (New York and London: D. A. Appleton and Company, 1913), pp. 52–3.
29 Balsan, Glitter, p. 5.
30 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 38a.
31 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 9.
32 H. Fuller, Belle Brittan on a Tour, at Newport, and Here and There (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1858), p. 112.
33 T. C. De Leon, Belles, Beaux and Brains of the 60s (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909), p. 182.
34 Geidel, ‘Forgotten Feminist’, p. 48.
35 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 10.
36 Belmont Memoirs (Young), pp. 9 and 11.
37 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 9.
38 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 30.
39 Though this ‘letter’ may have been the basis for a newspaper or magazine article. See National Woman’s Party Papers (NWPP): 1913–72, Series 1, Correspondence, 1913–72, Alva Belmont Correspondence Scrapbook, Glen Rock, New Jersey, Microfilming Corporation of America, p. 16.
40 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 25.
41 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 7.
42 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 10.
43 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 11.
44 Belmont Memoirs (Field), pp. 7 and 9.
45 Geidel, ‘Forgotten Feminist’, p. 51.
46 Geidel, ‘Forgotten Feminist’, pp. 12–13.
47 Eric Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York: Money and Social Power in a Gilded Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), p. 10.
48 Quoted in Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 10.
49 R. Townsend, Mother of Clubs, Being the History of the First Hundred Years of the Union Club 1836–1936 (New York: privately printed, 1936), p. 70.
50 ‘Every little southerner I met at dancing classes was a “wicked rebel”, to be pinched if possible’, Mrs George Cornwallis-West, The Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill (Bath: Cedric Chivers Ltd, 1973; first published London: Edward Arnold, 1908), p. 2.
51 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 47.
52 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 15.
53 A. Horne, The Fall of Paris (London: Pan Macmillan Ltd, 2002; first published Macmillan, 1965), p. 16.
54 Horne, Fall of Paris, p. 16.
55 Quoted in Horne, Fall of Paris, p. 7.
56 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 72.
57 I am indebted to Peter Geidel for his work on tracing the Smiths’ movements between New York and Paris and their history of house ownership in New York between 1865 and 1874.
58 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 21.
59 M. Twain and C. D. Warner, The Gilded Age (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; first published Hartford: American Publishing Company, 1873), p. v.
60 Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 8.
61 Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 181.
62 W. McAllister, Society As I Have Found It, in series: The Leisure Class of America (New York: Arno Press, 1975; first published New York: Cassell Publishing Co., 1890) pp. 349–50.
63 Quoted in Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 181.
64 J. E. Patterson, The First Four Hundred: Mrs Astor’s New York in The Gilded Age (New York: Rizzoli Publications, 2000) p. 59.
65 L. Auchincloss, The Vanderbilt Era: Profiles of A Gilded Age (New York: Collier Books, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989), p. 189.
66 Quoted in Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 193.
67 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 32.
68 C. Tomalin, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (London: Viking Penguin, 2002), p. 9.
69 Belmont Memoirs (Young), pp. 75–6.
70 Handwritten notes on early recollections, Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 3.
71 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 79.
72 Quoted in E. Eliot, Heiresses and Coronets: The Story of Lovely Ladies and Noble Men (New York: McDowell, Obolensky 1959) p. 72.
73 Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 199.
74 I am most grateful to Eric Homberger for his advice on this circle.
75 SBF to CESW from Newport, 31 July 1917, CESWP.
76 Quoted in D. Silverman, Selling Culture: Bloomingdale’s, Diana Vreeland and The New Aristocracy of Taste in Reagan’s America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), p. 14.
77 Gustav Lening quoted in Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 29.
78 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 7.
79 E. Wharton, The House of Mirth (London: FilmFour Books with Macmillan & Co., 2000), pp. 46 and 38.
80 Town Topics, 12 June 1913.
2 BIRTH OF AN HEIRESS
1 Belmont Memoirs (Field), pp. 34–5.
2 SBF to CESW, 29 July 1917, CESWP.
3 The New York Times quoted in Geidel, ‘Forgotten Feminist’, p. 16.
4 Quoted in Geidel, ‘Forgotten Feminist’, p. 16.
5 Quoted in Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 11.
6 Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 12.
7 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 35.
8 Belmont Memoirs (Young), pp. 89–90.
9 A. Churchill, The Upper Crust: An Informal History of New York’s Highest Society (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc., 1970), p. 120. This Bouncer’s ball took place on 27 December 1874.
10 Quoted in Eliot, Heiresses, p. 81.
11 World, 19 August 1892.
12 Entry for 28 June 1876, Frank Armstrong Crawford Vanderbilt (Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt), Diaries 1876–1878, BV Vanderbilt, VP.
13 Quoted in Patterson, Vanderbilts, p. 58.
14 The New York Times, ‘Vanderbilt Will Case’, 6 February 1879.
15 Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 6.
16 Foreman and Stimson, Vanderbilts and Gilded Age, p. 175.
17 Foreman and Stimson, Vanderbilts and Gilded Age, p. 173.
18 Foreman and Stimson, Vanderbilts and Gilded Age, p. 177.
19 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 92.
20 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 38.
21 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 37.
22 D. Lowe, Beaux Arts New York (New York: Whitney Library of Design, Watson-Gupthill Publications, 1998), p. 13.
23 Foreman and Stimson, Vanderbilts and Gilded Age, p. 35.
/> 24 Quoted in Lowe, Beaux Arts, p. 17.
25 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 111.
26 Quoted in Geidel, ‘Forgotten Feminist’, p. 19.
27 See ‘Supper Room, W. K. Vanderbilt, No. 81.7267, Prints and Drawings Collection, The Octagon Museum, The American Architectural Foundation, Washington DC.
28 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 39.
29 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 40.
30 Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 271.
31 ‘We wanted the money power,’ Ward McAllister wrote, ‘but not in any way to be controlled by it,’ McAllister, Society, p. 214.
32 Quoted in Homberger, Mrs Astor’s New York, p. 272.
33 McAllister, Society, p. 351.
34 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 109.
35 McAllister, Society, pp. 352–3.
36 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 108.
37 Patterson, Vanderbilts, p. 130.
38 McAllister, Society, pp. 353–4.
39 World, 28 March 1883.
40 Balsan, Glitter, p. 8.
41 Balsan, Glitter, p. 8.
42 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 49.
43 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 49.
44 New York City Journal, 21 October 1909.
45 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 49.
46 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 50.
47 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 50.
48 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 11.
49 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 20.
50 Auchincloss, Vanderbilt Era, p. 83.
51 ‘Early Training of Children’ in Anon., The Fireside Miscellany and Young People’s Encyclopedia (New York: 1854), p. 60.
52 Balsan, Glitter, p. 6.
53 Balsan, Glitter, p. 7.
54 Balsan, Glitter, p. 5.
55 Balsan, Glitter, p. 9.
56 Balsan, Glitter, pp. 10–11.
57 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 97.
58 Balsan, Glitter, p. 16.
59 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 55.
60 New York City Journal, 21 October 1909.
61 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 54.
62 Belmont Memoirs (Young), pp. 94–5.
63 Balsan, Glitter, p. 11.
64 Balsan, Glitter, p. 11.
65 Balsan, Glitter, p. 12.
66 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 96.
67 Balsan, Glitter, p. 11.
68 Quoted in Auchincloss, Vanderbilt Era, p. 153. Wharton wrote to Ogden Codman in 1897: ‘I wish the Vanderbilts didn’t retard culture so very thoroughly. They are entrenched in a sort of Thermopylae of bad taste, from which no force on earth can dislodge them.’
69 Belmont Memoirs (Field), pp. 35–6.
70 Quoted in Patterson, Vanderbilts, pp. 115–16.
71 Quoted in Patterson, Vanderbilts, p. 116.
72 W. H. Vanderbilt’s will is included as Appendix G in W. A. Croffut, The Vanderbilts and the Story of Their Fortune (Chicago: Bedford, Clarke & Co., 1886), p. 298.
73 D. Turbeville and L. Auchincloss, Newport Remembered: A Photographic Portrait of A Gilded Past (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1994), pp. 16–17.
74 C. P. B. Jefferys, Newport: A Short History (Newport, Rhode Island: Newport Historical Society, 1992), p. 49.
75 H. James, ‘The Sense of Newport,’ Harper’s Monthly Magazine Vol. CXIII, No. 675, p. 354, reprinted in A Selection of Historical and Social Articles pertaining to Newport, Rhode Island, compiled by Florence Archambault (Newport, Rhode Island: Historic Newport Publishers, 1997). James went on to say: ‘while their averted owners, roused from a witless dream, wonder what in the world is to be done with them. The answer to which, I think, can only be that there is absolutely nothing to be done; nothing but to let them stand there always, vast and blank, for reminder to those concerned of the prohibited degrees of witlessness, and of the peculiarly awkward vengeances of affronted proportion and discretion.’
76 E. Warburton, In Living Memory: A Chronicle of Newport 1888–1988 (Newport, Rhode Island: Newport Savings and Loan Assoc./Island Trust Co., 1988), p. 4.
77 G. MacColl and C. Wallace, To Marry an English Lord (New York: Workman Publishing 1989), pp. 160–61.
78 M. K. Van Rensselaer, The Social Ladder (London: Eveleigh Nash & Co., 1925), pp. 243–44.
79 ‘W. K. Vanderbilt mansion, Marble House’, No. 79.3682, Prints and Drawings Collections, The Octagon Museum.
80 New York Times, 1st October 1886.
81 ‘Log of the Alva’, privately printed, in the Collection of the Preservation Society of Newport County.
82 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 131.
83 Balsan, Glitter, p. 12.
84 ‘Log of the Alva’, 22 March 1887.
85 Balsan, Glitter, p. 12.
86 Balsan, Glitter and the Gold, p. 15.
87 M. Strange, (B. M. L. Tweed/B. Oelrichs), Who Tells Me True (New York: C. Scribner and Sons, 1940), p. 62.
88 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 55.
89 ‘People’ in Gertrude Vanderbilt’s private papers, entries for 16 September 1894 (Mo Taylor); 5 September 1894 (Dick Wilson); and 9 September 1894, GVWP.
90 F. A. Sloane, Maverick in Mauve, with a commentary by Louis Auchincloss (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1983), p. 126.
91 Balsan, Glitter, p. 21.
92 Balsan, Glitter, p. 5.
93 2 March 1893, William Gilmour, Notebooks, in the Collection of Preservation Society of Newport County.
3 SUNLIGHT BY PROXY
1 SBF to CESW, 29 July 1917, CESWP.
2 J. D’Emilio and E. B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), p. 182.
3 D’Emilio and Freedman, Intimate Matters, pp. 182–3.
4 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 154.
5 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 153.
6 Belmont Memoirs (Young), pp. 153–4.
7 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 153.
8 Belmont Memoirs (Young), pp. 152–3.
9 Belmont Memoirs (Field), pp. 59–60.
10 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 10.
11 World, 6 March 1895.
12 Balsan, Glitter, p. 23.
13 J. Cherol, ‘Historic Architecture: Richard Morris Hunt, Mr and Mrs William K. Vanderbilt’s Marble House in Newport’, Architectural Digest (October 1985), p. 134.
14 See P. F. Miller, ‘The Gothic Room in Marble House’, Antiques, August 1994.
15 Balsan, Glitter, p. 19.
16 Balsan, Glitter, p. 20.
17 Balsan, Glitter, p. 20.
18 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 60.
19 Strange, (B. M. L. Tweed/B. Oelrichs), Who Tells Me True, p. 24.
20 D. Black, The King of Fifth Avenue (New York: Dial Press, 1981), p. 707. Black suggests that the relationship ‘was becoming a talking point’.
21 ‘Log of the Alva’, entries for 1 Feb 1889 and 4 Feb 1890.
22 Auchincloss, Vanderbilt Era, p. 49.
23 Strange (B. M. L. Tweed/B. Oelrichs), Who Tells Me True, p. 23.
24 E. Drexel Lehr (Lady Decies), King Lehr and The Gilded Age (London: Constable and Co., 1935), P. 14.
25 E. G. Slocum, ‘Memories of Bellevue Avenue: The Story of A Newport Family’, Newport History, Vol. 67, Part 1 (Newport Historical Society: Number 230, Summer 1995), p. 48.
26 Balsan, Glitter, p. 23. The Log of the Valiant does not list Winthrop Rutherfurd as a guest on the cruise, though he was apparently on the pier to wave farewell.
27 World, 24 November 1893.
28 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 136.
29 Balsan, Glitter, p. 24.
30 N. Nicholson, Mary Curzon: A Biography (London: Phoenix Orion, 1998; first published London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977), p. 111.
31 Quoted in Lord Newton, Lord Lansdowne: A Biography (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd, 1929), pp. 58–9.
32 D. Cannadine, Aspects of Aristocracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 84.
33 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 138.
3
4 Newton, Lord Lansdowne, p. 126.
35 Balsan, Glitter, p. 24.
36 Balsan, Glitter, p. 24.
37 ‘Log of the Valiant’, 19 January 1894, VP.
38 ‘Log of the Valiant’, 31 January 1894, (William Kissam Vanderbilt) BV Vanderbilt, VP.
39 Balsan, Glitter, p. 29.
40 Balsan Glitter, p. 25.
41 Balsan Glitter, pp. 1–2.
42 Balsan Glitter, pp. 26–7.
43 E. de Gramont, Pomp and Circumstance (London: Jonathan Cape, 1929), p. 222.
44 de Gramont, Pomp, p. 213.
45 de Gramont, Pomp, p. 213.
46 Balsan, Glitter, p. 27.
47 Town Topics, 9 August 1894.
48 de Gramont, Pomp, p. 222.
49 Balsan, Glitter, p. 29.
50 Balsan, Glitter, pp. 29–30.
51 Balsan, Glitter, p. 7.
52 Balsan, Glitter, p. 30.
53 Town Topics, 17 March 1910.
54 Balsan, Glitter, p. 30.
55 Frances, Duchess of Marlborough to Lady Randolph Churchill, 19 July 1894, CHAR 28/42/23, CA.
56 R. Brandon, The Dollar Princesses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1980), p. 20.
57 A. Logan, The Man Who Robbed The Robber Barons (London: Victor Gollancz, 1966), p. 136.
58 Town Topics, 19 July 1894.
59 Town Topics, 26 July 1894.
60 Town Topics, 13 December 1894.
61 Town Topics, 4 October 1894.
62 Balsan, Glitter, p. 32.
63 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 63.
64 Belmont Memoirs (Field), p. 62.
65 Belmont Memoirs (Young), p. 152.
66 Belmont Memoirs (Field), pp. 65–6.
67 Town Topics, 13 December 1894.
68 22 December 1894, Gilmour, Notebooks.
69 1 January 1895, Gilmour, Notebooks.
70 World, 16 January 1895.
71 World, 6 March 1895.
72 World, 6 March 1895.
73 Interview with Sara Bard Field by Amerlia R. Fry, recorded between 1 October 1959 and 31 October 1963, available from the Online Archive of California (http://www.oac.cdlib.org/), 26, Adjustment. Digression: Mrs Belmont’s Divorce, p. 389.