Life on Fifth Avenue could be formal and stilted, and the children luxuriated in the freedom of the summer and early autumn months at Idlehour on the south shore of Long Island, where they crabbed, fished, and learned to sail. “During the hot summer days,” Alva remembered, “we spent much of our time on a little side wheel yacht, delightfully comfortable. We would start in the morning with the children and friends and go over to Fire Island…where we would have our luncheon, returning in the cool of the evening.”10 The children set up a playhouse at Idlehour and there, “utterly happy, we would cook our meal, wash the dishes and then stroll home by the river.’11 At the playhouse, Consuelo made preserves and cooked, while Willie K. served as carpenter and waiter. “I and my friends often went there for afternoon tea,” Alva remembered. “It was prepared and served by the children and was most excellent.”12 The children also raised vegetables and grew flowers, which Alva bought from them. “My happiest memory,” Consuelo reflected, “is of a farm in the surrounding country where we went for picnics and played at Indians and white men, those wild games inspired by the tales of Fenimore Cooper. Wriggling through thorns, scrambling over rocks, wading through streams, we were completely happy—though what sights we looked in torn clothes with scratched faces and knees as we drove home to the marbled halls and Renaissance castles our parents had built.”13
Even though their games took place around “marbled halls and Renaissance castles,” Consuelo, Willie K., and Harold did not perceive that their lives were different from other childrens’; but every once in a while, there were times when Consuelo pondered “with some discomfort on the affluence that surrounded me, wondering whether I was entitled to so many of the good things of life.” One day young Consuelo greeted one of the gardeners mowing the endless lawns at Idlehour, and noticed how sad he seemed.
“Is anything the matter?” Consuelo inquired.
He told her that his little girl, who was ten, just like Consuelo, was crippled and would be bedridden for the rest of her life. “The sudden shock of so terrible a lot overwhelmed me; and when the next day I drove with my governess to see her, the pony cart filled with gifts, and found her in a miserable little room on a small unlovely cot, I realized the inequalities of human destinies with a vividness that never left me.”14
When their father, affable, happy-go-lucky Willie, was with them, everything was fun for the Vanderbilt children. “He was so invariably kind, so gentle and sweet to me,” Consuelo recalled, “with a fund of humorous tales and jokes that as a child were my joy.”15 But their father was often not at home; “alas, he played only a small part in our lives; it seemed to us he was always shunted or sidetracked from our occupations.”16 “Sidetracked” was an understatement, for managing the family’s railroad properties with his brother Cornelius, acquiring more railroads, and consolidating and streamlining them into the Vanderbilt network occupied much of his time and energy.
With Willie consumed by his work, it was the children’s mother “who dominated our upbringing, our education, our recreation, and our thoughts.’17 There was no point in involving their father in their run-ins with Alva. “With children’s clairvoyance we knew that she would prove adamant to any appeal our father made on our behalf and we never asked him to interfere.”18
Alva could be a fun-loving friend to her children. “Her dynamic energy and her quick mind, together with her varied interests, made her a delightful companion,” Consuelo recalled.19 Nothing fazed Alva, nothing frightened her. Consuelo remembered with awe and admiration the day “when I, aged nine, was out driving, [and] my pony started to run away with me, making straight for a water hydrant. My cart would undoubtedly have been overturned; but without the slightest hesitation my mother who was standing near by threw herself between the hydrant and the racing pony and seized his bridle, thus preventing a serious accident.”20
But as a mother Alva could often be more fearsome than fun. It became obvious early on that Alva was turning her prodigious energies into molding her daughter into a certain kind of person. Often, as Consuelo lay in bed, she “reflected that there was in her love of me something of the creative spirit of an artist—that it was her wish to produce me as a finished specimen framed in a perfect setting, and that my person was dedicated to whatever final disposal she had in mind.”21 Only much later would Consuelo realize that Alva, entranced by the marriage of her childhood friend Consuelo Yznaga to the duke of Manchester, envisioned the same kind of royal marriage as the happy and ultimate goal for her daughter. Alva groomed Consuelo to be a duchess, a princess, perhaps even a queen, from her earliest childhood days.
By the age of eight, Consuelo, who never attended school but was educated at home by English, French, and German governesses, had learned to read and write in three languages. She was permitted to speak only French with her parents. And every Saturday, Alva made her daughter recite long poems in French, German, and English.
A young lady of Consuelo’s position had to learn proper deportment. On the long drives to church every Sunday, Alva insisted that Consuelo “sit up very straight,” and the poor child, “not allowed to relax for a moment,” found these drives “frightfully tiring.” “When my legs began to fidget in uncontrollable twitches, I was strictly admonished against what for some unknown reason my mother dubbed ‘Vanderbilt fidgets,’ as if no other children had ever been afflicted thus.”22 (It was rather surprising for Alva to term this condition Vanderbilt fidgets, for as a child she had spent her time in church “looking around or timing myself to see how many times I could take my gloves off and put them on again before the end of the sermon.”23)
Worst of all was “a horrible instrument which I had to wear when doing my lessons. It was a steel rod which ran down my spine and was strapped at my waist and over my shoulders—another strap went around my forehead to the rod. I had to hold my book high when reading, and it was almost impossible to write in so uncomfortable a position.”24 Alva designed this device to give Consuelo perfect posture and to cultivate the “measured and stately walk”25 of royalty.
Frequently Alva applied her riding whip to her children, just as her mother had done with her. But the taste of the whip was not as devastating to Consuelo as the “ridicule suffered in public” from her mother. “I remember an occasion when dressed in a period costume designed by my mother—for it was her wish that I should stand out from others, hallmarked like precious silver—I suffered the agonies of shame that the ridicule of adults can cause children.” Consuelo never learned to beat up her tormentors as had Alva, who, as a child, had thrown the boys who made fun of her clothes into the gutters. “Then again I was particularly sensitive about my nose, for it had an upward curve which my mother and her friends discussed with complete disregard for my feelings. Since nothing could be done to guide its misguided progress, there seemed to me no point in stressing my misfortune.”26 And so, the oldest daughter of the richest family in America “developed an inferiority complex and became conscious not only of physical defects but also of faults that with gentler treatment might have been less painfully corrected.”27
For all the training Alva provided her daughter, she unwittingly neglected to teach Consuelo the most important skill of all: how to think for herself. Alva so dominated Consuelo that she grew into a shy, submissive, withdrawn, overly sensitive young lady, very much frightened of the world.
Consuelo remembered once objecting to some of the clothes her mother had selected for her. “With a harshness hardly warranted by so innocent an observation, she informed me that I had no taste and that my opinions were not worth listening to.’28
Alva would not be contradicted.
“I thought I was doing right,’ Consuelo once replied to one of her mother’s harangues concerning something she had done.
“I don’t ask you to think; I do the thinking, you do as you are told.”29
Such a domineering mother, Consuelo was convinced, “reduced me to imbecility.”30
For Consuelo and her tw
o brothers, life with these mismatched parents could be a terrifying experience. As soon as she was old enough to think such thoughts, Consuelo began to realize what her father had come to learn soon after marrying: It was all but impossible to live with Alva. “Why my parents ever married remains a mystery to me. They were both delightful, charming and intelligent people, but wholly un-suited to each other.”31 Willie’s “gentle nature hated strife. My father had a generous and unselfish nature; his pleasure was to see people happy and he enjoyed the company of his children and friends, but my mother—for reasons I can but ascribe to a towering ambition—opposed these carefree views with all the force of her strong personality. She loved a fight. If she admitted another point of view she never conceded it…. She dominated events about her as thoroughly as she eventually dominated her husband.”32
Perhaps Willie should have realized early on that something was wrong in his relationship with his wife when he saw the assignment of bedrooms in the Fifth Avenue château for which he had just paid $3 million. It was, of course, customary for husband and wife in this Victorian era to have separate bedrooms, but it was the difference between Alva’s bedroom and Willie’s that was so extraordinary. Alva had designed for herself a huge bedroom on the second floor looking out over Fifth Avenue, with an enormous four-poster canopied bed fit for royalty, walls lined with tapestries and heavy draperies, and a marble bathroom with solid gold fixtures and an enormous alabaster tub. The bedroom Alva assigned to Willie was a tiny room on the third floor tucked next to the gymnasium. “My father’s small dreary room saddened me,” remembered his daughter. “It seemed a dull place for so gay and dashing a cavalier who should, I thought, have the best of everything life could give.’33
There was no doubt in Alva’s mind whose right it was to rule 660 Fifth Avenue. “The home is the woman’s sphere,’ Alva believed, “and the higher her intelligence, the greater her appreciation of that fact that it is peculiarly her castle, where she dominates.”34
As the years went by, Alva, the cute little plump Pekingese, matured into a stout, tightly corseted matron, a battle-ax with the fierce defiant eyes of a Confederate raider, a set, severe mouth, her prematurely gray hair dyed red. Articulate, opinionated, sarcastic, Alva ruled her family with an iron hand. If ever it seemed she was not going to get her way, she flew into a wild temper tantrum that submissive Willie found distressing, and that sent the three young children scurrying in fear to their rooms. “The bane of [Alva’s] life and of those who shared it,” Consuelo saw, “was a violent temper that like a tempest at times engulfed us all.”35
Willie quickly learned that the only way to humor and appease his volatile, imperious wife was to let her spend his money. Willie’s father soon made it possible for her to spend on a grand scale, the only kind of spending that could satisfy the insatiable Alva.
2.
True to his word, William H. Vanderbilt had put aside all his business interests. The family patriarch was sick and tired of it all: the twelve thousand miles of Vanderbilt railroads that now crisscrossed much of the United States, the constant misreading of his actions by the press, the attacks from state legislatures, the raids by his enemies, the death threats, the package addressed to “W. H. Wanderbilt” containing that “infernal machine” that had exploded in the post office. Let someone else assume the headaches of his empire. It had worn him out.
What would he do? “No yachts for me!” he chuckled to reporters. “No yachts for me, no sir! They are easy to buy, but they are hard to sell. When I want to go to Europe the ‘Britannic’ and the ‘Georgie’ [steamships] are good enough for me.’36
It was almost too late for him to enjoy the fruits of a lifetime of labor. He was sixty-two, he was exhausted, he was overweight, his blood pressure was high, he had suffered from years of indigestion, he didn’t feel well, and he was convinced his health was failing him. He wanted his doctor to see him constantly, often several times a week, but the doctor assured him that the attack of paralysis he had suffered in 1881, which left his right eye sightless and his lower lip occasionally trembling, was insignificant.37
When his doctor asked him how he felt, William Vanderbilt answered, “I feel very well, but I am not sure of myself.”38 “If I can only pass my sixty-fourth birthday!” he would tell his friends. “That seems to be a dangerous period in our family.”39 His personal physician believed that what Vanderbilt needed more than anything was rest and recreation. “I believed he had too much to think of and that under the weight of such important cares as his great interests involved, his health had been affected in such a way as only rest and freedom from thought would benefit.”40
His doctor encouraged his love of racing trotters. Some had been cynical enough to say that William Vanderbilt had shown an interest in horses only to please his father, but even after the Commodore’s death he was buying the fastest horses he could find.
June 14, 1883, was surely the brightest day of his life, the day he drove his wagon behind his prize horses, Aldine and Maud S., a mile around a track in two minutes fifteen and a half seconds, a record no professional driver had yet matched. “It is pretty good for an amateur!”41 he told his friends, beaming, when they congratulated him. From then on he was addicted, and could be seen flying by on wild rides behind his favorite trotters, his reddish whiskers flaring in the breeze, his face ruddy from the wind, happy and at ease. “In order to see William H. Vanderbilt as he is,” a contemporary wrote, “you must go, not to Wall Street, nor to the offices of the New York Central Railroad, but out to Harlem Lane, on a fine afternoon, when the fast trotters of New York are taking their exercise. Behind the fastest team on the road, whose speed emulates that of his own locomotives, Mr. Vanderbilt is himself. His stout, sturdy figure sits firmly upright in his light wagon; his strong hands hold the reins as an expert; his broad Hollandaise face, with shrewd small eyes, and drooping ‘Piccadilly’ whiskers, is flushed with pleasure, sunshine and fresh air. His voice is genial, cheery and emphatic. He is enjoying himself thoroughly, and he diffuses an atmosphere of heartiness and good will as he dashes along, passing all competitors, or halts for a moment at a roadside hostelry to exchange a few words with an old friend or a road acquaintance.’42
Several years before his retirement, William H. Vanderbilt’s favorite daughter-in-law had persuaded him that a man of his stature must have a better home. Caught up in Alva’s enthusiasm, he had purchased an entire block on Fifth Avenue, all the land between Fifty-first and Fifty-second streets, the site of Isaiah Keyser’s farmhouse. Now, Alva told him, what this block needed was a massive granite mansion set right in the middle. She also recommended that he buy up that block across the street, tear down the orphan asylum, and create a beautiful park.
Vanderbilt was captivated by the idea until his wife put her foot down. These grandiose plans had gotten out of hand. A house occupying a block was going too far. Even if he made it known that he would leave the house to the city as a museum, it still would not quiet public opinion and he knew it. Just imagine what the press would do! Besides, she had no intention of leaving the home they were living in located at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street. “We don’t need a better home and I hate to think of leaving this house where we have lived so comfortably,” quiet Maria Louisa Vanderbilt told a friend about her husband’s plans. “I have told William that if he wants a finer place for his pictures to build a wing to which he could go whenever he felt inclined; this is too good a house to leave. I will never feel at home in the new place.”43
Throughout his married life, William Vanderbilt had never once spoken harshly to his wife, and he wasn’t about to now. A compromise was in order. He retained the architect who had designed the Grand Central Depot to build him twin mansions on the lot, one of which would be his home, the other to be divided between his only two daughters who did not yet have homes on Fifth Avenue: Margaret Louisa, the wife of Elliott F. Shepard, a prominent attorney in the city; and Emily, the wife of William D. Sloane,
the well-known carpet manufacturer. (Daughter Eliza, Mrs. William Webb, lived at 680 Fifth Avenue, and daughter Florence, Mrs. Hamilton McKown Twombly, lived at 684 Fifth Avenue, in mansions their father had built for them.)
William Vanderbilt became caught up in the construction of the twin mansions. He had his heart set on red and black marble for the facade, but when he learned that the use of this imported stone would add a year or more to the completion date, he settled on Connecticut brownstone. He believed he had only ten years to live, and he was not about to waste one precious year.
Vanderbilt commissioned Herter Brothers to decorate the interior of the mansions. “We have rarely had a customer who took such personal interest in the work during its progress,” noted William Baumgarten of Herter Brothers. “All the designs were submitted to him from the first stone to the last piece of decoration or furniture. Mr. Vanderbilt was at our warerooms or at our shops almost every day for a year. He spent hours in the designing rooms, and often looked on while the workmen were busy in the shops, and gave them money and encouragement in their work.’44
With six hundred workmen and sixty sculptors laboring at full speed for two years, with William Vanderbilt throwing money at them to work faster, the twin mansions with entrances at 640 Fifth Avenue, 642 Fifth Avenue, and 2 West Fifty-second Street were completed by the end of 1881. It was obvious the grim four-story structures had been designed by the architect of the Grand Central Depot; massive square blocks of brownstone overwhelming their lots, they looked like public edifices—a “gloomy waste of rubbed sandstone,” one critic called them in comparing them to Alva’s masterpiece. But they were impressive in their very size. An awed observer dubbed them “the tenth wonder of the world.”45
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