It’s four years ago…you came down to New York and found Willie dying. He died and you—instead of taking his place—what are you about to do? If you have said you would announce don’t think you can’t go back on that. If Miss Wilson really cares for you she will not mind waiting. I tell you I know & I am a girl.95
“I hear a rumor that a certain young lady is paying you the most pressing attentions,’ Neily’s bachelor uncle, George Vanderbilt, wrote to him in what Neily termed a “most monstrous letter.” “I wish I could see you as I could tell you certain interesting facts about her which I cannot write. All I can say is do not commit yourself.”96
Grace’s sister wrote to her husband that Neily’s “father sent him a most horrid and disagreeable cable yesterday to the effect that unless he separated himself from G., his remittances would cease, beyond honoring his letter of credit which he was obliged to do…. Poor fellow, he is terribly cut up and depressed.” And Neily told Grace’s sister that he had received a letter from his mother that “he had burned…at once, it was so horrible.”97
Despite his family’s pleas and his father’s threats, Neily followed his heart and Grace to Cannes, and the lovers spent several weeks leisurely cruising the Mediterranean aboard the Goelets’ White Ladye.
The Wilsons, upset themselves about what all the gossip was doing to their daughter’s reputation, bombarded the Goelets with letters, wondering when young Vanderbilt would hurry up and propose. “Ogden is going to have a serious talk with the boy,” Grace’s oldest sister, May, wrote to her parents, “and point out to him that he has a serious trust put into his hands, and that altho he must, he believes, give in to the separation question if he still desires it, he must see that Gracie’s family can no longer allow her to be talked about with him without some definite promise. He himself is getting nervous about this equivocal situation and says something must be done, but does not seem to know how to do it.”98 Just as Alice Vanderbilt had called Grace’s behavior “the most dreadful thing of its kind that has ever happened in society,” so Grace’s sister called the Vanderbilts’ efforts to separate Neily and Grace “the greatest wickedness of the nineteenth century.”99 “Grace still intends and feels it is certainly for her ultimate happiness to carry the thing out. She is really very fond of the boy and one can understand that what he proposes doing for her and all the sacrifice it involves appeals to her very much.”100
Finally, early in 1896, Cornelius Vanderbilt sailed to Europe, rounded up his son, and brought him home. Shortly thereafter, the Vanderbilts left on their railroad trip to Palm Beach with Gertrude and her friends. Neily declined to join them on the trip. “The only really interesting item of gossip,” the New York Journal reported of the trip, ‘lay in the fact that young Cornelius, Jr. [as Neily, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, was called by the papers], was not in the party. For even this young favorite of fortune has his troubles, and the stern but wise parents’ swift, not to say peremptory, nipping in the bud of young love’s dream, and the sudden recall home from the presence of the fair but forbidden one, has resulted in a seclusion of himself and his shattered memories in the wintry waste of Newport…unhappy and alone since his summary recall from Paris and the presence of his love.”101
Neily took a job in the engineering department of his father’s New York Central, resolving to give his parents one more chance to change their minds about Grace.
Grace returned from Europe a few weeks later. “If I were in your place,” Grace’s sister wrote to her after she arrived home in New York, “I should have one preliminary canter over the course, and then I should coolly go in to win—with or without their consent. And with no fuss and feathers. Wait a week or two to see if there is any attempt to retract their bitterly insulting conduct, and then you and Neily must realize that you have got your own lives to lead and that you have perfectly proven the fact that you are all in all to each other, and the outside world must be dismissed from your minds for some years to come…. Live for yourselves.”102
For a month or two, everything was quiet. Then one June evening, Grace and Neily were seen riding down Fifth Avenue in a carriage with Mrs. Wilson.
On June 10, 1896, the New York World announced the engagement and forthcoming marriage of Neily and Grace, noting that as the eldest son of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Neily would be one of the richest men in the world and “that one of his wedding presents will be one of the biggest yachts afloat.”103
The front page of the New York Times the next day reported quite a different story.
MISS VANDERBILT ENGAGED, read the headline of the first of two articles, describing Gertrude’s engagement to Harry Whitney. ‘This engagement has the cordial approval of all the members of each family.”104
AGAINST MR. VANDERBILT’S WISH was the headline of the next article, reporting that “the marriage of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., and Miss Grace Wilson, whose engagement was formally announced yesterday by her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Richard T. Wilson, will take place within two or three weeks. The date will probably be made public to-day. ‘Though the time has not been fixed yet,’ Mr. Wilson told the reporters, ‘my daughter’s wedding will not be deferred long, and will doubtless take place in the present month. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr., is opposed to the marriage—on what grounds I do not wish to discuss. It is untrue that my daughter is eight years older than Mr. Vanderbilt. She is twenty-five years old, and he is twenty-three.’ “Cornelius Vanderbilt authorized a one-sentence statement to be published in the article: ‘The engagement of Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., to Miss Wilson is against his father’s expressed wish.” Grace Wilson’s brother was quoted as saying that it was Neily’s desire “to disregard his father’s preferences.”105
Right after the announcement of her daughter’s engagement, a proud Mrs. Wilson summarized for reporters the conquests of her children. Her daughter May’s marriage to Ogden Goelet had opened up a $45 million fortune. Son Orme’s marriage to Carrie Astor had landed a nest egg of $15 million. Daughter Belle’s marriage to Michael Herbert resulted in the Wilsons’ entry into the English aristocracy. And now their lovely daughter Grace’s engagement to Cornelius Vanderbilt III made the young couple heir to a Vanderbilt fortune of $110 million. “It is through her efforts that the House of Wilson, like the House of Hapsburgh, has achieved greatness through marriage,” a reporter wrote, “and its social head is undoubtedly the most influential person in New York society to-day. This fact has not been generally recognized. The late Mrs. Paran Stevens was once regarded as the most powerful woman in society, but anybody can see now that Mrs. Wilson was always a greater power. Her work can be judged by its results.”106
In an age when a proper engagement lasted at least half a year, the Wilsons arranged for their daughter’s wedding to take place a week later, thereby throwing fuel on the rumors and gossip that spread about the city. What would happen, reporters asked Mr. Wilson, if Cornelius Vanderbilt carried through with his threat and disinherited his son? “It makes no difference what Mr. Vanderbilt does,” the usually polished Mr. Wilson snapped. “I am not concerning myself about his intentions. Whether he cuts his son off without a cent or not, the wedding will take place at the time and place arranged.’107
So he thought. But that special day, Thursday, June 18, 1896, came and went with no wedding, with only a single-sentence statement signed by two doctors, one the Vanderbilts’ doctor, the other the Wilsons’, that was sent to the newspapers: “Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., has an attack of acute rheumatism and is confined to his bed and cannot safely leave his room, Thursday, the 18th inst. Dr. William H. Draper and Dr. E. G. Janeway.”108
Ten thousand lilies of the valley, ten thousand roses, and hundreds of boxes of orchids the Wilsons had ordered for the wedding were delivered to city hospitals, and the Wilsons sent a card to everyone who had been invited: “Mr. and Mrs. Wilson are obliged to postpone their daughter’s wedding on account of the serious illness of Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.”109 No alternate date was mentioned.
It was a hot, miserable summer in the Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue. For days on end, father and son would not speak. When they spoke, they argued endlessly. “Just how far Mr. Vanderbilt is likely to go if his son insists in opposing his wishes in marrying Miss Wilson is difficult to say, but those in a position to know assert that he is likely to go to extremes,” the newspapers reported.110 “Those in a position to know” were the household servants who, bribed by newsmen, told of the fights they overheard between father and son, and of the days of silence that summer when the two, living alone in the same house and working in the same office of the New York Central, would not speak.
Neily could be “the most evasive person in the world if he did not choose to face an issue,” those who knew him realized, but “could, once forced into a corner, explode with all the violence of a volcano.”111 Explode he did on the oppressively humid summer day of July 17, 1896, when his father ordered him to go to Newport, allegedly for relief from his rheumatism, but in Neily’s mind to get him away once again from Grace Wilson. Shouting at his father, Neily suddenly struck the harsh authoritarian who was trying to keep him from the woman he loved with the threat of losing a $100 million fortune.
Later that day Dr. Draper came to the mansion to discuss Neily’s rheumatism. The doctor thought that Cornelius Vanderbilt himself looked ill.
“You are not well,’ Dr. Draper told him.
‘Oh, yes, I am all right,’ Vanderbilt said.
“You look queer.’112
At that moment, Vanderbilt collapsed in his chair from a massive paralytic stroke. Far from feigning the attack to keep his son from marrying the wrong woman, as Alva Vanderbilt had feigned a heart attack the summer before to force her daughter to marry the right man, Cornelius Vanderbilt was completely paralyzed on his right side, unable to speak, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Alice rushed back from Newport aboard the Vanderbilts’ private railroad car to find her husband “desperately ill.”113 At one o’clock that morning, she ordered thirty workmen to spread several inches of tanbark from the Newark tanneries for three blocks in front of the mansion to deaden all noise of passing horses and carriages.
It was 98 degrees the next day. The servants struggled to keep Mr. Vanderbilt’s bedroom cool with ice and fans. Finally Alice made a decision she knew her husband would have disapproved if he had been conscious: She had him moved to the cool side of the mansion, the Fifty-eighth Street side, which he had ignored after the city erected the nude statue visible from the windows. The tanbark was shoveled off Fifty-seventh Street and spread over Fifty-eighth Street.
All traffic was rerouted to avoid the Vanderbilt mansion. “I know my rights,” the driver of a heavily loaded wagon yelled at a policeman. “Γ11 not let a sick rich man interfere with my business.”114 Threatened with arrest, he sullenly followed the rerouting.
“Is he gone yet?” someone in the crowd that had gathered around the Vanderbilt mansion called out as William Whitney, Harry’s father, crossed the street to come visit Mrs. Vanderbilt.
“We know that Mr. Vanderbilt’s condition is serious—dangerous—” Whitney told the onlookers, “but we do not expect that it will end fatally.”115
Gertrude followed her mother back to New York. “I too have been through an anxious time,” Gertrude wrote to her cousin Adele.
When they sent for me in Newport to go down and see Papa two days after he had the stroke they did not think he could live, but now he is better and though his recovery is very very slow, the doctors say he will recover. But it will probably be three months before he can stand again, and even then—we don’t know. And there are other troubles besides sickness. [Though Neily] knows it is his behaviour (that of course is private) that gave Papa his stroke, he refused to see him. Never took the trouble to walk across the hall and ask how he was. When he was told Papa’s life depended on it he would not say he would even put off the wedding. I used to feel that it would be hard when he married her not to see him, now I don’t care, I would go out of my way to avoid him. He is inhuman, crazy. Whatever you want to call it. I don’t believe he will ever come in the house again. He won’t come without her and that is out of the question. Of course Papa can’t be told for months.116
The 137-room Fifth Avenue mansion was no longer big enough for both Neily and his father. Neily left home and moved into a small apartment.
As with a president or monarch, every three hours an official physician’s bulletin was issued to the crowds outside the mansion, and published the next morning on the front pages of the daily papers. Cornelius Vanderbilt was paralyzed on the right side and could not speak. He slept five hours. His condition remained unchanged.
“Mr. Vanderbilt passed a restless night and his condition is less favorable than it was yesterday.” A summer storm that night had kept him awake, the rain hardened the tanbark, and “the noise of the street ascended to his room with harrowing intensity and bothered him.”
“Mr. Vanderbilt’s condition shows no material change. He has passed a comfortable day.”117
“Mr. Vanderbilt’s improvement has steadily progressed during the day, and he is much better this evening.”118
A cold front that drove the heat and humidity from the city seemed to help. “Mr. Vanderbilt passed an entirely satisfactory night, and is doing well this morning.”119
By July 26, he felt well enough to be taken from his mansion in an ambulance with special rubber-covered wheels to the East River, where he was carried aboard his brother Frederick’s steam yacht, the Conqueror, and taken to Newport. There he was carried to a room on the sea side of The Breakers to eliminate any noise from Bellevue Avenue. The tanbark that had been swept up from Fifth Avenue was spread around the gravel walks of The Breakers, and the bell on the front door was muffled. Here, in his Italian Renaissance palazzo, he could find the complete quiet and rest that, with “mild applications of electricity,” his physicians prescribed.120
On August 3, one week after Cornelius Vanderbilt was taken to Newport, Grace and Neily were married in a simple ceremony in the parlor of the Wilson home. Not a single member of the Vanderbilt family was present, though the duke of Marlborough and his duchess, Consuelo, sent a cablegram of congratulations. The papers reported that “young Vanderbilt looked defiant, though happy.”121
“You certainly have had more trials and sorrows than any other two people (out of a book) I have ever heard of,” one of Grace’s sisters wrote to the newlyweds. “I hope the present chapter is ending with ‘and they lived happily ever after’“122
And so it seemed it would, as the young couple set off for their honeymoon at Saratoga, with Grace stopping at a newsstand while switching trains and purchasing every copy of the different afternoon papers, which featured on the front page the story of the wedding. The press had taken the side of Neily and Grace. “Not only society but readers of newspapers all over the country have looked with interest upon the love story of the young prince of millions and his sweetheart. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., the prospective heir of a fortune of something like a hundred million dollars, has expressed the prerogative of all young men, rich and poor, and fallen in love with a young society woman whose face had charmed many…. For some reason, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr., objected to his son’s early marriage and has done everything in his power to prevent it. All the world loves a lover and it is doubtful if the father gets much sympathy in his objections. We cannot help setting him down with the ‘cruel parents’ of literary tradition.”123
Grace reveled in the publicity and attention showered on them. “All the hotel people treat us royally and the people in the hotel run to peer at us when we pass in and out,” she eagerly informed her parents. “You have never seen such behavior. They follow us in the streets!! The number of letters we get is dismaying, most of them are from people we don’t know congratulating us, etc.’124
“I wish you could see the way people watch and follow us about,’ Grace wrote to her brother. “R
ead today’s World and you will get quite a fair idea of it all.”125
“The reporters flocked to the steamer and tried to photograph the staterooms we had taken,” she told her parents when later in the summer the young couple decided to go to Europe to give Neily’s parents an opportunity to calm down. “I expect there were any number of articles in the papers after we left. By the way, Neily has subscribed for some newspaper cuttings and we want them forwarded. I expect we shall only be a week in London, so send everything to Munroe and Co., 7 Rue Scribe, Paris.”126
But the happiness of the young couple could not last while they were worrying about Neily’s parents.
It had been ominously quiet at The Breakers the day Neily and Grace married. “It was impossible to see Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr., this evening,” the papers reported, “or to get any word to or from him concerning his son’s marriage.” The attending physician, Dr. McLane, allowed no one outside of the immediate family to see him. “Mr. Vanderbilt is in no condition to be informed of his son’s marriage.”127
Neily’s sister Gertrude had hoped to make her wedding to Harry Whitney that summer a day of reunion to establish peace between her brother and father, but parental pressure proved too much: Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., were not invited.
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