“I will sweep it up,” Keislich snapped, fetching a carpet sweeper and tearing back and forth in silent fury.113
“You’ll have to learn a thing or two about neatness,” Gloria Vanderbilt reprimanded her, “because starting tomorrow you’ll be living with me….Little Gloria is not going back to Mrs. Whitney’s.”114
Little Gloria that morning had been playing a game she called “Invisible,” sneaking around the house and spying on whoever was there. She hid outside her aunt Consuelo’s bedroom, where her mother and her aunt were playing bezique.
‘The first thing you must do,” little Gloria had heard Consuelo tell her mother, “and the sooner the better, is get rid of the nurse. A German Fraiilein is what she needs!”
“Maybe Friedel could help. I’m sure he would recommend some-one.
“Why don’t you call him? Now!”
“Let’s see,” Gloria heard her mother say. “In Germany it’s six hours ahead…so now it must be…”115
Not waiting to hear the rest, little Gloria raced up the stairs to her beloved nurse.
Nurse Keislich comforted the sobbing child.
“When am I going to see Auntie Ger?” little Gloria pleaded.
“Soon,” her nurse told her. “Soon.”116
Nurse Keislich had a plan. They would pretend nothing was wrong. Together they would head for the park, but instead of going to the park, they would go straight to Mrs. Whitney’s. She would know what to do. She would protect them.
Together they softly said the prayer Nurse Keislich had taught Gloria years before. “When you want something to happen, you say, ‘Little Flower at this hour show me Thy power.’ “117
Gloria picked up her puppy and her roller skates and the two tiptoed down the hall.
“Where are you going?” Gloria Vanderbilt called to the two conspirators as they passed Consuelo’s bedroom.
“Just out for a bit to the park,” Nurse Keislich told her.
“But it’s about to rain.”
“Just for a minute to get some air. Gloria hasn’t been out all day.”
“Have a good time,” Gloria told them.118
Nurse Keislich directed Beesley, the chauffeur, to take them to the park.
On the way, on cue, little Gloria began crying as if in great pain.
“Take us to Larrimore’s drugstore,” Nurse Keislich ordered the chauffeur.
There, she went into the phone booth and called Gertrude Whitney.
“Very sick,” she said to the chauffeur when she got back in the automobile. “Very sick. We’re to go down to Mrs. Whitney’s studio in Greenwich Village. Hurry, Beesley, hurry hurry…very very sick.”119
Gloria and Consuelo had spent the afternoon playing bezique, unaware of the coming of evening.
“Good gracious, look at the time,” Gloria said to her sister at six o’clock. “I wonder where Gloria is.”
“No doubt she has come in with the nurse and they have gone directly upstairs.”120
Gloria walked up to her daughter’s room to see if she was there. In her room was the butler, looking through her daughter’s open bureau drawer.
“What are you doing here?” Gloria demanded.
“The chauffeur is downstairs, Madam,” he replied. “They have sent for Miss Gloria’s clock.”
Gloria ran down the stairs. Beesley, the chauffeur, was standing by the door.
“What have you done with Miss Gloria?”
“She is at Mrs. Whitney’s. She’s very sick.”
“What do you mean by taking her to Mrs. Whitney’s?” Gloria shouted at him. “Why didn’t you bring her to her own home?”
But Beesley was obviously not the culprit. Gloria called for her sister Consuelo.
“Put on your hat and coat quickly. We are going to Gertrude Whitney’s.”121
Gertrude was standing in the imposing, Renaissance-style library of her Fifth Avenue mansion. She looked worried.
“This is horrible, Gloria. I can’t understand the child, but she is in hysterics. The child was in the park when she became hysterical and Keislich phoned me asking if she could bring the child here. We could not quiet her, so I sent for Doctor Craig—he has installed a nurse; she is with her now.”
Gloria sharply interrupted her. “I want to see my child at once.”
“Of course,” Gertrude answered.
She led Gloria to the bedroom where her daughter was being examined.
When little Gloria caught sight of her mother in the doorway, she shrieked in horror, ‘Tor God’s sake, don’t let that woman come near me. Don’t let her come near, she wants to kill me!”
Screaming at the top of her lungs, the little girl ran to a window. “If she comes near me, I’ll jump.”122
“Hush!” Consuelo hissed at the child. “It’s your mother!”
Little Gloria had never liked her aunt Consuelo, with her sunken cheeks and birdlike beak of a nose: “Her face never had any light in it when she looked at me or spoke to me-—ever.” Aunt Consuelo, “whom I feared more than anyone else,”123 approached the child.
Little Gloria screamed, cringing as if about to be hit. “Don’t let them come near me—they are both going to kill me!”124
Dr. Craig, his nurse, and Nurse Keislich, herself babbling hysterically, failed to calm the little girl.
“Be quiet—at once!” Gloria Vanderbilt ordered Nurse Keislich. “I will never forgive you for what you did. Get out of this room.”
“What is the matter?” she asked her daughter, after her nurse stormed out.
Gloria stared at her mother, and then raced to Aunt Gertrude, throwing her arms around Gertrude’s waist and holding on to her with all her might.
“Take her away. Don’t let her hurt me. I’m frightened….Oh, don’t let her take me….Don’t let her come near me. She’s going to kill me!”
Little Gloria would not let go of her aunt Gertrude. “I hate her. I hate her,” she sobbed. “Don’t let her come near me. Don’t let her take me.”125
There was nothing to do but leave the little girl alone for a while. Now Gloria Vanderbilt wanted to determine what that hateful Nurse Keislich knew about all this.
“Ask her to come to your sitting room,” Gloria Vanderbilt instructed Gertrude Whitney. “I want to question her in your presence.”
When Nurse Keislich appeared, Gloria demanded, “Nurse, what happened? How did you come to phone Mrs. Whitney and not me when my child became hysterical, as you say?”
“No wonder the child is in this condition in that hole you’ve put her in!” Nurse Keislich responded.
“What hole are you referring to?”
A flight of words, half sentences, half thoughts, a pent-up torrent of accusations came tumbling out, spilling into each other, incomplete, incoherent, but decidedly vicious, hostile. Nurse Keislich complained of the type of house Mrs. Vanderbilt was living in, a hovel, a hole she called it, of the impropriety of Mrs. Vanderbilt’s guests, of the fact that Mrs. Vanderbilt did not want little Gloria to have a puppy, of her complaint that there were a few pieces of shredded wheat on the floor of Gloria’s bedroom.
“It was not a few pieces, the whole room was littered with Shredded Wheat and pieces of bread. It looked like a pigsty. I am not going to have my daughter brought up in a place that looks like that. You should be neater.”
“Ah, what I could say!” Nurse Keislich sneered. “And what I am going to say!”
“You can say the rest in court!” Gloria barked, summarily dismissing her.126
“There was nothing left for me to do,” Gloria told Gertrude, after Nurse Keislich had left the room.
“You were quite right; of course there was nothing else to do. She will leave my house this evening.”
“I will come back for Gloria in the morning, Gertrude.”
“Yes, do so—she will be quiet by then.”127
Aunt Gertrude, Grandmother Morgan, and Nurse Keislich went into little Gloria’s room the next morning and sat around her bed. Ger
trude told her that they would all drive out to Old Westbury that day.
“But you’ll have to see your mother before you go,” Grandmother Morgan told her.
“Do I have to? Do I really have to? Do I?”
“Oh, only for a minute, Gloria,” Aunt Gertrude explained.
“Yes, Little One,” Grandmother Morgan assured her, “only for a minute, and when you do—remember to…well, you know….You don’t have to say much….Just pretend nothing happened….You know what I mean….”128
Gloria and her sister Consuelo returned to the Whitney mansion later in the morning. In the library, they sat talking with Gertrude over a glass of sherry.
Soon Gertrude Whitney’s private maid, Hortense, knocked on little Gloria’s bedroom door.
“Mrs. Vanderbilt is here now,” Hortense told Nurse Keislich. “You are to go down, Mrs. Whitney said, and wait in the car with Mrs. Morgan. Miss Gloria will meet you in the car quite soon.”129
Nurse Keislich followed her orders and went down the back stairs, while little Gloria followed Hortense down the marble corridor and the wide white marble stairs to the library. Gloria Vanderbilt and Consuelo, seated on the sofa in front of the fire, made a space for little Gloria between them. As the ladies chatted, Gloria climbed down on the floor to play with her puppy.
“Gertrude, don’t you think Gloria had better go and get her coat on?” Gloria Vanderbilt said after a while.
“Oh, yes, Mummy,” the little girl answered. “I won’t be long. May I be excused?” she asked, staring at the fire.130
“Of course,” said Gertrude.
Slowly, carefully, precisely, little Gloria, holding her puppy, walked out of the library and into the great hall, where Hortense met her.
“Follow me,” the maid instructed, leading Gloria to the elevator. Hortense opened the door of the elevator and helped Gloria inside.
In the library the three women had another glass of sherry while they waited for Gloria to return with her coat. After what seemed like an unusually long time, Gloria Vanderbilt turned to Gertrude Whitney.
“Gertrude, dear, don’t you think it would be better if you sent for Gloria? She’s probably dawdling, and, really, lunch will be ruined.”131
Gertrude rose from her chair. No longer the friendly hostess, she stared at her sister-in-law with what Gloria perceived as a “faint slow smile of triumph.”
“I’m very sorry, Gloria,” she stated, “but little Gloria is halfway to Westbury by now. I’m not going to let you have her.”132
Gloria sat horrified, stunned, as the implications of what had happened became clear.
This was war. War over her little girl. The battle lines were drawn.
“All your money, all your position, all the power of your influenee—use it,” the dumbfounded Gloria finally uttered under her breath. “You will find it is not strong enough to kidnap a child from its mother.”133
That afternoon, court papers were served on Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney:
TO MRS. HARRY PAYNE WHITNEY
Greeting:
We command you that you have the body of Gloria Laura Morgan Vanderbilt by you imprisoned and detained, as it is said, together with the time and cause of such imprisonment and detention by whatsoever name the said Gloria Laura Morgan Vanderbilt is called or charged, before Honorable John F. Carew….134
“I want my baby,” Gloria Vanderbilt told the press. “I know Mrs. Whitney is one of the richest women in the world…but Γ11 fight to the finish for my child.”135
A court appearance was set for Tuesday, September 25, 1934.
3.
Safe at Wheatley Hills in Old Westbury, little Gloria was given the big bedroom that had been Harry Whitney’s, next to her aunt Gertrude’s. Nurse Keislich was stationed in the room across the hall, and Grandmother Morgan in a guest room down the hall. “Inside men” and “outside men” guarded the little girl day and night.
Grandmother Morgan realized that the judge would have to be convinced that little Gloria loved her aunt, that Aunt Gertrude was like a mother to the child.
“Listen to me, Little One, you must show your Aunt Gertrude how much you love her. You must hug her more and kiss her a lot—you must show your Aunt Gertrude—”
“But how can I love her when I don’t know her? I don’t know her yet—”
“Hush, hush, Little One, what kind of talk is that? You do know her, you do, and if you don’t know her yet, you will know her soon, very soon. So you see, darling—show her, hug her a lot and kiss her a lot and tell her how much you love her.”136
So little Gloria entered a world of acting, of pretending, of making believe to everyone around her that it was dear Aunt Gertrude whom she loved so much and from whom she could not bear to be parted, while in truth it was Big Elephant, Dodo, her beloved Nurse Keislich, who had been with her since birth and had become her real mother, the one constant in a tumultuous life.
“Call your Aunt Gertrude ‘Auntie Ger,’ “Grandmother Morgan counseled Gloria, “to show her how much you love her. Show more excitement—a lot more, Little One—a lot more excitement when your Auntie Ger arrives here on Fridays. Keep looking out the window waiting to see her car come in the driveway, then run down the stairs as fast as you can and throw yourself into her arms the second she comes in the front door. You know what I mean, Little One. You know what your Naney means. Do it next time—show your little Naney.”
Gloria did. “I got myself all keyed up looking out that window into the circle of the driveway, and when finally the car came in sight, I was raring to go. Down the stairs I went lickety-split, just like a racehorse at the sound of the bell. I almost knocked Aunt Gertrude—I mean Auntie Ger—over.”
“Don’t overdo it, Little One, don’t overdo it,” her grandmother told her later, but she was obviously pleased with her performance.137
The trial of the “Matter of Vanderbilt” began on Monday, October 1, 1934, a hot Indian summer day. The third-floor courtroom in the New York State Supreme Court building was stuffed with eager spectators and more than one hundred reporters.
The first witness was the dowdy Emma Sullivan Keislich, who, in a shapeless black dress and black lace-up shoes, with her short gray hair and plump figure, looked much older than her forty-three years.
From the moment Nurse Keislich was sworn in, she was ready to do battle for her little one, who was her life.
“What is your occupation?” the courtly Herbert C. Smyth, who represented Mrs. Whitney, asked her on direct examination.
“Nurse.”
“Will you please tell the court what your experience has been in taking care of children?”
“My experience has been, before the ten years, that the children had loving parents instead of harsh—”
Gloria Vanderbilt’s attorney, the scrappy Nathan Burkan, jumped to his feet. “I move to strike that out,” he objected.
“Strike it out,” the judge ruled.138
When Mr. Burkan tried to establish what type of people had visited Gloria Vanderbilt, Nurse Keislich testified that no good man or woman ever crossed the threshold. “They were all night life people.”139
“Mrs. Thaw was there, was she not?” the lawyer questioned, referring to Gloria Vanderbilt’s sister Consuelo.
“She calls herself Mrs. Thaw.”
“What do you mean—’she calls herself Mrs. Thaw? Do you not know this lady is married to Benjamin Thaw, then Secretary to the American Embassy in London?”
“She says she is.”140
“You will have to advise your witness that this prejudiced manner in giving her evidence only harms her,” Justice John Carew reprimanded Mr. Smyth, as he looked at the nurse through his pince-nez. “It discredits a witness when they show so partisan a spirit.”141
But there was no stopping her vitriolic outbursts once she started.
The triplex where they’d lived in Paris, she testified, had been infested with rats, so many that in just one morning the butler had killed th
irty. The tiny yard behind the apartment, which was the only place little Gloria could play, had been filled with rats. Gloria Vanderbilt’s unemployed brother had lived in the apartment, supported by the child’s trust fund. Each week Mrs. Vanderbilt had attended or hosted several all-night cocktail parties and never awoke until the afternoon. Nurse Keislich had seen Mrs. Vanderbilt in bed with Prince Hohenlohe. The prince had been reading to her.
“Did you notice what kind of books they were…” Mr. Smyth began to ask.
“Yes, the books were about. I saw them. I saw the books,” Nurse Keislich blurted out, hardly able to contain her excitement.
“What kind of books did you see? You looked at them, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I looked at them and as I said, I had never seen anything like it.”
“I move to strike that out,” Burkan interrupted.
“They were vile books!” Nurse Keislich shouted.
“Just answer the question,” Smyth told her.
“…I saw one book with…two women undressed, beating each other. Another day the child came in and found a picture on the table…of a man naked and a woman’s tongue very near. It is a very embarrassing thing for me to say….She saw this big red flaming thing, and the color attracted her attention.”
“What did the child say?”
“The child said, ‘Here is a big tongue.’ “142
“I can’t get half of this, Your Honor,” the court stenographer complained, throwing his pad onto the floor in disgust. “She starts answering before the question is asked.”143
“Woman—woman,” the judge scolded her, “don’t you know that God put teeth in your mouth to keep your tongue in?”144
Mr. Burkan began his cross-examination of Nurse Keislich.
“We are all not liars!” Nurse Keislich snapped at Mr. Burkan, bursting into tears and cringing from him. “We are not your kind!”145
When he had finished his cross-examination, Mr. Burkan rose to address the court.
“I wish to establish, Your Honor, that from this evidence alone this nurse is a dangerous woman to be around the appellant’s child. Her influence for ten years accounts in a great measure for the child’s attitude toward her mother.”
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