Leaving the family pew, Alva watched the men warily as she drew Ward McAllister aside. “I’m sick over this, and these men … Are we going to have to hire guards for our funerals?”
“It’s all terrible, just terrible, to be sure. He was a much better man than many believe. I knew him quite well, before the war. We were all of us much younger then. We once spent an entire summer together in the South of France…”
“My husband thinks I’m worrying too much, but I know you’ll understand: Do you suppose this will do us in?”
“Oh, it’s beyond unfortunate, to be sure—for you and the other Vanderbilt ladies. For all her outstanding qualities, Mrs. Astor does, I am sorry to admit, take pleasure in every occasion that demonstrates the family’s supposed unworthiness—it proves her right in her judgment, don’t you know.”
“Unworthiness,” Alva said. “That she still sees us in such a light—”
“The Vanderbilts aren’t her only interest. Take heart. Mr. Belmont has caused a stir that’s got her excited as well—though not in the same manner, I grant you.”
Alva said, “Which Mr. Belmont?”
“Your husband’s good friend. Named for his esteemed great-uncle, Oliver Hazard Perry, quite a hero in the War of 1812. Not too imaginative of his parents to simply tack Belmont to the end of that, I daresay—”
“What about Oliver?” Alva said.
“Oh—yes, well, apparently he’s betrothed himself to Miss Sallie Whiting, who Mrs. Astor feels is too common even for a Belmont, though Miss Astor is Miss Whiting’s good friend. And Mrs. Astor is quite persuaded that the Belmonts are secret Jews.”
“He and Sallie Whiting? Where did you hear this?”
“At my club. Word is, his parents are none too keen on the pairing.”
“And this rumor—”
“It’s no rumor. Mr. Belmont—that is, O.H.P. himself—was there in the flesh, informing everyone. One might say he was bragging about the controversy he’d stirred. I was certain you’d have heard it as well.”
“What folly!” Alva said. “He only met her the other night, at my house.”
And I was the one he wanted.
“Cupid must have let his arrow fly swiftly.”
“It’s nonsensical. What can he be thinking?”
“His parents are wondering the same thing, he says—and he hardly cares!”
“Someone ought to stop them.”
“Your concern for your friends is commendable. Who are we, though, to stand in the way of love? It’s a rare enough thing; one doesn’t wish to crush it.”
“Doesn’t one?” she muttered.
“True love, born not of reason but of the most genuine and passionate affections?”
“Show me such a thing.”
“Better to command that of your friend!” Ward McAllister said.
“I don’t intend to speak of it to him at all, nor to Miss Whiting. They’re hardly more than acquaintances of mine. It’s their affair. I have far more worrisome matters to occupy me.”
What Oliver decided to do with Sallie Whiting or any other lady was not a matter she wished to spend another moment thinking about. He had shown himself to be an inconstant friend to William. He had made her uncomfortable at her own table. The sooner he attached himself to someone else, the better (though how it was that Sallie Whiting appealed to him so well, she didn’t know).
Yes. Good. She hoped Oliver Belmont would remove himself from her scene entirely and take up instead with Miss Whiting’s set. Good riddance.
Ward McAllister was saying, “Indeed you do have other concerns, indeed you do. As to your question on whether my poor friend’s suicide will do you in, I say that what you need—really, the only thing you need—is to get Mrs. Astor on your side. Much as we might wish it otherwise, she still wears the gate key on her belt.”
“Oh, well, if that’s all I need do,” Alva said. “Why, I’ll simply send her a note: Dear Mrs. Astor, you have been badly mistaken in excluding the Vanderbilts from every event with which you are involved. Please do broadcast this fact to everyone you know.”
He took Alva’s hand and patted it. “You’re overly excited right now. Go home, take some brandy, have a rest, and you’ll see it’s not an irremediable problem. A solution will take time and thought, but I have no doubt that we’ll find a way to demonstrate that despite the unfortunate actions of C. J. Vanderbilt, the rest of the family truly deserve to be ranked among the top in this nation.”
“I have been demonstrating this for seven years now. Does it never end?”
“Need you ask? Of course it doesn’t—not even once you’ve made the summit. Even a monarchy can be toppled.”
Uncle C.J.’s casket was being taken to the hearse. Alva saw William beckoning. It was time to go. She made her good-byes, then joined her husband for the ride to the cemetery.
As they went, she reflected to herself on how the unmentionable Uncle C.J.’s tale—his odd habits, his poor reputation, and his gruesome end—had been written up in meticulous detail, taking almost an entire page in the day’s Times. Now everyone knew he’d been a dissolute gambler for much of his life, that he had twice been locked up in a sanatorium, that he had used his father’s name to secure credit he would not repay. They knew that he and his loyal companion, Dr. George Terry, were living in rented rooms at the Glenham Hotel; that his epilepsy had turned him pitiable in recent years; that yes, Dr. Terry knew his friend kept a revolver but never had he imagined it might be used in this manner. Dr. Terry had in fact been in the next room when his friend put the gun to his temple.
What troubled Alva most, though, was this:
Mr. Vanderbilt always carried a revolver not from any need but from habit. He was able to leave his bed but not for any length of time. He must have arisen while Dr. Terry was absent and taken it from his pistol pocket. It could hardly have been under his pillow, as Dr. Terry would have been apt to know it if that was the case.
The statement’s wording slyly suggested indecency. No doubt it had been crafted to provoke whispered speculation in drawing rooms throughout the city. Alva could almost hear Caroline Astor saying to her gathered sycophants, It’s an abomination, is what it is. Those Vanderbilts …
She could not prevent the speculation. Nor could she address it directly. But she would not allow her family—her children, especially—to be tarred with that brush.
She didn’t need Caroline Astor on her side, she needed her at her side, in as public a manner as she could engineer.
Alva remembered an evening in Paris, when she, Armide, and their mother had attended one of Countess de Pourtalès’s salons at her Champs-Élysées apartments. The countess was known for her beauty, her taste, and her political intelligence. Some of French society’s most interesting people attended her salons. Advising another woman on some matter that was lost to Alva now, she’d said, “On ne suit pas l’exemple, on le définit.”
One does not follow the example, one sets it.
IV
JUST AS SHE had solved the problem of the opera box and aimed to reshape New York society’s music scene, Alva now intended to reshape society itself—faire de l’exemple: she would throw the city’s most lavish costume ball ever, in the city’s best residence, in honor of a visit from the viscountess, Lady Mandeville, who (Alva was certain) would condescend to grace New York with her presence only because Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt was her most cherished friend. Together they would eclipse every social event ever before staged in this city. She would invite everyone of note, everyone—with but a single exception.
She did not bother William with the details; this morning she simply proposed a ball and gained his consent to host and pay. Nor did she at first reveal the exception in her plan to Ward McAllister after he arrived to confer. She gave only a broad sketch, then asked, “What do you think?”
“Do you suppose Lord Mandeville would wish to put himself on display as well?”
“I’d rather he be absent; we want to
maintain a certain tone.”
“Ah. Well, I think it a gorgeous idea! Really, quite wonderful. Nothing has ever been done on such a scale. How marvelous: a grand celebration of everything that’s good, when what society’s expecting is for you all to roll over and play dead.”
* * *
From the time of their conversation, Ward called on Alva weekly to assist in planning the ball. Each time he sat with his notebook at the ready, his pencil held with both hands, pinched between forefingers and thumbs. To be decided: the date, which required a mapping out and consideration of every other society event of the late winter season. Since the Vanderbilts were again in the shadows, Ward was invaluable here; he received invitations to all the significant receptions, dinners, balls, recitals, performances, and bloodlettings, as well as to most of the insignificant ones. Furthermore, he knew each of the hostesses involved, and could calculate with impressive speed their relative rank and the importance of whatever it was they were hosting. Alva did not want her ball’s date to abut anything that would already have society trilling, and could only hope that no one of note would be assassinated or succumb to sudden illness in the weeks before and after her chosen date, March 26.
“Right at the end of Lent,” Ward said approvingly. “When everyone is starved for good food and something lively. Jesus has arisen; wonderful, let’s eat! We’ll herald springtime’s arrival with a menu of unrivaled delicacies.”
To be decided: the theme, which needed to accommodate both classic and seasonal elements and provoke the most creative and elaborate costuming. Ward said, “Guests must be encouraged to outdo one another with their choices and the manifestations of those choices. I will personally put every tailor and seamstress of quality on alert for the orders that will be coming in.”
To be decided: the particulars of the guest list, which must comprise every fashionable person, and all the Knickerbockers who’d deigned to notice the Vanderbilts, and Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Belmont. Oliver had married Miss Whiting in December, after his parents had attempted to break them up by sending him off to Germany for immersion in the banking trade. He’d been so unsuited to the work that they pulled him home again and consented to the marriage—though gossips were saying that not all was well with the newlyweds, who were at present honeymooning in Paris with Sallie’s two sisters and their mother. Of course all was not well, thought Alva; the fool had married Sallie Whiting.
Not on the guest list: anyone by the name of Astor.
“Ah, the strategy of exclusion,” Ward said when she revealed her intention. “A particularly effective tool for society, I daresay. Though I am not confident it will work on my dear friend.”
“We know she won’t come if I simply invite her.” Cautiously Alva added, “If she were to learn of the strategy, it wouldn’t have even a chance—and frankly, such an indiscretion would end our friendship.”
“Don’t allow a single anxious thought to vex you! It is my own dearest hope to resolve this injustice and see my great friends in harmony together. You and I are as united on this as were Grant and Lincoln in the taking of Vicksburg.”
In the end, there were twelve hundred names on that list, not the least of whom was the very same Ulysses Grant of Ward’s analogy, now a former President and still her father-in-law’s close friend. All that remained was to order the invitations and send them out.
Ward, meantime, would hand-select members of the press to preview the house (“decorated to the hilt!”) and to attend the ball as Alva’s particular guests. “We’ll grant a few key men early access to everything, supply them with champagne and caviar and every detail about every detail. Leave this to me; I know just the men for the job.”
Too, he would direct special dance practices for the youngest of the invitees, the colorful gay unmarried ladies so reminiscent of the ones who’d intimidated Alva at the Greenbrier almost a decade earlier.
Alva said, “All of this is very good. Here, though, is where the key to my success lies: As you know, Miss Carrie Astor, who dominates this set, is said to be determined to compel Mr. Orme Wilson to fall in love with her. You should encourage her to see this ball as the ideal event for that ideal event.”
“Masterful! And being unaware that no invitation is forthcoming, she could also be persuaded to join the dance practices,” Ward said. “Indeed, I could give her some leading roles in some rather intricate quadrilles so that she will be stricken with horror and disappointment and, I daresay, panic, if she’s not permitted to attend the ball.”
“I believe you have the devil in you, Mr. McAllister.”
“Oh, not a bit! Creating order is what I’m doing. Creating order. Some would call that admirable.”
Miss Carrie Astor would seek her mother’s advice in acquiring a costume so flattering that Mr. Wilson could not fail to find her the most desirable young lady present. Alva predicted that when this occurred, her mother would reveal that Carrie would not be attending the ball because no Astor had been issued an invitation because Mrs. Astor had, these years, continued in her determination to receive no Vanderbilt. Carrie would beg her to see Alva and, because Mrs. Astor had lost her older daughter, Emily, in childbirth almost two years earlier, Mrs. Astor would not wish to deny this daughter anything.
The woman had to feel the sand sliding from beneath her feet before she would take a single step in the right direction.
* * *
As Ward reported at their next meeting, he had been taking luncheon with Caroline Astor when the expected conflict between daughter and mother occurred:
“I thought Miss Astor quite persuasive in her argument, yet my dear friend sent the poor girl away in anger and tears.”
“And?”
“Nothing further,” he said. “Miss Astor is distraught. Her mother claims to be unmoved. ‘The matter is one of principle,’ she said. ‘Relax the standard once, and before long we will have no standards at all.’ I remarked that this may not be an ‘everything or nothing’ proposition, but she was uninterested in that view.”
“Then we’ve failed,” Alva said, distressed. “If not even her daughter can move her—”
“Did the Union toss up its hands after Bull Run? No, it assuredly did not. Show some fortitude, my dear. Have some patience. Give Miss Astor time to wear her mother down.”
“Patience has not been my most reliable virtue.”
* * *
A few weeks after that conversation, shortly after the invitations had been engraved and addressed and delivered, Alva went out for the first of her costume fittings and then returned home to find a satisfying number of calling cards and notes and replies on the tray, including one from Mrs. Astor’s own set. Even should this plan fail, perhaps over time there would be a groundswell of good sense great enough to overwash the doyenne, clearing the way for herself and others, too.
As she was standing in the entry hall, there came a knock at the door. She answered the knock herself, opening the door to a startled-looking footman. Resplendent in the distinctive blue livery of Astor employ, the man bowed and extended his hand to deliver a card, which read:
Handwritten on the back was We would be pleased to see you.
When the doorman turned away, Alva pressed the card to her breast, then tucked it into a pocket. Ward had been correct: their strategy was sound, they’d simply needed to wait.
At her desk shortly after, Alva took out an invitation to the ball and addressed it to Mr. and Mrs. William B. Astor and their daughters. Giving it over to her footman, she directed, “Eric, take this to 350 Fifth Avenue, first thing. That is, take it over first thing tomorrow.”
How divinely sweet, the scent of success.
V
FLOWERS EVERYWHERE. A floral parade comprising Mr. Klunder (le meilleur of florists, Ward had declared) and his assistants, arms loaded with vases and urns the size of barrels, entering and leaving and entering and leaving … two entire days of disruption for this. Roses as big as Alva’s face: the dark crimson Jacqueminot, the de
ep pink Gloire de Paris, the pale pink Baroness Rothschild, the King of Morocco, the Duchess of Kent, and “the new and beautiful Marie Louise Vassey,” said Ward to the reporters, while leading the chosen few on a tour of the house the morning of the ball.
Then, too, came tiers of ferns, each as tall as four-year-old Willie, who was solemnly giving his nurse a tour in imitation of Ward. Palm fronds, sharp-edged and exotic, had been woven to make towering walls of green, and tucked into the green were cascades of pale orchids. The whole third-floor gymnasium was lined this way and strung with Japanese lanterns, and in the middle sat a huge potted palm tree draped in long, flowering vines of fuchsia. In each back corner was a sculpted marble fountain with its own hidden coal-fired pump. The room was done up then with dozens of small tables and café chairs—where, said Ward, his voice ringing through the house, “each and every guest will feast on the most remarkable menu of delicacies and wines, which it is my distinct pleasure to allow you to sample at the end of our tour.” When he saw Alva next, he winked.
This third-floor gymnasium was where guests would dine. The banquet hall downstairs would become a ballroom, its massive oak furniture moved to the sides, calcium limelights installed around the room to take the place of the chandelier light—“Too bright!” the all-knowing Ward had declared about that chandelier. Last night Alva had watched the men run a test of the limelights, and the room had been transformed into a silvery fairyland. The stained glass had seemed to glow on its own power. Alva glowed, too.
* * *
Upstairs in her bedroom at ten o’clock, Mary and Caitlyn, Lady C’s maid, were helping their ladies to dress. For Alva: the costume of a Venetian princess, drawn from a painting by Alexandre Cabanel, who, when Alva had entertained him in Paris the previous spring, said he’d just started a portrait of Shakespeare’s Ophelia.
A Well-Behaved Woman Page 17