American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  “So I heard of this special doctor in Paris while I was there with my mother this winter and you two were off on your exotic India adventure. A doctor who works absolute miracles of facial perfection, so they said.”

  “And you did what?” Sunny prompted. “He did what? You are a beautiful woman.”

  “Was,” she said and began to tremble and cry.

  I recalled the time I went to Gladys’s guest room to walk her to dinner here and found her just contemplating herself in the mirror so long she had evidently lost track of time.

  “You see—here, I must let you both see—I had a paraffin wax injection in the bridge of my nose to form a straight classic line from my forehead down to the tip. At first it seemed perfect, but then, it slipped—the wax—inside my face,” she said and finally removed her hat and veil.

  Her nose was swollen, but, that aside, there was an obvious puffy place where the wax had settled low between her nose and cheek to unbalance her features. And from other things Gladys had said off and on during the time we had known her, I wondered if she was sometimes unbalanced in other ways, too.

  Sunny stood and examined her face closely with his hands on her shoulders. “It will pass,” he told her, then whispered something else to her I could not hear since he was turned away.

  “You must not obsess over it, dear friend,” I put in, rising and stepping between her and Sunny to give her a hug. “His Grace is right that you are still beautiful. And it is the way people act, what they do that makes them beautiful, isn’t that right, Sunny?” I added.

  We had been arguing lately more than ever. We had spent time apart. I could not help myself now because I sensed, truly for the first time, there was more between these two than I had ever seen. Oh, yes, I knew she had adored me because I was the duke’s wife, but had there been more—that I was close to the man she adored . . . and wanted?

  We both comforted her, but as I lay in bed that night, I rehearsed in my head all that I knew about an English separation in a marriage and even—yes, I said it to myself for the first time—divorce. And not because of what feelings and acts might lie between my husband and Gladys.

  I had heard that an Englishman could obtain a divorce by proving his wife had committed adultery. So much of that went on among the upper classes so that was de rigueur, except it then ruined one socially, the woman at least if it had become public knowledge. But for the wife to obtain a divorce meant proving desertion or bodily harm in addition to bedrock proof the husband had been unfaithful. I had no doubt Papa would help me obtain a good lawyer, but what would that mean for my helping to rear our sons? I could not bear life separated from them, even though they would be away at school in the future and lead their own lives.

  But, I thought, I must try a separate life at least. Now that the London house was completed, I would furnish it, find excuses to stay there more, have the boys visit, especially Ivor, who needed me so. My mother could hardly scold me after her divorce and remarriage, and Papa had finally found his way to a new love.

  Divorce? I could not think nor plan that far. Remarriage? A distant fairy tale. Yet living separate from Sunny—whom I now vowed I would more formally and properly call Marlborough—I would be able to travel to Paris more to see Papa. I would visit America, which my husband still vowed never to see again. I needed that ear operation. I could spend more time with charity causes without being forbidden or criticized. Somehow, now at age twenty-eight, I would begin to forge a life of my own.

  Part Three

  Champion, 1906–1919

  The Open Door

  Chapter Eighteen

  I wanted to have privacy when I told Marlborough my plans to leave Blenheim and obtain a separation, so I went outside to talk to him. For once I had seen out the window that we would be alone—no hovering servants, not even his gardeners for once, who were working a ways off. It felt like such a long walk out to him, through endless cavernous rooms, down grand stone staircases, away from the massive bulk of the building, which hovered like a great, great creature over us all.

  He stood in the area where the new water terraces had been staked out in intricate patterns with a reflecting pool already being dug in the middle. All of this as well as many improvements inside the palace had come from my marriage settlement. He did not see me until my shadow crossed his feet.

  “My plans and hopes for this are ready to become reality,” he said with an all-encompassing sweep of his arm.

  “I can understand how good that feels. I need to talk to you about something else, something very serious.”

  “If you want to ask about furnishing our new London house, go ahead, but make it grand.”

  “But livable. I intend to live at Sunderland House full time, you see.”

  He looked up at me, squinting into the setting sun. “You cannot be serious. You cannot mean to endanger all this,” he added with another sweep of his hand, but his voice was deadly calm. “Us. Our heirs. Our solid place with royalty. Now, if you intend to live there frequently to lend our name to some London charities, I can see that. But I take it you dare to mean that will be your home while I am here. Consuelo, I know that house is in your name, but your father promised it to both of us. And what about our sons and what everyone will say? Are you quite mad?”

  I fought to steady myself, to keep calm. “I shall have them visit me, as you, of course, may do also. Learning about London will be an important part of their lives, and of course I shall visit them when they are here or at school.”

  “Bloody hell! You have had this scheme for how long? What are you really saying?”

  “What you already know. Let us just say what you declared a moment ago. Your hopes and plans are ready to become reality. I now claim the same for my life. You know we are husband and wife in name only, and it is so obvious that our friends, and even our families, have realized that for years. Our beginning was difficult, and our marriage, despite two fine sons, is even more so.”

  “Is there someone else? George Curzon is taken. Surely not Winston, however much he adores you, for he is finally mooning over someone else, that Clementine what’s-her-name.”

  “Clementine Hozier. Clemmie is wildly popular and pretty, so who knows if it will work out?”

  “But you—wildly popular and pretty—have your rabid admirers by the scores! That French balloon man, your father’s friend you danced with once back in the dark ages, perhaps, who just happened to turn up here once.”

  “There is no one I am keen on being with right now except myself and my boys. I did not choose this marriage, but you did, knowing I didn’t love you. Now that I am my own person, I have decided that—”

  “You are not your own person!” he shouted so loudly I would never have known I was going deaf. “You are Duchess of Marlborough, wife of the ninth duke, mother of the tenth! You are hostess of Blenheim, part of the British aristocracy! You are favored by Queen Alexandra, even by King Edward! What the deuce, Consuelo! You bloody well know that such a move on your part will sully the Marlborough name, after I’ve worked so hard to make sure it has fully been restored.”

  He was red in the face under his hat. I had expected something like this, an explosion, so I was prepared, or thought I was. I did love Blenheim and my sons. Yet I could do no other than this.

  “You are not contemplating asking for a divorce?” he demanded, lowering his voice.

  “Not at this time.”

  “Thank God for that. And, without my permission—my cooperation—you would never obtain one, no matter how much Vanderbilt money you could get from your doting papa.”

  “Do not dare to disparage the hand that feeds you and your real passion, Your Grace,” I said with a sweep of my arm at his precious water gardens and all of Blenheim.

  His hands were balled into fists as if he would strike me. I recalled how his father had abused him, how Gladys had told me her father beat her mother.

  Sunny took a step closer, but I held my ground, kept my chin
up, and my eyes riveted on his.

  “Call it a trial arrangement if you need to tell others and save face,” I suggested, keeping as calm as I could. “It’s not unusual for married couples to live apart, and as I said, you are welcome to visit me at Sunderland House, and perhaps we can entertain togeth—”

  “Hardly. In our circles here, Mrs. American Consuelo Vanderbilt, most—and there are many—who do not get on in a marriage manage to ‘live apart’ as you say, but they do it in the same great house. This will besmirch the Marlborough name all over again. We will be barred from proper society, though some will no doubt stick by us—by you. You can say good-bye to your friendship with Queen Alexandra.”

  “Sad, isn’t it, that His Majesty continually breaks his marriage vows to his faithful wife with Mrs. Keppel and others, then comes down so hard on anyone who breaks those same rules or wants to legally leave a marriage. His motto seems to be to couple with whomever one wants at country weekends and the like, but do it secretly. Still, if you mean our separation will be a trial for you, that you would miss me in any personal, heartfelt way, Your Grace, then that is perhaps one of the few, best compliments you have ever given me.”

  “You will disappoint your family, especially your mother.”

  “Who took control of her life to divorce her husband and marry for love.”

  “My sisters, my mother, and Winston who championed you from the very first will be horrified.”

  “I am grateful to them, for you never really championed me, not in my difficult beginning here nor in these last thorny years. If I had had your real support and affection in the beginning . . . Well, enough said. I will only tell the boys for now that I am leaving to furnish the new London home and will include things they will like since they will visit frequently. When you are in London you must come see them. I do not want them upset. After all, you have several other places you can stay in London. Perhaps even with Gladys.”

  I turned and started away, but he was so quiet after that jab that I looked back. He stood, watching me, his mouth open, stunned. He called after me, “I had hoped you would not let me down.” I was surprised that I read his lips at this distance, or did I just know what he would say?

  “And I had foolishly hoped the same of you, from the very first day you proposed marriage to me in the country you hate and I still love. I will tell you my plans for departing soon, but I say good-bye now.”

  I turned away again and headed back for the palace. Poor Cinderella had gone to the ball and not found her prince, but I would go on. I had to find myself, be myself. I knew that this was so right that I did not waver or cry.

  ALTHOUGH I KNEW it would take me several years to really finish and furnish huge Sunderland House in the Mayfair area of London, I set to it with a will. I did regret that years ago, when Papa offered to have it built for us, we had decided on the name of one of the duke’s early titles, the one that had given him his very misleading nickname of Sunny.

  The house was grand, of gray stone on Curzon Street, and had a fine stable out back. Four stories, many spaces to fill, and—I admit, like my mother—I had decided to give the décor a Louis XVI French flavor. How I longed those first few months living in London, not as much for Blenheim as I did for America and France. But I would visit each soon, very soon, I promised myself.

  Sunny would not share the massive painting of the four of us, which the famous painter John Singer Sergeant had completed at Blenheim last year, but I did take the painting of Ivor and me by Giovanni Boldini and hung it in the dining room. In it, my younger son leans against me as if for comfort and support, and that was truly the way things were between us. He was never fully hale and hearty, but he was not weak or ill anymore.

  As for the grand family portrait by Sergeant, the American artist who had made his name and fortune painting the aristocracy of England, I always thought he had read us perfectly. Because I was taller than the duke, he had us stand apart, with Blandford between us and our sons close by me with their two puppies. So Marlborough stood a step down cloaked in his black garter robes, his hand propped on an unsheathed sword. Above us, looming ever over all the Marlboroughs, was a bust of the first duke surrounded by battle flags.

  That ever-present bust of the first duke gave me an idea for decorating the long gallery of Sunderland House. I commissioned bas reliefs of the founders of our two families, the first duke at one end—to be expected, I am sure, of those I entertained there. But at the other end, in an equal position, Cornelius Vanderbilt, “the Commodore,” my great-grandfather, who had founded my family and its fortune in his railroad business. He had led an early hardscrabble life and was quite a character—typically a work-one’s-way-up person, which had always embarrassed Marlborough and caused no end of shocked looks by my guests that he was honored equally to the grand English duke.

  When my husband saw that and got the message, shall we say, he was not amused. Of course Papa loved it and Mother understood. Both of them supported and visited me whenever they could, and I had received an amazing number of kind letters from friends. I was amazed and honored how people rallied round me. Had my husband been disliked, or had I done something right?

  Once things were reasonably presentable at the house, and when the boys were visiting for the first time, I asked their father to stay for dinner, for I had invited his family members who had stuck by me through this difficult time. That included—I was so grateful—my mother-in-law, Albertha, and his sisters. Winston was here, for he had politically managed to stand by both the duke and me, and he had brought the woman he was hoping, he told me, to propose to soon, Clementine. Since I had tossed proper protocol out the window in separating from my husband, I threw caution to the winds even further and would have both boys at the dinner table, too. Thank heavens their father had declined my invitation, for he would never have allowed that.

  As we went into dinner, I saw that Albertha, I never could call her Goosey, had added small American and British flags to the new bas reliefs, so it rather looked as if both founders of our dynasty were waving the small flagpoles with their mouths.

  “Mother, really!” Lilian said without so much as a blink. “Sorry, Consuelo,” my sister-in-law told me as I led both boys in by their hands.

  “Quite all right,” I assured her. “Rather spiffy too.”

  I had found I had better hearing with fewer people about, especially if they were close or I could look into their faces as they spoke. The truth was, it had not grieved me one whit as it had Marlborough that the king had indeed cut us from his favorites, and I cherished the kind letter the queen had sent me, giving me her secret support. I wondered if she wished she could leave the king, but she was duty bound so much more than I.

  “Mama, can I have both those flags?” Blandford asked, obviously annoyed because he thought he was too big to be holding hands with his mother. “And tell Nanny you said so, too.”

  “You may have the British one and Ivor the American one. After dinner. Remember now all I told you about proper manners and being polite to your elders.”

  “So Ivor has to be polite to me,” Blandford insisted.

  I merely sighed as our footman—I used but one here rather than an entire army of them—helped me lift the boys onto the cushions on their chairs. They settled down well as the others took their seats, Winston hustling in last as he was always busy at something or other. He seated his Clemmie. I had thought about asking him to give a blessing for this new house, but I had asked him to pray at table once before at Blenheim and he had gone on so long asking for guidance for some contrary back benchers in Parliament that the first course had grown cold even under its lids.

  So I had decided to do that duty myself. I might as well. I was head of the new household here. Everything else in my life was different, topsy-turvy as my own nanny had once said about my dollhouse when she had scolded me. But this mansion with real people was not a dollhouse, nor was this an evening for scolding or regrets. It was my declaration
of independence, and I meant to find my way with worthwhile endeavors beyond my children. Several opportunities were waiting in the wings where I would help those less fortunate—and there were so many needy people.

  I raised my voice and began, “Dear Lord God, please bless this new home and the dear people assembled here and those who are not but who also need your love and care . . .”

  As I went on, Ivor reached over and put his little hand on mine, which were clasped in my lap. And that made everything just fine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As I adjusted to my new life—the first time I had ever felt, more or less, in control—I lived in several worlds. I was a mother first, seeing my boys in London, or even at Blenheim, whenever I could. Their nanny and a governess had given way to valets and tutors, but at least their father did not try to keep them from me. After the groundswell of support I had received and the fact I was still invited to some social events, though not those where the royals were present, perhaps he felt I still held some sway.

  Over the years, I had called him Sunny to his face or to his family members, he of the long frowns, sighs, and disapproving, narrow-eyed glances. But I now referred to him more formally as “the duke” or “Your Grace,” but most usually Marlborough, his formal title.

  I finally really felt a part of my own family again. Even Mother and I mostly got on, though I felt we were on tenterhooks together, perhaps because I now understood a lioness not only defending her cubs but wanting to choose what was best for them. And what could my mother say, after she had left her husband and children? Papa was ever helpful, my rock for advice. He and his new wife, Anne, visited me, so I had not been to France yet. As Papa and I sat over an early breakfast at Sunderland House one morning, he suddenly surprised me with a topic I had decided not to broach.

  “Was it a shock to you,” he asked, “that my new wife was the widow of your long-lost first love’s brother? It never came up at our wedding or our earlier visits, and I just wondered. You and I have always been close—honest with each other. Now that you are heading toward freedom and Win is out there . . .”