American Duchess

by Karen Harper

  “Anne’s in-law relation to Win was not exactly a shock. The moment I heard she had been married to a Rutherfurd, I knew it must be some relation, and I quickly figured it out. Actually, I had never really known Win’s brother Lewis, so I simply called it a coincidence and that was that. Papa, I have moved on far beyond that.”

  “And I know your mother would not dare to bring it up.”

  “Mother aside, I like Anne very much, and I am so happy for both of you.”

  “A second thing I want to mention is that my friend Jacques Balsan is here and there in Europe, testing and working on his precious flying machines, so I have not seen him for a while. But I mean to keep in touch with him and think you might, too.”

  I was so excited to merely hear Jacques’s name that I told Papa, “His work sounds exciting but dangerous. He said in a letter that he holds ‘Balloon Pilot Certificate Number 90’ and has set the record for altitude by going up to a height of five miles once and another time went a record distance of eight hundred fifty miles from near Paris clear to Russia! But another letter said that he had moved on from balloons to buy his own heavier-than-air machine, for which he holds ‘Pilot Number 18’ license in France.”

  “I say, my dear,” Papa said, smiling and leaning back in his chair to study me, “but you have all of those statistics down by memory, and that is not usually your bailiwick. I thought he might be keeping in touch, as they say. So was there something sweet in those letters?” he asked, putting another lump of sugar in his coffee with such perfect timing that I had to laugh.

  “Now, do not assume. He just knew I was interested since he took me up in that balloon.”

  “Right,” he said with a wink. “Wait until I tell Anne. She partly snagged me into a marriage proposal by memorizing the blood lines of sires, dams, foals, and racing schedules.”

  “Oh, she did not!” I protested, but I felt myself blush. He had caught me there. I had read Jacques’s letters over and over until they were ragged. “But he is busy there and I here,” I added lamely.

  “Not too busy to write multiple letters to someone he has only seen a few times, and, as far as I know, he is wed only to his aeroplane. Of course you too, despite this new life of independence, are still wed, and not to an inanimate object. I know it will take time, but you must admit there is a precedent in our family for moving on from a bad, well, a marriage that does not work out, even ones that have produced beautiful, talented children.”

  I reached across the corner of the table to touch his arm. “For the foreseeable future, that is the way it is yet, Papa. Separation, not divorce.”

  “Yet. Time will tell. Maybe Sunny—Marlborough as you call him now—will really want to move on, too. I hear he was at the theater with that Deacon woman, and that is quite public. So, have you seen her since you left Blenheim?”

  “Interesting that she has not called or even written. Perhaps I was naïve to think she was a close friend—my close friend at least.”

  “Ah, never did the course of love or false friendships run true—or something like that. Your mother and I are both better off, though I hear Oliver has been ill now and then.”

  “I know. As if she needs something else to fret about when she would like to have all the women of the world—perhaps the universe—vote in the next American presidential election, or else rise in full revolt. Still that is all opinion and no action from her.”

  He smiled and shook his head. “You have her gumption and her backbone, my dearest girl, but rather a softer, sweeter side, too.”

  I SOON BECAME part of the international steamer set, back and forth to the homeland I had missed so much. I had an operation on both ears in the States, which did not help as much as I had hoped. So I wore a hearing device tucked up under my hat, paid even closer attention to people when they spoke, and went about my business.

  My business—philanthropy and charity, but not simply dispensing funds from afar. As I had done at the almshouse near Blenheim, I jumped in with both feet. I used my position—and my genuine concern—to help out. Widows of the London tramway men were one group I visited and supported. How moved I was to be received by rows of capped and uniformed men—their guard of honor, they called it—at the opening of a hall for the Tramway Brotherhood in Kensington.

  They doffed their hats to me, then put them back on for a photograph. “Your Grace, we are beholden to you for all you done for us,” the spokesman’s voice rang out.

  If that was not enough to give the duke apoplexy about the “strange sorts” I was mingling with, next I took up the cause of prisoners of the crown, male prisoners. I was working with a churchman—well, that was acceptable—named Prebendary Wilson Carlisle, head of the Church Army, who was attempting to help first-time offenders so that, once released, they would go straight and not re-offend, which would be the final ruination of their already poverty-stricken families.

  “Those men just released from prison have good intentions,” the prebendary told me. “But too many cannot find gainful employment and so take the easy way out and go back to crime. The Lord would want us to help them and their families. Of course I could just ask you for a donation to hire someone—someone impressive, who could get us good press coverage and more donations, to interview and counsel them, but, well, it is overwhelming.”

  “I have thought myself overwhelmed more than once in life,” I told him. I could not help but think of my canary Golden in its gilded cage, singing her heart out, when I could no longer hear her songs. I had given the bird to Ivor and made him promise to take care of her. Oh, yes, I understood some of what it was like to be in a cage.

  “How can I help?” I asked. “I mean, besides leasing those two adjoining houses in Endsleigh Street you have your eye on. What a good idea to have laundries and sewing rooms there where their wives can earn a living to support themselves and their families while the husbands are in prison. I shall donate funds so we can also have a nursery with baby-tenders to free up those mothers to work there until their men come back.”

  “Then only by the grace of God can I ask you this, too, Your Grace. The men themselves, when released, you see . . .” he said, almost stuttering as if beset by a sudden rash of nerves. “It would be such a blessing if you could somehow get others on board, find places where these men could be gainfully employed.”

  “Since I would be spending time at the center for the women where I could encourage them, read to them, I could interview the newly released men to assess their talents and then have volunteers with jobs waiting.”

  “Oh, I did not mean yourself, to sit down with them, I mean.”

  “I do think that would be the best. So shall we get busy on all that?”

  I ALSO TRIED to help with the many tragedies I saw as I visited the slums in Southwark on a regular basis. But observing the grief of others was not limited to my work with the overwhelming problems of the British poor. My stepfather, Oliver Belmont, took seriously ill in 1908, and his life was despaired of. In June when I heard that, I took an immediate steamer to New York. I found my mother, who had truly loved him, as tough—yes, that was the word—as tough as she was, truly inconsolable, for he had died the day before I arrived.

  “He and my father—the only men I ever truly loved,” she said the moment I arrived and she burst into tears. It felt so strange to hold her in my arms while she sobbed on my shoulder. Though we had tolerated each other in the years since my forced wedding, we had not yet truly had a heart-to-heart to clear the air, though the morning I had gone into labor for my oldest son, we had come close. The funeral was tomorrow, so I had barely made it in time for that. I knew Mother was also on edge because my brother Willie’s marriage was, as they say, on the rocks. Was there some dreadful curse on us Vanderbilts?

  “I MISS HIM dreadfully and always will,” Mother told me the week after the funeral when we had gone to Marble House in Newport for peace and privacy. More than once she had said she must lie down for a while, but she kept coming
back into my sitting room. Her hair, now with silver threads, streamed loose to her shoulders. She wore a robe of black bombazine; the circles under her eyes were like dark half moons. Outside, the summer social season went merrily on, but we stayed inside, she mourning her loss, I mourning my dead marriage and missing my sons.

  “So, can you convince the duke to really release you?” Mother asked, sitting down on the chaise next to where I had been writing at the desk in a guest room, for I had not wanted to sleep in my girlhood one.

  “It is both complicated and embarrassing for him,” I told her, looking up from an article called “The Position of Women” I was writing for the New York Times. Although I felt that paper was not the scandalmonger other papers had been, I had come to detest most social sections. Still, I could not pass up a plea in my homeland for the betterment of women whether that meant getting the vote or not. The editor had told me that my name and position could do much good for the downtrodden. As that was exactly my battle cry in England, I had consented.

  “Believe me, I know the worst of a divorce,” she told me, dabbing a damp handkerchief under her bloodshot eyes. “I take it an Englishman must be seen with another woman in a compromising position and then not deny that charge.”

  “You have been reading up on it. Yes. And although I believe the duke has another woman, he would certainly not bring her name into it.”

  “I shall just die. I shall just die of boredom. Widowhood, worse than being a divorced woman. But I soldier on for my causes. And, bless you, Consuelo, you do too. I . . . I do have regrets about the way things were, perhaps yet are, between us, but I wanted so much for you. I prayed your husband would not tread you down, and I see that, however powerful, he has not.”

  “Mother, I fight for downtrodden women because I got some of that fight from you. Papa says I inherited your backbone.”

  “Did he? Well, that is something then,” she said and blew her nose.

  “Listen,” I said, suddenly feeling as if I were the senior person here. I swiveled in my chair, leaned forward, and held her hand. “We have had some terrible times between us—your dreams, your ambitions running things at any cost—even any cost to me. But I admire that you have never been one to give up, even against difficult odds. You have said you believe this country would be a better place if women could speak out more strongly. Perhaps I learned that from you.”

  She nodded fiercely, tears in her eyes again. “Here, that must mean they should be given the vote. Suffrage, as they dare to call it when women are suffering now—even you and I—sometimes together.”

  “Yes, together. Would that not be something grand? I believe that in England women can still speak out and do great, important things without the vote, but—”

  “As I said, not here. It must be the vote. Oh, that would be a war for me, if I got tooth and nail into it,” she said, almost wistfully. “We women must have the vote!”

  “I am sure you can work for it carefully, not with stunts or violence as some of the British women are threatening in order to make their case. Speaking out, writing an article—like this one,” I added, “though I am not demanding the vote here or abroad.”

  “I did not rear you wrong, did I?” she asked, leaning forward and squeezing my hands.

  “Well, you were a bit harsh at times.”

  “But look at you now! I am proud of your strength of character, not just your beauty. Did you detest me terribly? I wanted to help you, save you, make you strong.”

  “You know, I shall never forget that time my pony bolted and dragged the little cart with me in it toward the water. While others merely screamed, you picked up your skirt and chased that horse, stood nearly in front of the panicked beast and grabbed it by the reins and maybe saved my life. Even in our worst moments—especially at the end when I was so distraught—I knew deep down you loved me and thought you were doing the best you could.”

  She tugged me to sit beside her, and we held tight, both sobbing like babies. “My beautiful girl! My beautiful, strong girl,” she said, stroking my hair as if I were but five instead of thirty-one. “You have a position not only here to be asked to write for the Times, but influence yet in England, so you can stand up for what is right. And—” she said with a huge sigh, as she sat back away from me, “separated or not, divorced or not, widowed or not, we go on!”

  “We do! Together, if we can.”

  “Spoken like an English duchess—and an American one, too!”

  Chapter Twenty

  It made my spirits soar to know I was not socially ostracized in the States because of my marriage separation, and that even among some of my London friends, few seemed perturbed. Of course, I knew that going through with a divorce might be a different situation altogether.

  In London, my godmother Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, had invited me to one of her popular literary circle soirees. Oh, how I loved this sort of gathering, where, rather than social tittle-tattle, ideas and books and plays were spoken of and argued and often by the very men who had written them.

  I was especially excited that I was sought out by many of the guests. Grinning, but shaking a finger at me, H. G. Wells said, “One more good deed from you among the so-called underclasses, my dear Mrs. Marlborough, and your former friends will have to brand you a socialist, and welcome to that club!”

  He took a good gulp of wine, then raised his goblet as if he were toasting me, for he was a bit radical with all his criticism of the government—in fiction, at least. I had read his books The Time Machine and War of the Worlds and thought him terribly clever, however much I read a threat of doomsday beneath his stories.

  “Do not threaten this lovely lady,” John Galsworthy, standing on my other side, insisted.

  I thought Mr. Galsworthy rather a nervous sort. He spoke quietly, unlike the others who raised their voices over the buzz in the room, so I had to strain to hear him. I had thought at first he had gravitated to my side to pump me for inside information about the aristocracy, since he had begun a series of novels about a fictional Forsythe family, but he usually said hardly a word. He was, I thought, an observer, not a talker. He had, however, asked me if I had ever thought of authoring something like The Marlborough Saga, to which I answered, “I dare not, for truth is stranger than fiction.”

  The most interesting man today—not counting Winston who was here for once and had been kind enough to bring Clemmie to accompany me—was the very handsome, dark-haired and mustached Bernard Shaw, not to be called George, I had heard. His Irish accent was charming, though the tenor of his thoughts was not. It seemed he liked to criticize everything English, but then, I suppose, that was natural for a theater and music critic.

  “The duchess is not a socialist, Wells,” Bernard told his fellow writer, “but a fine example of my independent-thinking ‘New Woman.’ I will have to write a play called The Duchess of Destruction, for I believe she is out to declare war on slum landlords and even champion ‘women of the night,’ to get them out of that profession.”

  I was taken aback by that comment but not insulted. His drama Mrs. Warren’s Profession was about a prostitute, and the author Henry James, who was not here this time, championed independent career women in what he considered an unfair male-dominated society. I took this banter seriously, for Henry James had told me once at such a gathering as this that I was the bravest of the new women. He had said that I had “plucked myself from the sinking mud of the aristocracy then jumped in with both feet to pull disadvantaged women up after me.”

  “So, Consuelo,” Winston said, appearing suddenly as if to rescue me, “I imagine the heroine of the next British plays and novels will be a rebel from the upper crust, standing up for everyone’s rights—and authored by this creative British brain trust.”

  Bernard laughed, Mr. Wells smiled, and Galsworthy beat a quick retreat, evidently when he saw the outspoken guest Nancy Astor stroll over to our growing group. She, too, was an American, one who had made an important marriage to
Waldorf Astor, the American-born millionaire, now a British citizen. She was, as people put it, “frightfully outspoken” with a sharp wit. Winston usually liked that in a person, but the two of them got on like oil and water—or more like fire and turpentine.

  It was a brave or careless hostess who invited Winston and Nancy Astor to the same event. I could see they were in the midst of some sort of contretemps even now. Nancy, trying to catch up with him, who must have snubbed her, was saying—and I could hear her from here over the background chatter—“I tell you, Winston Churchill, I do not know how that sweet lady Clementine puts up with you. If I were your wife, I would put poison in your coffee!”

  “And if I were your husband,” Winston shot back, “I would drink it!”

  The chatter of our little circle stopped. My godmother must have sensed disaster and came rushing over. Bernard smiled, but Mr. Wells bellowed a guffaw.

  I admit I grew wide-eyed at that rejoinder but I had to laugh with the men. My godmother fanned her face. Nancy Astor, evidently unable to top that, harrumphed and hurried off.

  “I swear, Winston,” Wells said, “you may be wishy-washy between Conservative and Labour, but I like your style! And I like your American duchess, so better get her out of here before that Astor harpy tries to take it out on her.”

  “She dare not!” my dear godmother insisted, still fanning her face. “This younger duchess Consuelo stands up for herself, even as this older duchess Consuelo has learned to do!”

  I hugged her while our little circle, especially Winston, applauded.

  At that moment I decided, wherever I lived, I would be bold to mix such dynamic, fascinating personalities—however outspoken—at my gatherings, too.

  LIVING APART FROM the duke but keeping tabs on my growing boys, with all my other interests, kept me busy. I must admit that I was often exhausted, but that helped me to sleep. I was able to obtain one of the first Akouphone carbon transmitters, an electric one, to help with my hearing. When I visited Papa and Anne at their home in Poissy about twenty miles from Paris and went to the races with them, I could more clearly hear Papa’s recital of the order of the horses, despite the cheers all about us. I suppose it was pure nonsense, but I came to believe I could hear better in France.