by gail maccoll
On marrying De Castellane, Anna Gould wisely refused to convert to Catholicism, which would have ruled out a future divorce. The crowds of onlookers at her wedding were immense.
MARCH OF ANGLOMANIA
The Elms, the Newport home of the Berwinds, was patterned after a French château except for its three arched entrances, modeled after Buckingham Palace.
Naturally, it was a lovely party. Alva had brought $5,000 worth of favors over from Paris (one of her little secret tasks the previous spring); there were etchings, fans, mirrors and watchcases, each item marked with a medallion of Marble House. Exquisite taste, yes, of course—and the flowers, and the food, and the music, and Consuelo’s satin dress trimmed with heirloom lace. But the announcement?
The announcement didn’t come. Sunny had evidently not proposed. The days rolled on. More balls, more walks, more drives. No announcement. The rumors started up again: the Duke had proposed to Willie’s niece Gertrude (who was richer) and had been turned down. Word about Consuelo’s preferred American suitor leaked out. It was September before Sunny took Consuelo into the Gothic Room at Marble House and asked her to be his wife. “I was content,” Consuelo later wrote, “with his pious hope that he would make me a good husband and ran up to my mother with word of our engagement.”
The dark colors of the Gothic Room at Marble House moved Consuelo to describe its atmosphere as “propitious to sacrifice.”
ANNUS MIRABILIS
Not counting marriages to Continental bridegrooms, the number of titled matches for American heiresses in the year 1895 was tallied at nine.
April 16: Maud Burke m. Sir Bache Cunard
April 22: Mary Leiter m. Hon. George Curzon
April 30: Josephine Chamberlain m. Talbot Leyland Scarisbrick (later 1st Baronet)
April 30: Lily, Duchess of Marlborough (the former Lily Hammersley), m. Lord William Beresford
October 21: Elizabeth LaRoche m. Sir Howland Roberts
October 23: Leonora Van Marter m. 7th Earl of Tankerville
November 6: Consuelo Vanderbilt m. 9th Duke of Marlborough
November 12: Pauline Whitney m. Almeric Paget (later 1st Baron Queenborough)
November 12: Cora Rogers m. Urban Hanlon Broughton (posthumously created Baron Fairhaven of Lode)
COMME IL FAUT
The conservatory, the library, any private place, is off-limits to a young lady and her partner at a ball.
The next day, Alva made the news public. For her there could be no underestimating the triumph. The unremitting attention to every detail of Consuelo’s upbringing had paid off. The Duke was paying the most extravagant compliment in his vocabulary by considering Consuelo suitable to be his duchess and mistress of Blenheim. Alva appreciated the full measure of her future son-in-law’s compliment; it was a salute to her as much as to her daughter.
* * *
“I imagine our English cousins of the gentler sex must feel somewhat disgruntled that their American rivals should so easily secure the Marlborough plum twice in succession.”
From Metropolitan Magazine (1895)
* * *
LET’S MAKE A DEAL
He is only marrying you for your money,” said Consuelo’s younger brother, Harold, upon learning of her engagement to the Duke of Marlborough. But it wasn’t true. Sunny could not have betrayed his meticulous standards by bringing Blenheim an unworthy duchess. It was true, however, that without Consuelo’s money, the match would not have been made.
While the women fussed over wedding plans, the Duke’s solicitor, Sir George Lewis, arrived from London to look after the all-important settlements. More than one marriage had foundered on this issue: Minnie Paget had lost a potential husband when his man of business discovered that her dowry was less than advertised. And, of course, the match between Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill barely survived the financial haggling.
The scale of the Vanderbilt/Marlborough negotiations was much greater than the Jerome/ Churchill proceedings. A basic feature of the progress from Buccaneer to Self-Made Girl to American Aristocrat was inflation of the sums changing hands. Naturally, they reached a peak with the American Aristocrats—money was the foundation of the American aristocracy, after all. It was to be expected that Consuelo Vanderbilt’s dowry would eclipse that of any other American heiress.
The negotiations, in this case, went smoothly, and the ingenious result was a princely settlement on the Duke of $2,500,000 (or £500,000 at the then current exchange) in Beech Creek Railway stock, with a guaranteed minimum yield of 4 percent (or £20,000) annually. That was only the beginning: the Marlboroughs had constant recourse to Vanderbilt dollars, which they put to use in building a £500,000 town house on Curzon Street. All in all (repairs and improvements to Blenheim included), the Vanderbilt contribution to the Marlboroughs is reckoned at $15 million.
As American fathers became familiar with the price of a noble son-in-law, they also grew more sophisticated about safeguarding the welfare of their daughters. In England, a woman’s dowry was traditionally absorbed into her husband’s estate; he thus controlled the capital she brought to the marriage, while she was paid an allowance, or “pin money.” American fathers didn’t like relinquishing control of large sums of money, particularly when their beloved daughters’ welfare might depend on the investment savvy (and good will) of a son-in-law—hence Leonard Jerome’s eagerness to provide Jennie with an independent allowance. By 1895 the Vanderbilts’ lawyers were wise enough to the pitfalls of the international match to keep Consuelo’s dowry in reliable railroad stock. Equally, the English had become accustomed to the American insistence on financial security for the brides and acquiesced in arrangements that would have been unacceptable to, for example, Lord Randolph Churchill’s lawyers. In 1903, when Alice Thaw married the Earl of Yarmouth, her family advisers were extremely cautious: the income of $50,000 a year that would go to the Earl derived from money settled on Alice for life. It was not the traditional English way, but those were the terms of the deal. If English grooms wanted the pot of dollars, that was the form it came in. Take it or leave it. Usually, they took.
DOLLARS & PENCE
The press and the populace were fascinated by the phenomenon of transatlantic marriages, and from time to time lists were printed showing the amounts of money that had changed hands. Here, from The New York Times and London’s Tatler, is a list of the putative amounts paid in dowries. A pound equaled five dollars in that era, and a general rule of thumb by which to reckon inflation is to multiply by 33.
Mrs. John Adair (née Cornelia Wadsworth, sister of Mrs. Arthur Post, later Lady Barrymore): $300,000
Minna, Marchioness of Anglesey (née King): $200,000
Mrs. George Cavendish-Bentinck (née Elizabeth Livingston): $1,500,000
Lady Arthur Butler (later Marchioness of Ormonde, nee Ellen Stager): $1,000,000
Mrs. Ernest Beckett (née Lucy Lee): $500,000
Countess of Craven (née Cornelia Martin): £200,000
Lady Curzon (née Mary Leiter): £1,500,000
Countess of Donoughmore (née Elena Grace): £100,000
Lady Harcourt (née Elizabeth Motley): $200,000
Lady Fermor-Hesketh (née Flora Sharon): $2,000,000
Duchess of Manchester (née Consuelo Yznaga): £200,000
Duchess of Manchester (née Helena Zimmerman): £400,000
Duchess of Marlborough (formerly Lily Hammersley): £800,000
Mrs. Arthur Paget (née Minnie Stevens): $100,000
Duchess of Roxburghe (née May Goelet): £2,000,000
Cora, Countess of Strafford (formerly Cora Colgate): £200,000
Lady Vernon (née Frances Lawrance): $1,000,000
Lady Wolseley (née Anita Murphy): $2,000,000
Countess of Yarmouth (née Alice Thaw): £200,000
A Puck cartoon, captioned: “A New International Interest. The American Gold Fields for Impecunious Noblemen.”
SHE IS NOW A DUCHESS
While his solici
tor and the Vanderbilt lawyers hammered out the marriage settlements, Sunny, the Duke of Marlborough, left town to get in some hunting. He came back from the mountains and bracing air of the West to find that New York was feverishly excited about his wedding, though not exactly excited about him. It didn’t help his case that his father had so recently wooed and won the Hammersley dollars. Furthermore, the publicity in 1888 had made it all too clear that the Marlboroughs needed money. They had had some American money, used it all up, and here they were again—back at the well.
The publicity about Alva’s divorce heightened the interest, as did gossip about the spurned suitor, Win Rutherfurd. Alva began to assume the proportions of a gorgon. Information about intrafamily strife was leaked to both New York and London society by Maude Lorillard Tailer, who owned the house on 72nd Street where Alva and Consuelo were living in the fall of 1895 (and who would later marry the Honourable Cecil Baring, once betrothed to Grace Wilson). The story took on some of the aspects of a virgin sacrifice as the supposedly shy and gentle Consuelo submitted to her wicked mother’s ambition. Sunny’s behavior didn’t help. First he told The New York Times that the engagement had been “arranged by Miss Vanderbilt’s friends and those of the Duke of Marlborough.” It seemed fine to him; that was how the aristocracy did things. America, however, for all its aristocratic pretensions, disapproved of arranged marriages. Where was romance in all of this?
Baby Cornelius Vanderbilt and his sister Gladys: the photographer’s studio thoughtfully provided a small-scale wrought-iron gate of the sort the Vanderbilts were used to.
Everything Sunny did in the days before the marriage caused offense. He was stopped by the police for “coasting” his bicycle in Central Park. He had nothing complimentary to say about America. No one in his family was coming to the wedding. He stayed away from the rehearsal (but of course wouldn’t miss signing the documents that were going to make him rich). And he was only five feet six inches tall. His height, finally, was a metaphor for the whole ugly phenomenon: an effete member of a dissolute family, coldly marrying a fresh, innocent American girl for her dollars rather than for her charm.
Naturally, anyone who could read knew how tall the Duke was, and a great deal more besides. By 1895, the American heiress marrying a European aristocrat was a familiar and thrilling phenomenon in the press. For weeks beforehand, newspapers would lash their readers into a frenzy of interest. Genealogies of noble husbands were illustrated with coats of arms, portraits, and woodcuts of the stately home. Glowing descriptions of the bride-to-be’s beauty, refinement and charm usually included flattering misinformation about her dowry and her family’s ancestry.
The acorn in the Vanderbilt coat of arms was supposed to remind viewers that “tall oaks from little acorns grow.”
A Life cartoon by Charles Dana Gibson. The fair bride and her puny husband are kneeling on Cupid’s casket.
* * *
Though a duchess is referred to formally and by servants as “Her Grace,” in conversation she is addressed as “Duchess” (e.g., “More tea, Duchess?”). Among her social equals, however, she (or any titled lady) is referred to by her first name and her title, as in “Consuelo Marlborough,” and she also signs her name that way.
* * *
Mrs. George Gould invited some sneers by employing a press agent for the wedding of her sister-in-law Anna to the French Count Boni de Castellane. The Goulds were not in society and Mrs. Gould had been an actress, so such a faux pas was, if not forgivable, at least understandable. Yet the sheer volume of information available on Consuelo’s marriage indicates that someone in the Vanderbilt ménage was also idealing with reporters. Moreover, some of the columns bore the stamp of a publicist. The New York Times, discussing the wedding preparations, noted that the pews were to be decorated with floral torches that would “recall the flambeaux on the old residences in London”—hardly an image to leap to the mind of the average New York journalist.
Ordering 4,000 wedding invitations from the engraver must have given Alva deep satisfaction.
So great was the hunger for information that families who failed to cooperate with the press by periodically releasing innocuous news (the names of the officiating clergy, a description of the bridesmaids’ dresses, statistics on floral decorations) ran the risk of seeing falsehoods or, worse, private matters in print. Consuelo Vanderbilt’s trousseau was described and illustrated in Vogue, a project that must have required some cooperation from Alva. But to Consuelo’s chagrin, the Times ran a one-and-a-half-column piece describing her lingerie, illustrated by a drawing of her white brocade bridal corset. “I read to my stupefaction that my garters had gold clasps studded with diamonds,” she later wrote, “and wondered how I should live down such vulgarities.”
In the end, most families played along with the papers to some extent. Edith Wharton describes, in The House of Mirth, “the ‘simple country wedding’“ where “the representatives of the press were threading their way, notebook in hand, through the labyrinth of wedding presents, and the agent of a cinematograph syndicate was setting up his apparatus at the church door.” The wedding gifts were displayed with the cards of the donors, a custom that would have caused the Old New Yorkers to blanch but that gave a great deal of pleasure to the shopgirls who read the list of bridal spoils.
* * *
In 1895, Lily, Duchess of Marlborough, three years a widow, married Lord William Beresford. Her stepson, Sunny, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, gave her away.
* * *
Any girl, not just a shy one heading for an arranged marriage, would detest having drawings of her lingerie published for thousands to read.
Indeed, the gifts were revealing. The assumption was that the groom’s household was already equipped with priceless crystal, heirloom porcelain and all the other basics. By the time of Consuelo’s marriage, even gifts of silver were considered superfluous—coals to Newcastle. Instead, something the bride could wear was preferable: a necklace, a bracelet, a hatpin, a brooch. And what item of jewelry would be most necessary for the American Aristocrat in her new life? A tiara, of course. Thus Consuelo’s father presented her with a diamond tiara, tipped with large pear-shaped stones, while Alva contributed a long string of immense pearls that once had belonged to Catherine the Great.
THE HEIRESSES’ NEWPORT
Richmond Barrett, in Good Ol’ Summer Days, wrote that girls “made their formal débuts in New York coming-out parties and but Newport was the display case for them.” Nowhere was the concentration of American money more intense than in Newport, Rhode Island, where millionaires’ houses lined the coastline for miles.
Above: Ochre Court, little used after Ogden Goelet’s death; his widow May often complained about what a bother it was.
Middle: The Breakers, built after the first Breakers burned down. It is now open to the public, though Countess Szapary, a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt, maintains a private apartment there.
Below: Beechwood, the Italianate villa on Bellevue Avenue where Caroline Astor summered.
Above: Farther out Bellevue Avenue the elms gave way to wind-swept, rocky seashore, but that didn‘t prevent anyone from building massive houses there.
Middle right: Two of the old-fashioned wooden houses, with their porches and striped awnings. The rather modest one on the right belonged to Ogden Mills.
Middle left: Crossways, where the Stuyvesant Fishes ended the Newport season with their Harvest Ball.
Below: Mid Cliff, illustrating the romantic gabled, many-chimneyed style that was largely supplanted by the châteaux.
THE WILSON FAMILY SCORECARD #4
Grace & Neily
The youngest of the “marrying Wilsons” had benefited greatly from the improved family fortunes. Grace was pretty, charming, well-dressed and sophisticated, but that was precisely the problem. She had her eye on Cornelius Vanderbilt III, and his parents (who, after all, met while teaching Sunday school) thought her much too sophisticated for twenty-two-year-old Neily. “Th
ere is nothing the girl would not do,” Neily’s sister Gertrude wrote in her diary. “She is at least 27 . . . has had unbounded experience. Been engaged several times. Tried hard to marry a rich man. Ran after Jack Astor to such an extent that all New York talked about it. Is so diplomatic that even the men are deadly afraid of her. There is nothing she would stop at.” Among Grace’s ex-fiancés, rumored and official, were Cecil Baring, son of Lord Revelstoke (who backed down when her dowry proved insufficient), and William Vanderbilt, Cornelius’ deceased older brother.
Several newspapers received anonymous letters on Knickerbocker Club stationery stating that Grace was pregnant, but despite the opposition (Mrs. Vanderbilt told Gertrude that all of New York thought the Wilson woman’s pursuit of Neily “the most dreadful thing of its kind that has ever happened in society”) it was announced on June 10, 1896, that Grace and Neily would wed on June 18. Then word leaked out that Cornelius Vanderbilt, Sr, was threatening to disown his son if the marriage took place. June 18 came and went with no nuptials: Neily was ill with inflammatory rheumatism. A month or so later, immediately following a quarrelsome interview with his son during which Neily asserted his firm intention to marry Grace, Cornelius Sr. suffered a stroke—brought on, everyone believed, by his son’s insubordination.
