During the five months that Consuelo was in Europe she heard nothing from Winthrop. There was no reply to her letters to him, nor did he call on them. Only much later did she learn that he had followed her to Paris, but though he had tried on a number of occasions to see Consuelo, he was always thwarted. He had written frequently but his letters never reached her and her own few letters never reached him. After two months he returned home to await Consuelo’s return in August and make plans for an elopement. It is not hard to understand how this would have affected Consuelo. She was eighteen years old, with the naivety of a naturally submissive girl raised in very sheltered conditions in an age when women were not noted for their rebelliousness. This was her first love, and even if it was only a teenage crush (and we don’t know that it was only a crush), it is easy to sympathise with this lonely girl in her gilded cage.
Alva had the measure of her daughter, and Consuelo later said that soon after they arrived in Paris her mother was so confident that her plan would succeed that she secretly ordered a wedding gown for her. As the weeks wore on with no word from Winthrop, Consuelo became anxious, pale and withdrawn, submitting like an automaton to the numerous dress fittings, allowing her mother to choose her clothes and accessories without offering any input. She did not suspect that Alva was responsible for the silence from Winthrop, so she did not rebel; she simply became unhappy and introspective.
In late May Alva and Consuelo travelled to London, where Lady Paget had prepared the way for them with a sheaf of invitations. Of these the one Consuelo recalled best was a glittering ball given by the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland and, knowing nobody else, she was grateful when the Duke of Marlborough wrote his name on her card for several dances. A few days later Sunny invited Alva, Consuelo and Minnie Paget to Blenheim for a weekend visit. They travelled to Woodstock on a Saturday in June, to find that the gathering was a family party consisting of Sunny, two male cousins (one of whom was the son of Lord Lansdowne and had been in Alva’s matrimonial sights at one point), together with Sunny’s two sisters, Lady Norah and Lady Lilian. ‘Lilian, a pretty blonde a few years my senior, immediately won my heart by her simple unaffected kindness,’ Consuelo wrote, and this helped her to enjoy her first experience of the great house.
The following day, the Duke suggested that he drive Consuelo around some of the villages on his estate. In June Blenheim would have been at the height of its beauty, and he would have had every right to be proud of it. Consuelo had never previously been allowed to be alone with a man but, unusually, Alva made no objections to this proposal, so that Consuelo immediately scented danger. ‘I felt I was being steered into a vortex that was to engulf me,’ she wrote later.6 Yet she felt hardly able to refuse, and on the drive she conversed intelligently; unafraid, when villagers curtsied or touched their caps as they rode by, to discuss his social obligations to them. Sunny appeared to find this amusing. Alva’s proposals had been conveyed to him by one means or another – perhaps through Lady Paget and his Aunt Lansdowne. His grandmother had apparently indicated she was in favour, and perhaps Sunny assumed that Consuelo knew of and condoned the plan. Marrying her would mean ending his existing romantic relationship, but the terms offered by Alva were so favourable for Blenheim that they could hardly be refused. It was stated in a contemporary newspaper that Marlborough’s income was £8000 ($40,000) a year, whereas it cost him £74,000 ($370,000) to run Blenheim.7 Consuelo’s dowry was rumoured to be about $10 million.*
‘It was that afternoon,’ Consuelo stated in her memoirs, ‘that he must have made up his mind to marry me and to give up the girl he loved…For to live at Blenheim in the pomp and circumstance he considered essential, needed money, and a sense of duty to his family and to his traditions [required] the sacrifice of personal desires.’8
Consuelo, though, had already firmly decided that she would not marry the Duke. She intended to marry Rutherfurd, even if it meant doing battle with her mother over the issue. ‘I did not relish the thought, but my happiness was at stake,’ she wrote.’9 Nevertheless, she was nervous when she learned that Marlborough had accepted an invitation to Alva’s grand ball at Marble House in Newport in August, now only six weeks away. How was she to contact Rutherfurd?
Once again Alva anticipated her daughter’s reaction and Consuelo’s tiny spark of independence was snuffed out. ‘On reaching Newport my life became that of a prisoner, with my mother and my governess as wardens.’ Try as she might, there was no way she could get a message to Rutherfurd and no way he could get a message to her. ‘Brought up to obey, I was helpless under my mother’s total domination,’ she recalled.10 Then, amazingly, Consuelo and Rutherfurd came face to face at a ball that he gate-crashed. The lovers managed just one short dance before Alva ‘dragged me away’. But during that dance they had the opportunity to reassure each other that their feelings had not changed. Rutherfurd explained how hard he had tried to contact her in Paris and since, and Consuelo realised the full extent of Alva’s treachery.
When they reached home there was a resounding row between mother and daughter. Consuelo bravely insisted she had a right to choose her own husband. At this, Alva’s wrath exploded. She used every invective against Rutherfurd that she could think of, shouting at Consuelo that he was a fortune-hunter determined to marry an heiress (incorrect), that there was madness in his family (unproven), that he was impotent (incorrect), that he was a womaniser (incorrect) and that he was known for his relationship with a married woman (doubtful). Ironically, some of these accusations could have been truthfully applied to Marlborough. But Consuelo had no defence; she did not know whether her mother was speaking the truth or not and she did not know how to defend her lover. They argued all night and Consuelo eventually went to her room, still insisting she would marry Rutherfurd or no one.
The next day Consuelo felt desolate. No one came near her, not even a servant, and she felt the house was strangely quiet. She was left to endlessly rerun her mother’s accusations. Late in the afternoon Alva’s best friend of the time, a Mrs Jay, came to Consuelo’s room and told her that Alva had suffered a heart attack, brought on, said Mrs Jay, by Consuelo’s callous indifference to her mother’s feelings. ‘She confirmed my mother’s intentions of never consenting to my plans for marriage,’ Consuelo recalled. Indeed, Alva had vowed to shoot Rutherfurd if Consuelo eloped with him. Consuelo asked to see her mother and was refused – with the excuse that the doctor had warned that another scene might cause a stroke or even kill Alva. Believing every word of this, not least that to proceed might mean the death of her mother or of Rutherfurd, ‘in utter misery’ Consuelo capitulated and agreed to allow Mrs Jay to advise Rutherfurd that she could not marry him.*11
In the days that followed, Consuelo’s English governess, a Miss Harper, undoubtedly acting on Alva’s instruction, convinced Consuelo that because of her privileged station in life, duty and a higher idealism should override her personal wishes. Once she noted her daughter’s return to her usual submission, Alva made a miraculous recovery, arranging the forthcoming ball and fêtes at Marble House with all her old energy and verve.
When Marlborough arrived in Long Island Consuelo was again propelled into society, attending every ball and party of note of that Newport season. There were daily carriage drives along Bellevue Avenue (then Newport’s equivalent of London’s Rotten Row) and to polo matches, escorted by the Duke and always chaperoned by her beaming mother. There was no danger of meeting Rutherfurd; on being given Consuelo’s message he had withdrawn from society (probably he went to Europe), so her anxious scanning of the guests at each event was in vain.
‘It was in the comparative quiet of an evening at home that Marlborough proposed to me in the Gothic Room, whose atmosphere was so propitious to sacrifice,’ Consuelo wrote in her memoirs. ‘There was no need for sentiment. I was content with his pious hope that he would make me a good husband.’12 She immediately went upstairs to her mother and told her. Next day the news was out in the papers, a date announced for the m
arriage, and Marlborough left on a pre-planned visit to New York and a proposed tour of the USA. This was, after all, his first trip to America, and for all the financial advantages involved it is quite likely that the Duke felt as trapped by circumstances as did his helpless fiancée. Consuelo’s twelve-year-old brother Harold greeted the news scathingly with a typically brutal sibling comment: ‘He is only marrying you for your money.’ At which point Consuelo burst into tears.
The next eight weeks flew by. In New York the Duke’s lawyers met with the Vanderbilt lawyers to thrash out a prenuptial agreement. Consuelo played no part in planning her trousseau – indeed, most of it had been ordered in Paris months earlier. Only when the Parisian wedding gown was presented to her, an exquisite creation of white satin and Brussels lace, with a high collar and skin-tight sleeves, did Consuelo realise that her mother had conceived the entire plan a long time earlier.
Brought up chastely, she was embarrassed to read in the papers details of her bridal underclothes and the startling exaggeration that her garter buckles were made of solid gold. Consuelo’s quiet musings must have been bitter – certainly she recalled this agonising period with great clarity when, as an elderly woman, she was writing her memoirs. Even the eight bridesmaids were selected by Alva, without any consultation with the bride. And there was yet further distress for Consuelo when she found that her Vanderbilt relatives, demonised by Alva because they had naturally sided with William K during the divorce, were not invited to the wedding. Furthermore, the presents sent by them were returned unopened, without thanks, in Consuelo’s name. Surely, the Vanderbilts would have had to be very gullible not to have realised who was responsible for this particular piece of spite?
Marlborough might have hoped to have his favourite cousin Winston among his small party at the wedding. He would certainly have been aware that Winston was on his way to New York that week aboard the Cunard Royal Mail steamship Etruria. But a mail boat is not a passenger liner with a strict schedule to meet, and bad weather made the voyage some days longer than expected. The passengers had chosen this cheapest manner of travelling for obvious reasons, and did not expect luxuries such as public rooms or entertainments. ‘There are no nice people on board to speak of – certainly none to write of,’ Winston wrote to Jennie as the ship struggled to reach its destination. ‘The days have seemed very long & uninteresting…I shall always look upon journeys by sea as necessary evils which have to be undergone in the carrying out of any definite plan.’13
Winston arrived in New York on 9 November, having missed the big event by three days. He and his companion Reggie Barnes were met at the dock by Bourke Cockran, who accommodated them in style in his apartment at 763 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 58th Street. Cockran went out of his way to ensure the young men were entertained, amused and instructed, and introduced them to anyone who might be useful to them. On the 14th, Sunny arrived in New York from the Vanderbilts’ Long Island home Idlehour, in Oakdale, where he and Consuelo were spending the first days of their honeymoon.* Consuelo had decided to remain at the mansion while Sunny visited his cousin. ‘He is very pleased with himself and seems very fit,’ Winston reported to Jennie.14 It was a week full of new experiences for Winston and he wrote home glowing accounts of his impressions. There were plenty of people happy to entertain generously a young man who was a protégé of Cockran, a cousin of the Duke of Marlborough and the grandson of Leonard Jerome. Among them were Winston’s new connections by marriage – the Cornelius Vanderbilts.15
Cockran was impressed with the young man’s grasp of politics and his ambition, and the two would correspond for many years. Winston regarded him as ‘perhaps the finest orator in America’, and there is ample evidence that he modelled his own oratorical style on that of Cockran. In 1946, when Churchill gave his ‘Sinews of Peace’ speech, usually referred to as ‘the Iron Curtain speech’ and arguably his greatest ever,† he would say: ‘I have often used words which I learned fifty years ago from a great Irish-American orator, a friend of mine, Mr Bourke Cockran.’16
Much later, Winston’s son would write that as the relationship between the two men grew over the coming years, ‘Cockran in some way fulfilled a role that Lord Randolph should have filled if he had survived.’17 This seems unlikely, because while Cockran had a real affection for Winston and a respect for his abilities and ambition – which he demonstrated in many ways – Lord Randolph was always hypercritical of his son.
He arranged for Winston and Reggie to visit West Point, where Winston professed to be horrified at the discipline imposed, compared with that at Sandhurst. ‘The Cadets enter from 19–22 & stay 4 years,’ he wrote to his brother Jack. ‘They are not allowed to smoke or have any money in their possession nor are they given any leave except 2 months after the first two years. In fact they have far less liberty than any private school boys in our country.’18 From New York the two young men went on to Cuba, looking for adventure. Winston would not see Sunny again for almost six months, and had not yet met Consuelo. Missing Winston’s visit by only a day or two, she followed Sunny to New York before the couple left for Europe.
Consuelo had spent the entire morning of her wedding day alone in her room, in tears. No one came near her – even her governess was not allowed to call on her. A footman was stationed outside her door to turn away any member of the family or staff. Only ‘a lowly maid’ was allowed in when it was time for Consuelo to dress, to help her into the bridal ensemble. The exquisite court train, encrusted with seed pearls and silver embroidery, was clipped to her shoulders and fell ‘in folds of billowing whiteness’. Having patiently stood while the headdress and veil were fitted, and in abject misery, Consuelo then descended the stairs to see the upturned faces of her father and her eight bridesmaids turn from gaiety to anxiety. Alva had only just left for the church, waiting until the last possible moment. She was apparently concerned that in her absence Consuelo might find the spirit to revolt.
William K was under orders from Alva to escort his daughter to the church, officiate at the ceremony, and disappear afterwards; but one can imagine his concern when his daughter made her appearance. Having wept for hours, her face and eyes were red and swollen. Ice water was sent for and her eyes bathed by one of the bridesmaids. It is some measure of Alva’s steely personality and her explosive temper that William K, for all his riches and love of his children, did not feel able at this stage to stop the wedding on his daughter’s behalf. The delay in making Consuelo’s face presentable made the bridal party twenty minutes late at the church. This was possibly the longest twenty minutes in Alva’s life as, trapped in the front pew, she feigned a smiling unconcern as she awaited her daughter’s arrival and the fruition of her long-nurtured plan. New York reporters, expecting to see a radiant bride and a proud and beaming father, commented in puzzlement on the serious look on William K’s face and the sadness of the bride, ‘who appeared to have been crying,’ wrote one.19
The Duke of Marlborough, with his cousin Ivor Guest, waited patiently in the opposite pew, and like all the guests could not help turning occasionally to gaze down the aisle of the Church of St Thomas towards the open doors, as the organist attempted to keep the throng entertained with impromptu pieces he had not anticipated any need to practise. At last a cheer from the crowded street outside signalled the arrival of the bride. Consuelo was now calm. She recalled being glad of the protection of her veil from the prying eyes, and that she squeezed her father’s arm to slow down their procession up the aisle, as she had been rehearsed to do.
After the ceremony, William K carried out his final allotted task and signed the register before removing himself, as ordered. The New York Times reported that he spent the afternoon at his club. Then the Duke and his new Duchess entered their carriage, which had virtually to force its way through the ranks of excited onlookers to get to Alva’s new house on 72nd Street. They stood in a bower of white roses to receive their guests, among whom Mrs Astor was a guest of honour. Alva’s wedding gift to her daughter w
as the magnificent string of pearls that had once belonged to Catherine the Great, which William K had given her early in their marriage.
When the wedding breakfast and speeches were over, the couple changed and left for their honeymoon at Idlehour on Long Island. As their carriage drew away, Consuelo looked up at the façade of her mother’s latest house. She saw Alva, half hidden behind the curtains, but clearly in tears. Years later Consuelo bitterly reflected that, having at last achieved all her ambitions for her daughter, Alva now felt free to indulge in sentimentality.
After the journey to her once-loved childhood home which had been beautifully prepared with cheerful log fires blazing, she found that her mother’s large suite had been prepared for her, with the adjoining room allotted to Marlborough. Consuelo then faced that great hurdle of her wedding night with a man who was still a virtual stranger. ‘A sudden realisation of my complete innocence assailed me, bringing with it fear. Like a deserted child I longed for my family,’ she recalled. She wrote movingly that deep in her memories of that night lay ‘sorrows too deep to fathom’.20 Matters could not have improved when, during a quarrel on their honeymoon, Marlborough (possibly in an attempt to prove he understood her sadness – she was not the only one to have married out of duty) pointed out that he had been obliged to give up the woman he loved in order to marry Consuelo.
One of the popular songs of the day illustrates the plight of these young American women, of whom at the time Consuelo was only one, and who were almost literally sold to the British aristocracy in exchange for a title. It was called ‘The Dollar Princess’:
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