Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt

by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

  Once excitement about the engagement subsided, public attention turned to the scale of the deal. There was a short delay until the Duke of Marlborough’s lawyer arrived from England. ‘The marriage settlements gave rise to considerable discussion. An English solicitor who had crossed the seas with the declared intention of “profiting the illustrious family” he had been engaged to serve devoted a natural talent to that end,’39 wrote Consuelo. Although wild sums were discussed in the press – $10 million according to one source, plus an additional $5,000 to pay off the Duke’s creditors – the eventual settlement to the Duke was $2.5 million in $50,000 shares of capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company, on which an annual payment of 4 per cent was guaranteed by the New York Central Railway Company, giving him an annual income of $100,000*. This income, which was very similar in structure and total to Alva’s divorce settlement, was the Duke’s for life, and was guaranteed even if his marriage to Consuelo ended. In a most unusual arrangement, however, which may have reflected some unease on the part of William K. about the motives of his daughter’s fiancé, a comparable sum was settled on Consuelo. William K. agreed to pay her $100,000 a year in four equal quarterly instalments, a sum which almost certainly took account of $50,000 already paid to Alva annually for Consuelo’s upkeep which was now transferred to her on marriage under the terms of the divorce settlement.40

  There was some delay in the negotiations until Consuelo proposed that the final sum should be split between them ‘in equal shares, at my request’.41 It is interesting to note, in view of the later charges of coercion, that Consuelo herself came up with the proposal that finally unlocked the problem, for failure to find a compromise could have resulted in the engagement coming to a premature end. She may have felt, however, that matters had proceeded too far for her to back out. Later, Blanche Oelrichs remembered Newport servants gossiping that Consuelo cried all night at the conclusion of the settlements between the Duke and her father. ‘What were these settlements that tied people up in them against their will? For what did they barter this mysterious something which they cared for enough to cling to with tears? I put a few leading questions to my sister, a great friend of Consuelo’s … to be angrily told that if I went on playing with “street children” I would never get “anywhere”.’42

  After the first flush of enthusiasm, the attitude of the American press became much more ambivalent, as if the editors were responding simultaneously to a sentimental desire to see the engagement as a love match and to widespread cynicism about the Duke’s motives. In the World, which had both a political agenda and a wide female readership, both interpretations of the story appeared on the same page. Consuelo wrote later that the Duke went off on a tour of America shortly after the engagement was announced, but this is not true. Soon afterwards, Oliver Belmont arranged a coaching trip to Tuxedo for Consuelo, the Duke, Alva and the Jays, which lasted a few days. While the Duke was still – to all intents and purposes – Alva’s guest, criticism by the flock of journalists who followed him was muted. On the return of the coaching party to New York, however, this changed when the Duke took rooms at the Plaza Hotel. From the moment that he ceased to be Alva’s house guest the press declared open season. The Duke was quite inexperienced in dealing with this kind of publicity, accustomed to a far more deferential press in England. At the same time, however, he clearly lacked Alva’s instinctive grasp of publicity as an instrument of social power. Shortly after the engagement was announced, for example, he let it be known that the marriage had been ‘arranged by his friends and those of Miss Vanderbilt’,43 a most unfortunate turn of phrase which would be held against him for a very long time.

  The Duke cannot be held responsible for all criticism, however, for some of it was politically motivated. Joseph Pulitzer at the World, in particular, had a longstanding objection to the manner in which ‘our vulgar moneyed aristocrats’ were prepared to buy ‘European gingerbread titles’44 for their daughters. He thought it was deeply unpatriotic and objected just as strenuously to the European nobles who came hunting for American bounty. The day after the coaching trip, when the Duke was joined from England by his cousin Ivor Guest (who would be his best man), they departed for a short excursion to look at the famous blood stock of Kentucky, followed by a bevy of reporters. Such a trip does not seem wholly unreasonable given that the Duke had been staying with the Vanderbilts for several weeks and that Mrs Vanderbilt was on the point of moving into the new house at 72nd Street and Madison Avenue from which Consuelo would be married. Indeed, he may have felt that his presence would have been a burden at such a time.

  The Duke must soon have regretted the decision to strike out alone, however, for the World in particular was determined both to poke fun and to show him in the worst possible light. In common with other newspapers, it particularly objected to the fact that he measured just over five foot two inches and that Consuelo stood taller than him at five foot eight. He was accused of discourtesy at a Kentucky racecourse when he picked up a glove; he showed excessive enthusiasm for Kentucky whisky; and in Louisville he was spotted with various sporting friends, at a performance of a high-class comedy “The City Club of Gay Paree” at the Buckingham Theatre. At this point, the World’s reporter thought he had a scoop, maintaining that the Duke had been spotted giving ‘the glad hand and the cheerful word’ to Miss Sophie Erb who had played the role of Tottie Coughdrops.45 Miss Sophie Erb told the reporter that she had been ogled throughout her appearance as a living picture in ‘The Birth of Venus’ by a sporty-looking man who later sent word that he was the Duke of Marlborough and asked her for supper – an invitation she indignantly refused saying that she didn’t care if he was the Prince of Wales. Since ‘sporty-looking’ is an adjective that no-one else has ever applied to the 9th Duke of Marlborough, it seems likely that he was the victim of a prank, but the Tottie Coughdrops incident was soon picked up by other more sober newspapers including the New York Tribune.46

  The World then proceeded to print an exceedingly unflattering profile of the Duke, describing him as ‘no credit to his tailor … hollow-chested … with queer hats … very short of stature and some people say of money’,47 and was unable to understand why this had no influence over certain young ladies who, after his return to New York, took to hanging round the foyer of the Plaza Hotel. ‘They want to speak to the Duke, to touch him, to cut off a piece of his coat tails or in some other way to obtain a souvenir of the affianced husband of Miss Vanderbilt. The faithful attendants with difficulty preserve the amiable and ingenious duke from their clutches,’ wrote the World on 15 October. Almost certainly acting on Alva’s advice, the Duke sent for a reporter from the World on his return from Kentucky, his trip having lasted no more than five days. In an attempt to set the record straight he said rather plaintively: ‘They’ve told so many lies about me that really I hardly know myself any more. I’ve become a sort of stranger to myself don’t you know … You Americans seem to like to amuse yourselves at the expense of the English, isn’t that so?’ He offered to tell the reporter anything he would like to know about arrangements for the wedding; but his hazy grasp of the wedding details did little to help his case. He was then reported as having asked the journalist: ‘Why are you people are so fond of interviews with Englishmen? I suppose your American men never give interviews?’ When told that, on the contrary, they were very fond of being interviewed, the Duke was said to have replied incredulously: ‘No, really? They can’t be such flats.’48

  No sooner had the readership put the Tottie Coughdrops affair behind it than the Duke of Marlborough was arrested for ‘coasting’ on a bicycle in Central Park with his feet on the handlebars. This might be considered rather to his credit, but not by Policeman Sweeny. Said by his admiring colleagues to be capable of ‘arresting anything’, Sweeny had already ordered the Duke off the grass and moved him on, when, to his horror, the felon re-appeared ‘scorching’ down Block House hill, his feet elevated on the handlebars of his bicycle at a rate of at least twenty
miles an hour. Policeman Sweeny marched the Duke to the police station, where he confessed his ignorance of park regulations and pointed out that there was no sign warning innocent scorchers that they were in breach of the law. There was considerable embarrassment when the Duke’s identity was discovered, but since a crowd had gathered, ‘it was too late to recede’.49 The distinguished visitor was reprimanded, ‘discharged’, and proceeded on the offending bicycle back to the Plaza. This time the story appeared in The Times in London, though all mention of feet on handlebars was respectfully omitted.

  As these stories appeared, there was a counterblast in different mode. The Sunday edition of the World began to print a weekly ‘Diary of the Most Interesting Couple in America’. The newspaper was watching every move made by the Duke and Consuelo and was perfectly capable of fabrication, but there is also a strong possibility that it was being fed information by Alva in an attempt to manage criticism of her future son-in-law. Alongside impolite press coverage of the Duke, a different voice stressed his painstaking attentions to Consuelo, described by the World as ‘in many ways more entertaining than one of Ouida’s novels of high life and far more instructive to aspiring duchesses – for it is fact’.50 He showers her with roses; she carries three of them to a soiree; she wears a fetching gown of white mousseline de soie with a jewelled buckle; she breakfasts late with her mother; she steals a rest on a veranda as she receives the congratulations of friends; when he hears that Miss Vanderbilt is slightly indisposed, he sends more roses; she selects the most beautiful and wears it in her hair, etc.

  On Saturday 18 October the ‘Diary’ gave way to extensive coverage of Alva’s new house on 72nd Street, complete with elaborate descriptions of the interior, including Consuelo’s boudoir described as ‘the lovely little rooms she will leave behind when she becomes mistress of Blenheim Castle’. As the World pointed out: ‘The happy dwellers in it do not have to spend weeks in hanging pictures, living in one room at a time and so forth, as ordinary mortals do when they move into a new house,’51 but Alva certainly had much else to think about, and this included protecting her future son-in-law from the raw energy of New York’s newspapers. For a few days the tactic seemed to work. The Duke accompanied Consuelo and Mrs Vanderbilt to church on Sunday morning and on the Monday it was announced in the papers that the wedding would take place on 6 November (for some inscrutable reason the Duke refused to be married on Guy Fawkes Day); Walter Damrosch would direct the music; an orchestra of sixty players had been engaged. Letters appeared in the press saying that the Duke’s ‘arrest’ had been ridiculous and inhospitable. On Monday 21 October, he enjoyed a good day’s hunting with the Monmouth Hunt Club in New Jersey. And there, perhaps, matters could have rested.

  By Tuesday 22 October, however, the papers were in full flow again, this time because, in a serious public relations blunder, the Duke had refused to pay duty on family jewellery and on wedding presents for Consuelo sent from England. On the face of it, this was not an unreasonable reaction from a man accustomed to making economies. The presents would only be in the States for a very short time before travelling back to England with the bride and groom. But he was about to marry one of the world’s richest heiresses, there was great sensitivity about his motives and his instinctive reaction appeared curmudgeonly, mercenary and mean-spirited, particularly since it was also reported that he had bought four expensive white Kentucky mules which were being shipped back to England (a purchase he later denied). The World, needless to say, ran this as its front-page story, complete with a dramatic account of frantic attempts by ‘fuming and perspiring’ British officials to sort out the matter which ended with one Colonel Phelps of the New York Customs House suggesting in despair that the entire matter could easily be resolved if only the bride and groom were prepared to marry in a bonded warehouse.52

  On Saturday 26 October there was a publicity counter-attack which could only have come from one source. The New York Herald devoted several columns to the wedding details, including a drawing of Miss Consuelo’s wedding dress, a full list of bridesmaids, the number of invitations sent out, and police deployments. Contrary to claims by Consuelo in her memoirs, all press reports, including those in Vogue, maintained that her wedding dress was being made by Alva’s dressmaker, Madame Donovan in New York, and that it incorporated old lace flounces that Alva had worn on her wedding day. One plausible reason why Consuelo may have been confused was that she says she was not consulted about either her dress or her trousseau: ‘Ordering my trousseau, always an exciting event in a girl’s life, proved of slight interest since I had very little to say about it, my mother not troubling to consult the taste she claimed I did not possess.’53 The bride’s underwear excited particular interest. Even the New York Herald recorded that: ‘The bridal corset is made of white satin brocaded with tiny white carnations, and trimmed at the upper edge with a deep-pointed border of Valenciennes lace. The clasps, the large hook, and the buckles on the attached stocking supporters are all of solid gold.’54

  By 31 October, Town Topics was purporting to be startled by the extent of the personal information now being circulated in the daily newspapers though it would have printed the same details immediately had its informants been privy to the information in time. Town Topics was convinced that much of this information was being supplied to the newspapers by Alva herself: ‘There is a good deal of curiosity as to whether Mrs Vanderbilt has secured a press agent or not, following the plan of the Goulds at the Countess of Castellane’s wedding. I know there have been several applications for this position. It is possible, however, that Mrs Vanderbilt prefers to be her own press agent, and thus far I have not heard that any of the applications for the post have been successful.’55

  In suggesting that Alva was her own press agent, Town Topics may well have been right. It is quite clear, for example, that it was Alva who authorised Vogue to run an article about the bridal lingerie, and permitted samples to be delivered to Vogue’s offices so they could be sketched by a team of in-house illustrators. Edna Woolman Chase, who worked for the circulation department of the magazine at the start of her Vogue career, recalled the excitement that surrounded the arrival of these ‘entrancing garments’ as they appeared in the office, and the manner in which the publisher, Mr Turnure, shouted on the phone to a hard-of-hearing fashion editor: ‘I said underclothes, Miss Vanderbilt’s underclothes. We have some of her trousseau here in the office. I want you to come in and draw it.’56

  The founder and first editor of Vogue, Mrs Josephine Redding, regarded this as the greatest coup of her career, and devoted the greater part of one issue to the trousseau which confirmed that most of the information printed in the newspapers had been accurate: the lingerie had indeed cost in the range of $3,000; the bridal corset did indeed have solid gold clasps; a copy of Consuelo’s signature was embroidered on her nightgowns; her rose-coloured drawers were indeed caught up on the knee with jabots of lace; although it was incorrect that the gold clasps on Consuelo’s garters were studded with diamonds.57 As Alva busily publicised Consuelo’s underwear, the mortified bride-to-be squirmed with embarrassment, wondering how she would ever live down such publicity.

  Confident that in the face of such press attention Consuelo was most unlikely to create a scandal, Alva now finally relaxed her vigilance. She no longer confiscated Consuelo’s letters which meant that she was inundated with proposals from gentlemen anxious to rescue her from what was widely perceived to be an unromantic marriage. ‘Rendered sceptical by recent experiences, I viewed these offers with less enthusiasm than did their begetters,’58 said Consuelo later. Her saddest would-be knight was a gentleman who called himself Sir Oliver de Gyarfres, of Bart Leczfaera, who claimed he was the Prince of Teck. Fortunately for all concerned he handed himself in to the police on Sunday 27 October and was later declared insane at Bellevue Asylum. There were other signs of concern about Consuelo’s safety. Not content with simply hanging Consuelo’s portrait by Carolus-Duran above the Duke’s head when
he came to Marble House, Alva now loaned it to a portrait exhibition in New York as if determined to parade her foresight. She and Consuelo were present on the opening afternoon, along with many other society figures, ‘thus furnishing a splendid opportunity for those present to compare the picture with the original’.59 The World remarked on the presence of two detectives to protect Miss Vanderbilt’s portrait, leading the newspaper to comment that the counterfeit Miss Vanderbilt was almost as well guarded as the lady herself. Alva became concerned when proposals of marriage from strangers turned to threats of violence from those who objected to the idea of Americans marrying foreigners and Consuelo’s fortune leaving the United States. When she spoke to the police she discovered that they had been discreetly protecting both Consuelo and the Duke from the time that their engagement was announced.

  In the final days before the wedding, there was so much information available about the wedding arrangements that it seemed as if the Duke might now escape further persecution. To those outside New York’s inner circle, the list of wedding presents in The New York Times must have read like something from a fairy tale. It was considered impolite to imply that Blenheim lacked furniture or works of arts, so many of the gifts were jewellery or small objets. Ivor Guest, the best man, gave the bride a blue enamel watch, set with diamonds and fastened to a golden chain with a true-lovers’ knot. There were pearls and diamonds from her aunt, Armide Smith; a purse of gold mesh set with turquoise and diamonds from Mrs Astor; a fan of point lace with medallions by Watteau from Mr and Mrs William Duer. There were silver bon-bon boxes, silver loving cups, silver snuff boxes, silver mirrors, combs set with pearls, crystal vinaigrettes with stoppers set with aquamarine and diamonds; and – allegedly – a pair of antique candlesticks from a certain Mr Winthrop Rutherfurd. Vanderbilt wedding presents, much to Consuelo’s distress, were returned unopened, for Alva made her return them ‘without excuse or thanks’.60