Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt

by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

  In an Alva-like move, Consuelo took over responsibility for financing the party and its offices at 32 Victoria Street and started to enlist the support of friends and like-minded philanthropic associates, just as she had done for Bedford College. By September members included Lady Frances Balfour. Throughout the summer and autumn of 1913 the Women’s Municipal Party continued its work, putting up candidates (who were non-partisan and simply dedicated to pursuing women’s interests at local government level) or supporting candidates who endorsed the party’s agenda, at local, borough and parish council elections. The party was officially inaugurated on Thursday 5 March 1914.

  At first glance, the party seemed explicitly feminist in its aims. ‘The Women’s Municipal Party is of the opinion that a definite policy should be formed to invite women in one party which shall stand for their interests and represent their needs. Our candidates will hold our policy on all questions affecting the interests of women and children but on other questions they will vote according to their own political views,’ wrote Consuelo to birth-control campaigner Marie Stopes in October 1913 in an attempt to persuade her to join up.41 When she spoke at its launch, however, Consuelo was just as keen to emphasise its role in local welfare reform, drawing comments of surprise from The New York Times. ‘A speech of more than a half hour’s duration on so complicated a subject as local government is not delivered every day by a Duchess, but the Duchess of Marlborough performed the feat with remarkable facility at a meeting of women at Bedford College to-day,’ it declared. ‘She showed herself thoroughly conversant with her subject, and moreover, evinced an extensive knowledge of the housing conditions of the poor in the East End, of reforms that should be adopted, and a hundred and one other details of municipal affairs.’42 Indeed, though always in favour of women having the vote, Consuelo went to some lengths to draw a line between the Women’s Municipal Party and the national suffrage campaign, stressing that the WMP was a lever for greater control over social welfare issues by experts close to local problems – who were often women – rather than feminism by the back door.

  By November 1913, Consuelo was explicitly rejecting suggestions that her many philanthropic activities were principally driven by feminism. She hosted a large conference at Sunderland House organised by two important trades union officials, Margaret Laurence and Gertrude Tuckwell, in conjunction with another organisation, the rather alarmingly titled National Anti-Sweating League. The League had been formed in 1906 to obtain a legal minimum wage for workers in the sweated trades and had been instrumental in persuading the Liberal government to pass the Trade Board Act in 1909, which resulted in minimum rates for ill-paid women such as chain makers, lace finishers and matchbox makers.

  Consuelo’s Sunderland House conference focussed on the need for similar protection for women in other sweated trades. Individual women were asked to step forward and tell their stories of living on less than 15 shillings a week. One newspaper asked its readers to imagine the horror of various dignitaries who imagined they had been invited for ‘trite moral reflections’ and ‘gratuitous champagne’ confronted by ‘twelve poor but respectable old women, who had each spent from 20 to 50 years of a long life bearing the yoke of industrial slavery in its cruellest form.’43 The chance to see the interior of Sunderland House clearly acted as a magnet to some of the 500 guests, and to this extent there was a parallel with Alva’s manipulation of nosey social climbers at her Marble House rallies. One reporter from Pittsburgh Times said that the sight of Consuelo on the platform at Sunderland House at the conference jointly hosted with the Anti-Sweating League reminded him of Alva at the head of a suffrage parade. In reality, the resemblance was superficial. When militant suffragettes interrupted a speech by a Liberal politician during the conference, Consuelo pacified them tactfully. Years later, she took pleasure from an article which remarked that her conference had ‘probably done more to advance the cause of female suffrage in Britain than the violent combined efforts of the militant suffragettes’.44 And when an interested visitor said to her that afternoon: ‘This is the age of feminism’ she replied: ‘Not so much feminism as humanism.’45

  One explanation for Consuelo’s circumspection may be that she wished to distance herself both from the Pankhursts’ violently destructive militant suffrage campaign in England during 1913, and from Alva, who had finally exploded into public support of it. Consuelo may have played a key role in launching her mother ‘on the suffragette sea’ in 1908, but by 1913 Alva had sailed miles past her when it came to suffrage radicalism.

  The event which provoked Alva into an open declaration of support for a very unpopular position was the arrest of her heroine Emmeline Pankhurst – on very flimsy evidence – for firebombing Lloyd George’s country house, and Mrs Pankhurst’s subsequent sentence to three years of penal servitude. Alva was due to attend the Congress of the International Woman Suffrage Alliance in Budapest as a National American delegate, accompanied by Consuelo, in July 1913. On the eve of her departure to Europe in April, she announced that, in view of the British government’s treatment of Mrs Pankhurst, she would only stay in England for as long as it took to arrange a passage to France and that she refused to spend any money there because of the Liberal government’s cruel treatment of the suffragettes. ‘It is all right for women to fight to win man’s freedom. It is only when they fight to win woman’s freedom that they are called hysterical, viragoes, criminally insane etc. Men fight for what they want. There is lots of talk about arbitration, but show me the man who would arbitrate for forty-five years!’46 Her views aroused deep hostility in newspapers across America. ‘Mrs Belmont is mixing in the suffragette demonstrations in London and if she doesn’t get into jail and have some food squirted down her throat many thousands of her countrymen will be disappointed,’47 said the Kansas City Journal.

  When Alva arrived in London on 21 April 1913, she did not stay at Sunderland House as she normally did, knowing full well that her much publicised support for the Pankhursts would embarrass Consuelo who had just launched the Woman’s Municipal Party (the official explanation was that ‘spring cleaning’ was in progress). The press had a field day. Journalists noted that Alva took a British train to Paddington, tipped a British porter and took a British taxi to the very British Ritz. ‘With the customary brutality of the English toward women, the management made her settle,’48 said one. ‘What if our dukes should “girlcott” America?’,49 enquired another. None of this improved Alva’s mood. ‘How I hate and loathe England,’ she told journalists. ‘With what brutality you treat your women … We are disgusted with England. The whole world is ashamed of you … Mrs Pankhurst is the greatest woman of the age. You will probably kill her, just as Joan of Arc was killed.’ She went on to say that she thought that the Pankhursts were remarkably restrained. ‘Do I believe in burning down houses? Certainly, after what women have had to put up with. Yes, I would go even further than leaving bombs about, if women are to be killed and tortured.’50

  Consuelo arrived in the middle of the press conference where Alva made these remarks and greeted her mother effusively to avoid talk of a rift. Staying at the Ritz, however, was as far as Alva was prepared to go in sparing Consuelo’s blushes. Shortly afterwards, Alva insisted on making a visit of support to WSPU headquarters, only to find police raiding the building. They demanded that Alva and other visitors should keep away from the premises, arrested staff working on the WSPU newspaper the Suffragette, and took away papers and documents. The raid was probably designed to intimidate rich supporters from abroad, though Alva knew perfectly well that her position as Mother of the Duchess of Marlborough offered her considerable protection from arrest. Before she left England she was reported to have had a brisk passage of arms with her relation by marriage Winston Churchill, no friend of the suffrage movement since he was held responsible for particularly rough policing during one suffragette demonstration. At the end of the argument Churchill reportedly said to Alva: ‘At least you’ll admit that man has a great
deal more will than woman?’ to which Alva is said to have replied: ‘Not at all; he’s only got more won’t.’51

  Alva left England for a rented house near Deauville on the Normandy coast on 1 May and then travelled on to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance Congress in Budapest where Consuelo met her in mid-June. If Alva had hoped to press militancy on the congress (an international meeting of many different women’s societies) she was to be disappointed. Although the delegates gave her a warm reception, it was the non-militant suffrage view which prevailed, with leaders of the National American particularly anxious to avoid upsetting American men in the run up to another New York State referendum in 1915. While Alva was disgusted by the timidity and strategic ineptitude of the congress, Consuelo was rather pointedly impressed by Anna Howard Shaw who was recommending a more cautious approach. English militant suffragettes were not formally admitted to the conference at all, and only had a chance to speak at the end, when they denounced their exclusion and proposed a resolution to honour Emily Wilding Davison, killed when she threw herself under the King’s horse at the Derby on 4 June. ‘We did manage to get in a few cheers for the militants, to the great disconcert [sic] of the more conservative delegates,’52 wrote Alva later. It was noted that when the militants spoke, she stood up and waved her handkerchief wildly in the air.

  After the conference was over, Alva returned to the rented house in Deauville, where she took further steps to support the WSPU. While the British government did its best to disrupt and intercept funds coming into WSPU accounts, Alva fought back by using her own bank account to channel money to Emmeline Pankhurst from England to France. She also invited the Pankhursts to stay – they were living in Paris to avoid arrest that summer – so that Consuelo met both Emmeline and Christabel in Alva’s Normandy house. Even if she disapproved of Mrs Pankhurst’s tactics, Consuelo admired her courage: ‘a fine undaunted woman, her delicate body held the flame that animates crusaders, the spirit that willingly endures suffering and pain for an ideal’.53 On the other hand, Consuelo thought Christabel Pankhurst was ridiculous: ‘To hear Christabel Pankhurst orate against the male sex, as if their presence in this world were altogether superfluous, made one wonder how far prejudice could contaminate a brilliant intellect,’54 she would write later.

  She may also have been irritated by the extent to which Alva became quite infatuated with thirty-three-year-old Christabel, who spent several weeks of that summer under her roof. Alva later called the summer of 1913 ‘one of the most interesting periods of my life.’ It was almost as if she had found a surrogate militant daughter in Christabel in whom she saw all her own independence of spirit. While she stayed with Alva, Christabel and a colleague worked on editing the Suffragette which was then smuggled by courier back into England. There was a brief respite on Thursdays when the paper was ‘put to bed’ for the week, whereupon Alva and Christabel enjoyed ‘brisk walks at the seashore – rides through the country or moonlit walks in the garden overlooking the sea’. Alva was amazed by this ‘slip of a girl’ discussing the ‘great tragedy of womankind … with the moon shining on her brave, heroic young face she would discuss her ambition to so improve the status of woman that she could never again fall into the unspeakable slavery of body and soul she was now in’.55

  Christabel thoroughly enjoyed the luxurious surroundings provided by Alva for guests she admired. Set up in an office with a ‘rose-coloured paper and draperies’, and a secretary of her own, she wrote and dictated editorials for the Suffragette looking out on to a large and beautiful garden, and discussed ideas for her book on venereal disease, Plain Facts About A Great Evil, with Alva, who seems to have had insights of her own to contribute. ‘I shall always be glad that we had that long time together in the Summer,’ Christabel wrote afterwards. ‘It helped me very much indeed to be able to talk over the book with you and to hear all the things that you had to tell me.’56 For her part, Alva felt that ‘this precious July and August at Deauville passed too quickly’,57 and would later keep a photograph of Christabel on her desk in New York.

  Alva’s hospitality to Christabel caused problems for Consuelo, however. On 13 September 1913, a New York Times correspondent wrote that he had ‘the authority of the Duchess of Marlborough herself to deny the report that she is a sympathizer with the militant movement. The report originated from the fact that the Duchess was at Deauville while her mother entertained there Mrs Pankhurst and Miss Christabel Pankhurst but reports that she has in any way identified herself with the militant campaign are entirely without foundation.’58

  That autumn, when she returned to the States, Alva sponsored a US tour by Mrs Pankhurst whose arrival in the country on 18 October 1913 put the whole question of militancy back on the American agenda, particularly when she was held by the authorities on Ellis Island and threatened with deportation. Anna Howard Shaw not only did little to help, but refused to speak on her behalf. Tensions over Mrs Pankhurst’s tour brought Alva to the point of making a move which would redefine her suffrage activity until the end of her life. Early in 1913, yet another party formed under the umbrella of the National American. As far as Alva was concerned, this group offered a much more exciting strategy, despite having given itself a dull name: the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU). It was led by the redoubtable Alice Paul who argued that the American campaign should switch to campaigning for woman suffrage by way of a federal amendment; and should therefore be based in Washington where it could lobby more effectively. Moreover, Alice Paul had learnt her politics from the WSPU in England where she had been imprisoned and force fed for WSPU activities, and become something of a cause célèbre as early as 1909.

  In November 1913, at the annual National Suffrage Convention, Alva heard Alice Paul’s ‘brilliant’ report on some work she had already done for the National American in Washington. Alva immediately proposed a resolution moving the headquarters of the National American to Washington, but was defeated. The National American, sensing a growing rift, took steps to ensure that it was less dependent on Alva’s money, successfully enlisting financial support from other well-off women. Alice Paul, meanwhile, decided to approach Alva for support, for she too realised that a split between the CU and the conservative suffragism of the National American was now almost inevitable.

  Some of Alice Paul’s radical colleagues in the CU were very wary indeed about the idea of enlisting Alva. They cautioned against soliciting help from a society woman whose reputation for misplaced aggression had preceded her. ‘She really enjoys eternally fussing about details, and would use up all your energy and then would not be satisfied’ wrote one member; Alva lacked ‘constructive ability’ and was ‘an impossible member of the committee’; she was ‘in the habit of running things absolutely’, was ‘very rash with newspapers’ and was ‘constantly making statements which you wish she wouldn’t make’.59 Another influential member of the CU committee, Mary Beard, supported an approach to Alva, however, arguing that she would be a valuable ally if treated properly rather than ‘merely a money bag’.60 Alice Paul finally visited Alva in person on 18 January 1914 and impressed her greatly. Alva then wrote the Congressional Union her first cheque, for $5,000, and joined its executive committee, a condition of her financial support. When reports of her defection to the radical CU appeared in the press, she confined herself to anodyne comments that the National American needed better leadership.

  Behind the scenes she was far less polite: ‘I was tired of having to pull along with me a heavy mass of suffrage conservatism … I was happy to find at last in America a fearless group unafraid to fight for its principles.’61 The decision to commit to a fearless rebel group gave Alva a surge of energy. Once again she resuscitated society techniques. She searched for a prominent house in Washington to act as new headquarters for the CU and decided to raise the new group’s profile by giving a ball. Washington society women queued up to join the ball committee (‘pathetic’ was how one CU worker described it). Meanwhile her new political colle
agues were obliged to get used to the quirks of their important new backer and those who had been wary of Alva soon felt their reservations were justified. While plans were being made for the ball, she threw a tantrum over a bill for a prize cup, feeling that she had already contributed enough. Alice Paul quickly learnt that Alva had to be approached with care for her subventions. There was also disagreement over an important question of tactics, that is: whether the political party in power should be held responsible for failing to give women the vote. When reminded quietly by a CU secretary that the organisation did not share her views on this issue, Alva flew into a towering – and familiar – rage. ‘[She] said that if she had to be dictated to she would do nothing; that when she was requested to take any action, no matter what the nature of it might be, she must be left to decide just how it shall be done. She knew what was required better than anyone else, and her method must be pursued or none at all,’62 an alarmed Caroline Reilly wrote in confidence to Lucy Bums. It was a letter that could almost have been dictated by Consuelo.

  That summer, Alva returned to Newport to repeat a familiar manoeuvre. Just as she had held two suffrage meetings at Marble House when she first joined the woman’s suffrage campaign in 1909, she now decided to use her Newport power base to help the more radical CU, both by opening summer headquarters and holding a CU meeting there later in the season. As it happened, Alva had already started plans for a conference at Marble House in July 1914. This was for distinguished American women involved in social welfare work (a ‘conference for social workers’63 was how Alice Paul described it). She had planned this for the benefit of Consuelo, who had agreed to come to America from England after a long absence. That, at least, was the official line. An alternative interpretation is that in arranging for Consuelo to meet eminent professional American women at Marble House at the height of the summer season in Newport in 1914, Alva was up to her old tricks once again.