Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt

by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart

  Consuelo later wrote that she and her mother grew very close after Alva’s move to France ‘each sharing the other’s interests’.9 However, Consuelo was probably fortunate that her mother’s enthusiasm for the National Woman’s Party – of which she was still president – gradually returned after she settled in France. ‘Europe’s Embattled Feminists Make Headquarters at Belmont Chateau’, said the New York Sun; ‘All kinds of feminist irons are heated in the fires at Augerville.’10 Not all the irons were political. In 1927 Doris Stevens, who had eventually married Dudley Field Malone, decided to divorce him. Alva strongly encouraged this in her most declamatory style. ‘Believe me, though lonely, oh! Very lonely at times, to walk alone is divinely great and the very man who would take this from you, later will leave you.’11 Having filed her divorce papers, Doris went to stay with Alva at Augerville, and talked to her frankly of her concerns about money and her plans to start a law degree so that she could support herself. At this point Alva appears to have said she would definitely leave Doris a considerable sum in her will. ‘We have made agreement. She has promised to put me in her will because of all I have done for her. I am greatly relieved – said I could do law later – after she was gone – very sad.’12 However it was made, the agreement was not clear enough to prevent bitter confusion in the years ahead.

  Alice Paul came to stay at Augerville in the summer of 1927 too, for almost two months. She was anxious to keep Alva’s interest in the NWP going, concerned by her diminishing contributions, and keen to secure her assistance with new headquarters, for the building that Alva had bought for them on Capitol Hill was in the process of being compulsorily purchased by the federal government to make way for the Supreme Court building. Alva was delighted by Alice Paul’s visit in 1927, for she was one of the very few people for whom she had unqualified respect. ‘Do you know that in former times some of my friends thought me a little “tocquee” (ie crazy) over my fancy for Alice Paul until they had to admit that I was right in all I had told them about Alice’s wonderful capacities,’ she said to feminist Lies Van de Lehaln the year before her death. ‘I wish she would realize that I am her greatest friend.’13 By the end of the visit Alice Paul had secured Alva’s agreement that the money paid by the government for the old building could be used for another.

  The visit also seems to have given Alice Paul some insight into the president’s troubled soul, for she encouraged her to revive the idea of writing her memoirs. (The process began again when Mary Young arrived from America to take up the position of Alva’s secretary in the end of 1928. Like the first attempt these memoirs were never completed or extensively revised, but contain more detail and fewer literary flourishes, suggesting that the method was closer to straightforward dictation than the memoir ghostwritten by Sara Bard Field.) At the end of 1927, in November, Alva went back to America to approve the building chosen for the new headquarters and to arrange an auction of the contents of Beacon Towers which she had sold to the Hearsts. Although she did not know it at the time, this would be her last visit to America.

  Content for the moment that matters were progressing as they should be in America, Alva turned her attention to her own back yard. The association between her house and Jacques Coeur may have been tenuous; the connection between Jacques Coeur and Joan of Arc was probably non-existent; but Alva became so annoyed that the church at Augerville did not have its own tribute to Joan of Arc that she decided to put matters right. Because she was a Protestant she prevailed upon her friend, Elizabeth Lehr – who was not only a frequent visitor but a Catholic – to pay for it. ‘Fully aware of Mrs Lehr’s parsimonious habits, my mother did not entrust her with the choice of the statue, but herself selected a fine life-sized example,’14 wrote Consuelo. The ceremony to induct Joan of Arc on 9 July 1928 bore Alva’s stamp from start to finish. The procession from chateau to church was led by a well-drilled row of little girls from the village dressed in matching white tunics designed by Alva, in time to a march specially composed in Joan of Arc’s honour on trumpet, fife and drum. Bearers of banners in gold, blue and scarlet walked in front of the new statue which was carried beneath a canopy by four strong men.15 As the procession neared the church, the choir chanted religious anthems and Consuelo remembered that the villagers knelt. The clergy came last, resplendent in gold embroidery, with the bishop most resplendent of all – even Alva forbore from telling him what to wear.

  The procession moved into the church so that Joan could be ensconced in a candle-lit niche that had been specially prepared for her. The only problem was that Elizabeth Lehr would not stop talking. ‘My mother, who could always be relied upon to dominate a situation, furiously and loudly observed: “Bessie, will you shut up!”’ wrote Consuelo. ‘Thankfully I observed that, obedient as we all were to such admonishments, Mrs Lehr thereafter maintained the dignified deportment the occasion decreed.’16 Afterwards, there was lunch for Alva’s guests at the chateau, where Consuelo discovered that the French visitors were at a loss to understand why an American Protestant should wish to exalt a French Catholic saint. They were vastly amused to be told that they had just participated in a ceremony honouring Joan of Arc’s militancy (and, since French women did not get the vote until after the Second World War, they were possibly none the wiser).

  In spite of Alice Paul’s best efforts, the different perspectives of Augerville and Washington soon caused the relationship between Alva and the NWP to fray, with the excitable personality of Doris Stevens at the centre of much of the friction. In August 1928, Doris led delegates from a newly formed equal rights commission of women from North and South America to Paris, in the hope of presenting an equal rights treaty to governments gathered together to sign the Kellogg-Briand Pact. When the American ambassador refused to help them gain access, Doris Stevens and her colleagues forced their way in to a post-signing reception at Rambouillet, promptly getting themselves arrested for a few hours and generating much heated publicity. Instead of being pleased, Alva thought this was a grave miscalculation. She regarded herself as a much better judge of the outlook of the governments present and was furiously angry with Doris for setting back the cause of equal rights with ‘hoodlum methods’. Doris refused to listen to Alva and ‘seemed very excitable, very nervous and living in a state of exaltation’, whereupon Alva wrote to Washington insisting that mechanisms were put in place to stop such unilateral action in future and that she would never work with Doris Stevens again.17

  Although she eventually changed her mind, Alva found it difficult to forgive her. ‘I am not placed in a position to forgive people. I am working for the welfare of the Woman’s Party,’18 she wrote to its chairman. Doris Stevens eventually wrote her an apologetic letter that helped to mollify. ‘Many times I would be happy to see you even if you scolded me – The more I see of people … I realize … how easy it is to work with you. You are never petty, never. You are always forthright and direct … both in approval and disapproval.’

  Alva, who was now seventy-five, responded with a long and emotional letter in which she told Doris how much she hated ageing and dreaded death. ‘During the long hours of the night, when I do not sleep, I realize what I am unable to do out here, it is dreadful to grow old, to know that the body stops the will … Perhaps witnessing so many funerals of noted men, this last few days may have made me blue, forgive.’ And with this Alva sent Doris a cheque ‘for yourself alone’. Doris responded equally emotionally on 29 April. ‘Your note made me weep, to think of you sleepless in the long nights.’19 But in July 1929 there was more friction with the NWP itself. There was a mix-up over the date of the opening of the new headquarters for which Alva had paid, and she nearly travelled to the US from France for the dedication ceremony for no reason. She refused to relent when they offered another date to suit her, and broke off contact with the NWP for several months.

  Instead, she decided to go to Egypt for what she called ‘a last look round’. The country had fascinated her since the days she had worked with Richard Morri
s Hunt and this time she was accompanied by Consuelo, Jacques, her grandson William K. Vanderbilt III (son of Willie K. Jr), the Marquis Sommi Picardi and Elsa Maxwell. Millicent Hearst was so taken with the idea that she joined the expedition with a party of seven guests of her own. The two parties travelled up the Nile in dahabiyas to Luxor, making a visit to the Valley of the Kings led by Howard Carter who had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen seven years earlier. Although she was short of money and was taken along as a treat by Alva, Elsa Maxwell refused to be upstaged by the civilisation of ancient Egypt and threw a surprise party in the desert, arranging for sixty guests to be transported to a village ten miles from Luxor by camel and donkey. When it was explained to her that there was no wood for bonfires in the desert, she ordered in dead palm trees by camel. ‘It was an expensive proposition but well worth the dramatic effect. At midnight a huge, red moon came up as though ordered by Cecil B. De Mille and outlined what appeared to be the silhouettes of enormous, fantastic birds floating slowly towards us. The bizarre illusion was created by camels carrying more palm trees across the desert.’20 The high point was breakfast at sunrise on the site of the ancient temples of Karnak. The high point for Elsa Maxwell came when Prince Duoud, ‘the son of the former Khedive’, assured her that it was the first time since the dawn of history that anyone had succeeded in making the desert look attractive.

  The expedition to Egypt gave Alva the fillip she needed. She did not break off relations with the National Woman’s Party and turned her attention to one final campaign. A ‘World Conference for Codification of International Law’ was planned for the Hague in 1930. Alva had become much exercised by the disparities in nationality rights of women on marriage – an issue which related directly to Consuelo who had ceased to be an American as soon as she married the Duke in 1895. At NWP headquarters in Washington there was considerable disagreement about the importance of this issue in view of the depression gripping America. Peter Geidel points out, however, that Alva was right to pursue it for ‘in the first Hague conference, the only legal subject that applied to women was nationality’.21 Ironically, Doris Stevens thought Alva was principally spurred on by irritation with Consuelo who refused to take any interest in this matter because she was delighted to have become French by virtue of marriage to Jacques. Though mother-daughter relations were generally warm, there was always room for tension. ‘Mrs Belmont wanted the law changed, she said, so that at least no woman could lose her nationality unless she wanted to by choice and then she could really show up her daughter’s supineness if she chose the latter course,’22 wrote Doris Stevens later. On bad days, according to Doris, Alva could really rant about Consuelo’s ‘unloving attitude, her spinelessness about men, her indifference to losing her nationality’23 – in other words, Consuelo no longer automatically fell into line with Alva’s opinions. And as a result, Alva reserved her moods for Doris.

  When the Hague conference took place, Alva’s persistence resulted in a success for the NWP. Highly inequitable principles affecting women on marriage were almost built into the new convention until Doris Stevens, acting properly this time, alerted President Hoover in a telegram whereupon he instructed the American delegation not to vote for the convention at all. The consequence was that the following year the League of Nations created a Woman’s Consultative Committee to listen to representations by international women’s groups.

  By 1931, however, Alva was almost unable to enjoy this triumph for she was seventy-eight, her blood pressure problems had worsened and she was finding it increasingly difficult to move around independently. She was too unwell to travel to Washington for the re-scheduled opening of Alva Belmont House. She continued to make her views known on a number of issues, suggesting, for instance, that the NWP change its name to ‘the International Woman’s Party’; but there was little appetite for this in Washington. In the course of the year she found it so difficult to walk that she took to being pushed around the grounds of Augerville by her secretary Mary Young in a Bath chair. Consistent to the end, this was a very elegant and rather grand Bath chair once used by Queen Victoria which Jacques had modified so that it could be pulled by a (specially imported Sicilian) donkey.

  Alva battled on through 1931, agitating at Doris Stevens who was in the middle of law exams, to come to Europe and join others based in Geneva working towards the new League of Nations Consultative Committee on the Nationality of Women, established partly in response to NWP action the year before. Doris Stevens felt unable to leave the States until her exams were over. Alva became angry with her because – and this was typical – she had sent her another cheque to ‘go on a spree’ a few months before and seemed to feel that this bought her the right to summon Doris whenever she wished. Alice Paul, meanwhile, did her best to carry out Alva’s wishes, crisscrossing Europe and supplying facts for an article Alva was writing about the nationality issue. By the time Doris turned up at the chateau, Alva was so angry about her apparent lack of commitment to the work in Geneva that Alice Paul had to intervene on Doris’s behalf.

  There was a dreadful evening when Alva, as if unhinged by her growing powerlessness, insisted that Doris and Alice Paul should play cards and she would watch. ‘Throughout this play she constantly upbraided Paul and almost slapped her hands in anger if she did not play fast enough or did not drop a card instantly,’24 claimed Doris. There was misunderstanding and confusion about tickets to America on the Aquitania. When challenged by Alva, Doris Stevens became hysterical and cried, making Mary Young angry. ‘There are some things you just do not say to an elderly woman,’25 she said later. Alva seems to have felt that Doris Stevens was lying about money, though she did not say so to her face. When she had gone, Alva responded by revoking a legacy of $50,000 she had left Doris Stevens in her will, asking Elsa Maxwell and Mary Young to witness the new codicil.

  In January 1932, Alva was still well enough to travel to Eze-sur-Mer where her health briefly improved. She bought back Belcourt to save it from a tax auction, giving Perry Belmont the use of it during the Newport season, and in March 1932 she sent from France her last official communication to the NWP, advising the organisation to hold on to its bonds despite economic depression, saying that they would recover in time.

  On 12 May, however, she suffered her first major stroke at 9 Rue Monsieur which left her paralysed down one side. She was moved to Augerville in August, accompanied by Consuelo and Jacques, Dr Edmund Gros (William K.’s doctor and founder of the Lafayette Escadrille), four nurses, Mary Young and her sister, Matilda, who was visiting Europe that summer to keep Mary company. ‘Mrs O. H. P. Belmont’s recovery from her recent critical illness is just another example of her indomitable spirit which refuses to be conquered by anything, even death itself. All her life she has battled for one thing or another,’26 said one newspaper. While she still could, she finalised the sale of Marble House to the Prince family for just over $100,000 after she learned that they planned to keep the house largely as she had designed it. There was an occasional flash of her old fire and bullishness: one morning she took Dr Gros down to the village school to talk to the children about the importance of cleaning their teeth, and handed out fifty toothbrushes and tubes of toothpaste, to the great excitement of all concerned.27

  Like the Commodore, her final illness was protracted. ‘Poor thing, she really is so valiant,’ wrote Matilda Young to her mother. ‘I took hold of the paralysed hand, which has feeling in it now and really looks as well as the other. It had quite a grasp in it, but when I started to go, it was difficult to free my hand. She said: “Now that’s a funny hand. It can take hold of things but it won’t let go.” And she laughed a little – which brought tears to my eyes.’28

  Harold came to stay – much to the excitement of the entourage for he was one of America’s most eligible bachelors, an international bridge player and outstanding sailor who had become a celebrity after winning the America’s Cup in 1930. Matilda Young thought he understood Alva’s paralysis much better than his sibling
s and noticed that ‘he seems to be feeling very tenderly towards his mother’.29 He bought her a film projector and tried to design a game she could play with one hand. After dinner, when Alva was in bed, he and Dr Gros amused themselves by pushing each other round the corridors in Alva’s Bath chair. Consuelo and Jacques visited frequently. When Elsa Maxwell came to see Alva she found her in a state of irritation with her nurses who had allowed her dyed red hair to turn grey. ‘Don’t let her change nurses too often,’30 wrote Dr Gros to Matilda Young – a private joke for Alva was frequently dissatisfied with her attendants. She rallied sufficiently for plans to be made to go to Lou Sueil with Consuelo but in November 1932 she had a second stroke and the plans were abandoned. On 26 January 1933, Alva took a turn for the worse and died with Consuelo and a doctor beside her at 9 Rue Monsieur just before seven in the morning.

  In command to the last, Alva left full and precise instructions for her funeral. She had handed them to Alice Paul during one of her visits to Augerville saying: ‘Any man who’s been in the public eye and been of service to the country, when he dies there’s a public ceremony … nobody ever pays any attention to the death of a woman who has made a great gift to her country in the way of working for some reform.’31 Alva told Alice Paul to give the instructions to her lawyer in New York and to make certain they were carried out. Her funeral was to be a last defiant gesture in the direction of anyone who ever thought that Alva Belmont, also Alva Vanderbilt, nee Alva Erskine Smith, was merely a spectator in the theatre of life rather than one of its leading players.