The Husband Hunters

by Anne de Courcy

  It took an American girl, as Lady Grantley, to ignore this brutal policy. ‘She created what I believe was a world’s precedent for the time, in forgiving and reinstating a kitchen maid who had got into trouble,’ wrote her son, the 6th Lord Grantley.

  The house itself was divided up in a way that roughly reflected the different lifestyles of its master and mistress – library, dining room, smoking room and billiards room were largely masculine areas, women ruled the drawing room, music room and boudoir, that small private sitting room, decorated in a style that was soft, luxurious and inviting, in which the lady of the house could talk freely to her intimate women friends. This separation also meant that a listless or unhappy marriage could be kept going or made bearable. Lord and Lady Howard, for instance, separated but continued to occupy the same house.

  Divorce was virtually unthinkable: the husband was entitled to keep not only the children – whom, if the wife had committed adultery, she could be prevented from seeing because of her moral turpitude – but also all the money and property she had brought to the marriage, so that a divorced woman was both ostracised and penniless.3

  While the owner of the great house met his agent, saw to the management of the estate or went out shooting, his womenfolk were kept busy. His wife ran the house, conferring with housekeeper and cook over bedrooms and menus for weekend house parties and, with her daughters, took food, medicine and clothing to the poor or sick of the parish. Sometimes she conducted Bible readings as well as organising garden parties for charity and Christmas parties for tenants, servants and families. In some houses there were annual servants’ balls, which were extremely popular.

  In England women, especially those in the upper classes, were second-class citizens. Sylvia Brett, Lord Esher’s daughter, knew from early childhood that ‘women were only brought into the world to become the slaves of men. Every morning it was our duty to lace up our brothers’ boots.’ And, as the anonymous author of Good Form (1888), wrote, ‘they are brought up to feel that their first duty in life is to get out of the way of their brothers as soon as they possibly can, and marriage is the only possible means within their reach’.

  In other words, unlike the mansions of Fifth Avenue or the ‘cottages’ of Newport, English stately homes were not thought of as impressive backdrops for beautifully gowned women determined to impress with their wealth and social status, but run as the man who owned them thought fit.

  The only person of whom the head of the house was sometimes afraid was his mother. It was the era when the rule of the dowager was supreme. ‘Widowed mothers exacted obedience from sons and daughters, no matter what their age,’ wrote Mabell Gore, who became the Countess of Airlie. As for the daughters, their whole upbringing was directed towards finding a husband (of their own class, almost needless to say). Marriage was the only alternative to remaining at home under parental authority, and later being forced out, on the father’s death, to dependence on others or a meagre allowance. To this end, accomplishments rather than education were necessary: they learnt French, music, dancing, sketching, deportment, needlework (useful in the long winter evenings) and, perhaps most important of all, how a great house was run. As their social intercourse was limited to those houses considered suitable within reach of the carriage horses, this often meant a fairly isolated childhood and adolescence, largely confined to the house and its gardens. In the year or two before coming out, they might appear at luncheon but were not expected to say anything more than yes or no. It was something no American girl would have stood for.

  CHAPTER 6

  Mrs Paran Stevens

  American society was built on competition. Everything counted, from the size and number of the jewels with which the women were freighted to the smartness of the carriages in which they drove out. Oliver Belmont had chestnut horses with footmen in green livery – well, Mrs Stuyvesant Fish had the rarer colour of strawberry roans.

  ‘I know of no art, profession or work for women more taxing on mental resources than being a leader of society,’ said Alva Vanderbilt after years of engaging in that struggle. It was a battle into which Alva and others like her entered with gusto – and none more so than the woman who became known as Mrs Paran Stevens. Though it might seem pointless to us, it was all-engaging to these matriarchs of the Gilded Age.

  Their ruthless social ambition was the equivalent of the ferocious, no-holds-barred fights for power in the boardrooms of their men, in whom the early, frontier spirit still lived. Had not the financier Leonard Jerome, cultured patron of the arts though he was, picked up a Gatling gun to defend the office building of the New York Times, in which he was a major shareholder, at the time of the New York Draft Riots of 1863? James Gordon Bennett Snr, founder of the New York Herald, kept a cache of weapons in his office in case of attack by the angry readers who often gathered outside the building.

  Both males and females were descended from the same stock: those who had come to America to make their fortunes, had worked hard, taken chances, gambled on possibilities, survived difficulties and come out on top, but for the women there was only one field open in which to employ these qualities – the social. For the wives of the robber barons (as many of their men were known, with good reason), entry into the élite, exclusive milieu of the chosen was the main purpose of their lives. What made American society so much more competitive than English was that it was instituted by, run by and run for the benefit of women – women who had little else to do.

  Hence the battles royal in Newport and New York, the steely concentration, the miseries at social slights, the iron determination to clamber over the top of the stockade into the charmed circle at the centre, the bitter tears if an invitation failed to materialise. Nothing was overlooked, down to the abstraction of cards with famous names on them from the salver on someone’s hall table by socially ambitious lady callers to leave out on their own hall tables to impress others.

  No aspect of behaviour was too peripheral to be ignored by those wishing to climb to society’s upper reaches. Religion, or rather the public practice of it, was also part of the social round, and as competitive as its other rituals. Roughly speaking, the more successful you were in business, the more devout you were on Sunday; and even where you sat in that church was a mark of social status.

  As far as the social élite was concerned, there were only five churches in New York City. ‘Going to church was a social function,’ recalled Elizabeth Drexel. ‘Pierpont Morgan took up the collection at St Bartholomew’s, the Vanderbilt men roared out the hymns untunefully at St Thomas’s.’ The most fashionable was the massive Gothic edifice of Grace Church (at the corner of East 10th Street and Broadway), considered so important socially that it was attended not only by its regular congregation but by all those who aspired to enter society – if they could get in.

  For so sought after were the ‘top’ churches that, in a neat compromise between God and Mammon, they were able to sell their pews1 at prices only the very rich could afford; indeed, large family pews, the owner’s name on a brass plaque on the front, were considered valuable family property that could be handed down through wills. Seats auctioned off at St Bartholomew’s in 1872 fetched $321,000, their prices determined by their position, with those on the aisle at the front worth most.

  One determined social climber even approached the sexton at Grace Church, offering to pay him handsomely for a list of the most prominent members of the congregation, and when asked why she wanted them, said that she was about to enter society by giving a smart dinner and dance and wished to ask only the best people (the sexton turned down her offer in horror). Another tried to buy the stained-glass windows behind the altar of Calvary Church (on 21st Street) for a huge sum to decorate her dining room, with the same result.

  Although awkward subjects like the corrosive effects of great riches were avoided by tactful vicars, morality was emphasised. The passage of time could sterilise fortunes dubiously acquired (three generations washed it white as snow), so that while
a father, or preferably a grandfather, might have been known for sharp practice here and there, probity was essential for the son if he was to be an upright member of the congregation or belong to clubs like the Union and the Knickerbocker.

  And once the hours of planning, the strategic and tactical manoeuvres, the swallowed snubs and the cruel struggle had succeeded, what then? A life that seems to us, looking back on it, both comic and tragic in its stultifying boredom. The rules, the rituals, the stilted patterns into which the day fell for those who had reached the sunlit uplands of social success were all-important and, to those determined to maintain their position, unavoidable.

  * * *

  Possibly the most relentless social climber of all was Marietta Reed – better known as Mrs Paran Stevens – the tall, good-looking daughter of a grocer from Lowell, Massachusetts. She literally forced her way into New York society through sheer persistence, the lavish and unscrupulous use of the fortune her husband had left her, a skin so thick insults bounced harmlessly off it, a legendary temper and a judicious marriage for her daughter. Nothing, from her son’s happiness to countless lawsuits and adverse publicity, was allowed to stand in the way of her climb to the top.

  This began with her marriage. It was said that she had met her future husband, Paran Stevens, a rich widower who owned a chain of hotels, when she was working as a chambermaid in one of them. Stevens was quickly taken with this pretty, lively brunette and in 1851 they married. At forty-nine, Stevens was more than twice the age of his bride (her birth date is given as ‘circa 1834’). Marietta’s first step on the road to her ultimate goals, wealth and social eminence, had been taken.

  Nine years later, Paran Stevens built the hotel by which he became best known and which hugely increased his fortune: the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Having, to general derision at the time, bought its site in 1848 for a mere $5,000, he proceeded to raise this impressive building on the entire block between 23rd Street and 24th Street, at the south-west corner of Madison Square. Its address was 200 Fifth Avenue and it quickly became known for its luxury and elegance, attracting exactly the sort of clientele that he and Marietta had hoped for.

  Then, in 1860, came a huge and unexpected boost to the Stevens’ fortunes: when the nineteen-year-old Prince of Wales made his spectacularly successful visit to America (of its triumph the Prince’s governor, General Bruce, wrote: ‘exaggeration is impossible’), he came to stay at the Fifth Avenue. There could have been no greater imprimatur of excellence for the hotel.

  Naturally, Marietta Stevens made it her business to ensure that HRH was comfortable and happy there and a friendly acquaintanceship was formed, Marietta even presenting her small daughter Minnie to the Prince.

  As her husband’s business expanded to include more hotels and his wealth grew, Mrs Stevens decided it was time to tackle the icy peaks of New York high society. Without family connections, exceptional beauty or an introduction from someone within the circle, and hampered by the story of her past in domestic service, Mrs Stevens realised that her strongest suit was her husband’s wealth – and whatever ingenuity she could summon to her aid.

  She began her assault by giving musical evenings – musicales, as they were called. It was a wise choice: in early New York, an interest in and appreciation of classical music was a stepping stone towards social acceptability; by 1879 the Academy of Music was the musical centre of the city. Never mind that much of the stage was blocked from view by its huge pillars or that the seating was too close, its eighteen white and gold boxes with their red velvet cushions were filled by all those considered in the social swim. In practice, this meant the Knickerbockers, who would only sell or hand down a box to someone in their own circle.

  One of the newly rich, William Henry Vanderbilt, was extremely fond of opera, but his attempts to buy a box were rejected time and again; even when he offered the vast sum of $30,000 for a box for one season only (that of 1880) it was refused. For William Henry this was too much: he had had enough of being thwarted, as had some of his rich friends. None of them was accustomed to being frustrated; all of them had the determination to do something about it. Twenty-two of them, including several Vanderbilts, J. P. Morgan and an Astor (all of whom had been excluded from the Academy), contributed a minimum of $10,000 each (this sum would secure the donor a box) to build their own opera house, bigger, better and grander. They called it the Metropolitan Opera House.

  Behind its yellow-brick façade the ‘Met’s’ interior was sumptuous. It was done up in a rich plum colour, with plenty of gilt and three tiers of boxes known as the Golden Horseshoe. On Monday nights carriages, their doors emblazoned with newly bought coats of arms, driven by coachmen with cockaded hats, would draw up at its entrance at 1411 Broadway. At the front of each box would sit two beautifully gowned and bejewelled women, with their men behind. In the intervals, the velvet curtains at the back of these boxes would be drawn aside and the party would repair to the salons behind, some massed with flowers, some hung with satins and brocades. The Vanderbilts acquired five of these boxes.

  Not everyone approved of the change. When Anna Robinson, from one of New York’s old families, was invited to the Met’s opening in October 1883 she was delighted, and thought ‘the opera was lovely apart from seeing the new building. Seinbrick is excellent & Canpanini was just as good as ever. Nilsson sat in a box very near us, & looked beautiful, just as handsome as ever. I only hope someone will ask us to see her. The house is enormous, and after one has looked at it for a little while I think one likes the shape of the auditorium, but the decoration is so ugly, the whole building one colour, a dingy coffee color that they will surely have to change. It is so absolutely unlike the other house.’

  * * *

  Monday was the day society went to the opera. The day Mrs Paran Stevens chose for her musical entertainments was Sunday. It was a clever choice as there was no competition for it; Sunday evenings were traditionally a time when the sobriety of the day was concluded by evenings spent in the family. Although breaking this custom was a matter for disapproval, Mrs Stevens did not care. When told by one friend,2 ‘You don’t know what people say about your Sunday evenings, they call it Sabbath-breaking,’ she replied with magnificent scorn: ‘Do they indeed? They say. What do they say? Then let them say.’

  She was aided in her efforts by her sister, Fanny Reed, a well-known and popular singer often in demand for musical evenings – Fanny had moved her patrician audience to tears when she sang ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ at Newport in 1860. Indeed, so popular was Fanny that some said she had sung her sister into society, so much so that when she left to live in Paris one Knickerbocker matron, Maria Daly, observed acidly of another musical evening: ‘Mrs Fifth-Avenue-hotel was there, of course, with her sister. I would rather dispense with the music than have to take Mrs Stevens with it.’

  Marietta Stevens also served her guests champagne, just coming into fashion then but still somewhat of an innovation. A cruel portrait of her is drawn in Edith Wharton’s 1920s novel The Age of Innocence: ‘a tremendous black-wigged and red-plumed lady in overflowing furs’ who gives Sunday-night musical soirées because, she says, ‘it’s the day New York doesn’t know what to do with itself’.

  Marietta Stevens’s soirées became popular among many Knickerbocker males, bored by spending the long Sunday evenings in the unaccustomedly close embrace of domesticity … but the all-important wives were angered by this so-called desecration of the Sabbath. When the widow Mary Mason Jones, from an old New York family (with whom Marietta would one day become entangled), moved into her Marble Row mansion in 1869, she announced: ‘This is one house Mrs Stevens will never enter.’ It was a veto that echoed round the exclusive social circles in which Mrs Jones moved, and would entertain in her grand new house.

  For Mary Mason Jones believed in sumptuousness. Her box in the Park Theatre was considered the most luxurious: she had had it upholstered in blue silk and all the metalwork replaced by silver rails and fittings, and when in 185
4 she inherited two blocks of land from her father, the banker John Mason, she planned buildings like no other. Mason had bought up several acres of undeveloped, rocky terrain in 1823 for approximately $10 a city lot, a bargain that would prove immensely fruitful when the land was eventually carved into sixteen city blocks in what would become known as Midtown.

  Mason’s will was tied up in the courts for fifteen years, but once the property was hers outright, Mary Mason Jones set to work improving it. Far-sightedly, she took no notice of the fact that her inheritance was more than twenty blocks above the northern fringe of society, stretching from Fifth Avenue to Park Avenue, between 57th and 58th Streets, and in 1867, with the architect Robert Mook, she put her ideas into the building of this part of Fifth Avenue.

  Instead of the usual brownstones, the accepted hallmark of the Knickerbocker society to which she belonged, her scheme was based on the exuberant architecture of Paris, Fontainebleau and the country palaces of France, and carried out in white marble. For herself, there was a massive white marble château on Fifth Avenue and East 57th Street. When the project was completed, these isolated mansions, like nothing the city had ever seen before, were immediately given the name Marble Row. Mrs Jones ensconced herself in No. 1 East 57th Street and waited for society to come to her. And it did.3

  Decades later the New York Times would say: ‘Mrs Jones built the series of residences and introduced French tendencies in the architecture. Her innovation has been credited by some as ending the fashion of “brown stone fronts” as the home hallmark of “society”.’

  The impact of this building was such that Mary Mason Jones’s great-niece, Edith Wharton, featured a portrait of her, too, in The Age of Innocence. Here she is depicted as Mrs Manson Mingott, the shrewd social leader who constructed her lavish mansion daringly north of the affluent residential district. As for the mansion itself, Mrs Mingott ‘put the crowning touch to her audacity by building a large house of cream-coloured stone (when brown sandstone seemed as much the only wear as a frock coat in the afternoon)’. The description of the ‘wilderness’ that followed was equally true to life.