Novel it might have been, but it soon caught on. By the 1880s the truly smart, led by the queens, went to Newport in the summer; six weeks there was essential if you wished to keep, or improve, your place in society. Conversely, not to do so showed that one’s status was insecure. People would even travel to Europe in order to have a realistic-sounding excuse for not being in Newport for the season if they were still on the fringes and not certain of acceptance. One way of finding this out was to be invited onto someone’s yacht for a week or so, thus ‘testing the waters’.
Anyone unwise enough to take a villa without the certain knowledge that they were ‘in’ would suffer the humiliation of being omitted from the splendid balls and dinners that took place almost every night. They could not take part in bathing parties on Bailey’s Beach, nor were their men allowed to join the Reading Room or the Club, with its bronze owls on the gateposts. They could arrive on the Casino lawn on Bellevue Avenue and be ignored while the ‘rubber plants’ – as the ordinary townsfolk were known – peered at their discomfiture through hedges. They usually left after a month of such treatment.
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The sea might be sparkling, the copper beeches glowing in the sunshine, but the refreshing sea breezes brought no sense of holiday relaxation; rather, the rules of etiquette were even more stringent here.
For some the day began with riding, changing at around mid-morning from riding habit to day dress, or with a visit to the Horse Shoe Piazza at the Casino (signing in here was a sign to your friends that you had arrived in Newport). Some women would sit listening to Mullaly’s orchestra, in clothes that swished and rustled if they moved or gestured – countless petticoats, of satin, lace or taffeta, embroidered, flounced, decorated with seed pearls or cupid’s bows in gold, enormous feather hats, parasols to match every dress, eighty or ninety different dresses for a season. ‘You will see at a reception in Newport more Worth dresses than anywhere else in America, except in New York during the height of the season,’ commented one newspaper. Sometimes the prettiest girls would seek a quiet corner ‘to listen to the music’, demurely embroidering while they waited for swains to gather round them, with whom they would take turns to promenade.
On fine days the destination would be Bailey’s Beach, a crescent of coarse grey sand reserved exclusively for the élite and for them the ‘only’ beach out of the half-dozen-odd suitable for bathing. But even the drive to Bailey’s, at the southern end of Bellevue Avenue, required the right clothes. ‘When I was seventeen my skirts almost touched the ground; it was considered immodest to wear them shorter,’ wrote Consuelo Vanderbilt of 1894.
‘My dresses had high, tight whalebone collars. A corset laced my waist to the eighteen inches fashion decreed. An enormous hat adorned with flowers, feathers and ribbons was fastened to my hair with long steel pins, and a veil covered my face. Tight gloves pinched my hands and I carried a parasol. Thus attired I went to Bailey’s beach for a morning bathe.’
The veil that Consuelo mentioned was not just a coquettish adornment. To be considered a beauty a perfect complexion was essential, which meant the skin had to be defended against the ravages of sun, wind and sea air. A parasol was merely a second line of defence; a heavy veil, sometimes even made of wool, was the most popular answer. Occasionally one of the more dashing women would wear something even stronger: a mask made of fine chamois leather, often with embroidered lips and eyes.
Bailey’s had a watchman in a gold-laced uniform who knew every carriage by sight and would allow no one else in unless accompanied by a member or with a note from one of the great hostesses; everyone else had to go to Easton’s, used by the townspeople. Women bathers wore full-skirted costumes and long black stockings, often wading into the water holding their parasols. At midday, when a red flag was run up, they beat a hasty retreat: it was now the turn of the gentlemen, who as always bathed nude.
A few played the new game of tennis, the women in pleated skirts, black stockings and white tennis shoes, with sailor hats to which were attached the inevitable double veils to protect them from the sun. Later, bicycling was to become the craze, with even a bicycle fête (in 1894) when forty or fifty of the social cream set off for a picnic destination – followed, naturally, by their carriages in case of fatigue or accident. Others visited the Worth boutique, conveniently sited on Bellevue Avenue, for a little light shopping.
Then came luncheon, perhaps on a yacht for which smart clothes were essential – though only married women could wear jewels in the daytime – followed, possibly, by a short visit to the polo field after which came the all-important rite of calling. This, along with the other immutable patterns into which the day fell, was, to those determined to maintain their position, unavoidable. ‘I could never comprehend why we should spend every glorious summer afternoon at Newport showering the colony with our calling cards when we had already nodded and spoken to our friends several times since breakfast,’ wrote Consuelo’s cousin, Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, son of the redoubtable Grace.
‘Yet punctually on the dot of three Mother expected my father, sister and me to join the splendid dress parade of carriages on Bellevue Avenue. How vividly I can recall the tedium of those occasions when, proceeding at a snail’s pace in a shiny black victoria and clutching our hateful card cases in spotless white gloves, we accompanied Mother on this sacred ritual … for two hours in the velvet-upholstered carriage we were not allowed to lounge, or slump, or cross our legs. My cards, at the age of nine, read: “Master Cornelius Vanderbilt, Junr”’.
Children, for whom this was supposedly a summer holiday, were taught never to laugh or cry too loud, always to stand when a lady entered the room, never to sit down in a carriage until all the ladies were seated, and only to speak when spoken to.
Other lessons quickly absorbed from their parents were those of snobbishness. One girl, a scion of two of the oldest Knickerbocker families, wrote in her journal of a seamstress who came to their home to mend carpets: ‘I don’t like to have her use our forks and drink out of our cups … I try to pick out a nicked cup for her to use so that we can recognise and avoid it.’ Another felt humiliated because she was the only one at a formal luncheon without a personal servant to carve for her.
When calling, it was important never to overtake the carriage of a social superior (in the same way that you must not out-dress, out-jewel or out-entertain her). These rules of exclusion even extended to marking invisible boundaries on the ground itself: although the cottagers could wander in the town, the townspeople were not allowed in Bellevue Avenue. Only during Tennis Tournament week did the two sets mingle. The ‘outsiders’ could also attend the Tennis Club Ball – and did – which ended the season although, again, there was no mingling.
In the late afternoon, for the privileged, there was the equivalent of the European evening stroll up and down the boulevards. Carriages of all sorts, from dog-carts to four-in-hands, drove up and down Bellevue Avenue in a double line, passing and repassing each other; the custom was to make a ceremonious bow the first time you passed a friend, to smile the second time and to look away the third.
It was as necessary then to be well turned out on wheels as to have a fine house. The grandest equipage was that belonging to Mrs August Belmont, drawn by four horses, on two of which rode postilions in short jackets, tight breeches and velvet jockey caps. In these vehicles sat women dressed to the nines in satin-striped dresses fitting smoothly over tight-laced corsets, flower-trimmed bonnets and the ubiquitous parasol, this time in fringed silk or velvet.
Fashionable young men drove dog carts, with two horses in tandem; older men drove showy phaetons with the best horses they could find and a groom with folded arms behind. A handsome pair of horses would draw a ‘sociable’, in which four people could converse easily while leaning back on cushioned seats under a sheltering canopy, the women in picture hats and organdie dresses, the men in white flannels and peaked sailor hats. It was as much a promenade of Newport society as a visit to the Casino.
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Edith Jones (later Wharton) remembered seeing a young woman staying with the Jones family appear for the afternoon drive in a white silk dress with a broad black satin stripe and a huge hat wreathed in crimson roses, hung with a green veil against the sun. She was escorted by Edith’s brother Harry, dressed equally smartly in a frock coat, a tall hat and pearl-grey trousers. After tea and gossip, it was time to change for the evening, perhaps for dinner on another yacht, perhaps for a grand dinner in one of the ‘cottages’, perhaps for a dance or ball.
‘Newport is like an enormous and brilliant garden in which are palatial homes,’ commented Price Collier. ‘We have summer resorts in and out of France, all over Europe in fact, but no one place where the wealth and fashion of a nation focus themselves as here.
‘When an American family gets money enough to afford an attack on the citadel of Society, they begin at Newport. Here congregate what are called “society people” from New York especially, but from Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago as well, and for two months in the summer the most highly polished American kettle boils and bubbles and steams upon the Newport hob.’
Nothing was too expensive or too grand for those summering in this little town. On the Vanderbilt lawns ices were eaten under the shade of Japanese umbrellas, with feet upon Turkey rugs. Tapestries were brought from New York drawing rooms along with silk sheets that could be changed twice daily, 100 pounds of lobster would arrive in basement kitchens on party days. There were fancy-dress balls galore, dinners on gold plate for 100 overlooking the distant sea dotted with white sails and the Newport shore, glowing in the last bright rays of the sun setting behind the Narragansett Hills. Once, a butler who was sacked got his revenge by painstakingly unscrewing the whole of a gold dinner service into 300 separate pieces and leaving them mixed in a heap on the dining-room table. As there was a dinner party that night a wire had to be sent to Tiffany’s, who despatched two men from New York to put the service together again in time for dinner.
In this society designed by women for women, a husband – provided he paid the bills and turned up dutifully at important dinner parties – was scarcely needed. Even Newport’s most eligible widower, James Van Alen, a man with an impeccable Knickerbocker background and a passion for all things English, from copper warming pans and oak settles to pewter tankards and expressions like ‘Prithee’ – once, he even brought over a man from England at vast expense to teach the members of the Coaching Club how a coaching horn should be blown – had to toe the line laid down by the female half of society.
When he invited a pretty young woman whom he had met at Narragansett, to which he had sailed on his yacht, to stay for the weekend, he was quickly made to feel he had gone too far. The reason? She was not part of ‘the circle’. Every single woman of the twenty-odd who had been coming to his luncheon party on Saturday now found that, somehow, it had become impossible – a headache here, a slight cough there, friends arriving unexpectedly – and a number of their husbands called off too.
Eventually, the desperate Van Alen asked his daughter to act as hostess. She agreed, but only on condition he paid her $5,000 – and if he wished her to talk to his pretty guest, he would have to make it $10,000. With no alternative, he had to agree. She took the cheque and told him it would get her some earrings she had seen in Tiffany’s. The luncheon party took place but the guest was left in no doubt that she was unwelcome and departed the following morning, saying the sea air did not agree with her.
Another who broke the rules was the colourful and popular James Gordon Bennett Jnr, publisher of the New York Herald and a noted sportsman who had introduced polo to the United States (he also funded Stanley’s expedition to find Livingstone). Frequently drunk, he would pursue one of his favourite hobbies by driving a coach and four at breakneck speed through the streets of New York, often in the small hours and sometimes in the nude.
His real prowess was as a yachtsman, something greatly admired by Newporters; in 1866 he had won the first trans-oceanic yacht race, between three American yachts, the Vesta, the Fleetwing and his own Henrietta. On another of his yachts, the 300-foot Lysistrata, he kept a milk cow in a fan-cooled stall, a Turkish bath, a company of actors and a luxury car – later he sponsored motor racing.
For years he had summered at The Elms, a house facing the Casino. Then, at the age of thirty-six, he became engaged to the socialite Caroline May, an engagement that ended in scandal when he arrived late and drunk at a party at her family house and then urinated into a fireplace in full view of his hosts. Caroline was so shattered that she broke off the engagement at once; the next day her brother attacked Bennett with a horsewhip and challenged him to a duel – fortunately both men were such bad shots that they missed each other completely. This time, Bennett realised he had gone too far and sailed for Europe. The Elms remained empty for years until he judged, accurately, that sufficient time had passed for his return to be welcomed.
Some found the relentless Newport social round tedious in the extreme. ‘To take a meal with them was to look dullness squarely in the eye,’ wrote Blanche Oelrichs, daughter of one of society’s leaders, of the small ‘informal’ lunches McAllister organised in Newport.
Men, in particular, chafed at its restrictiveness and some managed to escape from it on their yachts. ‘Father’s boredom on these expeditions [the afternoon ritual of calling] matched my own,’ wrote Cornelius Vanderbilt IV. ‘However, he soon developed the habit of disappearing to his boats or club just before the calling hour began. Mother left several of his cards, anyway, with the corner turned down to indicate that he was in Newport and available for parties, a favour for which he did not thank her.’
The yacht to which the nine-year-old Cornelius’s father disappeared was one of the most luxurious in the world. The 233-foot North Star was gleaming white, with a thirty-foot dining room, cabin walls hung with silk, velvet-rope handrails, Irish linen sheets, a well-stocked wine room and a library.
Yachts also served another purpose. They provided the perfect hideaway for the clandestine affair: out at sea, there were no prying eyes and no one could prove what did or didn’t go on. As both husbands and wives, for their different reasons, did not wish to upset the status quo, even when some magnate had added a boatload of chorus girls to the crew both he and his wife could maintain the convenient fiction that he was merely taking a short cruise for his health.
As in New York, there were never enough men. Many husbands only came from their offices at weekends, often in their own private train; others simply remained in New York or took off in their yachts. Sometimes there were so many absentees that there was a serious shortage of men for dinner or dancing. When extra were needed, the young officers from the Naval Training Station were invited. ‘Can you let me have five bridge players for tomorrow at Mrs Hamilton Twombly’s?’ would run a typical call to the Commanding Officer. Or ‘Will you send a dozen dancing men for Mrs Oliver Belmont’s ball?’ Although, naturally, they had to be of good family, they were still outsiders, and certainly nowhere near their hosts in wealth, so as one woman put it: ‘They always wore their uniforms, so that no one wasted any time on them.’
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Magnificent as were the yachts, it was the ‘cottages’, stretching the length of Bellevue Avenue along the cliffs and over Ochre Point, for which Newport became (and remained) best known – houses like White Lodge, a villa with a Nile-green ballroom, Elm Court, with three entrances (copied from those at Buckingham Palace), built by a coal baron, and the Frederick Vanderbilts’ Rough Point, a grey stone ‘Tudor’ house with lawns running down to the cliff edge and a Gothic hall. These Newport mansions had stained-glass windows by Tiffany, mosaic floors, panelled walls, furniture of bronze, white holly, red cherry or black walnut.
The best known and grandest of these huge mansions was The Breakers. In 1885 Cornelius Vanderbilt II had bought an estate at Newport’s Ochre Point that included a three-storey brick and frame house as a holiday home for his family. When
the house burnt down seven years later, his wife Alice took charge of the rebuilding. What emerged was a palace (no wood was used in its construction as Cornelius insisted the building should be fireproof). Instead it was almost entirely marble.
The Breakers had seventy rooms (thirty-three of them to house the necessary number of servants).2 Twenty-six horses lived in the outlying stables, together with their grooms and the twelve gardeners who looked after the eleven acres of garden. Its massive double staircase had bronze and gold balustrades, the white and gold music room with its tapestry panels and the morning room were designed and built in France, taken apart for shipping, and reassembled at Newport; weekly crates of treasures – fireplaces, columns, tapestries, pictures and mantelpieces – came from the houses of European noblemen; in the bathrooms with their marble tubs and solid silver taps were not only hot and cold running water but hot and cold running salt water, and the kitchen was so large that Mrs Vanderbilt could give a dinner party for 200. At a cost of $5 million it was far and away the most impressive house in Newport, and Alice Vanderbilt surged ahead towards the leadership of society.
At the same time, Cornelius’s brother Willie K was building the Marble House, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and masterminded by his wife Alva, in hot competition with her sister-in-law Alice, with whom no love was lost. It was finally finished in 1892.
At $2 million to build, with another $9 million spent on its interior, it outdid Alice’s creation (hence the term ‘vanderbuilding’ for this form of social competitiveness). It was inspired by the Sun King’s Grand Trianon at Versailles. Two sweeps of drive rose towards its portico, held by four Doric columns the height of the entire two-storey house; its fifty rooms needed a staff of thirty-six servants. The hall and staircase were built of yellow marble, the dining room of red; the walls of the Gold Room were covered in gold leaf applied by hand. Over Alva’s bedroom door, cherubs clasped shields featuring the initial A.
The Husband Hunters Page 14
