They married in 1867. Louise was twenty-four and Mackay, at just thirty-six, a millionaire. Thanks to the wealth now pouring out of it, Virginia City was no longer a collection of shacks: as well as the numerous brothels, saloons and prostitutes inseparable from a mining boom town,5 there were brick and stone houses, an opera house, a library, three theatres, four churches, three daily newspapers, a 100-room hotel and restaurants serving French cuisine.
From the start Louise had social aspirations. One description of her tells of her attending the local opera in a striped silk dress with her hair done in the newest fashion and a small square of velvet tied flat on her head. She had already seen a way of living that inspired her with the desire to become a social leader, houses with crystal chandeliers, Italian fireplaces and a butler and footmen. But although her husband was interested in art and literature, he was absorbed by his work in the mine, with other men, many of them much rougher, and with no interest in social life for the sake of social life.
By 1869 Louise had had enough of Virginia City. The life of a mining town, with its emphasis on saloon life and gambling, did not suit her. What she wanted was to live surrounded by the amenities of the civilised life of which she had caught a glimpse. When she said that she was suffering from ‘a nervous affliction’, her doctor tactfully advised a recuperative trip to Europe, and consultation with a famous specialist there. Soon after her first son by Mackay was born, in 1870, she left for Paris.
Mackay, who adored her and could deny her nothing, was wretched, but could not leave his business. His knowledge of mining had led him to believe that much deeper in the mountain lay a huge tranche of silver ore, and he was in the midst of complicated negotiations to ensure the legal ownership of the various small Comstock mines above it, earlier bought by three other Irishmen with whom he had formed a partnership. The following year, with the necessary paperwork tied up, he went to Paris to try and persuade his wife to return.
Then came one of the most extraordinary stories in mining history. Mackay’s instinct had been right. In March 1873 a huge mass of almost solid gold and silver ore was found at more than 1,200 feet deep, so enormous that it became known as the Big Bonanza; Mackay and his partners were quickly christened the Bonanza Kings.
There was instant turmoil in the mining world. The Bonanza shares, originally sold at $5, shot up, at one point reaching $710 a share, the markets fluctuated and in 1873 the federal government de-monetised silver – thus lowering its value – largely because of the flood of silver now pouring into international markets from the silver mines of Virginia City. Mackay and his partners became four of the wealthiest men in America – and Louise agreed to return, provided they left Virginia City.
The Mackays now settled in San Francisco, where their second son was born in 1874 and where John Mackay had begun to employ a broker to handle his business affairs. This broker was Charles Bonynge, who with his wife, daughter and stepdaughter Virginia was now living in San Francisco. It was to be a fateful crossing of paths, although at the time relations were cordial enough.
Louise, who had hoped to establish herself socially in San Francisco, was not happy. Despite her husband’s enormous wealth, she was snubbed by its old aristocratic families, who would not accept her because of her past as washerwoman and seamstress in a mining camp. She suggested settling in New York for the sake of their children as the education was better there, and where Mackay could visit her. Here, where her background was, she hoped, unknown, she might be more successful in her social ambitions.
But it was the same story in New York, where the barriers were still up against ‘new money’. With the same determination to climb the social ladder as the husband-hunting mothers of desirable heiresses, she decided that France was the answer; and in 1876 settled at 9 rue du Tilsit, Paris, from which she decided to make her assault on Parisian society. But first, the preparations: encouraged by Mackay, who liked her to spend if it made her happy, there was the refurbishing of the house and the ordering of a Tiffany silver service of 1,250 pieces that took two years to make, and the buying of clothes and, above all, jewels.
These became justly famous. She had a wonderful set of sapphires: bracelet, ring, diadem, earrings and two-row necklace of large square sapphires and diamonds from which depended a sapphire pendant the size of a pigeon’s egg. There were pearls (then more expensive than diamonds), in bracelets, necklaces and diadems, a parure of turquoises and diamonds, a necklace of pointed diamond leaves, there were black pearls, pink pearls, rubies, brooches and hair ornaments, all kept in a metal chest lined with red velvet. Thus adorned, exquisitely dressed, immensely rich, and beautiful, she began to entertain.
Then came what she hoped would be the event that not only allowed her full entrée into French society but would place her squarely on its pinnacle: in the autumn of 1877 she and Mackay, who had come over for a visit, gave a reception for General Ulysses S. Grant, who had finished his second term as President of the United States that March and was making a two-year world tour. It was a glittering affair: even the menus for the dinner were framed in gold instead of the usual silver and at the reception for 1,000 that followed, musicians from the Opéra had been engaged.
But what rocked Paris was the story circulating round the city the following day. It was said that the Bonanza Queen, as Louise was called, wanted to have the Arc de Triomphe, opposite her house, illuminated in honour of the General, and when this was refused by the municipal authorities, she was supposed to have retorted that she could buy it and light it up whenever she chose. This seeming arrogance over one of their most treasured monuments so angered the Parisians that, once again, the doors of high society slammed.
In San Francisco, Mackay had returned gladly to the demanding routines of the mining world, but gradually things were changing. The magnificent lode of silver was beginning to run out and silver itself was down in value. In 1881 he decided to move into another new field, the cable/telegraph business, and in 1884 formed the Commercial Cable Company – largely to fight Jay Gould and the Western Union Telegraph Company. He laid two transatlantic cables, forcing the price for messages down to twenty-five cents a word and thus undercutting Gould. A rate war followed for two years until Jay Gould finally gave up, saying of his rival: ‘If he needs another million he will just go into his silver mines and dig it out.’
While her husband was away Louise, now forty, suffered a further social misfortune. While staying in the French countryside she had decided to have her portrait painted by the most celebrated artist in Paris, Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, who came down from Paris to paint her. After several sittings the plan was for him to take it back to Paris to finish, with the aid of a model seated in Louise’s pose. Before he left, Louise made some critical comments on it, at which the internationally celebrated Meissonier took offence, and decided that the portrait would not be a pleasing likeness of her but one that would depict her as elderly and plain. According to one of Louise’s friends later, he deliberately copied the stand-in model’s large and ugly hands and heavy make-up worn to disguise lines.
When the picture, its price an astronomical $14,000, was brought to the ever-supportive Mackay, both Mackays saw it as a disaster. The story goes that Mackay immediately threw it on the fire. Unfortunately, Louise had agreed to its being exhibited before it was handed over to her, so that le tout Paris was able to see what one paper6 described as ‘the irreparable ravages of years’. Or as another correspondent pointed out, Meissonier, famous for detail, had ‘marked all the wrinkles, showed the paint and powder, spoilt the ear, exaggerated the imperfection of the fingers, etc.’. The gossip about the affair, and the ridicule of Louise Mackay and her flaunted millions, raged round Paris. (It also did for Meissonier, as other critics described it as a revenge caricature.)
However, Louise was not deterred in the pursuit of her goal of social eminence. Although Mackay hoped that his family would return with him to San Francisco, Louise had other plans. It was time to conquer
London. Saying that she wanted to have her sons schooled in England and learn English customs, she persuaded Mackay that a move to London was necessary. Here he bought for them a palatial house opposite Kensington Palace. The grounds of 7 Buckingham Gate covered seven and a half acres and its 100 rooms had domed ceilings, panels of mother-of-pearl, oak and walnut everywhere, marble, gilding and panelling.
At roughly the same time Bonynge, who had now retired, came with his family to London. Well aware that as nouveaux riches they had no hope of becoming part of New York society, the Bonynges had decided to follow the now established custom of coming to England to achieve a brilliant match for Virginia. London, with its growing numbers of the American wealthy, and where a number of American heiresses had already married into the peerage, offered the best chance of this. They settled at 43 Princes Gate, Kensington.
But the couple they knew best, and who could have helped them most, the Mackays, could no longer be counted on, for by now relations between the two men had changed, turning sour when Bonynge publicly attacked Mackay for using, as he saw it, various schemes to milk the public. Soon this was to turn into naked social rivalry, with blood – literal and metaphorical – spilt across the floor.
Both families now set about conquering London society, competing with each other as they did so. On the same afternoon in March 1886 Louise Mackay, Virginia Bonynge and her stepfather Charles Bonynge were all presented to Queen Victoria at a Drawing Room, Mrs Mackay by Lady Mandeville and the Bonynges by the United States Minister, as the US Ambassador was then called, Edward J. Phelps. Mrs Bonynge too would have been presented, but shortly before the Drawing Room a London newspaper revealed that she had been divorced, which made her ineligible. To the Bonynges, who believed that either John or Louise Mackay had released that detrimental information, it was the opening of hostilities.
When it was further rumoured that the only way the Bonynges had been able to secure the vital presentation was because Bonynge had taken the financially imprudent son of Minister Phelps under his wing, advising him on profitable investments, and in his deep gratitude for this Phelps had made the Bonynges his social protégés, the Bonynges bristled even more.
Only two or three weeks later, Mrs Mackay secured the presence of the Prince of Wales at a dinner for twenty-two in her house in Buckingham Gate – something likely to have been organised for a huge fee by Consuelo Mandeville. There were two menus, one in French for the Prince and his retinue, and his favourite dessert was served – tartelettes aux fraises. Mrs Mackay wore a white satin gown made in Paris specially for the occasion and carried a bouquet of lilies of the valley, American banjo players provided the music at dinner and the whole house was filled with richly scented roses, with white orchids spilling out of white velvet sacks on each corner of the dining table. Princess Alexandra was there, and after dinner singers imported from Paris entertained the guests. With the Prince’s imprimatur, Mrs Mackay became the fashion overnight. She, it appeared, was the victor.
But soon people began to ask, why was she living in Europe when her husband was in California? She had two young sons, she explained, and English schools were much better than Californian ones, where her husband’s mining interests kept him.
‘The triumph of Mrs Mackay is complete,’ said the New York Times, kindly going on to remind its readers of her earlier embarrassments. ‘She will soon forget all about her Meissonier misfortune and the Arc de Triomphe … His Royal Highness has consecrated by his presence the new temple of hospitality in Buckingham Gate … The crowd of ambassadors, ambassadresses, peers, peeresses, and American citizens soon became bewildering.’
This did not stop the derogatory rumours. One popular one was that she had financed a $100,000 expedition to New Guinea to trap 500 birds of paradise so that she could have an opera cape of their feathers – to refute this story she hung a parrot in a cage in her window; that having failed to buy the Arc de Triomphe she had offered for the Place de la Concorde; that her husband’s study was carpeted in banknotes.
A few days after the dinner came something much more damaging. The Manchester Examiner and Times, and the Echo in London, declared: ‘It is not generally known that Mrs Mackay, who entertained the Prince of Wales on Wednesday night … was once what the Americans call a washwoman, what we call a washerwoman. She was a poor woman, with two children to support, and washed clothes for some of Mackay’s miners out in Nevada.’ Another article said that she had kept a boarding house in Virginia City; worse still, a third claimed that ‘Mrs M … with all those other seekers after bonanzas, sought relief in the sage bushes instead of a jaspar or alabaster lined, and rose of attar scented closet.’
Then came a further canard: that her husband had been one of two little boys educated by a kindly uncle who was now a pauper in the Ulster County poorhouse, while ‘one of the boys is none other than Mackay, the California millionaire’.
The day after this appeared Louise Mackay and Bonynge were at the same dinner party. Louise, clearly convinced that the Bonynges were behind the unpleasant stories, cut Bonynge dead. Next morning one of the papers had a paragraph saying that Bonynge, who had always said he was a colonel, had ‘served in the Crimean war as a private where he was known widely as “Balaclava Charlie”’.
The response to this allegation appeared in a Californian paper, pointing out that, far from Bonynge being ‘without antecedents’, Charles II had granted John Bonynge, an ancestor, lands in County Longford, as shown in the Chancery courts. Louise countered with news of the expensive and amazing jewellery she had bought; Bonynge engaged the best-known portrait painter of the day, Bouguereau, to paint a portrait of his wife. London drawing rooms were enthralled by the promising feud that was brewing.
Then came gossip that fascinated everyone. Word spread that Mrs Mackay had given Lady Mandeville a diamond necklace in return for her presentation to Queen Victoria, a titbit that slipped out in the course of a row between Mrs Mackay and the hot-tempered Mrs Paran Stevens. Gleefully, Town Topics reported that ‘it has long been an open secret that Lady Mandeville and one or two other ladies in London have made a regular livelihood this way. Mrs Mackay … paid a very high figure for her start in London … pressing bills have been paid, diamonds have exchanged hands, and receipts for house furnishings have been freely given. Everybody knows that Lady Mandeville has not a dime of her own.’
Both sides now engaged agents to publicise the other’s lowly origins and bad behaviour and, in Louise Mackay’s case, her movements and social triumphs. Bonynge was described in what Collier’s magazine called ‘obviously subsidised stories’ as a former stable boy, Scrooge of working girls, and husband of a convict’s widow. ‘Mrs Mackay did not go unscathed,’ said the magazine. ‘She was derisively called … Mrs Bonanza, Silver Queen, boarding-house keeper and ex-washerwoman.’
Thanks to her husband’s wealth, Collier’s continued, she had been able to buy the Shah of Persia’s $150,000 pearls, a maharajah’s French palace, tapestries once owned by the Tsar of Russia – as well as a rumoured attempt to buy the Arc de Triomphe – but she had failed to penetrate French society.
In Leslie’s Weekly of 21 September 1889 were several lengthy paragraphs setting out Mrs Mackay’s background and stating that her husband had given her $5 million in US bonds and also her house in Paris, and that quite aside from the cost of her dresses and jewels, her current expenses were $100,000 a year. Louise instigated several lawsuits to try and quell the rumours. With most of these stories making their way to England, London was agog.
The person most affected by the steadily rising level of enmity was Virginia. When she had been launched into London society after her presentation at the age of eighteen her success had been instantaneous, and the Bonynges too achieved a royal connection when Virginia was taken up by the King’s sister, Princess Christian. Rich and beautiful, Virginia was the target of many suitors until she finally agreed to marry the most persistent, the Hon. Ronald Greville, eldest son of Lord Greville. It s
eemed that the Bonynges’ strategy for their beloved daughter had worked according to plan, with Virginia’s engagement to Ronnie Greville announced late in 1889.
Ronnie Greville was a dandy, described by friends as a ‘charming, unambitious man’. As the heir to a title, part of the social circle round the Prince of Wales, and with a genial, affable nature, he was considered quite a catch. For his part, as the family income had dropped drastically, he knew that he had to marry a rich woman – and Virginia came with a dowry of $4 million.
All seemed set fair, then rumours began to circulate about Virginia’s innocent head: that she was not the daughter of the Bonynges, that Mrs Bonynge had a husband who had served a term of imprisonment in San Quentin prison for murder and then committed suicide on release.
London split into two camps: those who were glad to see off this threat to their own chances of marrying a daughter to this eligible sprig of the aristocracy and those who were indignant that the ‘sins of the fathers’ should be visited on a guiltless offspring – among these was Princess Christian. Being supported by royalty meant that the Bonynges could maintain their position in society and afford to overlook the slander.
But with the Mackays ranged against them, this state of affairs could not go on for long. ‘The unforgiving spirit is very strongly developed in Mrs Mackay and forms one of the darkest sides of her character,’ declared the Chicago Tribune in August 1890. ‘Let an affront or injury be offered her and she seems utterly incapable of forgiving or forgetting. This trait has been evidenced in several cases, which have attracted more or less public attention, in which persons actuated by jealousy or ill will had sought to malign or injure her.’
The Husband Hunters Page 19
