“Your mother doesn’t like me,” Mrs. Drexel wailed. “She has given me the most dreadful humiliation…. Oh, I have never been hurt so in my life….”
“But what has Mother done?”
“My name is not on the Throne,” Mrs. Drexel cried. “She does not love me. I won’t stay one minute longer in a house where I am not loved….”68
Another lady was denied the privilege of sitting with Mrs. Astor on the throne because of the size of her hips. “How can I have her when you have to allow at least two ordinary seats for her?”69
No one ever remembered Mrs. Astor’s Ball as being very much fun, but failure to be invited “virtually debars one from eminent leadership in that surpassing coterie known as national and international American society,” the Reverend Charles Nichols once noted.70 “Not to have received an invitation to an Astor ball; not to have dined at Mrs. Astor’s,”71 this minister of a fashionable church declared, was the equivalent of being banished from society. ‘There was weeping and gnashing of teeth on the part of those who did not receive the coveted slip of cardboard, ‘Mrs. Astor requests the pleasure…’” remembered Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, one of the ladies always invited. “Life could hold no more bitter mortification. There remained only one course open to them—to hide the shameful truth from their friends. They did it at all costs. Doctors were kept busy during the week of the ball recommending hurried trips to the Adirondacks for the health of perfectly healthy patients, maiden aunts and grandmothers living in remote towns were ruthlessly killed off to provide alibis for their relations…and every excuse was resorted to. Not a man or woman in society would let their friends jump to the dreadful conclusion that their absence from the greatest social event of the year was due to lack of an invitation!”72
Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt, Willie and Alva, had never received an invitation to Mrs. Astor’s Ball.
3.
The Vanderbilts were exactly the sort of objectionable element Mrs. Astor wished to exclude from her ball: people with no background who had gotten too rich too quickly, people who thought that their money could buy everything.
For Ward McAllister, the Vanderbilts presented something of a dilemma. On the one hand, McAllister’s purpose in life was to obey the wishes of his Mystic Rose. On the other, in his early days in New York, he had shamelessly cultivated the friendship of the Commodore. “I have always had a great fondness for men older than myself. Always preferring to associate with my superiors than my inferiors in intellect, and hence when brought in contact with one of America’s noblest and most cultivated men (withal, the then richest man in the United States, if not in the world),” McAllister noted parenthetically as an appealing characteristic of the Commodore in addition to his fine old age, intellect, nobility, and cultivation, “I sought his society, and he in turn appeared at least to enjoy mine. Dining with him constantly, I suggested that he should dine with me; to which he readily assented. So I went to Cranston, my landlord of the New York Hotel, and put him to his trumps to give me a suitable dinner. His hotel was then crowded, and I had actually to take down a bedstead and improvise a dining-room. Cranston was one of those hotel-keepers who worked as much for glory as for money. He gave us simply a perfect dinner, and my dear old friend and his wife enjoyed it. I remembered his saying to me, ‘My young friend, if you go on giving such dinners as these you need have no fear of planting yourself in this city.’”73
McAllister became a “great admirer of this grand old man.” “You, Commodore,” McAllister told him at one dinner, “you will be as great a railroad king as you were once an ocean king.” Vanderbilt grew “very fond” of this young sycophant, calling him “my boy.”74
When Ward McAllister saw young Willie and Alva Vanderbilt’s limestone château rising on Fifth Avenue, he knew there was no longer any holding the family back. On the evening of January 15, 1883, Willie and Alva were Ward McAllister’s guests at a Patriarch Ball. Mrs. Astor was also there. But she would not permit her court chamberlain to present the Vanderbilts to her.
“People seem to be going quite wild and inviting all sorts of people to their receptions,” Mrs. Astor complained. “I don’t know what has happened to our tastes.”75
How could she continue to ignore the Vanderbilts? McAllister asked his Mystic Rose. Theirs was the richest family in the world. Mr. and Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt had been to the homes of many of Mrs. Astor’s closest friends. And they had built that wonderful château just down the street.
That house, Mrs. Astor informed her chamberlain, was absurd. She was sick and tired of hearing about that house. A garish display of wealth, of palace car taste. Leave it to the parvenus to show off like that. It was absurd to have that monstrosity sitting on Fifth Avenue. It simply did not belong there. Surely people should not be able to buy their way into society. That was exactly what she had been fighting, to hold the line. Why, the Vanderbilts were nothing but rich vulgarians.
Alva stormed home that night from the Patriarch Ball. That was it! she complained to her friend Consuelo, Lady Mandeville, who was spending the winter as the Vanderbilts’ houseguest. That did it! This was the final straw! Mrs. Astor would not even say good evening to her. Everyone there had been talking about their invitations to Mrs. Astor’s Ball, and again this year the Vanderbilts had not received one. Social acceptance of the Vanderbilts seemed to be receding the closer they approached.
Enough was enough. Maybe the Commodore had been a little rough around the edges. Maybe his talk had contained too many expletives. Maybe he had not always been discreet in his personal life. Maybe he had pinched the pert little bottoms of the maids at the houses he visited. And yes, maybe it was true that he had expectorated tobacco juice onto his hostess’s Aubusson rugs. But what about the founder of the Astor fortune, John Jacob Astor? Who was he but the son of a butcher, a German immigrant who had made a fortune killing animals and skinning the stinking carcasses? A fur dealer. An opium trader. Everyone knew that one hostess had reported that he “dined here last night and ate ice cream and peas with a knife,”76 that at the dinner party given by the United States minister to London, Albert Gallatin, he had wiped his greasy fingers on the white dress of the daughter of the hostess, that one European visitor had watched in horror as he withdrew the chewing tobacco from his mouth and absently ran it over the window-pane as he talked.77
Mrs. Vanderbilt and Lady Mandeville put their heads together and decided it was time to act. Alva would hold a little housewarming party in honor of her dear friend Lady Mandeville. This party would be different from Mrs. Astor’s boring balls where guests sat and talked quietly of nothing but food, wines, horses, and yachts. “I went to my first society dinner party,” a lady confided to her friends after going to Mrs. Astor’s, “and I was bored to death. I amused myself by grading the people at the table in terms of dullness from one to ten, with one being the absolute peak of deadliness—and hardly a guest fell below three.”78
Alva’s party would be different. She would throw a fancy dress ball.
Monday nights belonged to Mrs. Astor. Everyone knew that. She had made them her own. Monday nights were Mrs. Astor’s nights at the opera. Monday nights were the nights of her Patriarch Balls. It was on Monday nights that Mrs. Astor gave her dinner parties, her receptions, her musicales, her dances. It was on a Monday night that Mrs. Astor gave her annual ball. So it was of course for a Monday night that Alva scheduled her party.
Alva’s house was much bigger than Mrs. Astor’s. There was no reason, therefore, to restrict her invitation list to four hundred just because Mrs. Astor’s old ballroom could hold only four hundred guests. Early in February, Alva mailed twelve hundred invitations to her fancy dress ball for Monday evening, March 26, 1883, after the completion of the forty days of fasting and penitence of Lent, at the beginning of a new spring. Everyone of importance was invited.
Alva and Lady Mandeville realized that Mrs. Astor’s friends would want to show their allegiance to her, but who would be able to r
esist the opportunity to see the inside of the Vanderbilts’ new palace? They would come out of curiosity. And, nothing so much as a title fascinated New York society. Having Lady Mandeville as the honored guest was a sure attraction. Nevertheless, having heard the stories of the heartbreaking balls thrown by the socially ambitious to which no one came, Alva and Consuelo left nothing to chance. Through well-placed leaks to the press, they began a campaign to make the forthcoming ball the most talked-about social event of the season.
“The Vanderbilt ball has agitated New York society more than any social event that has occurred here in many years,” reported the New York Times. “Since the announcement that it would take place…scarcely anything else has been talked about. It has been on every tongue and a fixed idea in every head. It has disturbed the sleep and occupied the waking hours of social butterflies, both male and female, for over six weeks…,”79
The newspapers caught the excitement and assigned reporters to prepare lists of those who would be going and what costumes they would wear. Those who received invitations began ransacking illustrated books, histories, and novels, and racing through art galleries and museums, to come up with clever ideas for costumes.
One of the city’s premier tailors, Lanouette, worked to exhaustion to complete his customers’ bizarre requests. He was compelled to refuse many orders “on account of my inability to complete them. I had one hundred forty dressmakers and seamstresses at work night and day for the past five weeks” making over 150 costumes, while “many ladies had their gowns made at home either by their own seamstresses or by dressmakers hired for the occasion.’80 Amid the rush and excitement of business, the papers reported, “men found their minds haunted by uncontrollable thoughts as to whether they should appear as Robert le Diable, Cardinal Richelieu, Otho the Barbarian, or the Count of Monte Cristo. The ladies were driven to the verge of distraction in the effort to settle the comparative advantages or the relative superiority from an effective point of view of such characters and symbolic representations as the Princess de Croy, Rachel, Mary Stuart, Marie Antoinette, the Four Seasons, Night, Morning, Innocence and the Electric Light.’81 Some reporters speculated that Alva would appear as Cinderella to represent her marriage to the fairy tale prince who had made all this possible.
It soon became quite clear, as the New York Times noted, that “everybody who amounts to anything, that is, in the eyes of society, will be present as over 1,000 invitations have been issued and it is not likely that anybody who has been invited will fail to go.’82
Mrs. Astor, however, still had not received her invitation.
Late one winter’s afternoon, Ward McAllister set off to the new château on Fifth Avenue on a most delicate mission.
McAllister admired Alva’s new home. He told her how fond he had been of the Commodore, and of all the special dinners he had with him. He told her stories of the first fancy dress ball he had ever attended, given by the Schermerhorns many years before, when all the guests had come in the costume of the period of Louis XV. He pontificated for a while on the importance of planning every detail of her own forthcoming ball, “as a general would a battle,” so that the evening would be a success. And then, without a pause in the conversation or a change in his lazy drawl, Ward McAllister began working into the conversation what was on his mind.
His daughter and Mrs. Astor’s daughter, young Carrie Astor, and their friends had been practicing for weeks, for weeks! to perfect the star quadrille they would perform at Alva’s ball. He had watched them just the other day. Their costumes had been completed and fitted, and refitted. Oh, if Alva could see them! Two of the young ladies would dress in white, two in blue, two in mauve, and two in yellow! The precision of their dance from the hours of practice! The beauty of the girls! It would be spectacular!
Alva sat quietly listening, nodding sympathetically now and then. But inside, she was all but bursting. Her trap had been entered! She felt like running through the period rooms of her home and up the grand staircase, shouting war whoops of triumph as she had as a child in Mobile when she beat her brothers and their friends at some game.
Instead, she hid her hand and played it with the skill of a robber baron.
Alas, what a shame! What a pity! Alva shook her head in sorrow. Oh, what a shame! But obviously neither young Carrie Astor nor her mother had been invited to the ball. How could they have been? It was out of the question. The Astors had never paid her a call. Why, she had never even met Mrs. Astor. And all that work the poor girls had gone to! It truly was a shame, but there simply was not a thing she could do about it.
She was right, of course. Ward McAllister knew she was right. Those were the rules of society.
As soon as he could leave gracefully, Ward McAllister thanked Mrs. Vanderbilt for a lovely visit and told her how much he was looking forward to the evening of March 26. He then took his hat, walked down the front steps to Fifth Avenue, and hurried down the street to 350 Fifth Avenue.
“Mrs. Astor,” it was said, “was always dignified, always reserved, a little aloof…. No one ever knew what thoughts passed behind the calm repose of her face.”83 When the news that she had been snubbed by those upstart Vanderbilts was brought to her by her chamberlain, the face of the Queen of Society lost its calm repose.
Mrs. Astor bristled. She was angry. She was furious. She was enraged. Every prejudice she held about the parvenus, every black thought about the Vanderbilts, came boiling to the surface. Who did that little strumpet think she was? What a humiliation! What an embarrassment! Revenge! She would teach Mrs. Vanderbilt a lesson or two!
Somehow, Ward McAllister convinced her that she had been checkmated. The time had come to recognize that the Vanderbilts were a part of New York’s high society, if for no other reason than to protect poor little Carrie, Mrs. Astor’s last unmarried daughter. The time had come. The time had come. “My dear,” Mrs. Astor told one of her friends, “we have no right to exclude those whom the growth of this great country has brought forward provided they are not vulgar in speech and appearance. The time has come for the Vanderbilts!”84
Mrs. Astor called for her carriage and ordered it to proceed up Fifth Avenue to Number 660. There, one of her footmen dressed in blue livery, a copy of the uniform at Windsor Castle in England, got out of the carriage and walked up the steps to the entrance. The great door slid open. Mrs. Astor’s footman presented a calling card to the maroon-liveried Vanderbilt footman who had opened the door. Engraved on it were two words: MRS. ASTOR.
A calling card with two words. Yet those two words opened up a new world for Alva Vanderbilt and the Vanderbilt family. They had finally crashed through the gates of society. Mrs. Astor had come calling.
The next morning, Alva ordered her carriage to take her to 350 Fifth Avenue. There, one of her maroon-liveried footmen walked up to the entrance of Mrs. Astor’s brownstone and delivered the last of the invitations to her fancy dress ball to the blue-liveried footman at the door.
Between then and the evening of March 26, if Mrs. Astor had reservations about what she had done, Ward McAllister kept reminding her of one of his cardinal rules of conduct: “A dinner invitation once accepted is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend.’
4.
Monday, March 26, 1883. A stranger to the city would have noticed that something extraordinary was afoot. Reporters saw “carriages flying about with unusual go, and there was much slamming of front doors as hairdressers, milliners, costumers and other tradespeople were admitted or let out.’85 All day long, wagonload after wagonload of palms and plants purchased from conservatories all over New York City pulled up to the Fifty-second Street entrance of the Vanderbilt mansion, until it seemed as if the house were being converted into a tropical jungle.
By seven o’clock that evening, reporters assigned to cover the ball spotted “gentlemen returning from the hair dressers with profusely powdered heads alighting from coupes along Fifth Avenue, and hurrying up the st
eps of their residences to complete their toilets.’86
Those who had taken up vigil outside the brownstone at 742 Fifth Avenue saw the workaholic Cornelius Vanderbilt II come home early from the offices of the New York Central in Grand Central Depot. A costumer and hairdresser awaited his arrival. If the sightseers could detect any trace of happiness in his stern visage as he entered his home, it was probably less because of the anticipated pleasure of an evening at his brother’s fancy dress ball than it was because shares of New York Central stock closed that day at the satisfyingly high price of 126%, with an annual dividend of 8 percent.
That evening, Ward McAllister was in his glory. Determined to be costumed in a way that would “live ever after in history,” weeks before he had gone “to a fair dowager” to ask her advice as to the best tailor to prepare his costume. “Mapleson is your man,” she had told him. “Put yourself in his hands.”
Mapleson’s female assistant looked McAllister over.
“Why, man alive!” she said. “Don’t you see he is a Huguenot all over, an admirer of our sex. Put him in the guise of some woman’s lover.”
“By Jove,” Mapleson said, “you are right, my fair songster! I’ll make him the lover of Marguerite de Valois, who was guillotined at thirty-six because he loved ‘not wisely, but too well.’ Pray, what is your age?”
“Young enough, my dear sir, to suit your purpose. Go ahead, and make of me what you will,” McAllister replied.
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