The police called their bluff and herded them back into the crowds.
Only the middle of Fifth Avenue was passable, and carriages soon jammed the street as the four thousand guests Alva had invited began to arrive.
“You will have to move to the other side of the street, ladies and gentlemen, and keep this space clear,” a police officer directed. His orders were met with cold glances.
“But we are guests. We have invitations for the church,” the guests cried out in chorus.
“You have to wait to present them until the doors are opened.”
“Who says so?” demanded one indignant guest.
“The Inspector,” the officer replied.190
The police were able to clear the middle of the avenue in front of the church of all the onlookers except one, a well-dressed woman “upon whose face was written in unmistakable letters, Τ won’t,’ “
“Madam,” said the Inspector, “you can’t stand there.”
“Why can’t I?” she asked defiantly.
“Because no one else can. We can’t give you a privilege that the others do not have. So please move on.”
“I won’t!” was her retort. “I’ve got a perfect right here. You don’t own the sidewalks of this city.”
“I don’t claim to own the sidewalks,” the Inspector answered courteously. “But don’t you think it would be rather unfair if we allowed you to stand here and drive the others away?”
“I don’t care what you do with the others. You can’t get me away from here unless you use force.” And she stamped her foot.
“Far be it from me, madam,” he responded with a low bow, “to use force against a lady. You may remain here as long as you like. But in order that the rest of the people may not object to your receiving special privileges, I will furnish you with a guard of honor. Sergeant?”
The sergeant approached and saluted.
“Bring me ten of your tallest men.”
Ten giants assembled.
“Officers,” said the Inspector, “this lady is not to be disturbed. Form a tight circle around her, all facing the lady, and do not allow any one to see her.”
“You won’t dare…” the lady began.
The men formed a suffocating ring around her, all grinning at her. She begged them to go away, she threatened them, she coaxed, but not one of them said a word. Her face, which had become red as fire, now grew white, and in sheer desperation she attempted to break through the circle. She might as well have tried to break through a stone wall.
“I want to speak to the captain,” she said fiercely.
The Inspector approached her.
With eyes that blazed with fury, the woman hissed, “I’ll go away! Let me out and I’ll go away.”191
The circle opened, and she ran into the crowds.
Thirty policemen, their heels braced against the street, were leaning with their backs against the mob of women to hold them back. Perspiration streamed down their faces, and all the time they were begging the women to stand still. A carriage rumbled down the avenue. Thinking it must be the bride, the women “seemed to become possessed of demons.’ Reporters watched in amazement “as they struggled like so many drowning persons, and there being such a tremendous pressure behind them, they pushed the police line further and further toward the church.’192
At ten o’clock, the two big front doors of St. Thomas’s opened, and at once there was a rush of favored persons holding the coveted invitations. They pushed their way into the fragrant church, which now looked more like a fairyland than a house of worship, through the vestibule filled with hothouse ferns and palms.
Eighty decorators and florists had been working in the church for several days, transforming it to fulfill Alva’s vision. From the dome of the church, ninety-five feet above the pews, six massive garlands of greens, laurels from New Hampshire and Maine, intertwined with lilies, roses, and chrysanthemums, draped all the way down to the galleries. The columns supporting the church were entwined with pink and white chrysanthemums and ropes of white roses. Trellises of lillies of the valley and laurel, interwoven with pink chrysanthemums, banked the walls of the church and hid the chancel rail. There was scarcely an inch of stonework or woodwork that was not decorated by vines or blossoms. At the end of every fifth pew was a four-foot-high floral torch, composed of bunches of pink and white roses, with ribbons of pink and white satin tied in a bow and flowing to the floor.
The guests hardly noticed the transformation of St. Thomas’s, so intent were they on claiming a seat with a view.
Within minutes, the pews were filled with wealthy members of New York, Washington, Philadelphia, and Boston society. The six ushers, dressed in black frock coats that reached to their knees, and sporting boutonnières of lilies of the valley and large white silk ascots set with sapphire pins, gifts from the bridegroom, found it impossible to carry out Mrs. Vanderbilt’s explicit directions for where each guest was to be seated. Even as the organ recital began, “many of the women insisted on taking seats in the centre of the Church, others absolutely refused to be seated in the pews assigned to them, either on the side aisle or in the galleries, and still others actually stood on the seats whenever some well-known woman arrived so that they might catch a better glimpse of her gown.’193 There was a “great craning of necks” when Mrs. Astor, wearing “an exquisite costume of gray.’194 was ushered to a forward pew right behind where the governor of New York and the British ambassador sat.
The chimes of St. Thomas’s rang out at noon, and at that precise moment, Alva arrived. She saw that something was amiss, gave her orders, and immediately two men began to unroll a crimson carpet down the center aisle out to the curb.
Dressed in a plain gown of sky-blue satin with a border of Russian sable, and carrying a large bouquet of white roses with streamers of blue and white satin, forty-two-year-old Alva walked triumphantly into the church and up the center aisle, escorted by her two sons, Willie K. wearing a frock coat and gray trousers and carrying a top hat, and young Harold in knickerbockers and a wide white Eton collar. “Mrs. Vanderbilt looked very bright and fresh, and wore a decided expression of satisfaction on her face as she entered the church,” one reporter noted.195
Flutters and stirs of excitement murmured through the pews. Everyone knew how Alva Vanderbilt had torn her daughter from the man she loved and, because of her own social aspirations, had forced her into a marriage to a man who, some reporters were fond of quipping, “isn’t much more than one-half as big as his titles.”196 They knew how Alva had refused to invite any member of the Vanderbilt family to the wedding except Consuelo’s grandmother, the widow of William H. Vanderbilt, but she had refused to attend without the others. On that wedding day, one commentator noted, “Alva Vanderbilt was perhaps the most hated woman on earth.”197
With Mrs. Vanderbilt seated, the bridal party would not be far behind. “The bridal procession,” the New York Times had reported several days before, “will move up the broad central aisle of the church promptly at 12 o’clock.”198
The ministers came out of the vestry room and took their places in the chancel; the Right Reverend Codman Potter, bishop of New York; the Right Reverend Abram Newkirk Littlejohn, bishop of Long Island, who had baptized Consuelo; the Reverend Waldo Burnett, the chaplain at Blenheim; and the rectors of St. Thomas’s and St. Mark’s. All were on hand to bless this international alliance.
The ushers took their stations, three on one side of the central aisle, three on the other side.
The orchestra leader stood. He raised his baton. The fifty-member symphony orchestra was poised to strike the first crashing notes of the bridal chorus from Lohengrin.
Nothing happened. The church was still. No one stirred.
Here and there, a guest rustled in a pew. Someone coughed. A few ventured a quick glance toward the back of the church. There stood the duke of Marlborough in his dark gray double-breasted waistcoat, with white orchid boutonnière and pale gray gloves. The duke had been
scheduled to attend the rehearsal several days before, but had not, explaining to reporters as he continued his shopping spree that “that sort of thing is good enough for women.’199 In any case, no rehearsal could have prepared him for this. There he stood, “his face almost ashen,”200 “pulling down cuffs, arranging mustache and folding arms,”201 glancing toward the main entrance, casting “an appealing look toward Mrs. Vanderbilt,”202 looking at the orchestra leader, shaking his head no. NO!
Alva looked neither to the right nor the left, showing no signs of emotion. Where was Consuelo? Consuelo was five minutes late. Alva felt an attack of the Vanderbilt fidgets, but composed herself. Ten minutes passed. Where the hell was Consuelo? Now Willie and Consuelo were twelve minutes late. “My heart grew pale. Now they were fifteen minutes overdue,” Alva realized. “What had happened? I no longer heard the deep singing organ and the Orchestra. I sat tense and heard my heart beat…. I imagined everything awful in all the realm of disaster as the cause of the delay.”203
Every few moments, the guests seated nearest the door of the church “would get up and lean out over the aisle with much rustling, whereupon everyone else would turn in his or her seat and gaze fixedly at the spot with the feeling that in a moment, even as their eyes were fixed there, the long awaited must appear.”204
False alarms all.
Then there was a stir outside. The orchestra leader tapped sharply with his baton to call his musicians to attention.
“Here they come at last,” the guests whispered.
But no one came.
A woman’s voice exploded from the balcony in the sudden hush: “Oh, will she never come?”205
Alva felt certain that Consuelo had not at the last minute run off with that Rutherfurd boy; it would be impossible. She had made certain of that by placing a guard at the door of her daughter’s bedroom so that nobody could get near, even to speak with her.
“I spent the morning of my wedding day in tears and alone,’ Consuelo remembered; “no one came near me.”206
Not even her wedding gifts, which filled her room, consoled her. Not all the pearls Alva had received from Willie and now given to her daughter: the three-foot ropes of evenly matched pearls, each half an inch in diameter, that had graced the neck of Catherine of Russia, or those that had once been the empress Eugenie’s. Not the diamond tiara with pear-shaped stones that her father had given her, or the diamond belt from Marlborough, or the purse of gold mesh set with turquoise and diamonds from Mrs. Astor, or the pearl brooch from Mrs. Richard M. Hunt. Not the diamond pins from her younger brothers. Not any of the gifts, which were said to be “more numerous and valuable than the entire stock carried in many jewelry stores that do business in New York City.”207 Her mother had made her return “without excuse or thanks” every wedding present she had received from any Vanderbilt relative, “and I felt hurt and pained.”208 Consuelo picked up the pair of antique silver candlesticks from Winty, held them to her, and cried, feeling she had “betrayed the love of another man.”209
“Like an automaton,” Consuelo “donned the lovely lingerie with its real lace and the white silk stockings and shoes” and slipped into the beautiful wedding dress with “its tiers of Brussels lace cascading over white satin,” its “high collar and long tight sleeves,” and the “court train, embroidered with seed pearls and silver,” which “fell from my shoulders in folds of billowing whiteness.”210 With the unexpected arrival of the wedding dress some weeks before, Consuelo had realized that her mother “had ordered it while we were still in Paris, so sure had she been of the success of her plans.”211
Consuelo walked downstairs to meet her father, who was to drive with her to the church. She “felt cold and numb” as if this were not happening to her, as if she was going into shock. Willie took one look at his daughter and realized that something had to be done quickly before they could proceed to the church. “We were twenty minutes late, for my eyes, swollen with the tears I had wept, required copious sponging before I could face the curious stares that always greet a bride.’212
Outside, down on Fifth Avenue, a great shout arose: ‘The bride is coming!”
Four carriages carrying the bride and her bridesmaids proceeded down Fifth Avenue.
“The bride is coming,” the women shouted, waving their handkerchiefs at the carriage. Far away began a wild fluttering of white handkerchiefs, which spread and came nearer, looking like the white crest of an incoming wave.
“Hurrah! Here she comes! Look! Look!”213
As the driver of Willie’s carriage called to the horses and stopped with a flourish in front of St. Thomas’s, the church chimes were merrily pealing. The sun had broken through the morning mist.
Willie stepped out of the carriage carrying Consuelo’s enormous bridal bouquet of white orchids, and then helped his daughter step down from the carriage and disentangle her fifteen-foot train. The crowds went wild. Tall, slender, erect, and graceful, her dark brown hair brushed back in a pompadour, Consuelo looked very much like the duchess her mother had so long groomed her to be.
“Hurrah for the bride!” the onlookers shouted again and again. “Hurrah for the Duchess!”214
The bridal party assembled inside the church. The sexton breathed a sigh of relief, and waved his handkerchief. The orchestra leader dropped his baton, and the grand notes of the Wedding March reverberated through the church.
The six bridesmaids, in white satin gowns with royal-blue sashes and Gainsborough hats of blue velvet, started down the aisle, carrying their bouquets of red bridal roses and lilies of the valley. All those in the church rose to their feet. Then came two flower girls. As Willie and Consuelo followed, Consuelo “remembered to press my father’s arm gently to slow his step. So many eyes pried my defenses, I was thankful for the veil that covered my face.”215
Before the altar, Marlborough stood waiting, noticing that Consuelo “appeared much troubled.’216
Consuelo cringed at the irony of the hymn as the chorus of sixty voices broke into song:
O! perfect love, all human thought transcending,
Lowly we kneel in prayers before thy throne,
That theirs may be the love that knows no ending,
Whom thou f or evermore dost join in one.217
Consuelo glanced at Marlborough shyly. “I saw that his eyes were fixed in space.’218
Bishop Potter addressed the young couple: “I require and charge you both as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not be lawfully joined together in matrimony ye do now confess it. For be ye well assured that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God’s word doth allow their marriage is not lawful.”
Silence.
Bishop Littlejohn came forward and addressed the duke: “Charles Richard John, wilt thou have this woman to be thy wedded wife to live together after God’s ordinance in the holy estate of matrimony? Wilt thou love her, comfort her, honor her, and keep her in sickness and in health, and forsaking all others, keep thee only unto her so long as ye both shall live?”
“I will,” the duke replied in a low but firm voice.
“Consuelo, wilt thou have this man?”
Only those in the front row could hear the girl’s faint reply: “I will.”
Willie Vanderbilt stepped up to the chancel and took his daughter’s hand, placing it in Marlborough’s.
“Let us pray,” said Bishop Littlejohn.219
Consuelo and the duke kneeled on a white silk cushion for the benediction, while the chorus softly sang: “God be merciful unto us and bless us, and show us the light of His countenance.” The ministers recited the benediction.
And then, as the duke and duchess left the chancel to the march from Tannhäuser, the duke “made a slight, very slight inclination of the head toward the seat where Mrs. Vanderbilt sat.’220 The bride and groom, followed by the father of the bride, proceeded into the vestry room.
Between the most Noble Charles Richard John, Duke of Marlborough, of Blenheim Palace, in the County of Oxford, England, party of the first part, and William Kissam Vanderbilt of Oakdale, in the county of Suffolk, N.Y., Esq., of the second part, Consuelo Vanderbilt, party of the third part…
Whereas, a marriage is intended between the said Duke of Marlborough and the said Consuelo Vanderbilt, and whereas pursuant to an agreement made upon the treaty for the said intended marriage, the sum of $2,500,000 in 50,000 shares of the capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company, on which an annual payment of 4 per cent is guaranteed by the New York Central Railroad Company, is transferred this day to the trustees. And shall during the joint lives of the said Duke of Marlborough, Consuelo Vanderbilt, pay the income of the said sum of $2,500,000…unto the Duke of Marlborough for his life.222
In addition to setting aside $2.5 million for the young couple, Willie signed a separate agreement memorializing his obligation to pay both the duke and the duchess $100,000 every year for life.
Within ten minutes, the documents had been executed. His job done, Alva made it known that Willie “was to disappear.”223 Willie left the church by a side entrance. Alva did not want him around at the wedding breakfast at her home.
As the march from Tannhäuser resounded through St. Thomas’s, and the chimes outside rang the news to the city, the bride and groom walked down the aisle and out to the waiting carriage. “People were surprised to discover that she was fully half a head taller than the bridegroom,” the papers noted.224 As the gossip sheet Town Topics summed it up: “Winty was outclassed. Six-foot-two in his golf stockings, he was no match for five-foot-six in a coronet.’225
As Consuelo and Marlborough (“Sunny” as he was called, certainly not because of a happy disposition but rather because one of his titles was earl of Sunderland) settled themselves into the carriage, Consuelo was informed by her new husband that he had no intention ever of revisiting the United States, for he despised “anything that was not British.”226 Then “my husband spoke of some two hundred families whose lineage and whose ramifications, whose patronymics and whose titles I should have to learn.”227 Consuelo understood at once that she had gone from being “a pawn in my mother’s game” to what her husband was calling “a link in the chain.” “To one not sufficiently impressed with the importance of insuring the survival of a particular family, the fact that our happiness as individuals was as nothing in this unbroken chain of succeeding generations was a corroding thought.”228
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