On Tuesday, August 25, 1896, a clear summer morning in Newport, Neily’s younger brother Alfred escorted the bride down the great staircase of The Breakers into the gold room, where a small assembly of Whitneys and Vanderbilts, minus Neily and Grace, had gathered. While guards in another room watched over the wedding gifts—the diamond tiara and necklace Cornelius had given his daughter, a diamond cluster from Willie Vanderbilt, five strands of matched pearls valued at $200,000 from Harry’s father, and countless diamond and pearl brooches and pins—Cornelius reached up from his plush-covered wheelchair when it was time for him to give his daughter away, and placed Gertrude’s hand in Harry’s. Afterward, the orchestra leader struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner,” an obvious comment on cousin Consuelo’s marriage ten months before. “It is so rarely that an American girl of fortune marries one of her own countrymen,” the orchestra leader commented in approval, “that I thought the selection decidedly in keeping with the occasion.’128
Gertrude and Harry’s honeymoon was spent at Harry’s father’s eight-thousand-acre preserve on October Mountain outside of Lenox, Massachusetts, in a small cottage that had been quickly built while the main house was being constructed. “The little house we lived in,” Gertrude wrote to her friend Esther, “the smallest and dearest you have ever seen…only had two rooms and a piazza, and we did not have a servant within a quarter of a mile….If you ever get married, Esther (which of course you will, and probably very soon too), don’t take a maid on your honeymoon. Harry and I really grew dependent on each other. More than that. There is nothing that brings you so close to a person as having to do the little necessities of life together.”129 Alice Vanderbilt knew that her daughter’s enchantment with playing house would not last long. She wrote to Gertrude, sending her quarterly allowance check, which she had forgotten to give her in the excitement of the wedding, asking if Gertrude would want to use the Vanderbilts’ private railroad car, instructing her to send all her laundry to The Breakers, and wondering how soon she might want Jeanne, her personal maid.
Gertrude’s wedding was the first of many signals to Neily and Grace that they were outcasts. Neily grew restless, wondering how his father was, wondering why his parents wouldn’t communicate with him, wondering how long they would turn their backs on him and his wife, wondering if he had caused his father’s stroke. With his stroke, Cornelius Vanderbilt had been transformed from a vital man of fifty-three consumed by his business and charitable interests into an invalid confined to a wheelchair, who never regained his energy or the full use of his limbs despite endless visits to spas, physicians, and hypnotists. “Neily telegraphs to his brother Alfred every few days asking about his father and he, Alfred, answers as to Mr. V’s condition, but that is all the communication we have had with them,” Grace wrote to her parents during the honeymoon.130
The first word Neily received from his father was a terse cable that autumn: ‘Tour grandmother died Friday after an hour’s illness. Funeral Tuesday. Father.’ “This is the first message of any kind Neily has had from his father,’ Grace wrote to her mother, “and he was so so happy to get even this.”131
Neily had been one of Mrs. William H. Vanderbilt’s favorite grandsons and might well have expected to receive something under her will, but his grandmother left all her fortune to her Kissam relatives and to St. Bartholomew’s Church.
It was becoming increasingly difficult for Neily and Grace to live like Vanderbilts on their income. Neily received $6,000 a year from his trust fund, and Grace received $25,000 a year from a trust fund her father set up for her, but she was accustomed to spending on her wardrobe each year more than their combined incomes. Grace’s wealthy sisters did not help matters, writing to her about footmen and valets and butlers they were interviewing to work for Neily and Grace, and debating the virtues of various pieces of jewelry Grace must have: “a dear little chain necklace with emerald drops,” a “pear-shape diamond necklace,” a “great pin with sapphire and two diamonds,” or a “huge pendant of the ruby necklace.”132
Both Neily and Grace realized how important it was to reestablish their relationship with the senior Vanderbilts. After receiving his father’s cable, Neily immediately wrote to him, telling him how much he wished to see him, and reporting that he and Grace planned to sail home on December 16, and that he hoped his father would not refuse to see him.
On December 3, Neily received a cable from Dr. McLane, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s personal physician, in response: “Your Father has read your letter he is doing well and making slow but steady progress he does not wish to see you at present and as his physician I must insist upon exemption from worry do not return an interview impossible have written you—McLane. December 2nd New York.”133
When the Wilsons learned from Grace and Neily that they were not going to return to New York as they planned, they were frantic. Rumors were circulating in the city that Grace had given birth to a child in Switzerland and that this had been the reason for the sudden marriage. Richard Wilson went to see Dr. McLane. It was essential that Grace immediately return to New York to quell these vile rumors and preserve her reputation. “I asked Dr. McLane if he could name a time when he would not object to Neily’s return,’ Mr. Wilson wrote to his daughter. “He replied that he hoped in a few months Mr. V. would be so far recovered as that the excitement incident to Neily’s return would not injure him.”134
In the meantime, the Vanderbilts were making it quite clear to their family and friends that they would never have anything to do with Neily and Grace. As Alice Vanderbilt wrote to her daughter, Gertrude, who was still on her honeymoon with Harry and now was in Japan, “Your Father went to Communion—up to the chancel rail, I mean—for the first time & that made him very happy…. Cornelius [Neily] has written three letters to him of the sort you might expect, saying he was sorry Father was ill & that he wanted to come home & see him. Never saying, however, he was sorry he had acted as he did or anything to show contrition except that they differed. Your Father got Dr. McLane to cable him not to come home as he did not wish to see him at present & an interview would be impossible.”135
Finally, in January 1897, pressured by the Wilsons to hurry home and clear Grace’s reputation, Neily and Grace arrived in New York and moved into the Wilsons’ house at 511 Fifth Avenue.
“My dear Mother,” Neily wrote to Alice Vanderbilt upon his arrival:
I received yr. note a few days ago. I feel terribly that you refuse to see me. What there has been in my actions during the past eighteen months to make you refuse to see me I do not know.
I considered the question of my own happiness lay with me, and I persisted in my choice. This is all I have done during that time and you know I have done nothing but what is perfectly open and just.
And yet I am treated as if I were a scoundrel by my own family when there is nothing I have done that I am ashamed of, or regret, or that I would not wish to have the whole world know. My dear Mother, will you not allow me to see my sick Father? He is ill, and though you do not seem to believe it, I am very wretched at not seeing him.
I ask this of you, and pray you will not refuse it. As ever, Yr. Aff. son C.136
As usual, Neily received no response from his mother or father.
Neily set out to prove himself, commuting every day to New Haven to earn his master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Yale, devoting himself to his studies, then seeking his old job with the engineering department of the New York Central. “Your Father has sent word to C[ornelius] that he may have the position he formerly filled in the Engineer’s Office” Alice Vanderbilt told Gertrude, “saying that he does this, not because he & I have changed our opinion of his conduct, but because he had promised it before he was taken ill. As a promise it had to be kept & that is all.”137 There was also in this letter to Gertrude a reprimand for making the mistake of inviting Neily and Grace to a supper dance. “It was very awkward for you about the Small Dances,” Alice scolded her daughter. “I think you ought not to
accept anything or go on any committees where the W[ilson] family are to be & I would not attend those particular Dances if I were you. That family will do everything to make it appear that you side with them & there should be no mistake in letting people see that you do not.”138
Grace gave birth to a baby boy on April 30, 1898. “To all appearances,” Town Topics reported, “he looks like any other two-day-old, in flannels, snowy linen and dainty laces. When he thrust his chubby little fist towards the ceiling, his father laughed outright…. Society sees him only as a living question mark. Will he heal the breach between the families? If they are reconciled he will be worth many times his weight in gold.”139 Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, Neily and Grace named him, but even this did not soften the hearts of Alice and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who rushed off to Europe to a health spa rather than attend the christening. Those members of the Vanderbilt family who sided with Cornelius and Alice always referred to the new Cornelius Vanderbilt as “that Wilson baby.”140
Six weeks after the christening, bored with Neily’s ascetic life, Grace took the baby and was off to Europe by herself, while Neily finished his courses and concentrated on his job with the New York Central, working to design a new locomotive firebox that would eliminate engine trouble. His invention was a success and was installed in many of the locomotives of the Vanderbilt system, saving the New York Central hundreds of thousands of dollars in repair bills. Neily was hailed as a genius in locomotive engineering. “This young man intends to win back his father’s favor by showing that there is something in him,” commented a New York Central executive who had served under the Commodore, William H. Vanderbilt, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. “And you may depend upon it he will make his mark. He is a worker, and he appreciates the value of a thorough understanding of the details that make the best executive. Unless I am greatly mistaken, this young Vanderbilt will be a great railroad executive before he dies.’141
Nary a word of congratulations or acknowledgment emanated from the frigid splendor of The Breakers.142
Early in the afternoon of Monday, September 11, 1899, Cornelius Vanderbilt felt well enough to leave The Breakers with Alice and travel to New York in his private railroad car so that he could attend directors’ meetings the next day of the New York Central, the New York and Harlem Railroad, and the Wagner Palace Car Company. They spent a comfortable several hours aboard Car No. 493, with its four mahogany staterooms, kitchen, pantry, and dining compartment, library, a main saloon of mahogany with a piano and harp and with furniture upholstered in rich blue velvet, and at the rear an observation room finished in quartered English oak. They would return to Newport on Wednesday to prepare for a dinner party they would host the next day in honor of Ulysses Grant’s granddaughter and her fiancé.
At six o’clock the next morning, Alice awoke in her bedroom of the Fifth Avenue mansion hearing Cornelius shouting for her.
“Alice! Alice!”
Alice rushed into his room to find her husband writhing in pain, his face blue.
“I think I am dying,” he said to his wife, falling unconscious.143
Servants came running in response to Mrs. Vanderbilt’s cries for help, but within minutes the fifty-six-year-old head of the House of Vanderbilt was dead of a cerebral hemorrhage.
His children were summoned. Gertrude, Neily, and Reginald rushed down from Newport by special train. For the first time since his marriage three years before, Neily, who looked tired and haggard, crossed the threshold of the Fifth Avenue mansion.
Neily and Grace were not oblivious to the importance of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s will, which would not be read until brother Alfred reached home from his graduation trip “to see the entire world, or as much of it as we can.’144
“I do so wonder what you are doing—and if it is hot, and uncomfortable, and if you are fairly well—???” Grace, who was in Newport, pregnant with their second child, wrote to her husband. “Have you seen the Journal and World of today—Do look at them. You are quoted in the World, and the Journal seems to know all about the three copies of the W[ill].”145
Later Grace reported to Neily that one of her friends told her that everyone was speculating about what the will would contain and some had said to her “that if you are cut off it will be iniquitous…. ‘Well, what would you consider cut off?’ and they responded ‘Why, five millions’“Another friend “also agreed that if it were true that you had been left very little it would be an outrage, but he would not for a moment believe any of those stories, as your father never could have done such a thing.’146
Late in October, when Alfred returned to the United States, the family assembled at The Breakers. There, in the dark library, paneled with Circassian walnut stamped in gold, they gathered around the great stone fireplace that, for $75,000, had been ripped from the sixteenth-century Château d’Arnay-le-Duc in France and installed at The Breakers, complete with its inscription in archaic French etched on the white marble mantle: “De gran bien me rie, et poind no default; Il n’est qu’adresse, quant tout prevault” (Little do I care for riches, and do not miss them, since only wisdom prevails in the end).
There was Alice, dressed in mourning. For the rest of her life, for thirty-five more years, she would wear nothing but black. There was eldest son Neily, twenty-six years old; twenty-four-year-old Gertrude; twenty-two-year-old Alfred; nineteen-year-old Reginald, the apple of his mother’s eye; and thirteen-year-old Gladys. Only the rustle of a quiet fire and the boom of the autumnal surf on the cliffs disturbed the silence of the gloomy gathering.
A group of Vanderbilt lawyers looked from Neily to Alfred. And then the senior attorney began to read the will of the late Cornelius Vanderbilt.
“I give and devise to my beloved wife Alice G. Vanderbilt, for and during the term of her natural life, my dwelling house on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street,” including all the stables, furniture, and works of art. “I except from this bequest the portrait and bust of my grandfather and the portrait of my father, and the two portraits bequeathed to me in the will of my grandfather, all of which I give to my son…Alfred.’ The Commodore’s gold congressional medal, presented for his gift to the Union of the S.S. Vanderbilt during the Civil War, had always been passed to the new head of the House of Vanderbilt. Cornelius bequeathed the medal to Alfred.
Clause after clause was read. Alice was given The Breakers and its contents and a trust fund of $7 million. Gertrude, Alfred, Reginald, and Gladys shared a $20 million trust fund, and each of the four children received $5 million outright. Gertrude received an extra million dollars. In provision after provision, the same names appeared. To Alice, to be handed down to Alfred, to Reginald, to Gertrude, to Gladys. To Alice, to descend to Alfred. To Reginald, To Gertrude. To Gladys. The quiet in the library was complete. There was no mention of Neily, the eldest son of the testator.
There were provisions for Cornelius Vanderbilt’s favorite charities. And $1.5 million of the $72 million estate was set aside for inheritance taxes, which the papers reported as being “exceptionally heavy.”147
And then, in the ninth clause of the will, Neily was bequeathed by his father the income from a trust of $1 million, and $500,000 outright.
Younger brother Alfred was named to receive the residuary estate: $42,575,000.
Finally the lawyer concluded the reading of the will: “I have to this my last Will and Testament, set my hand and seal of the city of New York this 18th day of June in 1896.”148
June 18, 1896! The will had been changed three years before, on June 18, 1896, the date Neily and Grace had set for their wedding. Cornelius Vanderbilt, whom scores of editorials and obituaries eulogized as a deeply religious man of Christian charity and compassion, had never found it in his heart to forgive his son.
6
THE COURT JESTERS
1895-1912
1.
“Thank God for Vanderbilts,” the social columnist Cholly Knickerbocker once observed. Town Topics concurred: I ‘The Vanderbilt family can always
be relied upon in _^L- times of dullness to furnish either news or a sensation of some kind.’1 Vanderbilt births, deaths, mansions, balls, illnesses, marriages, divorces, disinheritances, extravagances, and feuds continued to fill the headlines, as the high society the family had jimmied its way into a few short years before rolled on to the end of the century, evolving, changing, experiencing wealth and luxury unknown to ordinary mortals.
As the world had changed around him during the last decade of the nineteenth century, Ward McAllister continued strolling down Fifth Avenue each afternoon, stopping at the Union Club for an hour or two, and attending a dinner or ball in the evening. By profession a lawyer, McAllister never practiced law and had no office. “Society,” he had said, “is an occupation in itself. Only a man who has a good deal of leisure and a taste for it can keep up with its demands.’2
He found himself “assailed on all sides” by people wanting to enter society, and became, as he said, “a diplomat [who] committed myself to nothing, promised much and performed as little as possible.”3
Every morning “mothers would call at my house, entirely unknown to me, the sole words of introduction being ‘Kind sir, I have a daughter.’ These words were cabalistic; I would spring up, bow to the ground, and reply: ‘My dear madam, say no more, you have my sympathy’“
McAllister would assure the mothers that he would do everything in his power to help launch their daughters into society.
“May I ask if you know any one in this great city, and whom do you know? For to propitiate the powers that be, I must be able to give them some account of your daughter.”
This, McAllister found, “was enough to set my fair visitor off. The family always went back to King John, and in some instances to William the Conqueror.
“‘My dear madam,’ I would reply, ‘does it not satisfy anyone to come into existence with the birth of one’s country? In my opinion, four generations of gentlemen make as good and true a gentleman as forty.’
Fortune's Children Page 27
