At the end of the play, dinner was served in the house and on the large veranda, while workmen changed the theater into a ballroom, with rose petals strewn over the dance floor. The two orchestras were still playing as the sun rose over the sea and the last of the guests left their breakfast tables to say goodbye to Grace and Neily. “Isn’t she wonderful?” Neily asked all the guests as he stood proudly by the side of his beautiful wife.10
Even by the distorted standards of the Gilded Age, it had been an extraordinary night. Like all of the other guests, Grand Duke Boris was flabbergasted. “Is this really your America or have I landed on an enchanted island?” he asked Bessie and Harry Lehr as he marveled at the splendor of Beaulieu. “Such an outpouring of riches! It is like walking on gold.”11 Grace’s unique “at home,” just like Alva’s fancy dress ball, had established the reputation of the young Mrs. Vanderbilt.
Grace’s third coup was convincing her husband that they needed a yacht like her sister’s, May Goelet’s White Ladye. An avid sailor, Neily did not need much convincing, but the use to which the yacht would be put was probably other than what he had contemplated.
Construction began in 1901, and two years later Neily took possession of the 279-foot steam yacht, which he named the North Star after his great-grandfather’s.12 With its gleaming, graceful white hull, rakish bowsprit, heavy antique furnishings, seven staterooms, each fifteen feet square, a drawing room thirty feet wide and twenty-six feet long, a dining room thirty feet long, and quarters for a crew of forty, the North Star was rivaled by only four other ships afloat: King Edward VII’s Victoria and Albert, Emperor Wilhelm’s Hohenzollern, Czar Nicholas’s Stan-dart, and J. P. Morgan’s Corsair.
Each season, at Grace’s urging, the Vanderbilts sailed the North Star to those ports where they would most likely be seen by royalty, from Cowes on the north shore of the Isle of Wight—which was the resort of the British royal family and the gathering place each August of the Royal Yacht Squadron and the kings of Holland, Sweden, Norway, and Belgium, the princes of Prussia, Battenberg, and Bourbon, and Kaiser Wilhelm—on to Kiel to visit Prince Henry of Prussia, to St. Petersburg to be received by the czar and czarina, to Biarritz and San Sebastian to see King Alfonso of Spain. Along with oil paintings of yachts and frigates and sea battles, a gallery of autographed photographs of the good friends of Grace and Neily adorned the cabins of the North Star—photographs of the dowager queen of England, the last empress of Austria, His Imperial Majesty Kaiser Wilhelm, and the czar of all the Russias, Nicholas II. The North Star sported more royal pennants than any other American yacht.
After Mrs. Astor’s death in 1906, there was never any question who reigned as the new queen of New York and Newport. It was Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt. In more respectful moments, social columnists referred to her as “Her Grace.” At other times, her unabashed pursuit of royalty won her the title “the Kingfisher.”
There remained for Grace one more conquest. Society might recognize her as its queen, but to Neily’s family, the couple were outcasts still. After all these years, Neily’s brother Alfred would not speak to him and Reginald, Gertrude, and Gladys never came to visit.13 Every once in a while, Neily would take his young children, Neil and Grace, to visit their grandmother, Alice of The Breakers, though his wife would never accompany them. “I can remember how terrifyingly huge and cold The Breakers struck me as a child,” Neily’s son remembered, “with its high throne chairs and suits of armor. The music salon seemed as vast as an auditorium and as lifeless as a museum. Grandmother greeted us stiffly, seated on a high-backed red velvet chair. She asked a lot of perfunctory questions about our lessons, but hardly seemed to listen to our whispered answers. At the end of the visit, she and Father drank tea while a footman in a white wig brought us children French vanilla ice cream with the thickest, richest, creamiest chocolate sauce I have ever tasted. Afterwards, as we shook hands politely and turned to leave, the food lay cold in the pit of my stomach, like the cold little chill about my heart.”14
“We should all have luncheon together tomorrow somewhere,” Alice of The Breakers announced to her daughter Gladys and future son-in-law, Laszlo Szechenyi, a Hungarian count, when they were visiting The Breakers in the autumn of 1907 and Neily had stopped by to see them.
“Why not at Beaulieu?” Neily unexpectedly asked.
The room froze in silence. Alice looked up.
“Very well. If Grace will not come to me—then,” she said very softly and slowly, “I shall go to her.”15
On October 13, 1907, for the first time since the marriage of her son eleven years before, tiny Alice of The Breakers, dressed in black velvet, still in mourning for her husband, her neck hung with ropes of pearls that almost reached her knees, came calling.
The butler escorted her into the drawing room of Beaulieu.
“Mrs. Vanderbilt,” he announced without emotion.
Neily jumped to his feet and bounded over to his mother, embracing her and leading her over to where Grace sat, immobile, enthroned beneath her tapestries. As nine-year-old Neil would remember this historic scene: “Mother smiled and extended her hand with a graceful regal motion. Thus she received at her box in the Diamond Horseshoe [at the Metropolitan Opera], when important social figures trouped dutifully in to pay their respects during the entr’actes. Never, never did she go to them. Yet one look at my mother’s face as she greeted my grandmother that evening long ago, and I sensed, childlike, that her smile was the flash of sun on the surface of a glacier.”16
Grace’s conquests were complete.
2.
There was no doubt about it: Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt was the new queen. Like Mrs. Astor, Mrs. Vanderbilt adhered to the strictest protocol of the aristocracy. Her mornings were spent planning the day’s affairs, her afternoons taking a carriage around the neighborhood as a footman delivered her calling cards, her evenings entertaining. She wintered in New York, traveled to Paris in the spring to replenish her wardrobe, to London for the social season, to Newport for the summer. She knew how to speak to a queen or a chambermaid, and was equally at home in a drawing room, at the opera, on a yacht, or having tea with the king of England.
To maintain her standing as Queen of Society stretched Neily’s inheritance to the last penny. It was with a curious mixture of extravagance and thrift that Grace set about making ends meet. The North Star, for instance, was moored in England, not at New York or Newport, for if it was kept in American waters for more than a few months it would fall under American registry and the sailors’ wages would be higher. Neily and Grace could justify the enormous expense of maintaining the North Star by subtly weaving into their conversations with the yacht’s royal visitors glowing reports of Neily’s latest inventions, which the monarchs frequently ordered for their countries. Neily had sold his new firebox for locomotives to the German, British, and Russian governments long before it was purchased by the New York Central, the Chesapeake and Ohio, the Illinois Central, or the Harriman railroads.
Rather than buying or building a Newport summer cottage, the Vanderbilts for many years rented Beaulieu for $25,000 a season, closing down their four-story New York City mansion at 677 Fifth Avenue,17 drawing the blinds, covering the furniture with muslin, and hiring moving vans that carted the tapestries, the gold service, trunkloads of silver, and the big Steinway to Newport for the summer. This piano, by the way, which was shipped back and forth each season, did not belong to the Vanderbilts; for decades it was rented for $650 a year. Each summer Grace rented fourteen pots of palms to decorate Beaulieu for $237, along with rented boxes of begonias, hydrangeas, and gloxinias. Chinese vases, large gilt candlesticks, bath towels, face towels, tablecloths, linens, crystal: They were all rented. The grandeur in which this younger generation of Vanderbilts lived was largely an illusion.
To carry out her responsibilities as Queen of Society on so tight a budget was straining even Grace’s ingenuity. It was therefore a godsend when Neily’s uncle George Vanderbilt passed away down at B
iltmore in 1914. Uncle George had inherited his father’s mansion at 640 Fifth Avenue. Under the terms of William H. Vanderbilt’s will, if George died without any sons, as he had, the mansion was to pass to the oldest son of William H. Vanderbilt’s oldest son, Cornelius. But Cornelius’s oldest son, Bill, had died of typhoid as a senior at Yale. William H. Vanderbilt had planned for every contingency; in the event of the death of this grandson, the mansion and art works were to pass “to my grandson Cornelius, in fee, and in that event I give to my last-named grandson $1,000,000, my object being that my present residence and my collection of works of art be retained and maintained by a male descendant bearing the name Vanderbilt.”18 So it was that the family outcast inherited 640 Fifth Avenue, the family seat, and a much-needed million dollars.
“Why, it’s the Black Hole of Calcutta!” forty-three-year-old Grace complained as she and Neily first entered 640 Fifth Avenue through the massive bronze doors, reproductions of the Gate of Paradise created by the old Florentine sculptor Ghiberti, into the dizzying Byzantine splendor of the mansion’s interior, which had not been touched since that December day in 1885 when William H. Vanderbilt had died. “I couldn’t possibly live here!”19
Two years and $500,000 worth of renovations, remodeling, and modernization (“For that amount,” the newspapers commented, “as fine a private home as the average wealthy man would wish for could be built in the most exclusive residential part of the upper east side”20) made the mansion habitable for Grace. With its ballroom—a replica of one at Versailles with red velvet hangings, huge mirrors, cream and gold woodwork, and bare glistening parquet floors—which could hold a thousand guests, and a dining room table that could seat sixty, the mansion was the perfect setting for the large-scale entertainments she was planning.
The taxes on this mansion on Fifth Avenue when Neily and Grace moved in during 1916 were $33,115 a year. The income from the extra $1 million they had received when Uncle George died was enough not only to pay the taxes, but to run 640 Fifth Avenue as Grace believed it should be run, with thirty-five servants, including Gerald, the English butler, in tails and black tie; six footmen in maroon knee pants and tail coats, white stockings, and black pumps; six maids in black dresses with frilly aprons and caps; a French chef, a second cook under the chef, a kitchen maid, a second kitchen maid, and a scullery man; as well as three laundresses, footmen to polish the silver, three upstairs chambermaids, a parlor maid, a maid to clean the servants’ rooms in the basement and on the fifth and sixth floors, personal maids, window cleaners, elevator maintenance workmen, and a man who did nothing but stoke the giant furnaces.
Grace’s day began at ten o’clock, when her maid drew back the curtains and her social secretary entered her bedroom with a roster of those who were presently houseguests at 640 Fifth Avenue. Grace’s secretary kept a card file with important information about all of Grace’s friends: their birthdays, the names of their children, their favorite drinks, flowers, cigars, and candies. Her houseguests would find on their bedside table the latest book by their favorite author, a vase of favorite flowers, their brand of cigarettes, and a thermos of their bedtime drink of choice. At dinner, Grace kept a small notebook by her side, which she filled with this data as she learned it, the next morning passing the new intelligence on to her secretary, who classified it into files: lists, for instance, of ‘‘men who will dance,” “men who can play the piano,” “men who can lunch,” “men who will go to the theater but not the opera,” and lists of eligible male dinner guests.21
Then, for several hours, the real work began. And the work was never ending. Grace gave two large dinner parties each week, smaller dinners or luncheons daily, and a ball at least once a month. A hundred visitors stopped in for tea each Sunday, and a thousand came each Christmas Day to her annual Christmas party, with gifts for each guest hung on a giant tree in the center atrium.
“Telephone the Secretary of State in Washington and the Greek Ambassador and ask them to dinner some day next week,” she would tell her secretary. “Call the mayor’s office” or “call the governor’s secretary at Albany” or “call the protocol office of the State Department in Washington. Tell them that Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt would like to know at once where Mr. So-and-so can be reached because she would like to ask him to a dinner party.”22
The problems she faced every day were vexing. Once she held a dinner party for two hundred and could not decide where her friend, former president Theodore Roosevelt, should be seated. She called T.R.
“Colonel, how shall I seat the table? Which is correct? Should I put you, an ex-President, on my right, or the Mayor of New York City?”
“By all means, put the Mayor on your right,” T.R. chuckled. “A live dog is better than a dead lion any day.”23
Together, Mrs. Vanderbilt and her secretary each morning sorted through the mail, the stacks of letters asking for money, from a “less fortunate woman” in Indianapolis who had just given birth to her second set of twins and needed $400, from “a Southern California Seer” requesting funds to build the world’s most beautiful tabernacle, from the president of a midwestern college asking for $200,000 for a summer course. “Has it ever dawned on you, my dear lady, that through the simple medium of sacrificing just one of your many strings of pearls you can assure a college education for a score of Indian children?” wrote a “devoted friend of the Redskin children” from Muskogee, Oklahoma.
“Enough of that, my dear.”
“Yes, Madam.”
On to the invitations, which the secretary summarized.
“Mrs. X. wonders if you would care to be present at the luncheon she is giving in the Colony three weeks from tomorrow.”
“Mrs. X.? Isn’t she that preposterous woman from Oklahoma whose husband struck oil or ran a chain of grocery stores or something?”
“It was oil, Madam.”
“Do I know her?”
“Not exactly, although you met her last summer in Newport at Mrs. Y.’s tea. Mrs. Y. has telephoned several times since and was very anxious to have you meet her friend once more. She says Mrs. X. is the most remarkable woman that ever came from the southwest.”
“Write her a note, my dear, and tell her that I regret a previous engagement. What else?”
“Dinner at Mrs. Z.’s. Four weeks from today.”
“Who is she? Another provincial?”
“Yes, Madam. A distant relative of a western Congressman. Divides her time between here and Washington. Made the British Embassy last spring.”
“Not the British Embassy, my dear!”
“I am quite certain, Madam. She dined there twice.”
“Hm…I suppose I might just as well accept her invitation. They are getting to be quite successful, those provincials, aren’t they?”
“Unfortunately.”
“How do you suppose they do it? When I was a young girl it used to take a provincial anywhere from five to ten years to be recognized by even a South American Legation in Washington. Who ever thought in those days that the fact of one’s being related to a Congressman could impress an Ambassador?”
“The inter-allied debts, Madam. Trying to mollify the western sentiment, no doubt.”
“A sad state of affairs, my dear.”
“Yes, Madam. Do you recall, Madam, what Sir Cecil used to say about money?”
“Do I? Rather, my dear. That it takes at least three generations to wash off oil and two to exterminate the smell of hogs…Poor old Sir Cecil…It was a fortunate thing for him that he died when Society was still Society and not a hodge-podge of tradesmen and stock-brokers….And speaking about Sir Cecil…this reminds me, my dear. Did you finally decide who is to be given the place of honor at dinner tonight?”
“I am afraid it will have to be the Ambassador, Madam.”
“It won’t do. I tossed all night long thinking about it. I am not at all sure whether he should be given preference to the Count. It is all very well to call him ‘Ambassador’ but don’t forget that he l
ost his last diplomatic post more than fifteen years ago.”
“I am afraid…”
“I know, I know. You mean that luncheon when he never opened his mouth because he was seated three places away from the hostess. I think we’d better call him up and tell him about our predicament.”
“I already have.”
“You have? You are taking liberties, aren’t you?”
“I thought…”
“I forgive you this time, my dear, but it must never happen again. What was his answer?”
“That an Ambassador, even if he is a former Ambassador, ranks above all other guests except the President, the Vice-President, the Speaker of the House and the Governor of the State where the hostess resides.”
“Did you point out to him that the Count’s ancestors participated in the First Crusade?”
“I did.”
“And?”
“He said he would much rather plead illness and stay at home. In fact, he was quite nasty about it.”
“I have an idea, my dear…”
“He anticipated it, Madam.”
“You mean he guessed that I might have two tables?”
“Quite so. He warned me that in case there is going to be more than one table he is to be put at the one presided over by you.”
“The cheek of the fellow! Who is he, anyway? Just a common variety of American business man who happened to put his money on the right political horse.”
“Why not let him stay at home, Madam?”
“I can’t do that. I must have someone to talk foreign politics with the Count. I do not mind telling you that this sort of thing is playing havoc with my nerves. One dinner more like this and I will be in the hands of my physicians. Worry, worry, nothing but worry…I am all in.”
“Won’t you rest for an hour or so, Madam, and let me attend to the luncheon?”
“Rest? You are joking, my dear! Don’t you know what I have to accomplish between now and luncheon?”24
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