Fortune's Children

by Arthur T. Vanderbilt

  Mrs. Whitney’s attorney rose and agreed. “We will let the nurse go. She will be of no help to the child.”

  “Then that is settled,” the judge ordered. “The nurse goes.”146

  The next witness was Gloria Vanderbilt’s chauffeur, Beesley, who was called to help prove that Gloria had been the mistress of several men.

  He was followed by Gloria Vanderbilt’s personal maid, Maria Caillot, a twenty-three-year-old French girl, who testified that she had often seen Mrs. Vanderbilt under the influence of alcohol and that she knew when she was drunk because she always smiled when drinking excessively.

  “Are you trying to imply,” Mr. Burkan asked, “that Mrs. Vanderbilt never smiles unless she is drunk?”

  “When she is drinking,” the maid replied, “she always smiles.”

  Gloria Vanderbilt laughed to herself at this nonsense.

  “You see Mrs. Vanderbilt smiling at you now,” the lawyer said. “Would you call her intoxicated?”147

  The courtroom laughed.

  The French maid testified that she had seen “dirty books” around the house, books with pictures of nuns “doing things” with young girls.148

  “How much money did you ask to give this evidence?” Mr. Burkan suddenly demanded.

  “I did not ask for money,” the indignant maid protested.

  “But you were promised it,” Burkan explored.

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  At this point, her credibility was destroyed. All her testimony was worthless. Attorney Burkan then made a tactical error he would regret for the rest of his life.

  “And so all these months,” he concluded, “you saw nothing improper in her household?”

  “No, I saw nothing.”

  “Mrs. Vanderbilt always conducted herself in a perfectly respectable and decent manner?” he pressed.

  “Always,” the maid agreed.

  Now, rather than quitting while he was ahead, the lawyer went in for the finishing touch to write off this witness.

  “So then, you never once saw evidence of improper conduct?”

  The maid touched her hand to her forehead as if she had just remembered something. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I remember now something that once happened that was very amusant “

  Mr. Burkan had walked back to the counsel table and was putting his papers back into his briefcase. “Oh, yes?” he said. “And what was that?”

  “Yes,” she continued, “there was something struck me as very funny when we were at the Hotel Miramar in Cannes in 1929. Once, one day, Mrs. Vanderbilt called me for breakfast, like she do, for breakfast she call me.”

  “She called you for breakfast?”

  ‘Then I served breakfast, and I take her things up to my room, pressing them, and a few minutes afterwards I come back in Mrs. Vanderbilt’s room to bring back the clothes in the closet. Then when I came, Mrs. Vanderbilt was in bed reading a paper, and there was Lady Milford Haven beside the bed with her arm around Mrs. Vanderbilt’s neck—and kissing her just like a lover.”149

  For a moment no one in the courtroom stirred.

  “In the interest of public decency,” Justice Carew decreed, banging his gavel, “the press and the public will be barred from this courtroom!”150

  And then, chaos.

  Reporters fought to get through the doors out of the courtroom to reach the telephones to be the first to call in the scandal. FRENCH MAID BLURTS OUT SECRET, the headlines blared, LADY MILFORD HAVEN KISSED MRS. VANDERBILT….EVIDENCE SO REVOLTING THAT COURT BARS PRESS AND PUBLIC. “No sooner had the testimony of an Irish nurse placed Prince Gottfried Hermann Alfred Paul Maximilian Victor zu Hohenlohe-Langenburg in the bed of Mrs. Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt than the testimony of a French maid put the Marchioness of Milford Haven in the same place.”151 The stories branded Gloria Vanderbilt a “lesbian,” with the more conservative newspapers reporting her “alleged erotic interest in women.”152

  The words of Maria Caillot hit Gloria Vanderbilt like a punch. “I heard the excitement of the courtroom being cleared—the scraping of the chairs being moved away for the people to get up—the press filing out,” Gloria later recalled. “Every bit of noise was magnified to such a degree that I thought there were shells exploding over my head. I turned and looked at Gertrude Whitney, and she was smiling. She gazed at me full in the face and smiled.”153

  Baffled by the incredible testimony he was hearing and by the entire vexing case, Justice Carew was quite sure that if only Gloria Vanderbilt had a chance to be with her daughter, the normal mother-child relationship would assert itself. Perhaps there was some truth to Gloria Vanderbilt’s theory that her daughter did not want to be taken from the lap of luxury she had found with her rich aunt Gertrude—who had given her a pony and a puppy dog and eight young cousins to play with, and whose country estate was like paradise to the young child.154 He ordered that Mrs. Vanderbilt visit her daughter at Gertrude Whitney’s Old West-bury estate on Saturday, October 20, 1934.

  Gertrude Whitney, in bed with a sore throat in her home at 871 Fifth Avenue, early that Saturday morning called her son-in-law, Barklie Henry, who lived in one of the houses on her Old Westbury estate. “Perhaps little Gloria will be a bit upset,” she said. “Would you go over and tell her the news, please?”

  Barklie Henry went over to the big house and sat down with little Gloria.

  “By the way,” he casually wove into the conversation, “guess who’s going to see you this morning? She’s on her way right now—your mother.”

  Instantly, Gloria began shrieking and tried to race from the room. Henry stopped her.

  “Now look here, Gloria, this is all right. You are going to stay here, and you must not act this way.”

  Gloria raced by him, running up the stairs and into her room, locking the door behind her. Nurse Keislich had been sent away for the day, in accordance with Justice Carew’s direction. A trained nurse, Miss Walsh, who was in Gloria’s bedroom, saw where the girl hid the key and opened the door.

  “Your mother has just called to say that she’s been delayed and will not arrive until noon,” Barklie Henry told Gloria. “I’ll tell you what, we can go riding.”155

  The two spent the morning riding the trails through the woodlands surrounding the mansion, watched by a force of sixteen private guards that had been beefed up by several dozen Nassau County policemen due to the receipt of a kidnapping threat, as well as the growing apprehension of Gertrude Whitney and Grandmother Morgan that Gloria Vanderbilt would try that day to kidnap her daughter.

  After their horseback ride, the two played cards, waiting for the arrival of Gloria’s mother. When the butler announced that she was waiting outside, Barklie Henry noticed that little Gloria began shaking, breathing in shallow gasps.

  Barklie Henry met Gloria Vanderbilt and her two sisters, Thelma and Consuelo, out in the courtyard, explaining how upset little Gloria seemed to be. “Perhaps it would be better not to see her just now,” he suggested.

  “Nonsense!” said Gloria.

  “We are here to see the child, and see her we will,” Consuelo ordered.156

  It wasn’t as easy as all that. Little Gloria had again raced to her room, locked the door, and hidden the key.

  Thelma was furious. She pounded on the door.

  “Nurse, you must open the door. This is a court order. We are to see this little girl.”

  “I know it is,” Nurse Walsh pleaded, “but Gloria won’t give me the key.”

  “Why did you give her the key?” Thelma demanded.

  “I didn’t….She took it….She’s thrown the key in the fire. There’s a fire and she’s…”

  Consuelo had had enough. “This is Aunt Toto! Open this door!” She savagely beat the door with her fists.

  “No, I won’t. I don’t want to see you. I hate you…” little Gloria cried.157

  “Let me get at her!” little Gloria heard Consuelo snarl. “Listen, you listen here to me. Nobody is going to hurt you—can you hear me? Listen
to me now—just open the door to me—will you do that now?—just to me. Your mother isn’t even here now, she’s not feeling well—she’s lying down in the other room.”

  “Open up, Gloria,” someone else said. It was Thelma again. “Open up or we will have to break the door down. Do you hear me, Gloria? Your mother has a court order to see you—a court order—so make it easy on yourself, do you hear me? Make it easy on yourself and open up—she has an order from the court! Otherwise I’ll have to get one of those policemen you saw to come and I’ll have to ask one of those policemen to break this door down.”158

  “Get Mr. Henry and get a carpenter,” Thelma told Consuelo.

  Soon Barklie Henry arrived at the scene with a caretaker who brought a ring of keys. Each was tried until the door opened. Thelma and Consuelo entered little Gloria’s bedroom. Miss Walsh stood in the middle of the room. Little Gloria was hiding behind her, holding on to her for dear life.

  “What is this all about, Gloria, darling? You are not frightened of Aunt Toto, are you?”

  “I am.”

  “Why? I haven’t done anything to you.”

  “No.”

  “Then come on. Give me a kiss. Don’t act like a child.”

  “All right,” she whispered, and came out from the nurse’s skirts to give her two aunts a little kiss.

  “You know,” Consuelo said, “your mother is crying, and you have made her very unhappy. Won’t you go in and kiss her and say you’re sorry?”

  “No.”

  “Look here, Gloria. Do you realize you’re hurting your mommy? You don’t really want to make her unhappy, do you?”

  “No.”

  “All right then, go and tell her you’re sorry for behaving like such a silly little girl. You’re grown up now and you can’t behave this way.”

  “Will you take me?” she asked her Uncle Henry.

  He took her by the hand and started to lead her out of the room. Gloria stopped dead in her tracks at the doorway.

  “Why are you frightened?” Thelma asked.

  “I won’t tell.”

  “But why?”

  “I’m afraid of her.”159

  “Come to me,” Gloria called from the bedroom across the wide hall where she was lying on the bed, feeling faint.

  Her daughter started to walk toward her and then retreated back to her room.

  Thelma sat down on the floor and began playing with Gloria’s puppy, Gypsy-Mitzie. Soon little Gloria joined her.

  “Will you do something for me?” Thelma asked her.

  “What?”

  “Will you, when your mommy comes in here, kiss her?”

  “Yes.”160

  Thelma left the room to get little Gloria’s mother. ‘Tuli yourself together, darling,” Thelma instructed her twin sister, who was lying on the bed, sipping a glass of brandy, “and come along. The baby is perfectly willing and anxious to see you. Now fix your face up.”

  Thelma led her sister across the hall. Gloria handed two playing cards to her daughter, one of which had Mickey Mouse on the back.

  ‘Oh, thank you, Mommy. Would you like to see my card collection?”

  “Yes, darling. I would love it.”

  Little Gloria dumped all her trading cards on the floor and began showing them to her mother, one by one.

  “I have a Mickey Mouse game in the car for you,” her mother told her.

  The nurse went downstairs to get it and brought it back. Little Gloria was fascinated.

  “I wonder how it goes?” she asked.

  “When I come next time, we’ll play it together,” her mother assured her.161

  Justice Carew’s theory appeared to be working. Given time, a reconciliation between mother and daughter seemed inevitable. What he hadn’t factored into his theory was Grandmother Morgan.

  The next day, Grandmother Morgan arrived at Old Westbury to make sure her granddaughter was none the worse for having had to see her mother.

  “How are you feeling, darling, today?” Grandmother Morgan asked Gloria.

  “Oh, fine, I feel fine fine.”

  “Precious One, are you sure? How can you feel fine after what happened when They were here, when They all came here? How can you? Did your stomach pains come back? You know, those pains you get in your stomach when something upsets you? They came here, didn’t they? Right to this house. So why wouldn’t you be upset, terribly terribly upset, seeing the three of them here, right on this spot, trying to take you away from your Auntie Ger, away from me, and—where do you think Dodo will be when the Fräulein appears? You don’t think Dodo will be around then, do you? You’ll never see either one of us, when they take you back to Europe or who knows where—forever. Do you know what that means—forever?”162

  Grandmother Morgan was right again. Gloria had pains in her stomach that night, terrible pains that kept her awake and that once again required summoning good Dr. Jessup.

  “Now Doctor Jessup is coming,” Grandmother Morgan told Gloria; “he is on his way here right this minute, and when he gets here you must tell him how much your stomach hurts and how you couldn’t sleep last night because it hurt so much, and then when he starts poking around here and there on your little tummy, you can go like this—Oooo-ouch, um-um-um, ooooo—eeEEEEE—If you do this right, then he will be able to tell the Judge how sick it has made you knowing you may have to leave Auntie Ger and go back to your mother who will take you to Germany.”

  “But suppose he knows I’m making it up, making it up, making it up that my stomach hurts hurts hurts?”

  “He won’t know, if you do it right.”

  “But suppose he does!”

  This was unlikely. In one six-week period, eight physicians had examined little Gloria more than fifty times, each coming away with a different diagnosis and different recommendations, though most agreed that Nurse Keislich, who had pampered the ten-year-old child, bringing her breakfast and dinner in bed on a tray and making sure she was put to bed at six o’clock each evening, was not a healthy influence.

  “None of them have known so far, have they?” Grandmother Morgan asked little Gloria. “St. Lawrence doesn’t know when you say you feel sick. Doctor Craig doesn’t either. None of them know what’s going on, so why will Doctor Jessup?”163

  When kindly Dr. Jessup came to examine her, little Gloria made all the right noises. “I got quite carried away by my own performance,” she remembered later. “But Naney came closer to me and I could sense that even she thought I might be overdoing it—and if she thought that, I better tone it down a bit.”164

  Puzzled more than ever by what he was hearing during the seven-week trial, Justice Carew determined that he would speak to little Gloria himself. No one would be allowed in his chambers except little Gloria, Mr. Burkan, Mr. Smyth, and the court stenographer. No one else would be there to influence her or intimidate her. Now, the truth of what was really happening would come to light once and for all, and he would be able to fashion a fair settlement of the “Matter of Vanderbilt.”

  Little Gloria arrived at the courthouse in Gertrude Whitney’s Rolls-Royce, accompanied by two bodyguards. They moved through the crowds of photographers, reporters, and the curious.

  “You treat your mom good, Little Gloria!” people shouted. “Stick with your mom, Little Gloria! A mom’s love, Little Gloria! You be nice to your mom! Nothing like a mother’s love! Nothing—nothing—nothing.

  “Down with Gertrude! Down with her millions! Down with the aunt, up with the mom. Down down down, Gertrude!”

  Flash bulbs burst. Newsreel cameras ground away.

  “Over here, Little Gloria—smile, Little Gloria, over here—just one more smile smile smile—Little Gloria, smile—”165

  Little Gloria was well prepared to testify. Grandmother Morgan had coached her time and again. They had gone through repeated rehearsals. “So when you go there, the day you go—it won’t be for long, Precious One, but it’s a very very important thing you will be doing, and what you do there
and what you say will decide the Judge on whether he will let you stay with Aunt Gertrude or whether he will send you back to your mother who will take you to Germany and we will never see each other again—never never never. Never! Dodo and I will never set eyes on you again. The Prince has a Fraülein waiting for you, all ready and waiting at the Schloss, just for you to arrive-aie, aie—yes he has! And that’s where they will take you, do you hear me, darling? Are you listening to your Naney?”166

  In the quiet of Aunt Gertrude’s estate at Old Westbury, Gertrude Whitney’s lawyers had reinforced these sessions. “You see,” they told the young girl, “it’s very simple really, the Judge wants to hear it directly from you—your feelings about your mother, about your Aunt Gertrude, and why you want to live with Aunt Gertrude here at Old Westbury instead of living in hotels here and there traipsing around all over Europe, and then maybe even having to settle somewhere—Germany, for example. Have you thought of that ever? Settling somewhere in Germany? Your mother has always been interested in marrying a Title, so who knows what could happen in the future? Has that ever occurred to you? How would you feel about that?”167

  With the illogic and certainty of a ten-year-old, little Gloria Vanderbilt, her bangs brushing her forehead, her legs dangling from the chair in Justice Carew’s chambers, her white socks slipping into her brown laced shoes, proved a formidable adversary to the judge and Mr. Burkan.

  Justice Carew began talking with her to make her feel at ease.

  “I have a little girl about your age.”

  “Have you?”

  “Are you having a good time down in the country?”

  “Yes, lovely,” Gloria answered. “I got a pony and a dog—everything!”

  “Do you like it there?”

  “Oh, I love it.”

  “You do not want to live in the city?”

  “No. I hate the city.”

  “…You don’t hate the city?”

  “No, I hate it. Really,” the child insisted.

  “You want to stay in the country?”

  “Yes. I never want to live in the city.”

  “How would you like to live with your mother down in the country?”