107. New York World, March 2, 1878; March 21, 1878.
108. Croffut, p. 122.
109. Croffut, p. 131.
110. New York Herald, December 14, 1877.
111. Croffut, p. 136.
112. Ibid., pp. 137-139.
113. Lane, p. 317.
114. Smith, Sunshine and Shadow in New York, p. 196.
115. New York World, March 9, 1878.
116. New York World, March 23, 1878.
117. New York World, March 9, 1878.
118. New York World, March 23, 1878.
119. New York Herald, April 10, 1878.
120. New York Times, April 10, 1878.
121. Ibid.
122. New York World, March 30, 1878.
123. Croffut, p. 134.
124. New York World, March 9, 1878.
125. Ibid.
126. Ibid.
127. New York World, November 16, 1877; New York Herald, April 10, 1878.
128. New York Herald, November 15, 1877. “A million or two is as much as anyone ought to have,” the Commodore would tell his friends.
“Well, Commodore, there is a very easy way of getting rid of the rest.”
“No, there ain’t, for what you have got isn’t worth anything, unless you have got the power, and if you give away the surplus, you give away the control.” (New York Times, February 6, 1879.)
129. Vanderbilt, Without Prejudice, p. 241.
130. New York World, January 5, 1877.
131. New York Tribune, January 5, 1877.
132. New York Times, January 5, 1877. After Vanderbilt was dead, Dr. Henry Ward Beecher stated: “I am very glad he liked those hymns when he died; but if he had sung them thirty years ago, it would have been a good deal better for himself and many others. It is well to think that when an old man dies, he has turned to spiritual things before going, but there are plenty to say, as long as Commodore Vanderbilt could get about, he didn’t care for hymns. We are glad when anyone is saved, but what we want is men in the full strength of power and life, and not the tag end.” (Andrews, p. 177.)
133. Goldsmith, Little Gloria…Happy at Last, p. 80.
134. New York Sun, January 5, 1877.
135. New York World, November 17, 1877.
136. Gates, The Astor Family, p. 60.
137. New York Sun, April 14, 1878.
138. Browne, The Great Metropolis, p. 337.
139. Croffut, p. 290.
CHAPTER TWO
1. New York World, December 10, 1885.
2. New York Times, July 24, 1877.
3. Josephson, The Robber Barons, p. 378.
4. Holbrook, The Age of the Moguls, p. 93.
5. Ibid.
6. New York World, November 16, 1877.
7. New York Herald, November 13, 1878.
8. New York Sun, November 13, 1877.
9. Ibid.
10. New York Daily Tribune, November 14, 1877.
11. New York Times, May 13, 1877. Victoria married John Biddulph Martin, of a wealthy banking family. Tennessee married Francis Cook, an elderly widower who had made a fortune importing shawls from India.
12. New York Daily Tribune, April 10, 1878.
13. Andrews, The Vanderbilt Legend, p. 184.
14. New York World, December 22, 1877.
15. Ibid., December 29, 1877.
16. New York Herald, December 27, 1877.
17. Ibid.
18. New York Times, December 20, 1877.
19. New York World, December 27, 1877.
20. New York Sun, December 19, 1877.
21. New York World, December 22, 1877.
22. Clark, ‘The Commodore Left Two Sons,” p. 92.
23. New York Times, September 28, 1878.
24. Clews, Fifty Years in Wall Street, p. 359.
25. Andrews, p. 185.
26. Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 515.
27. Quoted in New York Herald, December 11, 1885.
28. New York Sun, December 10, 1885.
29. Harlow, The Road of the Century, p. 136.
30. Jackson, J.P. Morgan, p. 120.
31. Allen, The Great Pierpont Morgan, p. 44.
32. Andrews, p. 205.
33. Allen, p. 45.
34. “I don’t believe in a company organized for a specific business going out of its line. Our roads never build their own cars. They have them built for them by companies whose business it is to build cars. When I organize a railroad, I do so to run it as a railroad and not as a car-building company.” (Andrews, p. 191.)
35. Hoyt, The Vanderbilts and Their Fortune, p. 261.
36. Hampton, The Nickel Plate Road, p. 165.
37. Chicago Daily News, October 9, 1882.
38. Harlow, p. 311.
39. Hampton, p. 69.
40. New York Evening Post, December 9, 1885.
41. Harlow, p. 321.
42. Jackson, p. 139.
43. Balsan, The Glitter and the Gold, p. 3.
44. New York Evening Post, December 12, 1885.
45. Clews, p. 370; Andrews, p. 194.
46. Andrews, p. 194.
47. Hampton, p. 171.
48. New York Tribune, October 18, 1882. Over the years, the Vanderbilt family’s version of this story became quite sanitized. William had retired to his private railroad car to rest at the end of a long day. A group of reporters wanted to come aboard to interview him. He agreed to meet with one reporter, but only for a few minutes.
“Mr. Vanderbilt,” the reporter exclaimed, “your public demands an interview.”
William Vanderbilt chuckled. ‘Oh, my public be damned.’ (Balsan, p. 3.)
49. New York Times, December 9, 1885.
50. Fiske, Off-hand Portraits of Prominent New Yorkers, p. 329. Chauncey Depew was in London as a dinner guest of the prime minister of England, William Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone turned to him.
“I understand you have a man in your country who is worth $100,000,000, and it is all in property which he can convert at will into cash. The Government ought to seize his property and take it away from him, as it is too dangerous a power for any one man to have. Supposing he should convert his property into money and lock it up, it would make a panic in America which would extend to this country and every other part of the world, and be a great injury to a large number of innocent people.”
“But you have, Mr. Gladstone, a man in England who has equally as large a fortune.’ Depew responded.
“I suppose you mean the Duke of Westminster. The Duke of Westminster’s property is not as large as that. I know all about his property and have kept pace with it for many years past. The Duke’s property is worth about…$50,000,000, but it is not in securities which can be turned into ready cash and thereby absorb the current money of the country, so that he can make any dangerous use of it, for it is merely an hereditary right, the enjoyment of it that he possesses. It is inalienable, and it is so with all great fortunes in this country, and thus, I think, we are better protected here in England than you are in America.”
“Ah, but unlike you in England, we in America do not consider a fortune dangerous.” (Clews, pp. 360-361.)
51. New York Sun, December 9, 1885.
52. New York Daily Tribune, December 10, 1885.
53. New York Sun, December 14, 1885.
54. Croffut, The Vanderbilts and the Story of Their Fortune, p. 270.
55. Clews, p. 367.
56. New York World, December 10, 1885.
57. Ibid.
58. Croffut, p. 240.
CHAPTER THREE
1. Decies, Turn of the World, p. 49.
2. Churchill, The Splendor Seekers, p. 55.
3. William R. Perkins Library, Matilda Young Papers, Belmont Memoirs (hereinafter cited as Belmont Memoirs), p. 89.
4. Huntington Library, C.E.S. Wood Collection, Belmont Autobiography (hereinafter cited as Belmont Autobiography), p. 34.
5. Crofrut, The Vanderbilts and the Story of Their Fortune, p. 182.
6. Bals
an, The Glitter and the Cold, p. 6.
7. Belmont Autobiography, p. 3.
8. Belmont, “Woman’s Right to Govern Herself’; biographical sketch of Mrs. Oliver H. P. Belmont.
9. Balsan, p. 6.
10. Ibid., p. 216.
11. Belmont Memoirs, p. 31.
12. Belmont Autobiography, pp. 24-25. Another story Alva liked to tell was of her governess “whose chief reason for living it seemed to me was to thwart the things I most wanted to do. Whenever I most eagerly desired to go into the Ocean for a dip, she was most emphatic in denying me this pleasure. One day she was sitting on a wooden bench in a new silk dress the folds of which were spread out all about her. ‘Let me go into the water,’ I coaxed but she was inexorable. When I found that it was a case of strategy, I summoned to my aid all the children of the neighborhood. This is what we’ll do,’ I explained. ‘Some of us will dance before her like wild Indians, making a great noise, and the rest of us will go around behind her and quietly tack her skirts to the bench so she can’t get up and then we will all go in bathing.’ We carried the plan out to the last letter. The group who were to provide the distracting entertainment proved so loud in their demonstrations that the sound of the tacking was drowned in their shouts and whoops. When the job was finished we dashed for the water. The Governess tried to rise and detain us but she was held fast and every move she made endangered the precious new silk dress. These were the lawless ways in which I got results.” (Belmont Autobiography, p. 25½.)
13. Belmont Memoirs, pp. 37-39.
14. Ibid., p. 5.
15. There is some evidence that Alva married William K. Vanderbilt solely as a means of saving her family from poverty. In the summer of 1917, she dictated a draft of her memoirs to Sara Bard Field in the Chinese teahouse above the sea at Marble House “to escape the curious ears of her servants as she tells me the intimate things of her life,” Field wrote. The memoirs were to be published only after Alva’s death. Field wrote to a friend about Alva’s thoughts on her marriage to Willie Vanderbilt:
“But the chapter of her terrible marriage to Mr. Vanderbilt with its sordid selling of her unloving self but with the truly noble desire to save her Father who was slowly dying of worry and anxiety over his failing business—a pathetic mixture of good and bad—like life—and she only a baby—a girl barely seventeen who did not fully know the sex mystery—the agony of suffering—all this, the part that brings tears from her hard heart to her eyes—and to mine—this she will not let me write. She says she can’t. The children would object, and the Vanderbilts, too, and you must not tell this to anyone not even to Frances or Janina or Kitty.’ It is the sacred confidence of a woman’s inner heart—a heart that could have been loved into beauty but that has been steeled against its own finer and softer emotions. O, it is all fascinating what she is now telling me. Really, it is Life.’
At another point, Alva advised Sara Field, who was divorced with children, to remarry and that “she could and would help me to a rich marriage if I would aid her in doing it.” Field was shocked: “How can you cold-bloodedly advise such a thing after your experience with Mr. V?”
“I would not want you to marry such a weak nonentity as he,” Alva answered, “but all men are not like that and you must bury Romance for the Cold Facts of life in which your children are bound up. You cannot help your children to advantages through sentimental romance but through money which alone has power.” (Huntington Library, C.E.S. Wood Collection, Sara B. Field to C.E.S. Wood, Box 280.)
That Alva married Willie to help her family is also hinted at in the draft of her autobiography. Young Alva realized the seriousness of her father’s plight and how his fear of what would happen to his daughters “haunted him and brought him to his sick bed. I saw him growing old and worn before my eyes. When I finally understood the situation, my practical nature at once wanted to help. It was while things were going from bad to worse in my father’s business that I married William K. Vanderbilt. My Father was sick in bed and unable to attend the wedding. When I was all dressed for the ceremony and about to leave the house, I stole up to my Father’s room. He kissed me with great tenderness and told me I was taking a great burden off his mind and that he knew if anything happened to him I would look after the rest of the family. I had been married but two weeks when my Father died. He was beyond any need of the help which the change in my fortune due to my marriage had brought to him. But this I know, the anxiety which had probably hastened his death had been much removed before he left us. Had he died sooner, the whole course of my life might have been other than it was.” (Belmont Autobiography, p. 35.)
16. Croffut, p. 184.
17. Ibid.
18. Vanderbilt, Queen of the Golden Age, p. 44.
19. Balsan, p. 7; Martin, Things I Remember, p. 181.
20. Croffut, pp. 114-115.
21. Balsan, pp. 4-5.
22. Lehr, “King Lehr” and the Gilded Age, p. 121; Maxwell, R.S.V.P, p. 104.
23. Van Pelt, A Monograph of the William K. Vanderbilt House, p. 10.
24. Friedman, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, p. 16.
25. Wharton, A Rackward Glance, pp. 54-55.
26. Thorndike, The Magnificent Ruilders and Their Dream Houses, p. 317.
27. McAllister, Society as I Have Found It, p. 13.
28. Ibid., p. 14.
29. Ibid., pp. 14-15.
30. Ibid., pp. 19, 17.
31. Ibid., p. 25.
32. Ibid., p. 110.
33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., pp. 111-113.
35. Ibid., p. 111.
36. Ibid., p. 118.
37. Ibid., pp. 118-119.
38. Maurice, Fifth Avenue, p. 242.
39. Ibid.
40. McAllister, p. 258.
41. Ibid., p. 260.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 261.
44. Ibid., p. 282.
45. Ibid., p. 292.
46. Birmingham, Our Crowd, pp. 56-57.
47. McAllister, p. 349.
48. New York Tribune, March 25, 1888.
49. McAllister, p. 216.
50. Ibid., p. 214.
51. Ibid., p. 231.
52. Ibid., pp. 214-215.
53. Churchill, The Upper Crust, p. 83.
54. Lehr, p. 24.
55. Amory, Who Killed Society?, p. 119.
56. Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. 1, p. 398.
57. Cowles, The Astors, p. 11.
58. McAllister, p. 123.
59. Ibid., p. 222.
60. Ibid., pp. 127-128.
61. Kavaler, The Astors, p. 108.
62. Gates, The Astor Family, p. 92.
63. Advertisement quotations: Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 28. “I believe in a republic,” Mrs. Astor once told an interviewer, “and I believe in a republic in which money has a great deal to say, as in ours. Money represents with us energy and character; it is acquired by brains and untiring effort; it is kept intact only by the same means. (Insley, “An Interview with Mrs. Astor,” p. 549.) Reference to A. T. Stewart: Lehr, p. 86.
64. New York Tribune, March 25, 1888.
65. Churchill, The Upper Crust, p. 100.
66. Ibid., p. 95.
67. Lehr, p. 85.
68. Ibid., p. 88.
69. Ibid., p. 89.
70. Morris, Incredible New York, p. 257.
71. Josephson, The Robber Barons, p. 329.
72. Lehr, p. 87.
73. McAllister, pp. 77-78.
74. Ibid., p. 73.
75. Cowles, p. 90.
76. Simon, Fifth Avenue, p. 65.
77. Goldsmith, Little Gloria…Happy at Last, p. 79; Birmingham, Our Crowd, p. 57.
78. Kavaler, The Astors, p. 135.
79. New York Times, March 27, 1883.
80. New York World, March 27, 1883.
81. New York Times, March 27, 1883.
82. Ibid.
83. Lehr, p. 84. This incident became an indelible part of the accounts of the Vanderbilts
’ fancy dress ball, though there is no historical record of the details of the visit. As a friend of both Mrs. Astor and Mrs. Vanderbilt, and as a man who would engage in such missions, it seems likely that Ward McAllister was the agent in this act of social diplomacy.
84. O’Connor, The Astors, p. 197.
85. New York Sun, March 27, 1883.
86. New York Times, March 27, 1883.
87. McAllister, pp. 351-353.
88. Sinclair, Dynasty, p. 15.
89. Ibid.
90. New York Times, March 27, 1883.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid.
93. Ibid.
94. New York Sun, March 27, 1883.
95. On November 27, 1925, the New York Times published a letter to the editor from Leo H. Riggo: “As a young architectural sculptor I worked on the inside and outside carving of the Vanderbilt house. I laid my own private cornerstone there. In cutting a grotesque face in the panelling of the main hall, near the first landing, in cutting around the mouth back of the tongue I cut through the Caen stone into a small opening. Taking a piece of paper six or seven inches square, I wrote my name and the names of those about me and the date (I can now remember only one name, the late Robert D. Barry, sculptor for the Smith Company, Westerly, R.I.). Wrapping a few pennies with the paper, I pushed it into the cavity, sealing it with artificial stone, never thinking I would live to see that fine residence scrapped.’
96. New York World, March 27, 1883.
97. Balsan, p. 10
98. Balsan, p. 12.
99. New York Times, March 27, 1883.
100. Ibid.
101. Belmont Memoirs, p. 109.
102. Simon, p. 51.
103. McAllister, p. 354.
104. New York Times, March 27, 1883.
105. Balsan, p. 10. This description in Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan’s memoirs is of another ball at the Vanderbilt mansion, but it seems likely that Consuelo and her younger brother must have spied on this fancy dress ball in light of the weeks of excitement it had generated at their house.
106. Churchill, The Upper Crust, p. 128.
107. Ibid.
108. Ibid.
109. Ibid.
110. McAllister, p. 353.
111. Churchill, The Upper Crust, p. 133.
112. McAllister, p. 16.
113. Churchill, The Upper Crust, p. 131.
114. Churchill, The Splendor Seekers, p. 67.
115. McAllister, pp. 256-257.
Fortune's Children Page 51
