A Well-Behaved Woman

by Therese Anne Fowler

  They’d discussed Ophelia’s love for Hamlet, and her sad end: Ophelia, seduced and made pregnant by Hamlet, in love with him but put off by him, deranged with grief after her father’s death, drowns herself.

  Hamlet had toyed with Ophelia the same way supposedly upright, moral gentlemen did now with unsuspecting young ladies. Much had changed in the world since Shakespeare’s day, but not how badly some men used girls, nor how too many girls walked straight into the wolf’s den, singing.

  “In Ophelia’s place, I would have called him out and compelled him to do right,” Alva had said, to which Monsieur Cabanel replied, “Ah, but with no tragedy, there would be no reason to paint her.”

  Mary helped Alva into the gown, with its square-cut neck and long, gold-tissue cape sleeves. The brocaded underskirt went from deepest orange to lightest canary, with highlights in white silk. Leaves and flowers were done in gold, white, and iridescent beads. A pale blue satin train was stitched with gold and lined in bloodred satin. Alva checked her reflection and smiled. “I am transformed! Though an Italian title means little, nowadays. They give them out like lollipops.”

  “I like lollipops,” said Mary.

  She pinned a jeweled cap onto Alva’s hair. On the cap was a peacock brooch done in tiny multicolored gems, one of the replacements she’d bought after her mother’s jewelry was stolen. The brooch cost more than a laborer would earn in ten years, and after tonight, it would get locked back in her safe, possibly never to be worn by her again—because once a lady had displayed such a piece, a second display would be considered common. Unless the piece were an heirloom; then she would be obliged to wear it frequently, which, if it was as vivid as this peacock, would be considered gauche.

  Lady C. had commissioned a black velvet gown like the one worn by Marie Claire de Croÿ, Duchess of Havré, as painted by Van Dyck. With the gown, she wore a broad black hat that turned up at one side and was studded with colored gems. Three dyed-black ostrich plumes drooped in an arc from the hat to her shoulder.

  Alva said, “Look at us: Dark and Light, the two sides of nature.”

  “Tragedy and Comedy,” said her friend.

  The sound of voices outside drew Alva to the window. Light from the lower windows streamed onto the street like gold, giving everything a cheerful glow.

  “Come see this,” she said, waving her friend over. “The sidewalks are packed full. Every stoop has got its own little gazing party.”

  The gazers were bundled up against the chill in overcoats and mufflers. A pack of children stood in the street at the curb, jostling one another and laughing—pickpockets, waiting to take advantage of the manifold distractions that would be created once the carriages began to arrive.

  Alva put her face to the window and cupped her hands beside her eyes to see better. “What a crowd! Maybe I’ll have the butler take them some wine.”

  “You will not,” said Lady C., who hadn’t come to the window. “Unless you mean to encourage them to storm the palace.”

  “It’s a goodwill gesture,” said Alva, turning to her friend. “An acknowledgment of their interest in culture and history.”

  “It’s rubbing their noses in your superior fortune, is what it is.”

  Alva said, “What do you say, Mary?”

  “Me?” Mary asked, with a glance at Lady C. “Well, some out there would love you, I expect, and some would hate you.”

  Lady C. smirked. “She speaks her mind.”

  “Well, I did ask her to. Do people hate me?” she asked Mary.

  Lady C. said, “They despise you, Alva, and they despise me, and ever shall it be until we are all raised up as equals in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

  “You don’t believe that for a moment.”

  “No, but a lot of them do. Anyway, none of that is relevant to your purposes tonight. Tonight you are the supreme hostess of New York, the lady who brought Mrs. Astor to heel.”

  “And you are my extraordinary guest of honor.”

  The two of them left the room, descending the staircase with graceful ease just as Alva had foreseen. They would receive their guests with William in the salon, standing beneath the portrait of Alva—apropos of Caroline Astor’s tradition in her home, Ward had said. “Do this and your guests will associate your authority with hers.”

  “Stand beneath my own portrait? Is that necessary? I’m not attempting to be society’s leader.”

  “You may not wish to lead, but society needs to be led. Oh, indeed, this is the manner in which you will effect the changes you desire. You mustn’t pull your punches now, when you are so close to your goal.”

  “It’s imitative. I don’t wish to be Mrs. Astor.”

  Ward said, “Have I given you any bad counsel?”

  “You have not.”

  A person might easily come to think that this ball, this house, Alva’s efforts to improve culture and to beautify New York, were only about Alva wanting to elevate herself, with the Vanderbilt family getting the secondary benefits of her rise. One might conclude that she put personal ambition above all else in order to feed an insatiable vanity. Well, let them, she thought. An intelligent woman in this world takes her chances where she finds them.

  * * *

  The polished coaches were arriving, the costumed guests ascending her red-carpeted steps. Duchesses and dukes and princesses and princes. Marquises. Marquesses. Devils. Monks. A bumblebee. Bo-Peep. King Lear. An Old World maiden. A jester. A most ingenious lady costumed as Cat, with rows of white cats’ tails made into an overskirt, and an actual cat’s pelt—head and all—fashioned into a hat. With each French or Italian princess, each cavalier, knight, or nobleman who was gazed upon by the curious people outdoors, each wonderfully outfitted guest who then turned his or her gaze upon the splendor to be found indoors, the status of the William K. Vanderbilts grew.

  When the hosting trio was in place, the reception line proceeded into the oak-paneled salon, a room hung with the eighteenth-century French Gobelin tapestries. This was Alva’s favorite space in the house. Cupid and Psyche frolicked on the ceiling above the host, hostess, and honored noblewoman who, overlooked by the Madrazo portrait of Alva that hung above the mantel, stood greeting the guests with warmth and pleasure undifferentiated as to whether the guest was “old New York” or new.

  Which did not mean Alva noticed no difference; she was particularly amused by the obeisant curtsies and vivid smiles of some of the Knickerbocker ladies who a decade earlier would not have acknowledged Alva or any of the Vanderbilts or the former Consuelo Yznaga, even in passing. Mr. Yznaga was in trade, after all, and he was foreign—quite dark in comparison to their Dutch-descended husbands and their own Northern European complexions. Most of them wouldn’t be able to find Cuba on a map, but here they were, fawning over the trio, feeling terribly important at being presented to Viscountess Mandeville, the future Duchess of Manchester.

  And here was Ward, who had elected to be French Count de la Môle, the tragic lover of Marguerite de Valois, guillotined at age thirty-six for having loved not wisely, but too well. His costume was done in royal purple and scarlet stripes, with caped sleeves, pouffed pantaloons, a fur-lined feather-trimmed hat, a foil, a gold-tipped cane—and white chamois tights. How he must have struggled into those!

  “Mr. McAllister,” said Lady C., “how very dashing you are! Please tell me you’ve got a dance for me tonight.”

  Ward bowed deeply. “You honor me, madam.”

  “My evening would be incomplete if I didn’t spend at least a portion of it with the most important gentleman here.”

  “What, him?” said William.

  “Who else?” Lady C. replied.

  And then came the Cornelius Vanderbilts, he clad in a white wig and bright gold brocade, she in matching bright gold, with pearl-trimmed collar and brilliant silver beading that caught the light. Alice had three of their five children in costume and corralled at her side.

  Noting their presence behind him, Ward turned and said, “Good even
ing! A Renaissance couple, are you?”

  Corneil bowed. “Not quite. Louis XVI at your service.”

  “Ah! Another Frenchman who, as with my Count de la Môle, ultimately lost his head. But you, my dear Mrs. Vanderbilt: you’ve stumped me. I haven’t even a guess.”

  “She’s Electric Light,” said Corneil. “She consulted with Mr. Edison deliberately on the design. Hold up the globe,” he said to Alice. She complied, showing off a gilded glass fixture attached to a handle.

  “Would that he could actually light you up!” said Ward.

  “Yes, well,” said Corneil, “I did inquire, and Edison started going on about bulb filament instability and the difficulties of safe wiring and special containers for batteries and risk of shock or fire—”

  “Say no more! I confess that I find electricity rather terrifying. A man I knew in Savannah, many years ago, was surveying his cotton fields from horseback and was struck by a bolt of lightning that came from an almost blue sky! Attempting to harness such a force, well…” He shook his head. “It seems unwise to me. But you, Mrs. Vanderbilt, are quite wonderful, and good for you, representing our technological future in such splendid Old World style!”

  Corneil said, “She risks putting off my mother, who feels much the way you do.”

  “Ah, yes—that incident with the wirings! I heard all about it. Proving my point, don’t you know.”

  With Mr. Edison’s encouragement, the elder Vanderbilts’ new house had been built with electrical wires inside it, along with special lighting bulbs and a steam-powered electricity-generating machine in the basement. The house was to be lighted with gas and electricity both. With electric lights being strung down by Union Square, the city’s grandest citizen should have no less. Those wires were now a snarl of lines overhead, but people said, That’s progress happening before our very eyes! Some were saying Mr. Edison was the lightning god. But when he had the Vanderbilts’ system ready to demonstrate, some wires sparked in the art gallery and a curtain caught fire and that was the end: Mrs. Vanderbilt was having none of it. No wires, no boiler, no “lightning” inside her house; she would not risk her life or George’s. Mr. Vanderbilt had said, “Then Morgan’s going to outshine us with his new house going up on Madison.” “Let him!” said his wife, as forceful as Alva had ever heard her. When the younger daughters’ new homes were under way on Fifth Avenue, Mrs. Vanderbilt forbade electrification there as well.

  Now Ward bent toward the children. “And don’t you all look splendid as well!” The oldest boy, Bill, was dressed as an exotic-looking sailor—Turkish, perhaps, judging from his shoes. His brother Neily was a courtier. Gertrude, who was almost equal in height to Bill, was in pink tulle with a leafy green satin overdress and a white cap. “You must be Miss Vanderbilt,” Ward said to her. She stared and made no reply.

  Alice said, “My daughter is a rose.”

  “A rose indeed!” said Ward, drawing from her a slight smile.

  She said, “I would rather be Sinbad, like Bill.”

  “Oh, that would never do! You’re far too pretty.” Sotto voce he added, “I wish I could have dressed as a rose.” He obviously expected a smile of delight. Instead, he got a frown.

  “Roses don’t have adventures,” said Gertrude.

  “Ah. Quite right. Perhaps your brother will lend you his costume when he’s done with it.”

  This brightened her. Then Alice said, “Mr. McAllister is joking. No young lady should dress as Sinbad.” To Alva: “Where will we find Consuelo? I’ll suppose she’s dressed as a lovely little sparrow, or a shepherdess, perhaps.”

  “She and Willie are in the nursery with Lady Mandeville’s children, all un-costumed,” Alva said. “We hadn’t even thought to put our children on display.”

  * * *

  At ten-thirty, the traffic on Fifth Avenue was reportedly noseband to tailboard. Where Caroline Astor might be in the line was a mystery. Alva knew she wouldn’t place herself among the first arrivals. Nor would she want to arrive so late as to miss her daughter (who’d arrived early with the other featured dancers) in the leadoff quadrille. That she might fail to come at all was an outcome Alva did not wish to consider.

  Had her next guest stayed away, though, she would not have minded a bit: here was Oliver Belmont, entering the drawing room dressed in something vaguely Elizabethan. His bride and parents and brothers and their wives trailed him en masse.

  “Mrs. Belmont,” said Alva to the former Sallie Whiting, “what a pleasure to see you and your beloved here tonight. How splendid you look!” (Two lies.) “I’m certain you had wonderful exploits abroad. You’ll have to tell me all about them later, after the quadrilles.”

  “You’re quite splendid yourself,” Sallie Belmont said with a smile so wide that Alva knew instantly it had been augmented in some way—Vin Mariani, perhaps; she had the classic glassy, giddy stare. Sallie Belmont moved along to Lady C., saying, “Oh, how much I’ve heard about you! My English friends are positively in wonder, and so envious that I get to meet you!” She curtsied unsteadily, then, correcting, curtsied again.

  Oliver was next. William shook his hand. “Good to have you back, my friend. Running off to elope—couldn’t wait to marry the little filly, eh?” He winked. “But now we can celebrate you properly.”

  Oliver’s smile was tense. “Not at all necessary.”

  Alva said, “You remember Lady Mandeville.”

  “Yes, my memory’s far sharper than my intellect, it seems. Lady Mandeville.” He bowed. “You and Mrs. Vanderbilt have all the other ladies seething with envy tonight.”

  “We might add your wife to the list,” said Lady C. “Not of seethers. Of enviable ladies.”

  “Oh, she seethes all right,” Oliver said, and his brother nudged him. “But never mind that. Here, say hello to Perry!”

  Alva watched him anxiously as the rest of the Belmonts came through. He was in obvious foul humor, not at all the amusing and happy fellow he’d been.

  Not that she should concern herself with whether or not he was happy.

  Still, she didn’t wish for him to be unhappy, necessarily; she just wished him to be elsewhere.

  Ward was again in the receiving line, this time with Caroline Astor on his arm. Alva put her thoughts of Oliver aside. Here was the matter of most importance, the culmination of more effort than Alva liked to recall. That one woman could have such outsize influence demonstrated all that was wrong with society, and how badly it needed reform.

  When Ward and Mrs. Astor took their turn, William’s face lit with his most charming smile. “Good evening, McAllister,” William said as if they hadn’t already greeted Ward once. “Mrs. Astor, aren’t you the incarnation of beauty tonight.”

  “I told her precisely the same thing,” said Ward. “Is her gown not the grandest, her gems not the brightest?”

  “Indeed, both—but it’s her great character that shines most.”

  Alva silently disagreed: Caroline Astor was draped in diamonds as though she were a fir tree done up in tinsel and candlelight for Christmas. Alva had never seen so many diamonds in one place. The display was in no way tasteful by old New York standards or by any standard, really, so one could only conclude the display was an element of her costume, whatever or whomever she meant to portray. Was there a mythical goddess of excess? A fabled Queen of the Extreme? Or, wait: the diamonds were meant to be stars. Caroline Astor was the Light of the Universe. In her own mind, if not everyone else’s.

  Mrs. Astor said, “Gentlemen, do go on.”

  William laughed, and gestured to the women. “You know my wife—”

  “Mrs. Vanderbilt, yes, we had a good visit recently.”

  “We are so pleased to see you tonight,” Alva said. The call to which Mrs. Astor referred had lasted perhaps ten minutes and took place while three other ladies were also present. She and Mrs. Astor had exchanged only the briefest pleasantries.

  “May I present the viscountess, Lady Mandeville?”

  “Lady Mandev
ille,” said Caroline Astor, inclining her head.

  “Thank you for coming. Mrs. Vanderbilt and I both are delighted that you accepted her invitation.”

  “Yes, truly delighted,” said Alva, looking Caroline Astor in the eye. “Had you been unable to attend, tonight would’ve been a failure.”

  “So kind of you,” Caroline Astor said. “Your costume is lovely. The Italians understood style.” She glanced at the room around her. “Your home is lovely as well. Nothing quite like it in the city.”

  Ward, observing the exchange between his two friends, had let his mouth hang open. Now he closed it. “Oh, indeed. One of a kind. As are both of you. All of you,” he amended. “You three. Sui generis.”

  After the receiving line was concluded, the guests assembled in the ballroom, while in the gallery above, the musicians began to play. All conversation ceased at the sight of the first group of eight dancers in the wide, arched doorway, done up as lords and ladies riding life-size hobbyhorses, each rider dressed in a red coat as if ready for the hunt. The horses had taken two months to construct. Covered in real horsehide, each one had big bright eyes and a horsehair mane and tail. An embroidered blanket hid the wearer’s legs, while false legs that moved with the wearer’s motion completed the illusion.

  A whistle sounded and they galloped into the ballroom to an eruption of cheers.

  Watching from the head of the room, Alva thought, What a joyful scene. How intoxicating! After tonight, all would be well. In this moment, certainly, one could not imagine otherwise.

  * * *

  “Ah, Mr. McAllister.” Alva approached Ward in the corridor outside the gymnasium.

  He swept off his hat and bowed. “My dear! Are you as pleased with this result as I am? My dinner companions could not stop praising your tastes and efforts.”

  Grinning, she pushed some stray hairs from her forehead and attempted to tuck them into her cap. “It’s quite satisfying, I admit. Though I owe a good deal of my ‘taste’ to your guidance.”