A Well-Behaved Woman

by Therese Anne Fowler

  The library’s door swung open. First through the doorway was George. His cheeks and ears and neck were red. He strode past the women without remark, pursued by his brothers, who called after him not to go. A moment later, the huge front door slammed closed.

  As the others emerged, Alva got up and went to her husband, saying, “What in the world—?”

  William shook his head. “He’s offended.”

  “Your father couldn’t possibly have cut him out.”

  “No, not at all. He did quite well. About ten million. Same as Fred. And the girls.”

  She noticed he didn’t name himself or Corneil.

  William explained that George had expected the amounts to be equal—for the men, at least. Furthermore, the girls each inherited the new houses that had been built for them. Fred had already been given the old house at 459 Fifth. Mrs. Vanderbilt would keep the new one. Which left George with four hundred mostly undeveloped acres on Staten Island, where he had no desire to live. George got an ancient cemetery and an old house that had been given over to his great-grandmother until her death, a house that none of them much wanted, except for the sentimental value of it. He got an unfinished mausoleum. He got a farm.

  William said, “George wanted to know why he didn’t merit a Fifth Avenue house. ‘Why’ve I been stuck with the farm?’ he said. We reminded him that he’s been keen on the farm operations, and that Father hadn’t meant to die”—William’s voice thickened, and he cleared his throat—“and so, you know, he might have gotten a house later, and the will isn’t reflective of what it might’ve been had it been more recently done. Corneil pointed out that George seemed content to live at home. And that the house will be his when Mother’s gone.” William stopped and took a deep breath. Then, checking that the others couldn’t hear him, he said, “Anyway, truth told, I’m a little disappointed that Bill was singled out for a million while neither of our boys got even a cent.”

  Luncheon was a quiet affair. Alva observed her brothers- and sisters-in-law. Every one of them was suffering the loss of a dear man, an excellent father who’d loved them actively. Their affection and grief was plain on their faces. Along with that, however, was this: every one of them was now a multimillionaire in his or her own right. Personal wealth was nothing new for Corneil and William, but for the other five at the table—and for the girls especially—their lives had taken a profound turn. Alva didn’t yet know that William’s had, too.

  Later that evening, in the privacy of their home’s salon, William put his feet up and leaned his head back, looking up at the whimsical figures in the fresco overhead. “Father valued you a great deal, you know. Truth told, I believe he thought more of me because of you.”

  “That’s flattering,” she said. “But I know he appreciated you for yourself.”

  “At any rate, Corneil hasn’t said a word against him, but I suspect he’s as surprised as I am at the way Father structured his will. I don’t know … perhaps you didn’t influence this at all, but, given how Corneil has made the business his life’s work while I have been—shall we say—less devoted, I really don’t see any other reason I’ve come out so well.”

  “And how well is that?” Alva asked. Her expectation was that Mr. Vanderbilt had settled perhaps twenty million dollars on William. More than the others received, less than Corneil’s share. Given Corneil’s responsibilities, this would be just.

  William said, “You are ever direct, aren’t you?”

  “Would you say the same thing to a man?”

  “Of course not. In a man, directness is a good trait.”

  “Then pretend I hinted at the question coyly.”

  This made him smile. “All right. The remainder of Father’s estate beyond what went to Fred and the girls and George—and a good amount for Mother’s keeping, of course, and many gifts to charity—is to be divided equally between Corneil and myself.”

  “Equally?”

  “Well, except that Father made a token bequest of two million more for Corneil, to indicate that he should be considered the head of the family.”

  “Two million dollars is a token?” Alva said.

  He nodded. “Comparatively. Depew says my portion is in the range of … Well, it’s sixty-five million, or thereabouts.”

  Alva blinked. She blinked again. “You’re inheriting sixty-five million dollars?”

  “It’s … startling, I know.”

  She did a quick calculation. “Your father must have doubled what he inherited.”

  “In only eight years,” William said, nodding. “It seems Father was very good at his work.”

  And William need never give work a thought again.

  He did not say this. That he believed it, however, would become plain before long. Alva would not have guessed the effect exceptional wealth could have on an already very rich man.

  * * *

  When one inherits so much money that publishers create and sell to the public booklet reproductions of the last will and testament from which it came, so much money that it seems there is no limit to it, so much that it can’t possibly be spent by oneself, so much that barring a complete catastrophic collapse of one’s country’s economy, it can’t even be lost, one must, it appeared, commission the largest yacht ever made for personal use. Or at least this was William’s first action.

  If one were Corneil Vanderbilt, now head of the House of Vanderbilt (as it was said), one reenlisted George Post to figure out how to double the size of one’s Fifth Avenue mansion, acquiring and demolishing whatever neighboring real estate necessary to accomplish this (and, not incidentally, open its view to Central Park). His new child would eventually need a bedroom of his or her own, after all, and because he and his wife had so many children, it would be so practical if the laundresses lived in, and with Gertrude only a few years away from her debut, a larger ballroom was going to be required. Or at least these were the reasons Alice gave.

  If one were an offended party (legitimately or not) and youngest son, in possession of more than enough but still far less, one was given the ceremonial duty of laying the cornerstone of the building that would arise due to one’s father’s half-million-dollar bequest: the new College of Physicians and Surgeons, at Tenth Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street, a bequest made so that the cause of medical science could be advanced and perhaps fewer men would topple over dead at age sixty-four, inadvertently offending such a son in the process. The admiring crowd’s cheers would lend this son a sense of importance, a connection to the greater good being done. Sufficiently lifted, he would go out and buy a yacht as his reward—a small one, to simplify his travel to Bar Harbor, where he would buy himself a house. His most impressive gesture would come later.

  If one was none of these men—if instead one was on the other side of the gilded gate, a hardworking member of the Knights of Labor, perhaps—one read the flyer sent around in the midst of the May 1 strike, and on May 3 grew horrified and outraged by the police firing on strikers at the Chicago McCormick plant, killing two men. And on the fourth of May, gathered with others at the Haymarket to demonstrate support for those two dead men and for the enforcement of an eight-hour workday, when the bomb exploded and the shooting followed and men lay bleeding and dying in the square, one ran for cover, because what else could one do?

  And if one was a lady who’d married for money, who had aimed high but had never imagined she would be seated with the gods?

  Alva went about her days as usual. Still, she was ever aware that with this incredible fortune now underlying her life, there was almost nothing she couldn’t have, almost nothing she couldn’t do. She had greater resources at her disposal than any other woman in the world except perhaps Queen Victoria, and Alice.

  What more might she do than she was doing already? Already she’d been helping the less fortunate in myriad ways. Teas for orphans. Balls for maternity care. Auctions for veterans—homeless or limbless or helpless or all at once.

  What else might she acquire? Already she had
built a beautiful city château and a summer home. Already she traveled wherever she liked—traveled in high style, no less. Already she ate like a queen. She attended concerts and operas and musicales and plays, garden parties, flower shows, dog shows, fashion shows …

  On a spring day when she was strolling in Central Park while cherry blossoms fluttered like fat pink snowflakes on the breeze, it came to her: What she could do was relax. Everything was settled now. Her life was ideal.

  Lady C.’s words came back to her: Don’t be ridiculous. No woman’s life is ideal.

  “Mine is,” she said aloud. To think otherwise was to insult every poor woman, every woman who rose before dawn and worked until night, who made do with the barest minimum. Every seamstress and laundress and cook and shopgirl and farmer and nurse and teacher. All of them, the women whose labor allowed women like herself to be turned out in perfect style, to have her children looked after, to sleep on pressed sheets in clean rooms, to eat dainty cakes and savory roasts, to keep herself as distant as possible from the unsanitary, unpleasant facts and features of the body. A woman changed Alva’s babies’ diapers. A woman washed those diapers, along with Alva’s bloody pads, her stained bedsheets and underclothes. Those women would rightly see Alva’s life as nothing short of heavenly.

  Yet she understood a truth she could never say aloud: this ideal life was still deficient. She was not wholly content. Perhaps she should be, but contentment, she had learned, lay beyond money’s considerable reach.

  Inside a book high up on her bedroom shelf was a note and a pressed gardenia.

  * * *

  A 285-foot three-masted barque-rigged screw steamer with a steel hull, William’s yacht Alva was delivered in October. In return, he’d paid six hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and that was merely the beginning of the expense. Yachts such as this were remarkable for many reasons, but especially for the way they demanded perpetual cash outlays for docking, for cleaning, for coal, for spare line and sailcloth, for brass polish, for harbor fees, for supplies like water and food, and for a well-qualified crew. Alva thought of this and put it aside. It was not her money, after all. And her husband had named the yacht for her, just as he had once said he would.

  The Alva was as luxurious a vessel as anyone could desire. Included between bow and stern was a paneled library with fireplace, a plush music saloon, a dining room, a humidor, a flower-filled ladies’ lounge, a stateroom each for William and Alva plus seven more for the children and guests. Electric lights throughout. Carpets and crystal and gilt-edged panels. A grand piano. A four-foot-wide globe “for geography lessons,” William said. Fine china, exquisite silver, perfect linen. Incidentally, the Alva was also painted a vivid yellow, easily spotted against waves or sky. As William had requested of her maker, the Alva was a home away from home, a far better alternative to sailing on the passenger liners.

  Her crew would grow to more than fifty, but only a dozen or so were on staff for the family’s short demonstration cruise from the Sixtieth Street dock to Newport Harbor, where they would put in for a few days’ stay with Corneil and Alice at their newest house, the Breakers. This so-called cottage was a Bellevue Avenue ivy-covered Queen Anne they’d acquired from tobacco king Pierre Lorillard—who’d decided it would be more fun to make a men’s playground called the Tuxedo Club in the Ramapo Mountains not too far from Manhattan with the help of Caroline’s nephew William Astor, who had plenty of millions of his own. Everything in the Vanderbilts’ world was thusly connected. They and their friends existed on a joyous merry-go-round of wealth.

  Cool air, gentle seas, and sunshine greeted them the morning of their daylong cruise. The trees along the riverbanks were vivid orange, gold, and red. At the mouth of the North River they saw the new Liberty statue, which was finally finished and would be dedicated in a few days.

  William bade the captain to approach it slowly so that the children could have a close look. “Do you know,” he told them as they stood together at the rail, “more than one hundred thousand citizens sent in money so that the statue could be raised here?”

  Alva said, “And our friend Mr. Hunt designed Madame Liberty’s pedestal. Imagine, won’t you, how people who are arriving from far-off places will feel when they come into the harbor and see her after days and days at sea. Especially poor people who’ve lost their money and their homes and have come here to start anew.”

  “It’s the people’s statue,” Consuelo said, looking up at Alva for approval.

  “That’s right. You must always remember—you, too, Willie—”

  “And Harold,” Willie said.

  Alva smiled. “And Harold, when he’s old enough—that God made us equal and it’s man who creates the imbalances, the unfairness, the arbitrary rules meant to keep power in the hands of—”

  “Don’t trouble them with politics,” William said.

  “Did you not just tell them how the statue was funded by the people?”

  “Merely to educate them.”

  “Which is my aim as well.”

  “All right. But let’s enjoy the day.”

  “I was enjoying it, until you reprimanded me.”

  William signaled to the captain to carry on, and Alva forced down her irritation. Perhaps he’d been right to scold her. This wasn’t the time for lectures. It was a perfect day on a perfect yacht—a perfect yacht named for her. Lest she forget.

  Watching her children while they watched for whales, Alva thought of her own early voyages. Her mother had stood at the rail beside the children, proud and confident of her decisions to shape their experiences, direct their destinies. What might she think of Alva if she could see her now?

  Maman had been as shortsighted about “lesser” people as Caroline Astor was before Alva’s coup. She had disdained the “merely rich.” She said that wealth, while desirable, could be as impermanent as love; if the money went, so went everything else. What’s more, a wealthy man could discard his wife if he liked and leave her with absolutely nothing, whereas a discarded nobleman’s wife could not be made to give up her title ever, nor the benefits that title conferred, money (if there was any) being the least of it. “A title gives you status,” Maman said, “and it gives you purpose. Or the right ones do, at any rate.” Even a marriage as unhappy as Lady C.’s would by this measure be superior to most.

  Alva’s mother might be fond of William, his family, even his money. She might credit Alva for her social coup. She would adore the grandchildren without question. There would, however, always be some disappointment that Alva hadn’t found a way to do better. To do best.

  But never mind that. Maman was gone. That life—if it had ever been possible—was not Alva’s life, and look what had come instead: this unbelievably luxurious yacht; this gorgeous day with its sunshine diamonds glinting off the water; a new niece to coo over; a dinner party to officially close the Newport season; a winter of opera and Christmastime festivities and balls ahead. If William never had a reason to discard her, she needn’t ever miss the security a title conferred. She had done well enough.

  “Ahoy!” Willie yelled to a pair of men as the family arrived in Newport’s harbor and eased up to a dock that was not quite long enough for this record-setting yacht, but would serve. Beside Willie, Consuelo waved and grinned. One of the men saluted smartly. The other caught Alva’s eye, turned, and spat on the dock.

  Consuelo turned to Alva. “How terribly rude of him!”

  “Never mind,” Alva told her. “He’s got a bad taste in his mouth, that’s all.”

  When debarking a few minutes later, she paused near the man and said, “You might show some restraint around my children. It isn’t their fault any more than your circumstances are yours.”

  He looked her over. “Spare a dollar, might you?”

  She gave him one, then pointed at his stained, scraggly beard. “Diseases can live in there, you know. You should get a shave.” Then she gave him another dollar. “Can you read? Good books can improve your mind and your opport
unities.”

  He pushed the money back into her hand. “Didn’t ask for a sermon.”

  * * *

  That night’s dinner was a formal affair that included Ward McAllister, whom Alice occasionally consulted for advice on whom to see for draperies and rugs and fine art and flowers. She had brought in all of the fashionable people. No Astors, as they were in mourning for their patriarch, John Jacob III, who had died in February. But she had a Van Alen. An Oelrichs. A Belmont (Perry, not Oliver, who was who knew where). Two Roosevelts—including Lydia (now Mrs. Harry Brook), who was seated next to William and was, as much as Alva could tell from her end of the table, holding him in thrall. An act of politeness on his part, she was certain.

  Seated beside Ward, Alva turned her attention to the others at the long table—thirty of them in all. “Is that gentleman across the table one of yours? He’s not familiar to me.”

  “Mr. Sargent, yes, a portraitist. Marvelous gentleman—I met him through Mr. Wilde, the writer, when I was in London. Excellent reputation. He’s seeking new commissions, you know, and I recommend him with utmost enthusiasm.”

  “I’ve already got an agreement with Mr. Chaplin to do the children—”

  “An excellent choice, of course,” said Ward, though his tone belied his words.

  “He was favored by Empress Eugénie.”

  “Yes? Well, that is an impeccable recommendation, I must say.”

  This was why she had selected Chaplin above other qualified artists; even now, especially now, there was no one she admired more than the empress. Beyond Eugénie’s humane statement about Alva and her sisters, Alva respected her accomplishments. The empress had involved herself in the Second Empire’s politics. She had advocated for women’s equality. She had loved her husband deeply, had been a consultant to him and even at times been his regent. Envy was too tame a word for Alva’s sentiments. She would have liked to step right into Eugénie’s shoes, even if only for a day. She wore her pearls at least once every week just on principle.