Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter in the ‘Gilded Age’

One of Mann’s favourite tricks was to place paragraphs in his column that described reprehensible behaviour on the part of anonymous individuals, giving the readership the fun of decoding his allegations (this was often easy because he frequently placed another paragraph describing quite innocuous activities by the named individual close by). On 19 July 1894, Town Topics leapt into print with a story of ‘a most offensive liaison going on in high life between a man who has been conspicuous in society and … the wife of a millionaire that moves in the same set’. It had long been thought that this relationship would become a scandal. ‘But with a great deal of manoeuvring some sort of treaty of peace was patched up.’ Much to Town Topics’ sorrow however, ‘the shameful affair had continued without abatement’, the lover in question was now in Europe with the married woman, and the husband’s reputation had been ‘recklessly besmirched’. The names of two honourable families were about to be ‘dragged in the dust, all to gratify the passions of a pair that have renounced the thousand legitimate delights at their command to embrace the one that is forbidden and reprehensible’.58

But there was another twist to the story. It would appear that the husband in the case had inexplicably forsaken the moral high ground by taking up with an inamorata of his own in Paris, a demimondaine whom he was entertaining in ‘the fashion of Lucullus of old’. By the following week Town Topics had stopped bothering to keep up the fiction. William K. Vanderbilt was in Paris flaunting his relationship with one Nellie Neustretter, a very grand courtesan – ‘one of the prettiest and nicest of the high-class horizontales’.59

Alva seems to have decided to sit the publicity out in England, staying on after the London season and all suitable aristocrats had dispersed to the grouse moors of Scotland. It is unclear whether Town Topics was correct in maintaining that Oliver Belmont joined her, but it is quite likely. Alva and Consuelo returned to New York on 28 September 1894 on board the Lucania, arriving in Newport well after the season closed on 29 September. Alva now prepared to implement a three-point plan. She would divorce William K. for adultery, ensuring that she could have custody of the children; she would place Consuelo in an English aristocratic setting; and she would regularise her own position with Oliver Belmont. These three objectives would become intricately entangled in the months ahead.

After the amusements of Paris, Consuelo looked forward to a winter season in New York, well away from Europe and threats of international marriage. She and Alva settled back into 660 Fifth Avenue. William K. was banished to his club. (Dissatisfied with the configuration of space he called in workmen to knock down partition walls and redecorate. ‘When at the club Mr Vanderbilt can entertain at dinner forty friends on the same floor upon which his rooms are and be sure of no intrusion,’ insinuated Town Topics silkily.60) It was reported variously that his brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II had rushed to Paris in the summer for crisis talks and that the Vanderbilts had met for a family caucus in Boston. Whether or not these family conferences took place, the Vanderbilts now rallied firmly behind William K., because, according to Town Topics, Alva had condescended to them all in the most supercilious manner for years.61 There was certainly tension. As far as Alva was concerned they were either with her or against her. She broke off relations with every one of William K.’s siblings and anyone else who failed to offer her unconditional support. As a result, Consuelo’s hopes of a New York debut were dashed. ‘During the following months I was to suffer a perpetual denial of friendships and pleasures, since my mother resented seeing anyone whose loyalties were not completely hers,’62 she wrote.

Disliking scandal and controversy, William K. did his best to dissuade Alva from pressing for a divorce. However angry he may have felt, he was concerned that given the double standards of the day, disgrace would rebound on her alone. Well into the autumn, Alva’s lawyer, Joseph Choate, did his best to dissuade her, pointing out that her close circle would regard her as a traitor for drawing scandalous attention to the lives of the ultra-wealthy. ‘He saw immense fortunes in the hands of a privileged few. He knew the inevitable social unrest which would result from such a condition. If Wealth laid itself open to attack from any source its throne was weakened.’63 When that failed to have any effect, Choate tried to warn Alva that by insisting on divorcing William K. Vanderbilt for adultery, she would be pitting herself against the vested interests of American male wealth. ‘He knew better than I did the power and influence of wealth. He knew its sway over Courts of Kings and Courts of Law … prelates and laymen … even those who called themselves “friend”.’64

Choate argued that the punishment meted out to women daring to challenge male hegemony would be so harsh that even Alva would not be able to withstand it. Reflecting on the episode, Alva once again presented her reaction as heroic: ‘My argument in return was that I believed it was necessary for some woman to blaze the way for a just recognition of her own personality.’65 Later, though, she also said that if she had known how difficult it would be, she might have thought twice about going into battle alone. The problem which Alva never mentioned was that it was one thing to sue for adultery (and this was courageous); but it was quite another matter to survive the battle when the world knew that she had a lover of her own whom she wished to marry. Once Joseph Choate assured her she would have custody of the children, however, Alva determined to press ahead regardless. ‘The legalized prostitution that marriage covers is to me appalling … If marriage is a protection for the woman against many wrongs, divorce is also an escape from many degrading evils,’66 she said to Sara Bard Field.

Having surrendered on the divorce issue, William K. went back to Paris, where observant correspondents reported on his dalliance with Nellie Neustretter. A reporter for Town Topics thought that he looked wretched. ‘There were large circles under his eyes, and he looked neither well nor happy.’67 William K. arrived back in New York on 22 December 1894, and even the taciturn superintendent Mr Gilmour noted that the Christmas atmosphere was strained and tense. ‘Willie and his father went out walking this morning. In the evening I went to the Knickerbocker Club, 32 Street to get Mr V. for Mrs V. but he was not at home. Mr Jay came in the evening to see Mrs V. I was called out of my bed to take a note to Mr V. 11 pm.’68 On New Year’s Day, Alva had a huge row with another servant: ‘He was told to leave the house. He replied he would go when he felt so disposed.’69

The only person who did her best to ease the tension was seventeen-year-old Consuelo who treated her maid, her governess and Mr Gilmour to tickets for the opera on Boxing Day. In the middle of January 1895, William K. fled back to Europe amid mounting press speculation that the Vanderbilts were filing for divorce. On the day of his departure the World finally broke the story in prose breathless with excitement: ‘Mr Vanderbilt came from Europe just one month ago. His stay has been almost entirely devoted to arranging his family affairs. There has been no reconciliation between him and Mrs Vanderbilt.’70 One influential figure rallied to Alva’s defence. On the evening of 16 January, Mrs Astor publicly supported Alva by inviting Consuelo to a party for her great-niece, Helen Kingsland. It was a kind gesture but one society reporter noted that Consuelo had a miserable and embarrassing evening as the gilded youth of New York tittered about the scandal whenever her back was turned.

From a Vanderbilt point of view, William K.’s precipitate departure to Europe was both unfortunate and misjudged, for it handed control of the story to Alva. When the divorce was finally granted on 6 March, the dam of publicity burst. Never a newspaper to understate matters, the World described it as ‘the biggest divorce case that America has ever known. It is, in fact, the biggest ever known in The World.’71 The paper saw it as its moral duty to provide the reading public with everything it wanted to know, while simultaneously lambasting the rich for lax moral standards. One striking feature of its reportage, however, was the extent to which it favoured Alva over William K., leading to the suspicion that she had managed to brief its journalists. Mrs Vanderbilt had not fled to Europe, like her husband wrote the World. She was determined ‘to stay here until the divorce should be publicly announced; not to run away from the publicity which reflects only on her husband, who is pronounced guilty’.72 A photograph of Nellie Neustretter was printed in what looked suspiciously like her underwear. Alva (though the report was not entirely complimentary) was presented as the unhappy victim, made peevish by her philandering husband; and Oliver Belmont was never mentioned at all.

It is possible that Alva arranged a deal. Oliver’s name would be kept out of the World’s story in exchange for a most intriguing piece of information. On the morning of 7 March, the World produced a sensational piece of news. Nellie Neustretter was an elaborate sideshow, possibly just a decoy. The real object of William K.’s affections, and the true reason for Alva’s implacable fury, was that her husband had been having a longstanding affair with her very old friend, Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester.

There is no means of establishing for sure whether this story is true. It was never formally denied by anyone involved, however, and it may have some basis. Years later Sara Bard Field told an interviewer that although Alva would not allow her to mention it in the memoirs, William K. ‘had brought his mistresses right into the home’ including ‘poor women of the nobility of England’.73 Consuelo Manchester, to all intents and purposes, disappeared from Alva’s life after 1894, which is odd since she was not simply Consuelo’s godmother and an English duchess, she was also a relation by marriage after Alva’s sister, Jenny, married Fernando Yznaga. In her memoirs, Consuelo (Vanderbilt) makes very few references to her godmother.74 Consuelo Manchester was also famously unhappily married. Her husband had been declared bankrupt in 1890, and had abandoned her in favour of a music-hall singer whom he escorted round London before his death in 1892. She was constantly short of money; her other lovers included the Prince of Wales. The World suggested the affair between Consuelo Manchester and William K. was well established (though not exclusive): a ‘titled American woman’ and William K. had been linked eleven years earlier, in 1884. There was even one report that Alva had almost thrown a ‘titled American friend’ out of the marital home as early as 1879.75 William K.’s inexplicable conduct with regard to Nellie Neustretter was now quite comprehensible, said the World. He was simply trying to deflect attention away from a scandal involving his mistress by flaunting a relationship with a grande cocotte.

Town Topics, peeved at its failure to uncover this story first, managed to keep it alive by downplaying it. ‘According to the rumour most generally credited among those who know nothing on the subject, one of them is to marry a banker and the other a duchess.’76 Whatever the truth, the warm relationship between William K. and Consuelo Manchester was to be highlighted in the most tragic fashion possible within days of this publicity firestorm. In a coincidence far more dreadful than the sinking of any yacht, Consuelo Manchester’s daughter, who was named after Alva and who was only in her late teens, died in Italy ten days after the divorce was granted. Acutely distressed, Consuelo Manchester turned to William K. for help. On Saturday 16 March, he gave orders to the captain of the Valiant to sail to Civitavecchia in Italy. The captain wrote in the ship’s log: ‘In the afternoon we embarked the remains of the late Lady May Alva Montagu, accompanied by the Duchess of Manchester, Lady Alice Montagu, Miss Yznaga, Dr A. Muthie, Mr F. Yznaga, and servants, and at 6 p.m. sailed for Marseilles.’77 According to the same log, William K. went up to Rome by the 4.50 p.m. train, possibly to assist with legal formalities, or to avoid making scandalous rumours worse. The Duchess of Manchester and her party sailed with Lady Alva Montagu’s body back to Marseilles, and from thence to Paris. The Valiant then turned round and went back to Italy to pick up the rest of the party. William K. was back in Paris by 2 March.

This story of the liaison refused to go away for several months. It was noted that Alva did not attend her namesake’s funeral. By April, Town Topics was reporting that the rumour mill had it that the death of Lady Alva Montagu had marked a turning point in the relationship between William K. and Consuelo Manchester, and that there was a persistent story ‘that will seemingly not die down … to the effect that Mr Vanderbilt would have become the husband of the Duchess of Manchester had it not been for her bereavement in the loss of her twin daughter Lady Alva Montagu’.78 By the middle of June, a consensus seemed to be emerging in the society press that Nellie Neustretter had indeed simply been engaged by William K. as co-respondent, though this does not wholly explain why he felt obliged to spend several months in her company.

The affair caught the attention of Henry James, also in Paris in the summer of 1895, who thought that William K.’s relationship with Nellie was part of a complicated strategy to force Alva into divorce, and that it had the makings of a short story: ‘The husband doesn’t care a straw for the cocotte and makes a bargain with her that is wholly independent of real intimacy. He makes her understand the facts of his situation – which is that he is in love with another woman. Toward that woman his wife’s character and proceedings drive him, but he loves her too much to compromise her. He can’t let himself be divorced on her account – he can on that of the femme galante – who has nothing – no name – to lose.’79 This would become the starting point for James’s novel, The Special Type, published in 1903.

Under the terms of the divorce, Alva kept Marble House, which had already been made over to her at her insistence, and refused William K.’s offers of both 660 Fifth Avenue and Idle Hour, which were ‘rendered disagreeable by unpleasant memories’.80 The terms of the divorce settlement were never made public, in spite of furious efforts by the press to find out, but Alva received a sum close to $2.3 million and an income of about $100,000 a year, with provision that specified amounts of the capital sum should be transferred to each of the children on marriage or at the age of twenty-eight.81

Predictably, Alva faced a harsh reaction from some elements in society, but as ever, she presented herself as having toughed it out: ‘I did not fail myself at this stormy time. I got my divorce and just as in childhood days I accepted the whipping my mother gave me for taking the forbidden liberty, so I bared my back to the whipping of Society for taking a freedom which would eventually better them as well as myself.’82 In spite of Choate’s warnings about the viciousness of hegemenous males, society women were worse. ‘Yes, and they put on the lash, especially the women, and especially the Christian women. When I walked into Trinity Church in Newport on a Sunday soon after obtaining my divorce, not a single one of my old friends would recognize me.’83

On Wednesday 13 March, Alva departed for Europe with Consuelo and Harold, seen off by William Gilmour. The New York Tribune reported that Alva travelled in her usual style with five maids, one man servant and seventy pieces of luggage.

By now, Alva had another compelling reason for sailing to Europe. Preoccupied by her divorce, she had failed to take seriously Consuelo’s growing attachment to a man of thirty-three, which was threatening to undermine her plan to place her daughter in an aristocratic setting. It is impossible that Alva failed to notice the warmth between Consuelo and her American admirer since the indefatigable World had picked up the scent as early as the middle of February that year. On Valentine’s Day, it chose to run the story as a romantic tale of shattered hopes: ‘A young man, bearing an old family first name, prefixed with a prominent Boston family surname, has been all devotion to Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt and she apparently was most happy in his attentions. This joyousness must now be relegated to the saddest of “might have beens”.’84 Two days later the same paper explicitly linked Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough asking: ‘Is she to be a Duchess? It is quite generally recognised that the Duke must marry money if he is to keep up Blenheim. His income is only £8,000 ($40,000) a year and Blenheim costs £14,000 ($370,000) a year.’85

The young man who had been all devotion to Consuelo was Winthrop Rutherfurd, son of the eminently respectable Mr and Mrs Lewis Rutherfurd, a New England family of impeccable pedigree (Lewis Rutherfurd was one of the earliest Patriarchs in 1872). Through his mother, Winthrop Rutherfurd was a direct descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, colonial governor of New York, and John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts. ‘Winty’ Rutherfurd was tall and famously good-looking. Though trained as a lawyer, he spent much of his youth playing polo and golf, for which he had something of a reputation. He was a member of the elite Newport Golf Club and has been described as suitable for Consuelo in every way.

As far as Alva was concerned, however, he was not suitable at all. The first problem was that he simply represented the wrong marital path. In America in the 1890s, there were two routes to dynastic marriage open to the new phenomenon, the American heiress. One was to marry into the network of American families enriched by industrial capitalism, further consolidating vast fortunes, creating an aristocracy of money but effectively embracing the ‘new’. The other was to marry into one of the European aristocracies, depleting the industrial fortune but ennobling the American family through association with nobility and centuries of tradition, elegance and culture.86 This trend had been started in Alva’s generation by Jennie Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill and by Consuelo Yznaga, though as it happened neither of them had huge dowries. By 1895, the European route to aristocratising one’s family had become highly competitive. That year alone there were nine marriages between heiresses and English aristocrats** while Anna Gould’s marriage to Frenchman Count Boni de Castellane set new standards for lavish New York weddings. By 1914 commentators calculated that over 500 American fortunes had been transferred to Europe through this route.87 Alva, always ambivalent about the ‘crude’ and ‘unfinished’ nature of American life, embittered by the power structures of American society, drawn to those parts of European history where aristocratic marriages were arranged as a matter of course and a great admirer of British aristocracy was, of course, determined that it would be the European and not the American route for Consuelo.

A further problem with Winthrop Rutherfurd, however, was that he was far too close – and far too similar – to William K. Vanderbilt, the ‘weak nonentity’ whom she had just divorced. According to Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr, ‘the Rutherfurds lived well, dressed expensively, and did little else’, though Winthrop’s father, Lewis Rutherfurd, was a distinguished astronomer who took some early photographs of the surface of the moon. As far as Alva was concerned, Winthrop Rutherfurd was a fine example of the new breed of useless male now emerging, like her ex-husband, from three generations of plutocratic wealth. Alva also suspected him of being a gold-digger. American society had evolved to a point where it was impossible to participate without being very rich. Consuelo’s dowry was a clear temptation to a young man from a good family with social ambitions but without great wealth. Alva, of course, took the view that almost all rich American men were serial adulterers who left the business of keeping up respectable appearance to their wives, while they romped like young colts in ‘the world-wide field’.88 In Consuelo’s case there was a real danger that she would facilitate ‘romping’ by financing it. Alva always maintained that her divorce had no effect on her children’s lives. In reality, the bitterness and cynicism engendered by William K.’s philandering profoundly coloured her plans for Consuelo’s future.

For the moment, however, she dealt with her daughter’s first love badly, in a manner guaranteed to encourage romance rather than stifle it. According to Consuelo, her first line of attack was contempt, ‘reserving special darts for [the] older man who by his outstanding looks, his distinction and his charm had gained a marked ascendancy in my affections’.89 Winty’s response was to propose, and when the proposal came, it would not have been out of place in an Edith Wharton novel. It took place on Consuelo’s eighteenth birthday on 2 March 1895, a few days before the finalisation of the Vanderbilt divorce. First, he sent her an American Beauty rose, her favourite. Later, he joined Consuelo, a group of other young people, and Alva, on a cycling expedition along Riverside Drive. ‘My Rosenkavalier and I managed to outdistance the rest. It was a most hurried proposal, for my mother and the others were not far behind; as they strained to reach us he pressed me to agree to a secret engagement, for I was leaving for Europe the next day. He added that he would follow me, but that I must not tell my mother since she would most certainly withhold her consent to our engagement. On my return to America we might plan an elopement.’90

Consuelo was not, in fact, due to leave for Europe for another fortnight. But there were to be no further meetings with Winty. A few days after Alva and Consuelo set sail for Paris, several newspapers also noted the departure for Europe of Winthrop Rutherfurd. If he hoped to see Consuelo he was to be disappointed. Alva regarded her daughter’s glow of happiness with dark suspicion and did everything in her power to prevent a meeting. ‘She laid her plans with forethought and skill, and during the five months of our stay in Europe I never laid eyes on Mr X, nor did I hear from him. Later I learned that he had followed us to Paris but had been refused admittance when he called. His letters had been confiscated; my own, though they were few, no doubt suffered the same fate.’91 The happiness of the previous summer in Paris was a distant memory. Consuelo tried on new clothes ‘like an automaton.’92 Alva was intensely irritated by her daughter’s air of adolescent ‘martyrdom’, and her complaints about it only served to deepen Consuelo’s misery.

Alva later argued vigorously that she had only had her daughter’s interests at heart in keeping her from Rutherfurd in this way. It should not be overlooked that in this period immediately after her divorce, Consuelo’s interests were closely bound up with her own. Alva wished to marry Oliver Belmont. She did not, however, wish to abandon her position as a leader of society once she remarried, and thus retreat from the only theatre of life that was open to her. However high-minded Alva’s reasons may have been for saving her daughter from life with an American plutocrat, Consuelo’s marriage to Winthrop Rutherfurd would have done little to bolster Alva’s position in America, however popular he might have been at Newport Golf Club. The Duke of Marlborough was another matter entirely. Consuelo later maintained that Alva ordered her wedding dress in Paris that spring, so sure was she about the successful conclusion of her plans. There is no evidence for this; but Alva certainly bought hundreds of expensive ‘favors’ – small presents – for a ball, as she now planned what would become a decisive manoeuvre.

As Town Topics put it: ‘There has been little doubt in the minds of those who know Mrs Vanderbilt intimately, and consequently, understand her character and temperament, that she would return to Newport this summer and assert her position.’93 Months in advance of her return to Newport, Alva fired her first shot by letting it be known from Paris that she would be giving a ball at Marble House the following August, and that she would construe acceptance of this invitation as a pledge of loyalty. By the middle of June, these reports were sending New York’s elite into a frenzy, particularly in the absence of any signal from the Vanderbilt family whom nobody wished to offend. ‘Small wonder it is that the approaching dilemma begins to assume tremendous proportions in the minds of not only those who are not yet absolutely sure of their position in the social world, and who feel they cannot afford to risk their chances by a false move in the start, but even, indeed, in those of the contingent of assured position, who have no prejudice or animosity toward Mrs Vanderbilt herself, who certainly feel kindly toward her daughter, and yet are on terms of friendship and even intimacy with the other members of the family,’94 said Town Topics sagaciously.