January 1895, New York
‘I gave blow for blow.
I accepted any challenge.
I stopped at nothing attempted.’
– ALVA VANDERBILT
It was two days after the Patriarchs’ Ball when the story broke in the New York World. The front page confirmed that Mrs Alva Vanderbilt and Mr William K Vanderbilt would be divorcing and that Willie K had fled America for the safety of Europe.
‘Mr William K Vanderbilt will sail for England this morning on the White Star steamer Teutonic… 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 of him and Mrs Vanderbilt. It is understood though, by friends of both parties, that he leaves behind him papers signed and sealed… It was Mrs Vanderbilt’s reception day yesterday but none of the Vanderbilts called.’1
The news that one of the heirs to the Vanderbilt fortune had finally decided to dissolve his marriage caused a sensation, although nobody among New York’s elite could pretend they were surprised. For the nearly one million readers who devoured every morsel of gossip they could about Gilded Age society, the story was irresistible. It had scandal in the form of two protagonists who were rumoured to have had affairs, and one of New York’s most powerful families whose loyalties were now divided between a scheming society matron and a submissive husband who had sought refuge from daily domestic battles in the salubrious underworld of Paris. All of New York was braced for a fight of epic proportions over the Vanderbilts’ millions, but who would come out on top?
Alva Vanderbilt would have been confident it would be her. As a little girl, growing up on her father’s cotton plantation in Mobile, Alabama, she had revelled in terrorising the slave children, while proving more than an equal to the boys from neighbouring farms that dared to cross her. She later remembered, ‘I gave blow for blow. I accepted any challenge. I stopped at nothing attempted.’2 Alva was a survivor and she was no doubt determined that her divorce from Willie K and the furore surrounding it would not distract her from her main focus, the launch of her daughter Consuelo into society. Indeed, she had been masterminding that journey since the day her daughter was born, and now she would not let Willie K and his indiscretions derail her plans.
Alva was long used to engineering her own success. She had ridden the ups and downs of fortune since her days as one of the four Smith girls from the South, suddenly uprooted from their privileged life by the chaos of the Civil War. Murray Smith, her father, had been a very successful cotton merchant and had shown foresight in moving his family to New York before the Civil War. He could see the city’s central role in the industrial age fuelling its expansion, with outsiders both rich and poor trying to take advantage of its increasingly important role in America’s economy. At first the Smiths seemed to have no problem in assimilating into New York society. Although they were outsiders, they had the right genteel background, were well travelled and obviously had the funds to match their lifestyle. Murray was a member of the New York Cotton Exchange and was elected to the first of New York’s gentlemen’s clubs, the Union Club, in the early 1860s. However, as the realities of the Civil War began to hit home, the Smiths increasingly bore the brunt of the North–South divide and found themselves at both a business and a social disadvantage. As the war drew to an end and the family were trying to operate within a toxic atmosphere of recriminations, they fled to Paris.
The Paris of the Second French Empire (as the reign of Napoleon III, 1852–70, was known) was an alluring prospect for Americans. The lavish court of Napoleon III and Empress Eugénie provided a glittering opportunity to mix with European aristocracy and respite from the strain of constantly striving for social acceptance that had become a daily burden in New York. It became clear to the Smiths and many others in their position that, in Paris, whether you had new money or old didn’t matter as long as it was spent with aplomb. Whereas keeping up appearances on a reduced income proved a real challenge in New York, where new money was consistently upping the ante, in Paris it was possible to rent a fine house on the Champs Elysées and enjoy all the opulent trappings of high society that the Empire demanded. Paris also enabled Alva to mature into a young woman ripe for the marriage market. In many ways she was still the independent and strong-willed child who had afforded those daily beatings in Alabama and was often a headache for her parents, but her experiences in Europe opened up another world for Alva, one of luxury, frivolity and an aristocracy who made the rules.
By the end of the 1860s, Murray Smith found his businesses under real threat and decided that the family must return to New York. His self-imposed exile from America had seen a reduction in tensions but, as a Southerner, he was still at a disadvantage in the new era. He also found it difficult to adapt to an economy that favoured speculators and profiteers like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Willie K’s grandfather and the head of the family, who took advantage of the industrial age by investing heavily in the railways that were opening up the country.
By 1871, when Alva’s mother Phoebe died from an acute attack of rheumatoid arthritis at the age of forty-eight, the Smiths had been forced to rent houses further and further away from the fashionable Fifth Avenue abode they had once owned. When the stock-market panic of 1873 hit what remained of Murray’s fortune, Alva realised the family were in serious trouble.
‘Through change of circumstances he began not only to make no money but to lose it, so he notified us that we must move from 33rd Street to 44th Street,’ recalled Alva in her memoirs. ‘I could not understand the great worry and grief to my father because it did not seem to affect me. I remember hearing his saying when he was worried “we shall have to keep a boarding house” – at this my sisters would look dismayed but I would shout, “If we do keep a b.h. [boarding house], I will do the scrubbing.”’3
This typical reaction by Alva to her circumstances was full of defiance and chutzpah and may have brought Murray Smith some comfort, but it belied his daughter’s true feelings on their slide down the social scale. This experience would, in fact, colour Alva’s attitude to money for many years to come. Faced with a life of relying on wealthier relatives to afford them kindness while scratching out a precarious existence of genteel poverty, Alva took action.
She scoured her circle of friends and acquaintances for any opportunities that would transform her fortunes. It was not long before she remembered two old school friends from her days at Madame Coulon’s finishing school in Paris: Minnie Stevens and Consuelo Yznaga. Like Alva, both Minnie and Consuelo lived on the fringes of New York society. The very reason they had all congregated in Paris was because their families had chosen to seek refuge from the high-stakes social manoeuvring that characterised New York. In Paris they could partake in the very best society and give their daughters a valuable training ground to hone their skills. After experiencing first-hand the humiliation of being barred from the ballrooms of the establishment at home, they resolved to create something better for their daughters. They had the money to funnel into European pockets, which afforded them the taste of an aristocratic lifestyle Ward McAllister and Mrs Astor could only seek to emulate.
Minnie, Consuelo and Alva, together with Jennie Jerome soaked up the heady atmosphere of the French court. Although they were not yet old enough to make their debuts, their families were welcomed into the Empress’s inner circle and the sights they were exposed to had a profound effect on them all. They had much in common. They were young, beautiful, well educated and fun, and while Minnie and Jennie provided a considered foil to Alva and Consuelo’s lively personalities, their early days in Paris would lay the foundations for long and enduring friendships.
Alva, who now found herself motherless and without the funds to launch even a minor assault on New York society, knew she would have to use these alliances to her advantage. She had known Consuelo’s family, the free-spirited Yznagas, since childhood – when she would tumble over sand dunes at Newport, Rhode Island, with Consuelo’s brother Fernando. The Yznagas had a Cuban background, but both families came from the South and so understood the now herculean challenge that lay before them in trying to gain access to the social elite. They were outsiders bonded together through their experiences in Paris, their fluctuating fortunes and their need for acceptance. Mrs Yznaga, with three daughters of her own, and Mrs Marietta Stevens, who had already had some success parading Minnie around Europe’s drawing rooms, were well aware of the perils of the marriage market. They took pity on the feisty eighteen-year-old who had nobody to guide her through her most important years and, despite her circumstances, included her in their circle.
Waiting patiently in the wings, Alva made herself indispensable to her friends. She ensured that, along with the Stevenses and the Yznagas, she secured invitations to the so-called bouncers’ balls, filled with Swells on the sidelines, a younger, faster set who were not yet accepted by The Four Hundred but were making their case to Mrs Astor for inclusion. Alva was not the most beautiful, a title that Consuelo Yznaga, with her soft blonde ringlets, would surely challenge for. Later, Alva would be described as ‘a little too short, a little too plump, her face a little too severe, her mouth a little too set, her long brown hair, which reached the ground, tinged with gray even in her twenties. Some remarked that she looked like a cute Pekingese. But intelligent? Yes, without question.’4 She would have to rely on her irrepressible energy, her undeniable charm and fierce intelligence to place herself at the heart of the arrivistes, and then she would make her move.
Alva didn’t have to wait long before Consuelo Yznaga introduced her to Willie K Vanderbilt. The Vanderbilts’ rise to the top had been swift and alarming for New York society. Cornelius Vanderbilt, also known as Commodore Vanderbilt, Willie K’s grandfather, was the eldest of nine children, born in humble circumstances on Staten Island. His father diligently worked his small farm but the family often lived on the poverty line and the young Cornelius had very little formal education, eschewing literacy while searching for the practical means to change his circumstances. He demonstrated his entrepreneurial talent early by establishing a passenger-ferry service from Staten Island to Manhattan. When this proved successful, he expanded the operation and took advantage of new technology in the form of steamships, creating a network of routes along the Hudson River and the New England coastline. It’s perhaps a testament to the Commodore’s natural entrepreneurial ability that after making his first million dollars, a considerable amount at that time, he again looked around for how he could exploit the fruits of industrialisation. His answer was the railroad, in which he invested heavily, capitalising on its convergence in New York. From that moment, the Vanderbilt fortune was secure, although the Commodore would tell his son and successor, William Henry, ‘Any fool can make a fortune. It takes a man of brains to hold on to it after it is made.’5
The Commodore cared little about ingratiating himself with New York society, preferring to occupy himself with business matters and intimidating his family with his imperious personality. His lack of interest in the establishment was a source of relief to the Knickerbockers, who saw the Vanderbilts as uncouth upstarts who had been fortunate enough to predict the rise of the railroad. William Henry, who proved a diligent and talented successor, and his wife, Maria Kissam, did not seek the approval of New York society either, although their rapidly multiplying fortune was proving a challenge for The Four Hundred to ignore. However, Willie K, a third-generation Vanderbilt who had been educated in Europe and so exposed to society at an early age, sought acceptance. He wanted the Vanderbilt name to match its millions and to do this he would have to marry well.
There’s little doubt that, given the time and the inclination, the charming Willie K could have made a more strategic match than Alva Smith. However, despite her family’s fall from grace, Alva had managed to position herself at the epicentre of the younger set who were determined to climb all the way to The Four Hundred. She knew that to secure her family’s future and achieve what she really wanted, an unassailable social position, she would first need money, and Willie K, as one of the heirs to the Vanderbilt fortune, certainly had that. For his part, he saw Alva’s Southern heritage, her style and grace perfected in Paris and her indomitable wit as an irresistible combination. Years later, she was described as ‘pert, sassy, a tease, she was a bundle of energy’.6 When the two found themselves at the popular Virginian resort, White Sulphur Springs – whether by accident or by Alva’s design – in the summer of 1874, it wasn’t long before an engagement was announced.
The wedding itself took place on 20 April 1875, under the shadow of Alva’s father’s declining health. Although unable to attend the wedding, Murray Smith gave his daughter his blessing and congratulated her on a marriage that would ensure a future free from financial worry. The wedding was a smart affair, although Alva still had to make do with a wedding dress made out of flounces from one of her mother’s old dresses. She would maintain that her intended dress had not arrived from Paris, although this explanation seems unlikely, given her family’s financial situation. Of course one of her bridesmaids was Consuelo Yznaga, Alva’s friend from Newport and Paris, who had first introduced the couple and whose mother had taken Alva under her wing. Minnie Stevens’s mother, Marietta, had also offered Alva social protection and her friendship with Minnie had led to an invitation to be a bridesmaid; on the day, however, Minnie was too ill to attend and had to be replaced by Consuelo Yznaga’s sister, Natica.
The church was filled with society people, although very few of The Four Hundred were present, however the wedding was clearly the beginning of a new chapter for Alva. One when she would lead and others would follow. In spite of all the challenges she had faced, she had managed to secure one of the wealthiest men in the country, while her school friends with money and connections had yet to attract a suitor. ‘I always do everything first,’7 Alva would remark, but twenty years later, as she faced down the scandal of her divorce, blazing a new trail may not have seemed such a smart thing to do.