Huge postwar events swirled around us. The Treaty of Versailles formally ending the war was signed in June of 1919, five years to the day after Duke Ferdinand and his duchess were shot to death. During the war, British women who were landowners and over thirty years of age had been given the vote, which still left out most Englishwomen, so that struggle went on with protest marches, hunger strikes, forced feedings, imprisonment, and worse.
Jacques came and went to Crowhurst, though he was knee deep in family and business matters in France. Amid all this came my momentous attempt to attain a divorce from the Duke of Marlborough after a ten-year marriage and thirteen-year separation.
I’d spent time with my lawyer Sir Edward, planning how best to deal with the duke, and now the divorce drama had begun. It was to be played out in carefully orchestrated acts. There were nine steps for obtaining a divorce in England, and each must be documented, observed, or recorded. The duke and I had both agreed to play our parts, and I could only hope the British and American press would not broadcast every one of them in detail.
First, as if we were reading a hidebound script, the duke had written me a note requesting to see me to discuss an issue. Dear Consuelo, it began and ended, Yours ever, Sunny, per Sir Edward’s specific directions. I had then replied to him in writing, citing a specific date and time and signed it Faithfully, Consuelo. What a farce these laws were but as the Charles Dickens character Mr. Bumble said in Oliver Twist, “The law is an ass.”
Second, we must cohabit for a time. The duke, pretending to try for a reconciliation, had come to “live” at Crowhurst, bringing his sister Lilian, who I was still friendly with, so that it seemed we were living together, for I refused to go back to Blenheim for this part of the sham. Gladys had quite taken the place over and the duke had ordered her face—I heard from Lilian that Gladys’s paraffin wax had shifted even lower to her chin—to be carved on some sort of statue there to assure her she was still beautiful.
For the third step, pretending to have tried to save our marriage, the duke had departed Crowhurst—he had never been there before and, I vowed, would not darken my lovely haven again. The note he had left me, again dictated by Sir Edward, read in part, We have grown too far apart to live happily together again.
Continuing the scripted drama, I had written a note to the effect that it was sad that he believed our marriage was over. I told him I was bereft and going away to rest for a while, to see my mother. Indeed, that was not skirting the truth, for I was exhausted through all this. I saw a doctor who recommended a rest away from England, and I went to my mother who had recently bought a villa in the hills above the village of Eze on the French Riviera. But I intended to be back in London soon, to carry on the fight and for our son Bert’s wedding, in the middle of this grueling charade.
“MY DEAREST GIRL,” Mother murmured as she embraced me in the sunny doorway of her charming new pied-à-terre called the Villa Isola, which she was decorating to the hilt. So exhausted from events and from my travel here, I held hard to her. This time it was her turn to comfort me, and she did. Papa had always been so good at that, but I saw now Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont had that in her, too.
“Come in and rest, here on the patio with the view of the sea,” she insisted, pulling me by the hand as if I were four again. “It is restless in the winter, but always so beautiful.”
She rang for tea and little cakes, and we sat out of the wind but in the sun.
“Has it been terrible?” she asked, scooting her chair closer and wrapping her hand firmly around my wrist. “At least you do not have the entire Vanderbilt clan against you as I did.”
“No, the duke’s mother and sisters and the Churchills have been supporting us both. Well, they have all seen our train wreck coming from way back.”
“And the boys?”
“They see it as inevitable, I think. Ivor certainly understands. And since Bert is really in love for the first time—well, I never quite know about him. Sometimes he is Bert and sometimes he is Blandford, the next duke, so he, like his father, is caught between the devil and the deep blue sea of drowning debts at Blenheim and the heavy weight of heritage.”
“So now to happier news. Your Frenchman has tracked me down and written. He would like to meet me and see you.”
“Oh, when? Here?”
“He thinks not here at the villa, in case the duke’s lawyers—or even yours—would not like that. And when have we ever been able to hide from the snooping press, who seem to hide up in trees? So I told him you and I would be taking a picnic along the shore tomorrow, and should he wish to join us exactly where. After all, my dearest, you no doubt need a good watchdog chaperone since he is obviously such a charming and determined Frenchman.”
She laughed. Though I was ready to cry from exhaustion and emotion, I laughed too. My mother with a sense of humor. My mother on my side. My mother protecting my interests and wanting to meet the man I adored when she had caused my sad, bad marriage in the first place. But she was taking steps to make up for that now.
I hugged her so hard that I spilled my tea.
FEBRUARY 17, 1920, I was back in England for a Marlborough family affair: Bert’s wedding to the lovely Mary Cadogan, daughter of Henry Cadogan, Viscount Chelsea. King George and Queen Mary were in attendance. Neither Gladys nor, of course, Jacques were there, but what a coup that the royals were.
That meant that the Duke of Marlborough was beaming. It was a feather in my cap, too, for it was through the Queen Mother Alexandra’s friendship to me that she had convinced the king and queen to attend. I felt, since the duke was cooperating so far with the difficult steps of divorce, it was my final gift to him.
My mother had not come to the wedding because she heard Papa and his wife would be here. Yet what a blessing on this day that both my parents were on my side in the divorce.
My thoughts skipped back to the windy picnic she, Jacques, and I had shared on the deserted beach, getting behind some rocks to break the wind and to hide from possible prying eyes. They both had to shout over the wind so I could hear. I should have known she would ask him about his intentions, but she also encouraged us and urged us to move nearby when we were able to marry.
And, I daresay, Monsieur Jacques Balsan charmed her to the extent she left us alone for an hour to plan while she sat like a guardian on a rock a bit away from us, watching, she said, for some prying newspaperman or the duke’s lawyers. I believed she was doing penance for making me marry someone I hardly knew and did not love.
Each time Jacques kissed me, his lips tasted of wind-blown salt water, and it was the most delicious delight. We both tried hard not to laugh at my mother since she looked like Lot’s wife turned to a pillar of salt after her vigil.
“Who gives this woman to be wedded with this man?” The bishop’s words brought me back to the present scene.
“The viscount and I.”
Bert and Mary said their vows in this traditional venue for aristocratic weddings, St. Margaret’s Church in Westminster. I glared at the back of the duke’s head as he sat in the row before me. In contrast to this mutually agreed upon marriage, ours had been so wrought with tension and tears. At least, I thought, he dare not change his mind about the divorce, though a rather embarrassing step was yet in his control.
I shifted on the hard pew next to Winston, with Clemmie on his other side. Drat, there was one thing that still worried me. I knew the duke was angry over the information someone had given him that Papa had recently settled fifteen million dollars on me and a million on each of my brothers. Surely the duke would not insist we stay married to try to get his hands on that, though Gladys might have stayed with him at Blenheim anyway.
In the reception line after the ceremony, Queen Alexandra came up to me and took my gloved hand in hers. “My dear friend,” she said, “I so hope that you are happy, at least as happy as I was with my own Bertie.”
She was stone deaf and nearly shouting, but I knew she was too set in her ways to use the hearing devices I kept updating and hidden in my hair and hat. Had no one told her I was seeking a divorce? Or was she assuming I loved someone else? And how happy had she been with her roué Bertie, really?
“I am working on it, Your Majesty,” I said loudly.
“Working on what?” the duke said, coming up to us after again speaking with the king and queen. I was so grateful they had come and that they had even mentioned that Queen Alexandra had reminded them of this event more than once. At least King George was not such a stickler for propriety as his father had been, for rumors were rampant that the duke and I would permanently part. But could I trust this man to finally let me go?
“I want Consuelo to be happy,” Queen Alexandra told him, tapping his arm with her gloved finger. “I expect to see her again and know that she is content, so, sadly, you must do your duty, Sunny.”
“Oh, ah, yes,” he stammered, and the tips of his ears actually turned pink. So she did know of my attempt to turn our separation into a divorce, and she must be referring to that, bless her? Could she even know about Jacques?
After the royals had departed, the two newly united families went to Sunderland House for a reception. I could tell Ivor, the best man, was tiring, but I was too, light-headed and nearly swaying on my feet.
After everyone cheered the smiling, departing young couple—and I said a silent prayer that Bert’s fascination with showgirls was over—and Mary’s family had departed also, the duke came up to me and took my elbow to steer me aside from his family.
“I am writing a scathing letter to the Times,” he told me.
“Not about our situation?”
“Hardly. About the wretched mess our liberal P.M. Lloyd George is making of things. Taxing the aristocracy to death. My key line in the letter is Are historical homes to become merely museums and dead relics?”
“I see. Of course, you are worried about Blenheim with all the new taxes.”
“Go ahead and say it,” he whispered. “And without much Vanderbilt money, despite the so-called allowance I receive when you decamp. And then to be made to jump through hoops to obtain a divorce—which I should have had years ago!”
“Really? How I wished we had discussed that years ago. And perhaps you had best keep your voice down here.”
“I want you to hear this loud and clear. I still say you may have it—our damned divorce. I will do the rest that is required of me. I have someone who truly cares for me, and I have no doubt you do, too.”
“Then thank you for carrying out the last important step. I am grateful, for I will no longer be told what I must do with my life.”
“You have not listened to me for years on that! And that is what is wrong with America, always was and still is, rabid, out-of-control independence mania, my American duchess!”
I surprised him by seizing and shaking his hand. “Nothing like a good American independence day,” I told him. “Thank you again for your part in that. And on a happy marriage day, we discuss for the last time ending our sad one. It is for the best for both of us—Sunny.”
Still clasping my hand in return, he nodded, but his frown seemed etched on his brow. “Consuelo,” he said only and turned away.
Good-bye for good, I thought. And that made me feel good.
THOUGH I WAS terrified that the duke would yet balk at having to be seen cohabiting with another woman—though it would certainly not be Gladys, though he was actually living with her—he went through with it. Before Bert’s wedding, the duke had sent me a letter declaring we could no longer cohabit together happily. As ordered, I now took that to London to my lawyer to petition a judge to restore my conjugal rights.
Again, I thought, what a sham, but the duke stuck to the rest of the plan. Followed by a detective hired by Sir Edward, whom the duke knew was two steps behind him, he took a lady hired for the occasion to the Hotel Claridge in Paris. They stayed in the same room the night of February 28, 1920, and were seen leaving the next morning. I can only imagine that the woman earned her money that night, not for any sort of coupling, but for having to stay in the room with a very upset, angry man.
Finally, the nightmare of pretense was over. The duke took a train to Nice to escape the press, and I hied myself to Sir Edward’s to ask for a court order that my conjugal rights be restored. The newspapers got the news of our pending divorce on March 23 and went crazy with it on two continents.
Finally, freedom was within reach! I would soon get my divorce decree. Then, six months later—if Jacques proposed again as he had almost already—I could legally wed him. I knew his very Catholic family would be upset he was marrying a divorced woman, but nothing mattered except our being together.
Only, I had no idea a tragedy, careening around another of life’s sharp corners, would ruin my joy and tilt my world.