As much as we loved Paris and its people, one of the special joys early in our marriage was finding our country house, Lou Sueil. We both loved the beauty and the climate there, for it was perched along the Riviera coast where people grew vegetables for market, and their fields were colorful and productive. The entire area just felt healthful and rather private.
We purchased one hundred fifty acres from the growers. I was proud and amazed at how Jacques bartered with and cajoled them to sell their extra fields, which we patched together for our flower gardens, the lawn, and a house. Lou Sueil meant “the hearth,” and that meant heart and home to us when we took time away from Paris. We hoped the prying newspapers would never find us there.
We planted glorious gardens of flowers to complement the already exquisite cypress, mimosa, and eucalyptus trees. The latter were tall, slender evergreens that seemed to guard our privacy like sentinels. I loved the pink, feathery flowers of the mimosa and how the tiny leaves closed like hands if they were touched, even by raindrops. It was as if to say to outsiders who might wish us ill or want to spy on us, “Stay away or we will close right up!”
We built the house of stone to blend with the area. Eze, where Mother had a villa, was just across a ravine from us—a blessing but a bit of a curse, too, when she was with us. She seemed possessed by fears at times, other times by anger at the injustices to people here and at home. Always a builder and decorator of her own places, she at least approved of my furniture choices—the pieces that had been in storage from my dear refuge of Crowhurst and not used in Paris. We had a mix of deep sofas, easy chairs, and writing desks in the paneled rooms and white wicker furniture with cushions on the long porch.
“You enjoy writing, Consuelo,” Mother told me one day. “Perhaps you should write a book about your charity work in England. Of course you could mention how you helped me with women’s rights when you visited me at home, too. I intend to write my life story. But don’t you want to do more than lend your name to projects now that you are no longer duchess? I have certainly proved no title is necessary, only hard work, gumption, and funds.”
I turned on the wicker sofa to face her instead of enjoying the sprawl of fields and sea below. I had seen Jacques walking up the lane, swinging his arms. He had so much energy and was very popular here, even though few around knew of his war hero status.
“I am concentrating on my marriage for now,” I told her. “I was not able or allowed to do that before. It will be my foundation for helping others again, children’s causes, for, unlike the duke, Jacques will support my efforts.”
“Your love and care for Ivor is at the root of your special concern for children, is it not? That he was sick and weak for years.”
“That and, perhaps, that little girl I helped when I was so young and we spent time at Idle Hour. I took things to her—she was ill—in my pony cart.”
“I remember. I suppose you think of all those outings with your father there.”
“Yes, but I recall the playhouse you made for us, too. I led a gilded life and did not know it for the longest time. I would like to find a way to shed a bit of that on children who are ill or not so fortunate as I.”
“Fortunate. Because of the Vanderbilt fortune, you mean.”
“Mostly, but I will be honest with you. Despite the problems between the two of us when I was growing up, I was fortunate with my heritage. I always loved my easygoing Papa. You were strict and domineering, but you meant it for my good, and I see that now.”
To my surprise, she began to cry in big, sucking sobs just as Jacques came in to join us. I motioned for him to stay back. He nodded and went into the house.
“I am sorry,” I said. “I did not mean—”
“It’s all right. I was too harsh, too much the general. But you still want me here, care for me—thank God for that.”
“I will always love and admire you for the many good things you have done, for me and for others.”
She nodded, kept nodding, with her hands gripped around the handkerchief she had used to blot her eyes.
“Consuelo, I’ve been thinking. No matter what happens to me, if you want to convince Jacques to let you pursue an annulment, I will testify. I will tell them I forced you to wed, for I have learned that can be grounds—a reason for that.”
I leaned forward and gripped her hands. “They say it would all be private, kept within the Rota of three priests who hear the case. I was thinking Miss Harper could testify, too.”
“Good. Yes. She knew how I arranged everything, even leaked things to the newspapers, as much as I hated their continual prying when I could not control it.”
“You did? I wondered who, but I should have known!”
“Confession time all around then. But we must keep this attempt for an annulment secret, both before, during, and after, if they let us petition and testify. I can help you convince Jacques if you want.”
“I will let you know, but I think he will be grateful. It grieves me to see how he longs to be back in the good graces of his family, and how I would like to know them, too.”
“All right then, mum’s the word,” she said, blotting under her eyes again and giving me a tight smile. “The two of us together can do this for your dear Jacques.”
THOUGH JACQUES, MOTHER, and I agreed to pursue an annulment and keep it quiet, the peaceful area of Lou Sueil was soon under attack by the press, and not for our endeavor. Newspapermen seemed to be behind each tree, on the beach, the lane, in town. We built a better fence and installed gates. Our news had not leaked, but the Duke of Marlborough had made a big splash with a publicized visit to the pope and then a well-heralded request that his marriage to me be annulled.
“He beat us to it,” Jacques said. “I cannot believe that man is still plaguing us.” He glowered off into the distance, down our lane at two men still hanging out by the gate. “Those are the two American reporters again, I think, not the British ones that dogged me yesterday.”
“I had planned to buy fresh vegetables and other goods for our gathering tomorrow, but those reporters will cling to me and alienate our neighbors and friends. Mother just tells them off or starts explaining one of her new projects. Me they see as fair game for a statement beyond my standard one: ‘That’s the duke’s business—no comment.’ I cannot believe he has become a Catholic and, suddenly found religion, as they say. Sorry. I did not mean anything against the Catholics. I would remarry you in a Catholic or any sort of ceremony anytime.”
I sighed and felt deflated as I sank on the sofa overlooking the view. Jacques sat beside me. “I just wish, if he gets his annulment, it would apply to you also, but it will not,” he said. “You—and your mother—would still have to testify, and now that the duke has blown the lid off privacy—well,” he said with that charming Gallic shrug.
“I detest how dirty the publicity is getting. My brother Will says one New York paper suggested that since the duke insists there was no marriage, he might want to consider returning his American millions. And the Episcopal Church is attacking the duke for suggesting that a Protestant marriage is less valid than that of a Catholic mass. Such vitriol but at least it has not touched us—yet.”
I turned to embrace him but he was quicker than I, and he had me sprawled across his lap with both arms tight around me.
“I suppose we could do something outrageous in the middle of the day,” he said, his voice that raspy tone I could hear without my ear aid. I had thought at first that the air was different in France for a hard-of-hearing person, but it was just my bond to my Jacques. I swear, I could almost feel his voice like a caress.
“Such as?” I said and felt myself blush under his intense perusal.
“How about something that would shock them all and maybe not get you an annulment, but get me, strayed Catholic though I am, a delightful afternoon?” he added with an exaggerated waggle of his eyebrows that he had copied from one of our British friends who had visited here last week, Charlie Chaplin.
“In the middle of the day—in broad daylight?” I asked and giggled. How quickly and smoothly this man could make everything awful go away.
“They may all go to perdition!” he said and set me aside only to bend down and scoop me up in his arms. “Because we have staff here today and are already a scandal, we shall continue this discussion in the privacy of our bed.”
He bounced me once to tighten his grip and headed for our bedroom. Again, as ever with him, the outside world, even people stalking us, faded to nothing. We were newlyweds again, young, expectant, and happy. I was so desperately in love—but one thing did remain: However much the Duke of Marlborough still played havoc with my life, I was going to follow his lead to annul my marriage, whatever it took.
AT LAST, SIX years after my divorce and five years after my marriage to Jacques, I obtained an English lawyer and prepared to testify before the Catholic Rota with Mother and Miss Harper as key witnesses. With my mother’s permission, two of her sisters also gave corroborating and quite damning statements about her treatment of me.
Our British lawyer, Sir Charles Russell, warned me, “Unfortunately, I believe the entire Catholic Church must know that your mother has publicly taken on a New York Episcopal bishop over the taboo issue of women in the priesthood, and that could prejudice even the Catholic Rota against her. So you will have to be very convincing, Mrs. Balsan.”
My fear that my sons would be made illegitimate was not a problem, for this was indeed an ecclesiastical trial. The duke would never have threatened Bert’s future inheritance or title with his own legal annulment.
Just as in the complicated steps to get my divorce, these proceedings seemed so antique and unfair to me. I had learned that the Holy Rota which would hear my case had not changed since it came to power in 1326, and that it was the same governing church body that had refused to annul the marriage of King Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon. Well, I could see some similarities between that king and the Duke of Marlborough!
I testified first. I had been coached for the terrible—and true—things I must say. “My mother tore me from the arms of a man I loved and took me abroad,” I told them, my voice steady. “She even swore she would shoot that man and willingly go to prison if I did not give him up and marry the man she had chosen for me, the ninth Duke of Marlborough.”
The three priests nodded, frowning. I could hear and feel my heart beating. When they did not ask a question, I went on, “She had chosen the duke for me and brought him to America, though I had met him before in Europe. She said I would be the death of her if I did not agree to be affianced to him. He proposed and I, under great duress, accepted.”
My dear, now elderly governess, Miss Harper, testified next to corroborate what I had said. Then—I held my breath—my mother.
“Yes, I forced my daughter to marry the Duke of Marlborough,” she admitted under initial questioning. “It was, as you may know, an Episcopal ceremony, not a Catholic one. She disliked him for his arrogance—which, I must say, is understandable but has never abated. He is still very overbearing.”
Oh dear, I thought. She is already off the script she was advised to use and had practiced. And she might as well be describing herself. What would these priests think of a modern-day Joan of Arc? Word was in even the European papers that Mother had attacked the Episcopal and Catholic churches at home over male priests.
She went on, “Consuelo was quite upset, but I did not soften my decision. I admit I coerced her, even put a guard at her door so she did not escape before her wedding, but the young man she had been infatuated with was mostly interested in athletics, and as for charitable causes, was a bit of a layabout. Although good things came of the union of my daughter with the duke—mostly through Consuelo’s strength of will and care of the poor, and two fine, upstanding sons—their marriage and the resulting contract for Vanderbilt money was my fault.
“Surely,” she went on, gesturing now, her voice rising, “their unhappy marriage, the lengthy, resulting separation and divorce all speak to their union being wrong and unsanctioned by heaven from the start. Again, I say, I take the blame.”
She had said it. I fought to keep from rolling my eyes at that “unsanctioned by heaven” embellishment. I was amazed and grateful, but regretful to put her through this, however much she had ruined things years ago. But, I must admit, if I had not wed the duke, even if I had wed Win Rutherfurd, would I have lived a worthwhile life? More importantly, I never would have borne my dear Ivor and Bert—and, no doubt, never would have wed my Jacques.
FORTUNATELY, THE ROTA’S decision was to grant me an annulment since I had felt “deferential fear” of my mother and what she would do. Unfortunately, it all became front-page news on two continents. I partly blamed the duke for that, blazing the way as he had with his own public annulment.
Again, we were stalked by newspapermen both in Paris and at lovely Lou Sueil. Neighbors were harassed for their comments. Back in America, my mother was followed, and Miss Harper and my aunts were sought out and badgered, though my aunts—and, surprisingly, even my mother—said simply, “No comment.”
Mother, who had strived so long to be recognized as what was now being called a “feminist,” and who had fought to become a public figure of import, became depressed and almost solitary in reaction to her ruined reputation. To my grief and amazement, she said she wanted to be left alone. My brothers told me she hardly went out and merely wandered from house to house where she kept skeleton staffs and the curtains closed.
So great guilt crashed in on me even as we were privately—through much subterfuge and changing of vehicles—remarried in a Catholic ceremony in France. But I was ecstatic about one thing on the horizon. The press had not managed to sniff out Jacques’s family, and he had been in touch with them. We were going to motor a roundabout way to meet them, which frightened me at least as much as facing the Rota had.