By her own account, Alva took the only option open to her. She put herself on the marriage market for two anxious years. Her social circle revolved round a younger group than Mrs Astor’s. Within it, social demarcation as delineated by Mrs Astor was already breaking down. Alva described her set as an exclusive group based on family connections where the parents all knew each other and which was ‘very exclusive and safe on that account’.71 Some members of this younger set undoubtedly came from families already in the Four Hundred, while others would have been regarded by Mrs Astor as ‘fast’ or ‘new’.
Edith Cooper and the Livingston sisters, for example, were from old New York families. Alva’s Newport friend Consuelo Yznaga, on the other hand, did not meet Mrs Astor’s exacting standards on account of her oscillating Yznaga fortune and flamboyant Cuban background. Minnie Stevens, a friend whom Alva met at Madame Coulon’s school in Paris, was another of the younger set who suffered from the disdain of the Four Hundred. She was the daughter of Mr Paran Stevens, a hotel owner who collected hotels ‘as assiduously as Commodore Vanderbilt collected railways’.72 Although she was much more financially secure than either Alva or Consuelo Yznaga it was to Minnie’s disadvantage that Mrs Paran Stevens was rumoured to have been a hotel chambermaid, a charge she most indignantly fought off, eventually becoming a successful hostess in New York in her own right.
For the young blue bloods in the group, this mix was part of its charm. In truth, society as constructed by Mrs Astor was often intensely dull. This younger set was fun precisely because it was far less concerned with keeping out arrivistes. Its members skated on Central Park and danced at ultra-exclusive Delmonico’s too – not at the Family Circle Dancing Class, or even the first Patriarchs’ ball, but at the ‘bouncer’s balls’ which the press took great delight in describing as ‘opposition’ to Mrs Astor and Ward McAllister. The newspapers’ suggestion at the time of wholesale exclusion from the Four Hundred is misleading, however. According to Eric Homberger: ‘When we look at accounts of events labelled “bouncer’s balls”, such as a subscription ball held in New York in 1874, we find it under the management of an impeccable group of young blue bloods led by Charles Post, William Jay, and Peter Marie.’73 William Jay would later marry Alva’s great friend Lucie Oelrichs, another member of the same circle; and on 6 November 1895, Colonel and Mrs William Jay would walk up the aisle as guests of honour, just a little way behind Mrs Astor herself.
Although social demarcation lines were changing, it is possible to overstate the idea of ‘permeability’ too: entry to a circle such as this presented a formidable challenge. It seems likely that as a motherless girl, Alva was helped by the patronage of mothers of her friends who already knew the genteel Smiths well, and that once she was accepted she made sure her social behaviour was impeccably charming. Such mothers would have included both Mrs Yznaga, and Mrs Paran Stevens – who knew the family from the Smiths’ Paris years, when Mr Stevens was a US commissioner to the Great Exhibition in Paris in 1867. Even if these mothers were not ideal patronesses from the point of view of the Four Hundred, the attitude of New York’s social elite towards them was also being forced to change. Mrs Paran Stevens was particularly ambitious and frequently took Minnie to Europe in response to cold-shouldering by Mrs Astor. By 1874, New York knew that Minnie was a success in London society and had met with the approval of the Prince of Wales. Eric Homberger also suggests that Alva’s circle would have interested her fellow southerner Ward McAllister, and that it probably benefited from his informal protection. His reactions often ran ahead of the intensely conservative Mrs Astor. A younger set comprised of old families, genteel southerners and energetic and pleasant newcomers that kept the truly rich at a distance was a development of which McAllister would have approved.74
This group also provided the entry point for William K. Vanderbilt into New York society. Its members did not hold the Commodore’s reputation against him, whatever Mrs Astor had to say on the subject. William K. was handsome, charming, amusing, potentially rich, and keen to join in. It helped that he could spend time with these new young friends without attracting the Commodore’s opprobrium, for the ethos of this group was not flashily vulgar. For example, parents put a stop to a custom that suddenly sprang up of young men sending bouquets to girls they admired on the night of a ball, so that favourites would go home loaded down with flowers, while others had nothing at all – on grounds of cost to the young men. William K. was introduced to the circle by Consuelo Yznaga, who also effected his introduction to Alva, bringing him to at least one social event at the Smith house at 14 West 33rd Street in 1873 before financial problems precipitated another downward move to a house at 21 West 44th Street.
In her memoirs, Consuelo wrote that she could not understand why her parents ever came to marry, but Alva Erskine Smith and William K. Vanderbilt had much more in common than either of them were later prepared to admit. They had both been educated in Europe, spoke fluent French and shared a more international outlook than many of their peers. The imbalance in good looks that came later was not so apparent when both were in their twenties. Around the time of her engagement Alva was a highly attractive young woman with a great mane of hair (she lopped it off after catching a rich husband). In those of her personal papers that have survived her drive and wit shines through – alongside other less attractive characteristics. Perhaps Consuelo was never permitted to understand the extent to which the Vanderbilts were anathematised by Mrs Astor and the extent to which William K. felt that he needed Miss Smith. In 1874, Alva appeared to be a young woman whose genteel background and energy would open doors – and for some considerable time it was Willie who was widely perceived to have the better part of the bargain, and was thought, however unfairly, to have been led out into the world by his socially accomplished wife.
Perhaps Consuelo was never allowed to grasp just how close her mother and aunts came to financial ruin when they were in their teens, either. Alva’s experience of genteel poverty thus far had made her almost as ‘inflamed’ on the subject of money as the Commodore. Like him she was acutely aware of its power. Even in 1917, she tried to persuade Sara Bard Field to marry a rich man for the benefit of her children saying: ‘You cannot help your children to advantages through sentimental romance but through money which alone has power.’75 For over two years Alva had experienced at first hand the growing powerlessness that poverty brings, the terrifying insecurity of a family sliding ever closer to bankruptcy with nothing in the way of a safety net as it tried to preserve a refined front. She had known what it was to have slaves. She now sensed the enslavement of poverty for herself and its capacity to force her to the margins of her own existence. At best she faced a world of erratic kindness from her friends’ parents, a life of constant gratitude. At worst, she could expect extended and difficult stays with patronising relations, a world of fading watering-holes and drab and grimy boarding houses.
In New York, true poverty was often close by. As the historian H. Wayne Morgan writes, this was a time of extremes, ‘of low wages and huge dividends, of garish display and of poverty, of opulent richness in one row of houses and degrading poverty a block away’.