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.
Alva then moved Consuelo from Paris to London to participate in the London season of 1895. Here, she re-established contact with Minnie Paget who took the necessary steps. Consuelo was asked to a ball by the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland and, knowing almost nobody, was grateful to anyone who requested her as a partner by marking her dance card. Perhaps Aunt Lansdowne had had a word, for the Duke of Marlborough claimed several dances. To Alva’s intense satisfaction, he followed this up by inviting them both, and Lady Paget, to spend a weekend at Blenheim Palace.
The party that travelled to Oxfordshire on 15 June was small, consisting of Alva, Consuelo, Minnie Paget, ‘three young men’ – including Lord Lansdowne’s heir – and the Duke’s two sisters, Lady Lilian and Lady Norah Spencer-Churchill. They all seemed ‘lost in so big a house’ wrote Consuelo, but she liked Lilian immediately, finding her unaffected and kind.95 Saturday evening was spent listening to the Duke’s organist, Mr Perkins, playing the organ in the Long Library, installed when his father the 8th Duke married ‘Duchess Lily’, a wealthy American widow to whom Blenheim also owed the installation of central heating and electric lighting.
The following day, Alva’s usual rules of chaperonage were conspicuous by their absence for no obstacle was placed in the way of the Duke showing Consuelo round part of the Blenheim estate. They drove together to pretty outlying villages where ‘old women and children curtsied and men touched their caps as we passed’.96 Although enchanted by the countryside, the feudalism on display made Consuelo feel uncomfortable, and in Alva’s absence she was quick to say so. ‘That Marlborough was ambitious I gathered from his talk; that he should be proud of his position and estates seemed but natural; but did he recognise his obligations? Steeped as I then was in questions of political economy – in the theories of the rights of man, in the speeches of Gladstone and John Bright – it was not strange that such reflections should occur to me.’97
According to Consuelo – and we only have her side of the story here – the Duke of Marlborough seemed to find these remarks amusing rather than tiresome, and made up his mind that very afternoon that he would set aside his feelings for an English girl with whom he was in love and marry Consuelo. It seems more likely, given his subsequent caution, that the Duke of Marlborough simply decided that marriage to Consuelo was a possibility that could reasonably be explored. Even if her notions were a trifle outlandish, she was intelligent and thoughtful; and the intervening year had given this young duke ample time to discover that both his sense of obligation to Blenheim and his political aspirations required substantial financial resource. As far as Alva was concerned, however, the weekend at Blenheim and his pleasant attentions to Consuelo made it easy for her to extend an invitation to her ball at Marble House in August. The Duke immediately accepted, giving out that he had never visited the United States, and would come to Newport as part of a longer tour.
This was a major coup for Alva. By late June, the society press were lying in wait in Newport to await her return. The World even sent detectives – an early form of paparazzi – to Newport to watch every move both Vanderbilts made and report back. Once again, there were multiple narrative lines. How would the Cornelius Vanderbilts, who would be opening their house The Breakers that August, react if they met Alva? How would society as a whole respond to the invitation to her ball? There was also the delicious extra twist of Oliver Belmont’s arrival and the news that he too would be giving a house-warming ball at his Newport house, Belcourt. ‘The housewarming of this new mansion will probably be one of the chief social events of the Newport season, and may, if reports be true, also be the opening gun in the Montague and Capulet warfare that is still a menace to the peace of the season and looms like a dark cloud on the horizon,’ reported Town