On Thursday 5th and Friday 6th September, there was a sudden exodus from Newport to New York where the America’s Cup races were to be held. Just as suddenly, society’s focus swivelled away from Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough to the race itself, leaving Newport ‘as if stricken with a pestilence’ and at the mercy of a few ‘hen’ dinners organised by women in desperation at having been left behind.25 According to William Gilmour’s notebooks, Alva, Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough joined many other spectators on the 1.20 train to New York on Thursday 5 September, and watched the races from the Astors’ yacht the Nourmahal.
In the event, the America’s Cup of 1895 became mired in one of the more acrimonious controversies in the history of the race. Although William K.’s yacht, Defender, won the America’s Cup with a 3–0 victory over the Valkyrie, it only won the first race on water. At the start of the second race, the Valkyrie’s boom hit Defender’s topmast stay and broke it. Although Defender’s crew made emergency repairs, they were unable to overcome the handicap, and the race committee reversed Valkyrie’s win by disqualifying her. Lord Dunraven, patron of the Valkyrie, reacted furiously and defaulted from the third race to challenge the decision that he had lost the second. He blamed the large fleet of small spectator boats crowding the starting line, until it was pointed out that this had affected Defender too. Then he alleged that Defender had been illegally ballasted. His protest was disallowed, but he continued to make it so indignantly that he was stripped of his membership of the New York Yacht Club, causing such a breach that England made no further official challenge for the America’s Cup until 1934.26 The controversy had serious implications for Consuelo too, for just at the moment when she might have found an opportunity to talk to her father, William K. was caught up in the furore which threatened to bring the America’s Cup race to a premature end, and a row which called into question the honour of his captain, and his own.
Unlike many other members of society, Alva, Consuelo and the Duke of Marlborough returned to Newport on Sunday 8 September. There had been rumours that the Duke was planning to proceed from New York to Lenox, a smart resort in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, but the press noted with interest that this plan had been set aside. The days came and went. Nothing materialised. Impertinent speculation continued. ‘The lingering of the Duke of Marlborough at Marble House must mean something,’ thought Town Topics, ‘and his daily drives with the fair daughter are, in the minds of Newport gossips, convincing proof that America will have another Duchess, and a reigning one of the house of Spencer-Churchill at that.’27 By now, the magazine was explicitly linking the presence of the Duke of Marlborough to Alva’s relationship with Oliver Belmont. The Duke of Marlborough, the magazine remarked, ‘seems to be the exclusive property of the Marble House Vanderbilts and the Stone Stable Belmonts’.28 Moreover, every step was being taken by the aforementioned working in tandem to give the two young people time alone together. ‘While the Duke and Miss Consuela [sic] are driving, you may meet any morning, and again in the afternoon, Mrs Willie and Mr Oliver Belmont wheeling or walking.’29
As speculation reached fever pitch, another week passed. It is possible that the Duke of Marlborough, who had an obstinate streak, may have disliked the idea that he was being pressured into a proposal and refused to be rushed; by now he may have noticed that the ferocious Mrs William K. Vanderbilt always succeeded in getting her way and suspected that he was being used as a weapon in her armoury. He may have felt that it was undignified, given Consuelo’s wealth, to propose to her too quickly; and on closer inspection he may have found Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt most difficult to read. For what is one to make of Consuelo?
There were no newspaper reports that she looked unhappy during this courtship, though public sulking and failure to rise to the occasion would have been regarded as almost as insubordinate as eloping with Winthrop Rutherfurd. There were no reports of her looking radiantly happy either, however. In fact there was very little discussion of Consuelo’s demeanour at all. Her name was often misspelt, even by newspapers that had spent weeks tracking every move. There were philosophical debates such as ‘Why Do Women Crave Titles? Are They by Nature Imperialists and Enemies of Democracy?’30 Otherwise, it was as if Consuelo scarcely existed. Perhaps that is what she felt too, for Consuelo later spoke of being frightened of risking her mother’s displeasure and of being ‘disciplined and prepared’31 for the Duke’s arrival. For his part, the Duke may have found her so inscrutable that he began to doubt whether they were remotely compatible, for even marriages of convenience require a degree of mutual understanding to make them work. The difficulty was that the longer he stayed, the more awkward the position became.
Years later, Alva gave evidence to the Rota – the Catholic court in Rome – that she had precipitated the engagement by announcing it in the newspapers. The Duke of Marlborough told his hosts that he intended to depart during the week beginning 16 September and Alva may have applied pressure by issuing a formal denial of an engagement knowing that he was about to go. ‘New York papers insist upon the engagement of Miss Consuelo Vanderbilt to the Duke of Marlborough. Mrs Vanderbilt said to a reporter of the Daily News that evening “Miss Vanderbilt is not engaged to the Duke of Marlborough. I regret that the papers so often see fit to connect her name with different friends of ours”,’ wrote the Newport Daily News on the morning of Wednesday 18 September. This could have had the desired effect on the same evening, for according to William Gilmour’s records, Alva made a dash to New York on Thursday 19 September, returning the following day.32 She almost certainly went to New York to put matters in hand for the formal announcement of Consuelo’s engagement on Friday 20 September.
When it came, the proposal itself was undramatic. After dinner on the night before he was supposed to leave, the Duke of Marlborough took Consuelo into the Gothic Room at Marble House, which she famously described as ‘propitious to sacrifice’, and asked her to marry him, saying that he hoped he would make her a good husband. Consuelo ran upstairs to break the news to her mother. ‘There was no time for thought or regrets,’ she said. ‘The next day, the news was out.’33 These two short sentences may disguise a moment of real maternal cruelty by Alva however. It is possible that when she told her mother of the Duke’s proposal, Consuelo was still hesitating over whether or not to accept. It is equally possible that Alva simply ignored her daughter’s obvious doubts, and chose to regard the engagement as a fait accompli, leaving for New York as soon as she could to arrange