Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Mother and a Daughter in the ‘Gilded Age’. Amanda Stuart Mackenzie

was unable to understand why this had no influence over certain young ladies who, after his return to New York, took to hanging round the foyer of the Plaza Hotel. ‘They want to speak to the Duke, to touch him, to cut off a piece of his coat tails or in some other way to obtain a souvenir of the affianced husband of Miss Vanderbilt. The faithful attendants with difficulty preserve the amiable and ingenious duke from their clutches,’ wrote the World on 15 October. Almost certainly acting on Alva’s advice, the Duke sent for a reporter from the World on his return from Kentucky, his trip having lasted no more than five days. In an attempt to set the record straight he said rather plaintively: ‘They’ve told so many lies about me that really I hardly know myself any more. I’ve become a sort of stranger to myself don’t you know … You Americans seem to like to amuse yourselves at the expense of the English, isn’t that so?’ He offered to tell the reporter anything he would like to know about arrangements for the wedding; but his hazy grasp of the wedding details did little to help his case. He was then reported as having asked the journalist: ‘Why are you people are so fond of interviews with Englishmen? I suppose your American men never give interviews?’ When told that, on the contrary, they were very fond of being interviewed, the Duke was said to have replied incredulously: ‘No, really? They can’t be such flats.’⁴⁸

      No sooner had the readership put the Tottie Coughdrops affair behind it than the Duke of Marlborough was arrested for ‘coasting’ on a bicycle in Central Park with his feet on the handlebars. This might be considered rather to his credit, but not by Policeman Sweeny. Said by his admiring colleagues to be capable of ‘arresting anything’, Sweeny had already ordered the Duke off the grass and moved him on, when, to his horror, the felon re-appeared ‘scorching’ down Block House hill, his feet elevated on the handlebars of his bicycle at a rate of at least twenty miles an hour. Policeman Sweeny marched the Duke to the police station, where he confessed his ignorance of park regulations and pointed out that there was no sign warning innocent scorchers that they were in breach of the law. There was considerable embarrassment when the Duke’s identity was discovered, but since a crowd had gathered, ‘it was too late to recede’.⁴⁹ The distinguished visitor was reprimanded, ‘discharged’, and proceeded on the offending bicycle back to the Plaza. This time the story appeared in The Times in London, though all mention of feet on handlebars was respectfully omitted.

      As these stories appeared, there was a counterblast in different mode. The Sunday edition of the World began to print a weekly ‘Diary of the Most Interesting Couple in America’. The newspaper was watching every move made by the Duke and Consuelo and was perfectly capable of fabrication, but there is also a strong possibility that it was being fed information by Alva in an attempt to manage criticism of her future son-in-law. Alongside impolite press coverage of the Duke, a different voice stressed his painstaking attentions to Consuelo, described by the World as ‘in many ways more entertaining than one of Ouida’s novels of high life and far more instructive to aspiring duchesses – for it is fact’.⁵⁰ He showers her with roses; she carries three of them to a soiree; she wears a fetching gown of white mousseline de soie with a jewelled buckle; she breakfasts late with her mother; she steals a rest on a veranda as she receives the congratulations of friends; when he hears that Miss Vanderbilt is slightly indisposed, he sends more roses; she selects the most beautiful and wears it in her hair, etc.

      On Saturday 18 October the ‘Diary’ gave way to extensive coverage of Alva’s new house on 72nd Street, complete with elaborate descriptions of the interior, including Consuelo’s boudoir described as ‘the lovely little rooms she will leave behind when she becomes mistress of Blenheim Castle’. As the World pointed out: ‘The happy dwellers in it do not have to spend weeks in hanging pictures, living in one room at a time and so forth, as ordinary mortals do when they move into a new house,’⁵¹ but Alva certainly had much else to think about, and this included protecting her future son-in-law from the raw energy of New York’s newspapers. For a few days the tactic seemed to work. The Duke accompanied Consuelo and Mrs Vanderbilt to church on Sunday morning and on the Monday it was announced in the papers that the wedding would take place on 6 November (for some inscrutable reason the Duke refused to be married on Guy Fawkes Day); Walter Damrosch would direct the music; an orchestra of sixty players had been engaged. Letters appeared in the press saying that the Duke’s ‘arrest’ had been ridiculous and inhospitable. On Monday 21 October, he enjoyed a good day’s hunting with the Monmouth Hunt Club in New Jersey. And there, perhaps, matters could have rested.

      By Tuesday 22 October, however, the papers were in full flow again, this time because, in a serious public relations blunder, the Duke had refused to pay duty on family jewellery and on wedding presents for Consuelo sent from England. On the face of it, this was not an unreasonable reaction from a man accustomed to making economies. The presents would only be in the States for a very short time before travelling back to England with the bride and groom. But he was about to marry one of the world’s richest heiresses, there was great sensitivity about his motives and his instinctive reaction appeared curmudgeonly, mercenary and mean-spirited, particularly since it was also reported that he had bought four expensive white Kentucky mules which were being shipped back to England (a purchase he later denied). The World