She married a pompous duke
Laura Malt Schneiderman is an assignment editor and interactive developer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She is co-author of the book “Kaufmann’s: The Family That Built Pittsburgh’s Famed Department Store.”
Long-necked and lovely Consuelo Vanderbilt, scion of the railroad and shipping dynasty, personified her time and class. A much-published photo of her at age 19 shows her reclining in a chair wearing a lilac gown and fur, glancing over her right shoulder toward the viewer.
Her mother, the formidable Alva, kept Consuelo a virtual prisoner from the earliest age, homeschooling her, forcing her to wear a steel rod up her back to correct her posture and whipping her for the slightest infraction. No wonder that when Consuelo reached the age of marriage, she was used to bending to her mother’s will.
Consuelo fell in love with Winthrop Rutherfurd, a handsome lawyer descended from New York’s old-money Stuyvesant family. Alva wouldn’t have it. Her daughtershould have the best. Only an English aristocrat would do, and only of the highest rank. She was dead set that Consuelo should marry the Duke of Marlborough, despite neither party feeling anythingfor the other.
The duke of Marlborough visited the Vanderbilt “cottage” (an eye-popping mansion) in Newport, Rhode Island, and eventually proposed. He desperately needed money and negotiated $2.5 million (more than $91 million in today’s money) for the match. The pair wed in 1895 after a delay to sponge the tears off the bride’s face.
For 11 years, Consuelo ruled as Duchess of Marlborough — before initiating a separation in 1906 and then a divorce in 1921. She married a French aviator later that year and lived happily with him until his death in 1956.
Surely, Consuelo’s account of her upbringing and marriage, not to mention the many dignitaries and famous personages she met, should prove spellbinding reading?
A ramble through the past
At times, yes. But beware — Consuelo is the mistress of understatement and omission. Though a best-seller in its day, “The Glitter and the Gold” rambles through Consuelo’s past, with no particular weight put on the most interesting parts.
So circumspect is she that she does not even name Rutherfurd, though the book was first published in 1952 (he had died in 1944), referring to him as “X.” She recounts her life with the duke as more or less a spool of pageantry and tedium.
The duke, she says at one point, complained that she “had not a trace of snobbishness.” She also alludes in passingto his pomposity and gives an anecdote about his annoying dining habits, but in general, she keeps her mouth shut about their relationship, only reporting where they went and whom they met. She is equally guarded in describing her mother.
Throughout the book, she flits from tale to tale, describing people who are little remembered if at all in America, like Andre Tardieu, a French politician and later prime minister, who, at a lunch hosted by Consuelo and her second husband, remarked about a fellow guest that she was “still as beautiful and still as stupid.” After a pause, she merely smiled, and Tardieu turned to Consuelo’s husband and praised him for generously supporting his (Tardieu’s) election campaign.
What does this mean? Who was the woman? Why should we care? The former duchess moves on to the next story.
However, her description of Queen Victoria does capture the person and is satisfying to read: “[I] discovered to my dismay that she was so small that I almost had to kneel to touch her outstretched hand with my lips. My balance was precariously held as I curtsied low to receive her kiss upon my forehead, and a diamond crescent in my hair caused me anxiety lest I scratch out a royal eye. … The dinner itself was a most depressing function. Conversation was carried on in whispers, for the Queen’s stern personality imposed restraint.”
She is uncharacteristically harsh with authors: “Edith Wharton, neither young nor pretty, may have been too self-centered to waste pity or time in unprofitable thoughts.” And Henry James had a “dominating personality” and spoke in self-important, slow, weighty phrases.
Consuelo seems to want to impress the reader with the superiority of her education (undeniable), her lack of pretension (hard to say) and her social activism (difficult to put in context).
In short, the book is a collection of heavily curated reminiscences rather than a well-developed narrative. It leaves off almost as if the author had dropped her pen and never remembered to pick it back up and finish.