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The marriage between the 18-year-old American heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and Britain's ninth Duke of Marlborough in 1895 appeared to be a straightforward bargain: cash for class.
But Amanda Mackenzie Stuart's compelling double biography, Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age, reveals the story to be far deeper, darker and more psychologically convoluted. It reads like a non-fiction collaboration between novelists Edith Wharton and Henry James with a hefty dollop of provocative social history thrown in.
Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt addresses a number of fascinating subjects. Among them: the almost unimaginable luxury enjoyed by plutocrats of the Gilded Age, the women's suffrage movements in the UK and USA, the important and underestimated role of philanthropy in giving wealthy women a productive outlet, and the privileged world of the English aristocracy.
Consuelo's husband was a first cousin and friend to Winston Churchill. Had Consuelo not provided the duke with two sons, Churchill would have inherited the title and not gone into politics.
It is, however, the primal bond between mother and daughter that gives this biography its tormented drama and moving conclusion.
Born into a Southern slaveholding family, Alva Erskine Smith was an intelligent woman with a mania for power. Her daughter Consuelo was a sheltered teen who was coerced by her domineering mother to give up her American beau and marry the duke. (Citing coercion, the Vatican annulled the marriage in 1926, even though the couple had two sons.)
Alva's motivation was more complex than mere social climbing. Alva, married to a Vanderbilt heir, had observed that a titled Englishwoman wielded far more influence than an American woman married to a magnate.
Alva wanted her daughter to have a life of significance. She succeeded, although Consuelo's unhappy marriage failed in 1906.
Consuelo's title and position gave her stature in Britain and the USA. She participated in social work, lectured and wrote articles on women's roles. Her second marriage to a Frenchman was as happy as her first was miserable.
The dynamic Alva was a powerhouse in the women's suffrage movement in terms of leadership, money and in speaking out forcefully on women's subjugation. She shocked the elite by divorcing William K. Vanderbilt and marrying Oliver Belmont, with whom she had been having an affair.
Moreover, mother and daughter grew closer, overcoming the bitterness of Consuelo's first marriage.
This double biography provides an intimate look at two women whose lives reveal changing social patterns. Just fascinating.
Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age
By Amanda Mackenzie Stuart
HarperCollins, 580 pp., $27.95
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