The Backstory: Gilded Age Divorce Scandal

Imagine forcing your daughter into a loveless marriage to an English duke. Why? Because you want a divorce, money from the divorce, and the ability to hang on to your social standing. That was life among the rich in the Gilded Age and Alva Vanderbilt figured out a way to get what she wanted with her daughter as the pawn.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
If you're a fan of the HBO show The Gilded Age,
or if you're just fascinated about how differently people live
their lives a mere one hundred and twenty five years ago,
the story is for you. The dream of marriage is
that it's forever, but that's not always the case. Now.
The thing is today, if all goes well, we dry
our tears, sign some papers, and move on to a

(00:22):
hopefully better life. But that's actually a recent development. In
the real world of the eighteen hundreds, divorce was basically
social suicide. One very famous woman attempted to change that.
I'm Patty Steele. Divorce Vanderbilt's style. That's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. It's always interesting to take a

(00:48):
peek inside the drama of other people's lives. Makes us
feel better about our own troubles, right. Part of the
fun of watching the HBO show The Gilded Age is
the feeling that you're going back in time, behind closed
doors and getting a sense of what that upper echelon
lifestyle was like. The thing is, it wasn't without its downside.

(01:09):
Perfect example the life of Alva Vanderbilt. She, of course,
was the domineering mother of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the young woman
who was forced to marry an English duke despite being
in love with another man. How does that happen? Well,
once again, it was a very different time. But putting
Consuelo aside for one hot minute, let's take a look

(01:31):
at what was happening in Alva's life at the exact
same time. In order to do that, we have to
go back to the beginning of the relationship between Alva
and her husband, William K. Vanderbilt. Alva married Willie in
eighteen seventy five. They had met just a few months
earlier at a Vanderbilt family party. Alva's best friend, Consuelo Yusnaga,

(01:54):
introduced the two. As was the case in a lot
of marriages among the ultra wealthy, money was an important consideration.
Alva thought Willie was handsome and charming, but most importantly
he was loading. Her family had lost their fortune and
she needed a moneyed marriage to help them kind of
get back on their feet, and Willie fit the bill

(02:16):
to a tee. Now, the problem is Alva was a
stubborn chick, strong willed, and very opinionated at a time
when aristocratic women were none of those things, and Willie
was the ultimate spoiled playboy. His interest in other women
and in the party life without his wife around became
more and more of a problem. He spent more time

(02:38):
at his club, the racetrack and gambling than he did
at home, and he was delighted with the attention beautiful,
money hungry women and men gave him. Now in that time,
if you were a well born woman, you were still
considered inferior to men, so in a lot of cases
they did what they wanted while the woman gritted her

(02:59):
teeth and spent their money. Alva got really tired of
that life, particularly after Willie got involved with a woman
in Paris. Her name was Nellie Newstretter. He regularly took
her out to the theater, to cafes, and for drives
along the streets and through the parks of Paris. Well,
that was it for Alva. She was not about to

(03:20):
quietly put up with being publicly humiliated by anybody, let
alone her husband's mistress. In December of eighteen ninety four,
Alva filed for divorce. Not only was it international news,
but it also meant she would be ostracized from upper
class society who simply didn't do that kind of thing.

(03:40):
As a woman, you put up with your marriage no
matter what. You wouldn't be welcome at church, at social clubs,
at formal parties and dinners, and your children would be
tainted by the scandal of divorce. Even Alva's lawyer begged
her to reconsider. Now. The problem is, there was no
such thing as no fault divorce, and that meant you

(04:00):
had to prove adultery, which amazingly was the only way
to get a divorce in New York State as well
as many other states. Until nineteen sixty seven, only a
handful of states, like Connecticut and Rhode Island allowed divorce
on the basis of abandonment also. But Alva was done.
She wanted money, and she also wanted to hang on

(04:21):
to her social connections, and that's where her daughter came in.
When Alva and Willie's divorce was settled in March of
eighteen ninety six, it made the front page of the
New York Times. The headline read, w K. Vanderbilt loses
his wife, gets an absolute divorce and custody of children.
She is allowed to marry again. Alva got a settlement

(04:44):
of ten million dollars, which is equal to about three
hundred and twenty five million today. On top of that,
she got several of their country estates. While all this
was going on, she immediately felt the scorn of New
York City and Newport, Rhode Island bui shots and she
wasn't one to be ignored. She had known this moment

(05:05):
was coming and realized society types would have trouble ignoring
her if her daughter married into British aristocracy. Everybody wanted
to rub elbows with a duke, so Alva began orchestrating
the marriage of her eighteen year old daughter Consuelo to
the Duke of Marlborough, who had impeccable lineage and very
little money to maintain his lifestyle and his enormous family estate,

(05:29):
Blenheim Palace. A business deal was struck, Conswelo had no
ability to resist, and the marriage took place in November
of eighteen ninety five, with her sobbing for the entire day,
and that was just four months before her mother's divorce
was granted. The British press saw the wedding and the
same light as the marriage between Prince Harry and Magan

(05:51):
markle One hundred and twenty years later. Now, on the
upside for women, Alva's determination to escape an unhappy marriage
without being financially and socially destroyed did begin to help
get rid of the stigma of divorce. On the downside,
she had used her daughter to save her own social standing,
and she actually married another extremely wealthy man, Oliver Belmont,

(06:15):
a Newport neighbor, less than a year later. Interestingly, thanks
to Alva's successful divorce, a number of other rich women
felt safe to file for divorce as well, although it
was a while before women with less financial means were
able to. Later, Alva said, I blaze the trail for
the rest to walk in. I was the first girl

(06:36):
of my set to marry a Vanderbilt. Then I was
the first society woman to ask for a divorce, And
within a year, ever, so many others had followed my example.
They had been wanting divorce all the time, but they
had not dared to do it until I showed them
the way. Of course, Consuelo's forced marriage was miserable from
the start, and they divorced in nineteen twenty one after

(06:59):
a very cold twenty five year marriage, but she and
her mother did eventually reconcile. When Consuelo filed for an
annulment from the Duke in nineteen twenty six, Alva testified
on her behalf, admitting she had forced her daughter into
the marriage, even pretending she was on the verge of
a heart attack in the days before the wedding to

(07:19):
keep her from leaving the Duke at the altar. After
her second husband's death in nineteen oh eight, Alva Vanderbilt
Belmont became a leading suffragette supporting women's rights until her
death in nineteen thirty three. At her funeral in New
York City, she had all female pallbearers. I hope you
like the Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave a review

(07:42):
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and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele. The

(08:04):
Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durant Group,
and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
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(08:27):
Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't
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