The Husband Hunters Read online

  Connected by birth to some of the old New York families, in 1852 he had married an heiress and a few years later had settled in Newport, where his style of entertaining soon began to be copied. He had had a good deal of relevant experience, gained from looking after his family, even down to going to the market – followed by a couple of boys each carrying a huge basket – and thus acquiring a thorough knowledge of game, fish and vegetables, the best time to eat them, and the best way of cooking them. He had also travelled extensively in Europe, where he soaked up everything he could about court and aristocratic customs. On his return to America he determined to become the self-appointed arbiter of its society and the customs it should follow.

  He had already been successful in shaping the society of Newport.6 Now, he decided, it was time to tackle the one city in America pre-eminent in wealth, drawing power, sophistication and general glitter: New York. A man might have made a fortune by planting a Midwest prairie with wheat – but it was to New York that his wife, avid to spend this new wealth, now insisted they move.

  McAllister’s cleverness lay in realising that the newly rich were there to stay; more and more millionaires appeared each year and the relentless tide of wealth would soon flood the passive Knickerbockers completely – unless something were done about it (not for nothing were these newcomers known as ‘the Bouncers’). He also recognised that any society had to have a leader, whom everyone would accept without question – if not, it would degenerate into a formless mass riven by bitter internal struggles.

  There was only one person fit for this position and she, although beleaguered by the strivings of ‘Bouncer money’, as parvenu wealth was called, already occupied it. Caroline Astor would continue to be the queen.

  He decided to use the most desirable members of both old and new as the foundation stones of the new order. To select these, he formed a small committee (‘there is one rule in life I invariably carry out – never to rely wholly on my own judgment’); a little band that met every day for a month or two at McAllister’s house, making lists, adding, whittling down, forming judgements.

  Eventually, twenty-five men, all wealthy, some from old families, some from the new rich but all considered to be men of integrity, were chosen and invited to become ‘Patriarchs’, as they would in future be known. They would give two and sometimes three balls a season, as exquisite as possible, with each Patriarch in return for his subscription of $125 having the right to invite to each ball four ladies and five gentlemen, this number to include himself and his family; all distinguished strangers (up to the number of fifty) would also be asked, their names to be run past McAllister. Everyone asked to be a Patriarch accepted immediately.

  As McAllister had rightly foreseen, the exclusiveness of these balls was what gave them their magnetic power. ‘We knew … that the whole secret of the success of these Patriarch Balls lay in making them select … in making it extremely difficult to obtain an invitation to them, and to make such invitations of great value [so that] one might be sure that anyone repeatedly invited to them had a secure social position.’

  The first of the balls was given in the winter of 1872. With them, McAllister achieved absolute social power.

  Applications to be made a Patriarch poured in, the great majority turned down but often with the door left tantalisingly ajar. Soon McAllister realised that there was one significant omission from his otherwise highly successful plan. With places at the balls at such a premium, most of the women who came were married – you could not ask an invited husband to leave his wife behind – so that the daughters of even the top families were squeezed out. Such was the press of those anxious to be part of this inner circle that it was clear something would have to be done if rival upstarts were not to launch competition.

  Accordingly, McAllister introduced the Junior Patriarchs – known as the Family Circle Dancing Classes – in which all the debutantes were to dance in identical white tulle or, sometimes, in fancy dress. One result was that every morning he was besieged by a stream of mothers desperate to get their daughters in. Well aware that, as for the senior Patriarchs, exclusiveness was vital if the balls were to maintain their prestige and the cohesive social nucleus were not to splinter, he used all his charm and diplomacy to keep mothers at bay.

  ‘My dear Madam,’ he would say as he sprang up from his chair and bowed low. ‘Say no more … you have a daughter and want her to go to the Family Circle Dancing Classes. I will do all in my power to accomplish this for you but please understand that in all matters concerning these little dances I must consult the powers that be. I am their humble servant, I must take orders from them.’ Upon which he would delicately try to find out more of the family’s background – a grandmother from one of the great families, say, might mean the door should be left open a chink. Jewish blood, divorce or an appearance on the stage meant instant exclusion; when the internationally acclaimed actress Sarah Bernhardt came to America in the 1880s the hostesses who gave receptions for her would not allow any unmarried girls to be invited to meet her.

  * * *

  McAllister’s remoulding of society occupied his whole life. He had studied the customs of every court in Europe, he had read books on heraldry and precedence, he was aware of many of the nuances of English society. As a social arbiter he watched carefully to see who was being received by whom, he made the rounds of all the boxes at the opera on Monday nights, he gave advice on everything from the flowers to choose for a ball to the colour of writing paper.

  Every afternoon at the same hour he would walk up Fifth Avenue with a fresh flower in his buttonhole, his moustache and imperial brushed to the correct courtly point, greeting those he was prepared to recognise and cutting dead those outside the Astor perimeter. An ordinary business acquaintance, whom he would greet affably in his downtown office, he would pass with a cold stare on his walk to the Union Club. He declared that he would not recognise plebeian people on Fifth Avenue.

  He sent the fashionable to the opera on Monday and Friday nights, always to arrive at the end of the first act. During the second interval they would visit the boxes of friends and converse – ‘chat’ is too flimsy a word for this ritual social intercourse – with their friends. On some Mondays ‘everyone’ went on to one of the Patriarchs’ Balls, an Assembly Ball – chic subscription balls that gradually superseded the original Patriarchs’ Balls – or a Family Circle Dancing Class, all held at Delmonico’s. If a dance floor of wood was too slippery to dance on, McAllister would order it to be sprinkled with powdered pumice stone (‘nothing else to be done’), if covered with a heavy coat of varnish, corn meal put down then swept away.

  The third Monday in January was devoted to the most sacred and exclusive social event of all: Mrs Astor’s annual ball. The initial list of names was pruned and pruned again by Caroline Astor and her faithful acolyte Ward McAllister until those left were the crème de la crème. Then the invitations, written in Gothic script, were sent out.

  Even receiving an invitation written so elegantly was an upward move in the status game. The only woman capable of these stylish superscriptions was Maria de Baril, the scion of an old but impoverished Peruvian family, who was herself extremely conscious of social gradations. Only if she decided that those to whom she was addressing invitations were sufficiently ‘bien’ did she consent to write and address such cards, so that receiving an envelope embellished with her decorative calligraphy was in itself a sign that you were one of the elect.

  Those who did not receive this coveted bit of pasteboard resorted to various stratagems to prevent their friends from finding out. Some would persuade their doctors to recommend trips to the Adirondacks for health reasons, others invented funerals of distant relatives or took to their sickbeds; still others left for Europe.

  For the ball itself the keynote was lavishness and ceremony. The huge and magnificent Astor mansion blazed with lights and was filled with flowers, the servants were in their full livery of green plush coats, white knee breeches
and red whipcord waistcoats with brass buttons stamped with the coat of arms and motto (Semper fidelis) that the Astors had bestowed upon themselves, and Caroline received like a presiding goddess.

  By now her rule was supreme and unquestioned. Even the man – or more likely, the woman – in the street knew this. ‘She ruled with a strong hand,’ said the New York Times. ‘Her visiting list was the index of the socially elect.’7

  Caroline Astor filled her role admirably. A woman of commanding presence and deportment, she was made more impressive by whatever magnificent Worth gown she wore – education in a French-run school and visits to France had given her a love of French clothes, cooking, furniture, paintings and architecture. Her hair was always done high on her head – in later years, this effect was achieved with a black wig – emphasising the appearance of majesty, as, even more, did her jewellery, worn in intimidating abundance. She was hung about with diamonds – a diamond tiara finished with diamond stars, a triple necklace of diamonds, a stomacher of diamonds originally worn by Marie Antoinette and so large that it was almost a breastplate flashed rays of light through the chains of diamonds embellishing her corsage.

  She wore this great fortune in gems with the air of an idol bedecked for a ceremonial, carefully cultivating the mystique that had served her so well by refusing interviews, never allowing photographers into her home, keeping her opinions to herself and almost never dining out; if she did, she insisted on having the seat of honour at the host’s right hand. Her splendid entertainments had the air of regal receptions: you did not go there for the conversation – it was enough just to be there.

  Night after night there were parties – balls, dinners, musicales, the opera, in houses filled with the spoils of treasure-hunting in Europe and smothered in flowers. At the first Patriarchs’ Ball in 1872 flowers were hardly thought of, but within thirty years massive displays of blooms, shrubs and tropical palms were mandatory in the houses of the rich. Caroline Astor draped chandeliers and filled window seats with roses as well as splashing them over tables and mantelpieces.

  Everyday life for the smart set was hedged about with ritual. Dinner invitations were always sent by hand, although invitations to a ball or reception could go by mail. Calling had an etiquette all its own. Posture was all-important: backs had to be straight, heads upright; if invited into a house the visitor only stayed a set number of minutes. ‘Children, remember that no lady crosses her knees,’ said one teacher. ‘She may cross her ankles, but never her limbs.’

  While men could go anywhere, certain areas were forbidden to respectable women. One favourite place for them was the ‘Ladies’ Mile’, which intersected Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, and had fashionable shops, hotels, the jewellers Tiffany and restaurants where smart women would meet each other. Even this had its dangers in those days when reputations had to be hyper-clean: it was also the haunt of demi-mondaines, usually as elegantly dressed as society women and frequently the mistresses of their husbands.

  * * *

  So well known had McAllister become that his comments on matters social had the force of canon law.

  ‘A gentleman can afford to walk; he cannot afford to have a shabby equipage.’

  ‘If you want to be fashionable, be always in the company of fashionable people.’

  ‘If you see a fossil of a man, shabbily dressed, relying solely on his pedigree, dating back to time immemorial, who has the aspirations of a duke and the fortune of a footman, do not cut him; it is better to cross the street and avoid meeting him.’

  ‘The value of a pleasant manner is impossible to estimate.’

  ‘When you entertain, do it in an easy natural way as if it was an everyday occurrence, not the event of your life.’

  ‘A dinner made up wholly of young people is generally stupid.’

  ‘If you are going to refuse, do so at once, but remember that a dinner once accepted is a sacred obligation. If you die before the dinner takes place, your executor must attend the dinner.’ After every lunch, dinner or ball, calls had to be made.

  ‘If you are stout,’ he told his male audience, ‘never wear a white waistcoat or conspicuous watch chain.’ ‘If you go to an opera box with ladies, wear white or light French grey gloves, otherwise gloves are not worn.’ ‘A boutonnière of white hyacinths or white pinks is much worn, both to balls and the opera.’

  And the clincher: ‘My dear sir, I do not argue, I inform.’

  What was to be eaten – or not eaten – at a dinner was equally important: never two white or two brown sauces in succession, one soup rather than (the more usual) two, hot salmon only in spring and early summer. For a dinner of only twelve or fourteen, ‘one or two hot entrées and one cold is sufficient’, sorbets should never be flavoured with rum but always with maraschino or bitter almonds, omit a pudding but serve an ice, ‘preferably Nesselrode, if good cream is used’.

  There were even instructions for icing champagne, beginning to be the favoured drink for all lavish or ceremonial occasions on both sides of the Atlantic, thanks to an unremitting sales and publicity campaign by the French. ‘Put in the pail small pieces of ice, then a layer of rock salt, alternating these layers until the pail is full … keep the neck of the bottle free from the ice … if possible turn it every five minutes. In twenty-five minutes from the time it is put in the tub it should be in perfect condition and served immediately.’

  The society over which Caroline Astor reigned was one built on exclusion.8 As McAllister had foreseen, to be a success in New York or Newport society meant constant social striving and a rigorous adherence to the forms and customs deemed correct. Where an English grandee, his wife and their children could retire to his estate for several months, confident that their place in society would be unaltered when they returned, the American social leader could not afford to be absent: the ferocious competitiveness of American society ensured that in her place, others would instantly rise up – and how to struggle back?

  The result was that ‘everyone’ did the same thing at roughly the same time in a routine of what – seen from the perspective of today – seems not simply pointless but, without any other distractions, ineffably dull. The sole sport – if sport it could be called – lay in watching the struggles to be accepted by those on the outside.

  Already the daughter as social weapon was coming into her own. Great beauty accompanied by faultless style (and, of course, great wealth) was a powerful lever into the top social circles. Each season usually brought forth one or two such girls, known as ‘belles’.

  To be a belle was the equivalent of having the necessary patrician background. As belles were a recognised feature of American society a girl tabbed as one could gain entry to it by dint of her looks and general air of distinction, even if not from a society family. The belle had to be seen everywhere, her presence was required at all important dinner and dances. No ball was complete without her; it was considered her duty to be present at all public or semi-public events – and where she went, of course her parents had to come too, for whereas in England a daughter’s place in society was dependent on her parents, in America a daughter could often elevate the status of her mother.

  Mary Leiter, the daughter of Joseph Levi Leiter, was the supreme example of the belle who swept all before her. She was a tall girl with a curvy figure, large grey eyes, glossy chestnut-brown hair and small, elegant hands and feet; almost as important was her poise, charming manner and air of distinction. Her family was neither old-established nor, originally, particularly wealthy. Her father had begun life as a clerk in a dry-goods company and then made most of his fortune in real estate; as a self-made man with wealth of such recent origin, and without benefit of any connection to the New York élite, neither Leiter nor his wife would have had any hope of a welcome from them. But Mary’s beauty, presence and accomplishments – she had learnt dancing, singing, music, French and art at home from tutors and a French governess, history, arithmetic and chemistry from a Columbia professor – took her
effortlessly over these hurdles. Her grace and polish charmed everyone including, later, her future husband George Curzon. She finished up a marchioness and Vicereine of India.

  But for those outside the charmed circle of society, what then? For the more enterprising and determined, it was a case of an assault on another front. A visit to Europe was an excellent excuse for not being seen at, say, an Assembly Ball or a Newport picnic – especially as rich, good-looking American women were warmly welcomed on the Continent. The ‘buccaneers’ were on their way.

  CHAPTER 2

  The ‘Buccaneers’

  From the first tide of invaders, as the Gilded Age began, Englishmen from the Prince of Wales downwards tended to find American girls irresistible.

  The American girl was completely different from her opposite number, the girl that one of these peers would otherwise have married – perhaps the sister of one of his friends, perhaps a distant cousin, but certainly drawn from within the tight little circle that the English aristocracy then was. The transatlantic visitor’s looks were polished, her clothes impeccable and – within the bounds of complete propriety – her manner was inviting and lightly flirtatious. She also exuded that compelling quality, complete self-confidence.

  For she did not, like an English girl, regard herself as a second-class citizen, nor had she been treated, as English girls were from birth onwards, as much the least important member of the family. All her circumstances conspired to make her feel that she was mistress of her fate – or to believe that she was. ‘She expects to be worked for, worshipped and generally attended to – and she gets her way,’1 said the best-selling novelist Marie Corelli.

  In England, primogeniture meant most of the focus was on the eldest son, with a certain amount on any brothers he might have – after all, in case of accident, one of them might inherit – while his sisters were treated very much as subsidiaries, remaining so when they married, for as far as the law was concerned, husband and wife were one person, and that person was the husband. A married woman could not own property, sign legal documents or enter into a contract, obtain an education against her husband’s wishes, vote or keep a salary for herself.