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Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter and a Mother in the Gilded Age
Amanda Mackenzie Stuart
#UB5542
Paperback, 579 pages; 2007 (2005)
$16.95
 Members' Price: $14.41
Consuelo Vanderbilt's grandfather, Cornelius ("the Commodore"), left most of his money to Consuelo's father, William Kissam Vanderbilt. William and his wife Alva spent extravagantly-on houses, yachts, lavish parties and such-and then divorced. The father fled to the arms of his wife's best friend (after whom Consuelo was named). The mother found a new love of her own, and so schemed to marry her daughter off to the Duke of Marlborough, thinking that being the mother-in-law of an English duke would salvage her social position in a time when divorced women were social pariahs. Soon unhappy in her marriage, Consuelo devoted much of her resources to trying to improve the life of the workers on her husband's ducal estate. (She eventually divorced the duke, who happened to be Winston Churchill's cousin.) In their later years, both mother and daughter became great supporters of women's suffrage. Despite their enormous wealth, both wanted to be more than frivolous women. If all of this is beginning to sound like an Edith Wharton novel, it's because Wharton knew the Vanderbilts and incorporated elements of their lives into her work. This is one of those biographies that, though supported by serious research and much documentation, reads with the excitement of a great fictional saga. Amanda Mackenzie Stuart, having written several screenplays, is an accomplished storyteller, as well as an avid historian and researcher.
(EE)
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