Authors: Greg King
Alfred kept an impressive stable at Oakland Farm, his country estate just outside Newport, which boasted the world’s largest private riding ring.
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He won prizes for his equestrian skill at the New York Horse Show but it was his love of coaching that won him international fame. He was, said Gilded Age heiress Elizabeth Drexel Lehr, “the last great promoter” of the sport.
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It appealed to his vanity: handsomely attired in a long black coat, checked suit, tan apron, buckskin gloves, and top hat, he cut a dashing figure as he drove his coaches down Fifth Avenue.
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Deciding that riding with him was a privilege, Alfred even charged his guests for their seats, with the highest fee demanded of the person nearest to him.
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Until 1905, Alfred’s closest companion in coaching was tall, dashingly handsome James Hazen Hyde, president of the Equitable Life Assurance Society, an aesthetic Francophile who claimed to be the epitome of perfect taste.
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In October 1901, the two friends drove from New York to Philadelphia in just over nine hours, using seventy-eight horses strategically placed along the route.
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Hyde even spent thousands of dollars to have wayside inns along their regular routes redecorated in Tudor style so that they could imagine themselves as English squires, stopping to enjoy imported ales and steak and kidney pies.
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When this illusion wore thin, Alfred transferred his adventures to England, shipping up to a hundred of his prized horses, shining coaches, and teams of grooms smartly dressed in the maroon and gold Vanderbilt livery, across the Atlantic.
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In 1908, he drove his coach
Venture
from London to Brighton; hundreds lined the route, unwilling to miss the novel sight of an American millionaire racing along the roadways. It was, Vanderbilt happily declared, the “greatest day of my life.”
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Five years of marriage failed to temper Vanderbilt’s restless, amorous character. There were unseemly stories about wild parties with teenaged girls procured by Charles Wilson, Vanderbilt’s manager at Oakland Farms, and a true breach of social proprieties with rumors that Alfred had become intimately involved with Caroline Lorillard. Not only was Caroline married, but, inexcusably, she also moved in the same elite circles as Ellen Vanderbilt.
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Vanderbilt allegedly came up with a novel way to hide the affair, using his relationship with another woman to conceal the rumored liaison with Caroline. That other woman, beautiful Mary Agnes O’Brien Ruiz, was a former actress: as such, she could be relied upon to play her part. A string of aliases and stage names suggest that Ruiz may have been something of an adventuress herself, willing to indulge Vanderbilt in exchange for whatever financial benefits came her way. Marital fidelity wasn’t Alfred’s strong suit and these affairs were scarcely a secret, especially when Ruiz left her husband, Cuban diplomat Don Antonio Ruiz y Olivares.
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Thanks to his somewhat less than discreet valet, Alfred’s wife soon learned of his affairs; humiliated, she sued her husband for divorce, citing his repeated adultery with Ruiz aboard his railway carriage
Wayfarer
. Alfred’s money ensured that the case was heard before a closed court and that Ellen’s $10 million settlement was sealed along with the proceedings.
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No amount of money, though, could keep newspapers from reporting the scandal. Ruiz divorced his wife; she, in turn, seems to have fallen in love with Vanderbilt. Then, in March 1909, Caroline Lorillard killed herself—for reasons unknown but amid whispers of an affair with Alfred; if Ruiz had been a necessary smoke screen, she was necessary no longer, and Vanderbilt abandoned her. Increasingly depressed, and with her reputation in tatters, Mary Agnes O’Brien Ruiz killed herself with a dramatic gunshot through the heart in London in May 1909.
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Charles Williamson, a member of Alfred’s circle, moved to avert further scandal, seizing her belongings and firing any servants who might talk to the press. Representing himself as Ruiz’s “Parisian counsel,” he apparently paid off those who “might be in a position to reveal the true facts.”
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Williamson also arranged that details of the coroner’s inquest be kept secret; rumor held that he had bribed numerous journalists and officials “by an outlay of a large sum of money,” presumably from Alfred, to conceal the full story and render a quick verdict that Mary Agnes Ruiz had been of “unsound mind.”
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Scandal was no stranger to Gilded Age society, but somehow the Vanderbilt divorce and Lorillard and Ruiz suicides seemed more egregious than other peccadilloes. Ellen had not only been very popular in smart society but was also the wronged party whose husband had publicly humiliated her. Alfred found himself ostracized.
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Thinking that an extended stay in England would improve his reputation, Alfred quietly took up residence in London, only to learn that many in British society also condemned his actions.
The surest way to quiet the rumors was to marry again, yet the unhappy Alfred soon found himself at the center of another maelstrom. He’d met Margaret Emerson McKim—wealthy American heiress to the Bromo-Seltzer fortune—a few years earlier; now, she left her husband, Smith Hollis McKim, claiming that he was an alcoholic who regularly beat her. McKim fired back in the press. Not only had his wife deserted him, he insisted, but she was also having an adulterous affair with Vanderbilt. He sued Alfred for alienation of affection.
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Alfred couldn’t refute the charges; what he could do was again use Vanderbilt money, giving McKim some $150,000 to buy his compliant silence. Amid the scandal—a hasty Reno divorce, Margaret excommunicated by the Catholic Church, and gleeful newspaper stories—a very quiet British registry office ceremony united Alfred and his second wife in December 1911.
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Alfred found Margaret to be an understanding and sympathetic wife. They lived in a two-dozen-room apartment atop the new Vanderbilt Hotel he built at Park Avenue and 34th Street.
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Two sons followed: Alfred Gwynne II in September of 1912, and George Washington Vanderbilt IV, born two years later. Perhaps because his eldest son, William, spent most of the year with Ellen, Alfred was a diligent, attentive father. Not only was the nursery stocked with expensive toys but Alfred also could often be found romping on the floor with his sons.
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“I have no recollection of my father being anything but kind and pleasant with me,” William later wrote. “He gave me wonderful toys and played with me.”
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Settlements to his brother and his former wife, bribes, and hush money—not to mention Alfred’s profligate manner of spending—rapidly depleted his coffers. By 1915, his initial $42 million fortune had dwindled to just over $26 million.
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Ostensibly, Alfred boarded
Lusitania
that May to attend a meeting of the International Horse Show Association in London.
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In reality, he wanted to use his money to support the Allied cause. He secretly hoped to offer both motorcars and his own services as chauffeur to the Red Cross, explaining that he felt that he was not doing enough for the war effort.
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He’d blithely dismissed talk of possible danger; he was looking forward to the trip—and perhaps to whatever new diversions awaited him in London.
Traveling with Vanderbilt was forty-four-year-old Charles Williamson, the man who’d gone to London in 1909 to hush up details of Mary Agnes O’Brien Ruiz’s suicide. Williamson was himself a figure of some mystery. He’d worked as private secretary to Vanderbilt’s close friend James Hazen Hyde and apparently transacted his business with Gilded Age heir George Gould, son of infamous robber baron Jay Gould.
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Then, in 1905, Hyde gave an extravagant costume ball at Sherry’s in New York; rumors that he had drained money from his Equitable Life Assurance Society to foot the $200,000 bill drove a disgraced Hyde into Parisian exile, with Williamson in tow.
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Soon, Williamson opened a small gallery near the Place Vendôme in Paris, where he dealt in tapestries and antiques. No one knew where Williamson’s money came from, but it had come suddenly, and in abundance. He had kept Hyde’s secrets; owed a small fortune to Gould; and, even after his role concealing the Ruiz suicide, was said to be heavily in debt to Vanderbilt as well.
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Blackmail was then a profitable business: American society lived in fear of William d’Alton Mann and his notorious magazine
Town Topics,
which invented that gossip staple, the blind item.
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Williamson had resorted to blackmail and bribery to cover Vanderbilt’s indiscretions; had he now done the same to these prominent men to finance his own extravagant way of life?
Williamson brought to
Lusitania
his own hint of scandal in the person of aspiring actress Amelia Baker. Born in Minnesota in 1887, she’d studied music under a Duluth voice coach, won acclaim in a number of amateur productions, and gone to New York to further her career. She joined Charles Frohman’s repertory company, but her 1907 marriage to musician Alexander Oliver Lynch seemingly put an end to her dream. “Of course I love the stage,” she told a reporter, but added that her new husband opposed her career.
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When the marriage collapsed, Amelia returned to the stage, studying in Europe and taking small roles on Broadway. Now she was traveling with Williamson aboard
Lusitania,
where they occupied adjacent cabins on B Deck. Anticipating her Parisian debut, Amelia traveled with nearly $15,000 worth of clothing and jewelry—a significant amount when she herself had never had a prominent role onstage or enjoyed financial success.
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Perhaps it had all come from Williamson: there were rumors that they were secretly engaged. But perhaps George Kessler offered an unwitting insight into the situation when he described Amelia as “a lady known to us all.”
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Some frequent travelers made their living aboard ship, gambling and scheming to separate unwitting millionaires from their money; a few other oceanic entrepreneurs played more dangerous games of sexual intrigue. All it took was a lovely young woman and her attendant male partner. The beautiful lady flitted about the ship, flirting with some naive gentleman traveling without his wife. Sometimes she complained that she was alone on the ship and desperate for sympathetic company; at others, she unraveled sad tales of a neglectful husband who spent his days gambling in the Smoking Room and his nights passed out in a drunken stupor. The goal was the same: to draw the unsuspecting victim belowdecks to her cabin, with promises of a passionate rendezvous that soon went horribly awry when her male partner indignantly burst into the room. Threats of ruined reputations, compromising situations, and worries over exposure were usually enough to guarantee that the victim promptly paid whatever was demanded to keep the whole ignominious affair secret.
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Of course, not all sexual encounters aboard ship took place under such dubious circumstances. A woman willing to cater to a select clientele could easily count on voluntary financial rewards. Kessler’s description of Amelia in this respect is striking: “a lady known to us all” was a curious turn of phrase, suggestive in that era of a highly questionable reputation.
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Perhaps Williamson and Amelia had come by their riches honestly—or at least as honestly as was possible given his past actions. Yet, given Williamson’s involvement, it is difficult to entirely dismiss the possibility—however unlikely—that this pair, with a taste for the finer things in life, may have discovered a less conventional path to financial success.
Amelia and Williamson moved throughout the ship, but Vanderbilt largely kept to himself, even taking most of his meals in his suite. “He was always like that,” Kessler said. It was there that Kessler found him one afternoon, musing on the future. Alfred was adamant when discussing the war. “I’m sorry,” he told Kessler, “but to drive a coach in these times is out of the question.” He also complained about Germany and the ominous warnings. “They have disgraced themselves, and never in our time will they be looked upon by any human being valuing his honor save with feelings of contempt,” Alfred declared. Then he offered the gravest insult imaginable from a gentleman of his standing: “How can Germany, after what she has done, ever think of being classed as a country of sportsmen?”
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