Pod Insights Hot History Alva Vanderbilt About this episode The golden girl of the gilded age, we are talking about the IRL inspo for Bertha Russell - Mrs Alva Vanderbilt. She was a southern heiress turned new money social climber who rose to the top, married her ex husbands BFF and shocked all when she emerged as one of America's leading suffragette's. This one is truly scandalous!
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hello guys and welcome back to a brand new episode of Hot History. I am so excited, as always, to have you all listening along as we talk about all the things in history that you probably should know but don't. Today's episode, guys, is a special one. I have been keeping it in my backpocket, squirreled away for a rainy day, and given that the Gilded Age Season 3 is over, it's finished, we need some Gilded Age fervour to keep us moving through the winter. So I thought, let's pull this one out, let's chat about arguably the biggest, the baddest, and the brightest queen of the Gilded Age, a woman who went from outsider to socialite
0:44 Speaker 00 to divorcee to suffragette, all in one lifetime. This is the story of Alva Vanderbilt.
1:09 Speaker 00 Okay guys, like I said, to the devastation of every single period drama girly from here to the moon and back, the Gilded Age Season 3 finale was yesterday. So in order to fill the giant Carrie Coons sized hole left in my weekly TV cycle, I want to talk about her character, Bertha Russell's real life counterpart, Mrs. Alva Vanderbilt. So let's rewind it all the way back to January 17th, 1835.
1:40 Speaker 00 So we've gone back in time, it is early 1835 and we have landed in Mobile, Alabama, which, for any of my queens out there who've watched Heart of Dixie, this is the Heart of Dixie town. For those of you who have not watched Heart of Dixie... There's no Gilded Age, so go and watch Heart of Dixie. It is so adorable and cute and just like the perfect comfort show. Anyway, off topic. We're in Mobile, Alabama, where we find the Smith family. Now, the Smith family made and then lost their fortune in agriculture, which was built on the back of slave labor. Gross, ill, not hot, but we'll get to that later. Their daughter, Alva, spent her early life as both a wealthy heiress and a self-described horrible child.
2:25 Speaker 00 She was spirited, she was smart, and most of all, she was aware at an incredibly young age that girls were looked down upon by boys. And Alva spent her early years being repeatedly teased for her outward precociousness, so much so that she gained a reputation throughout Mobile for punching young boys in the nose when they claimed that her girlhood made her lesser than. In fact, there was even one occasion where she nearly killed a young boy who removed the ladder from an apple tree she had climbed, after which she pelted him with apples, dropped to the ground, and then bashed his head into the grass. So... maybe not how we want to handle the situations today, um, but you know what?
3:11 Speaker 00 I'm here to support women's wrongs as much as I am to support women's rights in this situation. And this is an 11-year-old girl who's being told nearly every single day that she's less than because she has a vagina. So, I say go with what's coming to him. So, it's pretty clear here that despite being born down south, despite being a young woman, Alva Smith is not some southern belle. She was a shark, and it was just as well for when the 1870s rolled around and her family fortune went kaput with the abolition of slavery at the end of the Civil War. The future and security of her family fell to her. Now, as the punching of young boys in the nose may suggest, Alva Smith did not like to lose.
3:53 Speaker 00 So she did what any self-respecting woman of ambition would do, at least back then. She married to save her family, which is how we end up meeting Consuelo. Now, Consuelo was the original buccaneer and actually the inspiration for Conceited in the book of the same name written by her friend Edith Wharton. Now Consuelo married the Viscount Mandeville, making her the prestigious Duchess of Manchester. She was titled and connected, and Consuelo took the opportunity to introduce her best friend Alva to the handsome, strong, and most importantly, guys, filthy, filthy rich William K Vanderbilt.
4:33 Speaker 00 As the heir to the Vanderbilt fortune, Willie, as he was called, was not only the most eligible bachelor of 1875, but he was proper fucking rich, guys. He inherited around 55 million US dollars back in 1875. He was absolutely loaded. And with Alva's old southern last name giving social standing to the Vanderbilt family and the Vanderbilt cash saving her and her family's hide, they really were a match made in heaven and they married that same year, 1875. So all is looking up, but Alva soon discovers that while she is protected by the Vanderbilt money,
5:13 Speaker 00 she was not protected by the scorn of society who viewed her now as a member of the new. As we see in the Gilded Age TV show, polite society was made up of exactly 400 members at the time of the real Gilded Age overseen by the Queen B, Mrs Caroline Astor. She was, guys, the socialite to end all socialites. She was the very definition of old money. Not only were both her and her husband's descendants Dutch merchants in the early years of America, but they had proper coin. At the ball where she determined who would make the list, she wore the diamond necklace that lost Mary Antoinette her head,
5:58 Speaker 00 estimated today at a value of around $10 million. So, a proper, proper society queen. And with the right bank account and the right heritage, Mrs Astor alongside her right-hand man, Mr Ward McAllister, filled her 400-capacity ballroom with the who's who of Gilded Age society, making her list and of course checking it twice. There was no new. And there was certainly no Vanderbilts. Now this, as you can imagine, didn't sit well with Alva, who had enough ambition to not only run the Vanderbilt businesses, but the entire United States. After all, money, of course, is very fun, but without influence, it is relatively meaningless, at least in Alva's eyes.
6:44 Speaker 00 So here, she was at a crossroads. She had a decision to make. She should, she could try and follow Mrs. Astor, or she could best her. And for Alva, a woman whose personal motto was "My way or no way", the former was hardly ever an option. So to get her entry into the four hundred, Alva launched a serious social climbing campaign, guys. And with cost as no objective, she could really pack a punch. So the very first thing that they do is take care of their real estate. And Alva and William purchased one of the most sought-after blocks of real estate in New York City. Six hundred sixty Fifth Avenue, AKA Millionaire's Row.
7:26 Speaker 00 Here, they built the Petit Chateau, which was anything but petty. Let me tell you, it had a sixty-foot long grand hall, a limestone Gothic edifice, walnut paneling and ceilings that were painted by the artist responsible for the French Opera House. In the end, the one hundred and thirty-seven room mansion was the talk of the town, so much so that even Mrs. Astor's most loyal servants were willing to border on treachery to get a peek inside, including right-hand man, Mr. McAllister. So with the house and the public practically begging for a peek inside, Alva made her next move. A party. But not just any party, guys. This was the ball to end all balls, and still to this day
8:12 Speaker 00 remains one of the most extravagant events in New York City history. So she sends out her army of uniformed servants to hand-deliver invitations to her grand costume ball. It had young socialites practising quadrilles until their souls were worn through, and according to the New York Times, even, quote, "Men found their minds haunted by uncontrollable thoughts as to whether they should appear as Robert le Diable, Cardinal Rachel Yu, Otto the Barbarian, or the Count of Monte Cristo", close quote. Alva spared no expense here, inviting journalists to get exclusive photographs of the decorations and kitchens. But throwing a party, however grand, would count for nothing if Mrs Astor wasn't there.
8:55 Speaker 00 But don't worry, guys, for this, like all things, Alva had a plan. So Mrs Astor's daughter, also named Carrie, and Alva's daughter, named Consuelo, after her best friend, had practised a quadrille to perform at the ball for weeks. And as the hours passed, Carrie sat at home anxiously waiting for her invitation. However, while all her friends got theirs, Carrie's never arrived. You see, Alva claimed that since Mrs Astor had never called on the Vanderbilt home to introduce herself formally, she had no address to send Carrie's invitation to, forcing Mrs Astor to visit the petit chateau and finally beg for an invite for her daughter and herself.
9:37 Speaker 00 The next day, the invitations arrived, and Alva claimed her first victory. Now, the ball in total came to a grand cost of around $250,000 US dollars at the time. This included $65,000 for champagne and $11,000 for flowers, all of which came to a grand total of approximately $6 million US dollars in today's money. Now, for context here, guys, because you kind of listen to that and you're like, all right, I guess maybe that's like not too bad, but context is important here. Kim Kardashian, Kanye West, their wedding is said to have cost around $12 million, which included an army of private jets, couture gowns, accommodation for all their guests
10:22 Speaker 00 for over a week, and a fat, fat donation to the Palace of Versailles, which hosted their rehearsal dinner. So Alva Vanderbilt spent half of Kim Ye's entire week-long wedding budget on one.
10:38 Speaker 00 Evening. Like I said, there is a reason that this is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, event that New York has ever seen. Forget the Met Gala, guys. This was epic. So the balls happened, it's gone without a hitch. Everyone's taken their pics, everyone's posted to the Gram, Daily Mail are reporting that Alva and the Vanderbilts are officially in. And my god, guys, she did not waste any time showing just how vast their wealth and influence could grow. She bought everything, and I do mean everything, from jewels, artworks, property, Parisian couture, and even the largest yacht in the world at the time, which
11:22 Speaker 00 she pulled the ultimate hot girl move and named after herself. She also followed the crowds to Newport, Rhode Island for the summer, where she commissioned the grand eleven million dollar marble house, which she had her husband gift her as thirty ninth birthday present in eighteen ninety-two. Her outrageous spending and blind ambition made her the favorite topic of New York newspapers who followed her from Rhode Island to Fifth Avenue. But just as she reached the top rung of the social ladder, she would go plummeting back to the very bottom. You see, Willie Vanderbilt was a notorious philanderer, as were most men of the time. Now, the common practice here was for their wives to suck
12:04 Speaker 00 it up, rack up bills at department stores, and travel to the continent. But Alva Vanderbilt is no ordinary woman, and sitting down or shutting up with things that she had absolutely zero intention of doing. So in an act that shocked everyone, Alva Vanderbilt files for divorce. I cannot express how groundbreaking this was at the time, guys. Divorce was not only a one-way ticket to social suicide, which Alva was fully aware of, but it was so incredibly rare that not even the richest of rich aristocratic women managed to do it. But Alva didn't care. She would not be disrespected and successfully divorced Willie
12:45 Speaker 00 in eighteen ninety-five on the grounds of adultery for approximately ten million US dollars. Near instantly, the once glorious socialite was now the notorious leper, excluded from the four hundred yet again. However, Alva had a secret weapon. The one thing that made every person in every room green with envy. Her daughter, Consuelo. Tall, thin, naive and rich, Consuelo Vanderbilt was not only the most eligible woman in America, but as it turns out, the world. You see, for all their pomp and circumstance, even the oldest of old money families both lacked and envied one thing. Titles.
13:29 Speaker 00 Reserved for proper old money, the English aristocracy were the pinnacle of class. But after centuries of maintaining their castles and paying death taxes, they lacked cash. So eligible dukes, lords and marquises braved the Atlantic in their droves, looking for wealthy American social climbers with very deep pockets. This led to the creation of what we now call the Dollar Princesses, young, rich, American women whose ambitious parents traded them off as cash cows in exchange for marriage. And there was no ambition like Alva Vanderbilt. We see the whole Dollar Princess thing come into the show with Gladys Russell, who is actually modeled off of Consuelo Vanderbilt, blah, blah, blah. Anyway.
14:10 Speaker 00 At the time, the first society debut in eighteen ninety-five, Consuelo Vanderbilt's dowry was worth twenty million US dollars, an estimated, wait for it, four billion US dollars today. Yes, that is billion with a B. Now, this attracted one of the highest ranking peers of English society, the cash poor but incredibly pedigree-rich ninth Duke of Marlborough, who proposed to Consuelo, in which Alva accepted. However, as there so often is, there is a problem. Consuelo was in love with someone else. The seventeen-year-old met Winthrop Rutherford, considered to be the most handsome bachelor
14:52 Speaker 00 in New York City, and decisively old money enough that Consuelo would be accepted into the four hundred instantly. However, New York would not be turned upside down by one of their own, and what Alva wanted more than anything was for every single person who would shunt and judge her to weep, green with envy. And that meant she needed the duke.
15:18 Speaker 00 Consuelo, of course, was miserable. She refused to speak to her mother and threatened to run away with Rynthrop, after which Alva delivered the final blow. She threatened to kill him before faking a heart attack caused by her daughter's disobedience. Once again, it is Alva's way, or it is no way. Described best through Consuelo, who later wrote that her mother said, "I do the thinking, you do as you are told." It is so Bertha Russell, "I can't." This is why I love Julian Fellowes, "The man can do no wrong." So on November 6th, 1895, a decisively miserable Consuelo Vanderbilt becomes the ninth Duchess of Marlborough, shipping out for the illustrious Blenheim Palace in England.
16:02 Speaker 00 The relationship between Consuelo and the Duke would never improve, and she spent many years despising her mother for the golden coffin she put her in. Rather interestingly, Consuelo became very good friends with the Duke's cousin, Winston Churchill. But still, Alva's plans succeeded, as they always did, and New York society once again flocked to her side. She had a Duchess for a daughter, and truly completed one of the greatest PR moves in history when she married an old friend of her husband's lolcomer, Mr. Oliver Belmont, a member of the wealthy Belmont Banking family. So she really set herself up for the life of luxury and influence, which she enjoyed enormously, and not just for her personal gain.
16:46 Speaker 00 You see, following Oliver's death, guys, Alva did the most shocking, controversial, outrageous, borderline vulgar thing that any woman of high society could do. Forget getting divorced, forget being a mistress. The most scandalous thing that you could become was a suffragette. That is right. The woman who threw the $6 million ball and sold her daughter off to a duke devoted every waking hour of her life to women's suffrage.
17:20 Speaker 00 There's been a lot of conversations about that amongst society itself and amongst historians who think that perhaps this was guilt for said past infringements. Or whether it was her genuine passion, I believe it is a mix of both. Because what we know for certain about Alva Vanderbilt, the very, very core of her character from the youngest of ages is that she refused to have boys or men think that she was lesser than. It is the pinnacle of her life. It is there in every single phase, in every single stage. And after hearing a lecture by Ida Huston Harper, one of Susan B. Anthony's biographers, Alva sprang into action. She was financing actions by the labour movement, underwriting
18:04 Speaker 00 many of its more prominent demonstrations. She proved a masterful fundraiser and pulled all of her social and political connections to the cause of Votes for Women.
18:15 Speaker 00 Years later, she founded the Political Equality League, merging the labour and suffrage movements. She opened Marble House for one of the biggest suffragette symposiums in the country and joined/ founded the National American Women's Suffrage Association, paying for their rent and later, the expenses of the Congressional Union and the National Women's Party, or the NWP. Society was then further horrified when it turned out that Alva's fight for suffrage wasn't just a phase or a cause, which was something that many white, rich ladies with nothing better to do would pick up for a while before getting bored and moving on. No. For Alva, this was her life's work and she was rich enough and most importantly,
19:01 Speaker 00 she was ambitious enough to both see it happen and not give a fig what anyone else thought.
19:09 Speaker 00 The horror truly reached its pinnacle though when she took to Washington with her picket sign in tow, organising the first ever picketing to take place on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Yes, that is right. Alva Vanderbilt was one of the first people to protest outside the White House. In the years that followed, Alva devoted herself to the cause even further as a member of the executive board of both the Congressional Union and the National Women's Party. And after many, many years of successful fundraising, campaigning, and pissing enough men off, the Nineteenth Amendment was passed in nineteen twenty, giving women the right to vote in the United States of America.
19:54 Speaker 00 Alva Vanderbilt was not only a woman of wealth, but she was one of substance. Having resisted every cold shoulder, overcome every setback, and overstepped every single boundary for what men deemed appropriate for Gilded Age women, Alva has left her mark on not only the Gilded Age and the modern suffrage movement, but ultimately, American history. She then died in as much fashion for defiance as she lived, with her casket being carried into Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in New York on the shoulders of all female pallbearers. Women who, without Alva, may never have gotten the right to vote or to be seen.
20:39 Speaker 00 A fitting tribute to America's own Iron Lady, who reminds us to always keep our heels, heads, and standards high. After all, as Alva herself would say, "It's my way or no way." I am an Alva Vanderbilt stan. I'm really interested to see what they do with Bertha Russell and her journey. Will her and George divorce? Will we see her become more involved in the suffrage movement? We already know that Gladys is married to the Duke, so she can't pull that out as her trump card, although I guess she already is Duchess's mother, like now at the moment. But I'm super interested to see what they do with her, because I truly believe that
21:19 Speaker 00 Alva Vanderbilt, for all of her faults, is an incredibly ambitious, incredibly momentous, incredibly outrageous woman, who, like I said, divide every single expectation that was set before her. And in her nearly eighty years of history, um, that we cover when we look at her life, there are some of the most influential and um equally outrageous people that are kicking around. So let's have a look at them. Placing her in history, Mary Antoinette died sixty years before Alva was born. Alva was twelve when Lincoln was shot and she was thirty when the Ford Motor Company was founded. Queen Victoria was born thirty-four years before Alva was.
22:05 Speaker 00 Alva was seventy-three when Queen Elizabeth the Second was born. And Joe Biden was born nine years after Alva died. JFK as well was born sixteen years before Alva died. So a really incredible bridging period between what we kind of today, I feel like anyway, see as like proper modern history. And that earlier Victorian period around the Industrial Revolution. Which I think is really arguably one of the most fascinating time periods. Like if you're going to exist, maybe not exist, but if you're gonna like watch any period of history. Um, I think this would be an incredible, incredible time to be placed in. I definitely wouldn't want to participate, particularly as a lower class citizen during the Industrial Revolution. No, thank you.
22:51 Speaker 00 But to be a spectator, wow, I would have loved to have seen Alva Vanderbilt in full force, guys. I don't know about you. So what influence does Alva Vanderbilt have on modern times today? Well, it really does come down to suffrage, which is ironic because it is not what people associate her with, rather opting for the Consuelo marriage or the six million dollar ball. But her work as a suffragette and her pioneering work that she did for divorced women was truly extraordinary. She used her wealth to finance the N W P and popularized the idea of a constitutional amendment for women's suffrage, which again ultimately became the Nineteenth Amendment.
23:33 Speaker 00 Marble House in Rhode Island, her brainchild, also acts as a lasting memory of Gilded Age architecture, which would largely not exist without Alva.
23:44 Speaker 00 And lastly guys, before we wrap up here, how is Alva remembered in pop culture? Most obviously, most deservedly, most incredibly, most aptly talked about. She is portrayed by the amazing Carrie Coon on Julian Fellow's The Gilded Age, where her character is clearly seen in Bertha Russell. Whether it's through Gladys's marriage, her throwing of various groundbreaking balls, the opera war with Mrs Astor, or any number of other Alvarisms, which Bertha embodies the relationship between the two women is undeniable. And I will certainly miss seeing her on my screen each week. So HBO, come on. When is season four? Make the announcement. Let it be soon. I need to know what's happening. I need more of The Gilded Age.
24:29 Speaker 00 I need, I need more of Carrie Coon. Period. And that brings us to the end of another episode of Hot History. If you would like to support us guys, then you can find us on Spotify and Apple Podcasts as Hot History. Follow us on TikTok at hot dot history and on Instagram at Hot History Club. As always, it is an absolute pleasure getting down and dirty in time with you. And tune in next time as we take a dual time jump back into the depths of ancient Egypt as we look at the life of King Tut and 1920s Cairo as we talk about the most famous archaeologist in world history, the man who discovered Tutankhamun's tomb, Mr Howard Carter. See you then, guys.
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