Alva Belmont

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Alva Erskine Belmont
Alva E. Belmont, photo dated 1911.
Born	Alva Erskine Smith 17 January 1853 Mobile, Alabama
Died	26 January 1933 New York, New York
Burial place	Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx
Spouse	William Kissam Vanderbilt Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont
Children	Consuelo Vanderbilt William K. Vanderbilt II Harold Stirling Vanderbilt
Parents	Murray Forbes Smith Phoebe Desha

Alva Erskine Belmont (January 17, 1853 - January 26, 1933), née Alva Erskine Smith, also called (1875–96) Alva Vanderbilt, was a prominent multi-millionaire American socialite and a major figure in the women's suffrage movement. Known for having an aristocratic manner that antagonized many people,^[1] she was also was noted for her energy, intelligence, strong opinions, and willingness to challenge convention.^[2] She was married first to William Kissam Vanderbilt, with whom she had three children, and secondly to Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont. She died on 26 January 1933 in Paris, France.

[edit] Early life

Alva Smith was born on 17 January 1853 in Mobile, Alabama. Her parents were the moderately wealthy Murray Forbes Smith, a commission merchant, and Phoebe Desha, daughter of Robert Desha, a former US Representative and General in the War of 1812.^[3][4]

Alva's childhood home in Mobile, Alabama.

Alva was the youngest of four children, though her two sisters, Alice and Elenor, both died as children before she was born. The only sibling that she ever knew was her older brother, Murray Forbes Smith, Jr., he died in 1857 and was buried in Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile.^[4]

As a child, Alva summered with her parents in Newport, Rhode Island and accompanied them on European vacations. In 1857 the Smiths moved to New York City, where they briefly settled in Madison Square. Murray Smith later went to Liverpool, England, to conduct his business. Alva and her mother moved to Paris, where Alva attended a private boarding school in Neuilly-sur-Seine.^[2]

After the Civil War, the family returned to New York, where Phoebe Smith died in 1869. At a party for one William Henry Vanderbilt's daughters, Alva's childhood best friend, Consuela Yznaga, introduced her to William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt. On 20 April, 1875, he and Alva were married at Calvary Church in New York City.^[5] As Murray Smith suffered repeated losses in his business dealings, his health began to fail. He died shortly after Alva's marriage.^[2]

[edit] First marriage

[edit] Children

Alva and William K. Vanderbilt would have three children. Consuelo was born on 2 March 1877, followed by William Kissam II on 2 March 1878, and Harold Stirling on 6 July 1884. Alva would maneuver Consuelo into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough on 6 November 1895. The marriage would annulled much later, at the duke's request and Consuelo's assent, on 19 August 1926. The annulment was fully supported by Alva, who testified that she had forced Consuelo into the marriage.^[6] By this time Consuelo and her mother enjoyed a closer, easier relationship. Consuelo went on to marry Jacques Balsan, a French aeronautics pioneer. William Kissam II would become president of the New York Central Railroad Company on his father's death in 1920. Harold Stirling graduated from Harvard Law School in 1910, then joined his father at the New York Central Railroad Company. He remained the only active representative of the Vanderbilt family in the New York Central Railroad after his brother's death, serving as a director and member of the executive committee until 1954.

[edit] Buildings

Alva and William's residence at 660 Fifth Avenue in New York City.

As a young newlywed, Alva worked from 1877 to 1881 with architect Richard Morris Hunt to create a French Renaissance style chateau for her family at 660 Fifth Avenue in New York City. A contemporary of Alva's was quoted as saying that "she loved nothing better than to be knee deep in mortar."^[3] In 1878 Hunt began work on their Queen Anne style retreat on Long Island, Idlehour. It would be added to almost continuously until 1889. In 1891, Hunt was again hired to design the Neoclassical style Marble House in Newport, Rhode Island, as Alva's 39th birthday present and summer "cottage" retreat.^[3]

[edit] Society

Determined to bring the Vanderbilt family the social status that she felt they deserved, and after being snubbed by Caroline Astor, queen of the "400" elite of New York society, she held a masquerade ball that cost $3 million to open the Fifth Avenue chateau. This forced Mrs. Astor to come calling, in order to secure an invitation to the ball for her daughter. Unable to get an opera box at the Academy of Music, whose directors were loath to admit members of newly wealthy families into their circle, she was among those people instrumental in founding the Metropolitan Opera Association, based at the Metropolitan Opera House. The Metropolitan Opera long outlasted the Academy. Marble House would be built next door to Caroline Astor's much simpler Beechwood estate. Marble House set the pace for Newport's subsequent transformation from a quiet summer colony of wooden houses to the legendary resort of opulent stone palaces.^[7]

[edit] Second marriage

Belcourt, where Alva and her second husband summered after their marriage in 1896

Alva shocked society in March 1895 when she divorced her husband, at a time when divorce was rare among the elite, and received a large financial settlement said to be in excess of $10 million, in addition to several of the estates. The grounds for divorce were allegations of William's adultery,^[1] though some believed that William hired a woman to pretend to be his mistress so that Alva would divorce him.^[8]

Alva married Oliver Hazard Perry Belmont, a man five years her junior, on 11 January 1896. Oliver had been a friend of the Vanderbilts since the late 1880s and had accompanied them on at least one long voyage aboard their yacht the Alva. He was the son of August Belmont, a successful Jewish banker.^[9] After their marriage Alva began extensive renovations to his sixty-room Newport mansion, Belcourt, and had another mansion, Brookholt, built in Hempstead, Long Island. Oliver died suddenly in 1908, upon which Alva took on the new cause of the women's suffrage movement after hearing a lecture by Ida Husted Harper.

[edit] Women's suffrage

Drawn further into the suffrage movement by Anna Shaw, Alva donated large sums to the movement, both in the United Kingdom and United States. In 1909, she founded the Political Equality League to get votes for suffrage-supporting New York State politicians, and wrote articles for newspapers. She gave strong support to labor in the 1909-1910 New York shirtwaist makers strike. She paid the bail of picketers who had been arrested and funded a large rally in the city's Hippodrome, which she addressed along with Anna Shaw, president of the National American Women's Suffrage Association (NAWSA). In 1909 she joined this organization and was named an alternate delegate from New York to the International Women's Suffrage Association meeting in London. There Alva observed the commitment of Emmeline Pankhurst and her followers, who would influence the depth and the form of her own personal commitment to the cause. On her return to the United States, she paid for office space on Fifth Avenue that allowed the relocation of NAWSA offices to New York, and she funded its National Press Bureau. At the same time, she formed her own Political Equality League to seek broad support for suffrage in neighborhoods throughout the city, and, as its president, led its division of the 1912 Women's Votes Parade.^[2]

National Woman's Party members picket the White House in 1917, the banner reads, "Mr. President How Long Must Women Wait For Liberty."

By this time, organized suffrage activity was centered on educated, middle-class white women, who were often reluctant to accept immigrants, blacks, and the working class into their ranks. Belmont's Political Equality League only partially broke with this tradition. She established its first "suffrage settlement house" in Harlem, and she included black women and immigrants in weekend retreats at Beacon Towers, her Châteauesque style castle in Sands Point, New York. However, she also contributed to the Southern Woman Suffrage Conference, which refused to admit blacks.^[2]

The Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (CU), organized by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman, separated from the NAWSA in 1913. Alva then merged the Political Equality League into the CU. Now committed to securing the passage of the 19th Amendment, she convened a "Conference of Great Women" at Marble House in the summer of 1914. Alva's daughter Consuelo, who promoted suffrage and prison reform in England, addressed the gathering, which was followed by the CU's first national meeting. Belmont served on the executive committee of the CU from 1914 to 1916.^[2]

In 1915 Alva chaired the women voters' convention at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The following year, she and Alice Paul established the National Woman's Party from the membership of the CU and organized the first picketing ever to take place before the White House, in January 1917. She was elected president of the National Woman's Party, an office she held until her death. The National Woman's Party continued to lobby for new initiatives from the Washington, D.C. headquarters that Alva had purchased in 1929 for the group, now the Sewall-Belmont House and Museum.^[2]

[edit] Later life and death

From the early 1920s onward, she lived in France most of the time in order to be near her daughter Consuelo. She restored the 16th century Château d'Augerville La Rivière and used it as a residence. With Paul, she formed the International Advisory Council of the National Woman's Party and the Auxiliary of American Women abroad. She suffered a stroke in the spring of 1932 that left her partially paralyzed, and she died in Paris of bronchial and heart ailments on January 26, 1933. Her funeral at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in New York City featured all female pallbearers and a large contingent of suffragists. She is interred next to Oliver Belmont in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.^[2]

[edit] Quotations

• "Just pray to God. She will help you."
• "First marry for money, then marry for love."

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• The Vanderbilt Women: Dynasty of Wealth, Glamour and Tragedy Clarice Stasz. New York, iUniverse, 2000.
• Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt Arthur T Vanderbilt. Perennial, 1989.

[edit] External links

• Long Island's Rebels With a Cause from New York Newsday
• Women in Philanthropy
• 75 Suffragists