48 pages • 1 hour read
Anderson Cooper, Katherine HoweVanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Failure Is Impossible: May 4, 1912”
The authors continue describing the life of Alva Vanderbilt in this chapter, telling the story of her divorce (briefly mentioned in the previous chapter) and her later years as an advocate for women’s suffrage and other rights. In 1895, Alva sued her husband Willie for divorce on the grounds of infidelity. The papers were full of scandalous news of Willie’s affair with a French women—he had bought an apartment in Paris for her and gave her an annual allowance of $200,000. However, another, more discreet affair, was the final straw for Alva—with her best friend, Consuelo Yznaga, for whom she named her daughter.
In divorcing Willie, Alva acted once again as a trailblazer, since at the time women in high society virtually never divorced. They may have suffered through many indignities, but they stayed married for obvious reasons: Men held power, wealth, and legal standing. Even Alva’s divorce lawyer tried to talk her out of it for fear that she risked losing everything, but she would not be deterred. She had her own affair during their marriage, with Willie’s best friend, Oliver Belmont. The divorce was completed with no mention of the respective best friends—only the French woman, for which Willie took the blame—and Alva came out of it with a healthy financial settlement. In notes later made for a memoir that was never written, Alva explained how she felt at the time. Upper class women in the Gilded Age, she argued, were virtually enslaved to their husbands. The men were free to engage in all kinds of dalliances while women were expected to keep up appearances and maintain the honor of the family name. The latter were silenced and kept “in their place” by the power imbalance and money.
After the divorce, Alva married Belmont and began working for women’s rights. She had always had a rebellious streak and wanted to help other women break free of anything holding them back. However, she also held in contempt those who were held down but did not fight back, a viewpoint, the authors note, stemming from her attitude toward enslaved African Americans while growing up in the South before the Civil War. She donated money to organizations that helped women from disadvantaged backgrounds improve their lives, and she founded the Political Equality League in 1909 to fight for women’s suffrage. In 1912, she marched up Fifth Avenue with other suffrage demonstrators, probably watched from the homes of society women she once mingled with.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Down with the Ship: May 1915”
Chapter 8 is about Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, the third son born to the Commodore’s grandson Cornelius II (son of Billy) and his wife Alice. He became the nominal head of the Vanderbilt family when one of his older brothers died from typhoid fever and the other was disinherited after marrying a woman of whom his parents disapproved. When his father died young, Alfred inherited the bulk of the fortune. He married his college sweetheart, Ellen, in 1901. His main interest had to do with horses—breeding, showing, and riding.
A few years later, Alfred began an affair that became a scandal when news of it hit the media. Ellen filed for divorce in 1908, and Alfred spent more time in Europe to get out of the glare of the spotlight. After remarrying in England and having two children with his new wife, the family settled again in New York. In 1915, he was traveling on the Lusitania to England, to review opportunities for Red Cross work for World War I, when the ship was sunk by a German submarine. Alfred died at age 37, along with 1,197 others. Reports by survivors who saw him as the ship was sinking indicate that he had a lifebelt buckled around him but removed it and gave it to a woman who approached him. That was the last anyone saw of him. As he was one of the most famous passengers to die, the incident may have contributed to the United States’ entry into the war two years later. Posters urging Americans to “Remember the Lusitania” were part of the campaign to drum up public support.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Standing in a Cold Shower, Tearing Up Hundred-Thousand-Dollar Bills: September 15, 1934”
Chapter 9 centers on Harold Vanderbilt’s win at the 1934 America’s Cup. Harold was a son of Willie and Alva Vanderbilt, and his main passion was sailing. The contest was held by the New York Yacht Club and the Americans had never lost. Harold’s opponent was Sir Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, the British aviation pioneer who was also an accomplished sailor. Sopwith and his crew raced the Endeavour, a yacht considered slightly superior to Vanderbilt’s Rainbow. Held off the coast of Newport, Rhode Island, the race was a major social event, attracting luminaries that included President Franklin Roosevelt.
The race consisted of a series of various events, with the best out of seven winning the cup. The Endeavour won the first two events, taking a surprising lead. In the first, a straight out-and-back course, the boat’s new style of spinnaker worked better in the wind conditions. The spinnaker on the Rainbow tore when Vanderbilt tried to keep up. The second course was triangle-shaped over a total of 30 miles. After the first turn, the Endeavour opened an insurmountable lead, winning despite a furious charge by the Rainbow at the end. In the next event, Vanderbilt was confident conditions favored him. Yet again, however, the Endeavour opened a big lead. Vanderbilt gave up command of his boat, the authors write, “out of either frustration, pragmatism, or shame” (195). In stepped the able C. Sherman Hoyt, who used a strategy more commonly used with smaller boats to come back and win.
The fourth event, again a triangle shape, brought controversy. After the first turn, the Rainbow was slightly behind but bearing down. The rules stated that the boat in the lead could move laterally in order to block the path of the challenging ship trying to overtake it. The lead boat had the right of way and the challenger had to yield. On this day, Vanderbilt played a game of chicken to the point where the boats nearly collided. Sopwith moved at the last minute, averting disaster, which allowed the Rainbow to take the lead. The Rainbow won, but Sopwith lodged a complaint. After deliberation, the race committee—composed entirely of New York Yacht Club members—dismissed it on the technicality that he had not raised his protest flag soon enough, according to the rules. Sopwith was furious but not one to cause a scene. He went on with the race, also losing the next two events, which gave the America’s Cup to Vanderbilt. All this occurred against the backdrop of the Great Depression and news of a strike by textile workers up and down the East Coast, including in Rhode Island. The state’s governor, meeting Roosevelt at the race, assured the president that everything was under control, but in fact violence against the strikers had taken place.
Part 2, Chapters 7-9 Analysis
These chapters begin the tale of the downward turn for the Vanderbilt dynasty, as the family’s lavish lifestyle began to catch up with them. A notable influence on this time in the family’s history is divorce becoming more common, here fracturing families who lived comfortable and luxurious lives, with multiple homes and so on. Each divorce and remarriage often meant more children, which divided the wealth further when it was inherited.
Divorce had another, more positive side, though. While it did have the effect of increasingly spreading out the family fortune, it also greatly benefited the women in the family. Alva Vanderbilt was at pivotal in making divorce more acceptable to members of the upper class. When she divorced her husband Willie in 1895 over his infidelity, it was a rare and bold act. The authors again draw on primary sources to enrich the tale of Alva’s divorce in Chapter 7. Later in life, she worked with a writer to make notes for her memoir; it was never published but the notes remain. She was blunt in her assessment of marriage and how it kept women oppressed while allowing husbands to get away with all kinds of bad behavior. After the honeymoon phase and having children to further the family name, she claimed, a wife is virtually abandoned. She is no longer seen by her husband as a partner in sexual pleasure, as he often moved on to younger mistresses. The wife was left to raise the children and uphold the good family name; meanwhile, men could do as they wished with impunity.
The authors continue to employ the technique of in medias res, beginning each of these three chapters in the middle of action: a march for women’s rights that Alva helped lead in Chapter 7, onboard the Lusitania the morning it was sunk in Chapter 8, and in the middle of a yacht race during the 1934 America’s Cup in Chapter 9. In each case, the opening scene serves as an entry into a larger story about one of the Vanderbilts, telling something about an individual as well as about the book’s themes.
All three of the book’s themes come into play in these chapters. One theme that is less explicit but constant throughout these chapters is The Myth of the Self-Made American. The titans of industry gave the impression that their drive, skill, and intelligence alone led them to success and great riches, and stories the nation tells itself reinforce this ideal. However, the reality is quite different. The authors remind readers of this here and there throughout the book, as with the story of the textile strike in Chapter 9. While the privileged gathered in Newport to watch yacht races during the Depression, the largest strike in US history to date was taking place. Employers asked workers to do more with no increase in wages, effectively lowering their rate of pay. The same juxtaposition is used in Chapter 5, where families mourning the miners lost in a devastating accident are awarded a fraction of the cost of Alva Vanderbilt’s famous ball. The authors only allude to these moments briefly, but they serve as a reminder that the wealthy gained their profits from the backs of working men and women—and no one is entirely self-made.
The writing style in these chapters is brisk, taking the form of narrative like most of the others. This is especially true in Chapters 8 and 9. In the former, the last moments of normalcy aboard the Lusitania are described; all the while, a German U-boat captain is stalking the ship off the coast of Ireland. The authors build suspense with details such as the submarine running low on fuel and just about to return to port before the Lusitania appeared, and then the ship making a turn that appeared to put it out of range—before turning again and coming back within range. Chapter 9 recounts a race, so Cooper and Howe employ these techniques to describe a hotly contested competition as the advantage veers between the Rainbow, skippered by Vanderbilt, and the Endeavour, helmed by Sopwith. The authors write vividly, using strong active verbs in passages like this:
After that last turn, Rainbow shook off her frustration and started screaming for the finish, picking up speed and gaining forty seconds on her elapsed time. The racing machine under Harold’s hands knifed through the dark Atlantic water, tossing spray from each dip of the bow (193).
These emotionally charged vignettes of lives in the Vanderbilt family work to make American “royalty” a bit more human to the reader, demonstrating where their wealth and status sometimes trapped them, or conversely, gave them enormous opportunities for escape at a time of nationwide poverty.
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