FROM MEDICI TO BOURBON - Newport Mansions

From the early 1880s on, the term ‘desire’ entered American discourse at all
levels. 76 Lester Ward defined consumption as the ‘satisfaction of desire’. 77 Alva
Vanderbilt was arguably the most satisfied and self-fulfilled woman of the leisure
class of her period. A self-proclaimed trail-blazer she was not to be refused, and her
much rewritten Memoirs speak with single-minded purpose of a Minerva-like mission
in life as dual patron of the arts and protector of women’s rights. A self-awareness of
her potential role in history led Alva to produce two distinct sets of Memoirs dictated
to successive secretary-companions. 78 In each, self-analysis prompts rewriting to
explain her transition from socialite to suffragette. In both versions, an emphasis on
her family’s contacts, while resident in Paris as a child, in the inner circles of the court
of emperor Napoléon III and his empress Eugénie may explain Alva’s Eugénie-like
adherence to the cult of things Marie Antoinette. The combination of the Hamilton
Palace sale’s social credentials, provenance, and timing, early July 1882, on the eve of
the completion of the New York house, may have served not only to satisfy Alva
Vanderbilt’s desire but to formulate its evolution along new lines.
The family’s history with such intermediaries as Avery may have led the
William K. Vanderbilts to inquire after the most effective bidding agent in London.
They required not only an agent but a connoisseur who would assure them of the
integrity of the goods. The London art dealer Samson Wertheimer may have been
recommended by Avery or by an acquaintance. 79
76 William Leach, ‘Strategists of Display and the Production of Desire’, Consuming Visions:
Accumulation and Display of Goods in America, 1880-1920, Norton, New York, 1989, p. 102.
77 Ibid.
78 Perkins Library version and Huntington Library version: unpublished Memoirs of Alva Vanderbilt
Belmont as dictated to Sara Bard Field, 1917; The Charles Erskine Scott Wood Collection, The
Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
79 Norman L. Kleeblatt (ed.), John Singer Sargent: Portraits of the Wertheimer Family, exhibition
catalogue, The Jewish Museum, New York, 1999, p. 10. Wertheimer was of German-Jewish origin, he
had immigrated to Britain in 1830. Although he had arrived a modest bronze maker, Samson built a
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