The 'real' Bertha and George Russell: inside the high-society divorce that shocked the Gilded Age

Julian Fellowes, the creator behind HBO’sThe Gilded Age, has taken plenty of cues from real history for the characters of Bertha and George Russell, seemingly turning to the lives of Alva and William K Vanderbilt in plotting much of their story. Discover the real history, and what thiscouldmean for everyone’s favourite power couple in series four Bertha Russell is the undisputed queen of Julian Fellowes’s dramaThe Gilded Age. In the story so far, glamorous ‘new money’ socialite Bertha (played by Carrie Coon) has conquered New York society through means both fair and foul, and risen to the top of the so-called ‘Four Hundred’. And she’s done it all while holding the steady hand of her husband, ruthless ‘robber-baron-with-a-conscience’ George Russell (played by Morgan Spector). To date, her plot has mirrored many key moments in the life of a real historical figure in New York’s Gilded Age history:Alva Vanderbilt. In the show, Bertha has befriendedWard McAllister(who was a real contemporary of Alva); thrown a grand ball in her Fifth Avenue mansion to signal toMrs Caroline Astor and the Four Hundredthat she means business (as Alva did in 1883); and she has triumphed in theWar of the Operas(as Alva claimed victory too). For Bertha, life is perfect, right? Far from it. Throughout the previous seasons, Bertha successfully courted the Duke of Buckingham, a British aristocrat visiting New York, and welcomed him publicly as her guest to the opera, which served as evidence that she had finally been accepted by the highest echelons of society. She secured him as a marriage match for her daughter Gladys, who was shipped to Oxfordshire as a new bride. But beneath the surface, all was not well, with others speculating over the lengths to which she had gone in securing the Duke’s alliance and Gladys separated from her family and the life she had always known. Meanwhile, Bertha and George spent much of season three at loggerheads over the marital prospects of Gladys, and a surprise shooting threw the Russell family's prospects into disarray, leaving the couple estranged. If show creator Julian Fellowes means to trace real history further inThe Gilded Agedrama, here’s what that means for Bertha, George, and the rest of the Russell family… Alva Vanderbilt (née Alva Erskine Smith) was born in January 1853, in Mobile, Alabama,into a wealthy Southern family. Their fortune came from cotton – and as such, their riches were inextricably tied to the trade of enslaved people. When victory for the Union in theAmerican Civil Warin 1865 brought about the end of slavery as an economic institution, the Smith family relocated permanently to New York City. Here, Alva soon realised that admittance into the entrenched social circles of Manhattan’s elite would be more difficult than anticipated. She had spent much of her early life in Paris and New York, receiving an education that emphasised language, arts and European manners, but even such a prestigious background would not be enough. Ambitious and socially strategic, Alva sought to change that. In 1875, at 22 years old, she married William Kissam Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius ‘Commodore’ Vanderbilt. As evidence of the family’s vast wealth, when Cornelius died in 1877, William Henry – William K’s father – became the richest American. Though William K (or ‘Willie’ as he was known) is described in many sources as personally shy and somewhat passive, particularly in contrast to the manoeuvrings of Alva, he was immensely wealthy – in 1885, he in turn inherited $55m from his father. Willie and Alva’s union was seen as mutually advantageous: Alva brought charm, social intelligence, and aspirations to elevate the Vanderbilt name into the old-money elite, while William offered vast fortune and access to society’s upper echelons. Amid Alva’s ruthless mission to engineer the Vanderbilts’ social ascent, the legendary 1883 costume ball at the newly completed Vanderbilt mansion on Fifth Avenue is regarded by many as her crowning achievement. The ball, attended by over 1,000 guests, effectively forcedMrs Caroline Astor, gatekeeper of New York’s elite, to formally acknowledge the Vanderbilts as ‘society’. By the 1880s, despite her Southern roots, Alva had positioned herself as a major figure in the social scene of the Gilded Age. Today, physical evidence of her social triumph survives in the form of the Marble House, an opulent mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, gifted by Willie to his wife on her 39th birthday. The Vanderbilt couple commissioned society architect Richard Morris Hunt (who had also designed their Fifth Avenue mansion) to create a ‘summer cottage’ on the coast. Though the name evoked the modest wooden houses that had edged the Rhode Island clifftops years before, the new stretch of mansions on Bellevue Avenue that included the Marble House were modelled more closely on thePalace of Versailles. The Vanderbilts’ summer retreat featured rooms gilded with 22 carat gold, with marble balconies, electric interior lights and hand-carved detail throughout. It survives amid other palaces on the coast, including The Breakers (owned by William K’s brother Cornelius Vanderbilt II) and Beechwood (which belonged to the Astors). “I always do everything first,” Alva reportedly once boasted. “I blaze the trail for the rest to walk in.” Blaze a new trail Alva did.At a time when divorce among the American elite was still rare and highly stigmatised, Alva, increasingly frustrated with Willie’s infidelity and detachment, sought a legal separation from her husband in 1895. “I was the first girl of my ‘set’ to marry a Vanderbilt,” Alva proclaimed. “Then I was the first society woman to ask for a divorce, and within a year ever so many others had followed my example. They had been wanting divorce all the time, but they had not dared to do it until I showed them the way.” Alva’s case was that Willie had reportedly spent increasing amounts of time away from her, often travelling in Europe and maintaining romantic liaisons with other women. Alva tolerated his behaviour for years, in part because divorce was considered socially damaging, particularly for women. However, by the early 1890s, their marriage had grown cold and emotionally estranged. Alva is reported to have said that she was unwilling to continue living with a man who flaunted his disinterest and infidelity so openly. The couple formally divorced in March 1895, with Alva citing adultery, which was at the time one of the few legally permissible grounds for divorce in New York. The proceedings were handled discreetly, but the implications were significant. Alva retained custody of their three children, including their daughter, Consuelo, and received a settlement reportedly worth$10m (equivalent to around $380m, today). Concerning such high-profile individuals, their divorce was a prominent example of the shifting norms of the Gilded Age, especially regarding women’s agency within marriage. Alva’s radical decision to pursue divorce, despite the potential social backlash, is evidence of both the changing social mores of the time, and Alva’s own indomitable pride and ambition. IfThe Gilded Age'sBertha and George are inspired by Alva and Willie, the latter couple’s daughterConsuelo Vanderbilt is surely the real historical parallel for the character Gladys Russell(played by Taissa Farmiga). ThroughoutThe Gilded Ageso far, Gladys has suffered the strict attentions of her mother, in turn restrained or deployed as society currency to assist Bertha’s ambitions. But while Bertha is portrayed as domineering though ultimately acting out of love in the series, the real treatment of Alva’s own daughter is much more severe, to say the least. Born to Alva and Willie in 1877, Consuelo was named after Alva’s close friend, Consuelo Yznaga (a Cuban-American heiress who later became the Duchess of Manchester), which many have interpreted as a signal of Alva’s aim from the beginning: that nothing but