An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(23)
Anson, who adored his two stepchildren, also tried to give the forthcoming marriage the best possible start. As a wedding present he gave Greta Birchwood’s accompanying farm and had a brand-new stable built for her horses. Whatever the future might bring, she’d always have her own house close to her mother and him.
Allene, in turn, gave her daughter the grand wedding she’d never had herself. In the early morning of October 21, 1914, a special train brought more than three hundred guests from New York’s Pennsylvania Station to Lattingtown. The Hostetters, as well as family and friends of Glenn’s, turned out in great numbers: almost all of the twelve bridesmaids and page boys were from Pittsburgh.
The ceremony itself took place in the Lattingtown Union Chapel, a small church that had been financed almost entirely by members of the Piping Rock Club. The marriage was consecrated by one of Glenn’s cousins; another cousin was best man. Allene had copiously decorated the train, the chapel, and Birchwood, where the wedding breakfast and the reception took place, with autumn leaves and gold-and copper-colored chrysanthemums. It turned the event into “a Chrysanthemum Wedding” as the New York Times captioned it.
Greta’s wedding dress and her bridesmaids’ outfits were deemed worthy of a separate article in the paper because they had been designed by an American talent at a time when Europe was still considered leading in terms of fashion and taste. The honeymoon was also an all-American affair. After a visit to Pittsburgh, the newlyweds went on to Mount Mitchell, the highest of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Appalachians, where they went trekking and mule packing.
Meanwhile, there was nothing in the society sections about the real reason for the patriotic nature of their wedding in Lattingtown. The reader would have to turn to the front pages, which were growing considerably gloomier in tone, for that. Those who had seen in the sinking of the Titanic more than two years earlier a foreboding of more shocking events to come were right. Something that had seemed to Americans impossible in this new century, something they had not been expecting and did not want, had nevertheless occurred: a major war had broken out in Europe.
The direct cause of the conflict, everyone agreed, was the murder of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. “Heir to Austria’s Throne Slain with His Wife by a Bosnian Youth to Avenge Seizure of His Country” said the New York Times. Opinions weren’t divided about the political background to this, either. It had mainly to do with the German Empire, created in 1871 under the leadership of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, which was keen to see its growing economic power translated into international political influence. But how it was possible for the war to spread across Europe so quickly after the incident in Sarajevo, setting the world on fire almost immediately, was a matter that historians would puzzle over for a long time to come.
The fact was the Europeans who marched to war late that summer were literally singing and had decorated their guns with flowers. Possessed by a kind of romantic war heroism that really belonged to the previous century, they were convinced that they would soon return home triumphant. But what was then modern technology turned out to have fundamentally transformed the practice of warfare. By that fall, armies were stuck in trench lines that ran from northern France to deep in Europe. From the trenches, the warring parties hit each other with ever-heavier ammunition—sacrificing lives day after day, with no one able to break through.
Czarist Russia sided with France and England; Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire fought on the German side, assisted after a while by Bulgaria. America anxiously stayed on the sidelines. Weren’t these kinds of idiotic wars, instigated by megalomaniac aristocrats and parading soldiers, one of the main reasons so many immigrants had left everything behind to seek out the peace and prosperity of the New World?
It wasn’t until the passenger ship RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by German submarines on May 7, 1915, taking down with it 128 American citizens, including millionaire’s son Alfred Vanderbilt, that the United States bared its teeth. The German generals, who realized all too well that they wouldn’t stand a chance in hell if mighty America sided with the Allies, hastily backed down: the submarine war would remain limited and the safety of American vessels would be assured. With this, America could comfortably resume its neutral position. The country was by then making money from the war, which, despite triumphant bulletins from both sides, never seemed headed for an end.
Month after month, the conflict oscillated around a front line that ran across Europe like a suppurating wound, feeding itself with young lives. There were days, as in July 1916 at the Somme, during which 60,000 young soldiers died for what in retrospect turned out to be a couple hundred yards of territorial gain. Or the ten-month-long “Hell of Verdun” that, when it ended in December 1916, was ultimately responsible for an incredible death toll of more than 700,000 lives.
Parents lost sons and women their fiancés; countries their young men, their prosperity, and their future. The entire international community looked to America: when would the most powerful nation in the New World finally accept her moral responsibility and put an end to the pointless butchery on the Continent?
Somewhere in the fall of 1916, Anson and his friends began to discuss in muted tones, after dinner and with their cigars and port, the possibility that American neutrality might not be sustainable. An international concern like General Electric that also operated in Europe received war updates on a daily basis. They knew, for example, that great dissatisfaction with the czarist regime was brewing among the Russian population. The February revolution and the subsequent collapse of the Russian side on the east front indeed gave the Germans a welcome respite; they could now concentrate their efforts on the Western Front. Determined to force a breakthrough, the high command called for a total submarine war.