THE FAIR-VANDERBILT WEDDING.

Evening Star, Issue 10901, 8 April 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE FAIR-VANDERBILT WEDDING.

FROM MINER'S HUT-TO MILLIONAIRE'S PALACE. THE GENESIS OFTsOCIErY QUEEN. 'lis strange, but true, for truth is always strange— Stranger than fie ion: if it could be told. How much would novels gain by the exchange. S-jherazvde never, in her most exalud fights, told any etory more inherently improbable, or more gorgeous in i's contrasted;, effects, than has bson presented to the world in the last half-century by the life history of some few score men whom, for want of a better term, wo dub "millionaires." There ia no narrative in the whole of the thousand and one nights' entertainment that surpasses the reality of Mrs John Maokay's experiences mid the hum-drum, practical life of to-day, and there are few families whose archives contain material of a more absorbing, startling, and instructive nature than that of the young lady whose marriage with the "son of the vanitrbilts" waß consummated on Thursday last, surrounded with all the pomp and ceremony and brilliancy that fabulous wealth can command fiom tho masters of musio and art in the mag:iifioe,nt sa'on of one of the mo3t luxurious palac-s of the wealthiest city of rn■■) lern limes. Not that the oable was entirely accurate. Cables never are. But although it i 3 not jruo tha*; Miss Fair is the daughter of "St-uator" Fair, pr that she inherits ei,000,000 from her mother, it is true that <he is married to tho young son of W. K" Vauderbilt. Jtmes Fair, the father of the ,'oung lady, has been dead over four years, wd ho was not & senator at ±he time of his leaih, Stewart, the Silver King of Nevada, laving succeeded him many years previlusly. Nor did Mrs Fair leave her daughter i 1.000.000, for the simple reason Bhe hadn't his amount to leave, but how much she had knd how it was left I will narrate in the ;our?e of my sketch. James G. Fair, to give bim hia full lame, alias "Uccle Jimmy" and "Slip-).-ry Jiny' was a self-made man in the ruest sense of the term. A good many so* ailed " self-made " men are nothing of the ;ind, bat often owe their advance to birth, ducation, or influence. Fair bad none of hese. He was poorly born, poorly trained, neducated, cynical, destitute of friends or afluence, and dependent upon his own ative wit and sagacity for his bread and utter. He had not even a trade; yet a letter miner, a handier man, a defter ncchat ie, caipenter, or blacksmith it would avo been hard to find. He trusted no one. Ie was first in the mine and the out, I work' r himself, he hated loafers, and 'bounced"or "fired" the shirker without lercy. Bat, withal, a good master. He, i-heo acting as superintendent for one mine, aised the wages of the men 2a a day, educed the working day to six hours, paid he hands according to the part of the mine a whir-h they worked, was careful as to heir eafety beyond what he wa3 legally ailed upon to .do, and found those who o:ked in the " wet mine " one rubber suit very month. Yet he was not popular, and tined all kinds of nicknames, of which 1 Slippery Jim " was one, indicative of this seliDg. Further, he was a handsome man, bit of a wit, fond of a dance aud socg, but ot a drinker. Perhaps his unpopularity ?as a compliment to his business methods Ie never stormed or raved, like his partner lackay, but was always familiar, couiderate, and fondly addressed the men as ' me boys "; but the latter could never tell, ,s they expressed it, "what he was up to" -an ignorance on their part which Fair loubtless welcomed. Fair did not nuke his money with a rush. Ie had ups and downs like mauy another liner, and when he came into Virginia Jity—in which town Mrs W. K. Vand,rilt, Jan., n&e Mi s Virginia Fair, was born—e had, to use his own words, "precious ittle money. But there is no saying," he coninued, " what a man may f'o iu a lifetime Vben I went to Virginia City a'l I wanted ras to get a little bit of a staka to keep my amily from starving. I never expeoted to nake a fortune." But the fortune came not only to him, but o four others, and that largely through 'air's indomitable energy, self-reliance, «nd iith. When in conjunction with Mackay, ?lood, O'Brieu, aud Walker, he got control if several claims, he began working through ;o what was known as the Consolidated fifginii. Flood and O'Brien were iu Sa ?ranoi?co, in a little hole of a saloon, doing he financing put of th 6 business and watch□g the market; Walker was a man who did ,v hat the o'hers told him and kept quiet: whilst Mackay wished thi mine "would >ink in hrlt"—an aspiration ably seconded ay the foreman of the works ; but Fair, who ia! been away for a few weeks, went down oto the mine, took a look arouud, and said : 'Clean out all this dirt and rock, and drive s'nigbt ahead ioto the Virginia." lone, aud in less than five years 50,030,000 loliars' worth of bullion was turned oui 'torn this bonanza, and Fair, Mackay, and iiis partners had bloomed into magnates rich atyond the dreams cf avarice. Then the roaring times in San Francisco. Business boomed and pulsated with jarning throbs beneath the golden shower. From a city of houses arose a city cf palaces. Flood, from his hole of a salcoa in a narrow street, went up the frowning heights abovp, and built himself a mansion ind stocked it with the treasures and trophies of old Europe. Mackay becams backer, owner of tens of thousands of m<les jf tr.legraph lines, acd part proprietor of the Mackay-Bennet cible across tho Atlantic, whilst Mrs Mackay, from the modest position of widow to a defunct country practitioner, out into the great world, there to entertain emperors and king-, princes aud potentates, and to do it all with a charm and grace as though to the maon: r born. But Fa ; r stayed on in the State of California, to which he had removed when once his fortune was assured. His home life was far from happy, and the. fault was largely his. The worst side of the man came to the surface. True, he built palatial dwellings, hotel", and invested in undertakings that returned him vast sums, but 1 • ran down bill on the moral side at a rapid paca His homa seldom saw him. His two boys —clever and well-made lads—lived anyhow, and after much scandal Mrs Fair obtained a divorce and a settlement cf 4,000,000J01. It is this latter sum about which the cables have got mixed up. By her will 500,000d0l were left to her eldest son James, the like amount to her son Coarles; but tho iaterest only thereon was to be paid thrm until Charles was thirty years of ago, when her endre estate was to be divided as follows : —The two bons to reoeive the principal of the sunn named, or, in the event of one dying, both amounts to b9 paid to the survivor, and th" two daughters each to receive the sum of 1,500,000.161. Fair's character, aftei this exposure, did not stand vary high; in Mackay broke from him, it was said, on account of the life Fair vas leading, «,nd thfl master of millions found that money could not atone for everything. His troubles came fast and thick uuon bim. James, tho eldest boy, led a fearful life, siukiag down be'ow the level of ibe V'.riest ba>- loafer who bung around bim for drink, and ho died early. Charles followed in his brother's steps. The handsome income and a goodly portion of the principal of his expectations was all wasted or pawned for drink an! worse. Ho quarrelled with his father, behaved like a brainless dolt, kppt the newspapert filled with his vagaries and wound up his career by marrying the proprietess of an infamous establishment. This last act had some redeeming features in it; the woman was as good as he; she kept him sober; has conducted herself admirably since, and will not allow others to rob bim. Fair, ssn , lived aloae. His dangnten were in New York taking their place amid the fashion and society of that great city, and the old man, ill with dropsy and kiduej disease, passed his time between his offioi and an ordinary suite of rooms in his owi hotel across the street—friendless, home

when he died no 'soli! Jronfd . pity him, "What are you" go%'ijb do with your monsyf* friendly aeq«aintance.«sked hi<r> "Thatfe what I dotf* know," be saiH. " Hera I am at the fctel'ilone and bereft tf friends. Nobody cares' lor tnv'X*p; ttrg-1 money out of me." ~&*w »<a v it wpuld be to moralise on snob a 6tnfeunon I Bat it Is, unnecessary. Foui! years agn last" December the owner of at I ast twenty million dolla) s —the papers said forty millions—in a small room (no be ter than yon or I, my got d friend, reßb our tired bodies io), eurroucdtd only by a hired nurse, a pergonal servant, three! dootdr?, and his oped oast-off son—died. .

The will was believed, j||obe lawyers who drew it up, to be an Alas, poor will! It had to fight its way for recognition through one of the longest and mist unsavory legal and moral combats known to California courts; and, even when recognised, it bad (I think ttill has) to stand the onslaught of the family, united for a common benefit, aud putative babes and clamant " widows," and tho ui-ual carrion crows and kites that shriek around a rich man's grave. From out this storm-tossed career came Miss Virginia, youngest daughter of old Fair. She was born in the purple, aud, thanks to her sister, Mrs Hermann Oebrichs, has passed ter life amid all the frills and flutters of fa-lvonaule frivolity. Wealth is the king of all lands, but it is the god of Protestant America—the lust words are not mine—and "tho invidious bar" to social eminence, such as some might suppose my sketch would involve, does not etist where wealth—all powerful, masterful, autoeratic wealth—holds sway. An English girl, possessed tf culture, refinement, and that nameless grac9 charao*eriatio of the Eiglish lady, might sigh iu vain for the «peniog of those doors through which one reaches the presence of a sovereign, unless, in addition, she has birth, wealth, or influence ; but our young American bride will find no bar to hrr admission to the most | exclusive and royal of oiroles. She will enter without question and amid murmurs of princely gratutation. -How the fairer half of the Goths and Huns and Vandals of these dying hours of a dying century are playing havoc with our old ideals. Vauderbilt ptre, after living, from all acoountf, a godly, sober, lighteous life up to forty odd years of age, suddenly breaks loose. Ht—the stodgy, staid representative of stocks and shares ! 'ike a neophyte in vice, plunges iu so recklessly, and showers - his dollars so ostentatiously upon a famous Parisian beauty that he lauds his family in grief, his friends in disgust, and himself in the Divorce Court, from which he emerges minus a wife. This last lady, a mature matron, promptly marries Mr Belmont, a tremendously wealthy banker, but not before she has seen her daughter by her late husband safely changed into Her Grace the Duchess of Marlborough. As for the lad, just happily married, he had not finished his collegiate course at the time of his engagement, and is three or four years younger than his wife that is.; but who shall stay the course of true love when it ie based en mutual esteem, self-respect, and intimate fellowship? Rather let us join our felicitous congratulations on this auspicious occasion to those of the many thousands of wealthy Americans who, in common with every true patriot, love their country but scoru to live in it, preferring the more democratic freedom of an English Court or Russian palace. Kosmos