The thrillingly scandalous lives of the 300 American heiresses

One entry reads: ‘Lord Arthur’s mom is a gorgon.’ ‘The dowager Marchioness has a liquor cupboard in her mattress chamber, of which she takes full benefit earlier than breakfast,’ reads one other; whereas a 3rd declares: ‘Lord Robert is rumoured to take pleasure in le vice Anglais’ — sadomasochism, to you and me.

And so the entries go on, all contained throughout the New York subscription periodical, The Heiresses’s Guide.

Launched within the 1870s, the Guide not solely listed each member of the British peerage and their marital standing, however titillating details about their sexual proclivities, and the characters and foibles of their kinfolk.

Why? Because as the brand new hit TV sequence, The Buccaneers — primarily based on Edith Wharton’s unfinished traditional novel — exhibits in decadent element, this was a time when English aristocrats had been in excessive demand as marriage materials for rich American ladies and their socially bold households. 

So a lot so {that a} guidebook like this was important studying for any younger girl eager to bag a blue blood.

The Buccaneers, newly launched on Apple TV and starring Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks, is so lavish it makes Netflix‘s Bridgerton look positively cut price basement; with costumes infinitely extra divine, homes immeasurably extra grand, and events so louche, Lady Whistledown herself would swoon.

Set within the late Nineteenth century, it follows a gaggle of vivacious American heiresses, thrust on the English debutante market by socially bold moms. Their goal: aristocratic matches to the scions of Britain’s biggest households.

In the TV present, Nan St George, her sister, Jinny, and their pal Conchita Closson are lovely however naive younger issues who grow to be wives of raffish Dukes and Earls, and chatelaines of England’s biggest stately properties, with scandalous, generally tragic outcomes.

Yet much more extraordinary are the tales of the real-life ladies on whom these characters are primarily based. Known because the Dollar Princesses, their destinies formed not solely trend and society, however the destiny of entire nations.

My curiosity in these fascinating however elusive ladies started after I spent Christmas at Blenheim Palace in 1997, the yr my father died. The then Duke of Marlborough, or Sunny, as he was recognized, was an expensive household pal.

On Christmas Eve, he took me to one of many nice image galleries, and we stopped earlier than a portray of a slender, dark-haired lady with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen. ‘Who is that?’ I requested my host, whose face had instantly adopted an uncharacteristic solemnity.

‘My American grandmother, Consuelo Vanderbilt,’ he replied. He defined she had been married to the ninth Duke, however ‘could not stand him. She left him, however I used to fulfill her within the States earlier than she died. She was a kind of hothouse flowers that should not have been picked and replanted in England.

‘But she was an awesome heiress and my grandfather was strapped for money. It was a tragedy for her. It occurred quite a bit, in these days, with American ladies. She wasn’t alone’.

Consuelo Vanderbilt, I found, had been America’s swan of swans. Her marriage to the ninth Duke of Marlborough, in 1895, was the marriage of the yr, inflicting a stampede on the streets of New York.

The 18-year-old bride was so lovely spectators had been crushed attempting to glimpse her in her carriage. Her options had been delicate, just like the newly trendy Clichy crystals; her determine the right hourglass beloved of late Nineteenth-century painters.

Moreover, Consuelo was the main Dollar Princess and the best heiress in America, value an estimated $4 billion (£3.1 billion). Daughter of railway tycoon William Kissam Vanderbilt, she had grown up surrounded by each conceivable fashionable luxurious, together with the primary marble rest room in Manhattan.

Nonetheless, as she stood on the altar, she was crying behind her veil, her fingers selecting at her satin costume with its 5 ft prepare. For Consuelo detested the person with whom she was about to change vows.

The aloof and supercilious English aristocrat had been chosen for her by Consuelo’s ferociously socially bold mom, Alva, who had actually whipped her daughter into submission, and threatened to homicide the younger American with whom Consuelo was in love.

For Alva, an excessive amount of was at stake. Her potential son- in-law, Charles Spencer Churchill, ninth Duke of Marlborough, belonged to the best echelons of British society. His ancestral seat, Blenheim Palace, was one of the vital celebrated stately properties in Britain and had often entertained royalty. Alva and her husband had paid him $25 million to marry Consuelo and make her a duchess.

Consuelo was not alone in her predicament. She knew different American ladies who had been kind of offered to English aristocrats.

The hassle was that by the 1870s, the as soon as omnipotent British aristocracy was in disaster. Various social and financial components had threatened a lot of its members with monetary destroy. The Duke advised Consuelo coldly after their wedding ceremony that he had married her ‘to avoid wasting Blenheim’.

Traditional alliances with penurious English ladies from the identical class had grow to be inconceivable. The answer was to solid grasping eyes throughout the Atlantic.

For simply because the previous moneyed households in Britain had been in decline, a brand new class of plutocrat was rising in America. Money made on Wall St, within the oilfields, railroads and retail, was creating fortunes on a scale by no means seen earlier than.

These American ‘Barons’ liked conspicuous spending; constructing marble and gold homes in Newport and Palm Beach, and founding what turned often called The Gilded Age. And so, the Dollar Princesses had been born. Between 1874 and 1911, 300 Dollar Princesses like Consuelo married into the British aristocracy.

It quickly turned an business of which the enterprising took full benefit. In 1874, Minnie Stevens, the daughter of a rich American hotelier, had gone to Europe to purchase a titled husband, and had married a grandson of the Marquess of Anglesey, Sir Arthur Paget.

Henry Anglesey, the seventh Marquess, who was my godfather, advised me some astonishing tales about her eccentricity: ‘She saved a cheetah as a pet, which did not go down properly with the pinnacle butler. He was afraid of pussy cats, by no means thoughts cheetahs. She additionally had her carriage doorways enlarged to accommodate the preposterous hats she wore. You may say she invented that hideous factor, the fascinator. But she was very enterprising.’

Lady Paget, as Minnie turned, determined to make capital out of her successors and set herself up as an unofficial marriage dealer, giving events the place handpicked Englishmen may meet wealthy American ladies.

In 1895 alone, 9 heiresses from the U.S. married Englishmen with noble titles. These included Mary Leiter, the daughter of Levi Z. Leiter of Marshall Field & Co, an upscale division retailer in Chicago.

Mary married the controversial and sensible George Nathaniel Curzon, future Marquess of Kedleston. In 1898, Curzon was appointed Viceroy of India, and Mary, by advantage of her position as Vicereine, was propelled to the best political rank but held by an American lady.

Mary was well-known for commissioning the most costly costume in historical past, which is now on show at Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire.

Designed by Paris couturier Jean-Phillipe Worth, the robe was referred to as The Peacock Dress. Constructed from gold and silver thread and wire, it was embroidered with peacock feathers on chiffon. Weighing 10lb, it value £2 million in right now’s cash.

Poor Consuelo Marlborough was faring much less properly. Her place as a duchess, her magnificence and her candy nature made her standard along with her friends, however she remained sad along with her husband, who handled her with calculated disdain. She additionally detested the English local weather.

At least she discovered sympathy from her American-born godmother and namesake Consuelo Yznaga, who had been one of many early Dollar Princesses. The spirited, cigarette-smoking daughter of a rich Cuban-American landowner, she had married the impecunious George, Viscount Montagu, future Duke of Manchester, in 1876.

Initially, the Duke’s household had not been happy, asking, aghast: ‘Is she black?’ However, a big settlement had persuaded them to beat their racism. (After her marriage, Consuelo Manchester turned an influential trendsetter and was the primary feminine member of English society to put on trousers in public.)

Despite, or due to their travails, the Dollar Princesses turned the largest celebrities of their day. Gossip columnists on either side of the Atlantic chronicled their each transfer and selection of apparel, making them in a single day model icons. Women copied their hair, milliners ran up knock-offs of their hats, whereas their pictures had been on the market in London store home windows.

Some Dollar Princesses had been to form the course of historical past, notably within the case of the ravishing, witty Jennie Jerome, who is likely to be referred to as the mom of ‘the particular relationship’.

Jennie was the daughter of rich New York speculator Leonard Jerome. The independent-minded Jennie was one of many first ladies to sport a tattoo and was described by one admirer as ‘extra panther than lady’.

Both she and her father set their sights on English aristocrat Lord Randolph Churchill, who was additionally a rising politician. Lord Randolph’s conservative dad and mom had been initially nervous in regards to the engagement till a dowry of £3.4 million, paid by Leonard, calmed them down.

As Sunny Marlborough advised me, Jennie’s 1874 marriage to Lord Randolph Churchill made her one of the vital influential society hostesses in England.

The Churchills entertained Prime Ministers and members of the Royal Family. Jennie was a infamous flirt. Nevertheless, she and Lord Randolph had two sons, one in all whom was Winston Churchill, the good battle chief and one of the vital well-known Britons of all time.

‘Jennie had scores of lovers,’ Sunny associated. ‘But she did produce Winston, so the household forgives her the whole lot else.’

Jennie, Consuelo and Mary typically met at balls and country-house weekends. But whereas Jennie and Mary thrived, Consuelo was determined. Both she and the Duke, who had a merciless, sadistic streak involving flagellation, had been each having affairs, and their behaviour threatened to grow to be a scandal.

Even with one of the best of husbands, American brides generally discovered the transition to English aristocratic spouse a tough one.

The British aristocracy was largely conservative and anti-democratic. American ladies, used to a level of independence, discovered themselves digital prisoners in chilly, draughty stately properties, the place a shower was thought-about a luxurious.

(Maids needed to carry a heavy tub up flights of stairs, line it with sheets after which fill it with buckets of scorching water.)

Women like Consuelo additionally discovered English etiquette and coping with legions of servants, who had been typically overworked and underpaid, tough to deal with and inconceivable to grasp.

Their sisters again within the U.S. weren’t delay.

In 1904, the San Francisco Call reported: ‘Though the British peerage has yielded many titled husbands to American heiresses, there isn’t a hazard of the provision operating quick.’

As proof, two years later, one other trendy heiress, Nancy Langhorne of Virginia, married Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor, and went on to grow to be Britain’s first feminine Member of Parliament.

From 1876 to 1914, the Dollar Princesses injected in extra of $1 billion (£792 million) into the British economic system. Not all American dad and mom had been pleased with what they noticed as a poor return on their funding; dropping daughters to snobbish Englishmen who had no gainful occupation.

One disillusioned father was Franklin H. Work, a New York stockbroker, whose daughter, Frances, married the third Baron Fermoy in 1880, in opposition to his needs. He remarked angrily: ‘It’s time this worldwide marrying got here to a cease, for our American ladies are ruining our nation by it. As quick as our hard-working males can earn cash, their daughters take it and toss it throughout the ocean.’

Frances and Fermoy divorced in 1891. However, the wedding was not fully in useless. Frances’s nice granddaughter was Diana, Princess of Wales, making Work, had he however recognized it, an ancestor of Prince William, the long run King of the United Kingdom.

The Dollar Princesses and their offspring socialised in the identical elite set, by which the futures of governments and nations had been determined. Some discovered consoling friendships with fellow Americans, whereas others had been cattish rivals.

‘Does she should smoke like a savage?’ Mary Curzon griped about Consuelo Manchester.

Some marriages, if not blissful, turned tolerable. Some had been real successes, together with that of Anne Tredick Wendell, one other New York heiress, who married the sixth Earl of Carnarvon and was the mannequin for Cora, Countess of Grantham, in Downton Abbey, filmed on the Carnarvon’s household seat, Highclere.

Other unions, although, had been so wretched the ladies ultimately fled again to America.

After a long time of distress and the beginning of two sons, Consuelo Marlborough and the Duke divorced. Even extra sensationally, the wedding was annulled a number of years later when Alva Vanderbilt admitted she had coerced her daughter.

Still lovely, Consuelo fell in love with a French aviator, Jacques Balsan, remarried and retired to Casa Alva, the ornate Palm Beach mansion she constructed on her return to the U.S. Casa Alva was the place Sunny Marlborough visited her till her loss of life in 1964.

‘She was nonetheless pretty, and reasonably unconventional,’ he advised me. ‘She had probably the most impish smile and a big assortment of hair bows, which she wore on prime of her head.’

Consuelo was additionally near Winston Churchill. It was at Casa Alva in 1946 that Churchill is alleged to have composed his well-known ‘Iron Curtain’ speech, warning of the risks of Communism. The home nonetheless stands, in all its magnificence, a becoming testomony to the outstanding star-crossed lives of the Dollar Princesses.

As because the eleventh Duke of Marlborough himself stated: ‘Few ladies have had lives as extraordinary as these.’