by gail maccoll
While the aristocrats around the Prince of Wales were having a gay time, the Queen’s circle was terminally dull. The Queen was a stickler for the correct forms of showing grief, and in her forty years of widowhood her mourning never lightened. She insisted that her court formally mourn the death of any of her numerous relatives or other heads of state. A lady-in-waiting had to consider, when replenishing her wardrobe, the healthy odds that the court would be plunged into black during her attendance. Evening clothes were always black, white, gray, purple and mauve, the colors of half-mourning.
The Queen was also a stickler for her own consequence. She might not have enjoyed her position, but she took it very seriously and even admitted in a letter to one of her children that she felt she could never be truly intimate with someone who wasn’t of royal blood. When Prince Albert died in 1861, she is supposed to have said: “There is no one left to call me Victoria now.”
She would never dream of relaxing protocol. It is the traditional privilege of aristocrats to serve their rulers, and the Queen would not accept personal service from mere menials except at table. If a door was to be opened, a blanket placed over her knees, a walking-stick brought, a letter written, a courtier must be called. Duchesses carried her umbrella; countesses and marchionesses stood behind her chair after dinner. No one was allowed to sit in her presence unless specially invited to, and the ladies-in-waiting habitually bought shoes a size too big since their feet swelled so badly. (Some also suffered chronically from hemorrhoids, the result of so much standing.)
This was a far cry from the opulent gaiety of the Marlborough House Set. Jennie Churchill, after a “dine and sleep” at Windsor, lamented the stilted conversation at dinner and described how, “when the Queen spoke, even the whispers ceased. If she addressed a remark to you, the answer was given while the whole company listened.” Another American heiress, who underwent this ordeal twice, characterized dinner as “a most depressing function.” Conversation afterward, in a “narrow and somber passage,” was no better: “We were, in turn, conducted to where the Queen sat and she addressed a few words to each of us. I found it most embarrassing to stand in front of her while everyone listened to her kind inquiries to my reaction to my adopted country . . . .”
Though she had a very sweet smile, the Queen would more likely greet new acquaintances with an uneasy laugh; on top of it all, she was shy and hated meeting strangers. She abhorred novelty (in marked contrast to her restless son) but cherished continuity, especially in families. That was one reason so many of her courtiers in the 1880s and ‘90s were the sons and daughters of equerries and ladies-in-waiting from the 1840s and ‘50s.
It also explained why Americans, however high they might rise in the Prince of Wales’ circle, would never be accepted by the Queen. Everything they represented, the liveliness, the frivolity, the taste for luxury, the informality, were characteristics that made Her Majesty nervous. And for their part, the Americans found the Queen’s set dull and dowdy and boring. Which was precisely what they had said about the most exclusive sets of Americans back home.
Above: Osborne House, the Queen’s private refuge on the Isle of Wight.
Below: Three generations of the Royal Family. To Victoria’s right are George V and Edward VIII.
The ever restless Prince of Wales founded his own gentlemen’s club, the Marlborough, and in 1870 presented this silver snuffbox to its members.
By the end of the 1880s, boredom was the Prince’s biggest problem. And if it was his problem, it was society’s problem. It was up to the Set to make sure the Prince was supplied with an endless round of parties to go to, food to eat, birds to shoot, girls to flirt with. Since royalty traditionally designates not only the time and place and guest list of any party but also the host, the Prince was in a position to be a tyrant-guest, an invité who gave orders. His favorites were permanently on call, sometimes given as little as twenty-four hours’ notice of the Prince’s intention to be entertained at their home. Nevertheless, the Set’s hostesses competed with each other for his love and approval. They lived for the sound of his satisfied purr and would stop at nothing to keep the thick royal fingers from drumming testily on the tabletop. And if this meant entertaining upstart American females, they would do just that—no matter how galling the sight of their future king smiling contentedly under the spell of some showy little savage.
BY ROYAL DESIRE
Right at the center of the Set were the Buccaneers: the former Consuelo Yznaga Mandeville, now Duchess of Manchester (Mandeville succeeded to the title in 1890), Lady Randolph Churchill and Minnie Paget. Their marriages had been blessed by the Prince, their welcome in English society facilitated by him. For instance, the season often featured charity concerts of classical music performed by aristocratic amateur musicians. In the 1883 and 1885 seasons, these concerts featured, “by royal desire,” performers taken exclusively from the circle of American ladies in London. The American ladies returned the favor by joining in the task of keeping the Prince happy.
The Buccaneers as English ladies (left to right): Consuelo, now an American duchess; Minnie Paget (in a 1900 photograph); and Lady Randolph Churchill, dressed for the hunt.
The Prince hated to be alone. So if he was off for a month’s shooting in Austria, Jennie must drop everything and go with him. When he was in London over the deadly quiet Easter week, Consuelo would scamper up to town and organize a party or two. Minnie always took a house in Cowes during the sailing season, simply to ensure that the Prince had a hostess there whom he could count on.
* * *
“Whenever I ask Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester, about an American lady I am invariably told, ‘Oh, sir, she has no position at home; out there she would be just dirt under our feet.’”
THE PRINCE OF WALES, to Alice Rothschild
* * *
COMME IL FAUT
Friendly American curiosity—“How many brothers do you have? Do you know many people in New York?”—is considered rudely intrusive in England.
A private theatrical at Chatsworth, the Devonshires’ country estate. The bearded gentleman in the foreground is the Duke; the Prince of Wales is visible midway down the row.
The Prince had two lives: a formal public, ceremonial one, and the informal, private, occasionally rather naughty one. So it was with the parties of the Set. There were the huge receptions to which everyone who was anyone was invited, and there were the “small evenings,” dinner parties seldom graced by the presence of the Princess of Wales that went on till dawn. It was the latter particularly that the Prince enjoyed and the American women excelled at giving. They created intimacy by seating guests at small, round tables rather than the conventional great long ones; they created excitement by paying the Prince’s favorite soprano to chuck a concert in Paris and come sing privately for an evening. And they had good cooks. The Prince was a gourmet in a country where much food served in even the best houses was simply execrable, so for the meals alone he adored them.
THE TRANSATLANTIC PIPELINE
All their efforts on the Prince’s behalf gave the Buccaneers considerable leverage in London society. Who better to supply the Prince with the season’s allotment of American heiresses? Across the ocean were a score of sisters, mothers and friends with whom they established a transatlantic pipeline, a delivery system that pumped the audacious and innocent from Fifth Avenue right into the heart of Mayfair.
Let’s say an heiress débuted in New York. All the matrons there got a chance to look her over, while she got a chance to charm one or two of them. When the heiress announced she was going to England, one of the matrons offered to write a letter of introduction for her. If it was Mrs. Stevens, she could send the heiress to daughter Minnie. If it was Alva Vanderbilt, the girl would be sent on to best friend Consuelo Manchester. Fifth Avenue hostess Mrs. Ogden Mills could send an heiress she liked to her twin sister Elizabeth, married to a socially prominent M.P. named George Cavendish-Bentinck.
Upon arriving in England,
the heiress would present her letter of introduction. If she sought out Consuelo Manchester, for instance, and met with her approval, a tea would be arranged and she would be introduced to other notable Americans in London. Consuelo could then ask her sister Natica, married to a great friend of the Prince named Sir John Lister-Kaye, to have the heiress round to dinner when she ‘ was entertaining H.R.H. If Bertie liked her, other hostesses would soon find out and she’d be well on her way.
Natica Yznaga, Lady Lister-Kaye, costumed as the French Duchesse de Guise foran 1890s ball.
* * *
“The almighty dollar will buy, you bet
A superior class of coronet;
That’s why I’ve come from over the way,
From New York City of U. S. A.”
From The American Girl, a musical comedy
* * *
For those heiresses not connected by blood or friendship to the transatlantic pipeline operators, all was not lost. It was possible to engage the services of one of the “social godmothers,” as they were known, much as one hired a carriage for the season—by paying with a check. Or with some stock tips or an emerald brooch. Some of the first-generation fortunes were running dry. Consuelo Manchester’s husband had been declared a bankrupt when he succeeded to the ducal title. Leonard Jerome’s finances had taken a turn for the worse in the mid-seventies, and he had long since curtailed the amount of money he sent to his three daughters. And Minnie Paget still had to share her father’s money with her mother. The American hostesses in London, and some of their English counterparts, paid their dressmakers’ bills with the money received for engineering the husband-hunting campaigns of on-the-make American heiresses.
The print edition of this book includes an image called Fifth Avenue Meets the Peerage.
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THE WILSON FAMILY SCORECARD #3
Belle & Mungo
One of Worth’s great success stories was Belle Wilson, second daughter of the increasingly well-connected R.T. Taken to Worth before her début, Belle was completely transformed from a quite ordinary girl into a striking young woman. It was in this guise that she fascinated the Hon. Michael Herbert, a secretary in the British legation in Washington. Her older siblings had married into powerful New York families, but Belle did them one better. Herbert, known affectionately as “Mungo” by such friends as the Prince of Wales, was the younger brother of the Earl of Pembroke. Thus, when Belle was wed in 1888, the Wilson web of matrimonial alliances reached in the very heart of the British aristocracy.
The Hon. Michael Herbert, aristocratic English gentleman par excellence.
COMME IL FAUT
A girl must never dance more than twice with a young man at a ball. Strict mothers do not even permit girls to “sit out” with young men.
THE MATING SEASON
The sponsors were aided in their scheming by the very nature of the London season, which, despite all the festivities, was at bottom just a marriage market. English girls were hauled up from the country for three months of carefully chaperoned but more or less constant exposure to men roped in for dinner parties and dances and house-party weekends. The girls at the balls, clacking open their plumed ivory fans, dance cards dangling from their wrists, were really mere goods on display, the men stepping into the ballrooms doing up the last buttons on their dance gloves just shoppers—wary of being cheated, eager to make a deal, or pleased to be able to afford the best.
Because the end of the season was always in sight, a sense of urgency prevailed. Eager English mothers and canny social godmothers aimed to secure the men’s proposals and the girls’ acceptances by the end of July, after which everyone could go back to the country where they belonged and not have to think about the entire business for another nine months. This cattle-drive approach to courtship worked in the newcomer’s favor. In the clamor and thrill of swirling skirts and flickering candles, the pallid, serene womanliness of the English girl was no match for the “snap” and “go” of the American heiress.
Ladies and gentlemen both wore gloves on the dance floor; flesh never touched flesh. Kid gloves were supposed to fit so tightly that the outline of the fingernails was visible; they lasted for only one wearing. Fans were essential for more than flirtation, as crowded ballrooms often got very hot.
The requirements of limited access and quick decisions also meant that the young English lord got to see just enough of the strange, forward child to become infatuated. And he liked being infatuated. The English aristocracy are, as Henry James pointed out, the most romantic people in the world, entirely capable of marrying their cooks and their coachmen. This romantic tendency, this thirst for novelty and rebellion, was just another factor that worked to the advantage of the fiercely midwestern American heiress. The more resemblance she bore to Annie Oakley of the Wild West Show, the better. If the English aristocrat wanted to be modern, to be fashionable, to take a chance, annoy his parents, flatter the Prince of Wales, he got himself engaged to some little American. One evening, in the lantern-lit garden of a great London house, the young lord would listen to the American heiress’s chatter and let himself get carried away.
Above: The heiresses’ goal: a coronet. This one is an earl’s, alternating strawberry leaves and raised gold balls. The “cap of maintenance” is crimson velvet; the fur is ermine.
Below: “The Hypnotist and His Easy Subject,” a cartoon from the American magazine Life. The exodus of American girls to Europe was increasingly fodder for cartoonists.
And the little American, who seemed such a child, saw that the thing was sealed as quickly as it was agreed with the obligatory announcement in the very next edition of the Morning Post. She had got what she came for and only smiled to see the flurry of distress her maneuvering caused her English rivals. Too bad for them. She had played the game, snared her victim, gained critical ground in her quest for class. She was the victor. Or was she?
ANOTHER SIDE OF THE STORY
By the time American heiresses were beginning their siege of London, the Marlborough House Set had put twenty years into amusing the Prince of Wales. He was increasingly petulant—and some of them were going broke trying to keep up. The most famous sacrificial lamb was Christopher Sykes, of whom the Prince took merciless advantage until the poor man was wrung dry and ruined from party-giving. There were others, such as Daisy Warwick, Lord Hardwick and Lord Dupplin, who managed to avoid complete ruin but nevertheless spent their family fortunes on entertaining the heir to the throne.
For them, the American heiress was more than a mere novelty, more than just spice to be added to the endless round of dinner parties, house parties, receptions and teas. To them, she was salvation. They intended to get their hands on all that American money and see that it was spent right there in London. It would be a waste for the heiresses to go back home and marry Americans. They were pretty, they were accomplished, they were rich. Properly married off, they could take their turn at entertaining the Prince of Wales, and most of the Set along with him.
So an heiress who had won their approval would be put in the way of a man they thought could make use of her, regardless of their own views of his merits as a husband. They might know things about him—the size of his debts, the state of his property, the level of his drinking, the number of his mistresses—which did not recommend him. But they kept these things to themselves. And the social godmother’s protection did not extend this far. She had social debts, social responsibilities of her own. As far as she was concerned, if the Set wanted an heiress they could have her. As far as the Set were concerned, American heiresses—so good at distracting the Prince, so capable of taking up the burden of the bills—could invade London anytime they liked.
Christopher Sykes, whose only reaction to his Prince’s excessive commands was “As His Royal Highness pleases.” Ultimately, this passivity bankrupted him.
MISS DAISY MILLER
The American reading public loved Daisy Mi
ller from the moment she appeared, smoothing her bows and ribbons, gazing unappreciatively upon the Swiss landscape and declaring to a complete stranger that she had “always had a great deal of gentlemen’s society.”
She hadn’t any idea what a gentleman was, of course, but that was just the point. For Daisy Miller: A Study was intended to portray the great difference in the American and European way of looking at things, right down to the differing use of the same words. To Daisy a gentleman was any nice young man; to a European, of course, the word could be applied only to a man from a particular class. Likewise, to Daisy “gentlemen’s society” meant picnics and tea dances and nice little chats walking home from church; to the European ear, the phrasing suggested something just short of prostitution.
The frontispiece of Harper Brothers’ 1892 edition included a mock coat of arms with two bleeding hearts and an arrow.
Henry James’ American publisher rejected the story—perhaps, the eventual English publisher conjectured, because it was “an outrage on American girlhood.” But only an Englishman could see it that way. Daisy’s woeful ignorance of social standards made her all the more appealing to Americans. In the eyes of her countrymen she wasn’t a vulgar little ignoramus, but a wonderful example of the freshness and vitality of American youth refusing to give way before stodgy old Europe. Daisy Miller was a huge hit—the only really big popular success of Henry James’ literary career. Daisy Miller hats appeared at the milliners’, and Daisy Miller’s behavior was discussed in great detail in the etiquette books. As far as the American public was concerned, James had not created “a piece of pure poetry,” as he later claimed, but simply reproduced, straight from life, a typical American girl.