To Marry an English Lord

by gail maccoll

  * * *

  “A girl, born and bred in the backwoods of some Western State, will adopt the manners and customs of her husband’s country to such an extent that, after a few years, she might pass as of his nationality.”

  LADY RANDOLPH CHURCHILL

  * * *

  Tea on the terrace at Parliament. The heiress who wed an aristocrat married into the governing class of England. Many women found this intimate exposure to politics thrilling.

  This sharing, this overlapping of spheres of influence, was the saving grace of the international marriage. After all her girlhood freedom, marriage for the young woman who stayed in America offered very little more in the way of liberty than she already had and considerably more in the way of restrictions and responsibility. Her carefree days of social stardom ended. She was suddenly chaperone material. She must cede first place, in the matter of fun, to the next lot of pretty young heiresses. In London, however, where the unmarried girl was so restrained, so confined, so relentlessly supervised, the married woman came into her own.

  Invitation to a ball given by the Corporation of the City of London for Victoria’s Diamond jubilee. Civic duties weren’t all tedious.

  BLESS MY SOUL! THAT YANKEE LADY

  “There is no doubt that life in England is on much larger lines, and more full of occupation for the women of the leisured classes than that of any other country,” wrote Jennie Churchill. “Everything is open to them if they have the ability.” Jennie certainly had the ability, and she proved an invaluable ally in her husband’s political career.

  Randolph had become a controversial orator of renowned skill. The cry “Randy’s up” in the corridors of the House of Commons would send members scuttling for their places. No one wanted to miss a blistering word, least of all Jennie. Long before it was fashionable she listened to Commons debates from the Speakers’ Gallery, her interest all the keener since she helped Randolph prepare his diatribes—in fact was thought to have drafted some of them.

  In the early 1880s, with the founding of the Primrose League, Jennie had a political career all her own. The League’s purpose was to promote Conservative views among all classes of society. Jennie traveled throughout England, opening branches (called “habitations”) and signing up recruits, and became an adept and popular speechmaker in her own right.

  Such speechmaking from a society woman would not have been acceptable in America, where public speaking was for suffragettes and religious fanatics. Carrie Nation could make speeches; Caroline Astor could not. This was the most glaring instance of the different life of an English wife. Back home, politics and the upper class did not mix; in England, politics and the upper class were the same thing. New York society did not contaminate itself with the acquaintance of U. S. Senators. But in London it was possible to hear government discussed, the way Somerset Maugham swears he once did, as a matter between friends: “Jimmie can have India, Tom can have Ireland and Archie can have the Exchequer....”

  Cartoonists continued to follow the American heiresses’ activities in their new land. The legend on the balcony reads: “Reserved for American Wives of English lords.”

  In 1885 Lord Randolph Churchill was appointed secretary of state for India. Since he was too busy to campaign for reelection to his seat in the House of Commons, Jennie took over the job and canvassed the Woodstock constituency in her sister-in-law’s wicker tandem, decorated with ribbons in brown and pink—Randolph’s racing colors. Her success as a vote-getter inspired the opposition party’s Sir Henry James to declare he would introduce “a new Corrupt Practices Act. Tandems must be put down; and certainly some alteration made in the means of ascent and descent therefrom. The graceful wave of a pocket handkerchief will be dealt with in committee.” From New York, Leonard Jerome wrote his wife: “You have no idea how universally Jennie is talked about and how proud the Americans are of her.”

  Jennie; the Ladies’ Gallery at the House of Commons; a caricature of the Commons Lobby in 1886 (Lord Randolph, second from right in central group).

  * * *

  “. . . the fact is I loathe living here. It is not on account of its dullness, that I don’t mind . . . . It is no use disguising it, the Duchess hates me simply for what I am—perhaps a little prettier and more attractive than her daughters.”

  JENNIE JEROME CHURCHILL, writing from Blenheim

  * * *

  By the general election of 1886, her reputation was such that the local press covered an appearance on behalf of another candidate with the reference “Lady Randolph, ably supported by Lord Salisbury’s nephew, Mr. Balfour, M.P.” That summer she and Randolph were in their heyday. Randolph became Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons. They were invited to stay with the Queen at Windsor in early July. When Jennie drove through Hyde Park, her carriage was mobbed. She and Randolph were asked everywhere, the London season hummed with their names.

  JENNIE GETS PINNED

  After vigorous work in promotion of medical aid to Indian women, Jennie Churchill hoped to be awarded the Insignia of the Order of the Crown of India. Randolph refused to speak on his wife’s behalf, but the Prince put in a good word with his mother and Jennie was summoned to Windsor Castle. Her invitation included information on what train to take (the 1:10 from Paddington) and a note on what to wear (bonnet and morning dress, gray gloves) from a lady-in-waiting; a room would be made ready for her, presumably for tidying up lest a stray lock of hair disturb Her Majesty.

  Received by the Queen, one of the Queen’s daughters and a lady-in-waiting, Jennie made the correct curtsy without tripping or tipping over. Her dress, however, was so embroidered with jet that the Queen had difficulty affixing the pin and stuck it into Jennie’s shoulder before placing it properly.

  When, after curtsying, Jennie told the lady-in-waiting that she feared she’d been awkward, that lady said: “You need not be troubled. I know the Queen felt more shy than you did.”

  After meeting Jennie, the Queen wrote in her Journal: “Lady Randolph (an American) is very handsome and very dark.”

  The next day Jennie received a note, perhaps from the same lady:

  My dear Lady Randolph,

  I hope you got home quite comfortably yesterday, and took no cold. The Queen told me she thought you so handsome, and that it had all gone off so well.

  Believe me ever,

  Yours truly,

  Jane Ely

  Jennie’s next move was a visit to M. Worth, who obtained a dress fabric that exactly matched the pale blue of the ribbon to which the pearl-and-turquoise cipher was attached. Clearly, there was no sense in “getting pinned by the Queen if a new Worth gown was not part of the bargain.

  The sensation of popular worship, of social acclaim, of being near what in that era seemed to be the center of the universe, was heady indeed. Unfortunately for Jennie, her husband’s irrational resignation from the Cabinet, just as he seemed on the brink of becoming England’s next prime minister, brought that sensation to a sudden, heart-breaking end.

  Jennie found out that Randolph had left the government when his letter of resignation was reprinted on the front page of The Times. It was the first she’d heard of it—they’d been to the theater the night before and he had whispered not a word. White with disbelief, she carried the paper into his room. Randolph looked up at her. “Quite a surprise for you,” he said, and went back to his own paper. Their heyday was over.

  “We are sorry Randy is in the muck,” wrote Town Topics, expressing the general view, “less for his own account than for that of the gallant American girl he had the luck to marry. She had worked so hard to popularize him and forward his ends.” Jennie’s dream of becoming one of the most important women in the world was over.

  Lord Randolph as Chancellor of the Exchequer. He was already very ill with syphilis, and his flashes of temper could be frightening.

  LEITER OF INDIA

  Jennie loved campaigning, loved public speaking, loved going about knocking on doors a
nd exchanging words with the butcher and the brewer. But Mary Leiter Curzon loathed these tasks. She was the typical stoical political wife, smiling on the outside, cursing within. While an opposition newspaper noted that Curzon owed his 1895 electoral victory “far more to the winning smiles of his American wife than to his own speeches,” Mary wrote home from Plymouth: “The people are an ungrateful lot of stupid cockneys, provincial to a degree, and very stupid.” And, a few days later, “The people are an idle ignorant impossible lot of ruffians. I smile at them and look sweet because it would be the end of us if they knew all that I thought.” Moreover, her father was paying for her misery: Levi Leiter picked up the tab for all George Curzon’s campaign expenses.

  * * *

  “Oh! the ladyships! I feel like a ship in full sail on the high seas of dignity!”

  MARY CURZON, on becoming a baroness after George’s appointment as viceroy of India

  * * *

  Mary and George Curzon, early in their marriage. She had an even more difficult adjustment to face than most heiresses.

  When, having won, the Curzons went to London, Mary was rewarded for her suffering with a husband who thought only of work. George was not interested in going out in society, and Maty didn’t dare keep him home once in a while for fear she would be accused, as Margot Asquith was, of hurting her husband’s career. But Mary soon discovered that George’s career and her sharing in it meant the ripening of love. Her lonely, homesick years ended on August 11, 1898, when George was named viceroy of India, fulfilling his lifelong ambition.

  It was in India, where the ever-driven George made her his chief confidant, that Mary came into her own. She’d always adored her husband—she once described how, when he came into a room, she felt “that the band is playing the Star Spangled Banner and that the room is glowing with pink lights and rills are running up and down [my] back with joy.” Now he began to adore in return. If he had originally chosen Mary for a mixture of reasons—her beauty, her quiet grace, her wealth—in which there was little hint of genuine affection, he came during their time together in India to love her very much.

  Her finest qualities flourished with his devotion. Though she suffered constantly from severe headaches after the birth of their first child, she never gave in to them. She pushed on with her duties as vicereine, as tough-spirited as any English colonial wife. When the political waters in England began to darken, she became George’s envoy, returning to London all alone to give his side of the story, to size up the atmosphere, listen to the whispers and report back to him. He could trust her for that—she was the only person he did trust.

  If Mary Curzon had a fault, it was that her devotion to George (“she had subordinated her personality to his,” wrote Consuelo Marlborough, “to a degree I would have considered beyond an American woman’s powers of self-abnegation”) prevented her from criticizing him. His obstinate, self-righteous, uncompromising manner of ruling, brilliant though it may also have been, eventually ended in disaster for both of them. George was forced to resign in ignominy from his unprecedented, self-imposed second term as viceroy. But that didn’t alter the fact that Mary’s position as vicereine of India made her the highest-ranking American, man or woman, in the history of the British Empire.

  George (now Lord) Curzon in his viceregal robes. He enjoyed the nearly oppressive splendor of the post.

  DREAMS THAT MONEY CAN BUY

  Lord Curzon in later life became Waldorf Astor’s political patron, when Astor stood for Parliament in Plymouth just as Curzon once had. And, like Mary, Astor’s American wife campaigned for her husband, though with considerably more enthusiasm. According to her biographer, Nancy Astor’s campaigning “greatly strengthened her sense of the tie between her native and her adopted lands.” It was a sentiment shared by most of the political heiresses.

  And there were plenty of them. The pay of a member of the House of Commons was negligible, the outlay considerable. The American heiress wife bought fine horses, grand houses, and lots and lots of votes. She bought a twenty-four-carat setting for the diamond of her husband’s talent. For the most part, the American money that did not go into renovating great country houses went into supporting Tory politicians. (It was almost always Tory politicians-American heiresses had not come to England to shake up the status quo.) It seems only fair, perhaps even predictable, that all the dollars and energy and verve contributed by American heiresses to British politics should result in Nancy Astor’s becoming, in 1918, the first woman to take a seat in the House of Commons. And then in Winston Churchill’s finally avenging his father’s name and his mother’s disappointment by becoming, in 1940, “that half-breed American” prime minister of Great Britain.

  Unlike Mary Curztm, Nancy Astor was a born campaigner, reveling in the rough-and-ready wisecracking of canvassing. With her elegance and her quick tongue, she entranced voters.

  THE HEIR & THE SPARE

  It was standard procedure for a new bride to become pregnant promptly. On this point, at least, American and English attitudes were in harmony. Children were an important part of a marriage, and all but the most ignorant of girls would expect to be expecting in short order. (Poor Florence Garner was in for a shock. On her wedding night, Sir William Gordon-Cumming told her: “I won’t come in to say good-night unless you want me to.” In all innocence, she replied: “Oh, that would be nice.” What followed astounded her.)

  Americans were always surprised at the occasional crudeness of the English upper classes, however. And on the subject of providing an heir, they could be remarkably blunt. “Your first duty is to have a child,” Consuelo Marlborough was told by the Duke’s grandmother, “and it must be a son, because it would be intolerable to have that little upstart Winston become Duke. Are you in the family way?” Constant reference would be made, pressure exerted. The blushing bride must realize that married life offered upper-class Englishmen few advantages over a bachelor existence. They married because it was time to beget an heir.

  Consuelo Marlborough was seven months pregnant when she laced herself into this costume for the Devonshire House Ball. A lady needn’t retire from society until her “interesting condition” could no longer be hidden.

  Continuity, again, was the goal. The noble families had not survived revolutions and plagues and capricious monarchs only to die out, at the peak of Empire, from inanition. They hadn’t cleverly preserved their estates just to see them pass into the hands of some South African mining millionaire. The system of entail, legal bedrock, was based on the solid expectation that a family would have male heirs. (This expectation persists in England, and aristocratic young brides like Diana, Princess of Wales, are usually pregnant within a year of their marriage.)

  Custom, needless to say, played a huge part in this most central of family events. When Helena Zimmerman, wife of the ninth Duke of Manchester, was pregnant for the first time, the family seat had been rented out. Manchester tradition dictated that heirs be born under Kimbolton’s roof, so the tenant obligingly vacated for the birth. Unfortunately, Helena produced a girl.

  Stressing the relative importance of the eldest son, Sargent placed the Marquess of Blandford (holding his father’s sword) at the center of his portrait of the Marlboroughs; his younger brother stands off to one side.

  * * *

  “The trouble with you is that you have the worst blood of two continents in your veins!”

  LADY ASTOR, to Winston Churchill

  * * *

  BOYS, BOYS, BOYS

  It was a pity, but a girl wasn’t good enough. Jarring though it might be to the fine flower of American girlhood, the point was to have a boy—an “heir male of the body” to carry on the name, the title, the family glory. A girl was simply another mouth to feed, a liability to be dressed and dowered. Elma Gordon-Cumming wrote that her parents went to Italy when she was six weeks old, “presumably to recover from the shock of my being a girl.” (Her mother’s ignorance of physical matters had extended to childbearing; until the mome
nt of Elma’s birth, she expected the baby to emerge from her navel.) The Italian voyage was haunted, for Florence, by the knowledge that she’d have to endure the whole appalling ordeal again.

  And possibly again and again. Many Englishwomen had suffered uncomplainingly through multiple pregnancies in order to produce the requisite heir, particularly in the early Victorian era of high infant mortality. Lord Randolph Churchill’s mother bore eleven children. Six were girls; three sons died in infancy, leaving Randolph and his older brother Blandford (the eighth Duke of Marlborough). Having done her duty so spectacularly and stoically, it was no wonder she insisted that Consuelo follow suit.

  Minnie Paget, with great efficiency, had twin boys: Arthur George and Wyndham Reginald.

  The alternative scarcely bore contemplation. A younger son or his younger son would inherit. That was hardly the point of being a duke. May Goelet’s slowness to produce a son caused all kinds of disturbance in the Innes-Ker family. Four years after her marriage, the Duke’s younger brother, Lord Alastair, married his own American heiress, Anna Breese, and it was widely assumed that the Roxburghes’ heirlessness added to Lord Alastair’s attractions. The Duchess finally consulted a gynecological specialist in Vienna, to whom, rumor had it, the Duke paid £1,000, with another £1,000 to come if a male baby was born. In the event, May turned up trumps and produced the Marquess of Bowmont in 1913, ten years after her marriage. (The specialist’s contribution, evidently, was to eliminate sugar from her diet.) The Daily Sketch reproduced a large photograph of Lady Alastair Innes-Ker framed in black with the superscription “Our sympathies.” She was quoted as saying, “The Goelets might as well have the title as they’ve got the dough, too.”