To Marry an English Lord

by gail maccoll

  The cover of a coronation souvenir booklet, featuring flags from all over the Empire.

  The King’s sensitivity to feminine beauty, as well as his famous loyalty, was evident in the composition of his private guest list for the coronation. In a gallery overlooking the transept were seated a number of women who, not of the peerage, would normally have been absent from the ceremony. All of Edward’s old friends were there: Minnie Paget, Mrs. Cavendish-Bentinck, Lady Naylor-Leyland and Mrs. Adair; Jennie with her new mother-in-law, Mrs. Cornwallis-West, and her sister-in-law, the Princess of Pless. These women joined Mrs. Keppel, Sarah Bernhardt and Baroness de Meyer as the occupants of what was dubbed “the King’s Loose Box.”

  Edward wasn’t too busy being crowned to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of his loyal peeresses as they donned their coronets.

  Of course, there were a few mishaps. Cora, Countess of Strafford (formerly Mrs. Colgate of the soap-manufacturing family), put on her coronet crooked and sat with it at a tipsy angle for the rest of the ceremony. The Marchioness of Londonderry dropped her massive tiara into the sole toilet provided for the peeresses; the only way to extricate it without damage was with gynecological forceps, and a long line of ladies in white satin dresses and red velvet robes queued restively while the forceps were found. After the Royal Procession finally left the Abbey, one elderly Duchess was so anxious to reach the facilities that she literally knocked down another peeress.

  THE GREAT DURBAR

  Top: In April of 1902, in honor of Edward’s coronation, a durbar was held in Delhi. All the Indian princes and nawabs and rajahs—and a good many British socialites—gathered to pay homage to the new king-emperor. As vicereine, Mary Curzon presided over it all.

  Center left: The viceregal lodge at Simla, the hill resort where the English spent the hot Indian summers.

  Bottom: George and Mary, with their prey.

  Center right: Mary riding in the procession.

  The King and Queen in full coronation regalia, including velvet robes and scepters.

  The net result of the coronation, however, was a burst of pride in English hearts—and in American hearts as well, for the American ladies at the coronation had made a very impressive contingent, one with obvious influence. Surely, under King Edward’s reign, an American woman in London was to be a favored creature.

  Minnie Paget, as a commoner, could not have attended except as Edward’s guest.

  The unfortunate Cora, Countess of Strafford, who wore her coronet crooked.

  DEVONSHIRE HOUSE BALL

  If the crowning event of Victoria’s reign was her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the social pinnacle of that celebratory summer was the costume ball held at Devonshire House on July 2. The Duke and Duchess’s 700 guests, in “allegorical or historical costume before 1815,” represented eminent figures from the courts of Elizabeth I, Catherine the Great of Russia, Maria Theresa of Austria, King Arthur, various Oriental potentates and, naturally, Louis XV and XVI.

  Many of the guests, incapacitated by their elaborate costumes, could not actually dance. The Countess of Westmoreland, as Hebe, wore a stuffed eagle on her shoulder; Lord Rodney stalked around in full armor as King Arthur. Capt. Arthur Paget, as the Black Prince, was covered in chain mail down to his fingers. His wife Minnie, as Cleopatra, was only one of the many American women, costumed by Worth and brilliantly jeweled, who were remarkable even in that extraordinary company.

  Consuelo Marlborough, seven months pregnant and laced to disguise it, was a lady of Catherine the Great’s court, while Sunny wore a lavish, jewel-embroidered eighteenth-century costume that astonished even its maker, Worth. Mary Curzon was Valentina Visconti of Milan, and Fanny Ronalds, still a social figure to reckon with, represented Euterpe, the muse of music, with an electrically lit lyre on her head.

  Jennie Churchill (left) as Empress Theodora by Worth, with emeralds and diamonds hanging from her headdress.

  Right: May Goelet, as Scheherazade, in gold gauze embroidered with precious stones.

  Top right: Devonshire House, designed in 1733 by William Kent.

  Top left: The Duke, as the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

  Bottom left: The Duchess, as Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, entered the ballroom in a palanquin.

  Bottom right: The Prince of Wales, as Grand Master of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.

  ENTERTAINING EDWARD

  The King and Queen arrive for a country visit with their considerable retinue.

  Entertaining was more important than ever during the Edwardian years. As Kim, the ninth Duke of Manchester, put it, “When one came to London for the season then, one came prepared for an orgy of parties, and ivory cards fell like snowflakes. One could count on being two or three deep every evening in balls.” Keeping the King amused was still an essential task, but eliciting his pleased purr of “Yes, yes, yes” at a dinner party or musicale became more difficult. His thirst for novelty was unending, yet a substantial break with tradition was unthinkable. The Servants’ Ball, so screamingly funny in Newport, would never do in Buckingham Palace. There was a narrow margin between convention and the constant threat of tedium.

  Opulence, doing things on a grander and grander, but still correct scale was the only answer. And that suited the American contingent right down to the ground. The American hostesses, as Vanity Fair remarked, entertained “with a splendid disregard for money, which our sadly handicapped aristocracy cannot afford to imitate.” Somehow they kept providing something new enough to be charming, without straying into danger.

  A country-house party to meet the King (center, back row), including Alice Keppel and Consuelo Manchester (fourth and fifth from left, front row) and Jennie Comwallis-West (far right).

  Mrs. Mackay, for instance, would hire to perform, on one evening, not only the Russian Choir Singers but Coquelin, Blanche Pierson and Réjane as well. Her house itself, 6 Carlton House Terrace, could only belong to an American. It had a new carriageway built from the curb to the stairs, lined in scarlet silk—no Englishwoman would have bothered. It also featured a marble entrance hall and a fifty-foot ballroom opening onto a terrace, while the furnishings included a massive anci ornate table service of over fifteen hundred pieces, made by Tiffany of silver from the Comstock Lode. And Mrs. Mackay was hardly alone in her penchant for luxury. About the Bradley Martins, vilified in New York, the Tatler stated: “Indeed, in the extravagance of their entertainments they have completely outshone the functions of the wealthiest leaders of English society.”

  COMME IL FAUT

  A royal “request” or invitation may never be refused.

  It was thus entirely appropriate that Whitelaw Reid, upon his appointment as ambassador to the Court of St. James, should install his family in the finest house in London. Built less than fifty years earlier, Dorchester House featured a grand staircase (crucial for parties in London, where the ballroom and drawing rooms were usually on the second floor) that rose in an immense three-story hall surrounded by a wide arched gallery. The saloon, or ballroom, had one wall pierced with similar arches that enabled dancers to look out on the arcaded gallery and allowed guests ascending the stairs to glimpse the figures twirling on the parquet floor. It was a splendid showcase of a house, and its occupation by the Reids spelled out very clearly the new American posture in English society, what the Tatler was calling “the American Invasion.”

  Whitelaw Reid started life as a farmer’s son, but journalistic brilliance (and marriage to California banker Darius Mills’ daughter) catapulted him into the highest social spheres.

  Left: The grand staircase at Dorchester House.

  Right: Tradition has it that painter Sir Edwin Landseer suggested piercing the walls between the saloon and staircase hall at Dorchester House. Largely finished by 1860, the house had been built by a rich Gloucestershire squire and was the most dramatic mansion in London.

  ONWARD & UPWARD

  The invasion brought to London the American devotion to gilding and marble and bri
lliant little table decorations. And American social competitiveness. With Edward’s coronation, the rivalries and anxieties that buzzed through the New York and Newport seasons had been transferred to London wholesale. As Vanity Fair commented, “It has happened that members of that exclusive body, the ‘Four Hundred,’ have been dreadfully shocked to find some compatriot who is taboo on the other side of the water received with open arms in Mayfair and Belgravia.” In this regard, not much had changed since the Buccaneers’ days. Except that in the 1870s London society could not have cared less about the Four Hundred.

  “I don’t know what it is you are all after,” Mrs. Cavendish-Bentinck remarked about the striving in New York society. As a former New Yorker, she did, of course, know, but certainly in London the goal was so much clearer. What everyone was after was the favor of the King, signaled to all of society by His Majesty’s presence under one’s roof.

  Lesser lights settled for lesser royalty. Elizabeth French, Lady Cheylesmore, according to the Tatler “never reached the innermost circle of smart society”; she had entertained the Connaughts and other minor royalty, but never the big hitters. Still, the Cheylesmores were not socially ambitious, living as they did in un-smart Prince’s Gate, forgoing bridge games and balls, and Cheylesmore was a new title as well, the family having made lots of money in importing silk.

  Lady Leigh, a somewhat old-fashioned hostess, would not tolerate gambling or fast behavior at Stoneleigh.

  Plebeian, plebeian. As the Tatler said, “‘Onward and upward’ is the American motto,” and most heiresses would not have been satisfied with second-rank royalty and a house in Prince’s Gate. If they chose to play the game at all, they wanted to win the prizes, and entertaining the King was the brass ring. It wasn’t so much that one would enjoy herself; the onus of keeping His restless Majesty continually beguiled was too great for mere pleasure. But the cachet! The respect! And the publicity! The Illustrated London News, for example, frequently carried picture-spreads of houses visited by the King, with biographies and photographs of the host and hostess. The Journal pointed out, on the occasion of Edward’s visit to Kylemore, that’ “for the fashionable classes of America who had never considered the Duchess of Manchester as being quite as important as the other conspicuous American heiresses, this event will show them that they have made a mistake.” The privilege of housing and feeding the King was the supreme vindication for any social slights.

  Lady Cheylesmore, née Elizabeth French of New York, whose social success the Tatler found rather second-rate.

  THE ROYAL VISIT

  The King invited himself, of course, for no subject would dare presume. Either in person or through an equerry, he would express the wish to visit Blenheim or the Heskeths’ Easton Neston or the Harcourts’ Nuneham Park. Of course, one agreed with alacrity. A tentative list of guests went to His Majesty, and to Queen Alexandra as well if she was joining her husband. One would have taken care to list people His Majesty liked, including his official mistress Mrs. Keppel. He often eliminated the names of those he didn’t want to meet, or added new favorites.

  In Edward’s era, “bubbly” replaced claret as the tipple of choice. H.M. preferred Charles Heidsieck’s product.

  At the same time, a rapid building and redecoration program would be launched. For a simple summer dinner, Lady Paget added an extension to her country house at Coombe Warren and erected a marquee in the gardens. For the royal visit to Kylemore, the railroad station was enlarged and elaborately decorated with red carpets and the usual masses of flowers; the castle itself was done over (with special attention to the royal suites), and commemorative presents for the King and Queen were purchased. One had to lay in the very best of food and drink; His Majesty was fond of such esoterica as ptarmigan pie and always had lobster salad with his tea. If there were entertainments, special programs had to be printed; at Floors Castle, a church leaflet commemorates the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales (later King George V and Queen Mary) to the Duke and American Duchess of Roxburghe.

  Kylemore Abbey in Ireland was built by a rich Liverpudlian in the 1860s. The Manchesters sold it to an order of nuns after World War I.

  An additional logistical burden was imposed by the royal staff. His Majesty traveled with two equerries (each with a valet), his own valet, a “sergeant footman,” a brusher, two loaders for shooting weekends, two grooms (or two chauffeurs), and possibly gentlemen-in-waiting, telephonists, more footmen, and an Arab boy who made his coffee. The Queen, if she were present, had her staff as well, though she usually limited herself to one lady-in-waiting.

  Entertaining the King was thus a fearfully expensive project. Daisy Warwick, in her autobiography, says: “I could tell stories of men and women who had to economize for a whole year, or, alternatively, got into debt, that they might entertain Royalty for one weekend!” When the Manchester were honored by Edward’s presence in 1904, newspapers estimated that the cost of the visit was $150,000, paid of course by the Duchess’s papa, Mr. Zimmerman, who had bought Kylemore for Duchess Helena.

  Part of the cost was dressing the part. The King, for a week’s stay, would be bringing forty suits or uniforms and at least twenty pairs of shoes and boots, and costumes were expected to be splendid in his presence. Consuelo Marlborough remembers at least four changes of clothes: an elegant silk costume for breakfast in the dining room, a tweed suit for lunch with the “guns” (the men who were shooting), a tea gown, and the most formal brocade or velvet evening dress with the grandest jewels possible (always including a tiara) for dinner. One could not wear the same ensemble twice, and what reasonable woman would not want completely new outfits for such a momentous occasion? Sixteen new ensembles (four dresses for each of four days) from, say, Worth would substantially increase the cost of a royal visit.

  Even kings and queens are human: the Wolferton Royal Railway Station near Sandringham had special plumbing installed for the royal travelers (above, King Edward’s; below, the Queen’s).

  TAKING THE MEASURE

  In a formal, highly civilized society like England’s there were, naturally, a thousand ways to display rank and wealth. Many of these were for the benefit of the hoi polloi, leftover traditions or habits that impressed upon underlings the power of their feudal overlords. Some, however, were so finely calibrated that the underlings couldn’t possibly grasp their significance. They were quiet signals, from one tribal chief to another: “Just between us, I’m richer.”

  A GIRL’S BEST FRIENDS

  The ideal was jewels so large they could safely be disparaged, as in “the family fender” (the enormous Londonderry tiara) or the Royal Family’s modern version, “Granny’s chips” (Queen Mary’s imposing stones from the giant Cullinan diamond). There was a reverse chic that Americans would never understand in the old, heavy, dingy, ugly settings.

  Queen Alexandra in a Russian-style tiara encrusted with 488 diamonds. Inset: The Cullinan III and IV diamonds, cut from the immense stone given to Edward VII by the South African government.

  The King (second from right) inspects the day’s bag.

  DEAD BIRDS

  In an agricultural economy, it took a certain panache to turn acres of cropland into a sanctuary for doomed birds. To provide really good shooting, birds had to be raised and fed, and keepers and beaters trained to expertise. At Wilton, the Earl of Pembroke’s seat, such was the beaters’ skill that the birds could be sent flying over the “guns” high, medium or low. On a shooting weekend at Eaton, the Duke of Westminster’s place, the beaters had orders to start sending the birds over the day’s stand, whether or not a single “gun” was present. A very good day’s bag might number 2,000 dead birds.

  THE SIX-FOOT FOOTMAN

  Only the grandest families kept servants in livery. Nothing was more conspicuous than a tall, handsome young man, dressed in canary yellow with green plush breeches, trailing behind a woman in the Burlington Arcade to carry her packages. Footmen were paid extra for every inch of height over six feet, so a r
ow of towering young men along the stairs at a ball was a clear signal of superiority.

  Mary Burns, Lady Harcourt, made the gardens of Nuncham Park, Oxford, into a splendid showplace.

  Sunderland House, the Marlboroughs’ new home in Mayfair, with its windows right on the street.

  OUTER SPACE

  By the turn of the century, London real estate was hugely expensive. Thus the supreme status of dwellings like Lansdowne House in Berkeley Square and Devonshire House in Piccadilly, whose gardens backed onto each other, and the prestige of forecourts where carriages could drop off passengers without blocking city traffic.

  LIVELY HORSES

  All horses (known in deprecatory masculine slang as “cattle”) should be fine, not just Thoroughbreds but hunters and carriage horses as well. True grandiosity would insist that all horses also be the same color. (Sunny, 9th Duke of Marlborough, tolerated only grays.) A complete wardrobe of carriages ranged from the enormous town chariot (drawn by a team of four horses, two ridden by postilions) to the light, fast, low-slung curricle.

  DETAILS, DETAILS

  Once the guests had responded and the building program was underway, rooms must be assigned. Bachelors were easy enough—they could be tucked into the second-best bedrooms or put in the bachelor wing if the house had one. But a duchess, an ambassador, a bishop would expect one of the best bedrooms. Furthermore, in the King’s set, couples with an extramarital understanding would expect to be placed near each other. (Keeping up with the gossip was an essential part of a hostess’s duty.)