by gail maccoll
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“Now I do not often complain—but few men have been plagued with such a woman as C—truly her life is spent in doing harm to the family whose name she bears.”
THE 9th DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH, about his ex-wife Consuelo
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A DAWNING DOUBT
One of the messiest of the mercenary matches was that between Alice Thaw and the Earl of Yarmouth (he of the bartending skills). Yarmouth, eldest son of the Marquess of Hertford, was a very handsome young man whose thespian aspirations had brought him to New York, where he joined a stock company under the name Eric Hope and penned some articles for the World on the art of being a lady. He met Harry K. Thaw, the young heir to a Pittsburgh railroad fortune, at a dinner party and before long found himself aboard the same train that was carrying Harry’s sister Alice and Mrs. Thaw to Palm Beach. Alice was a serious girl, devoted to her church and charity work, but she fell for Lord Yarmouth and the date for their marriage was set.
Alice Thaw, whose brother Harry found her a husband just as inappropriate as his wife Evelyn Nesbit would be.
Unfortunately, on the morning of the wedding, Yarmouth was arrested for three hundred pounds’ worth of outstanding London debts. He took the opportunity to renegotiate the settlements, achieving a total rumored to exceed a million dollars, and delayed the marriage for forty-five minutes until the papers were signed. The bride, left waiting at the church, would have done well to use those minutes to reconsider. The New York Times printed the story that her favorite dog jumped up on Yarmouth at the wedding reception and was violently thrown against a wall. Within ten months, when the Yarmouths visited the United States, he was staying alone in New York while she went to Palm Beach and Pittsburgh.
“A Hanging Offense”
Frank Work, father of Frances Burke-Roche, put his disapproval of foreign marriages quite baldly. During an interview quoted in his obituary, which appeared in the New York Tribune in 1911, he stated: “It’s time this international marrying came to a stop for our American girls are ruining our own country by it. As fast as our honorable, hard working men can earn this money their daughters take it and toss it across the ocean. And for what? For the purpose of a title and the privilege of paying the debts of so-called noblemen! If I had anything to say about it, I’d make an international marriage a hanging offense.”
Frances Burke-Roche: later; much against her father’s will, Frances Batonyi.
Strong as these words were, Work reinforced them in the terms of his will, which turned out to feature fifteen codicils that mirrored Frances’ marital career. In 1901, she was to be left $70,000 per year if she had nothing else to do with her ex-husband. The fifth codicil forbade her to have anything to do with the National Horse Show and horse trainers—she was rumored at the time to be getting too intimate with a Hungarian trainer. The sixth codicil cut her allowance to $12,000 if she had anything to do with her former husband; the seventh increased her allowance to $80,000. A twelfth codicil stated that if she married the Hungarian trainer, Aurel Batonyi, she would forfeit her interest in her father’s estate. Frances married Batonyi, and was cut out of the will by the thirteenth codicil.
In a fourteenth codicil, Work was prepared to make an allowance if Frances would separate from Batonyi. She eventually did divorce the man (very messily; he counter-sued, accusing her of adultery, and she was publicly cut dead at the Newport Casino by all her old friends), and after her father’s death she and her sister shared the estate.
Left: The Earl of Yarmouth. After his marriage, he was caricatured in the New York Journal as a female impersonator powdering his nose.
Right: The Thaw wedding party at Calvary Church in Pittsburgh.
Harry K. Thaw. When he shot Stanford White, Yarmouth’s family worried about tainting the family line with insanity. Their concern, it turned out, was misplaced.
It didn’t help when brother Harry shot and killed architect Stanford White over the affections of actress Evelyn Nesbit. Returning to the States for the trial, Alice was not accompanied by a supportive husband. Yarmouth had gone to Monte Carlo. Rumors of separation were rife, and no one was surprised when a suit to annul the marriage was entered in a London divorce court. “The Earl’s companions and his manner of living,” wrote The New York Times, “were such that he could not give his wife the position in society that she had a right to expect. She supplied immense sums to defray her husband’s extravagances. . . . ” The only grounds for annulment in England were insanity prior to marriage, an already existing marriage, or nonconsummation. On the last of these, the marriage was annulled: the Earl and Countess had never “lived together as man and wife.” Yarmouth’s lawyer, as a parting shot, pointed out that at least there were no grounds for divorce.
Most important, Lord Yarmouth got no money. The Thaws had carefully tied up Alice’s settlements in trusts. Her husband’s income of $50,000 per year derived from money settled on her for life—money he had no access to after they parted. By 1903, the year of the Thaw/Yarmouth marriage, American estate lawyers had learned something about protecting the interests of their clients who married English peers.
Gertrude Vanderbilt and Harry Payne Whitney, the all-American couple.
THE MILLIONS BELONG IN AMERICA
The backlash had actually begun in the 1890s. When Gertrude Vanderbilt married Harry Payne Whitney, literally the boy next door, journalists had a field day. The New York Journal blared, “Money will marry money next Tuesday. Broad acres will be wed to broad acres. . . . But it will be an American wedding. There will be no foreign nobleman in this—no purchased titles. The millions all belong in America and they will all remain here.” Bandleader Nathan Franko, in a paroxysm of patriotism, could not restrain himself from playing The Star-Spangled Banner at the reception.
The mercenary matches, by then, were adding up. It was impossible to forget the Hammersley/Marlborough courtship. And there was Mrs. Burke-Roche, a fixture of New York society, every inch the wronged woman. The Vanderbilt/Marlborough match also looked ugly. As the century turned, the sentiment against Anglo-American matches grew stronger until an Englishman’s marriage proposal seemed less a compliment than a calculation. While women like Betty Leggett were rushing oft’ to England to establish themselves in the new social capital, their husbands were thinking things over. It was all very well for the ladies if it kept them entertained, but really, America was a very fine place and what good was a title anyway? “A good social position I can agree with you is most desirable,” Frank Leggett wrote to Betty, “if one is endowed with all the qualities and attainments to fill it with dignity and credit.” But he was writing about Alberta’s engagement to George Montagu, heir presumptive to the Earl of Sandwich, and he found it difficult to muster enthusiasm. “I shall try to show as much pride in the connection as you and Alberta must feel, but above all hope that happiness will prove the dominant feature of the whole affair. For happiness is worth more than millions of money and the most exalted positions.”
Above: Anthony J. Drexel, Jr. (with his sister Margaretta) and Marjorie Gould (inset), daughter of George Gould. When Anthony and Marjorie married, the Tatler coverage included the headline: “Dukes at a Discount.”
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“Those who are always carping at the tendency on the part of our young peers to take unto themselves wives from among the heiresses of America will be glad to hear that there is a suggestion in the United States that a graduated tax, increasing according to the size of the lady’s fortune, should be levied on all rich American brides who marry titled foreigners.”
“Round and About Notes,” the Tatler (1908)
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END OF THE WALTZ
It wasn’t merely the risk of marrying a reprobate that lessened the attraction to the English aristocrat. The breed was losing some of its otherworldly patina. In the first years of the twentieth century, it became commonplace for peers to serve on the boards of various businesses. Viscount Maidstone, for example, after
marrying Margaretta Drexel, went into the City every day to work in a brokerage firm. If an American girl wanted to marry a stockbroker, she might just as well stay home.
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“The King dines alone.”
EDWARD VII’s last diary entry (May 4, 1910)
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The Royal Ascot race meeting the month after Edward’s death was nicknamed “Black Ascot” because society, out of respect for His late Majesty, wore black to the race course. The Royal Box was deserted since the late King’s family naturally could not attend while mourning him.
Another important factor in the waning of the transatlantic match was America itself. In the 1870s, the still-new republic was just recovering from a civil war, just forging a national identity and a national culture. By 1910 it was the imperial republic that had annexed the Philippines and built a navy to rival Germany’s. America’s international stature was indisputable. This held true on the social as well as military fronts. Expatriates who cut a swathe in English society—Grace Wilson Vanderbilt on the Kaiser’s yacht at Kiel, Consuelo Vanderbilt Marlborough visiting the Imperial Court at St. Petersburg—need not apologize for being American.
Society in America became more sure of itself. Social climbers no longer needed titles for legitimacy; America could provide its own distinctions. By 1910 New York was not a backwater but an important stop on the international social circuit, along with London, Paris, Newport and emerging pleasure spots such as Palm Beach and the French Riviera.
The whole world, in fact, was changing. The pleasantly ample curves and pastel palette of the Edwardian era (equally charming in women, furniture and paintings) were giving way to modernity. Picasso was creating strange, ugly gray pictures. The tuneful waltzes of Strauss were dissolving into the spiky atonalities of Berg. And Charles Frederick Worth’s son was designing dresses that ended above ladies’ ankles.
THE PARTY’S OVER
Perhaps the final, irrevocable blow to the era of Anglo-American matches came with the death of “that arch vulgarian,” King Edward VII, in 1910. George and Mary, the instant they assumed the throne, indicated that things were going to be different. When they chose their courtiers, two of Edward’s grooms-in-waiting, Sir John Lister-Kaye and the Honourable Montague Eliot, were not reappointed. Since both men had married American heiresses, the point was made: George and Mary did not like Americans. After forty years of love from the top, American women were no longer in favor at court.
Not that it was a court they would have had much liking for. George V and Queen Mary were as different from Edward and Alexandra as the latter pair had been from Victoria and Albert. George was his grandmother all over again, minus the brains: hardworking, thrifty (if not downright cheap), dignified, disdainful of frivolity. He did not have his father’s appetites or robust appreciation of beautiful women. Mary had no passion for clothes or parties. The massive tiaras, the houses stuffed with treasures, the elaborate entertainments, the Worth dresses—those were Bertie’s style. George and Mary represented the England that hated having dollars thrown in its face. They reigned within their means and according to their mediocre taste. Bridge games were out (cards equaled gambling equaled sin), as were the lavish balls and free-flowing champagne. This was a sober, respectable court, in bed by eleven; hardly a court worth crossing an ocean for. And so the heyday of the American heiress and her countrymen in London became a thing of the past—at least until another fun-loving, high-living Prince of Wales came along to welcome them once again.
The King at his last Derby, in 1909, won by his colt Minoru. The next year, his dog Caesar, above, followed his casket in the funeral procession.
“It was a period when many of the daughters of America elected to marry and identify their lives with Europeans and notably Englishmen—They exchanged the home life of America for that of England, and the new angles of vision with which they perceived the old world enabled them to leave an imprint on the customs of a society which hitherto had grown up sheltered in its insular tradition.
“This period of social intercourse, this period of international relation is not likely to recur because Europe and its traditions no longer appeal with the same force and vigour to the American feminine mind as they did in the closing years of the Victorian era.”
—9TH DUKE OF MARLBOROUGH
AN AMERICAN HEIRESS DIRECTORY
Register of American Heiresses
Walking Tour of the American Heiresses’ London
Bibliography/Selected Reading
Index
The print edition of this book includes a map called Heiresses' Homes Open to the Public.
Please download a PDF of this map here: workman.com/ebookdownloads
REGISTER OF AMERICAN HEIRESSES
BECKWITH, FRANCES HELENE FORBES
Daughter of Nelson Beckwith of New York
Married November 29, 1890
To: the Hon. Francis Dudley Leigh, later 3rd Baron Leigh
Seat: *Stoneleigh Abbey, Kenilworth, Warwickshire
Helene’s engagement to Leigh, whom she met while visiting Mrs. Bradley Martin in Scotland, surprised New York. Having been a belle at Napoleon III’s court, Helene was a bit long in the tooth—eight years older than her thirty-five-year-old fiancé. She was a conservative châtelaine, said not to tolerate the “rapid set” at Stoneleigh house parties. After her death in 1909, Leigh married Marie Campbell, also an American.
*Open to the public.
BLIGHT, ALICE
Daughter of Atherton Blight of Philadelphia
Married February 28, 1908
To: Gerard Augustus Lowther, later 1st (and last) Baronet
A great beauty, Alice had traveled in Europe fairly extensively by the time she married Lowther (nephew of the 3rd Earl of Lonsdale). His diplomatic career took them to Constantinople for five years and earned his baronetcy.
BONYNGE, LOUISA
Daughter of Charles William Bonynge of London
Married 1892
To: Sir John Grenfell Maxwell, KCB, CVO, CMG, DSO
The English-born Bonynge began his American career as a San Francisco landscape gardener, then flourished as a broker in the boom years; when he moved back to London with Louisa and Virginia [q.v.], their presentation at court aroused a fuss about lowered social standards. Maxwell, a soldier who distinguished himself in the Imperial wars, was later disgraced for ordering the execution of Irish rebels at Kilmainham Gaol during the Easter Rising of 1916.
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“In the art of amusing men they are adepts, both by nature and education, and can actually tell a story without forgetting the point—an accomplishment that is extremely rare among the women of other countries.”
OSCAR WILDE, in The Pilgrim Daughters
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Despite her dubious antecedents, Virginia Bonynge was a bosom friend of Queen Victoria’s daughter Helena, Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein.
BONTNGE, VIRGINIA
Stepdaughter of Charles William Bonynge of London
Married March 10, 1894
To: George William Coventry, Viscount Deerhurst, eldest son of 9th Earl of Coventry
Seat: Earls Croome Court, Earls Croome, Worchestershire
Virginia’s real father, William Daniel, had committed murder in the Wild West, but the bankrupt Deerhurst was himself no marital bargain. Deerhurst died before succeeding to the earldom; two younger brothers married Americans, Lily Whitehouse and Edith Kip (McCreery) [q.v.]. A tapestry-hung salon from Croome Court is in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
BRECKINRIDGE, FLORENCE
Daughter of John Breckinridge of San Francisco
Married September 8, 1909
To: Thomas Fermor-Hesketh, 8th Baronet, later created 1st Baron Hesketh
Seat: Easton Neston, Towcester, Northamptonshire
Florence, stepdaughter of Frederick W. Sharon, thus stepniece of Flora Sharon [q.v.], was taken to England as wife material for Flora’s son, keeping the Comstock
Lode dollars in the family. She found the adjustment difficult and took to her bed in reaction.
BREESE, ANNA
Daughter of William L. Breese of New York
Married October 10, 1907
To: Lord Alastair Robert Innes-Ker
Lord Alastair, younger brother of the 8th Duke of Roxburghe (husband of May Goelet [q.v.]), gained stature when the Duke seemed unable to produce an heir; Anna was widely assumed to be heartbroken when the Roxburghes finally had a son in 1913.
BREESE, ELOISE
Daughter of William L. Breese of New York
Married December 6, 1905
To: Gilbert Heathcote-Drummond-Willoughby, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, later 3rd Earl of Ancaster
Seats: Grimsthorpe, Bourne, Lincolnshire; Drummond Castle, Crieff Perthshire, Scotland
Stepdaughter of Englishman Harry V. Higgins, impresario of the Covent Garden Opera, Eloise was lively and very “American”—a good match for the reticent Willoughby de Eresby. Their eldest son married the Hon. Phyllis Astor, daughter of the 2nd Viscount and Nancy Langhorne [q.v.].
BROWN, ELIZABETH TRIMBLE
Daughter of Judge James Trimble Brown of Nashville
Married February 17, 1897
To: the Hon. Archibald John Marjoribanks, 4th son of 1st Baron Tweedmouth
Elizabeth’s grandfather was Neil P. Brown, former governor of Tennessee and U. S. minister to Russia. Archibald’s brother Edward, the 2nd Baron Tweedmouth, caused a furor in 1908 when, as first Lord of the Admiralty, he allegedly disclosed British naval estimates to the German emperor.