Also there was the young Duke of Roxburghe, dressed as a Yeoman of the Guard, in a scarlet and gold tunic above scarlet breeches and stockings, with a white ruff emphasising his good-looking face. This 8th Duke, six foot four, the handsome eldest son of seven children, was called Kelso (the Earl of Kelso was one of the Roxburghe subsidiary titles) by his family and Bumble by his friends. With an estate of 60,418 acres bringing in over £50,000 a year, he was also rich.
But the man with whom May’s name became linked was another duke, Kim, as the son of Consuelo Yznaga the half-American 9th Duke of Manchester, who had followed May round the ballroom wherever possible. Then aged twenty – he had succeeded at fifteen – he had already established a reputation as a notorious spendthrift. In fact, he was following in some well-defined family footsteps: the previous two dukes had frittered away much of the family fortune and he was on the lookout for a wealthy bride. May, pretty, charming, hugely rich and petite – he himself was on the short side – seemed an ideal target. Consuelo, now forty-four and the widowed Duchess of Manchester, agreed and, whether or not the rumour was put about by them, it was soon believed in London that May was engaged to the profligate Duke.
To Ogden who, in common with his class and kind, had always avoided publicity, this bruiting-about of his daughter’s name in connection with a man of whom he thoroughly disapproved was intolerable. A denial by Kim, on which Ogden had insisted, did something to calm the outraged American headlines (‘England’s poorest Duke after our richest heiress!’), but Ogden, as always, felt safer at sea. The Goelets left Wimborne House and anchored at Cowes in the Mayflower for the August regatta.
They were only able to enjoy it for a few days. Ogden had been growing steadily worse and when, finally, his liver ceased to function he died, on 27 August, on his beloved yacht, his family clustered round him. ‘It was a tragic ending of one of the most sensational social successes ever made by an American in England,’ recorded one newspaper. ‘The Prince of Wales had been his guest at Cowes for the third time, and his American host had already made plans for other important social entertainments. Some of Mr Goelet’s friends think his daughter’s determination to marry the young Duke of Manchester may possibly have hastened the father’s end. He felt very strongly about it, but as was cabled at the time of the suit of the young English nobleman he was supposed to be favoured by Mrs Goelet.’ Unsurprisingly, perhaps – May Goelet was, after all, one of the ‘marrying Wilsons’.
Ogden’s body was transported back across the Atlantic in his yacht for the funeral service in Newport in September. He had left $10 million dollars to his wife and – where an English girl with a brother might have expected much the smaller sum – May and Bobby were treated equally. Each received $20 million, the only difference being that May’s was to be held in trust for her, gathering interest, until she reached twenty-five, when the whole sum would be hers absolutely.
When the Goelets returned to Europe May was a golden target for every man who felt a rich wife was one of life’s essentials. ‘How I should hate to be May Goelet,’ commented Daisy, Princess of Pless, ‘all those odious little Frenchmen and dozens of others crowding round her millions. An English duke does not crowd around – he merely accepts a millionairess.’
May, however, was a girl with plenty of emotional common sense. She had been brought up in a close and warm family environment and she had the example of a loving marriage before her in the shape of the two women to whom she was closest, her mother and her favourite aunt Belle. She wanted the same for herself and she was prepared to wait until she got it. Flattering though it might be to receive all these proposals, she was well aware that part of her attraction was her potential dowry.
‘I must give an account of my proposals,’ she wrote to her aunt Grace. ‘Well, first Lord Shaftesbury popped almost as soon as he returned to London. He came one afternoon. Mamma happened to leave the room for a few minutes and off he went – like a pistol. I told him it was quite ridiculous as he had only known me three weeks and he couldn’t possibly know his own mind.’ She added shrewdly that she knew nothing of him or his past.
The same letter brings a mention of the Duke of Roxburghe. ‘[He is] the man everyone says I am engaged to,’ wrote May. They met at a dinner party – ‘he never goes to balls’ – and the following night at another, given by May’s countrywoman Lady Curzon. ‘Such a nice dinner,’ though she added: ‘Lord Castlereagh took me in (the Londonderry boy) and we talked together afterwards so I didn’t have a chance of saying a word to the Duke.’
To a girl with her head as well screwed on as May, the twenty-four-year-old Charley Londonderry’s looks and charm were no threat:2 he was already married. Of the Duke, who had been commissioned into the Royal Horse Guards and served throughout the South African (Boer) War of 1899–1901, all she was able to observe was that he seemed shy and well read, with charming manners. But there was not then any striking of sparks nor, on the part of the Duke, the pursuit that May was used to.
Although May’s immense wealth meant that she would always be a matrimonial target, her friends had begun to feel that it was time she got married. She was twenty-five – that dread age which to the Victorians was the cusp between fresh young girlhood and old maid-dom – and most of those in her circle had been married for several years. Even the King told her that it was time to settle down and, indeed, tried to arrange a match for her with Captain George Holford, owner of Dorchester House on Park Lane and two estates in the country. For May, who had a keen sense of her priorities, this was not enough. ‘Unfortunately, the dear man has no title, though a very good position [he was the brother-in-law of Lord Grey] – and I am sure he would make a very good husband.’ To someone else, was the unspoken corollary.
For May knew exactly what she wanted. With her money and looks, only a duke would do. And within a year, during which she and Roxburghe gradually got to know one another better, she had got one. The Duke of Roxburghe was handsome, brave, a conscientious landlord and rich enough himself not to have pursued May for her money – though it was undoubtedly welcome. When, in July 1903, Mrs Goelet returned to New York, May, significantly, was left behind – but with her aunt Grace to chaperone her as they stayed at Claridge’s. Soon the Duke of Roxburghe arrived there too, and their families were told of their engagement. It was announced by the Dowager Duchess in Scotland and Mrs Goelet in Ochre House simultaneously, on 1 September. They were married in New York, the Duchess having first presented May with the family emeralds.
May brought with her to Floors Castle not only her magnificent $20 million dowry but some wonderful French furniture and a set of superb tapestries. Like May, they fitted perfectly into Floors. From the start, she enjoyed the panoply, and the grand treatment: when she and her husband returned from their honeymoon to his family seat on the Scottish Borders, they were greeted at Floors Castle by 100 torch-bearers and a band of pipers. She redecorated the castle in deluxe American style and settled down to a happy life growing carnations and doing good works among the villagers. The only problem was her failure to produce an heir. After ten childless years, the Duke and Duchess went to visit a specialist in Vienna, promising him £1,000 if he could help them conceive, and double that if the child was a boy. The doctor apparently did nothing more to earn his fee than advise the Duchess to give up sugar, but the Marquess of Bowmont was born a year later, in 1913. His birth was marked by a chain of bonfires along the Borders of Scotland, lit by jubilant tenants, relieved that the Goelet money would stay in the Roxburghe family.
* * *
Several years after his father had died in 1899, Neily managed to persuade his mother Alice to allow them to visit her with their son Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, and the breach was officially healed. But Grace had neither forgotten nor forgiven the behaviour of her husband’s parents, and when she finally greeted her mother-in-law, even her son realised that ‘her smile was as the flash of sun on a glacier’. Alice Vanderbilt and her husband were, after all, the only
people who had ever tried to halt the advance of the ‘marrying Wilsons’.
CHAPTER 10
The Call of Europe
Many of the ‘buccaneers’ wound up as the brides of European noblemen, if only for the reason that Americans were naturally drawn towards Europe. Some were either immigrant or only a generation or two away from immigrant, with families or relations there; and, living in a continent where great distances were a part of life, travel seemed normal. The wealthy among the old New York families, very conscious of their Dutch or British ancestry, frequently visited Europe to renew links and enjoy its culture and horizons.
Then there were the buildings: a few decades earlier, Washington Irving’s tales and travel narratives induced the first of many generations of American sightseers to visit the great aristocratic houses and castles of the Old World. Later, the impact these had on the rich of New York and Newport was reflected in the building of vast French châteaux along Fifth Avenue or Newport’s Ochre Point.
Despite the fear of absence – out of sight was out of mind in the new model of New York high society – many Americans travelled to Europe to spend a few out-of-season months there. Europe was believed to impart polish and knowledge of culture: in 1866, according to the American fashion bible, Godey’s Lady’s Book, 50,000 Americans travelled to Europe. They went in clipper ships, often with livestock aboard, and steamers, and all of them suffered horribly from seasickness, not helped by engine fumes, the vibration of the screw and poor ventilation.
Although these newly wealthy were firmly republican in outlook, they were fascinated by the traditions, the sense of centuries behind various established customs, the sophistication of people who knew exactly who they were and how to behave in any given set of circumstances. With the War of Independence now far enough away in time to be overlooked, their own society had taken its lead from that of England: Ward McAllister, its self-appointed arbiter, had largely shaped the Patriarchs’ Balls on the model of Almack’s Assembly Rooms in London’s King Street, and English fashions (for men), customs and etiquette were the model for New York. Besides, several summers in Europe meant an excellent education for their daughters, who would learn to speak good French and possibly Italian or German as well, and become familiar with artistic and musical masterpieces, all of which would make them more desirable brides – many to the young aristocrats impoverished by the fall of the Second Empire, who flocked round them like hungry sharks.
* * *
Although travel was so often undertaken, there was little of the relaxation usually associated with sea voyages. Even on the ocean, etiquette ruled. No woman, whatever her age or station in life, would venture on crossing the Atlantic without placing herself in the captain’s special charge, or under the escort of some male passenger. Such precautions even extended to the mundane business of tidying the cabin: if a woman were married, or with some male relation, she could be waited on by a male steward, otherwise not.
Then there was the question of safety. July and August, potential passengers were informed, were considered the safest and least stormy months to cross the Atlantic. June had southbound icebergs and heavy fogs – on some voyages the wind whistled through the rigging and the foghorn blew all night. The rest of the advice administered to ocean travellers was largely concerned with seasickness; it is impossible for anyone born after stabilisers were invented for ships or in the age of air travel to comprehend the duration and virulence of this horrible condition.
‘After the most terrific, terrible and dreadful sea voyage of my life (& I have crossed the Atlantic five times, and from Marseilles to Alexandria, Egypt twice),’ wrote Mary Theresa Leiter, mother of the future Lady Curzon, on a tour of Europe, from Bergen in 1881. ‘Oh, if I could communicate to mankind a warning to never under any circumstances venture upon the North Sea. We left the mouth of the Humber at six o’clock on Tuesday morning, & from that hour until Wednesday night Mary & I suffered such tortures as only are known to people who traverse the North Sea.’
With no stabilisers, ships rolled tremendously, so passengers were advised to try and get a cabin near the centre of the ship, as there was less motion there. By sail, a crossing took ten days or more and, judging by the tone of a book of advice on ocean travel, would involve several days of prostrating nausea. ‘It is quite impossible to prevent. Whatever you do, get up on deck.’ If prostrated, then ‘hang a strip of cloth with pockets beside your bed, to aid undressing if you are too ill to move’.
The rather gloomy conclusion by the writer of this popular booklet of advice was to dress well, because ‘I have always felt that a body washed ashore in good clothes would receive more respect and kinder care than if dressed in those only fit for the rag bag.’
Later, journeys were by steamer; these often had sails as well, and took around nine or ten days. Conditions were fairly primitive: as late as 1870 the Cunard liner Tarifa had no baths and only two toilets. All the same, when they arrived in port, the passengers would give three cheers for the captain and crew.
* * *
Once arrived, they found a glamorous, exciting milieu, made more so by the young noblemen with whom the American girls danced and flirted: men who were accustomed to pay romantic homage to women in a way their brothers and cousins at home would have thought at best insincere or at worst unmanly. That they were also keenly aware of the value of the dollar in restoring their faded fortunes did not go unnoticed but, sometimes, the thought of an ancient title outweighed more practical considerations – besides, it was always something to flaunt back home.
The epitome of this mingling of European high-society glamour and American hard cash was the match between Anna Gould and Boni de Castellane.
Anna Gould was the daughter of the robber-baron Jay Gould, immensely wealthy and castigated as unscrupulous even in his own time. Like many of his contemporaries, he bought up or bribed officials and legislators, his ice-cold objectivity, utter determination and speed of action enabling him to outwit competitors and build up a huge fortune. Even Commodore Vanderbilt, once a sworn foe, later an ally, described him as ‘the smartest man in America’.
Anna, the fifth of his six children and the younger of his two daughters, was born in 1875 and brought up amid every luxury. Her pleasant, vivacious manner concealed an iron will, doubtless inherited from her father, that made her determined to get her own way in everything she wanted to. She was not a beauty: she was short, with a sallow complexion, hairy arms, a prominent nose and thick, caterpillar-like eyebrows, although she was slender, with tiny hands and feet and black eyes. Against these drawbacks, over which lay the vague aroma of her father’s unsavoury doings, was the allure of the huge fortune she had inherited from him – both her parents had died before she was eighteen.
When she was nineteen a thirty-seven-year-old financier called Oliver Harriman, a well-to-do friend of her brother’s, proposed to her, a match approved by both families. She accepted immediately and set off to Paris in March 1894 to buy a luxurious trousseau. Here she stayed with the singer Fanny Reed, the sister of Mrs Paran Stevens, who was a Gould family friend. Fanny had settled in Paris, where she entertained widely and gave musical evenings. On one of these, Anna met the twenty-seven-year-old Paul Ernest Boniface, Comte de Castellane, the eldest son of the Marquis de Castellane. ‘It was soon apparent that she found me a pleasant companion,’ he reflected complacently, ‘and I confess that I found her an interesting study.’
‘Boni’, as he was always known, was slim, elegant, good-looking, charming, a dandy to his fingertips, wildly extravagant, very conscious of his ancient lineage and what he felt was owed to him on account of it – a life untouched by gainful toil and buttressed by the best that money could buy. Although his parents lived in a broken-down château, Boni had servants galore (and almost as many mistresses), his toenails were painted pink, and he was always douched in scent – all on credit. He was, in short, what the average upright, rather puritan American citizen would think of as an effete forei
gn fortune-hunter.
Anna was dazzled by his worldly, hand-kissing charm, his title, by the hinterland of sophisticated European glamour that seemed to stretch behind him. ‘I paid assiduous court to her,’ wrote Boni. ‘I passed under her windows on horseback, I wrote to her several times, I sent her Persian lilac. Her feet trod on a carpet of flowers.’ He added, with breathtaking disingenuity: ‘I can honestly affirm that Miss Gould’s fortune played a secondary part in her attraction for me.’
A more complete opposite to poor Mr Harriman could not have been found, and Anna briskly broke off her engagement and remained in Paris, on the excuse that George and Helen Gould, her older brother and sister, were coming over – by the terms of her father’s will, George had to approve any marriage she wished to make while she was still a minor. The three went yachting round England, returning to Paris in the spring of 1894, when Boni continued his courtship of Anna. Whether or not George thought Boni would be a good match, he certainly did not then disapprove.
With her father’s scandalous reputation hanging over her and minus the looks that might have gained her an entrée, Anna had no hope of achieving the social eminence she wished for at home unless she married a title.
The Gould siblings returned to New York in the autumn, followed by Boni. Now so close to a fortune, he could not give up the chase merely because he was penniless, so he borrowed enough money from his bankers to fund the voyage. In New York, he stayed with a friend, to whom he explained the situation – and from whom he borrowed more money. Nor was he discouraged when Anna told him she would never marry him, merely answering: ‘My dear lady, you forget that I have not asked you to marry me.’ Anna went scarlet – but from then on, he believed, began to consider him as a husband.
The Husband Hunters Page 17