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Title: The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married Into the British Aristocracy by Anne de Courcy
Details: Copyright 2017, St Martin's Press
Synopsis (By Way of Front Flap): "A deliciously told group biography of the young American heiresses who married into the impoverished British gentry at the turn of the twentieth century – the real women who inspired Downton Abbey.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century and for the first few years of the twentieth, a strange invasion took place in Britain. The citadel of power, privilege and breeding in which the titled, land-owning governing class had barricaded itself for so long was breached. The incomers were a group of young women who, fifty years earlier, would have been looked on as the alien denizens of another world - the New World, to be precise. From 1874 - the year that Jennie Jerome, the first known 'Dollar Princess', married Randolph Churchill - to 1905, dozens of young American heiresses married into the British peerage, bringing with them all the fabulous wealth, glamour and sophistication of the Gilded Age.
Anne de Courcy sets the stories of these young women and their families in the context of their times. Based on extensive first-hand research, drawing on diaries, memoirs and letters, this richly entertaining group biography reveals what they thought of their new lives in England - and what England thought of them."
Why I Wanted to Read It: We all have our eras of history that hold fascination and various aspects of the Victorian era are one of my big ones. I've enjoyed Downton Abbey (which traces from 1912 to the 1920s in a small English village, but references the events of the Gilded Age) and more recently, the show that was originally intended to be a prequel to Downton but is (for now, anyway?) a story of its own, The Gilded Age, which takes place in 1880s New York City.
How I Liked It:
When you're interested in true crime, you start getting similar questions about why you're interested true crime. When you're interested in history, however, the questions can vary. The one that comes up the most though, is some version of "But history is boring, what's the attraction?!" And usually, if you're feeling patient, you wind up trying to explain to that person why history can be magic, why the past has lessons that relate to the present, why history is "Hi, story!" and stories on top of stories on top of stories, how knowing the past gives you a more fully formed understanding of, well, everything! So where does this book fall into all of that? I'll get to it.
The book traces the rise and fall of the phenomenon of extremely wealthy American families during the Gilded Age marrying their daughters into the limping British aristocracy for mutual benefit: the American families got prestige and titles, oh-so-useful for the nouveau riche, and the British aristocracy got much needed money poured into their flagging empire. This was literally over millions of dollars over the decades and Americans turn up in no less than the families of Winston Churchill (his mother was an American heiress) and Princess Diana (her great grandmother was an American heiress).
The book begins by setting the scene and explaining why it happened, before profiling many, many different families, particularly their remarkable daughters, and concludes with the factors that brought this phenomenon down, but not before it had a lasting cultural impact.
So the girls from the US came - and they kept on coming. Between 1875 and 1905 over forty American girls married into the peerage, bringing with them the dollars that saved many a stately home from ruin. There were many attempts to calculate the total amount of American dollars spent in dowry payments; one estimate said that American brides had brought in $50 million to Britain, but the probability is that it was nearer to a billion dollars - money that went straight into the pockets of the men they married. (pg 239)
(Can you imagine that number adjusted for inflation?)
The author concludes:
Culturally, the American effect was great, although more subtle. The Americans' style and smartness made Englishwomen make more of an effort; their vitality and openness to the new let fresh air into what had become formalised lives. They were responsible for a number of 'firsts'; Maud Burke put English opera on the map and Nancy Astor became England's first female member of Parliament. And their descendants, from the amazing 20th Earl of Suffolk (son of Daisy Leiter and the 19th Earl), hero of numerous incredible wartime exploits, to Winston Churchill, perhaps our greatest Prime Minister, made an indelible mark on our history. (pg 283)
The book has a slow pace because it covers so very much ground (and with a lot of different directions), but it's still enjoyable and entertaining. While I may not completely agree with some of the conclusions drawn by the British author on the differences between American and British women (more on that later), or on some aspects of American culture and Americans in general (more on that later, too), she still makes her case pretty fairly and the book is extensively researched.
The book is not a stiff, dry read, although it's immensely informative. It's full of fascinating little tidbits, larger fascinating formed stories, and even downright hilarious anecdotes. The author works to put you in the period and help you understand it.
Reading through this book, I was reminded so much of how much I love history (all history) and why. The stories on top of stories in this book (that spin off into other stories if you research them further), the connections to the present, the forgotten past- it's all here. You can wander comfortably through another time period without ever losing sight that you're still in the present, because there's relevancy here that calls to the present moment, if you know how to look.
Whether you're interested in the Victorian era, the Gilded Age, any of the television and movies that cover this, or various significant figures in British history in the 20th century, this is worth a read. But more importantly, it's worth a read because it's one of those books that remind you of why you love history in the first place. If you think you don't, I don't know if this book will convince you, but at least it'll help you understand the history geeks in your life and what we're about.
A history book that reminds history geeks of why we love history in the first place? You can't recommend a book more highly than that.
Notable: One of the biggest aspects of the book with which I probably differ is the author's assertion that American upper class society (she generally doesn't differentiate between American upper classes and the lower classes when she says this though) was better and freer to women than British upper class society. It's actually something that goes back and forth through the book, with contradicting information. While I think it can be true that American upper class women were freer than their British counterparts, by no means where they as free as this author sometimes claims at various points of the book.
Another aspect that emerged equally strongly from my research was the clash between the matriarchal society of the US and the patriarchal society of England, often resulting in a rude shock for the American bride, who had grown up seeing her mother do more or less what she wanted, paid for by an unquestioning husband, and who expected to do the same. For American upper-class society was run by women, for women; whereas in England it was fitted around the demands and expectations of male lives. Women may have fulfilled a vital role, but it was a secondary one-- secondary to the demands of husband, estate, Parliament, and sport. (pgs 3 and 4)
I can hold contradictory opinions, honestly. I'm sure compared to a British woman of the same stature, an American woman could do more in certain areas. But I take issue with "matriarchal society", "do more or less what she wanted", and "society was run by women, for women" at a time when those same women (including the upperclass ones) could not vote, divorce was almost unheard of, a woman's sole purpose was to marry (and time was ticking on that one), and marital rape and domestic abuse were not just legal, they were a part of life. The book is about the 1800s, yes, but it was written in 2017.
Everyday life for the smart set was hedged about with ritual. Dinner invitations were always sent by hand, although invitations to a ball or reception could go by mail. Calling had an etiquette all its own. Posture was all-important: backs had to be straight, heads upright; if invited into a house the visitor only stayed a set number of minutes. 'Children, remember that no lady crosses her knees,' said one teacher. 'She may cross her ankles, but never her limbs.'
While men could go anywhere, certain areas were forbidden to respectable women. One favourite place for them was the 'Ladies' Mile', which intersected Broadway, Fifth Avenue and 23rd Street, and had fashionable shops, hotels, the jewellers Tiffany and restaurants where smart women would meet each other. Even this had its dangers in those days when reputations had to be hyper-clean: it was also the haunt of demi-mondaines, usually as elegantly dressed as society women and frequently the mistresses of their husbands. (pg 24)
See, contradictions. Those same upperclass American women who could "do what they wanted" couldn't even go down certain streets.
The American girl was completely different from her opposite number, the girl that one of these peers would otherwise have married- perhaps the sister of one of his friends, perhaps a distant cousin, but certainly drawn from within the tight little circle that the English aristocracy then was. The transatlantic visitor's looks were polished, her clothes impeccable and-- within the bounds of complete propriety-- her manner was inviting and lightly flirtatious. She also excluded that compelling quality, complete self-confidence.
For she did not, like an English girl, regard herself as a second-class citizen, nor had she been treated, as English girls were from birth onwards, as much the least important member of the family. All her circumstances conspired to make her feel that she was mistress of her fate- or to believe that she was. 'She expects to be worked for, worshiped, and generally attended to- and she gets her way.' said the best-selling novelist Marie Corelli.(pg 28)
If all they ever knew was their sorry lot, would English girls regard themselves as secondclass citizens, or would they never question it, not knowing any differently? American upperclass women were so incredibly limited most didn't to some extent realize they were not allowed the freedoms of men of their same class.
American girls, by contrast, were brought up to believe in themselves, to demand respect, even veneration, from their men, whom they treated as equals. In front of them, all the time, was the example of their formidable mothers, women who reigned over their households and their husbands alike, women who perhaps two generations earlier would have stood shoulder to shoulder with their men as they carved out the beginnings of a fortune in their brave new world. Marriage in the early republic had been thought of as a partnership, perhaps not of equals, but of two mutually supportive people, each of whom contributed complementary equally valuable skills, and this spirit still infused the American household.
It was said that American husbands were the best in the world, and from the standpoint of American woman, this was true. For the early part of the century, men had greatly outnumbered women and the value attached to this scarcity still lingered. American daughters saw their mothers make decisions on everything, from the building of a house to where in Europe the family should visit that spring, with the funds to do so automatically handed over.
'American women are more indulged than English women because they eclipse English women in their ability to inspire their husbands; and they are also more extravagant in their personal expenditure, but in this particular they are encouraged by their husband,' confirmed John Morgan Richards, an American who had come to England at eighteen and spent the next sixty years living there, interspersed with visits to the States. 'In all matters of pleasure-making, amusements and traveling the American woman sets the pace.'
Sons were of course welcomed, especially as able successors in the care and increase of family wealth, but daughters were seen as the way forward, the family member who could boost the status and fortunes of a whole generation. The girl who made a successful marriage could lift herself and her whole family upwards, so that daughters were cosseted and care for like hothouse plants, cherished not only for themselves but for their potential. Almost from birth they were educated in everything, from riding to music, languages, painting, history and dancing, that was supposed to fit them for a position in American society- or for marriage into the English aristocracy. (pg 29)
Once again, more contradictions and those are truly some wild claims.
It followed - another shock for American girls - that the wife was absolutely subservient to her husband. 'After the Almighty, let your husband reign in your heart,' was the advice given by her father to Lady Cecil Tablbot when she married Lord Lothian. 'You have no duty but to obey him. Watch his looks and fulfill all his wishes, conform yourself to his habits and inclinations.' (pg 73)
I do not believe that American women of any class would be shocked at absolute subservience to their husbands in the 1800s.
Divorce was virtually unthinkable: the husband was entitled to keep not only the children - whom, if the wife had committed adultery, she could be prevented from seeing because of her moral turpitude- but also all the money and property she had brought to the marriage, so that a divorced woman was both ostracized and penniless.*
*It was not until the 1880s that women were able to gain custody of their children and control their own properties. (pg 85)
Again, secondclass citizens that were absolutely not doing whatever they wanted.
In England women, especially those in the upper classes, were second-class citizens. Sylvia Brett, Lord Esher's daughter, knew from early childhood that 'women were only brought into the world to become the slaves of men. Every morning it was our duty to lace up our brothers' boots.' And, as the anonymous author of Good Form (1888), wrote, 'they are brought up to feel that their first duty in life is to get out of the way of their brother as soon as they possibly can, and marriage is the only possible means within their reach.' (pg 85)
Women having to get out of the way of men would absolutely be an experience the American woman was familiar with at the time.
The only person of whom the head of the house was sometimes afraid was his mother. It was the era when the rule of the dowager was supreme. 'Widowed mothers exacted obedience from sons and daughters, no matter what their age,' wrote Mabell Gore, who became the Countess of Airleie. As for the daughters, their whole upbringing was directed towards finding a husband (of their own class, almost needless to say). Marriage was the only alternative to remaining at home under parental authority, and later being forced out, on the father's death, to dependence on others or a meagre allowance. To this end, accomplishments rather than education were necessary: they learnt French, music, dancing, sketching, deportment, needlework (useful in the long winter evenings) and, perhaps most important of all, how a great house was run. As their social intercourse was limited to those houses considered suitable within reach of the carriage horses, this often meant a fairly isolated childhood and adolescence, largely confined to the house and its gardens. In the year or two before coming out, they might appear at luncheon but were not expected to say anything more than yes or no. It was something no American girl would have stood for. (pg 86)
That last line is just ridiculous.
Despite these drawbacks, one of the great attractions of upper-class English life to American girls was that in England married women had a much better time than they did at home something admitted even in America. 'Naturally, one of the chief reasons why American women have to great a liking for European society is to be found in the fact of the far more important position that married ladies occupy in that society than they do with us,' commented Lippencott's Magazine. (pg 238)
Contradictions!
No one was repelled more firmly than New York's Jews (though later, gradually, the ban was lifted). Although husbands did business with them, often lunched with them, regarded many as friends and frequently begged their wives to entertain a favoured Jewish friend or colleague, the answer was invariably No. And as New York society was run entirely by women, and no New Yorker dared stand up to his wife, No it was. 'These women are never crossed, never made to obey,' said the (American) author Price Collier, adding that though American men were not easily bullied by other men, they were entirely subordinate to their women. Because his wife Grace thought showers unsmart, Cornelius Vanderbilt III, who preferred them to baths, as not allowed one in any of the bathrooms in their home (which, naturally, he had paid for), so had to go to his club when he wanted one. (pg 262)
"New York society was run entirely by women, and no New Yorker dared stand up to his wife" is, again, a bit of an overstatement, to say the least. Also, one (or even a few instances) of a husband acquiescing to his wife's preferences does not a matriarchal society make.
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The hatred for Americans is sometimes a little funny, sometimes gross and racist, sometimes just weird.
The alien horde, as such girls were sometimes dubbed, was eagerly welcomed by some, in the main those who hoped to profit by it, while others felt that much of English life was being polluted. 'Seadown - marry Seadown?' says the baronet Sir Helmsley Thwarte in horror when his son Guy tells him that Lord Seadown is interested in the oldest St George girl. 'There won't be a family in England without that poison in their veins.'(pg 4)
As Jennie Jerome later wrote: 'In England, as on the Continent, the American woman was looked upon as a strange and abnormal creature, with habits and manners something between a Red Indian and a Gaiety Girl. Anything of an outlandish nature might be expected of her. If she talked, dressed, and conducted herself as any well-bred woman would, much astonishment was invariably evinced, and she was usually saluted with the tactful remark: "I should never have thought you were an American"-- with was intended as a compliment.'
The young American Belle Wilson bitterly resented the patronising attitude of the English upper classes towards herself and her countrymen and women. In 1886, when she was staying in Cowes for a week, she met a Mrs Cust, a woman with a tongue so sharp that her house, opposite the entrance to the Royal Yacht Squadron (familiarly known as the Club), was known as 'The Seat of the Scornful'. Mrs Cust lived up to her reputation by greeting Belle with the remark that she 'thought America must be a dreadful place, she had heard no one had any servants there'. Belle replied that one or two families had. Then Mrs Cust said that she thought no one there had a lady's maid and that she would hate to be without a lady's maid. Belle replied again that she knew those with lady's maids. 'I thought Americans did not like to be servants,' said Mrs Cust. Finally, driven beyond endurance, Belle allowed her good manners towards an older woman to slip slightly. 'They don't,' she replied, 'all our working class are English!'
It was true. Americans were used to a different kind of servant, who as very seldom a fellow countryman or woman; for an American, being a servant was looked down upon. Out of a sample of 562 American women, by far the largest number - 157 - gave their reason for not wanting to be a domestic servant 'Pride, social condition, and unwillingness to be called a servant - I don't like to be called a menial.' Many would not wear uniform, a sine qua non in the houses of the rich, a habit that was catching. Delmonico himself, when asked to put his waiters in knee breeches with silk stockings and pumps for a special dinner, refused. 'Servants who have been here even a very short time will not mark themselves out by assuming a distinctive livery of this kind.' he said. (pgs 231 and 232)
'Eccentric' was a kindly way of describing Lord Scarsdale's rude and irritating manner. When he asked his new daughter-in-law a series of questions implying that life in America was primitive beyond belief: 'Do you have sea fish in America?' 'I suppose you don't know how to make mince pies in America,' she was eventually goaded in replying: 'Why don't you ask if we are civilised or white in America?' Whereupon George leapt to her defence: 'Papa, what sort of notion have you of America anyway - I never heard such absurd notions in all my life.' (pg 235)
The American girl might be pretty, well dressed and lively but - where did she come from? Few English could understand that Americans, too, had a class system which, though unadmitted, was every bit as meaningful as their own, that their opposite numbers in New York, Boston or Newport were hedged about with similar restrictions and conformed to shibboleths equally important in their world. (When the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1866, its backers had proposed co-operation with the New York Historical Society, in which lay many treasures that should have been in a museum. Their offer was rejected simply because the patricians who ran the Historical Society considered some of the backers of the museum unacceptable socially.) When Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, the son of the former Grace Wilson, as a small boy saw a woman hanging out clothes and asked his mother, 'What's that lady doing?', Grace smiled and said: 'That's not a lady, darling, that's a woman,' going on to explain that a lady never turned her hand to menial tasks, and always wore silk stockings and silk gloves. And while in Newport nothing was too grand or too formal, in the English equivalent, Cowes, everyone walked out to dinner as carriages would have been considered ostentatious.
To most English, all Americans were the same, so that it was a shock to realise that most of these girls were far better educated than the home-grown variety. (pg 237)
This last example again points to the contradictory nature of the book when it comes to American women versus British women.
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Some of these were damn funny.
American parents were usually too far away to embarrass. 'The American mother is a tedious person,' wrote Oscar Wilde. He could have been speaking of Mrs Leiter, mother of the beautiful Mary, whose malapropisms were a byword. She expressed admiration for a sharp-witted person's quickness as 'repertoire'; when she received someone in her negligee she begged their pardon for appearing in her 'nom de plume'; and when told by someone at Newport that Mary looked too delicate to sit on the porch in the evening, replied: 'You are mistaken, my daughter is one of the most indelicate girls you ever knew.' (pgs 34 and 35)
Town Topics was a society magazine with a difference. As it punched far above its weight, this rates an explanation. Founded from the ashes of a failing social journal, by 1887 it was a sophisticated weekly that reached most subscribers on a Thursday morning, to be opened with a mixture of excitement and dread. It was run by Colonel William d'Alton Mann, a Civil War veteran who had made and lost a fortune. The Colonel was a Father Christmas-like figure with thick white hair and whiskers, a large red nose, sparkling blue eyes and a genial and gregarious nature, who would invite his employees to lunch at Delmonico's giving sugar lumps to the horses he passed by en route.
Benevolent as he may have appeared, under the Colonel's editorship the magazine was anything but. Taking it rapidly upmarket, he quickly built up an unparalleled network of informers, from telegraph operators to caterers, from bandsmen to those in the smart set with a grudge against one of their number. Then, in pungent, witty and usually mocking prose, these revelations would emerge under the title 'Saunterings', written by the Colonel under the pseudonym The Saunterer, and occupying the first twelve or fourteen pages.
These jottings, as the Colonel liked to call them, went in both for the sharp dig and the scabrous innuendo. Thanks to Mann's no-holds-barred remarks, in four years the circulation rose from 5,000 to 63,000. 'Mr Drexel's head is gradually assuming the smoothness and polish that is so familiar on a billiard ball.' 'Lady Sarah* is humpy, pudgy, and homely, and no chicken.' 'I observe that the Misses Paton are gaining materially in weight since their mother's death.' A hat in magenta 'makes [Lillie Langtry] look ghastly'. 'The Marquis [of Queensberry] looks exactly, with his red face and black side-whiskers, like a butler in a small family.'
[...]
'Seldom does a brunette make a pretty bride, and Miss Maria Arnot Haver was no exception,' was a typical offering, as were 'Miss Van Alen suffers from some kind of throat trouble ' she cannot go more than half an hour without a drink,' and '
*The Duke of Marlborough's daughter, Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill(pgs 99, 100, and 101)
For years he had summered at The Elms, a house facing the Casino. Then, at the age of thirty-six, he became engaged to the socialite Caroline May, an engagement that ended in scandal when he arrived late and drunk at a party at her family house and then urinated into a fireplace in full view of his hosts. (pg 128)
[Lady] Maud [Cunard]'s social life continued: by now she knew not only the highest of society but politicians and their wives like the Asquiths and the Balfours, painters and writers such as Somerset Maugham and Max Beerbohm and, of course, George Moore. Some of those she met became her lovers; one was Lord Alexander Thynne, son of the 4th Marquess of Bath. Of this dashing man she remarked* that the witty and handsome Alexander 'was one of the world's great lovers'.
*Many years later, to a member of his family. (pg 193)
Uhhhhh, you frequently discuss the sexual (or romantic, I suppose) prowess of your former lovers with members of their family?
She died at the Dorchester Hotel, where she lived for the last part of her life. She had left instructions that after her death she wished to be cremated, but not as to where her ashes should be strewn. As all her friends knew, she hated country life, so that when someone said, half-jokingly, 'What about Grosvenor Square?', it seemed the perfect answer to most of them.
One of her regular guests performed this, and a wind blew them back into his face, so that he complained he was now full of his former hostess. It was just the sort of unexpected twist to the ceremony that the inimitable Emerald would have loved. (pgs 195 and 196)
I genuinely laughed out loud.
A wild, press-hyped 1893 society wedding had this corker:
Mrs Van Rensselaer Cruger, who watched the scramble with horror and whose dress was almost ripped from her in the crush, told a newspaper: 'The people utterly ignored the fact that they were in the house of God. They talked in loud, vulgar voices. Ladies forgot the modesty of their sex in elbowing their way to the front, men forgot their manliness in pushing others aside, and even used the backs of the pews as a highway to reach the front.' (pg 222)
The "elbowing isn't ladylike" I've heard, but "pushing isn't manly" is a new one.
A lavish February 1897 costume party had a bit of unexamined irony:
There were eighty-six people, said the New York World, whose total wealth was 'more than men could grasp', with a dozen worth more than $10 million. Oliver Belmont wore a suit of inlaid gold armour valued at $10,000; Mrs Astor wore her famous diamond tiara worth $200,000, while the jewels of Cornelia Bradley-Martin herself, worth an estimated $50,000, were probably the most noticeable of all.
Cornelia, now a plump matron with a bow mouth, a generous bosom and incipient jowls, was an unlikely Mary Queen of Scots in a black velvet dress with white collar and twenty-foot train of black velvet over a white satin underskirt. Against this chaste background she looked like a walking display cabinet. Her dress, embroidered with gold thread and hung with pearls, was adorned with clusters of diamond grapes ordered for Louis XIV; on her right shoulder was a quartrefoil pendant of rubies and diamonds in addition to a giant diamond brooch and the staggering ruby necklace that had belonged to Marie Anointette*. Her toilette did not escape the eye of the [snarky period gossip columnist] The Saunterer: 'Mrs Bradley-Martin was so ablaze with diamonds from head to foot that she looked like a dumpy lighthouse.'
* She had brought both the grapes and the necklace from the sale of the French crown jewels in May 1887. (pgs 267 and 268)
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Let's be honest: while this period is fascinating, it was horrible for women, American or British, upperclass or lowerclass:
Most young American girls were ferociously chaperoned, their mother sticking to them like burrs and any contact that could possibly sully their purity forbidden, including, of course, any mention of sex. Edith Jones, brought up in the heart of well-bred American society, was so ignorant of, and so dreading, 'the whole dark mystery' that just before getting married she summoned up the courage to question her mother, who had always refused to allow any mention of it.
'[I] begged her, with heart beating to suffocation, to tell me "what being married was like." Her handsome face at once took on the look of icy disapproval which I most dreaded. "I never heard of such a ridiculous question!' she said impatiently, & I felt at once how vulgar she thought me.
'But in the extremity of my need I persisted. "I'm afraid, Mamma- I want to know what will happen to me!"
'The coldness in her expression deepened to disgust. She was silent for a dreadful moment; then she said with an effort: "You've seen enough pictures & statues in your life. Haven't you noticed that men are-- made differently from women?"
'"Yes," I faltered blankly.
'"Well, then?"
'I was silent, from sheer inability to follow, & she bought out more sharply: "Then for heaven's sake don't ask me any more silly questions. You can't be as stupid as you pretend!"' And that was all. (pg 36)
Moment of horrified silence for the realization there are GOP lawmakers who would happily go back to this era.
For decades the medical profession had been tying itself into knots over female sexual attitudes. Doctors were in no doubt that men needed sex, and indeed might be adversely affected without it.. But as the famous Dr William Acton wrote (in The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, a book widely read in England and reprinted in America), 'The majority of women (happily for society) are not very much troubled with sexual feeling of any kind,' and as late as 1910 the well-known doctor and sex specialist Havelock Ellis was commenting: 'by many, sexual anesthesia is considered natural in women, some even declaring that any option would be degrading to women.'
But at the same time, many of these (all-male) doctors prophesied that for a woman denied sexual intercourse, hysteria and 'neurasthenia' were the least of the ailments she could suffer, Even an early and fervent proponent of women's rights, Richard Carlile, claimed that 'women who have never had sexual commerce begin to drop when about twenty-five years of age, become pale and languid, a general weakness and irritation... takes possession of them.. their forms degenerate, their features sink, and the peculiar character of the old maid becomes apparent.' (pgs 69 and 70)
Women: damned if you do, damned if you don't! Plus ça change.
Finally, when Minnie was twenty-five, which at that time meant she was almost an old maid, when there were no other grander takers she decided to go for the most persistent of her suitors[.] (pg 96)
The Gilded Patriarchy has the same standards as a certain overrated Hollywood actor.
Nancy [Cunard] also recorded that 'The men... become more intellectual as the autumn proceeded and the host was away shooting and fishing lengthily in Scotland.' One of them, the faithful George Moore, also took an interest in the child Nancy, talking to her not only of literature but also of sexual matters with a freedom unheard of in those days. Once, for example, he reported a female friend's attempt to become a better wife by going to Paris and taking some lessons from a superior cocotte - only to hear her husband say when she tried to put them into practice: 'Dora, ladies never move.' (pg 192)
A quick note here: this is describing the lonely, neglected and bored daughter of Lady Maude Cunard, Nancy. At first I was leery about the idea one of her mother's old flames (which may have been strictly platonic) talking to her young daughter about sex, but apparently there were rumors that George Moore was Nancy's biological father, something of which he was well-aware, so it's more likely he's talking to her in a frank, thoughtful way, not a creepy one. And that story is hideous.
It's not mentioned in the book, but Nancy Cunard grew up to be amazing, a lifelong fighter against racism and fascism who literally put her life on the line repeatedly for the right things.
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Want to get immersed in history? The author has you covered!
Naturally, there was an etiquette even in relationships with a courtesan. Passing a stylish equipage in which was seated one of those gorgeous creatures, it was not done to recognize either her or the man who was escorting her, even if he was one of your greatest friends and had dined at your house the previous night. In the early days of the century, if a man was driving with his wife, or some other lady of spotless reputation, she always sat on his right; if he was with a mistress she sat on his left so that friends and acquaintances knew when to ignore the couple. Similarly, if he was in a carriage with his courtesan-mistress, it was a social solecism for him to acknowledge any other woman; when a Danish diplomat bowed to the Empress when with his mistress, the Empress complained formally to his embassy of his behaviour and he was severely reprimanded and temporarily suspended from his duties. (pgs 48 and 49)
That is fascinating and so practical.
For American husband-hunters, whether mother or daughter, clothes were not simply a matter of covering their bodies decently and reasonably attractively, but a lethal weapon and a walking advertisement of status and of husband or father's wealth and success.
Choosing, fitting, putting on and wearing their clothes was virtually a full-time occupation, and vital if they wished to rise to the top-- or marry someone who could elevate them. Dressing badly, or worse still, dressing shabbily, was not an option. It was not so much that wearing elegant clothes helped you rise, more that 'bad' ones (especially ones that denoted a drop in income) facilitated descent down the ladder. With enough money, if a woman had not taste, she simply left it to her dressmaker. (pgs 50 and 51)
Invitations to such balls were by hand-written note; in the 1890s there were twelve postal deliveries a day in London. (pg 68)
Twelve.
Hey, how familiar are you with the history of bathrooms?
It was all so different [in England] from home [for American girls]. Before the Civil War, Americans had been as dirty as Europeans, but by the 1880s, middle-class city dwellers had begun getting water pumped into their homes. The first American bathrooms were largely found in hotel basements (plumbing then seldom extended to the first floor), catering for those who had journeyed across the vast distances of America and so were weary and travel-stained. Soon private houses followed, and by the time the great mansions of the Gilded Age were being built, bathrooms had become a necessity to everyone who could afford them.
This was far from the case in England. Although the most famous writers of the age, Charles Dickens, had an up-to-the-minute bathroom installed in 1851, in which he took a cold shower every morning ('I do sincerely believed that it does me unspeakable service'), he was one of the very few with such an advanced approach. Most people were happy with a daily sponge bath, while in great houses a combination of apathy, disinclination and snobbishness fought successfully against modern plumbing; because the middle classes and nouveau riches welcomed such things as gas, water closets, and piped-in water, the upper classes tended to regard them as - well, middle-class and therefore to be avoided.
Then, too, for some time baths had a flavour of ill-repute. The famous courtesans and actresses - mistresses, in other words, of rich men - were known to spend long hours soaking themselves in their luxurious baths and then anointing their bodies with exotic preparations. And what for? was the unspoken question. When it became known that Cora Pearl and La Païva, celebrated belle époche courtesans in Paris, had respectively a magnificent bronze bath and bathroom walled in onyx with a silver tub, both furnished with mysterious and delicious oils and unguents with which to prepare their bodies for future sensual delights, there could be only one answer.
So for many years the whole idea of a female removing all her clothes to enjoy bathing in warm, possibly scented (quelle horreur!) water had a frisson of forbidden erotic pleasure - many convent-educated girls were ordered to bathe in a shift to avoid the corrupting influence of nakedness. In country houses, however, the lack of bathrooms was due much more to a lethargic contentment with the status quo: there were plenty of servants to cart hot water up to bedrooms, so why bother to install expensive plumbing? (pgs 74 and 75)
How common was it to have servants?
In 1895, the 2,229 servants living in Newport (a town of less than 20,000) made up over 10 per cent of the population. Over half of them had emigrated from Europe. (pg 130)
That common.
In case you forget how absolutely obscenely wealthy these people are:
By the 1870s, the Marlboroughs had found themselves in such financial trouble that they had had to sell pictures and most of the family jewellery at auction, raising £10,000. Then came the sale of the wonderful 18,000-volume Sunderland library, a Raphael, a Van Dyck and finally the jewel of the collection, Rubens' Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment, and their Son Peter Paul.* But the sums raised were still not enough to cover either the family's debts or the maintenance of the ducal palace and by 1892 the Spencer-Churchills were almost broke.
* Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. (pg 134)
This was something to think about:
[Queen Victoria's son the Prince of Wales] was the most longed-for guest in the country, admired so much that he was widely imitated: it was said that he could walk along Piccadilly without being recognized as so many gentlemen had modeled themselves on him, dressing and moving in exactly the same way. Once, when he had an attack of rheumatism in his shoulder, he was obliged to shake hands with his arm pressed tightly to his side, and this peculiar handshake was immediately adopted by fashionable London. Similarly, when Alexandra developed a slight limp after an illness, smart women also began to walk with the 'Alexandra limp.'
The Prince would often change his clothes half a dozen times a day. He had so many clothes that he never traveled with fewer than two valets, with two more at home cleaning, brushing and pressing his vast wardrobe. As everything he wore was instantly copied, he was what we would call a fashion icon, and was known as an authority on fashion - tailors from all over Europe would gather to watch him as he strolled through the streets of a favourite Continental spa. (pg 198)
Okay, but imagine being so fashionable even your ailments are imitated.
Widows mourned two and a half years for a husband, in bombazine and black crêpe for the first year and dullish black silk for the next, twenty-one month stage. During the last three months, embroidery and lace could make their appearance again. Many widows went into half-mourning - mauves and greys- for the rest of their lives. (pg 200)
Good to know!
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Night after night these young girls, dressed in virginal white, made their appearance in ballrooms, under the assessing gaze of the young men whom, it was hoped, they would fairly shortly marry. The young Winston Churchill used to stand in the doorway of a ballroom, rating female looks on the Helen of Troy basis: 'Is this the fact that launched a thousand ships?' he would ask a friend standing with him, receiving an answer a murmured: 'Two hundred ships?' as a young woman passed. 'By no means,' Winston would respond. 'A covered sampan or small gunboat at most.' There was no equivalent of the American belle; in England the beauties were married women and actresses, and by the late 1880s the Professional Beauties had upped the stakes for female loveliness. (pg 69)
This is fascinating for a number of reasons. For one, beauty is subjective, and so in England at the time, if you were too pretty, that wouldn't do, at least until the Americans came along.
Also, Winston Churchill's American mother, the striking beauty Jennie Jerome, apparently had an affair with the Prince of Wales, who had a thing for American girls. I wonder if Churchill knew that and if it made his subsequent dealings with the royal family weird? (Did Queen Elizabeth the II ever know and did she think it was awkward that her first prime minister's mother and her great grandfather were lovers?)
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Just when you thought you'd heard the last about those rascally, revolutionary American girls!
Financially independent and with the self-confidence that was her American birthright, she took matters into her own hands - and spent as little time in her new home as possible, largely through extended and highly expensive trips abroad. (pg 77)
Followers were generally forbidden and fraternising with someone from the opposite sex within the house meant instant dismissal. 'In Paris we had a housemaid who was a most charming and delightful girl, and she had a child by one of the footmen in the house,' wrote Lady Emily Lytton in October 1982 to her confidant the Rev. Whitwell Elwin. 'Of course the poor girl was sent away, and she went to a wretched lodging in London, where her child was born, and she died, which was the best thing that could happen to her, poor thing.'
It took an American girl, as Lady Grantley, to ignore this brutal policy. 'She created what I believe was a world's precedent for the time, in forgiving and reinstating a kitchen maid who had got into trouble,' wrote her son, the 6th Lord Grantley. (pg 84)
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Here's some good reminders that while these people may be fascinating to read about, they were actually pretty horrible.
As plantation owners the family had been comfortably off, living in one of the grandest houses in Mobile, Alabama, with large, high-ceilinged rooms, tall casement windows and a hint of the Renaissance in its architecture - something that would influence [Alva Vanderbilt] strongly in later life, as did also the fact that, like all well-off Southern families, the Erksine Smiths were slave-owners. As a five-year-old she would be taken for a weekly visit to her godmother, where she played with the small son of the house and the little black slave boys. 'I never [in my life] played with girls,' she wrote; and as a young adult, she invariably got on better with men than women. (pg 105)
When the [Vanderbilt] family moved to New York [from Alabama] in 1859, they brought their slaves with them, including Alva's favourite, Monroe Crawford - who had been given to her mother as a wedding present by her father - whom she bossed unmercifully. 'It was the case of absolute control on my part,' she told Sara Bard Field, the writer and poet to whom she dictated her memoirs in 1917. By the age of six, so deeply engrained was her sense of dominance over those she considered her inferiors, and her attitude to them, that it remained with her all her life. (pg 106)
And yes, those would be the same Vanderbilts that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper comes from, and yes, he has addressed the fact his ancestors owned slaves, including that one of them was killed by one of said slaves, much to Cooper's evident delight.
'Nothing gives so much mortification and annoyance to this individual as the contemplation that Mrs Boynage is a lady by birth and education, the daughter of one of the slave-owning aristocracy of the South.' He then described how one of the lawyers of (presumably) Mackay had gone to her birthplace and had every one of her father's former slaves interviewed to try and rake up something against her. (pg 180)
Yikes.
The slave-owning is the most reprehensible obviously (don't you dare pull that "of the times" crap; abolitionists have existed about as long as slavery itself and the abolition movement in the US was over a hundred years old at that point), but lesser awful attitudes make you relieved you're viewing these people at a historical distance:
Other lessons quickly absorbed from their parents were those of snobbishness. One girl, a scion of two of the oldest Knickerbocker families, wrote in her journal of a seamstress who came to their home to mend carpets: 'I don't like to have her use our forks and drink out of our cups...I try to pick out a nicked cup for her to use so that we can recognise and avoid it.' Another felt humiliated because she was the only one at a formal luncheon without a personal servant to carve for her. (pg 125)
Not that the servants couldn't get their revenge:
Once, a butler who was sacked got his revenge by painstakingly unscrewing the whole of a gold dinner service into 300 separate pieces and leaving them mixed in a heap on the dining-room table. As there was a dinner party that night a wire had to be sent to Tiffany's, who dispatched two men from New York to put the service together again in time for dinner. (pg 127)
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Britain has a superiority problem when it comes to the United States and race relations, and unfortunately, this book has a whiff of it, despite pointing out the historical evidence that white supremacy is a worldwide problem (and again, before you sniff about "Europe being white", A. that's not true and never has been and B. who gets to be called and considered "white" has literally spawned and fueled wars).
At the time [of the Civil War], England's sympathies lay with the South, thanks largely to the lucrative cotton trade they shared, so to England [Georgia native and suspected inspiration for Rhett Butler] Richard [Thornton Wilson] moved in 1864, accompanied by his family, chiefly as an agent to dispose of the South's cotton crop - though some said to sell Confederate supplies to foreign governments. (pg 140)
There were also plenty of caveats from the other side of the Atlantic. There had been historic links with the South: many impoverished younger sons and English squires had gone out there to seek their fortune, and a Southern accent still charmed and reassured. But with the defeat of the Confederate States most English felt that all that was civilised and gentlemanly in the US had also been defeated, leaving only a tribe of voracious, unhealthily rich tycoons with little sense of how to behave. (pgs 230 and 231)
Huh, so seems like Britain was on the side of slave-holders and those holding on to slavery, at the very least for economic reasons. But the upholding of a barbaric practice like slavery was also considered "gentlemanly".
But then,
Yet across the Atlantic the attitude of Americans - or perhaps I should say that expressed in the American press - to titles or anything that smacked of an aristocracy of birth was ambivalent to the extreme.
There were now endless declarations of their innate republicanism, together with frequent quoting of that famous sentence of the Declaration of Independence: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'*
*Except, of course, in those days, women and black Americans. (pg 228)
Note the context as well. When America was asserting the fact aristocracy by birth is one of the reasons we became our own country, here's a (rightful, but hypocritical given the source) smack about our own hypocrisy.
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Others condemned spending on such a scale when set against the beginnings of what became known as the Great Depression. Wheat prices crashed - other countries were now producing wheat and cotton in quantity - and farmers in many states were encumbered with mortgages often between 40 and 50 per cent of the value of their farms, so that falling prices meant many foreclosures. (pg 223)
Did you know that before the 1930s, there was another economic Depression called "the Great Depression"? It was literally called that until the 1930s version finished it off, after which it became known as The Long Depression. Also, did you know that this happened more or less throughout American history until FDR put economic oversights in place which were then removed by (sigh) Ronald Reagan and we all know how that went? Yeah.
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Originally, the family had been respectable and hard-working: on her father's side, her great-grandfather was a son of the Duke of Hamilton and their grandfather was the first senator from Massachusetts; another forebear was George Washington's great friend, the American legislator Colonel Alexander Hamilton; on her mother's side, she was descended from the old German families of the Hummels and the Moyers. (pg 242)
Kind of found it interesting to mention Alexander Hamilton in 2017 with no mention of the smash hit musical that completely revived and solidified his reputation, but to be fair, we don't know how far in advance this book was written (Hamilton didn't become a cultural touchstone until 2016, despite debuting in 2015) and also, England doesn't come off well in that play, which makes it an incredibly interesting choice to be performed in England.
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One of my favorite stories of the book is of two amazing sisters, spiritualists, feminists, political activists, and women's suffragists (DO NOT SAY "SUFFRAGETTE", THAT WAS A PEJORATIVE COINED BY THE OPPOSITION TO DIMINISH THE CAUSE.) who carved a bold swath through history, Tennie Clafin (who became Lady Cook) and her sister Victoria.
The family moved on, earning as they did so by fortune-telling and conducting seances. Tennie's youthful marriage broke up and her husband disappeared from her life for good. Then Victoria had a spirit vision telling her to go to New York, to 17 Great Jones Street. 'There you will find a house ready and waiting for you,' declared the spirit, after which a vision of the house and of its interior appeared. Victoria rushed to New York and there found the house exactly as she had seen it in every detail. It was on 3rd Street, between the Bowery and Broadway, a perfectly respectable district, and in 1868 the family moved there. (pg 244)
One evening they went to Delmonico's, where they had often dined with their parents, arriving a few minutes after seven. They gave their order, and waited... and waited. Eventually, crossly, Tennie called the waiter. 'Miss Claflin,' he said apologetically, 'the rules are, not to serve ladies after seven in the evening unless accompanied by a gentleman.' 'Fetch Mr Delmonico,' said Tennie furiously. When Delmonico arrived he said that it was the rule, as 'we might be having women coming in from the street if I did.'
'You know very well that not half a dozen women outside in Fifth Avenue could pay your prices for a dinner,' retorted Tennie, adding that his rule 'would be obeyed.' Telling her sister to wait, she went outside, brought in her coachman, and loudly ordered: 'SOUP FOR THREE.' It came.
It was, however, the beginning of their decline. They were not behaving as women of the class they had risen to were expected to behave. There were battles when they presented their nominations at the polls and they were sued for illegally attempting to vote. But this was as nothing to the storm raised when, in the lectures they continued giving, they advocated giving a child sexual knowledge, albeit in the most decorous form imaginable ('Mamma carried you under her heart days, weeks, and weary months... when people understand this mighty problem of proper generation, all the mock modesty will die.')
Victoria went on to press for legalized prostitution ('a woman of the town can life no hand or voice for the defence'). Common prostitutes, she said, were at the mercy of policemen, and 'are compelled to pay them both in personal favours and money for the privilege of escaping arrest. In this way, large sums of money are drawn from them by men whose sworn duty it is to protect society.
'What we ask and demand,' she said, 'is equality everywhere.' She went on to a much more controversial theme of the double standard operating generally in society. 'If loss of virginity is a disgrace to unmarried women, then the same should be held of men. If the mother of a child out of legal wedlock is ostracized, then the father should share the same fate; if it is wrong to mother such a child, it is equally wrong to father it. If a life full of female prostitution is wrong, a life of male prostitution is equally wrong. If Contagious Diseases Acts are passed, they should operate equally on both sexes.' (pgs 250 and 251)
She even managed to sit down with President Roosevelt in 1907, when she told him, in her old forthright manner: 'By putting us on the same plane of suffrage with our servants and our former black slaves*, you could rise to the greatest height in the world.' But the President told her that he did not see much good had come of giving women the vote in the few places they had achieved it (Wyoming was one of the only states to allow it; in most others the idea had been voted down).
Tennie was now masking in the sun of approval for her outspokenness on the question of female suffrage. When she returned to America in 1909 a large contingent of American suffragettes came out to tugboats to greet this heroine of the movement as her ship arrived in New York harbour. 'Lady Cook in her old Cell' ran one headline as she took reporters to the jail where she and Victoria had been incarcerated.
She travelled, she lectured with enormous success both in the US, where she filled Carnegie Hall, and in London, where she repeated her earlier triumphs at the Albert Hall. She extolled the blessings of marriage (her fervour for free love might never have existed). She never gave up her fight for women's rights and in old age became a revered and inspirational figure to the younger generations of suffragettes now fighting for the same cause (British women achieved limited franchise in 1918, two years ahead of their American sisters). By any standards, hers is a remarkable story.(pg 257)
This is so delightful to know and consider, these women fighting for causes that would still be (sadly) considered progressive now. I now of course need a mini series about them, preferably with an HBO budget.
Also, when noting when women got the right to vote in the US, please keep it intersectional: white women in the US got the vote in 1920. For women of color, the journey was considerably longer (and is currently under attack).
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The British royal family, especially the then-Prince of Wales, get a lot of talk in this book, but there's another family member woven in there.
The story of Frances ('Fanny') Ellen Work, who would become the great-grandmother of Diana Princess of Wales, and the Hon. James Boothby Burke Roche, is seven more poignant, especially as her [American] father had made his views [about American women marrying into the British aristocracy being personally offensive and morally wrong] clear. (pgs 271 and 272)
But the [Roche] boys, with their romantic Irish heritage and their paternal roots overseas, did not see why they should allow a dead man [meaning their enormously wealthy American grandfather who raised them and left them huge fortunes on the condition they become American citizens and stay in the US for the rest of their lives] to dictate to them as he had in life. After thinking things over, they decided to contest this clause of the will. As none of the other beneficiaries minded in the slightest if they travelled to Europe, or were unhappy about the elder twin inheriting his father's title, their case was successful. Maurice, who did not marry until he was forty-six, by which time he had become a close friend of the Duke of York, was granted a lease for Park House on the Sandringham estate. Here, no doubt, his small granddaughter Diana had her first sight of Prince Charles. (pgs 276 and 277)
So if Princess Diana's great-grandmother was American, that means Prince Harry living in America is technically returning to the home of his ancestors?
Final Grade: A
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