"My Last Duchess" by Daisy Godwin 2010
"My Last Duchess"
by Daisy Godwin
Cash for titles: The Billion-dollar ladies | Mail Online
Publisher: HEADLINE REVIEW
Publication Date : 19/08/2010
ISBN: 9780755348060
Excerpts:
For daughters of the new American billionaires of the 19th century, it was the ultimate deal: marriage to a cash-strapped British aristocrat in return for a title and social status. But money didn’t always buy them happiness, says Daisy Goodwin.
In 1895 when Consuelo Vanderbilt, the daughter of the American billionaire Willie Vanderbilt, married Sunny, Duke of Marlborough, in New York, the wedding was the media event of the year; the closest modern equivalent would be Prince Harry marrying Paris Hilton. Three hundred policemen were employed outside the church to hold back the thousands of onlookers desperate to catch a glimpse of the glamorous bride in the dress with the five-yard train.
Details of the wedding were reported on the front page of The New York Times, and Vogue devoted pages to the bride’s trousseau, describing everything down to the white brocade corset, which had gold clasps studded with diamonds. Consuelo carried orchids which had been grown in the greenhouses of Blenheim Palace and shipped over to New York in a specially refrigerated chamber, because Marlborough brides always carried flowers from Blenheim. The presents were displayed for the public, as they are at royal weddings today, and the queue to admire the gifts – which included a string of pearls once owned by Catherine the Great – stretched halfway down Fifth Avenue.
The second half of the 19th century was the time when the American billionaire was created – men like Cornelius Vanderbilt, Consuelo’s great-grandfather, who made a fortune out of railways; Andrew Carnegie, whose empire was built on steel, and Isaac Singer, who built the first commercially successful sewing machine. These men were rolling in ready money, unlike the English aristocracy, who were land rich but cash poor and whose income dwindled every year thanks to the agricultural depression and the new death duties.
Consuelo was the most famous of the ‘dollar princesses’ – the fabulously rich daughters of these billionaires who came to England looking for the one thing they couldn’t buy at home: a title. In 1895 alone, nine American heiresses married members of the English aristocracy, and by the end of the century a quarter of the House of Lords had a transatlantic connection.
Even Princess Diana had an American great-grandmother. It was a straightforward economic exchange: American girls got to be aristocrats and impoverished peers got the money to mend their stately homes. Mary Leiter, who married Lord Curzon, had a dowry of £1.5 million as the daughter of a wealthy department store owner from Chicago – that’s about £50 million in today’s money. And Consuelo’s dowry was double that.
Transatlantic matches became so much the rage among the newly rich that a whole industry sprang up to serve their needs, including professional matchmakers and magazines. Typically, the American heiress would start by consulting the quarterly publication
The Titled American: a list of American ladies who have married foreigners of rank.
This contained a register of all the eligible titled bachelors still on the market, with a handy description of their age, accomplishments and prospects – for example:
The Marquess of Winchester is the fifteenth Marquess and Premier Marquess in the Peerage of Great Britain. He is also the Hereditary Bearer of the Cap of Maintenance. The entailed estates amount to 4,700 acres, yielding an income of $22,000. He is 32 years of age, and a captain of the Coldstream Guards.
Family seat: Amport House, Hampshire From The Titled American No 2 March 1890.
This 19th-century version of match.com was in great demand in the Fifth Avenue and Newport mansions where these American heiresses lived. Many came from families whose wealth was very recent, and who were desperate to stand out in a famously snobbish New York society where mere money was no guarantee of acceptance. The upper echelon, known famously as The Four Hundred, was based on the number of people who could fit comfortably into Mrs Astor’s ballroom – Mrs Astor being the most powerful woman in New York society on account of both her breeding and her fabulous wealth.
You should write it Alistair,and make millions and you better send me a signed copy!
