March 1895, Washington DC
‘I think London wonderfully delightful, although I know so little of its people. Everything is in full swing, and we read long accounts of balls we don’t go to!’ – MARY CURZON
From her bedroom window on the top floor of the family’s mansion on Dupont Circle, Mary Leiter would have had a perfect view. The wide tree-lined avenues that converged on the circle bustled all day long with carriages, carrying politicians to meetings and ladies to afternoon appointments. Mary would have looked down on this scene every day, noting the contrast between the clatter of horse’s hooves and the peaceful tranquillity of the circle itself, filled with exotic flowers and ornamental trees that enveloped the imposing statue of Samuel Francis Du Pont, a widely respected rear admiral during the Civil War. Would she miss the daily ritual when she left America for England, indeed would she ever look down on this view again? She had spent a great deal of time away from Washington over the past five years, yet the journey she was about to make was more permanent. Her marriage to George Curzon would mark the beginning of a new era, one that would take her a long way away from her birthplace and family, and for Mary that was a serious concern.
She looked once more at her copy of Town Topics. She knew that she should be wildly happy and excited at the prospect of the engagement announcement. After five long years, George Curzon had finally succumbed to the inevitable and they had declared to the world their intention to be married. There had been a flurry of congratulations, with favourable articles in the newspapers, naming George ‘a very promising politician, who has much of the quality of a statesman’.1 Mary had been simply inundated with letters and gifts to mark the announcement of the coming together of the brilliant young couple, but one disturbing comment in a tawdry gossip rag had permeated her giddy mood, replacing it with an anxiety that now loomed large over her. The article read, ‘… the engagement has also revived a discussion of the characteristics of the fair fiancée’s family, and the almost numberless malapropisms that are attributed… to Mrs Leiter.’2
The accusation illuminated a problem that had plagued Mary since her debut into society. The charge was nothing new and had been levelled at the nouveaux riches many times before: that they lacked the refinement and cultural superiority of their more socially established contemporaries. Often it was an accusation that had no merit, a rumour largely put about to subdue the threat from arrivistes who had grown too ambitious, too hungry for the acceptance of society leaders. In this case, however, Mary knew that Town Topics was right. Her mother was a hindrance to her aspirations, one she had been trying to control unsuccessfully for many Seasons. Mary had been confident that, apart from a few unfortunate moments she had not been able to prevent, the impeccable performance she had managed to maintain at all times, never putting a foot wrong in society, had been enough to make up for Mrs Leiter, but now she wasn’t sure. Her mother wasn’t terribly vulgar, of course, just not quite up to the standards that Washington society demanded. She had spent the majority of her life supporting her husband, Levi Ziegler Leiter, in his business endeavours and raising their three daughters, Mary, Daisy and Nancy. Levi Leiter had made his fortune after establishing Field and Leiter, a store in Chicago, known later as Marshall Field, in 1865. He quickly became a multi-millionaire, sold his share to his business partner and moved to Washington with his family. The Leiters then embarked on the familiar routine of the American upper class, following the social Seasons in America while also travelling the world in an effort to broaden their education and acclimatise themselves to European culture. It was Mrs Leiter’s remarks when asked about a recent trip to the Orient that had prompted rumours of her lack of refinement. Her inquisitor asked if she had seen the Dardanelles, to which Mrs Leiter had replied, ‘Oh dear, yes. We dined with them.’ Much to Mary’s embarrassment, this story was retold again and again and had now been revived by Town Topics at the very moment she should have been revelling in her happiness. She just hoped the gossip didn’t reach George.
George Curzon was a perfectionist and he demanded the same of Mary. Throughout their long courtship, which had lasted years and had mainly been conducted through correspondence, he had consistently advised Mary on every aspect of her appearance and demeanour, telling her, ‘You must learn to think and spell as an Englishwoman, my child,’3 when she used American spellings in her letters, and imploring her to learn some simple songs for him even though she was an accomplished musician and had far more knowledge of the piano than he did. On receiving a photograph of Mary, when he might have been expected to exalt her beauty, he instead criticised her expression, saying it made her look stern, contemplative and severe, and impressed upon her the need to adopt a softer, gentler demeanour. He even commented on the way she wore her hair and on her linguistic abilities, even though she was fluent in French and German, skills he had failed to master. There really was nothing that George would not give his opinion on.
It must have come as a relief to Mary that George did not reserve his pomposity and vanity for her. As the eldest son of Lord Scarsdale, hailing from the Curzon family who had an aristocratic lineage that could be traced back for generations, George was supremely confident of his position and superiority. He had been educated at Eton and then Oxford, where he had proved himself to be highly intelligent and had demonstrated an aptitude for literature and an obsessive interest in the East; this led to his becoming an authority on the region, writing many books on the subject. In 1886, when he was only twenty-seven, he became Conservative MP for Southport, beginning a journey that would propel him to the upper echelons of British politics. His arrogance was so ingrained that he became infamous in British society, inspiring the poem:
My name is George Nathaniel Curzon,
I am a most superior person.
My cheeks are pink, my hair is sleek,
I dine at Blenheim once a week.4
While George demanded much of his future bride, in some ways it was nothing more than he demanded of himself. When he was writing, he subjected himself to a punishing schedule, often isolating himself for long periods until he was content with his efforts. He also suffered from incurable curvature of the spine, which he resolved to keep hidden from all but his closest confidantes. The condition meant that he was forced to wear a padded leather corset and was often in excruciating pain, particularly when he embarked on long, laborious and perilous research trips to Persia and India. George emanated an inner strength, intelligence and sense of entitlement and he was determined that his wife would have the same qualities. She would be a mirror image of himself, ensuring that, together, the Curzons would make an unfaltering partnership.
When George met the twenty-year-old Mary at the Duchess of Westminster’s ball on 17 July 1890, he couldn’t possibly have predicted how such a thoroughly American heiress, brought up in the midst of a confident and thriving democracy, would adapt to become the perfect embodiment of an aristocratic wife. She was exceptionally beautiful, with an oval-shaped face, deep grey eyes and long hazel hair pulled back into a love-knot at the nape of her neck. She was tall and slim and carried herself with a practised poise and elegance that fascinated George from the moment he first laid eyes on her.
It wasn’t just George whom Mary entranced: she had been making waves on the social scene for two years in America, after coming out in 1888. Ward McAllister expressed his unqualified admiration for her and invited her to a Patriarchs’ Ball in New York, while she had already charmed the elite in Washington, establishing a friendship with Frances Cleveland, President Cleveland’s wife, the youngest First Lady in history, who occupied the centre of Washington’s social whirl. This friendship would be one of the few that Mary established outside of her immediate family circle, with some, such as Virginia Peacock, society editor of the Washington Post, speculating in her book Famous American Belles of the 19th Century that she had a natural shyness: ‘She formed but few close friendships, the natural reserve of her temperament rendering it impossible for her to respond easily to those intimacies which enter into the lives of so many girls.’5 Others ventured that Mary’s tendency to be aloof was the root cause of her lack of friends, noting that she snubbed acquaintances when they failed to be useful to her, as her biographer Nicolson explains: ‘It was said that she dropped friends, that she was cold, that she formed few intimacies, that she alarmed people, that she made them aware of the social category in which she placed them.’6
This appears not to have applied to Frances Cleveland, who was endlessly helpful in establishing the Leiters as stalwarts of Washington society, introducing them to Henry Adams, Theodore Roosevelt and other prominent politicians. Such associations led to the family being accepted in New York, where Mary would have encountered Marietta Stevens and other influential hostesses. She was also a frequent visitor to Newport, where she dazzled society with her sweetness of character, innate dignity and intelligence – cultivated by tutors paid for by her indulgent parents and comprehensive trips to Europe, where she had been afforded sojourns to Paris and London but had also travelled more widely to Norway and Sweden.
By the time the Leiters were in Paris again in the Spring of 1890, Mary was an experienced social operator, used to admiring glances from ladies and gentlemen and adept at remaining aloof from the vicious whispers that branded her family nothing more than simple shopkeepers. The romantic novelist Elinor Glyn, who would go on to become George Curzon’s mistress, remembered in her memoirs seeing Mary for the first time at a ball in the French capital: ‘Opposite to me in the cotillion, I remember, was the beautiful Mary Leiter, afterwards Lady Curzon. Her Aphrodite type was a great joy to my Greek-loving eye.’7
Marietta Stevens was also in Paris at this time and had already encountered the Leiters on several occasions in New York and Newport. Mary and her mother were now intent on finding a suitable match for the popular debutante and after Mary branded the French ‘self centred’ and ‘snobs’8, their attention turned to England. From Mary’s recollections it seems that, although they had spent a great deal of time in London, they had failed to make any connections of consequence: ‘I think London wonderfully delightful, although I know so little of its people. Everything is in full swing, and we read long accounts of balls we don’t go to!’9
Mary’s growing frustration at sitting on the sidelines of the London Season is palpable, but then suddenly everything changed. Mary produced a letter of introduction to Sir Lyon Playfair, a Member of Parliament, whose wife happened to be American. He promptly took her to a high-profile luncheon at the Royal Naval Schools, Greenwich, where the Prince and Princess of Wales were due to watch a demonstration by cadets and award prizes to the most promising. Widely attended by society and described by one newspaper as ‘one of the most attractive of the al fresco gatherings of the Season’10, it was the perfect opportunity for Mary to make her mark on London society. Rather unexpectedly, Mary was presented to the royal guests by the Duchess of St Albans, who, Mary’s biographer Nigel Nicolson suggests, had ‘heard of her from an American friend’11. It therefore appears possible that, by using their American and British contacts, Minnie and Marietta may have had a hand in launching Mary onto the social scene. After her triumph at Greenwich, Mary’s life was transformed: she was suddenly in vogue and invited to a dizzying array of events in just one week, including lunching at the House of Commons where she was introduced to Gladstone and Austen Chamberlain, an appearance at a society wedding and attending a country house party in Oxfordshire. The contrast with her life on the fringes of London society just the week before was distinct and culminated in her attendance at the Duchess of Westminster’s Ball, which she opened by dancing the first quadrille with the Prince of Wales. If Mary was unsure whether she had arrived, then Bertie’s decision to choose her as his dance partner would have convinced her. She had been accepted, and the accomplishment was made all the sweeter when she discovered that an aristocrat named George Curzon had been watching the entire display with great interest.
Like many gentlemen of the aristocracy, George Curzon had an enduring interest in women and idealised the romantic notion of love affairs. He was part of a select group called the Souls, so named because of their sensitive and enigmatic natures. This rather earnest band, which included Margot Asquith, Ettie Grenfell, George Wyndham and Arthur Balfour, was created after the death of their close friend Laura Lyttleton. Their overwhelming grief after her death bound them together tightly, causing them to restrict their company to one another and reject wider society. Before long, Arthur Paget’s friend and fellow racing enthusiast Lord Charles Beresford had christened the group the Souls, a moniker which caught on and spread throughout the aristocracy, marking the Souls out as intellectual, elite and mysterious. Minnie, who avidly followed their activities, as she did the whole of society, declared Curzon the ‘captain of the Souls’12, reflecting her keen interest in the eligible bachelor and his activities. Of course, among a group of romantics such as them, infatuations and affairs were rife, and George often found himself at the centre of such intrigues. In 1886, he had declared himself madly in love with Sibell Grosvenor and ardently pursued her, only to find that she had chosen to marry his friend George Wyndham. He continued to hurtle from one love affair to the next, causing one of the subjects of his affections, the novelist and socialite Pearl Craigie, to observe that he was ‘madly reckless with women’13.
Perhaps it was inevitable that George would immediately become infatuated with Mary. After meeting her at the ball, he sought her out again at a house party given by Lady Brownlow at her country estate, Ashridge in Hertfordshire. He wrote to Mary later that when she had taken him into the rose garden, he had ‘a strong inclination to kiss you, with difficulty restrained’.14 In the ten days that followed before the Leiters departed for Europe, George and Mary corresponded daily, exchanging small presents and photographs. There was no doubt that Mary was intoxicated with the enigmatic George and he was certainly charmed by the graceful American who had captured his attention when she seemingly floated around the ballroom with Bertie; however, if Mary was at this stage confident of a smooth courtship that could perhaps lead to marriage, she would be proved wrong. George would be an elusive and unconvincing suitor, yet Mary’s regard for him endured throughout five long years of sporadic and uncertain contact.
George’s ambition for an important political position in government would always be his top priority. Engaging in romantic entanglements would come second, and Mary was just one of a number of ladies to receive his attentions. In 1891, he wrote to the now married Sibell Grosvenor, ‘I loved you earliest and I have loved you longest; and the joy and treasure you have been to me, although we have never been married, has been as great as most wives can give their husbands.’15
In the same year, he asked George Wyndham to act as his intermediary with an anonymous mistress who had taken to blackmailing George Curzon when he tried to end their affair, threatening to expose him to members of the cabinet and sabotage his political career. When Wyndham finally brokered a meeting between the pair, Curzon’s mistress spitefully informed him that she had previously slept with another man on one of the many occasions George had left England a research trip. George, horrified, wrote to Wyndham, ‘Treachery, betrayal, anger, abuse, revenge – all I have forgiven but coarse and vulgar sin never – no, not till I die.’ Despite his own dubious morals, George was quick to denounce others.
Meanwhile, back in America, Mary was basking in the success of her London trip. The Chicago Tribune was full of praise for a young lady who had won over the British nobility with consummate ease: ‘… only very occasionally do American girls make their way in this hedged-about, over sensitive, very suspicious class. It takes a woman of limitless tact, dignity, money and culture to make any impression… yet this is precisely what Miss Leiter has done.’16
She continued to write to George, seemingly unaware of his other liaisons, and made another trip over to England in 1891 for the Season, again proving popular. She seemed to secure the tacit approval of the Souls, receiving invitations to several gatherings, and was even presented at the Queen’s Drawing Room. Mary’s regard for George was unchanged, yet he continued to blow hot and cold. He attended a small party given at Claridge’s for Mary’s twenty-first birthday and invited her to Norwood, his country retreat, where he preferred to isolate himself from friends and acquaintances, rarely extending an invitation to anyone. To Mary and the Leiters, it appeared that George’s affection was growing and they were hopeful that a proposal might be forthcoming, but when she returned to America it was as though the previous few weeks had not happened. Having recently secured the post of Under-Secretary of State for India, George immediately began again to concentrate on his career rather than occupying himself with thoughts of romance. He understood that as one of the few gentlemen to travel extensively through Asia and the Middle East, his knowledge of the region would prove invaluable to the government. Feeling certain that this expertise would be the key to his eventual success, he redoubled his efforts and continued to immerse himself in his studies, working obsessively on his mammoth tome Persia and the Persian Question.
Mary, who had returned to America still unsure of George’s feelings, wrote to him. It would be six long months before she would receive a reply. In 1892, he embarked on a round-the-world trip, which included the USA. His letters continued to be sporadic and, although he spent a large amount of time in the country and even visited Washington, he neglected to inform Mary or try to arrange a meeting with her. Instead he began a flirtation with a young Virginian lady named Amelie Rives while he was staying with her family. It appeared that George’s interest in Mary was waning, although he did maintain occasional contact. It was just enough to leave Mary with hope and, despite having many suitors of her own, she had fallen in love with George and refused to entertain the possibility that they would not share a life together, writing to a friend, ‘I will have him, because I believe he needs me. I have no shame.’17
Inherently George did not approve of Americans, calling them ‘the least attractive species of the human genus’18, but Mary Leiter presented an interesting opportunity. She was respectable, elegant and kind, all of the attributes he admired in a woman, and she was able to provide him with the funds to pursue his political ambitions. George was certain of Mary’s devotion but continued to debate her place in his future. Finally, in March 1893, George and Mary found themselves both in Paris and, after having dinner with the Leiters at the Hotel Vendôme, the couple were left alone.
‘I had entered the hotel without the slightest anticipation that this would be the issue. After dinner, when we were alone, this beautiful, sweet and faithful woman told me her story… was there not something wonderful in this long trial, in the uncomplaining and faithful devotion of this darling girl?’19 George wrote when he recalled the evening years later. He proposed on the spot and then quickly insisted that the engagement remain a secret until he had taken another trip to the Pamirs and Afghanistan and could be sure of his father’s response to the idea of an American daughter-in-law. George’s romantic retelling of the proposal fails to illuminate the long years of uncertainty he had forced Mary to endure. Perhaps he was overwhelmed by the sight of this beautiful, cultured, wealthy young woman declaring her utter devotion to him and realised this was his chance for personal happiness. Or perhaps he calculated that after years spent pursuing his political ambitions, he would need Levi Leiter’s financial assistance to progress any further. While George’s intentions aren’t certain and his behaviour was certainly erratic during their courtship, it is clear that the couple were well suited. Virginia Peacock described Mary as ‘serious and earnest rather than scintillating, with a reserve and dignity of manner tempered by a sweetness that admitted no suggestion of austerity’.20 These characteristics were all highly valued by George and gained added appeal when combined with the prospect of a large dowry.
Chauncey Depew could have been writing about George and Mary when he wrote in Titled Americans: ‘As a rule he belongs to an old and historic family, is well educated, traveled and polished, but poor. He knows nothing of business, and to support his estate requires an increased income. The American girl whom he gets acquainted with has that income, so in marrying her he goes to heaven and gets – the earth.’21
Mary returned to America and the couple met only once more in London in 1894 for two days, when George finally agreed that she could share the news of their engagement with her parents. After that, they did not plan to meet until the eve of their wedding.
After years of tentative, painstaking courtship, Mary must have wondered whether the malicious gossip that magazines such as Town Topics insisted on peddling would alienate George. She had an innate understanding of his need for appearances to be maintained at all times and his suspicion that the admittance of frightful Americans to the English upper classes would only damage it. And now he was marrying one, a decision that seemed at odds with these long-held beliefs. Mary could only hope that her own impeccable behaviour and the promise of a healthy income would help George to ignore any doubts he and others had about the Leiters’ pedigree. It would be easier to keep her mother at arm’s length when she was in England, although it might pain her to even think about leaving her close-knit family. It was here in the capital that she had taken her first tentative steps into society and here that she had befriended the President’s wife, ensuring Washington’s elite were at her feet. Now, she had her own wedding to look forward to, at St John’s Church opposite the White House, where she would look luminous in the Scarsdale family diamonds and a gown from Charles Worth. As Mary Leiter she had achieved so much, but as Mary Curzon the possibilities were endless.