November 1895, London
‘Society means the same thing all over the world – the same ambitions, the same small jealousies, the same ceaseless struggle to get ahead of someone else, the same climbing, climbing! That is human nature and that is society in every land.’ – MINNIE PAGET
Number 35 Belgrave Square had been buzzing with activity all day in preparation for the evening ahead. Now, as the remains of the bright autumn day gave way to the encroaching gloom of the cold, dark night, Minnie Paget would have taken advantage of the pause in duties. She glanced down at her notebook, checked the menu once more and began to stalk slowly around the table that was already set for dinner. She checked that the place cards she had handwritten herself corresponded with the guest list and adjusted the seating arrangements more than once. She contemplated the placement of her guests and exchanged one card for another, as she thoughtfully calculated the most beneficial layout. Town Topics had remarked in 1894 that Minnie’s ‘cheeky little card parties’ had ‘helped to pass the winter’1 and she intended to channel her efforts into the same intimate occasions this year. She would be ready to entertain aristocrats and royalty, politicians and plutocrats, all weary of the dreary London weather, all temporarily stranded in town on their way to more enticing destinations – the Continent perhaps or a lively county house party. Irrespective of their destination, Minnie knew her role and, although London had a sort of eerie quietness about it as it embedded itself in the swirling winter fog, the game of society never stopped. While those around her might retreat for the winter, Minnie would forge ahead, laying the foundations for the Season to come.
When Minnie reflected on 1895, she would have been gratified to note that it had been a most successful year. She had engineered and arranged, cajoled and manipulated, and had been rewarded with several marriages that she had played a part in and had seen her financial position drastically improved into the bargain. With the increasing interest of the world’s press in American heiresses who had captured the hearts of dashing English aristocrats, more and more daughters of Swells were making the journey on the steamship to England, bound for a life of love, acceptance and a social superiority that they believed they could never achieve at home. Minnie knew the image peddled by newspapers that had culminated in the feverish coverage of the Vanderbilt-Marlborough wedding was little more than a fairytale, conjured up by those who wished to disguise the realities of the phenomenon. The uncomfortable truth was that such marriages were simple transactions that required months and sometime years of complicated machinations by those surrounding the couple. Those who had their very best interests at heart. Those who knew that love was more often than not wholly unobtainable in the ruthless world they all inhabited. Whether they lived in New York, Paris or London, the upper classes bore intolerable scrutiny from their peers and the wider world that dictated their every move. Anyone who wished to truly succeed in society needed to master the rules quickly and display the same ruthless streak as all those who had come before them and now occupied the upper echelons of society.
‘Society means the same thing all over the world,’ Minnie told a reporter when asked to reveal her thoughts on the subject. ‘The same ambitions, the same small jealousies, the same ceaseless struggle to get ahead of someone else, the same climbing, climbing! That is human nature and that is society in every land.’2 She had always known how to read those around her, how to study and prosper in a society that valued huge fortunes and impeccable lineage, when she could lay claim to neither. Her mother’s fortitude and example had served her well, all the way to the pinnacle of the most fashionable set in London. Her achievements had even extended to engineering the match of the decade. The spectacle of Consuelo’s wedding to Sunny had been handled masterfully by Alva, Minnie had to admit, and as she read the acres of newspaper coverage given to all the details, she luxuriated in the moment, her greatest triumph. When Pauline Whitney’s wedding took place just a week later in the same church, St Thomas in New York, with almost as much pomp and ceremony, Minnie’s feat was complete.
The similarities between the two weddings would not have been lost on the crowds of onlookers that again turned out to witness another member of the American aristocracy marry into the British one. While William Whitney was not so adept at briefing the press on arrangements as Alva Vanderbilt was, Pauline’s wedding nonetheless generated enormous publicity from an insatiable press and public who hadn’t lost their appetite for the intricate details of such occasions. Unlike the Vanderbilts, who were still occupying themselves with infighting between Alva and Willie K, the Whitneys were popular in society and two pre-wedding dinners were organised in advance of the day. Perhaps to highlight her glaring absence from Consuelo’s wedding, Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt hosted a dinner for Pauline, and William arranged for a celebration to be given at the Metropolitan Club in Almeric’s honour, to which Winthrop Rutherfurd was invited as a guest. The financial considerations had been agreed between William and the Paget family, with Pauline’s dowry estimated at two million dollars.
It was a cool, bright day when Almeric arrived at noon to the sight of a large crowd at the now infamous Fifth Avenue church. Onlookers would note that the crowds were not as large as Consuelo had attracted the week before, but more guests were in attendance to appreciate the great arches of white roses and chrysanthemums that hung over the central aisle. Comparisons between the two friends’ weddings were numerous, reports on both occasions noting the presence of Mrs Astor and Bishop Potter’s careful handling of the service; it was also remarked that Pauline’s wedding boasted a superior calibre of guest, with President Cleveland and Lady Colebrooke, Almeric’s sister, among those who heard Edouard de Reszke sing Ave Maria accompanied by the renowned Nathan Franko’s orchestra before the bride arrived.
Pauline was beautiful in a white satin dress with a high neck and long, dramatic train trimmed with point lace. Her fine veil was held in place by a small diamond pin, a gift from Almeric, and she carried a bouquet of white orchids and roses. Six bridesmaids, including Gertrude Vanderbilt and Miss Emily Sloane, wore identical poplin dresses trimmed with sable in varying pastel shades of pink, blue, green, yellow, lilac and, white with dainty velvet hats, and carried pretty muffs decorated with lace frills. Afterwards, guests retired to the Whitneys’ residence on West 57th Street, where the bridal party observed their several hundred guests from a crescent-shaped table situated in the window at the west end of the palatial ballroom. The wedding breakfast, which was catered by the fashionable Sherry’s restaurant, indulged guests with a menu encompassing oeufs brouillés aux truffes [scrambled eggs with truffles] and carré d’agneau à la bourgeoise [rack of lamb].
Minnie had ensured that her gift of a silver breakfast service had arrived at the Whitney mansion on the appointed day, an essential token of her appreciation for their lucrative friendship. It joined an antique silver urn from President Cleveland, a white feather fan with a mother-of-pearl handle from Willie K and a silver vase from Lady Colebrooke. William Whitney gave Pauline part of his wife’s extensive jewellery collection, including a collar of sapphires and diamonds, a corsage of diamonds that draped for four inches and a brand-new diamond and pearl necklace.
Despite the profusion of wealth on display, and against the general grain of such matches, the young couple radiated happiness. They had been calculatingly laid in each other’s path, but against the odds, Minnie thought, real affection had blossomed. She had to acknowledge that Almeric and Pauline, while not representing the highest position among the aristocracy, made a promising match. Almeric was not yet titled, but Minnie suspected it would not be long before he would be, particularly now that he had Pauline’s fortune to utilise and fund his ambitions. Minnie believed with every fibre of her being that marriage, when applied to the upper classes, was all about finances. Money was the heart that beat at the centre of every match, driving young people, some unsuspecting and some with their eyes wide open, down the aisle. Yet Pauline and Almeric disproved her theory. Yes, money and station had certainly been a consideration but there was romance there too. Frederick Martin agreed in his memoir, arguing, ‘… marriage with American women infuses vitality, personality, beauty and money into the peerage, although money is not always the factor in the case.’3 Indeed, Minnie’s own marriage with Arthur, despite Marietta’s longing for something better, had been built on affection, prompting Minnie’s friend Lady Decies to declare in her autobiography, Turn of the World, that ‘when she married Arthur Paget, [she] had married for love’.4
Not all of the American heiresses who married that year did so publicly and in the glare of the world’s press. While Consuelo and Pauline were planning their nuptials, Minnie noted that a certain Colonel Howland Roberts and Elizabeth La Roche had got married in Kensington on 21 October 1895. The La Roches were not conspicuous in society but there had been some effort to bolster their status in recent years, with The New York Times reporting on the first of a series of dinners hosted by Dr and Mrs La Roche at their home on Madison Avenue in November 1894. ‘The dinner will be in yellow and blue, the floral decorations consisting of violets and yellow chrysanthemums,’5 readers were informed. Minnie sensed that this was an effort to raise their profile among New York’s elite, after all a series of dinners reported on in the society pages was a statement of intent, a sign that the family wished to partake in the round of occasions that characterised the winter Season. Perhaps it was an attempt to attract a husband for their daughter Elizabeth, who, at thirty years old, was in serious danger of being classed a spinster. It was clear the tactics had worked: Elizabeth was now married and living in England. Colonel Roberts was connected to the London Irish Rifles and was twenty years older than his bride. Maybe Arthur could use his military connections to discover more about the pair and whether they needed guidance to be embraced by London society?
Minnie understood that at least two more marriages between English gentlemen and American heiresses were scheduled to take place by year’s end. Keen evangelist Leonora Van Marter was due to marry the eccentric Lord Bennet, the future Earl of Tankerville, while Cara Rogers, whose father had made his fortune in oil, had accepted the wealthy English civil engineer Urban Hanlon Broughton. Even by Minnie’s standards, the year had been an extraordinary one. With more American women marrying into the British aristocracy than ever before, the clamour for respectability garnered from acceptance by the nobility was worth its weight in gold. Minnie had long ago foreseen the potential for profit from such alliances and realised that, with a little guts and guile, she could assist naive and objectionable upstarts blinded by ambition and mystified by the ordered world that she ruled. She had been the first to understand that dukes with high overheads and hard hearts would enthusiastically respond to the prospect of a renewed fortune and a cast-iron guarantee of their favourable place in family folklore. Later, a reporter would comment on Minnie’s calculated move into society.
‘While her husband was attending to his military duties abroad, this calm, observing, far-sighted woman was arranging her own outposts and defenses at home, and before long London became aware that a very strong and attractive personality had been established in its midst.’6
As she turned her attentions to that evening’s objectives, she must have smiled at the thought of the crop of heiresses who had joined her in England that year. All so different, all searching for something – acceptance, love, respectability, influence – in this land that was in some ways so familiar, yet demanded things from them they couldn’t begin to fathom. They had money and now had a title, but they would need resilience more than anything else to survive the transition. Minnie wondered whether they would be happy, as she had been with Arthur, and immediately berated herself for being so indulgent. The rules of high society were simple and clear. Marriage was a business, and for Minnie Paget that business had been, and would continue to be, a lucrative one.