Soon the procession of heiresses trooping across the Atlantic would also cease. So many of these marriages turned out unhappily – for the girls – that those at home began to think twice about the benefits offered by strawberry leaves. ‘She never dreams that the coronet usually turns into brass and signifies nothing but a decadent race, profligate, immoral, poverty-stricken, and that instead of a crown of glory it will only be a weight of shame on her head to crush her to the earth in humiliation and despair,’ wrote one New York vicar, summing up the American view of the tide of cash-for-coronet marriages, as they were popularly known. Although the majority of the marriages he cited involved European nobility, there were enough in Britain to serve as a warning.
After the first glamour had worn off, life in England, with its wretched climate, its lack of home comforts, the isolation of country life and a husband who spent the new wife’s money while going his own way resulted in disillusionment, misery and – among the more spirited – a determination somehow to escape. Lady William Bagot, who had left her husband several times, finally separated; Sarah Stokes (of New York), who had married Baron Halkett, bringing $5 million, was divorced; as were Lord and Lady Rosslyn (Anna Robinson), while the divorced Lady Francis Hope (the actress May Yohé) ‘ex-musical-comedy star and ex-duchess-presumptive, is, to earn her daily bread, reduced almost to the lowest depths. She is now giving nightly a song and dance turn in a cheap music hall in Sacramento,’ reported the Chicago Sunday Sun with relish.
Better known still were three maritally unhappy American duchesses: Consuelo Marlborough, Consuelo Yznaga and her daughter-in-law Helena Zimmerman.
* * *
The archetype of these unions so fulminated against by the American press – indigent European nobleman cynically weds innocent American heiress to acquire her huge dowry – was probably that of the marriage of Alice Thaw and the Earl of Yarmouth, heir to the Marquess of Hertford. So innocent was Alice that she did not realise her future husband was homosexual; so determined was he to get hold of her money that the actual marriage ceremony was delayed by forty-five minutes as he negotiated for this while fielding a summons for debt.
Alice was one of the ten children of a Pittsburgh iron millionaire who had left each of them $1 million, with more to come from her even richer mother. She had met Lord Yarmouth through her half-brother, Harry Thaw. Yarmouth was known as ‘one of the poorest peers in England’,1 but Alice was clearly determined to become a countess although many of her family disapproved of her marriage. They married in Pittsburgh and her mother, equally keen on the wedding, helped to organise a settlement of $1 million on the couple, plus an annual income that also amounted to $100,000.
The couple went to London, where Alice was presented, but her new life lasted a mere three years, when, unsurprisingly, the marriage was annulled on grounds of non-consummation. Fortunately for Alice, most of her money was securely in trust, although even when she was safely back in America she continued to pay Lord Yarmouth an annual income of $30,000 – it is thought as a quid pro quo for not contesting the divorce.
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 even more poignant, especially as her father had made his views clear.
‘I am an American to my backbone,’ he had declared. ‘Therefore I have only contempt for these helpless, hopeless, lifeless men that cross the ocean to carry off the very flower of our womanhood. When they win our girls they use them, humble them and dishonour them, and then cast them aside for actresses or adventuresses of their own real class. If I had anything to say about the matter I’d make an international marriage a hanging offence.’
Franklin Work had built up his fortune in traditionally American fashion, starting from very little and working his way up, as he did so becoming an expert carriage-driver and owner of some of the finest trotting horses in the US. Through this sport, he met the legendary Commodore Vanderbilt, whose protégé he became – and increased his fortune even more. Fanny, his favourite daughter and set to inherit much of his money, was equally fond of horses. During her debutante seasons in New York she was much admired for her beauty, style and intelligence. She spent lavishly, enjoying parties and the excitement of being admired in beautiful clothes. At the same time, she was very well read, could speak French fluently and took a great interest in paintings and furniture.
She met James (‘Jim’) Roche for the first time when he spent a few days in New York. Jim was tall, good-looking, with good skin, dark eyes, a dark moustache, a sizeable dollop of Irish charm and, as his older brother then had no sons, heir presumptive to the barony of Fermoy.
Though Fanny could not know it, Jim was broke. His family’s Irish estates had been gambled away, he was a younger son and he led a life far beyond what he could actually afford, scattering debts everywhere. He had gone to America with his great friend Moreton Frewen, already known as ‘Mortal Ruin’ for his ability to encourage his friends to invest in reckless financial schemes that failed, thus losing their money. Jim and Frewen, who was married to Clara, the eldest Jerome sister, had been friends since their days at Cambridge, where they had spent most of their time in hard riding to hounds and enjoying themselves.
When Moreton asked Jim to stay at his cattle ranch in Wyoming, Jim accepted with alacrity, partly to try and make a fortune, partly for the opportunities of shooting, riding and general adventure in tough, open-air conditions. They took with them letters of introduction to many of the smartest families in New York, where they spent a few weeks after arrival. It was here that Jim first met the beautiful Fanny, but the friendship did not ripen until his second visit to the US.
In Fanny he saw a way out of his financial problems and she, for her part, was determined to marry the glamorous Jim although under no illusions as to her father’s reactions. Their wedding took place in Christ Church, New York City, in September 1880, and although he disapproved, and indeed disinherited her, her father did, however, make her an allowance of $7,000 a year. The couple set sail for England almost at once, leaving Franklin – who had restrained himself after his daughter’s wedding – to thunder after another similar one:
‘It’s time this international marrying came to a stop for our American girls are ruining our country by it. As fast as honourable hardworking men can earn their money their daughters take it and take it across the ocean. And for what? For the purpose of a title and the privilege of paying the debts of so-called noblemen.’
It was a true prophecy in Fanny’s case. They set up house in London where Fanny, through the Jerome sisters and other American friends who had married into the peerage, was quickly adopted into ‘society’; and gave birth first to two daughters,2 then twin sons. After their arrival, her father increased her allowance to $12,000 a year – Fanny, as her father well knew, had been brought up to be a big spender.
Fanny quickly found that Jim was a philanderer and, what was almost worse, a compulsive gambler, meaning that even the social position to which she had aspired was compromised: she was cut by many in English society because Jim did not pay his gambling debts (where a tailor could be kept waiting for years, gambling debts were considered ‘debts of honour’ and had to be settled as quickly as possible). Appeals for more money, from Fanny, from her husband, and even from his mother, poured across the Atlantic. When Jim squandered $100,000 in one year, Franklin grew tired of subsidising these excesses and, in his own words, ‘stopped pouring money down a rat hole’.
Finally, six years after her wedding and with their furniture in the hands of bailiffs, Fanny returned to New York in December 1886 with her tail between her legs. She took her daughter Cynthia with her – Jim refused to let her take the two boys, largely to keep a hold on her and as a bargaining counter for more money. In New York, Franklin agreed to reinstate her in his will, on condition that she divorced her husband and never returned to Europe. She agreed, taking up her American social life again, and initiating proceedings for an English divorce (American divorces were not then recognised in England). Spurred by this, Jim arrived in the spring of 1887 with the two boys, in an effort to extract more money from his father-in-law. With none forthcoming, he dumped the children on the doorstep of the Work mansion in fashionable East 26th Street and left.
The divorce, headlined in newspapers all over America, eventually took place in 1891 in Delaware. Town Topics was heartily on Fanny’s side, The Saunterer expressing himself freely. ‘Mrs Burke-Roche demands release from a husband she neither loves nor respects. The church and the law oppose her, and do all in their power to drive her into a state of desperation when sin would become easy and disgrace a natural consequence. If she is strong-minded, calm, and sensible, she will continue to fight the bitter battle to the end.’
She did, but during it, Jim’s efforts to win money for himself infuriated Franklin. ‘I have supported that man until I had to decline to pay his debts,’ he told one newspaper. ‘He wrote to me himself. He begged me to come to his assistance. He asked me to save him from bankruptcy. I helped him until I got tired. I deemed it wrong to assist him further after his wife and children had come to this country … I have letters from his mother where she begs me to save her son. Here I have telegrams and letters written by Roche both to me and my daughter.’
Eventually Fanny, who also seemed to have little idea of the value of money, left her father’s house after quarrels with him over her extravagance, going to live at Two-Mile Corner Farm, given to her by her father and only a few miles from Newport, where he had a huge house, Elm Court, over which she presided. With public sympathy on her side, she led a lively social life.
This happy state was brought to an end by history repeating itself. Fanny was taught coach-driving (she became the first woman to drive a four-in-hand in Central Park) by a professional whip who went under the name of Count Aurel Batonyi (his real name, it later emerged, was Cohen). She fell in love with him and they married in 1903. Knowing what her father’s reaction would be to another ‘foreign’ marriage, she kept her marriage completely secret from everyone, until a year later, only hours before they embarked for a trip to Europe, she told her father.
For the eighty-seven-year-old Franklin this was the last straw: he cut off her huge allowance – never less than $5,000 a month – and denied her the use of Elm Court, putting it on the market immediately. ‘She is nothing more to me,’ he said wearily. ‘I don’t know where they have gone; they will never come here.’
Where they went was to the farm near Newport. Here she saw some of her friends, although others cut her (‘Passed Faxon in Bellevue Avenue. Did not bow’). Aurel was not accepted at all. Without her income – a bitter blow for one whose clothes and spending habits were part of her identity – and threatened by her father that her children would suffer in the future if she persisted in this marriage, Fanny finally caved in. Aurel was despatched and, after various ups and downs, her father reinstated her again and restored her generous allowance.
He continued to look after her children, giving them expensive educations, and when he died in 1911, aged ninety-two, left the twin boys, Maurice and Frank, huge fortunes – on condition they became American citizens and stayed in the US for the rest of their lives.
But the boys, with their romantic Irish heritage and their paternal roots overseas, did not see why they should allow a dead man 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.
* * *
Some marriages were, of course, extremely happy, notably those where the bride was in her mid-twenties rather than her teens and where love, rather than ambition, had played a part. But adapting to a life so different in climate, attitudes, behaviour and general mores from the one they had known at home was a challenge that had faced all the American girls who married into the peerage.
Some surmounted it by simply winning over their in-laws by their general charm in the face of stiff opposition. One was Leonie Leslie, whose suitor, John Leslie, followed her to America and whose family violently disapproved of the match. ‘Once married I am sure they will all like her,’ wrote Mrs Jerome to her middle daughter, Jennie, in August 1884. ‘She is such a nice clever kind-hearted girl. And will do all she can to make Jack happy & please his family.’
His father’s uncompromising letter quickly followed these sentiments. ‘Dear Sir, I believe my Son has sailed for America with the expressed intention of offering marriage to your daughter,’ wrote Sir John Leslie to Leonard Jerome, in a warning shot across the bows that September. ‘As he is acting entirely in opposition to my desire & without my approval in the course he has taken, I think you ought to know that I am in absolute possession of my estates. I remain faithfully yours.’ On arrival, Jack Leslie quickly won over Mrs Jerome, who was soon reassuringly on his side.
A month later, Jack Leslie and Leonie Jerome were married – and went on to become favourites of both families, so that a year later Randolph was able to write to Jennie: ‘I am truly delighted at Leonie having got over all her troubles,’ adding, ‘the son and heir is a great thing & must remove all remaining bad feelings in the Leslie bosom.’
Maud Burke, who quickly found that she had little in common with her fox-hunting husband, was one who managed to rebuild her life by discovering her talents as a hostess. At the start of her marriage she had tried to adapt to Leicestershire life, occasionally going out hunting with her husband to please him – though delighted when pregnancy gave her the excuse to stop – then on winter days standing listlessly looking out of the window at the mud, rain, snow and frost of the British winter, sometimes restlessly readjusting the furniture in the rooms she was gradually making prettier and more inviting. After approval by the Prince of Wales gave her social cachet she seized her chance and launched herself as a hostess, eventually moving to London and leading a life on her own.
Other girls tackled their transplanting with a kind of camouflage, adopting the customs, however eccentric they might have thought them, that they had seen in grand houses. One who did this, after a shaky start, was Katharine McVickar, the daughter of a commodore in the US Navy. She had eloped almost on sight with the 5th Baron Grantley in 1879, while being already married to his cousin. The startled and injured Charles Norton brought a divorce action and, as soon as it was absolute, Lord Grantley married Katharine, a mere week before their eldest child was born.
‘Later,’ wrote their son Richard (the 6th Baron), ‘I continually urged my father to permit me to remove the evidence of this race with time from Burke’s Peerage. He took the view, however, that nobody read that work except old-fashioned domestic servants, and said he did not care about their opinion anyway.’
Katharine quickly took to life as a peeress. ‘I can remember being summoned to tea with my mother as a mite of four years,’ wrote Richard Grantley. ‘[It was] a procedure of almost Germanic complexity. My nurse would lead me to the end of the picture gallery, a cosy little apartment 150 feet long. At the end of this interminable walk I was taken over by a footman-in-waiting and handed to the senior footman, two rooms on. Then, one room from my dear mother’s boudoir, I was passed to the butler, and finally announced by the Steward, a sort of super-butler, in the way that still prevails at Embassies.
‘He would throw open the door of the boudoir and trumpet: “Mr Norton.”
‘Tea with Mother was not very jolly. My sisters would be sitting bolt upright and nearly as terrified as I was, in spite of being older and wiser. I was always made to address them as “Miss Joan”, “Miss Eleanor”, “Miss Winifred” and “Miss Katharine”. Our portion was one thin sandwich … I scored, because I was always given a bonus of a single lump of sugar, but only if I sucked it silently and did not crunch “vulgarly”, as Mother used to say.’
Cornelia Craven, a bride at sixteen, managed her successful marriage through total immersion in her husband’s way of life – aided by the fact that she had largely grown up in Scotland and that for much of the time her parents were nearby. As she grew older she became grander: once, when an elderly cousin whom she was entertaining to luncheon told her that he was over on business, she responded: ‘How unfortunate you had to go into trade.’ Living at Coombe Abbey in Warwickshire, where she was loved and respected, she took a close personal interest in the villagers’ lives – to the extent that if a villager failed to appear in church on Sunday morning she would call round in her carriage and pair to find out why. If an employee was ill she provided medical attention, she distributed hampers at Christmas and (after she was widowed) financed a Christmas party and conjuror for the children in the village hall.
But it took Mary Curzon to sum up the more general view in a letter to her father. ‘Just tell the dear girls once a month so they won’t forget it never never never to marry away from home unless they find a George as it is always a sorrow to be an alien – and 50 years in a new country never alters your nationality and I shall never be an Englishwoman in feeling or character and oh! the unhappiness I see around me here in England amongst American women.’