The Dollar Princesses

For much of the history we're discussed on this podcast, marriages were the best way to advance one's social position. In the Gilded Age, a special subset of advantageous marriages emerged: in which wealthy American heiresses paid generous dowries to marry into the European nobility.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
and Grim and Mild from Aaron Mankey Listener discretion advised. Hey,
this is Dani Schwartz, host of Noble Blood. If you
want to support the show, you can sign up on
our Patreon, Patreon dot com slash Noble Blood Tails. There's

(00:20):
a link in the episode description where you get episode scripts,
monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive merch like a seasonal sticker
that is designed by incredible artists. There's so much fun.
I have them now all over my kitchen. If you're
listening to this episode, the day comes out. My book
comes out next week, and preorders are so important in

(00:43):
the book world. I'm sure you're tired of people telling
you about that, but it's true. So if you like
slightly maccabre historical stories, I think you'll really like my book.
It's a sequel to my first novel, Anatomy A Love Story.
This one is called Immortality a Love Story, and it's
a sort of fictional alternate universe where a young female

(01:04):
surgeon becomes the personal physician to Princess Charlotte of Wales,
the granddaughter of King George the Third. So if you're
interested in this podcast. I really think you'll like it.
Please preorder it and thank you for listening. Alice Thought

(01:24):
was the wealthy daughter of an even wealthier man, a
Pittsburgh railroad magnet, who was convinced that his money should
be able to buy his family entry into the upper
echelons of society. This was three and as had been
the practice for hundreds of years, the best way to
elevate and cement your family social status was by marrying

(01:47):
off your daughter. In this case, Alice Thought was going
to be married to the Earl of Yarmouth, an English
visitor who would sweep young Alice back across the Atlantic
and into a life of title and balls. It should
have been the happiest day of her life. The setup
sounds like a fairy tale, a rich, beautiful girl marrying

(02:09):
an earl. But Alice waited at the church in Pittsburgh,
no doubt listening behind a door or screen. As all
of the esteemed society guests filed into the pews to
take their seats, and Alice waited and waited. There were

(02:29):
frantic whispers and grimaces barely disguised as smiles. The wedding
was delayed, Was it a case of cold feet. Not
quite that morning, the groom had gone to the courthouse
to get his marriage license, and on his way back
to the Hotel schlen Ley where he was staying, he
was served a writ by a constable and local alderman's agent.

(02:54):
You see, the groom was an earl, but he was
also a habitual gambler who had a talent for avoiding
paying his debts. His marriage to Miss Alice Thaw was
in large part thanks to her generous dowry and inheritance,
and her wealth was tremendous. Between the inheritance she received

(03:14):
from her by then dead father and the money that
she would inherit from her independently rich mother, Alice was
a multimillionaire many times over, and this was more than
a hundred years ago. Money the Thaw family had, but
they wanted prestige, which George Seymour, Earl of Yarmouth, could provide.
Upon marrying him, Alice thought would become a countess and

(03:36):
her family would get the bragging rights of having an
English noble in the family. The Earl was an amateur
actor and the young couple had only known each other
for three months before the wedding. Still, it seemed like
a perfectly reasonable arrangement, at least until the day of
the wedding, when Alice was pacing at the church and

(03:58):
her younger brother had to race down to the courthouse
for a last minute renegotiation of the dowry so that
the groom would be released from custody. Once the earl's
debtors were satisfied, the groom headed to the church, where
he took his place at the altar with his betrothed
a few hours late, but with the guests none the wiser.

(04:20):
At least none the wiser until The New York Times
wrote an article about the whole snaffhoo a few weeks later.
Alice's arrangement was fairly common. There was a name for
girls like her, dollar princesses. They were the results of
an old social system crashing violently against a new way

(04:42):
of making an extreme amount of money. The marriage between
Alice Thaw and the Earl of Yarmouth was, and try
your best not to be too shocked by this, a
wildly unhappy one. Alice was miserable almost as soon as
the two boarded the St. Paul to begin sailing for England,
and five years later, she sued for divorce. The annulment

(05:04):
was granted on the ground of non consummation. Alice moved
back to Massachusetts, taking her wealth with her. It had
seemed like a perfect arrangement, a way of taking and
giving in ways meant to game the system during a
sort of social and cultural no man's land when the

(05:25):
Industrial Revolution had turned everything on its head. But the
system itself was designed on its exclusivity, meant to keep
certain people out, and some people, even when they married
dukes or earls or princes, preferred to break the system entirely.

(05:46):
I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is noble blood. The late
eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds, a periods sometimes referred
to as the Guilded Age, was a fascinating period in
the social history of the American elite. Comparing ourselves to Europe,

(06:09):
Americans sometimes like to boast about the fact that we
have no aristocracy. Well that's not exactly true. Well we
don't have well titled landed gentry. There was very clearly
a defined upper class in the Gilded Age, so clearly defined,
in fact, that there was a group called the four

(06:32):
Hundred who were considered part of the elite social circle,
as determined by Caroline Astor anecdotally, four hundred was the
amount of people who could fit inside Mrs Astor's ballroom,
though there have been questions even at the time whether
explicitly a list existed, and if it did, who was

(06:52):
on it. What's very clear is that there was an
in crowd, and getting in wasn't always something that money
could buy. Though our social strata have become maybe slightly
less rigid, I want to be clear, the hidden American
aristocracy still very much exists, probably in a pile marked

(07:14):
legacy in the Yale Admissions office. But something strange was
happening at the turn of the century. Certain common people
were making money, a lot of money from steel and railroads,
money that would have been unthinkable a century or even
half a century prior. The Industrial Revolution had changed things,

(07:38):
and now there were people whose parents had been nobody's
who were now able to buy homes facing Central Park.
They could afford the right clothes and the right wall
paper and the right chefs, and they wanted to go
to the right parties. But the social system of the
Gilded Age still scoffed at new money, and when the

(07:58):
likes of Mrs ass refused to allow them entry into
her private kingdom. The so called new money decided that
the best way to get ahead was to go overseas.
Originally a move borne out of creative desperation among the
new vaux reach, marrying into a title soon became the

(08:20):
most fashionable thing that a young American woman could do.
It's still pretty glamorous today if you think about it.
I mean, we're raised on Disney movies that promise that
the most beautiful and virtuous among us are destined to
be royalty. Even today, a lot of Americans are suckers
for a British accent titled or not. But this was

(08:42):
a mutually beneficial arrangement for the mail order grooms across
the pond as well. Their titles were centuries old, but
so often were the estates that came with them, and
the world had changed in that time, particularly the way
that people made money. Lar swatches of farming land simply

(09:02):
weren't going to make a man as rich as say,
being a railroad magnet machinery was the new superpower. Years
of gradually diminishing inheritances left dukes and earls with magnificent estates,
but no cash to heat them or fix their leaking roofs.
They needed an influx of cash, and they could get

(09:23):
it through marriage. I saw one figure estimating that twenty
five billion dollars made its way into England via American brides.
If you've seen Downton Abbey, you're familiar with the arrangement.
Running a massive estate with a massive staff takes money,
and so in Downton Abbey, the fictional Earl of Grantham

(09:45):
married an American heiress named Cora to help keep Downton running.
It was such a common practice at the time that
there was a quarterly publication called the Titled American that
would run ads from bachelor's looking for rich wives. One
ad read, the Marquess of Winchester is thirty two years
old and a captain of the Coldstream Guards. You know

(10:08):
what you could do worse. It wasn't always the case
that these men were holding their noses and being forced
to marry gasp tacky Americans for purely mercenary reasons. There
was some charm to their new brides. As a rule,
American girls were well educated and fun and typically outspoken,

(10:29):
which was a novelty compared to their more demure English counterparts.
Even still, unlike Downton Abbey, these marriages almost invariably ended
in disaster. So let's take a look at some of
these marriages. The trend began with a young woman named
Jenny Jerome, the Brooklyn born daughter of a land speculator,

(10:52):
who married Lord Randolph Churchill in eighteen seventy four. Neither
set of parents were thrilled at the man the couple
had met, if you can believe it, at a sailing
regatta introduced by Queen Victoria's son, the then Prince of Wales,
who had been delighted and charmed by Jenny. American girls
like Jenny Jerome were faring better in Europe than they

(11:15):
were among the New York City elite. Though the Jerome's
could buy a mansion at the corner of twenty six
Street and Madison Avenue, they couldn't buy their way out
of the perception that Jenny's father was a rake. I
found one source claim that he was quote a noted
chaser of comely opera singers, and that Jenny's mother had

(11:36):
gasp rumored Iroquois ancestry. But in Europe, Jenny Shone. In
her diary, she wrote of why she thought English boys
were so delighted by American girls. Quote, they are better
read and have generally traveled before they make their appearance
in the world. Whereas a whole family of English girls
are educated by a more or less incompetent governess, the

(11:59):
air Can girl in the same condition of life will
begin from her earliest age with the best professors. By
the time she's eighteen, she's able to assert her views
on most things and her independence in all. Three days
after meeting Lord Randolph, Jenny and he were engaged. His
parents were upset about the aforementioned blemishes on Jenny's parents reputations.

(12:23):
Lord Randolph's father wrote in a letter to his son
that Jenny's father quote drives about six and eight horses
in New York. One may take this as an indication
of what the man is. To be quite honest, I'm
not sure if that's too many horses or too few,
but I'm sure Lord Randolph knew what that meant of

(12:44):
what kind of man he was. Meanwhile, Jenny's parents were
myth that Lord Randolph hadn't asked their permission before proposing,
and they were a little upset that because Lord Randolph
wasn't his father's eldest son, he wouldn't inherit the title
of Due of Marlborough. But now either family could argue
with the fact that it was a smart arrangement, on

(13:05):
top of the fact that the Prince of Wales had
ostensibly set them up. Because Randolph was a younger son,
he wouldn't have any money of his own outside of
a meager allowance. The Jerome's were getting into bed with
a powerful British noble family, and for that they paid
fifty thousand pounds in a dowry and a one thousand
pound yearly allowance for Jenny. It had been a long

(13:29):
negotiation before the marriage could actually take place, despite the
speed at which the couple had originally become engaged, which
had probably something to do with the slight scandal when
their first child, a son, was born, only um seven
months after the wedding. By the standards of dollar princess marriages,

(13:51):
theirs was successful, at least successful enough that after her
husband died, Jenny would go on to marry two more Englishmen,
but more often than not, the marriages were disasters from
the start. Consider the case of another American, a young
woman named Winnoretta Singer, the heiress to the Singer sewing

(14:13):
machine fortune. In eighteen eighty seven, when Winneretta was twenty two,
she was married to a French prince named my sincerest
apologies for this pronunciation, Louis de sa mont Bayard. The
marriage did not go well. On their wedding night, Winneretta
climbed on top of an armoir and shouted at the

(14:33):
groom that if he touched her, she would kill him.
It wasn't a distaste for frenchmen. Winneretta was a lesbian,
and five years later their marriage was annulled on the
grounds of non consummation. Winnoeretta would marry again another French aristocrat,
a man named Prince Edmund de Polignac, whose grandmother, the
Duchess Polignac, had coincidentally been one of Marie Antoinette's favorites.

(14:58):
This marriage between winner Etta and Prince Edmund was also
never consummated, but it was a much happier arrangement. The
two were both gay, and so they remained married, happily
hosting salons and sponsoring causes of arts and culture, while
each took whichever lovers they wanted on the side. On
Winneretta's end, those lovers included a number of prominent female

(15:20):
socialites and artists, including allegedly Virginia Wolf. I want to
say here, I realized that this episode of the podcast
is a little bit different than others I've done that
focus on a single story. This episode is more the
story of a phenomenon, and so we're jumping between individual
cases to understand a larger pattern. But this is Noble Blood,

(15:44):
and I want to tell you a story. So let
zoom back in on the wedding day of one of
the most iconic dollar princesses in American history, a young
woman named Consuelo Vanderbilt. By her wedding day in eighteen
Consuelo was one of the most well known socialites in

(16:06):
New York. Her father was the oldest son of the
oldest son of the railroad baron, Cornelius Vanderbilt. For a time,
the Vanderbilts were considered the wealthiest family in America. Still,
they had been snubbed by Old New York, and Consualo's
mother was determined to give her daughter a match that
would exalt her. What better way of establishing importance on

(16:30):
an altogether arbitrary system of social standing than by giving
her daughter a title Duchess. Consualo's groom was Charles Spencer Churchill,
the Duke of Marlborough, who went by Sonny because of
another title he also held, Earl of Sunderland. He was
actually the nephew of the man that Jenny Jerome had

(16:51):
married two decades earlier. It was to be the event
of the season. On the morning of November six. Swarms
of people lined both sides of Fifth Avenue, waiting to
catch just a glimpse of the bride as she arrived
to St. Thomas Episcopal Church, but their jubilant spirit hadn't

(17:11):
reached Consuelo. She would later write, quote, I spent the
morning of my wedding day in tears and alone. No
one came near me. A footman had been posted at
the door of my apartment, and not even my Governess
was admitted. Like an automaton. I donned the lovely lingerie
with its real lace and the white silk stockings and shoes.

(17:34):
I felt cold and numb as I went down to
meet my father and the bridesmaids, who were waiting for
me and quote. Allegedly, Consuelo had been in love with
another man, but regardless, the bride was already bought and
paid for. The dowry was two point five million dollars
worth of shares in Vanderbilt stock. The family would also

(17:56):
give one hundred thousand dollars annually to both Consuelo and Charles.
The wedding happened, and miserable as Consuelo had been that morning,
things for her were about to get much, much worse.
As soon as the wedding was over, Consuelo and Sonny

(18:17):
left for his dreary family home, Lennim Palace. When they
got there, Sonny told his new bride that he actually
had a lover and intended to keep her on the side.
Consuelo's role then was wife, yes, but also bank. The
marriage to her finally allowed the Marlborough family enough money

(18:37):
to begin to restore their historic home. For Consulo, it
was a misery living there, she wrote, quote, we spent
the first three months in a cold and cheerless apartment
looking north. They were ugly, depressing rooms, devoid of the
beauty and comforts my own home had provided. Remember, of course,

(18:58):
that Consualo's family had been extraordinarily rich in America. Their
homes in New York had electricity and running water. Those
were not luxuries that stately but very very old houses
in England had. Blenheim was sixty five miles from London
and did not have indoor plumbing. The couple remained married

(19:21):
for ten years, with multiple affairs from both parties, until
they finally divorced, although it couldn't have been all bad
for Consuelo because when she finally died, she did ask
that she be buried at Blenhim Palace, which her money
had done so much to restore. The times would evolve,
and the heyday of the American dollar princess ended at

(19:44):
the beginning of the twentieth century. George the Five became
king in nineteen ten, and his ascension began to usher
in a season of English prudence and austerity that lasted
throughout the First World War. Excesses, a labortt parties, and
displays of wealth began to seem vulgar, and so the

(20:05):
need to import it via American brides began to diminish. Meanwhile,
things began gradually improving for the new money set in America.
Wealthy heiresses were granted more social capital. They didn't need
a title so badly that they were willing to spend
their lives mill doing on a dreary property outside London

(20:26):
while a cheating husband tore through her fortune restoring his
family's home. They could get enough attention and parties. In America.
The final heiress that will talk about today is a
young woman named Frances Ellen Work who married a baron
in eighteen eighty. She would eventually inherit fifteen million dollars,

(20:50):
which is a good thing because her husband spent an
estimated two point five million gambling. Francis works father, Frank,
was a self made New York millionaire, and by the
time he died in nineteen eleven, he came to despise
the idea of dollar princesses exchanging titles for money, even

(21:11):
though that's exactly what his own daughter had done. His
obituary in the New York Tribune included a quote, It's
time this international marrying came to a stop, for our
American girls are ruining our own country by it. As
fast as our honorable hard working men can earn this money,
their daughters take it and toss it across the ocean,

(21:34):
and for what For the purpose of a title and
the privilege of paying the debts of so called nobleman.
If I had anything to say about it, I'd make
an international marriage a hanging offense. Ultimately, Francis work Baroness
would become the great grandmother of a woman who married

(21:54):
into a title even grander than her own, the title
Princess of Wales. Her great granddaughter was Princess Diana, But
like her ancestor, the title and the marriage was ultimately
not worth the price. That's the story or stories of

(22:18):
a few notable dollar princesses. But stick around after a
brief sponsor break to hear a little fun fact. I
think you'll enjoy. The englishmen and women I know take

(22:40):
a certain pride in looking down on Americans, not overtly,
but little jokes bragging, you know, But an American is
actually responsible for one of Great Britain's biggest points of pride.
Do you remember Jenny Jerome, the girl who all but
started the trend of marrying for titles when she wed

(23:00):
Lord Randolph in eight seventy four. Well, Jenny Jerome did
her duty of providing her husband and air a baby
born scandalous Lee seven months after their marriage, a son
who would go on to become a statesman, scholar, and
Prime minister. Jenny Jerome's son was Winston Churchill. Noble Blood

(23:35):
is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and
Mild from Aaron Mankey. Noble Blood is hosted by me
Danish Sports. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston,
hannah's Wick, Mirra Hayward, Courtney Sunder and Laurie Goodman. The
show is produced by rema Il Kali, with supervising producer
Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Mankey, Alex will Lilliams,

(24:00):
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