AUTHOR’S NOTE
252 Words
AUTHOR’S NOTEAs I have related in this story, the long line of American heiresses eager to marry titles in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries started with Jenny Jerome who married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874.
Historians estimate that by 1909 there were around five hundred marriages in which the bridegroom might have been dissolute, homosexual, brutal or have serious mental health issues, but so long as he appeared in Debrett’s Peerage or the Almanach de Gotha he was deemed eligible.
The wedding ceremonies tended to highlight the differences between the reserved and traditional British bridegrooms and the ‘new money’ of their American brides, resulting in celebrations that could be described as ostentatious displays of wealth, which were vividly publicised. For example, at Sherry’s, a famous restaurant of the time in New York, an immense ‘bird’ was exploded to shoot ten thousand roses over the guests, which shocked British Society.
In circumstances in which these young brides had no say, many thousands of miles away from home, it is amazing that any ever coped with the cultural differences and adjusted to the Society into which they had married.
As a child the loveliest person I ever saw was the Duchess of Marlborough. Before her marriage she had been Consuela Vanderbilt, an immensely wealthy heiress, and who, despite being desperately unhappy, was adored by everyone who knew her. Her biography, The Glitter and the Gold, describes her sufferings and unmasks the way her dominating mother used threats and even violence to compel her to marry the Duke.
- Writer
