by gail maccoll
ON TO ALBION
Now the Pushy Mamas were truly breaking new ground. If Continental society was disapproved of by Old New York, English society was beyond redemption. England represented, after all, the hand of tyranny cast off. It was not so many generations back that the Republic had earned its independence from the perfidies of the English monarchy. The subsequent War of 1812 had dashed any notions of forgiveness from American hearts. Each side continued to form and file plans for the invasion and final subjugation of the other. New York society was also well aware that the sympathies of the English aristocracy (and therefore the English government) had been with the South during the American Civil War. In the period directly after that conflict, relations between Albion and her former colonies were as strained as ever they were at the height of the Revolution. A third Anglo-American war was not thought to be out of the question.
This Anglophobia was most fiercely felt toward the English aristocracy, who were perceived as a decadent, hypocritical, conniving, ill-mannered bunch of snobs incapable of understanding the higher principles of democracy and freedom. It was anathema to the republican heart to consider bowing down before English titles; rather, it had been for years the tradition in Old New York to ignore them. If, in Knickerbocker eyes, the seductive gaieties of Paris and Rome could tarnish a woman, then dirty old London could turn her black.
What the Jeromes and Yznagas and Stevenses found, however, was that London, dirty as it was, did not ignore them. London society did not refuse to attend their dinner parties or make lists that excluded their names. London society, the Pushy Mamas discovered, was more stimulating and more permissive, more leisurely and more sophisticated than Old New York. Best of all, London society had the Prince of Wales. Bertie took one look at the green-eyed Minnie Stevens, the luscious Consuelo Yznaga, the entrancing Jerome girls—and all doors opened before them.
H. R. H. the Prince of Wales in a casual mood. The increasing girth of middle age didn’t interfere with his appreciation of women—or with their appreciation of him.
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
Certainly, when dark-haired Jennie Jerome made her début in 1872, there was no problem about invitations. Jennie spent her nineteenth summer with her mother and two sisters at Cowes on the Isle of Wight. In August she attended a ball on board the cruise ship H.M.S. Ariadne in honor of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the Prince’s aunt and uncle, the Czarevich and Czarevna of Russia. At this dance, she was introduced to Lord Randolph Churchill, the brilliant, unruly second son of the seventh Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. He was a bit of a dandy, popeyed and slender, but charismatic—not much of a dancer, but as a talker, hard to resist. Three days later he proposed to the American girl and was accepted.
* * *
“Last night at the circus, someone told me that Jennie would marry the second son of the Duke of Maryborough—a Good Thing tho’ he is a younger son.”
LEONIE JEROME, in her diary
* * *
When, four days after that, Mrs. Jerome was informed, she was aghast. In the first place, neither pair of parents had been consulted, and in the 1870s it was customary for a suitor to reveal his intentions to a girl’s parents or guardians as well as his own before making any firm commitments. For Jennie to plight herself to Randolph before he’d spoken to her mother was rash, if not unbecomingly bold. Then there was his position. Clara Jerome had been in Europe long enough to know that Lord Randolph, a mere second son, was not in line to inherit his father’s dukedom.
Left: The era’s large and luxurious boats like the Royal Yacht made charming venues for socializing as well as vehicles for sporting competition.
Right: Social life at Cowes centered on the Royal Yacht Squadron, which hosted a famous annual regatta.
The Duke and Duchess of Marlborough were equally disapproving. That their son should marry an American about whom they knew nothing was in itself a shock. They moved swiftly to find out more about Leonard Jerome from New York correspondents, and learned nothing they liked. “[T]his Mr. J. seems to be a sporting, and I should think vulgar kind of man,” wrote the Duke to Randolph. “I hear he drives about six and eight horses in New York (one may take this as a kind of indication of what the man is).” Continuing in this vein, the Duke called Jerome a connection “which no man in his senses could think respectable.”
But the force of history was not on the side of the Jerome and Marlborough parents. The Prince of Wales took up Jennie’s cause, informing Their Graces that he, who knew something about American society in general and this family in particular, could see nothing at all objectionable in the match. In fact, Bertie told them, he positively endorsed it. The Marlboroughs then decided to put their faith in Randolph’s renowned fickleness. They would not allow their son to marry Jennie—or even to see her again—until he had gained a seat in the House of Commons. Fortuitously, Parliament was promptly dissolved, a new election called, and Randolph voted in by the people of his home village of Woodstock.
Headstrong fiancés, Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill. A meeker couple would have yielded to their parents’ objections.
* * *
“. . . both Mr. Jerome and myself have too high an opinion of our daughter, too much love ever to permit her to marry any Man without the cordial consent of his family.”
MRS LEONARD JEROME, to Lord Randolph Churchill
* * *
Finally the engagement was accepted—and then nearly foundered on the financial negotiations. Randolph could bring little to the marriage (even though his father would pay his debts beforehand and increase his allowance to £1,100 a year), so the young couple would have to live on the marriage settlement. After all, an illustrious Churchill was marrying a nobody; her family would gain immense prestige from this connection, which meant the dowry had to be generous. Jerome came up with £50,000, which would produce £2,000 of income annually, but insisted on making Jennie an allowance of £1,000 for her personal use. This outraged Lord Randolph’s lawyers, one of whom wrote to him: “The Duke says that such a settlement cannot as far as you are personally concerned be considered as any settlement at all, for. .. Miss Jerome would be made quite independent of you in a pecuniary point of view, which in my experience is most unusual.. . . Although in America, a married woman’s property may be absolutely and entirely her own, I would remark that upon marrying an Englishman, she loses her American nationality and becomes an Englishwoman so that I think that the settlement should be according to the law and custom here.” Jerome saw it differently: “I can but think that your English custom of making the wife so entirely dependent upon the husband, is most unwise.”
Left: The wedding certificate, signed by Lord Randolph and the “spinster” Jennie, proved that love conquers all.
Right: The triumphant young couple. Jennie lost no time in becoming pregnant with Winston.
THE WILSON FAMILY SCORECARD #1
May & Ogden
Among the families arriving in New York after the Civil War were the R.T. Wilsons, a classic example of what the Knickerbockers found so distasteful. Wilson, who stood six and a half feet tall, had an ambition that matched his size. Born the son of a Scottish tanner in Georgia, he began his career as a traveling salesman. The Civil War meant opportunity for a man of his stamp, and he advanced to be commissary general of the Confederate Army. He found it expedient, however, to move his family to London in 1864, and at war’s end the Wilsons returned and settled at 812 Fifth Avenue.
Wilson brought with him his wife Melissa, sons Marshall Orme and Richard Thornton, Jr., daughters May, Belle and Grace—and $500,000. No one knew where the money had come from, but Old New York assumed he’d been selling Confederate supplies to foreign governments while in London. He set about increasing his fortune and was highly successful in banking and southern railroads (as well, some sources say, as the widely fraudulent public franchising of Detroit).
The mother of the “marrying Wilsons,” known as the most successful matc
hmaker of her day.
But the Wilsons remained social outcasts in New York until 1877, when eldest daughter May married Ogden Goelet. The Goelets were Old New York denizens, deriving their genteel income from New York real estate. To be sure, Ogden’s income wasn’t immense, but his connections were impeccable. Suddenly the Wilsons were related by marriage to some of New York’s stuffiest families. Wilson settled $75,000 on the newlyweds. Then Peter Goelet died, leaving his nephew Ogden as much as $25 million. Now the respectable match looked like a brilliant one, and the Wilson family strategy against New York society was set: if you can’t beat them, join them—in holy matrimony.
Baby May Goelet and her mother, née May Wilson.
A “Spy” caricature of the 8th Duke of Manchester (1853-1892) when he was still Viscount Mandeville but already a reprobate.
Young love eventually got its way. In April of 1874, in the modest manner quite typical of the era, Jennie Jerome and Lord Randolph Churchill were married at the British embassy in Paris. Lord Randolph’s parents did not attend (noble parents were not expected to drag themselves across the Channel simply because a child was getting married), but the Prince of Wales sent a representative, indicating not only his friendship for Randolph but also his admiration for Jennie.
Emerging from the wedding breakfast into the spring sunlight, Jennie stepped into an open carriage and waited for her husband to join her. As he settled himself beside her, she opened the gold-and-tortoiseshell-handled parasol that had been a gift from her father and turned with one last smile for her mother and sisters. Then they were off. The new Lady Randolph Churchill could expect to go directly from her honeymoon in France to the center of English society. Reports had reached Paris that a more than usually brilliant London season was about to get underway (the wedding had in fact been pushed forward for this reason), and Jennie had every intention of being part of it.
A NOBLE RAKE
A terse, single-sentence announcement in The New York Times informed the Four Hundred that Jennie Jerome, protégée of the scandalous Fanny Ronalds, was now an English aristocrat. (Fanny already knew, since she’d taken a cue from the younger girls and moved to London herself.) Consuelo Yznaga was not so discreet.
If the Jeromes’ reputation was dubious, the Yznagas’ was worse, and Consuelo’s careless behavior had something to do with this. Blond, pretty, with a merry, easy manner, she was completely uninhibited in an era when bending down to buckle a slipper was considered unladylike. Consuelo thought nothing of picking up a banjo and singing minstrel songs in a Mayfair drawing room, behavior that rather intrigued London’s fashionable set.
One of the dominant women in this circle was the Duchess of Manchester, the former German princess of great beauty and high spirits whose reputation was such that Queen Victoria had demanded the Prince of Wales shun her. The Prince ignored his mother. Louisa Manchester was too charming, her entertainments too amusing to forgo. People played cards for money after her dinner parties; married women flirted and carried on with men not their husbands. The Duchess of Manchester was the sort of woman who went to a music hall with the Prince and danced a cancan.
Her eldest son, Viscount Mandeville, himself fell somewhat short of respectable behavior, and he was charmed by the irrepressible Consuelo when they met at the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York. The story has it that he later visited the Yznagas at a country home (in Louisiana according to one source, New Jersey according to another), where Consuelo nursed him through a bout of typhoid fever. By the time he was well, they were engaged.
The seventh Duke and Duchess of Manchester were as ill-pleased by this engagement as the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough had been by Randolph’s. Mandeville, after all, was going to be a duke himself, and the prospect of an American duchess (particularly a banjo-playing one) seemed unthinkable. But a woman who danced the cancan could not disapprove too successfully of one who played the banjo. Furthermore, Mandeville’s profligate behavior had already spoiled his chances for a respectable English match.
Consuelo Yznaga costumed as Beauty of “Beauty and the Beast,” all too appropriate considering her marital fate.
Where Jennie Jerome’s wedding, announced from Paris, had warranted a single sentence, Consuelo Yznaga’s, a local affair, required headlines in the New York newspapers. It was one of the most elaborate weddings the city had yet seen, with the carriages of the 1,200 guests creating a traffic jam along Broadway outside Grace Church. At the bride’s request, there was a special musical arrangement of the English hunting tune “John Peel.” The New York Times was forced to cover the May 1876 ceremony as a news event, although a social snub was nevertheless administered in the article’s headline: “Lord Mandeville Married.” The bride, in other words, was not someone whose name New York was expected, or even asked, to recognize.
Louisa, Duchess of Manchester, considered a great beauty in her youth. By middle age, her looks had set into a kind of fearsome grandeur.
“A GREAT HEIRESS”
Mrs. Paran Stevens’ name, in contrast, was practically a byword in New York society, and daughter Minnie soon gained a renown of her own. The Stevens women arrived in Europe in 1872, and Minnie naturally charmed the Prince of Wales. She charmed a few others as well and began to receive proposals of marriage, which were promptly turned down as not being impressive enough. The rejects included Lord William Hay and Lord Newry as well as Captain Arthur Paget, a boon companion (and reputed bookmaker) of the Prince. But Minnie was apparently intent on making a really spectacular match, and Paget didn’t qualify.
As Mrs. Stevens trolled her daughter through the social shoals of England and the Continent, Minnie came to be known as “a Great Heiress.” She was the first—if not, as it later transpired, the most deserving—American girl to earn the label. Finally, she (and her mother, it must be assumed) accepted the offer of the French Due de Guiche. As a son of the Due de Gramont, his pedigree was unassailable. The Due, however, was cautious, and he sent a man of business to New York to investigate the Stevens family finances. His offer was subsequently retracted. The Stevens women had, it seemed, inflated Minnie’s net worth.
* * *
“I must say I think this business very cruel, but at the same time I can’t help thinking she deserved a snubbing as she told me she had £20,000 a year and would have more and she told me that sum in dollars as well, so there is no mistaking the amount.”
LADY WALDEGRAVE to Lady Strachey, on the Stevens/Gramont debacle
* * *
Despite the bouquet, this photograph of Minnie Stevens Paget was not taken at her wedding. Her dress, hair and jewelry would have been far more elaborate.
The chagrined and now somewhat desperate Minnie (she was twenty-five, practically a confirmed spinster by the standards of the era) decided to go with the sure thing. If he wasn’t actually titled, Captain Paget was certainly well connected, son of General Lord Alfred Paget, grandson of the Marquess of Anglesey, member of a family prominent in court life for several generations. Mrs. Stevens promptly booked the ceremony for July 27, 1878, at St. Peter’s Eaton Square, scene of many fashionable English weddings.
The real moment of triumph, however, came the day before the wedding, when the Prince of Wales “condescended to pay a visit” (as the press reports phrased it) to offer congratulations and best wishes. Marietta Stevens could gloat, as she fell asleep that night, over just how tough to swallow New York would find that little nugget of news. Queen Victoria’s son calling on the hotelkeeper’s wife—it was a scene that didn’t bear contemplating.
COMME IL FAUT
A bride may wear her wedding dress for formal occasions in the first year of her marriage.
But it was contemplated a great deal over the next few decades. The irony was that this suddenly wealthy woman, snubbed by Mrs. Astor, was considered quite good enough for the future king of England. Many years later that future king would turn at a dinner party and say to Jennie’s grown son, Winston Churchill, “You know,
you wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me.” It was a statement Bertie might have extended to include many of Winston’s contemporaries, the entire generation of half-American English aristocrats that he, more than anyone else, made possible.
THE LAST WORD
Edith Wharton’s last novel was published posthumously in its unfinished state in 1938. Called The Buccaneers, it traces the marital careers of a band of American girls who landed in London in the 1870s. As she did in many of her novels, the author based her characters to some extent on people she knew.
Lovely, lazy, guitar-playing Conchita Closson clearly resembles Consuelo Yznaga. She marries improvident Lord Richard Marable in circumstances similar to those surrounding the courtship of Consuelo and Lord Mandeville. Mrs. Wharton also creates a pair of sisters reminiscent of the socially successful Yznagas and Jeromes. The pretty and high-spirited St. George girls have a father who is a Southerner, like R.T. Wilson, and an inconsistently successful stock speculator, like Leonard Jerome. One marries the Earl of Seadown; the other, the Duke of Tintagel. Finally, Lizzy Elmsworth, a dark-haired beauty resembling Jennie Jerome, marries Hector Robinson, a rising M.P. in the Randolph Churchill mold. The focus of the novel was to be Nan St. George, Duchess of Tintagel (based on Consuelo Vanderbilt, an heiress of the 1890s), who would eventually run away from her husband.
Near the end of the fragment, Mrs. Wharton sets the scene not only for the rest of her story but for the rest of the century. “The free and easy Americanism of this little band of invaders had taken the world of fashion by storm . . . . ‘Wherever the men are amused, fashion is bound to follow’ was one of Lizzy’s axioms; and certainly, from their future sovereign to his most newly knighted subject, the men were amused in Mayfair’s American drawing rooms.”
