by gail maccoll
Daisy was full of contrasts, the very contrasts that were driving European men crazy. She had “the tournure of a princess” and the manner of a flirt. She dressed with “extreme elegance,” while her conversation was all “a charming, innocent prattle.” She was “dying to be exclusive” but would not for a moment consider abandoning her inappropriate Italian on the main thoroughfare of Roman society just for the sake of appearances.
Her characteristic mix of naïveté and self-confidence, celebrated by James as “an inscrutable combination of audacity and innocence,” was precisely what it was about American heiresses that so perplexed the Europeans, so astounded the English. Was the American girl sophisticated or simple-minded, a calculating woman or an unself-conscious child? Daisy said such naughty things—claiming to have spent so much time with men, for example—in so straightforward a manner. Didn’t she know she was being brazen? Or didn’t she care? They never could figure it out.
Henry James thought he, perhaps, had. After Daisy’s death (from Roman fever, naturally) Winterbourne, a Europeanized American like James himself, chides her Italian suitor for having taken her into the Colosseum at night. He should have known it would expose her to serious illness. But the Italian, while conceding to the danger, can only shrug his shoulders and say, “She did what she liked!”
That statement was added to the story thirty years after it was first published, when James was preparing a uniform edition of his collected works. It came after nearly three decades of writing fiction about American women abroad in foreign society and was practically a single-sentence elegy on the lives of all the American heiresses. These girls weren’t just innocent or ignorant. They were also, in an unsupervised, ill-informed way, free. No one told American girls what to do; no one knew better than they. They hadn’t a clue, but they intended to sweep all before them. “II faut vous preparer d’une vie de sacrifices with me, my dear,” eighteen-year-old Jennie Jerome had warned Lord Randolph Churchill. “I won’t marry you if you don’t let me do exactly as I like.” Or as Daisy Miller’s brother could have told him. along with the rest of the English aristocracy, “She’s an American girl, you bet!”
ON BEHALF OF THE HEIRESS
“It’s very well for Europe to have a few phrases that will do for any girl,” says a society matron in James’ “Pandora.” “The American girl isn’t any girl; she’s a remarkable specimen in a remarkable species.” James himself found the right words to do her justice in the following literary portraits.
Sargent’s portrait of Henry James.
The Golden Bowl, Daisy Miller: A Study, Portrait of a Lady, The Reverberator, Wings of the Dove, A London Life
“An International Episode,” “Lady Barbarina,” “Lord Beaupre,” “Miss Gunton of Poughkeepsie,” “Mrs. Medwin,” “Pandora,” “The Pension Beaurepas,” “The Siege of London”
THE COMPETITION
English girls and their English mamas cast fearful glances southward. Just who would be on the next train from Atlantic ports of call? Noble husband-hunting was hard enough, thank you very much. Foreigners need not apply. Unfortunately, their English brothers and sons seemed not to agree. American girls. What did men see in them?
A NATURAL APPEAL
First and foremost, American girls were pretty. Always. They seemed never to have the bad teeth or long noses or excessive height of English girls. True, they lacked the porcelain complexion and drooping lids considered the crowning glories of aristocratic good looks, but the average American girl was handsomer, more elegant than her English counterpart. And her natural beauty was, of course, clothed to perfection. Her parents were willing to spend more than the English girl’s parents, who could seldom afford to bring out their daughters in a succession of new gowns—much less new gowns from Worth. The American girl also had a superior clothes sense, while the English girl, for reasons never fully made clear, clung to the national tradition of dowdiness. “The general consensus of opinion,” wrote Lady Randolph Churchill, no impartial observer, “is that she [the American girl] is perhaps the best dressed woman in the world.”
* * *
“If you could only see what sticks English women are and bow badly most of them dress . . . .”
CLARA JEROME, in a letter to her mother
* * *
The great thing about English girls was their regal carriage, their quiet, simple hauteur, but even this feature was offset by their tendency to efface themselves unto evaporation. Their detachment was noble, but it could also be deathly dull. No one looked better perched sidesaddle on her horse in Hyde Park, straight-backed and serene, than the English girl, but one would, perhaps, rather take the American girl down to dinner.
Jeannie Chamberlain, the blooming American beauty in person, captured by fashionable portraitist Edward Hughes.
THE AMERICAN BEAUTY ROSE
Right from its 1885 launching by a nursery in Washington, D. C., the American Beauty Rose was society’s favorite flower. No dinner, ball or wedding was properly decorated without hundreds of the red blooms, covering tables, walls and latticed arches. Part of their appeal was the expense (everyone knew they brought $2 a stem) and part was their showy look (so much more luxuriant than the tea roses they replaced), but undoubtedly the greatest draw was their name. There were better roses in the United States and in Europe—hardier, easier to grow, longer lasting once they were cut. But the American Beauty has remained the florists’ best seller because, 100 years ago, an astute nurseryman decided that his customers wouldn’t buy a rose called “Madame Ferdinand Jamin” and renamed it for the prettiest girls he knew.
THE LIFE OF THE PARTY
The American girl was animated. She moved. She asserted herself. She liked to have fun. The Englishman was always amazed, according to Oscar Wilde, at her “extraordinary vivacity, her electrical quickness of repartee, her inexhaustible store of curious catchwords.” On going down to dinner for the first time, the English débutante might also be expected to talk to adults for the first time; naturally, since these adults were not only friends and relations but Cabinet ministers and peers of the realm, she might find herself tongue-tied. Not so the American heiress. Encouraged from the earliest age to express herself, and fully confident that herself was an entirely worthwhile thing to express, she would be utterly unfazed by finding the Chancellor of the Exchequer on her left. She’d had a number of “experiences” she was willing to recount in a burbling, gushing fashion that could, despite her atrocious accent, entrance her otherwise jaded dinner partner.
The American girl might be too familiar, what in English eyes amounted to being “pert,” but she was so innocent it hardly seemed an affront. While the English girl was trained, according to Daisy, Princess of Pless, to greet introductions with “eyes demurely fixed on the ground,” the American girl strode across the room to shake a man’s hand in a way that was pleasing from a young matron, delightfully shocking from a fifteen-year-old.
Lafayette was London’s society photographer. Good friends might exchange signed photographs, which would sit, silver-framed, on a drawing-room table. Photographs of the “Professional Beauties” (Jennie Churchill and Lillie Langtry among them) could actually be bought in shops.
“THE COURAGE TO BE HERSELF”
The American girl enjoyed a freedom of movement and association reserved in Europe solely for married women. She was neither as sheltered nor as ignored as the English girl, who had always to concede first place to her noble brother. While American girls were getting French lessons and history lessons and music lessons from the best possible tutors, the English girl was being educated by “a more or less incompetent governess” in the third-floor schoolroom of the country seat. While the American girl was tripping through the capitals of Europe, looking at pictures, listening to lectures, examining monuments of civilization, the English girl was traveling between the nursery and the stableyard.
“The New York woman has the courage to be herself,” asserted Mary MacDonald Brown, a
n Englishwoman. “The English society woman is trained from her cradle in the art of pleasing and charming. In the process her individuality is apt to be obliterated.” In England it was unthinkable to allow an unmarried girl to ride alone in a carriage, to cross a street without her maid, to attend a dance unchaperoned. Her parents’ surveillance extended to the people she mixed with, her correspondence, the books she read, the thoughts she tried to express. Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough, pitied “the limited outlook” produced by such a restricted upbringing.
In America, on the other hand, girls and boys went on picnics together, had their own little dinner parties, went walking or sailing or riding. It was entirely possible for a young American couple to be left sitting innocently alone in an American drawing room. American girls did not approach the altar, as Daisy Pless swears English girls did, with the expectation of “for the first time in our virginal lives actually touching the elbow of a man.” Unhampered by constant parental surveillance and suspicion, they could launch themselves into the London season with a confidence that simply could not be shared by their shy, inexperienced English sisters.
Lady Sarah Wilson, Lord Randolph Churchill’s sister. With her deep-set eyes and long nose, she typified the English style of good looks.
POINTS IN HER CAMPAIGN
Acquiring sponsorship and putting together a wardrobe by Worth were only the first steps in preparation for the American heiress’s campaign. Other ploys were required to ensure unqualified success in gaining an English title of the first magnitude.
THE RIGHT ADDRESS
The accommodations, of course, were crucial: Claridge’s or Brown’s, or a rented house in Mayfair if one was absolutely confident in one’s—or one’s mother’s—abilities as a hostess. Sponsors knew which families were not coming up to town for the season, and who might be willing to unload their large house on wealthy Americans while they rented some other, smaller house. One most wanted something discreet yet impressive, with a good staircase for making grand entrances. In the 1870s and ‘80s, a house off Berkeley Square, in Bruton Street or Hill Street or Curzon Street, was ideal; by the turn of the century, Portland Place and Grosvenor Square were addresses of choice.
Above: Brown’s Hotel, the American heiress’s home away from home.
Below: The grand houses on Carlton House Terrace, an admirable setting for many an heiress’s charms.
A PRIVATE YACHT
A surefire way to the Prince of Wales’ heart was through his sailing competition with Kaiser Wilhelm II, the nephew whom he strove to prevent from becoming “the boss of Cowes.” Since Americans were increasingly the owners of the world’s most luxurious yachts, and since they tended to keep them in England to avoid American registry and higher crew salaries, the Prince found himself consorting with persons whom, yachtless, he would have ignored. Royal racing circles were the cream of European nobility, and inclusion meant a regular exchange of shipboard dinner invitations as well as a chance to socialize with the Prince when he was at his most relaxed and friendly.
THE OFF-SEASON
Though it was widely conceded that one should never be seen in London in August, it was possible to make use of the less crowded field of the offseason. There was, for instance, the “little season,” when Parliament met in December, as well as the preseason in late winter/early spring. There would be no large political receptions or major balls, but in general the social corset was laced less tightly—a circumstance always advantageous to the newcomer. Mrs. Leggett saw the off-season, “when the butterflies are in Egypt, Cannes, and Rome and the solid men at work in Westminster,” as an opportunity for her daughter Alberta to meet “men of brain and position.”
MEDIA COVERAGE
It was always a good idea to get one’s name about—in the same paragraphs, preferably, with other, more well-known names. If necessary, the free-lance journalist covering a social event could be paid to include an heiress’s name in the list of preeminent attendees. If the heiress was generous, he might expend himself on a description of her glowing appearance. In the 1870s and ‘80s, frequent mention in the Morning Post (“seen riding in the Row,” “seen in her magnificent carriage”) would do; in the ‘90s, a paragraph in the World set the standard. After the turn of the century, publication in the Taller of a photograph by Alice Hughes or Lafayette (one preferred a caption such as “Another American Beauty” to “A Welcome American Invader”) was a good promotional ploy.
WHEN TO SAY NO
No doubt about it, to be shown the ancestral pile was to have the inside track—a chance to show how well one fit with the turrets, Van Dycks and broad acres of the intended setting. But the heiress must weigh her response to the marriage proposal that often accompanied her visit: one didn’t want to jump too fast, nor did one wish to alienate the family. Nancy Langhorne Shaw’s apparent lack of interest in a titled suitor provoked an acquaintance to warn: “I think you should realize, Mrs. Shaw, that it is a very serious matter to refuse a peer.” And Belle Wilson Herbert, in a letter to her sister Grace, noted that “the men get so nasty when they are refused over here.” The heiress must walk a tightrope, with no letup of caution, lest she end up without her English lord.
Left: The Prince of Wales, combining his two favorite pastimes—yachting and flirting.
Below: Marlborough House, the ultimate goal.
POOR PEERS
In many ways, money had always been a factor in aristocratic marriages. There was a longstanding tradition in England of noblemen marrying heiresses to refresh the family coffers. It was the only choice they had. All the manners and impeccable tailoring and aristocratic connections of London’s bachelors effectively hid the harsh truth that many of these men had no money and no way of getting any. In England, gentlemen didn’t work. The custom was a hangover from the palmy days of English agricultural society, when the great landowning families lived on their estates, collected rents from tenant farmers and ran the country. The land yielded sufficient income to live well, sometimes splendidly; and it was part of the landowner’s duty to contribute his time to local or national government by serving as a justice of the peace or taking a seat in Parliament.
* * *
Early in the twentieth century it was possible to live comfortably in London with two servants, eating five meals a day, for £400 a year.
* * *
LORD TUFFNUTT: “You have nothing to grumble at; you were a rich American girl, I am an impoverished English nobleman with a proud title. You bought me with your wealth. I was what you call, in shopping, a bargain!”
LADY TUFFNUTT: “Pardon me! Not a bargain—a remnant.”
The growing industrialization of Britain and the swelling wealthy middle class, however, had put pressure on the aristocracy. The new bourgeoisie, adopting the manners and habits of the upper classes, were sending their sons to public schools and studying the etiquette books to puzzle out the use of calling cards. The crucial distance separating the upper class from the upper-middle was shrinking. Unemployment was the last true distinction.
MARCH OF ANGLOMANIA
American huntsmen often imported packs of foxhounds from England.
HARD TIMES
The concomitant of aristocratic unemployment was aristocratic poverty. A younger son (or, for that matter, an elder son who had not yet inherited) was forced to live on whatever allowance the family estates could muster. To be sure, he might go into the army; but army officers had only recently begun to receive pay, and in a fashionable regiment that would have to be supplemented by as much as £500 per year just to keep up with his messmates in terms of champagne drunk and polo ponies ruined. Politics was an option for, perhaps, the younger son of a great family who could wield age-old influence to obtain a seat in Parliament (as in the case of Lord Randolph Churchill). Political campaigns were expensive, however, and members of Parliament were not paid.
A typical American college graduate, viewing education as a means to getting ahead in the world. For th
e aristocratic Englishman, education was merely gilding the lily.
Dispiriting as these prospects were, they were exacerbated by economic conditions, for England had fallen into an agricultural depression. Beginning around 1873, the income from farms began to slide. The influx of imported foodstuffs, especially refrigerated meat from the Antipodes, Dutch margarine and, worst of all, American wheat drove down prices on native products. Landlords had to permit rent rollbacks or lose their tenants; and there were no new tenants moving onto the land. It became impossible to improve, let alone maintain, agricultural estates. The land was no longer cultivated. Landlords who wished to sell found no buyers, since the return on investment for land had dropped so radically.
Tandragee, the Duke of Manchester’s estate in Ireland. It produced £25,000 a year in rents before the agricultural depression, £14,000 a year afterward.
* * *
“Try one of the Leiter girls.”
Advice from a London dowager to the impecunious Earl of Suffolk, future husband of Miss Daisy Leiter
* * *
By the early 1880s, when the Self-Made Girls began emerging from their schoolrooms, a number of families across the ocean had been very hard hit. Not only were younger sons’ allowances cut back, but even an eldest son who had inherited might have urgent needs (a new roof, for example) not covered by his income. English heiresses were always scarce, owing to primogeniture. If they had brothers, they wouldn’t be heiresses. And now, if a young lady’s family fortunes were agriculturally based, her financial expectations were considerably diminished.
