The Husband Hunters

by Anne de Courcy

  A fortunate few, however, still had charge of their own money and thus, to a degree, of their lives. One of these was Anna Murphy, whose solution to boredom and unhappiness was constant travelling. ‘What sort of a life do I have to lead to induce me to return any sooner than I can help?’ she wrote to her baronet husband on one of her trips abroad.

  Anna was one of the four daughters of Daniel Murphy and his wife Anna Geoghan. Daniel had emigrated from Ireland during the potato famine, or Great Starvation (1845–52). Arriving in New York, he had begun work on the transcontinental railway that offered employment to so many Irish labourers, working his way across America until he reached the village (as it then was) of San Francisco, where he opened a hardware store. Then, in 1848, came the Gold Rush, and with Murphy’s the only hardware store in town it was the place all the would-be miners went for equipment. Between January 1848 and December 1849, the population of San Francisco increased from 1,000 to 25,000 and Daniel Murphy’s business expanded exponentially. Within a few years he had made a fortune. But the Murphys, with their humble beginnings and ‘nouveau’ money, could not get into society. Mrs Murphy took a route by now beginning to be time-honoured: she took her daughters to Europe in search of husbands, preferably titled.

  Charles Wolseley, the 9th baronet, born in 1846, had inherited his title when he was only eight. As a minor, he had been made a Ward in Chancery, and as such his mother was not permitted to go on living at Wolseley Hall, so she took her children abroad, where living was more economical. At eleven, he was brought back to England for formal education, living with his mother at the estate’s dower house, Park House.

  He did not take to education. His response when she insisted that he go to Oxford University was that he would do so, but he would not study, would not take his degree and would leave when he was twenty-one. He did all three, and the parting words of the Dean of his college to him were: ‘I hope to hear anything good of you but I never expect to.’

  When Charles attained his majority he had hoped to live at Wolseley Hall, but it needed so much refurbishing and repairing after neglect by its various tenants that when he had completed these he could no longer afford to live there. So he took himself off for long trips abroad, not even returning for his mother’s funeral in 1873. When he did return, he lived at Park House (the dower house), where his mother had lived, and spent the next five years working hard at enjoying himself. He shot, he hunted, he raced in point-to-points, and became one of the country’s first polo players.

  When he lost money betting on races, he let Park House and went abroad again. On his return, he again found that the tenants of Wolseley Hall had let the place go and major repairs were needed. This time, the bill was £4,000 plus another £800 to build new stables. He turned to the solution found by others in his predicament – a pretty American heiress.

  Charles had met the Murphys in San Francisco on one of his trips abroad, and now proposed to the prettiest daughter, Anna, with the agreement that her father would settle over $1 million on him. Unfortunately for Charles, after the wedding (in 1883) but before the money had been transferred, Mr Murphy died, and Anna’s siblings, feeling that too much of the estate was going to the Wolseleys, contested the will and had the Wolseley portion reduced. Even worse for Charles, it was settled on Anna rather than him.

  At first Sir Charles and the new Lady Wolseley were happy, and two little boys were born. But then the familiar drawbacks of life in the English countryside became too much for someone like Anna, accustomed to the lively social scene of the European capitals. Financially independent and with the self-confidence that was her American birthright, she took matters into her own hands – and spent as little time in her new home as possible, largely through extended and highly expensive trips abroad.

  By 1899 she was in India, enjoying herself taking photographs, moving around the country, asking her husband to send out some of her clothes and refusing to come home because she ‘hadn’t seen enough of India yet and didn’t have time to pack before the ship sailed’.

  Relations between them had begun to deteriorate, so much so that she refused to return for her sons’ six-week school holidays, though she continued to sign her letters with the phrase ‘The Sweet Wife Wolseley’. But this did not stop her writing that April: ‘I cannot see why you wish to make it so great an affair my being away for the holidays instead of suggesting that you will try and fill my place towards the boys for this once … with only the past life to face on my return – for I can picture no other – little wonder that I tarry in doing so.’

  When she did return, she complained of her husband’s indifference, saying that he was too cold, detached, inattentive and unsympathetic (‘I don’t believe you have once made a kind personal reference to me since I left in one of your letters, as to whether I was well, enjoying myself, or anything about me’), though she hoped the American flag was still flying at Wolseley Hall on the Fourth of July.

  As for the wealth that had been supposed to rescue the Wolseley fortunes, this was still firmly in Anna’s grasp. Although she sent her husband an allowance to keep up the estate for their elder son Edric, Charles found this inadequate and sold off a few pictures to supplement his income, upon which Anna promptly cut the allowance by half. By now their marriage had become a misery, with Anna’s letters bristling with hostility; any hotel room on earth, she assured him, was better than a night under the same roof as him. To survive, Charles sold more and more until, finally, almost everything had gone and, broken and wretched, he was forced to leave the Hall.

  * * *

  In nineteenth-century Britain, politics and land were inextricably mingled: almost three-quarters of the Commons represented landed interests, and so did nearly all the House of Lords, an aristocracy so small that it was almost tribal, with its own nicknames, jokes and expressions. In those old Whig families where the gulf between the two parties still remained, even certain words were differently pronounced. Little Whig children were taught to say ‘cawfee’ instead of coffee, ‘yaller’ instead of yellow, ‘cowcumber’ for cucumber, ‘napern’ for apron and ‘Orspital’ and ‘orficer’ for hospital and officer. To call a chimneypiece a mantelpiece, wrote Mabell Gore, the daughter of Viscount Sudley, ‘proclaimed a Tory of the deepest dye’.

  It was also strictly hierarchical, with everyone knowing exactly where everyone stood. When Consuelo Vanderbilt married the Duke of Marlborough in 1895 he told her that there were just 200 families whose names and titles she must remember. Precedence was all-important, not just for seating but for the procession in to dinner: one of the four earls she was entertaining at her first big weekend house party reproved her on the second night because she had wrongly given one of the other three precedence over him.

  The converse of this was that because gradations of rank were both accepted and well known, there was little jostling for position – competition took other forms – as everyone knew that no matter how hard she tried, a marchioness could never outrank a duchess. At the top, of course, was Queen Victoria, but, honour though it was to serve her, it could not have been called fun. Gloom, cold and formality were the salient characteristics of the court. There was little colour, with the Queen in the mourning she always wore after the death of the Prince Consort in 1861, the conversation frequently of funerals and epitaphs, in which Victoria was keenly interested and, for the last twenty years of her reign, dinner parties conducted in almost total silence. Balmoral, always freezing-cold – the Queen detested fires – was even more hideous for those unlucky enough to be invited. ‘We just exist from meal to meal and do our best to kill time,’ wrote one of her ladies-in-waiting, Marie Adeane, in 1890. It was not surprising that smart society revolved round the pleasure-loving, genial Prince of Wales.

  * * *

  Another surprise for American brides was the discovery that politics was generally part of daily life – discussed over the dinner table, written about in letters. (‘I cannot help thinking you are quite in the wrong wh
en you say so decidedly “Drop the Education Bill”,’ wrote one wife to her husband before going on to say, ‘in less than a week, my darling, we shall be together once more…’) Spending afternoons in the Strangers’ Gallery to listen to important debates or those in which a brother or husband was involved was a recognised entertainment, while the great hostesses were also political enablers.

  ‘Cyril Flower asked us to dine with him at the House of Commons, which we did in the evening,’ wrote Mary Theresa Leiter when she and her daughter Mary visited London. ‘The guests were Lord and Lady Rayleigh (she is sister of Arthur Balfour), Mr George Wyndham, Mr G. Curzon, St John Brodrick and Lady Hilda his wife, H. H. Asquith, Princesse de Wagram, Mary and I. The dinner was a brilliant one and all were MPs except of course Lord Rayleigh. After dinner we went to Mr Brodrick’s Committee Room, where we took our coffee, when all the members were summoned for a Division.’

  This intermingling of social life and politics in a way then unknown in America was not merely because the simple geographical reason of lesser distance allowed peers and other landowners to come up to London for parliamentary terms, staying in their own or rented town houses; more that in England ‘the ruling class’ was the ruling class; and it was a matter of hereditary custom that they should be so. As late as 1865 a mere sixty families supplied one third of the House of Lords and one third of the House of Commons, thus one third of the ruling body of an empire that comprised a quarter of the world’s population.

  In America, by contrast, a large proportion of the ‘movers and shakers’ were busy opening up the prairies, building railways and establishing mining, stockbroking and real estate businesses anywhere from California to Connecticut – in other words, focusing on the expansion of the country’s wealth and economy – while politics per se took place in Washington.

  Politics was in fact the ruling social passion of many of the upper-class English. Statesmen met each other at the houses of the leading hostesses, often arriving at a private consensus that would later be ratified in Parliament – and probably to be watched from the gallery that afternoon by the same women at whose houses they had so recently dined.

  Once the season was over, they were to be found at carefully arranged country-house parties, where instead of confidential discussions over cigars there were strolls in the shrubbery well away from listening ears; or meetings in a quiet library. Nor did the gossip-writers in England concern themselves with private house parties, so that it was possible for political opponents or ambassadors from arguing countries to have friendly discussions in an atmosphere of privacy and luxury.

  Autumn was the best time for these country-house weekends – known then as Saturdays to Mondays (because as in law a ‘gentleman’ was ‘a man who has no occupation’, the word ‘weekend’ implied that weekdays were spent earning a living). There was still late-summer sun, the hunting and shooting seasons had not yet started, debutantes, now ‘out’, could be asked to leaven the mix, Parliament did not go back until after Christmas – and after the exhaustions of the season, rest in the country was welcome. Besides, there would be plenty of gossip over what had gone on during the balls and dances and close proximities of those three months of gruelling late nights – who had been seen with whom, who had said what to whom, who had got engaged and who hadn’t.

  Such weekends were, of course, ostensibly nothing to do with politics but all about enjoyment of the company of interesting or like-minded people. Often they were all from the same small set, but as the century drew on, as well as the usual aristocratic contingent there might be a diplomat, one or two well-known beauties, a painter, a writer and a musician, who would entertain the company after dinner.

  The hidden agenda, though, was frequently the facilitating or furthering of romances and love affairs. With restaurants largely out of bounds to respectable women – and hotels even more so – there would have been few chances to meet in London but, during a country weekend, riding or walks together or a disappearance for a pre-dinner stroll in the shrubbery were easily manageable.

  Assignations were discreetly arranged; any touching in public was taboo, but a man might show his interest in a woman by writing a note that his valet would give to her maid to put on her breakfast tray, perhaps suggesting a walk together before lunch or, if it was a shooting party, that she should stand with him at his ‘peg’. Labels with the occupant’s name on them slotted into brass holders on bedroom doors not only stopped anyone getting lost in a large, strange house but allowed illicit visits during the night (‘children of the mist’ was one name for a child sired by someone not the husband).

  ‘For a winter visit you arrived about five o’clock,’ wrote the novelist Elinor Glyn of staying with the Prince’s favourite, Lady Warwick. ‘The entrance hall where you left your furs had trophy heads round it, as had every other hall in this kind of house at that time, because all proper Englishmen (who could afford it) went big-game shooting all over the world, and brought back the heads of every sort of strange animal to adorn their stately houses.’

  You would then be taken into the saloon, where your hostess and any other lady guests were to be found. ‘They would be wearing tea gowns, of velvet or satin brocade, trimmed with sable,’ recalled Elinor. ‘They usually had V-necks and elbow-length sleeves. They would be enjoying a substantial tea – muffins, crumpets, cakes, scones with honey or jam and Devonshire cream instead of, as formerly, only slices of thin bread and butter.’

  Tea would be removed by footmen. In a grand house, these might be chosen for their matching heights – Lady Warwick’s were all six foot – and good looks. The hostess would then take the ladies to their bedrooms, ‘made luxurious with sofas heaped with soft down cushions, stands loaded with the newest books near them, white bear hearthrugs, shaded lamps, silk or tapestry hangings, writing tables with pens, paper and stamps’. Behind a screen, tipped against the wall, was a huge, painted tin tub, to be filled with hot water brought up by housemaids every morning. A fire would already have been lit.

  Most people arrived by train, often with several changes en route and always accompanied by a mountain of luggage – hatboxes, trunks containing numerous changes of clothing swathed in tissue paper, guns, shooting sticks, field glasses or fishing rods if for a sporting weekend, as well as personal miscellanea. ‘My mother had been born in the era when you took sketching materials, and a great many heavy London Library books, as well as clothes,’ wrote Lady Tweedsmuir. ‘She usually also had an embroidery frame and, as she was often studying a language, primers were added to everything else.’ Once the luggage wagon had arrived – guests went by the faster brougham – trunks would be unpacked by the lady’s maid and valet brought by the couple, and clothes hung up on hooks (coat-hangers had not yet been invented).

  For breakfast women wore simple morning frocks, changing into slightly more elaborate dresses for luncheon or, if they were going out for a shooting lunch, tweed coats and skirts, followed, in the late afternoon, by a tea gown – the men might change into velvet smoking suits – and, finally, into full fig for dinner. Some houses provided men with buttonholes and ladies with sprays of gardenias or orchids; most had freezing passages along which women in their décolletée evening dresses had to scurry.

  On the first night, guests went in to dinner according to rank, with each man ‘taking in’ (i.e. offering his arm to) a woman. After dinner the new game of bridge1 might be played, after which every guest would take a silver candlestick from a tray in the hall and carry it up to his or her room where maid or valet would help them to undress.

  As no one could be seen in the same outfit twice, this meant ten or more for a weekend, each with its appropriate accessories – gloves, belts, scarves, wraps, fans and underwear – corsets, shifts and flounced, frilled, lace-trimmed petticoats and jewellery (diamonds to be worn only at night). If royalty were there, this meant tiaras. No one wore make-up.

  Life in these houses ran to a series of unwritten rules. The large staff of servant
s needed for this meant a complex interdependence between family and staff. In a great house, the number of servants was a correlation between how many were required to do its work and how many the owner could afford, the latter in order to display his proper standing. A ratio of three or four servants to each member of the family was quite normal. At Eaton Hall, the Duke of Westminster had fifty indoor servants and forty gardeners, while Edwin Lee,2 second footman to the Honourable Frederick George Wynn, at Glynliven Park, Caernarvonshire, recalled: ‘Mr Wynn was a bachelor of some sixty years, living alone, entertaining rarely yet keeping a full establishment [of fifty-one servants) … All these people to look after one gentleman.’

  Major-domos would remove yesterday’s blotting paper from bedroom blotters before curious housemaids had a chance to hold it up to the mirror and perhaps read a love note, a valet would shave his master, iron his shoelaces and could double as a loader in a shooting party, log boys watched an hourglass to know when to run and refill log baskets in the family’s rooms, lamp boys kept wicks trimmed and lamps filled, and there might be a night soil man or a spider boy, who had a bunch of feathers tied to a long stick for knocking high-up spiders’ webs to the ground.

  Followers were generally forbidden and fraternising with someone from the opposite sex within the house meant instant dismissal. ‘In Paris we had a housemaid who was a most charming and delightful girl, and she had a child by one of the footmen in the house,’ wrote Lady Emily Lytton in October 1892 to her confidant the Rev. Whitwell Elwin. ‘Of course the poor girl was sent away, and she went to a wretched lodging in London, where her child was born, and she died, which was the best thing that could happen to her, poor thing.’