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A review by erboe501
To Marry an English Lord: Tales of Wealth and Marriage, Sex and Snobbery in the Gilded Age by Carol MCD Wallace, Gail MacColl
5.0
Any Downton Abbey fan worth his or her salt would salivate at the chance to understand the backstories of the real women who inspired Downton’s popular character Lady Grantham. And so, my mom and I drove south toward the gulf as the lives of past American heiresses unfolded before us.
Before listening to this book, all I knew about the hordes of American women who married into the British aristocracy was that hordes of American women married into the British aristocracy. This I ascertained from Downton Abbey. Cora, the lady of Downton, traded her American money for an English title that saved the abbey from bankruptcy. As I learned during the 7.5 hours to NOLA, her character reflects the personal trajectory of many American heiresses at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
In the 1870s and 1880s, many British aristocrats needed millions to restore their family estates, and the American nouveau riche needed eligible matches for their daughters outside New York’s mercilessly exclusive social circles. Wily American mothers realized that their fresh-faced, vivacious (and filthy rich) daughters had better prospects across the pond, where Prince Bertie (eldest son of Queen Victoria), worshipped beautiful women, and so supported the American girls in their matrimonial enterprises.
One such match between an American heiress and British Lord produced Winston Churchill (how many people know that one of Britain’s most famous Prime Ministers was half American?).
I never realized that, before this glamorous American invasion, British-American relations were not at the level of amicability we enjoy today. The Revolutionary War and War of 1812 were still recent history in the 1870s, and the U.S. had yet to become its own Imperial power. The American women who married into the British aristocracy, and later helped many of their husbands campaign for political office, fostered friendship between the two nations.
Although American enthusiasm for these transatlantic marriages waned in the 1900s–as Americans took issue with the loss of American fortunes to support British aristocrats’ whims and debts–the height of the trend in the 1890s sounded so dazzling and so over the top I can hardly believe the details. MacColl and Wallace did such a splendid job of describing the society women’s balls that the amount of detail devoted to the ladies’ dresses even tired me! The wealth of some Americans astounds me: one lady wore the jewels of Marie Antoinette to compliment her French costume, while another wore Catherine the Great’s precious stones to a costume ball.
As we drove toward a city renowned for its own extravagant parties, my mom and I thoroughly enjoyed imagining another era of American extravagance, epitomized by 55-carat diamond crowns and mink coats rather than plastic tiaras and hot pink boas.
Before listening to this book, all I knew about the hordes of American women who married into the British aristocracy was that hordes of American women married into the British aristocracy. This I ascertained from Downton Abbey. Cora, the lady of Downton, traded her American money for an English title that saved the abbey from bankruptcy. As I learned during the 7.5 hours to NOLA, her character reflects the personal trajectory of many American heiresses at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries.
In the 1870s and 1880s, many British aristocrats needed millions to restore their family estates, and the American nouveau riche needed eligible matches for their daughters outside New York’s mercilessly exclusive social circles. Wily American mothers realized that their fresh-faced, vivacious (and filthy rich) daughters had better prospects across the pond, where Prince Bertie (eldest son of Queen Victoria), worshipped beautiful women, and so supported the American girls in their matrimonial enterprises.
One such match between an American heiress and British Lord produced Winston Churchill (how many people know that one of Britain’s most famous Prime Ministers was half American?).
I never realized that, before this glamorous American invasion, British-American relations were not at the level of amicability we enjoy today. The Revolutionary War and War of 1812 were still recent history in the 1870s, and the U.S. had yet to become its own Imperial power. The American women who married into the British aristocracy, and later helped many of their husbands campaign for political office, fostered friendship between the two nations.
Although American enthusiasm for these transatlantic marriages waned in the 1900s–as Americans took issue with the loss of American fortunes to support British aristocrats’ whims and debts–the height of the trend in the 1890s sounded so dazzling and so over the top I can hardly believe the details. MacColl and Wallace did such a splendid job of describing the society women’s balls that the amount of detail devoted to the ladies’ dresses even tired me! The wealth of some Americans astounds me: one lady wore the jewels of Marie Antoinette to compliment her French costume, while another wore Catherine the Great’s precious stones to a costume ball.
As we drove toward a city renowned for its own extravagant parties, my mom and I thoroughly enjoyed imagining another era of American extravagance, epitomized by 55-carat diamond crowns and mink coats rather than plastic tiaras and hot pink boas.