The rich, glamorous, American women of the gilded age who married into the English aristocracy faced some challenges – but they were resilient, formidable characters. As TV’s The Buccaneers season two begins, and an exhibition in London is devoted to them, we explore the lives of the women who inspired writers and artists.
Can the new Duchess of Tintagel steer clear of scandal? Will her fugitive sister, Jinny, keep her baby from the clutches of her husband, the monstrous Lord Seadown? Can Mabel and Honoria’s forbidden love flourish?
The Buccaneers, Apple TV+’s hit period drama, is back for a second season, and its legions of fans expect answers to all of the above. The show charts the romantic adventures of a group of young American women – two pairs of sisters and their friend – who, looked down upon as nouveau riche by older, grander New York families, come to England in the 1870s and cut a swathe through high society. Fast-moving, fun and visually sumptuous, it looks as though the costume budget alone could dwarf the entire expenditure of lesser shows. It is lavish, colourful escapism – yet the unfinished Edith Wharton novel of 1938 upon which it is based was inspired by a real phenomenon.
Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women – 50 of them from New York – married British peers or the younger sons of peers, and many more married into the upper classes. They were dubbed “dollar princesses” and the popular view was that these were purely transactional marriages – cash for class. The women gained a title and status; the often cash-strapped aristocrats got a welcome injection of money to help them fix the leaking roof of the crumbling family seat.
“The decline in landed income during the Great Agricultural Depression, beginning in the 1870s, necessitated numerous male aristocrats to seek marital alliances outside the inner social network of the British aristocracy,” explains Maureen Montgomery, a historian and Wharton scholar who is currently editing The Buccaneers for the Oxford University Press’s The Complete Works of Edith Wharton.
“Another factor was the openness of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII, to wealthy businessmen being part of his inner social circle and his penchant for the beautiful and entertaining daughters of the American bourgeois elite who were travelling in ever larger numbers, after the Civil War, to Europe.”
The first inklings of a novel to be called The Buccaneers appear in Wharton’s notebook for 1924-1928. There she set out the plot, revolving around the “conquest of England by American adventurers & adventuresses/families”.
“In the summer of 1928, during one of her many annual trips to England in her later years, she visited Tintagel in Cornwall and stayed with her close friend Lady Wemyss at her Cotswold estate, Stanway,” Montgomery tells the BBC. “Both of these places became significant settings for the novel.”
However, Montgomery doesn’t believe that there is any one particular story or person that the writer drew upon.
“Wharton had close friends among the British aristocracy, and went to weekend country house parties. She personally knew a number of titled Americans. She would have been familiar with various scenarios for these marriages, how they were received, the different motives for marrying,” she says.
Some historians have suggested Consuelo Vanderbilt as one of the possible models for The Buccaneers’ Conchita Closson. Considered a great beauty, Consuelo was a “dollar princess” whose father made a fortune in railroads. Her dowry was worth tens of millions in today’s money. She was more or less bullied by her mother into marrying Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, and was said to have wept behind her veil at the altar on her wedding day in 1895 (one of nine US heiresses to marry English aristocrats that year).
The marriage was deeply unhappy. “Sunny”, as the Duke was known, wasted little time in telling her he’d only married her for her money and in order to save Blenheim Palace, the ducal seat. In her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold, Conseulo wrote of a Blenheim Palace butler who had drowned himself: “As one gloomy day succeeded another I began to feel a deep sympathy for him.” Her marriage produced two children but both Consuelo and her husband had lovers.
Consuelo had been preceded into the aristocracy by the godmother after whom she was named. The Cuban-American heiress Consuelo Yznaga Montagu, another model for Conchita, married George Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, in 1876 and became the Duchess of Manchester when he inherited the title. The profligate duke burned through his wife’s money and had numerous affairs. Consuelo, who is mentioned in Wharton’s notebook, was reportedly very close to the Prince of Wales. (BBC)
How the heiresses dubbed the ‘dollar princesses’ brought US flair to the UK
