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American 'Dollar Princesses' - how many were there?

posted 8 years ago by SuCue
9 replies | jump to latest

When I visited England and Ireland a few years ago, I toured four great houses/castles and every single one of them had "an American lady" in the family tree. Only one was well known, Consuelo Vanderbilt; the others were lost to time.

It must have been a very common situation. Conan Doyle even wrote a Sherlock Holmes story about it (The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor) and Edith Wharton wrote her last novel about them,"The Buccaneers."

The more famous ones include:

Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough
Mary Leiter, Viscountess Curzon and Vicereine of India
Mary Goelet, Duchess of Roxburghe
Nancy Langhorne Shaw, Viscountess Astor, first woman to serve in the House of Commons
Thelma Morgan, Viscountess Furness, the aunt of Gloria Vanderbilt and the great-aunt of Anderson Cooper; longtime mistress of Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor
Maud "Emerald" Burke, Baroness Cunard
Jennie Jerome, Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Winston
Leonie Jerome, Lady Leslie, sister of Jennie and longtime mistress of Queen Victoria's third son, Prince Arthur.
And of course, the most famous "buccaneer" of them all, Bessie Wallis Warfield, who snagged the king. I'm sure there were many more but those are the ones I know about.

[–] SuCue 8 years ago

Oh and I forgot to add Frances Ellen Work, who would have been Baroness Fermoy, but divorced before her husband succeeded to the title. Princess Diana's great-grandmother.

[–] SuCue 8 years ago

Oh and another one: Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy, Lady Hartington, the sister of JFK, who would have been Duchess of Devonshire if her husband hadn't been killed in the war.

[–] tally1-934-484232 8 years ago

Dollar princess / buccaneer really applies to women who were married for their money, to bolster up a sagging estate/family finances.

Kick Kennedy may have been wealthy but the Devonshires were fabulously wealthy. She was married not for money but for love. A distinct difference (interestingly enough both sets of parents were opposed to the match, for different reasons. The Devonshires opposed the match because she wasn't English or an aristocrat, and she was Catholic. The Kennedys opposed the match because they were anti-English and wanted all their children to remain/marry Catholics).

The Devonshires, to their credit, attended the wedding although the duke pointedly gave his son a copy of the very protestant King James Bible as a wedding gift. The Kennedy parents refused to attend the wedding, although other siblings did attend.

[–] SuCue 8 years ago

Well that is true of Nancy Longhorne, Mrs. Simpson and I think Thelma Morgan as well. They weren't obscenely rich like Mary Leiter or Consuelo Vanderbilt so you couldn't call them "dollar princesses" but you could call them Buccaneers in the Edith Wharton sense (hunting for the most prestigious titles they could get.)

It doesn't make either side look especially good, though I guess some of the marriages were happy.

Some of the Kennedys were a very grasping lot; they wanted the most prestigious of everything. I think Billy Hartington's title was a big inducement for Kick, despite the religious difficulties.

Interestingly, the biography I read if Kicks life in England notes that Fred Astaire's sister Adele (who was his original dancing partner before Ginger) married a Cavendish and lived at Chartwell for awhile.

[–] CakesAndAle 8 years ago

the Astors didn't even have a title when Nancy married into the family.

[–] CakesAndAle 8 years ago

I agree, as was Astor, so I wouldn't count Nancy Shaw, either.

[–] tomcervo 8 years ago

I think it was in Season 4 that there was a Lady Raven mentioned; another American heiress who came over with Cora and married a lord, but who had fallen on relative hard times. Carson was appalled that she was reduced to be living "north of the park"--he made it sound like Whitechapel--while Mrs. Hughes said it spoke well of Cora that she still invited her old friends to her house, regardless of present circumstances.
There must have been as many of those women as the women who still had their fortunes.

[–] [deleted] 4 years ago

I don't know.

[–] Furienna (3322) 3 years ago

Consuelo Yznaga, Duchess of Manchester.
She was the godmother of Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was of course named after her.