Noble Blood - The Dollar Princesses

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

For much of the history we're discussed on this podcast, marriages were the best way to advance one's social position. In the Gilded Age, a special subset of advantageous marriages emerged: in which wealthy American heiresses paid generous dowries to marry into the European nobility. Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Merch! — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and pre-order its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeartRadio and grim and mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Hey, this is Dana Schwartz, host of Noble Blood. If you want to support the show, you can sign up on our Patreon. Patreon.com slash Noble Blood Tales. a link in the episode description where you get episode scripts, monthly bonus episodes, and exclusive merch, like a seasonal sticker that is designed by incredible artists. They're so much fun.

I have them now all over my kitchen. If you're listening to this episode the day it comes out, my book comes out next week. And pre-orders are so important in the book world. I'm sure you're tired of people telling you about that. But it's true. So if you like slightly macabre historical stories, I think you'll really like my book. It's a sequel to my first novel, Anatomy, a Love Story. This one is called Immortality, a Love Story. And it's a sort of fictional alternate universe where a young female surgeon becomes the personal physician to Princess Charlotte of Wales, the granddaughter of King George III. So if you're interested in this podcast, I really think you'll like it. Please pre-order it. And thank you for listening. was the wealthy daughter of an even wealthier man, a Pittsburgh Railroad magnate who was convinced that his money should be able to buy his family entry into the upper echelons of society.

This was 1903, and, as had been the practice for hundreds of years, the best way to elevate and cement your family's social status was by marrying off your daughter. In this case, Alice Thaw was going to be married to the Earl of Yarmouth. an English visitor who would sweep young Alice back across the Atlantic and into a life of titles and balls. It should have been the happiest day of her life. The setup sounds like a fairy tale, a rich, beautiful girl marrying an earl. But Alice waited at the church in Pittsburgh, no doubt listening behind a door or screen, as all of the esteemed society guests filed in to the pews to take their seats.

And Alice waited and waited. There were frantic whispers and grimaces barely disguised as smiles. The wedding was delayed. Was it a case of cold feet? Not quite. That morning, the groom had gone to the courthouse to get his marriage license, and on his way back to the Hotel Schlenley where he was staying, he was served a writ by a constable and local aldermen's agent.

You see, the groom was an earl, but he was also a habitual gambler who had a talent for avoiding paying his debts. His marriage to Miss Alice Thaw was in large part thanks to her generous dowry and inheritance, and her wealth was tremendous dowry and inheritance. Between the inheritance she received from her by then-dead father and the money that she would inherit from her independently rich mother, Alice was a multimillionaire many times over, and this was more than that. a hundred years ago. Money the Thaw family had, but they wanted prestige, which George Seymour, Earl of Yarmouth, could provide. Upon marrying him, Alice Thaw would become a countess, and her family would get the bragging rights of having an English noble in the family. The Earl was an amateur actor, and the young couple had only known each other for three months

before the wedding. Still, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable arrangement, at least, until the day of the wedding, when Alice was pacing at the church and her younger brother had to race down to the courthouse for a last-minute renegotiation of the dowry so that the groom would be released from custody. Once the Earl's debtors were satisfied, the groom headed to the church, where he took his place at the altar with his betrothed. A few hours late, but with the guests none the wiser. At least none the wiser until the New York Times, wrote an article about the whole snafu a few weeks later. Alice's arrangement was fairly common. There was a name for girls like her, dollar princesses. They were the result of an old social system crashing violently against a new way of making an extreme amount of money. The marriage between Alice Thaw and the Earl of Yarmouth was, and try your best not to be too shocked by this, a wildly

unhappy one. Alice was miserable almost as soon as the two boarded the St. Paul to begin sailing for England, and five years later, she sued for divorce. The annulment was granted on the ground of non-consumation. Alice moved back to Massachusetts, taking her wealth with her. It had seemed like a perfect arrangement, a way of taking and giving in ways meant to game the system during a sort of social and cultural no-man's land when the Industrial Revolution had turned everything on its head. But the system itself was designed on its exclusivity, meant to keep certain people out. And some people, even when they married dukes or earls or princes, preferred to break the system entirely.

I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The late 1800s and early 1900s, a period sometimes referred to as the Gilded Age, was a fascinating period in the social history of the American elite. Comparing ourselves to Europe, Americans sometimes like to boast about the fact that we have no aristocracy. Well, that's not exactly true. While we don't have, well, titled landage entry, there was, very clearly a defined, class in the Gilded Age, so clearly defined, in fact, that there was a group called the 400 who were considered part of the elite social circle, as determined by Caroline Astor. Anecdotally, 400 was the amount of people who could fit inside Mrs. Astor's ballroom.

Though there have been questions, even at the time, whether explicitly a list existed, and if it did, who was on it, what's very clear is that the... There was an IN crowd, and getting in wasn't always something that money could buy. Though our social strata have become maybe slightly less rigid, I want to be clear, the hidden American aristocracy still very much exists, probably in a pile marked legacy in the Yale admissions office. But something strange was happening at the turn of the century. Certain common people were making money.

A lot of money from steel and railroads. Money that would have been unthinkable a century or even half a century prior. The Industrial Revolution had changed things, and now there were people whose parents had been nobodies who were now able to buy homes facing Central Park. They could afford the right clothes and the right wallpaper and the right chefs, and they wanted to go to the right parties. But the social system of the Gilded Age still scoffed at new money, and when the likes of Mrs. Astor refused to allow them entry into her private kingdom, the so-called new money, decided that the best way to get ahead was to go overseas. Originally, a move born out of creative desperation among the Nouveau Riech,

marrying into a title soon became the most fashionable thing that a young American, woman could do. It's still pretty glamorous today if you think about it. I mean, we're raised on Disney movies that promise that the most beautiful and virtuous among us are destined to be royalty. Even today, a lot of Americans are suckers for a British accent, titled or not. But this was a mutually beneficial arrangement for the mail order grooms across the pond as well. Their titles were centuries old, but so often were the estates that came with them. And the world had changed in that time, particularly the way that people made money. Large swatches of farming land simply weren't going to make a man as rich as, say, being a railroad

magnet. Machinery was the new superpower. Years of gradually diminishing inheritances, left dukes and earls with magnificent estates, but no cash to heat them or fix their leaking roofs. they needed an influx of cash, and they could get it through marriage. I saw one figure estimating that $25 billion made its way into England via American brides. If you've seen Downton Abbey, you're familiar with the arrangement. Running a massive estate with a massive staff takes money. And so in Downton Abbey, the fictional Earl of Grantham married an American heiress named Cora to help keep Downton running.

It was such a common practice at the time that there was a quarterly publication called The Titled American that would run ads from bachelors looking for rich wives. One ad read, The Marquess of Winchester is 32 years old and a captain of the Coldstream Guards. You know what, you could do worse. It wasn't always the case that these men were holding their noses and being forced to marry, gasp, tacky Americans for purely mercenary. reasons. There was some charm to their new brides. As a rule, American girls were well-educated and

fun and typically outspoken, which was a novelty compared to their more demure English counterparts. Even still, unlike Downton Abbey, these marriages almost invariably ended in disaster. So let's take a look at some of these marriages. The trend began with a young woman named Jenny Jerome, the Brooklyn-born daughter of a land speculator who married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874. Neither set of parents were thrilled at the match. The couple had met, if you can believe it, at a sailing regatta, introduced by Queen Victoria's son, the then-Prince of Wales, who had been delighted and charmed by Jenny. American girls like Jenny Jerome were faring better in Europe than they were among the New York City elite.

Though the Jerome's could buy a mansion at the corner of 26th Street and Madison Avenue, they couldn't buy their way out of the perception that Jenny's father was a rake. I found one source claimed that he was, quote, a noted chaser of comely opera singers and that Jenny's mother had, gasp, rumored Iroquois ancestry.

But in Europe, Jenny shone. In her diary, she wrote of why she thought English boys, were so delighted by American girls. Quote, they are better read and have generally traveled before they make their appearance in the world. Whereas a whole family of English girls are educated by a more or less incompetent governess, the American girl in the same condition of life will begin from her earliest age with the best professors. By the time she is 18, she's able to assert her views on most things and her independence in all. Three days after meeting Lord Randolph, and he were engaged. His parents were upset about the aforementioned blemishes on Jenny's parents'

reputations. Lord Randolph's father wrote in a letter to his son that Jenny's father, quote, drives about six and eight horses in New York. One may take this as an indication of what the man is. To be quite honest, I'm not sure if that's too many horses or too few, but I'm sure Lord Randolph knew what that meant of what kind of man he was. Meanwhile, Jenny's parents were myth that Lord Randolph hadn't asked their permission before proposing, and they were a little upset that because Lord Randolph wasn't his father's eldest son, he wouldn't inherit the title of Duke of Mulborough. But neither family could argue with the fact that it was a smart arrangement. On top of the fact that the Prince of Wales had ostensibly set them up, because Randolph was a younger son, he wouldn't have any

money of his own outside of a meager allowance. The Jerome's were getting into bed with a powerful British noble family, and for that, they paid 50,000 pounds in a dowry and a 1,000-pound yearly allowance for Jenny. It had been a long negotiation before the marriage could actually take place, despite the speed at which the couple had originally become engaged, which had probably something to do with the slight scandal when their first child, a son, was born only seven months after the wedding. By the standards of Dollar Princess marriages, theirs was successful, at least successful enough that after her husband died, Jenny would go on to marry two more Englishmen. But more often than not, the marriages

were disasters from the start. Consider the case of another American, a young woman named Winoretta Singer, the heiress to the Singer Sewing Machine Fortune. In 1887, when Winaretta was 22, she was married to a French prince named, My sincerest apologies for this pronunciation, Louis de Cé Montbeillard. The marriage did not go well. On their wedding night, Winnoretta climbed on top of an armoire and shouted at the groom that if he touched her, she would kill him. It wasn't a distaste for Frenchman.

Winoretta was a lesbian, and five years later, their marriage was annulled on the grounds of non-consummation, Winaretta would marry again. Another French aristocrat, a man named Prince Edmund de Polignac, whose grandmother, the Duchess Polignac, had, coincidentally been one of Marie Antoinette's favorites. This marriage between Winoretta and Prince Edmund was also never consummated, but it was a much happier arrangement. The two were both gay, and so they remained married, happily hosting salons and sponsoring causes of arts and culture, while each took, whichever lovers, they wanted on the side. On Winaretta's end, those lovers included a number of prominent female socialites and artists, including allegedly Virginia Woolf. I want to say here, I realize that this

episode of the podcast is a little bit different than others I've done that focus on a single story. This episode is more the story of a phenomenon, and so we're jumping between individual cases to understand a larger pattern. But this is Noble Blood, and I want to be a little bit. And I want to to tell you a story. So let's zoom back in on the wedding day of one of the most iconic dollar princesses in American history, a young woman named Consuelo Vanderbilt. By her wedding day in 1895, Consuelo was one of the most well-known socialites in New York. Her father was the oldest son of the oldest son of the railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt. For a time, the Vanderbilt's were considered the wealthiest family in America.

Still, they had been snubbed by Old New York, and Consuelo's mother was determined to give her daughter a match that would exalt her. What better way of establishing importance on an altogether arbitrary system of social standing than by giving her daughter a title, Duchess. Consuelo's groom was Charles Spencer Churchill, the Duke of Marlborough, who went by Sonny because of another title he also. also held Earl of Sunderland. He was actually the nephew of the man that Jenny Jerome had married two decades earlier.

It was to be the event of the season. On the morning of November 6, 1895, swarms of people lined both sides of Fifth Avenue, waiting to catch just a glimpse of the bride as she arrived to St. Thomas Episcopal Church. But their jubilant spirit hadn't reached Consuelo. She would later write, quote, spent the morning of my wedding day in tears and alone. No one came near me. A footman had been posted at the door of my apartment and not even my governess was admitted. Like an automaton, I donned the lovely lingerie with its real lace and the white silk stockings and shoes. I felt cold and numb

as I went down to meet my father and the bridesmaids who were waiting for me." End quote. Allegedly, Consuelo had been in love with another man, but regardless, the bride was already bought and paid for. The dowry was $2.5 million worth of shares in Vanderbilt stock. The family would also give $100,000 annually to both Consuelo and Charles. The wedding happened, and miserable as Consuelo had been that morning, things for her were about to get much, much worse. As soon as the wedding was over, Consuelo and Sunny left for his dreary family home, Lennem Palace. When they got there, Sunny told his new bride that he actually had a lover and intended to keep her on the side. Consuelo's role then was wife, yes, but also bank. The marriage to her finally allowed the

Mulborough family enough money to begin to restore their historic home. For Consuelo, it was a misery living there. She wrote, quote, We spent the first three months in a cold and cheerless apartment looking north. They were ugly, depressing rooms, devoid of the beauty and comforts my own home had provided.

Remember, of course, that Consuelo's family had been extraordinarily rich in America. Their homes in New York had electricity and running water. Those were not luxuries that stately, but very, very old houses in England had. Blenham was 65 miles from London and did not have indoor plumbing. The couple remained married

for 10 years with multiple affairs from both parties until they finally divorced. Although it couldn't have been all bad for Consuelo because when she finally died, she did ask that she be buried at Blenham Palace, which her money had done so much to restore. The times would evolve and the heyday of the American dollar princess ended at the beginning of the 20th century. George V became king in 1910, and his ascension began to usher in a season of English prudence and austerity that lasted throughout the First World War. Excesses, elaborate parties and displays of wealth began to seem vulgar, and so the need to import it via American brides began to diminish. Meanwhile, things began gradually, improving for the new money set in America.

Wealthy heiresses were granted more social capital. They didn't need a title so badly that they were willing to spend their lives mildewing on a dreary property outside London while a cheating husband tore through her fortune, restoring his family's home. They could get enough attention and parties in America. The final heiress that we'll talk about today is a young woman named Francis Ellen Work, who married a baron in 1880. She would eventually inherit $15 million,

which is a good thing because her husband spent an estimated $2.5 million gambling. Francis Works father, Frank, was a self-made New York millionaire, and by the time he died in 1911, he came to despise the idea of dollar princesses exchanging titles for money,

even though that's exactly what his own daughter, had done. His obituary in the New York Tribune included a quote, It's time this international marrying came to a stop for our American girls are ruining our own country by it. As fast as our honorable, hardworking men can earn this money, their daughters take it and toss it across the ocean. And for what? For the purpose of a title and the privilege of paying the debts of so-called nobleman. If I had anything to say about it, make an international marriage a hanging offense. Ultimately, Francis' work, baroness, would become the great-grandmother of a woman who married into a title even grander than her own, the title

Princess of Wales. Her great-granddaughter was Princess Diana. But like her ancestor, the title and the marriage was ultimately not worth the price. That's the story, or stories of a few notable dollar princesses. But stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear a little fun fact I think you'll enjoy. Everyone, I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and The Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice ever.

I went and had lunch with them one day, and I was like, and Dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come, look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a count. A calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be

that. There's a lot of luck. Yeah. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodom. My next guest, you know from Stepbrothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.

I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up and coming talent. He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. The English men and women, I know, take a certain pride in looking down on Americans. Not overtly, but little jokes, bragging, you know.

But an American is actually responsible for one of Great Britain's biggest points of pride. Do you remember Jenny Jerome, the girl who all but started the trend of marrying for titles when she wed Lord Randolph in 1874? Well, Jenny Jerome did her duty of providing. providing her husband an heir, a baby born scandalously seven months after their marriage, a son who would go on to become a statesman, scholar, and prime minister. Jenny Jerome's son was Winston Churchill. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky.

Noble Blood is hosted by me, Dana Schwartz. Additional writing and researching done by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sunder, and Lori Goodman. The show is produced by Rima Il Kiali, with supervising producer Josh Thane and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio,

visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. My dad gave me the best advice. ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there.

Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks dad on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast Guaranteed human