How the heiresses dubbed the ‘dollar princesses’ brought US flair to the UK

The golden, glamorous, American women who married British nobles faced several challenges, but they were resilient and formidable characters. The Buccaneers season 2 on TV begins, and as the London exhibition is dedicated to them, we explore the lives of women who inspired writers and artists.

Can the new Duchess of Tintagel avoid scandal? Will her fugitive, Ginny, protect the baby from the hands of her husband, the giant master Cedartown? Can Mabel and Honor’s Forbidden Love Prosper?

The Apple TV+ hit-period drama Buccaneers is back for the second season. The show represents the romantic adventures of a group of young American women (two sisters and their friends), with older, spectacular New York families looking down as a rich nouveau riche, coming to England in the 1870s and passing through high society. Just as fast moving, fun and visually luxurious, the outfit budget alone seems to warn the entire spending of less shows. It’s a gorgeous, colorful escapism, but the unfinished 1938 Edith Wharton novel was inspired by a real phenomenon.

Between 1870 and 1914, 102 American women (50 from New York) married young English men or fellow sons, and many more married to the upper class. They were called “dollar princesses” and a popular view was that these were purely trade marriages. It’s class cash. Women have achieved titles and status. Often cash-bound nobles got a welcome injection of money to help repair leaky roofs of the falling family seats.

“The decline in land income in the depression of large agriculture that began in the 1870s required a large number of male nobles to seek a marriage alliance outside the inner social network of British aristocrats,” explains Maureen Montgomery, a historian who currently edits the Buccaneer of the complete work of Oxford University and a Wharton scholar.

“Another factor was the openness of the Prince of Wales, and later King Edward VII, a wealthy businessman who was part of his inner social circle, preferring the beautiful and funny daughters of the American bourgeois elite who had moved to Europe after the civil war.”

The first inkling of the novel, known as Buccaneers, appears in Wharton’s notebooks from 1924-1928. There she set up a plot that revolves around “the conquest of England by American adventurers and adventurers/families.”

“In the summer of 1928, on one of her annual trips to England in the later years, she visited Tintagel in Cornwall and stayed with her best friend Lady Wemis on her Cotswold estate, Stanway,” Montgomery told the BBC. “Both these places have become important environments for novels.”

However, Montgomery does not believe there are any particular stories or people portrayed by the writer.

“Wharton had close friends among the British aristocrats and went to a weekend country house party. She personally knew Americans with many titles. She would have been familiar with the different scenarios of these marriages, the way they received them, and the different motivations for marriage,” she says.

Some historians have proposed the Consuelo Vanderbilt as one of the possible models of Conchita Closeson at Buccaneers. Consuelo, considered a great beauty, was the “Dol Princess,” whose father made fortune on the railway. Her dowry was worth tens of millions of millions of money today. She was more or less bullied by her mother, married Charles Spencer Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and is said to have wept behind her veil at the altar on her wedding day in 1895 (one of nine American heirs who married an English nobleman that year).

The marriage was very unhappy. “Sunny” wasted some time, as the Duke was known, saying that he had only married her for her money, to save Ducal’s seat, Blenheim Palace. In her memoir, sparkling and gold, Consuelo wrote about the butler of Blenheim Palace, who owned herself to die: “When one pessimistic day was successful, I began to feel deep sympathy for him.” Her marriage gave birth to two children, but Consuelo and her husband had a lover.

Consuelo was preceded by the nobles by the godfather she was named. Consuelo Yznaga Montagu, another model who married George Montagu Viscount Mandeville in 1876 and when he took over the title, he was also a Cuban-American heir. Profligate Duke burned his wife’s money and had many problems. Consuelo, mentioned in Wharton’s notebook, reportedly was very close to the Prince of Wales.

Both are Consuelos features Heir: Sgt. American Portraitexhibiting 18 works by John Singer Sargent at the Kenwood House in Hampstead Heath, London. The show is curated by Wendy Monk House, a senior curator of British Heritage (south) and is the result of two years of work.

“I had real courage about these heirs,” Monkhouse tells the BBC. “They were brave. They struggled to enter British society as foreigners, and everyone was jealous and resentful, and wanted to beat a peg or two for this ‘buccaneer’ trope.”

They probably leapt up on a good Britannia ship, and with the ruthlessness of a pirate, they sacked themselves a Baron, Earl or Duke. English newspaper editor WT Stead used the phrase “gold prostitution” when writing about these transatlantic marriages.

It was at the highest level, and there was opposition from the US. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to the British Ambassador of Whitelaw Reid in 1906. [sic]…I hate these international marriages…it is based on the sale of a girl for her money and the purchase of a man for his title. “And many ordinary Americans left the country and hated the idea of ​​all the wealth that was wasted by the aristocrats of Wastrell England.

However, Monkhouse claims that Monica’s “Dollar Princess” is causing harm to women. “I think that’s a term that’s been thrown away for 100 years, other than academic circles, without much thought,” she says. “The more you delve into it, the more it gets apart. Consuelo Vanderbilt defined the genre in that she doesn’t call herself a princess of dollars, but she is a very wealthy American whom she has not chosen, married for the title and was then unhappy.”

However, the other women whose images are featured in the exhibition had very different stories. Daisy Reiter, the charming, independently oriented daughter of Chicago real estate tycoon, was considered not only to her money, but also to a fair catch, as Sgt.’s grand portrait shows. She was attacked by the proposal, but married Henry Howard, Earl of Suffolk. It was a very happy love match and apparently gave birth to three sons. In later life, Daisy further illustrated the adventurous spirit of many of these women by becoming a helicopter pilot.

Another subject in Sargent was Cora, the Countess of Strafford. Her name is reflected in the famous fictional “Dollar Princess” name of Cora, Countess of Grantham at Downton Abbey. Julian Fellows says that one of the inspirations for the series is a book about American heirs called to marry British people. The real Kora was South Bell, who married Count Straford after the death of her first husband, Baron Samuel Colgate, toothpaste. The Earl died five months after his wedding when he fell on the railway tracks at Potter’s Bar. This incident prompted a lot of gossip, as well as the fact that Cora wore her coronet sideways in the coral crown of Edward VII.

One of the most famous women in the heir exhibition, represented by both oil portraits and charcoal paintings, is Nancy Astor, daughter of the Virginia Railroad tycoon and the first woman to win a lawmaker in the house. She clashed with Winston Churchill regularly. Winston Churchill’s mother, Jenny Jerome, was a wealthy New York speculator and daughter of speculators.

In the new season of the Buccaneers, there is a splash of politics as Nan watches realize that her growing social status is giving her power and influence and beginning to exercise it. Katherine Jakeways of Buccaneers Showrunner reads “Dollar Princesses” extensively before writing begins in the series, where she draws their stories and the text of Wharton.

“Imagine (a) they were beautiful, (b) they were Americans, and (c) they were rich so you were interesting to men. [than their English counterparts]”She told the BBC: “Their opinions were asked in New York, but as we showed with Honoria in season one, they either didn’t speak or were asked to have an opinion.”

Like their real-life counterparts, the women on the show don’t follow reductive stereotypes. “Our characters are complex and deep, and we’re trying to make every relationship resonate with a modern audience in some way,” says Jake Ways. “And hopefully it’s really fun.”

Season 2 is another roller coaster ride that remixes all the successful ingredients of the first series. Is there a season 3? I bet the heir’s dowry on it.

Buccaneers Season 2 will premiere on Apple TV+ on June 18th.