Maureen E. Montgomery - Gilded Prostitution : Status, Money and Transatlantic Marriages, 1870-1914

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Routledge Library Editions: Womens History

GILDED PROSTITUTION

'Gilded Prostitution'

Status, money, and transatlantic marriages, 18701914

Maureen E. Montgomery

Volume 28

First published in 1989

This edition first published in 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1989 Maureen Montgomery

All rights reserved.No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,including photocopying and recording,or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice : Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-0-415-53409-3 (Set)
eISBN: 978-0-203-10425-5 (Set)
ISBN: 978-0-415-63252-2 (Volume 28)
eISBN: 978-0-203-09561-4 (Volume 28)

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer
The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and would welcome correspondence from those they have been unable to trace.

For RODNEY FOSTER

Contents

APPENDICES

I am grateful to the 17th Earl of Pembroke and the Honourable Mrs Gascoigne for their kind permission to quote from family papers. In addition, I thank the Houghton Library of Harvard University for permission to quote from the Oliver Wendell Holmes Papers and the Charles Sumner Papers; the Bodleian Library (Department of Western Manuscripts) for permission to consult the Harcourt Papers; and the Library of Congress (Manuscript Division) for permission to consult the Joseph P. Choate Papers, the Whitelaw Reid Papers and the William Howard Taft Papers. Lyrics from Noel Coward's 'The Stately Homes of England' have been reproduced with the permission of Methuen, London.

Publishers Note:

The phrase 'Gilded Prostitution' was first used by the journalist W.T. Stead writing about the tendency of transatlantic marriages. It has never been used other than as a figure of speech, and neither suggests that a transatlantic marriage was an act of physical prostitution, nor imputes than any of the transatlantic marriage partners was a prostitute. Its use in this book is as a relevant contemporary reference only.

The entry of American women into the royal court and high society of Britain after the American Civil War has been referred to by contemporaries and biographers alike as an 'invasion'. Certainly the number of women travelling across the Atlantic was unprecedented. The hazards and discomforts of long-distance travel, let alone ocean crossings, had hitherto discouraged women of the middle and upper classes from embarking on long journeys. But the term 'invasion' referred to more than the sudden arrival of large numbers of American women; it signified a sense of intrusion and disruption. The influx of wealthy Americans of allegedly plutocratic backgrounds threatened to raise the standard of expenditure within smart society and to intensify competition in the aristocratic marriage market. It is possible to identify two reactions evoked by the introduction of American women into the elite circles of the British capital: admiration for their adventurous and inquisitive spirit, and fear for the consequences of their social success.

The focus of this study is on American women who married British peers or the younger sons of peers. Many American women married into the nobility of France, Italy, and other countries in western Europe, and a number of aspects raised in connection with Anglo-American marriages are applicable to the broader phenomenon of international marriages. Concentration upon the British peerage, however, offers a number of advantages. Above all, it allows an exploration of these marriages in terms of the cultural relations between Britain and the United States. Social contact between the British and the Americans inspired countless articles in the newspapers and serious journals of the times as well as writers of fiction. In such writings, frequent reference is made to In light of this 'special relationship', there is much to be said for limiting the inquiry to Britain.

The terminal dates for this study of Anglo-American marriages are usually associated in the minds of European historians with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the First World War. And, although the period 1870 to 1914 is familiar enough in British history, it might have been more appropriate to define the period as 1874 to 1910, beginning with the marriage of the Randolph Churchills and ending with the death of Edward VII, in whose social circle titled Americans became so prominent. It can be argued, however, that wars play a part in transatlantic marriages, most notably in the GI-bride phenomenon of the 1940s. Wars, for example, limit civilian inter-continental travel, and it is no coincidence that the first major period of inter-elite marriages involving American women coincided with an upturn in transatlantic travel after 1865. The Gilded Age witnessed significant improvements in steamships, which, together with the expansion of the American leisure class, contributed to this upturn.

Eighteen-seventy was an auspicious year for the future of Anglo-American marital alliances. Paris had been the most popular city amongst American tourists and expatriates in the first generation of travellers after the Civil War. But hostilities with Prussia diverted some of this leisure-class traffic away from France to London, where the Marlborough House Set around the Prince of Wales was beginning to acquire a reputation for conspicuous consumption. Its openness to wealthy businessmen and attractive American women made it an appropriate successor to the court of Louis Napoleon and Empress Eugenie. Edward VII's reign coincided with the peak years of transatlantic marriages, and the King became so closely identified with these marriages that his death appeared to herald the end of the social sway of American women at the British court. However, Anglo-American alliances continued after 1920, so it would be misleading to associate them too closely with Edward VII.

The First World War is an appropriate marking-off point, because the socio-economic upheaval connected with the war substantially altered the situation of the British peerage. Moreover, titled marriages were far less striking after the war unless they involved a monarch or a movie star or both. Even the popular fiction of the day noted the change:

My dear child, any title under that of a Royal Prince or a Duke is dead as last year's hats. It's the fashion on this side to be sick of Europe and Europe's worn out idols. I don't know how long the fashion will live. But it's very much alive and kicking at present: sure to last a couple of seasons at least.

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