The Husband Hunters: American Heiresses Who Married Into The British Aristocracy, by Anne De Courcy

Many readers of this book–and probably the ideal readers of this book–will enter this work familiar with and fond of such books as Edith Wharton’s The Age Of Innocence and The Buccaneers, which are two novels within her body of work that tell the story of the price of social acceptance into the elite high society of Gilded Age New York. This book tells that story from a historical perspective, one which frequently refers to and gives honor to Wharton’s own personal observations, and points out both the reasons why American heiresses began the habit of marrying into the British aristocracy and why the habit eventually stopped. The story manages to combine, in a fascinating way, such different fields as literature, biography, social history, and economics, into a compelling narrative that manages to provide a lot of information without being stuffy at all. Admittedly, this book is not for everyone, but given the popularity of the subject material of Downton Abbey as well as Wharton’s works and the history of the Gilded Age in general, this book likely has a lot of potentially appreciative readers. I know I am one, largely because my own interests in many ways intersect with the interests of the author in discussing history on both the personal and the broader level.

In terms of its contents, this book is between 250 and 300 pages. It begins with a list of illustrations (mostly from Punch, which was well-informed about the period in its pointed cartoons), as well as a short introduction. After this the author introduces the social world of Gilded Age New York City (1) as well as the famous Buccaneers (2) who married into the British aristocracy, one of them becoming the mother of Winston Churchill in the process (3). The author talks about the first duke that was captured (4), as well as the perils that American brides faced in living in the (comparatively boring) British countryside (5). Entire chapters are devoted to leading figures in the social striving of the period, such as Mrs. Paran Stevens (6) and Alva Vanderbilt (7). The author talks about the rise of Newport (8) as a social season of immense importance, as well as a group biography of the marrying Wilsons (9), who were among the people who answered “the call of Europe” (10). A sympathetic tale is told of Virginia Bonynge (11), whose efforts to marry were ultimately successful despite the terrible feud involved, as well as the equally successful but very different Maud (12), who was able to adapt very well to the British system and acquire a train of discreet elite lovers. The author then speaks of the heiress’ royal connections (13) though Edward the caresser, the crown prince, and his entourage, as well as the behavior of the Bradley-Martins (14). The author speaks of how people fit in or not (15), discusses Tennie Claflin as the odd heiress out (16), and then discusses the immense amount of money involved in these dynastic marriages (17) as well as the collapse of the tradition due to changing economics and social concerns within New York society (18). The book then ends with an epilogue, acknowledgements, a bibliography, and an index.

Without being particularly sympathetic towards the social striving of the American families, especially the mothers, who pushed their daughters into often unsuitable marriages to support their own ambitions to rise into high society, there is a lot in this book that strikes me as poignant. On the one hand, American young women were associated with a confidence and poise that their native English competition appeared to lack, but also lacked the familiarity with politics as an all-consuming interest of the British elite, as it would be at least another century or so before American politics similarly became an all-consuming interest of America’s own elites, as at the time of the late 1800s they were too busy making money to care about what happened in Washington DC to a great degree. We can argue whether this was a good thing instead of a bad thing. It is also poignant just how deep the suffering of many of the young women who married into the British aristocracy was in terms of the unfaithfulness and boorishness of many of the husbands towards their wives. On the other hand, some of the women involved were rather catty and not particularly sympathetic either. The marriage of American money and British class was, ultimately, not a lasting success, as changes within American high society made it less exclusive and thus there was less of a perceived need to spend money on foreign marriages to prop up domestic social position.