ABSTRACT
Marrying for money, as is well known, was not considered unusual within the British aristocracy. There was a long tradition of peers seeking brides with handsome dowries. In 1861 the Sixpenny Magazine ran an article entitled ‘Heiress Hunters’ in which it described the tactics of men with ‘an old name and a young face’ who could ‘ferret out dowries, scent a mile off a wealthy father-in-law, and fall at a dead set before the rich heiress’. These ‘poverty-stricken patricians’ sought out ‘wealthy retired merchant(s) or shopkeeper (s)’, it alleged, married their daughters, and settled down to a comfortable life, taking on unpaid sinecures and building up a reputation for performing public service. 2 This was written shortly before the heyday of transatlantic marriages and is an example of the title-for-money cliché applied to the marriages of aristocrats to businessmen’s daughters. So predominant was the cliché that virtually 114any marriage to a person outside the landed elite was categorized as an exchange of the prestige and social status of a title for a large dowry. When American women began to marry into the British elite in significant numbers after 1870, their marriages quickly fell into this category. In the year of the Marlborough–Vanderbilt wedding, Henry Labouchere’s Truth commented that the dream of the daughters of New York ‘dollar-magnates’ was ‘to marry English noblemen’, and ‘where one side has to offer a title and the other side money, the dream is easily realized’. 3 Marie Corelli put it more colourfully:
there is always a British title going a-begging, – always some decayed or degenerative or semi-drunken peer, whose fortunes are on the verge of black ruin, ready and willing to devour, monster-like, the holocaust of an American virgin, provided bags of bullion are flung, with her, into his capacious maw. 4
