ABSTRACT
By the 1870s New York could lay claim to being the social capital of the nation, attracting wealthy families from elsewhere in the United States. Native New Yorkers spoke in terms of an invasion and declining standards, not unlike London society’s response to the American invasion. 1 Indeed, it appears as though the wave of nouveaux riches which flooded New York was the same one which washed through the drawing rooms of Mayfair. In this regard alone, New York merits special attention in understanding the increase in transatlantic marriages from the 1870s onwards. Another reason for focussing on New York is that it was the alliances between peers and the daughters of New York businessmen which particularly attracted a great deal of publicity and gave rise to the stereotype of the American heiress. Even so, it should be remembered that a significant proportion of titled Americans neither came from New York nor were especially wealthy. Among these women, one could include Frances Butler, daughter of the British actress Fanny Kemble and a Southern plantation owner, Pierce Butler. She married a young clergyman, the Honourable James Leigh, in 1871, and they spent the early years of their marriage rebuilding the Butler estate in Georgia which Frances had managed since her father’s death in 1867. 2 Alys Pearsall Smith, another American woman of modest fortune, married the young Bertrand Russell in 1894. Her family had lived in England since 1887. Their move from Philadelphia had come about as a result of long-standing connections with evangelicals in Britain and the marriage of their elder daughter to an Irish barrister. 3 Neither of these marriages could be regarded as a stereotypical Anglo-American alliance and they are not amongst the best-known examples.
