Marrying Up in the Gilded Age

Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting little article about the habit of nouveau riche Americans marrying into cash-strapped British nobility in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Much of the Gilded Age matchmaking that united the two nations occurred under the reign of Edward VII, who as Prince of Wales encouraged social merriment equal to that of his mother Queen Victoria’s sobriety. When Edward died, in 1910, the throne passed to his son George V, who, along with his British-bred wife, Mary, curtailed the excess that had characterized his father’s leadership of Britain’s leisure class. Nightly private parties throughout a social season began to seem vulgar as Europe moved closer to war. In New York, Newport and Chicago, the likes of Caroline Astor began to cede social power to the nouveaux riche they had once snubbed, and as the American economy became the domain of men like J.P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie, their daughters had little reason to spend their inheritances restoring 17th-century castles when they could stay home and be treated as royalty by the press and the public.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2013/08/how-american-rich-kids-bought-their-way-into-the-british-elite/#ixzz2bu66RLfw Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter