Heiresses

 

"Heiresses

By Laura Thompson

(St. Martin's, 378 pages, $29.99)

According to Laura Thompson, the essence of the heiress's dilemma is: "How can she ever be sure that she is wanted for herself?" How can she avoid falling prey to a fortune-hunter as she yearns for love?

The poor little rich girl is a well-worn cliche. Two of the best-known 20th-century examples are the shipping heiress Christina Onassis and the Woolworth heiress Barbara Hutton; between them they notched 11 husbands -- mostly dodgy -- plus sundry addictions before dying early wretched deaths. But as Ms. Thompson reveals in "Heiresses: The Lives of the Million Dollar Babies," the predecessors of Onassis and Hutton often had a far worse time, with fewer legal protections.

Ms. Thompson begins her romp through the lives of the filthy rich with the story of Mary Davies. Born in London in 1665, Davies was the heir to a vast stretch of the land, part of which would become London's West End. She was only 12 when Thomas Grosvenor slipped her mother <pound>9,000 (almost $3 million today) and married Mary in what Ms. Thompson calls possibly "the best property deal in history." Her legal identity was promptly subsumed into her husband's, giving him control of her fortune.

Even so, the marriage, by all accounts, was a harmonious one. When Grosvenor died in 1700, Mary and her fortune were on the market again. Suitors swarmed. After some miserable misadventures, the confused widow was declared a lunatic and packed off to live with relatives. Today, Mary's descendent, the Duke of Westminster, is one of the wealthiest property owners in Britain.

Early tropes always presumed that heiresses were mere items: "wholly passive," Ms. Thompson writes, "and there for the taking." They were regularly traded in fancy drawing rooms, kidnapped in dark passages or forced into clandestine marriages beyond England's borders -- often at Gretna Green, on the Scottish border. But some of them sabotaged their own lives through folly. In the late 18th century, Mary Bowes, an ancestor of Britain's current monarch, had both looks and learning, as well as a reputation for being the richest woman in the country. Yet she fell for the duplicitous charms of a good-looking monster, who beat her and spent all her money.

By the early 19th century, according to Ms. Thompson, the heiress marriage market resembled "a horror film in periwigs." Here we meet Catherine Tylney Long, who owned thousands of acres in southern England. Tylney Long fell for a rake named William Wellesley Pole and lived a life of misery. Pole bullied her, spent all her money, demolished her beautiful Palladian mansion -- with its ceiling frescoes by William Kent -- kept several mistresses and separated her from her children. She died at the age of 36.

The arrival of American heiresses on British shores forms the next phase of the narrative. "The plot of Dollar Princess marries Son of Duke," Ms. Thompson tells us, became "as fashionable and familiar as that of the Gretna Green elopement." Ducal incomes were shrinking, stately homes were crumbling and New World heiresses were suddenly welcomed within aristocratic circles. Besides being wealthy, these women were better educated, better dressed and more fun than their British counterparts. In late Victorian England, they fit comfortably into the bed-hopping swirl that surrounded the sybaritic Prince of Wales. Still, many of the "cash for coronets" alliances failed.

Ms. Thompson closes with a look at terrain that she knows well: London's beau monde after World War I. Ms. Thompson is the author of two books about this period: a biography of the novelist Nancy Mitford -- herself a witty observer of the upper-class clique known as the Bright Young Things -- as well as "The Six," a lively account of all six Mitford sisters.

By the 1920s, women could vote and run for political office, but "a woman's natural milieu remained the drawing room," Ms. Thompson writes, "and the means to wield power came typically through her ability to curate" a guest list. Two of the great London hostesses of the era were Mrs. Ronnie Greville and Lady Emerald Cunard, both of whom were rich and enjoyed enormous social power. Today, a woman like Mrs. Greville -- sharp and brainy -- might be running a business or holding public office instead of cozying up to royals. "It is impossible to overemphasize," Ms. Thompson reminds us, "the limitations of a woman's life" only a century ago.

The most recent heiresses in this selective catalog refused the default female position of passive victim that characterized earlier incarnations. Instead they chose lives of hedonism. The most gob-smacking is perhaps Daisy Fellowes, Winnaretta Singer's niece, who did exactly as she pleased: "No guilt, no regrets, just lots of sex and Schiaparelli."

Alongside all the gossip, Ms. Thompson found a few enlightened heiresses, such as Angela Burdett-Coutts, who in the late 19th century made good philanthropic use of her millions. But heiresses such as these are not so fun to read about. They certainly don't give us the same delicious shiver of schadenfreude.

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Ms. Gray is the author of "Murdered Midas: A Millionaire, His Gold Mine, and a Strange Death on an Island Paradise."" [1]

1. It Wasn't All Schiaparelli
Gray, Charlotte. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 09 Feb 2022: A.15.