The Dollar Princesses

One of the byproducts of the industrial revolution in Europe was the slow death of the great landed estates of the aristocracy.  Steamships and railroads enabled massive imports of cheap grain from the United States, Canada, Argentina, and Russia.  Refrigerated shipping also brought cheap meat and dairy from overseas. 

European grain and meat simply could not compete with the low production costs of the vast overseas farms, especially those in North America.  Even as the price of food dropped, the cost of labor was steadily climbing, cash-hungry parliaments were raising taxes, and even the nature of farming was changing.  While a few aristocratic estates modernized with mechanized plows, fertilizers, and scientific breeding, most of the inbred and undereducated nobles simply refused to do anything different than their grandfathers.

If the aristocrats wanted to continue those leisurely fox hunts across their fields, they desperately needed to locate a new source of money.

Luckily, the same industrial revolution was affecting the United States and this new  industry created the nouveau riche, who were eager to trade money for social position.  If you’ll pardon the pun, it was a marriage made in heaven. 

American “new money” families wanted the social prestige of membership in Europe’s rigid, aristocratic class system while European aristocrats wanted the funds to maintain the estates that were increasingly expensive to run in the industrial age.  So, the crass Americans provided their daughters with dowries sufficient to make them desirable to even the haughtiest of aristocrats.   These rich American brides were referred to as “Dollar Princesses.”

The Dollar Princesses brought in the money and their husbands brought in the drafty ancestral homes, the priceless silver, and the invitations to royal garden parties.  It was—more or less—a fair trade.  This didn’t stop English newspapers, like Puck, from lampooning the marriages, however.

Starting just after the American Civil War, when American fortunes exploded, and lasting until World War I, when the entire European aristocracy system imploded, roughly 350 rich, young American brides provided rich, (mostly young) dowries to their new aristocratic husbands, thus transferring hundreds of millions of dollars (billions in today’s money) to prop up those old noble estates.  The peak of such marriages occurred during the 1880s and 1890s—the Gilded Age.

Jennie Jerome, later Lady Randolph Churchill, was an early example of a “Dollar Princess,” though the term had not yet entered common use when she married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874.  Jennie was born in Brooklyn in 1854, to financier Leonard Jerome, who was known as the “King of Wall Street”.  She was introduced to Lord Randolph during the Cowes Regatta on the Isle of Wight and, after a whirlwind romance of just three days, they were engaged.  Her father’s considerable fortune helped smooth over any aristocratic concerns about her American birth and it provided the much-needed cash infusion into the Churchill family’s strained coffers.  Not only did Jennie’s dowry save the Churchill Estate, but it can be argued that her son, Winston Churchill, saved all of England.

If Jennie Jerome’s marriage was a whirlwind romance, Consuelo Vanderbilt’s 1895 union with the 9th Duke of Marlborough was more of a hurricane, engineered by her formidable mother, Alva Vanderbilt.  Consuelo, heiress to one of the largest fortunes in America, was essentially marched down the aisle as a living trust fund who was intended to shore up Blenheim Palace’s leaky roof and the Duke’s equally leaky bank account.  The bride wept through the ceremony (and those were not tears of joy), while society wits whispered about the “wedding of the century” being less a love match than a high-society merger.  Still, the Vanderbilt millions accomplished their architectural rescue mission, even if the marriage itself crumbled into divorce—proof that, while money could buy a dukedom, it couldn’t always buy happiness.  The saga of this dollar princess is the inspiration for the television show, The Gilded Age.

If you were one of those American heiresses in the late 19th or early 20th century, who had just swapped your posh Fifth Avenue address for a drafty English manor, you had two urgent needs: a lady’s maid who could unpack your trunks without fainting at the sight of all that Paris couture and a portrait by John Singer Sargent.

Sargent was the undisputed Instagram filter of his day—minus the phone, but plus a lot of oil paint and the ability to make even the most nervous sitter look as if she had been born knowing how to carry off a tiara.  That kind of talent made the $5,000 price of a Sargent portrait a bargain (Roughly $177,000 in today’s dollars!)

So, why Sargent?  Well, he was the portraitist of choice for anyone who wanted to announce, “I have arrived,” without having to shout it over tea at Claridge’s.  His brushwork had a way of making pearls gleam, gowns ripple, and the sitter’s expression hover between approachable charm and “I summer in the south of France.”  For an heiress, commissioning Sargent wasn’t just about vanity—it was a social credential, the equivalent of having one’s own heraldic crest or of getting a glowing profile in Vogue.  The portrait of Jennie Churchill above is by Sargent.

The families themselves weren’t shy about it, either.  While the official purpose of the portrait was to “capture the likeness for posterity,” it also served as an elegant, full-length calling card.  When a Sargent painting of ‘Lady So-and-So’ was unveiled at a London salon, it might as well have been accompanied by a discreet footnote:  “Yes, the family’s finances are once again in order, thank you, and the young lady is available.”

Sargent painted these women with a knowing blend of flattery and truth.  He understood the subtle alchemy they represented—American steel, railroad, or banking money poured into Old World titles and estates.  Often, the dollar princess, herself, was more modern, witty, and independent than her aristocratic husband’s family quite knew what to do with.  Sargent let just a glimmer of that spark peek through: the tilt of a head, the faintest smile, a glint in the eye that seemed to say, “Yes, I paid for the roof, and no, I don’t regret it.”

And how many did he paint?  Roughly two dozen confirmed dollar princess portraits are  scattered today among major museums, family estates, and auction houses.  In every one, you can see why these women paid (or had their fathers pay) the equivalent of a small townhouse for the privilege.  The gowns may be Edwardian and the backdrops might be grand, but there’s a hint of steel under the satin—exactly what Sargent knew to show.

Consuelo Vanderbilt’s 1903 portrait (right) by John Singer Sargent is the very picture of aristocratic poise—though knowing her story, you can almost imagine her thinking, “If only I could trade this tiara for a ticket back to New York.”  Draped in sumptuous satin and crowned with the Marlborough jewels, she stands like the perfect Edwardian duchess she was trained (or coerced) to be.  Sargent, ever the diplomat with a paintbrush, caught her elegance without betraying the fact that her marriage to the 9th Duke was about as warm as a Blenheim Palace corridor in February.  The result is dazzling—she looks every inch the society goddess—but if you look closely, you might detect the faint glimmer of a woman who knew she had rescued a palace roof (And knew she had  provided the requisite “heir and a spare”!) yet found her own happiness leaking away.

In the end, a Sargent portrait was less about recording a face than about sealing a chapter of social history. The dollar princesses’ marriages may have been transactions, but on Sargent’s canvases, they became triumphs—proof that money, titles, and art could meet on equal terms…at least for the span of one dazzling sitting.