The Husband Hunters
Feb. 21st, 2019 06:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jadislefeuI've just finished reading The Husband Hunters by Anne de Courcy. It was a really interesting look at the social scene of the time in New York, and the forces that led so many (454!) American girls to marry titles overseas. The individual chapters had stories about specific girls who married into the European nobility, which ranged from delightful (Victoria and Tennie Claflin, first women to own a stockbroker's, Victoria the first female candidate for the presidency, advocates of women's rights) to the horrifying (poor Consuelo Vanderbilt, who was locked in her room by her mother and her letters destroyed, all contact with the world denied her until she agreed to marry a Duke instead of the man she loved).
The absolutely staggering conspicuous consumption of Gilded Age New York is also heavily detailed and just... wow. The final party thrown by the Bradley-Martins before they left America for Britain (in the face of being expected to pay more taxes on their flaunted wealth) cost $116,000 a head, which a currency conversion site informs me is $3,424,653 in today's dollars. At the party that spurred their increased taxation, one woman, Caroline Astor, was noted as wearing $250,000, or $7,380,717 today, worth of jewelry. Cigarettes were handed out at parties wrapped in hundred dollar bills instead of paper, which is like $3000 now.
So basically what I learned was that rich people have always been completely stupid about spending money. One guy was noted as having a yacht on which he kept a milk cow in a fan-cooled stall, an entire acting troupe, and a motorcar. A cow. Because, I suppose, he couldn't possibly go without having fresh milk available at all times.
I also hadn't been aware of how American agriculture basically knocked the bottom out of the British economy. America's enormous amount more space--and different climates meaning harvests could occur at multiple points of the year--apparently destroyed British wheat farming, and upon the advent of refrigeration, American livestock farming also destroyed British livestock farming. Just completely took the bottom out of the market. And then all the aristocracy's incomes were ruined, because they came from tenant farms, and they couldn't afford to upkeep their homes even, many of which were apparently saved by the infusions of cash that came with American heiress brides. So the whole socioeconomic milieu on that side of the Atlantic was really interesting. As opposed to the American side, where people were just competing to throw the most lavish possible parties to show off how rich they were, and if they were snubbed from society having a daughter marry into a title would add to their cachet and let them into Mrs Astor and McAllister's set.
The absolutely staggering conspicuous consumption of Gilded Age New York is also heavily detailed and just... wow. The final party thrown by the Bradley-Martins before they left America for Britain (in the face of being expected to pay more taxes on their flaunted wealth) cost $116,000 a head, which a currency conversion site informs me is $3,424,653 in today's dollars. At the party that spurred their increased taxation, one woman, Caroline Astor, was noted as wearing $250,000, or $7,380,717 today, worth of jewelry. Cigarettes were handed out at parties wrapped in hundred dollar bills instead of paper, which is like $3000 now.
So basically what I learned was that rich people have always been completely stupid about spending money. One guy was noted as having a yacht on which he kept a milk cow in a fan-cooled stall, an entire acting troupe, and a motorcar. A cow. Because, I suppose, he couldn't possibly go without having fresh milk available at all times.
I also hadn't been aware of how American agriculture basically knocked the bottom out of the British economy. America's enormous amount more space--and different climates meaning harvests could occur at multiple points of the year--apparently destroyed British wheat farming, and upon the advent of refrigeration, American livestock farming also destroyed British livestock farming. Just completely took the bottom out of the market. And then all the aristocracy's incomes were ruined, because they came from tenant farms, and they couldn't afford to upkeep their homes even, many of which were apparently saved by the infusions of cash that came with American heiress brides. So the whole socioeconomic milieu on that side of the Atlantic was really interesting. As opposed to the American side, where people were just competing to throw the most lavish possible parties to show off how rich they were, and if they were snubbed from society having a daughter marry into a title would add to their cachet and let them into Mrs Astor and McAllister's set.
