Excluded by stuffy New York society at the end of the nineteenth century, America’s nouveau riche heiresses set sail for England, where aristocratic bachelors welcomed them (and their dowries) with open arms

Photography: London Stereoscopic Company, Getty, Topical Press Agency, Getty, Central Press/Getty, Herbert Barraud/Hulton Archi ve/Getty, Bettmann/Corbis

THE “SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP” between Britain and the USA isn’t something new. At the end of the 19th century, though, the relationship was about material pledges and matrimony, as minted American heiresses married into Britain’s most aristocratic families.

The American Museum in Bath celebrates this phenomenon with a new exhibition on the “Dollar Princesses” – the nickname given to American heiresses also used by the heiresses themselves – American Heiress to Peeress in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, which runs until 28 October.

The American Museum itself is a Dollar Princess legacy of sorts, founded in July 1961 by Dr Dallas Pratt, who inherited his fortune from Standard Oil. His mother and great-aunt (Cara Leland Huttleston Rogers of New York and Fairhaven, Massachusetts – later Lady Fairhaven of Anglesey Abbey), are both featured in the exhibition.

“‘Dollar Princess’ was a term coined in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain at the time of the so-called ‘American Invasion’. It was the perfect description for the American heiresses,” explains the exhibition’s curator, Laura Beresford. “The popularity of the term is nowhere better illustrated than in the title of the 1909 operetta by Leo Fall, The Dollar

Princess. We have set up part of the exhibition to look like an Edwardian theatre lobby, with photographs from the 1909 London production lining the walls.”

The reason the heiresses, with pushy mamas in tow, landed here was because they were shunned and excluded at home. New York society in the 1870s was particularly stuffy and many of the new wealthy were excluded from joining the city elite of old-money families known as Knickerbockers (after the trouser lengths worn by the Dutch settlers from whom many of them were descended).

Anti-showy and scathing about all the newly minted millionaires resulting from rapid American industrialisation, city grandees Mrs William Backhouse Astor and Ward McAllister were responsible for divising the strict codes of conduct that should operate in American high society, as well as ways of keeping the nouveau riche and their supposedly flash ways at bay.

Photography: Hulton Archive/Getty Images, Merchant Ivory/The Kobal Collection/Borrel, Arnaud

There was Mrs Astor’s legendary Four Hundred Families, so-called because this was the number of people able to fit into the ballroom in her home at 34th and Fifth. Meanwhile, McAllister organised a group of 25 New Yorkers called the Patriarchs or Ton who, beginning in 1872, would give three balls per season to which each could invite four ladies and five gentlemen, thus redefining society and assimilating chosen “swells” (new money) into the ways of the “nobs” (established families).

Across “the pond” in London, the aristocracy wasn’t so threatened by wealthy American heiresses. But life wasn’t always easy for these transplanted women. Throughout the exhibition there are quotes from letters and memoirs that recount instances of anti-Americanism and snobbery that many of them suffered even after they succeeded to their aristocratic positions.

At the time, Edward, the Prince of Wales, relished the company of these often beautiful, well-educated, wealthy American women and played an active role in introducing them into English Society.

“When London replaced Paris as the social capital of the world in the early 1870s, the Prince of Wales took on the role of debonair Master of Ceremonies,” explains Beresford. “Remember that the social elite were named after his London residence: the Marlborough House set. He liked beautiful and witty women. He also enjoyed the humour and vivacity of Americans. As you can imagine, he played a pivotal role in getting these “invaders” – as they were sometimes perceived – accepted into London society. The prince apparently remarked to Winston Churchill once that the wartime prime minister (who was to be voted as the “greatest great Briton” in the future) would not have been born without him!

Winston Churchill’s American mother, Jenny Jerome, was the daughter of wealthy New York stockbroker Leonard Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill, the second son of the seventh Duke of Marlborough, in April 1874. Meanwhile, the Marlborough family, who owned Blenheim, Britain’s only non-royal palace, had two American duchesses in succession: wealthy widow Lily Hammersley, who married the eighth duke in 1888, and Consuelo Vanderbilt, who became the ninth in November 1895. It is estimated that £15m of Vanderbilt money went into the Marlborough coffers, contributing to repairs and the general tarting up of Blenheim Palace.

Dollars and dowries also set the London scene alight and lent unprecedented glamour to the upper echelons of British society, documented in Gail MacColl and Carol Wallace’s book How To Marry An English Lord (Sidgwick & Jackson, 1989). American women threw some of the best parties, had some of the finest houses and wore exquisite dresses. Back then, Vanity Fair magazine declared: “The American hostesses entertained with a splendid disregard for money, which our sadly handicapped aristocracy cannot afford to imitate.”

People were fascinated by the lives of Dollar Princesses on both sides of the Atlantic. The fates and fortunes of these women provided the fodder for some of the novelists Edith Wharton and Henry James’ most successful books. It was also the subject matter of The Wings of the Dove (by James), which was the basis for the 1997 film of the same name, starring Helena Bonham Carter.

Photography: Polygram/Propaganda/The Kobal Collection, Bettmann/Corbis

Katie Taylor, who works for London public relations firm Brunswick Art, has a personal interest in the Dollar Princess phenomenon. She is hoping to turn a dissertation she’s worked on into a book. “I am looking at American Heiresses from 1880 to 1910 and their contribution to arts patronage and architectural history,” she says. “I’m currently looking at 40 ancestral seats in the UK where American money made a distinct difference. However, it saddens me to see how little these women have been credited for the contribution that they made.”

The exhibition opens with costumed mannequins descending a double staircase. Dresses come from film adaptations of Henry James and Edith Wharton novels in which they were worn by Nicole Kidman (Portrait of a Lady), Uma Thurman and Kate Beckinsale (The Golden Bowl) and Gillian Anderson (The House of Mirth).

Even though Worth, the British-born but Paris-based couturier, was the leading designer of the day, there are no original dresses from him in this exhibition. Back then all self-respecting American heiresses went to Worth for their wedding trousseau in the same way that designer Vera Wang or shoemaker Manolo Blahnik is the name synonymous with American society weddings today.

“Historically, it has always taken foreigners to inject some form of new energy into a society, and that is exactly what the Dollar Princesses did – bringing with them a new way of seeing things that wouldn’t always have enamoured them to their contemporaries,” says Bath resident Manolo Blahnik.

“Most of them were already women of considerable social standing in America, although that meant very little to the English, who at the time were immense snobs and would still consider them foreign, and, dare I say it, vulgar! But, of course, I am sure that many women secretly wanted to be like them – which is why they eventually became so influential. It is almost impossible now to have an equivalent to the Dollar Princesses because the world has changed immensely since then. Theirs is an era that is long gone.” Perhaps; but its influence has remained long after.

Dollar Princesses: American Heiress to Peeress in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain runs until 28 October. +44 (0)1225 460503; www.americanmuseum.org