These “Dollar Princesses” Never Got A Happy Ending D
When Alva Vanderbilt divorced her husband, it was an instant scandal. At first, some blamed a mistress, while others claimed Alva straight. No one guessed the real sickening reason. They say when you marry for money, you earn every penny. But even though these American aises were the ones holding the purse strings when they wed European nobility, these dollar princesses managed to find tragedy.
One by one, they proved that these fairy tale marriages were just spousian bargains. The term dollar princess came about in the guilded age when wealthy American families, usually the Novo Ree robber barons who made their fortune off railroads, married a series of their daughters off to prestigious if penniless European noble houses.
One of the first true guilded age dollar princesses also turned into the most infamous. Born in 1854, Janette Jenny Jerome was the daughter of an American financier and speculator, and she had an aura of mystery to go along with her father’s money. Paying a compliment to her beauty, one commenter noted that she had more of the panther than of the woman in her look.
Her parents seemed to know what they had on their hands, too, and they weren’t going to let go of it without a prophet. In 1873, Jenny met Lord Randph Churchill, the third son of the Duke of Marorrow, while at Argata with the future King Edward IIIth. With Jenny’s beauty and money, she was irresistible to the young lord, and he proposed within 3 days.
Nonetheless, it took well into the next year for the marriage to take place, as their respective parents argued over payments and inheritances. The same year she was married, Jenny gave birth to her biggest claim to fame, her son, Winston Churchill, the future prime minister of Britain.
But Winston was born two months premature after Jenny reportedly fell, leading many to wonder if she hadn’t been pregnant before her wedding. When asked about his odd birth, Winston characteristically quipped, “Although present on the occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it. Still, whatever passion the new Lady Randolph Churchill had for her husband, it didn’t last long.
Jenny was something of an absent mother to Winston and his younger brother John, which wasn’t uncommon at the time. More unusual was where she spent her time instead, with a series of extrammarital lovers she pulled from the highest echelons of society, including King Edward IIIth himself. Nonetheless, this had surprising consequences.
Although Jenny’s affairs didn’t draw her and her husband closer together, they did help his career. The men she took to her bed were so powerful, her affairs doubled as diplomatic sessions, and Lord Churchill rose steadily in esteem in response. Jenny even managed to become friends with Queen Alexandra, her lover King Edward’s wife, who was aware of their relationship.
Yet, in a twist, Jenny didn’t stay married for all that long. In 1895, Randolph Churchill died, leaving Jenny a widow. though she hardly changed her habits. Now in her 40s and still in possession of her great beauty, she married George Cornwallis West, a man just 19 days older than her son Winston, who nicknamed her Pussycat.
But even now, there was no happily ever after for Jenny. By 1909, Cornwallis West had fallen out of love with his much older wife and instead began an affair with Jenny’s close associate, the famed actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell. To add to the dysfunction, after Jenny and Cornwallis West officially divorced in 1914, he turned around and married Campbell. Jenny didn’t respond well.
In the summer of 1918, she was well into her 60s when she married Montigue Fibbon Porch, who also happened to be 3 days younger than her son Winston. It was certainly scandalous at the time, but it’s impossible to say whether the marriage would have been successful or not.
Jenny simply didn’t have enough time. Jenny Jerome’s final days were as ugly as they come. In May of 1921, while her husband was away, she slipped on a staircase wearing high heels and broke her ankle. In no time at all, Gang Green had set in, forcing an amputation in June to try to save her life. It was fruitless.
Later that month, Jenny died at the age of 67 from a post amputation hemorrhage. Where Jenny Jerome skillfully navigated the waters of European society, this next dollar princess nearly sunk. Railroad magnet Jay Gould was one of the most forceful and cutthroat businessmen of the guilded age. So when his daughter Anna was born in 1875, people likely figured she was in for a wild, if privileged ride, they were regrettably right.
And most of her troubles stemmed from March 14th, 1895. This was the day the 20-year-old Aerys married Bonifas Dcast Castellan or Bonnie, the son and heir of the Marquee Dcastellan. To begin with, Anna and Bonnie made a mismatched pair and not just because of her massive wealth and his relatively impoverished name.
While Anna was plainlooking and certainly no great beauty, Bonnie was infamously vain and a notorious dandy. He stunned Americans with his flashy continental style, but he soon stunned Anna for another reason entirely. Bon was something of an unstoppable force in society, and he quickly became an unstoppable force in Anna’s bank account.
Truly using his ays’s diary for all it was worth, Bon went through an incredible 10 million of the Gould’s money in just a handful of years and spent much of it on excessive gifts for his string of mistresses. In 1906, Anna Gould unsurprisingly divorced her husband and perhaps surprisingly married his cousin Eli de Talhon instead.
They were together until Talhon’s passing in 1937, though it was hardly a fairy tale either. In 1929, Anna’s eldest son with her second husband took his own life after the couple refused him permission to marry. Still, if the best living is a good revenge, Anna Gould did end up winning on that front.
Soon after her civil divorce with Boni, Anna Gould’s ex-husband decided he wanted to marry again within the Catholic Church, which meant he had to receive an anulment of his first marriage to Anna from the Vatican. This proved nightmarish for him. After several trials and decisions, it took until 1924 for their union to finally be analled.
As Time magazine put it, probably not since Henry VIII tried in vain to get an en anulment of his marriage with Catherine of Aragon has a matrimonial case been so long in the courts. Yet, while Anna’s attack on her husband was slow, $1 Princess took an explicitly violent route. Born in 1865 in Yonkers, New York, Wineretta Singer was one of the aerises to the massive Singer sewing fortune.
In fact, the family fortune was so big that even though Wineretta was the 20th of an incredible 24 children for her father, Isaac Singer, she still had a million-dollar inheritance. This was too enticing for many noble suitors to ignore, but any amorous man who came into contact with Singer learned to regret it.
Singer’s young life was tragic and tumultuous, with a childhood spent pinging between European countries before her father died when she was 10 years old. Unfortunately, when her mother remarried, it was to a brute of a man who abused Zinger, spurring the young girl to seize control of her inheritance the moment she was of age and go live on her own.
It wasn’t long before she was in a new kind of trouble. Despite her relative freedom and objective wealth, at 22 years old, Winoretta found herself married to the French nobleman Countli de Ma, a man who surely enjoyed the prospect of her family money. However, Klouie likely never enjoyed the prospect of Winoretta Singer herself because on their wedding night, he found out her secret.
Although people within Singer’s inner circle knew she was a lesbian, Count Louie himself seemed to have missed this piece of gossip and he learned about it the hard way. When the two were alone together after the wedding, Singer reportedly climbed onto an armwire and threatened to kill the count if he so much as touched her.
Somehow though, Singer managed to make marriage work for her. Just not this one. After five years of this, the count and singer had the marriage enulled by the Catholic Church, having a much easier time of it than Bon and Anna Gould, not the least because there was little evidence of intimate relations.
In 1893, the 28-year-old Wintera then married another noble, the 59-year-old Prince Edmon Pollingak in a lavender marriage that suited the lesbian singer and the gay Pollingak quite well. Of course, this only made it easier for Singer to stir up drama. The leading woman of singer’s day seemed to find her irresistible and over the years she carried on affairs with the likes of the beautiful painter Roma Brooks as well as King Edward III’s rumored illegitimate daughter Olga Meyer. The other people in these women’s lives sometimes also found her infuriating. One scorn lover reportedly turned up outside of singer Venetian Palazzo and ordered her, “If you are half the man I think you are, you will come out here and fight me.” But for every romping story like Wineretta singers, the dollar princesses have 10 more tragedies, even when they have loving marriages. Mary Keren is one of the most famous dollar princess success stories, but her
fate post marriage was as tragic as they come. Born in 1870 in Chicago as Mary Lighter, her father was an incredibly successful merchant, and Mary herself earned a reputation for being as well bred and educated as she was beautiful. when she caught a husband. Then he was a very big fish indeed.
Soon after being introduced to London society, the 20-year-old Mary met the 35-year-old George Keren, a member of Parliament and the heir to the Baron of Scarsdale. Unlike so many other dollar princesses, Mary was drawn more to George for his political aspirations than for his title, and their marriage in 1895 was a love match.
It would also rocket them both to international power. Like Jenny Jerome, Mary was one of the most charming diplomatic wives around. And when her new husband won re-election to Parliament soon after their wedding, many credited his bride’s sweet smiles for the feat. This upward trajectory continued, and a handful of years later, George became vice roy of India with Mary becoming vice reign, the highest official title in the Indian Empire for a woman.
Mary seemed to have it all, which is when fate came and snatched it away. In truth, something had been missing from the Keren marriage for a while, a son and heir that George desperately wanted. Instead, Mary gave birth to a succession of three girls, the last of whom was born during her time as vice reign in 1904. And though she tried to get pregnant again right after, she suffered a bitter miscarriage.
Weighed down by her failure, as well as her endless political duties, Mary’s health grew frail until the day it snapped. The couple was back in England for a brief visit when Mary fell so ill she started to slip in and out of a coma. She ended up making a miraculous recovery, but doctors had been telling her husband to prepare to say goodbye.
This wasn’t warning enough for the viceroy and vice reign. Due back to his post, George returned to India with Mary’s blessing, leaving her to conileles alone. True to form, she pushed herself to get better. When she was barely able to move around, and even then only with help, she wrote to George and told him she would join him in India shortly.
She then followed through far earlier than she likely should have. So, in the summer of 1906, Mary Kersonen’s body finally gave out entirely. An illness and an awful cough that shook her bones to pieces took over, and she wrote to her brother, “I sometimes fear and feel I shall never be well again.” She was right.
That July, she suffered a fatal heart attack at just 36 years old, proving that even when a dollar princess’s marriage goes well, it can still go wrong. While Mary Keren helped shape British politics for years to come, the next dollar princess helped shape an American dynasty. Consuel’s Naga isn’t wellknown today, but as her story and scandal go on, you’ll see just how embedded she is in American history, at least in its backdoor bedroom dealings.
Born in New York City in 1853, Yiznaga hailed from Cuban nobility and a long line of plantation owners. As such, she grew up with the future elite of New York society, what novelist Edith Wharton would go on to describe as the Buccaneers. In fact, her childhood best friend, Alva Smith, married William Vanderbilt, Zion of the American Vanderbilt family.
But Yiznaga’s own marital accomplishments were also formidable. While Yiznaga’s friend Alva kept her money stateside, she went the dollar princess route, marrying George Montigue. Since George was the future Duke of Manchester, it was only fitting that Yiznaga brought with her an eyepopping dowy worth multiple millions when converted into today’s money.
Consuelia’s Naga had been sold a fairy tale, but almost as soon as she settled into her new European estates, she realized something had gone horribly wrong. Her husband might have been a future Duke, but he was also a brute. And in less than a decade, he had squandered all the money she’d brought in on gambling and mistresses.
The Duke was so far gone, Yiznaga’s father-in-law banished the couple to Ireland for years to get him under control. But when Canuelo emerged back into society, it didn’t get much better. Though her husband died in 1892, her new freedom may not have been a healthy development. Around the same time, Alva Vanderbilt shocked society by demanding a divorce from her husband, William.
Rumors flew as to the reason why, and the truth may have been more scandalous than they could have guessed. According to some whispers from those who knew the couple, William Vanderbilt hadn’t just cheated on his wife, he cheated with her best friend, Canuel Naga. Perhaps the most poignant part was that Alva had actually named her own daughter, Consuel Vanderbilt, after her traitor’s friend, who was also the girl’s godmother.
And this godaughter had possibly the worst time as a dollar princess. From the moment of Canuelo Vanderbilt’s birth in 1877, Alva was determined that her daughter make an aristocratic European match just like her namesake. Accordingly, Alva forced the girl to wear a steel rod from a young age to perfect her posture and would whip her with a riding crop at any sign of misbehavior.
The Vanderbilt matriarch was open and unapologetic about her control. When Canuela once protested, her mother retorted, “I do the thinking. You do as you are told.” Like her predecessors Jenny Jerome and Mary Kerzen, Canuelo won both the family and genetic lottery, being both unimaginably wealthy and unimaginably beautiful.
Peter Pan playwright James Barry wrote, “I would stand all day in the street to see Canuelo get into her carriage and men raved about her pecant oval face and long slender neck. By the time Canuelo reached maturity, she was the embodiment of the slim, tight look that characterized women during the Edwwardian era.
And her mother knew this all too well. When Canuelo became of a marriageable age, Alva was sure she could win her daughter one of the biggest catches in Europe, namely Charles Spencer Churchill, the 9inth Duke of Marorrow, who came from an illustrious family and was also the cousin of Winston Churchill. There was just one thing Alva hadn’t counted on.
Canuelo was singularly uninterested in the Duke, title or not, primarily because she was utterly in love with the socialite Winthrop Rutherford, a man 15 years her senior who possessed less than half the possibilities of a Duke of Marbor. And when it came to keeping Rutherford, the normally compliant Canuelo got rebellious.
Instead of caving to Elvis demands, Canuelo planned to alope with Rutherford, thereby ending the marriage negotiations with the Duke once and for all. But her doineering mother was ready. When Alva got wind of Canuelo’s plans, she locked her daughter in her room, all while threatening to harm Rutherford and force Consuelo down the aisle.
As Canuelo still staunchly refused to marry anyone but Rutherford, Alva began getting extremely ill, a sickness apparently brought on by her daughter’s stubborn refusal to listen. The more Canuelo stood her ground, the closer Alva got to death’s door. until the girl, fearful she really was killing her mother, agreed to the wedding at last.
At that point, all of a sudden made a full recovery, enough to witness one of the worst days of her daughter’s life. Canuel’s wedding to the Duke of Marlboro was the talk of society, but so too was her strange behavior on the day. Reportedly, she spent her time at the altar uncontrollably weeping behind her veil. Meanwhile, the Duke collected 2.
5 million, nearly 100 million in today’s money as a marriage settlement that would inject new life into his dilapidated estates. It only took until the honeymoon for Canuelo to realize the full impact of her mistake. Not only was the Duke a relatively shallow man, he was also completely dismissive of her.
He also made a series of chilling confessions. First, he admitted he’d only married her to save Blenhan, his ancestral home, and then informed her that he too was completely in love with someone else, and didn’t intend to romance her beyond producing an heir. Canuel did end up giving the Duke a son, but she was still miserable and rekindled her relationship with Winthre Rutherford.
She was as in love as ever, and eventually confessed to her husband that she still wanted to elope with Rutherford. There were even rumors that her second son belonged to him, not the Duke. The Duke reluctantly agreed to consider the possibility of a split and in 1900, Canuela went to London to sit down and discuss an alopment with Rutherford, only to receive the shocking news that he didn’t want to marry her.
In the desperate aftermath, Canuelo began an affair with the Duke’s cousin, Regginald Fellows, and may have done the same with the artist Paul Cesare Hel. Before long, the Duke and his daughter Princess were barely on speaking terms, much less intimate ones, and they separated in 1906, officially divorcing in 1921.
In a too little too late moment of vindication, even Canuel’s own mother, Alva, admitted during the court proceedings that the marriage was a mistake, confessing, “I forced my daughter to marry the Duke.” Eventually, Canuelo did find happiness when she married Jacqu Balsan, an early lover of Koko Chanel. She remained married to him until his passing in 1956.
When Consuel herself died in 1964, many saw it as the true end of a not so gilded era and the end of the dollar princesses. However, one of the very first dollar princesses preceded the guilded age, and her dramatic life and tragic marriage set the pattern for the woman who followed her.
Born in February of 1785, Elizabeth Patterson was the eldest daughter of merchant William Patterson, the second wealthiest man in Maryland. From a young age, people considered Elizabeth one of the most beautiful women in Baltimore, and she put these good looks to good use. In 1803, she met Napoleon Bonapart’s weward brother, Jerome, who was stalling around the United States, afraid to go back to France because he knew the emperor was annoyed at his conduct during a recent military incident.
Despite this warning sign, Elizabeth quickly developed a romance with him. Most everyone around Elizabeth was worried about their relationship, and her father even received an anonymous letter claiming that any wedding vows Jerome made would only be for the sake of wasting more time in America. It was another warning, but the more objections there were, the more Elizabeth was determined to marry him.
She even threatened to elope if her father didn’t give an official union his blessing. So on Christmas Eve 1803, months after first meeting Jerome, she became Napoleon Bonapart’s sister-in-law. It was an unmititigated disaster. However irritated Elizabeth’s family was about Jerome, Napoleon himself was even more unhappy about his brother’s new wife.
When he heard about their union, the ruler ordered his brother back home without his bride so he could enol the mistake. Jerome embarked on the journey back to France, but did bring the now pregnant Elizabeth with him across the ocean. They were in for a rude awakening. The pair were unaccountably shocked when they landed, and Napoleon’s men on his orders wouldn’t even let the American woman set foot in continental Europe.
Jerome, incensed, swore to Elizabeth he would do everything that must be done before heading off to Italy to convince his brother to relent. Elizabeth waited for months for her husband to succeed in his mission, giving birth to a son in London in the summer of 1805 in the meantime. Yet, even though she kept receiving letters from her husband saying he would never abandon her and he was working on his brother, this didn’t come true.
Jerome eventually caved to Napoleon’s demands, accepting a post as an admiral and then the position of king of Westfallia for his troubles. Napoleon made good on his word and enulled the union with Elizabeth getting an official divorce in 1815. Then just two years after the birth of their son whom Jerome refused to support, Elizabeth’s ex-husband married another woman, the German princess Katina von Verenberg.
Elizabeth never saw her husband again except in one excruciating moment. In 1822, Elizabeth and Jerome accidentally crossed paths in Florence at the Pity Palace. Reportedly, they made brief eye contact and neither of them spoke to each other. Afterward, Jerome informed his current spouse, who was with him, that this was his American wife.
That was the last they saw of each other, though they both lived decades longer, with Elizabeth passing away in 1879 at the age of 94. Yet for all that, at least Elizabeth Patterson chose and fought for her doomed marriage. Her successors weren’t always so lucky. Thanks for watching History Expose. If you love uncovering the best stories in history, hit like and subscribe to keep exploring with us.
If you enjoyed this video, check out the videos on screen for more amazing history content.
