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socially ambitious mothers – hoping to propel them into what could be described as a carefully ‘arranged’ but very grand marriage, where the trade-off for their ‘new’ American cash is a title and a big country estate and a heritage going back centuries. Shedloads of it. An estimated 10 per cent of aristocratic marriages between 1870 and l914 are with brides from the USA.
    This ‘Desperately Seeking An English Toff’ system works in some cases. There’s too much money involved for it not to work, and these girls have a wildly romantic notion about marrying an English earl or a duke. But there are huge cultural differences. As a result, some liaisons are unhappy, loveless and occasionally disastrous: wealthy, pampered American girls already used to servants and the latest mod cons like central heating complain endlessly about how chilly and cold the vast, unheated English mansions can be. The very English characteristic of ‘putting up with it’ or being stoic about physical inconvenience or discomfort has never really played well across the Atlantic. And there is a persistent belief among the English aristocracy, that lasts well into the twentieth century, that the only way to heat a room is by a fire – even though the cost of installing the ‘new fangled’ methods of heating their homes is affordable for some.
    American social princesses arriving into the English or Scottish countryside are aghast to discover that every time they want a bath in their chilly new stately home, a housemaid has to lug gallons of water up and down stairs if the kitchen is tucked far away in a different part of the enormous house. And, if they are unlucky, their day-to-day relationship with their cash-strapped English aristocratic spouse, often overly concerned with the cares of keeping the estate running, can be as chilly or remote as the house itself.
    In the Downton Abbey marriage, the Earl of Grantham believes he has secured the future of his estate this way by marrying the wealthy American heiress, Cora, Countess of Grantham. They wind up with three daughters and no male heir. Yet theirs is very much a love match rather than a mere merger of interests. Was this typical? Maybe not. Consider the story of the marriage of the fabulously rich railroad heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt and her marriage to ‘Sunny’, Charles Spencer Churchill, the ninth Duke of Marlborough and owner of the 187-room Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, in 1896.

T HE GIRL WITH THE DIAMOND-ENCRUSTED GARTERS
    Eighteen-year-old Consuelo’s dowry (part of which was paid in railroad stocks and shares) is equivalent to US $100 million today. Newspaper stories at the time carry gushing reports about her bridal undies: her pink lace corset (with real gold hooks) and her silk stockings (held up by diamond-encrusted garters).
    Yet Consuelo is a very unhappy bride. For starters, she’s in love with someone else. However, so desperate is Consuelo’s conniving mother Alva to up the ante socially by being mum to a duchess that Alva pretends to be dying in order to convince Consuelo to go through with the match.
    Consuelo cries all the way to the glittering wedding ceremony. Some stories claim she’s seen weeping at the altar. In their carriage afterwards, the Duke, close to bankruptcy, blithely informs her he’s given up the woman he loves to marry her money. The honeymoon isn’t even over when he orders a hugely expensive refurbishment of Blenheim.
    Two sons are born. But the couple separate, a great society scandal in 1906 – even the King has insisted they should not divorce – and it isn’t until 1921 that a divorce is finally granted.
    So has the cash from the American heiresses ‘saved’ the British cash-poor, land-rich aristocracy from financial ruin? It certainly helped. Once you’ve sold off the family silver, your valuable art collection and other costly items to pay your debts the last thing you want to do is give up the house and the