An American Princess: The Many Lives of Allene Tew(19)
Greta was fairly late to debut on the social scene: the average deb was sixteen or seventeen. At first glance, there would appear to be no reason for her not to have had a line of eager young suitors. She had inherited her father’s dark good looks and his friendly, pleasant nature—though, like him, she was susceptible to a certain plumpness. From her mother, she had inherited striking blue eyes and great talent as a horsewoman. And she was rich. She and Teddy were the heirs to several million dollars, still carefully managed by their uncle Herbert.
Although the society sections report Greta’s presence at plenty of parties for debutante friends and classmates, there was no question of making her debut herself, let alone becoming engaged. This probably had something to do with her mother, or rather with her mother’s turbulent love life. If there was one thing the mothers of eligible young bachelors on the New York scene ran a mile from, it was that unfortunate combination of divorce and scandal. And those two things were present in abundance in the young life of the Lucky Plunger’s daughter.
Allene, never to be put off her stride, abandoned the snobs in New York for what they were and left for Europe with her daughter. In doing this, she was following in the footsteps of numerous American heiresses who, for whatever reasons, were considered less than marriageable in their own country. Dollar princesses, they were called, who, in exchange for an impressive-sounding title and its accompanying prestige, would buy their way into aristocratic families on the other side of the ocean. Around 1900, the British aristocracy counted more than five hundred Americans, and there was scarcely a distinguished family to be found that didn’t have a daughter-in-law from the New World.
The English barons, lords, and counts had little choice: as a consequence of mechanization and the competition of cheap grain and meat from America, their own rural estates were earning less and less, while taxes were rising. They would even place personal ads in New York newspapers in which they’d announce—in so many words—their search for a moneyed wife. A woman’s lack of status in her home country was something they accepted: for them, all Americans were equally socially unacceptable, and so, as the British writer Ruth Brandon pithily put it, “one might therefore pick the richest without compunction.”
Some of these alliances worked out extremely well, such as in the case of Jennie Jerome, who married Lord Randolph Churchill in 1874 and became the mother of British prime minister Winston Churchill. The 1909 marriage of banker’s widow Olive Grace Kerr, a good friend of Allene’s, to the third Baron Greville was incredibly successful, too. “American women are bright, clever, and wonderfully cosmopolitan,” Oscar Wilde opined. They often didn’t just bring money but also welcome new blood and a breath of fresh air to the old castles.
Other fairy-tale weddings were less happy, such as that of Consuelo Vanderbilt, whose ambitious mother married her off to the Duke of Marlborough in 1895. Just as unhappy was the beautiful, powerful, and rich Mary Hasell, a friend of Greta’s, who married British baron George Borwick in 1908. It soon became clear to the new baroness that a title and a collection of old family portraits offered no guarantee of marital happiness. Her husband gambled, got into debt all over the place, and saw the fact that he’d married his wife for her money as a reason to treat her with as much scorn as possible. Sometimes, she admitted to Greta, he even spat at her.
When Allene and Greta arrived in England in early June 1911, they decided to take the unhappy Mary with them. In the fall, the three women moved on to France, where Greta was the honored guest of the Duchess d’Uzès in Rambouillet and, according to the Washington Post’s correspondent, widely admired for her riding skills. Next they traveled to British India, where they took in the polo season and witnessed the “durbar”—festivities to celebrate King George V’s investiture as the official emperor of the overseas territories.
Halfway through February 1912, the three women returned to England. Mary Hasell found herself standing in front of a locked door as access to her in-laws’ London house was rudely denied her. She moved into Claridge’s hotel and began very public divorce proceedings as revenge—this to the delight of the press hounds on both sides of the ocean and, it seemed, even to Mary herself. Dressed up dramatically, she made the most of every opportunity in the courts to glory in her role as the tragic heroine.
Perhaps due to Mary’s bad experiences—or perhaps during the women’s nine-month trawl through the British Empire no suitable marriage candidates had announced themselves—Greta still wasn’t engaged when she and her mother returned to New York empty-handed in mid-March 1912. Once there, Allene organized an official coming-out for her daughter, sparing no cost or effort.
The debutante’s party took place on April 9, 1912, at Sherry’s. More than a hundred guests were invited for the dinner alone, including Greta’s many girlfriends, family members from Pittsburgh, and all kinds of friends and business relations of Allene’s. A further hundred guests were invited to the after-dinner ball, held in a room lavishly decorated with fresh white and yellow spring flowers. Greta was radiant in white satin with pearls; her mother was stunning in dark blue satin with diamonds, and the New York Times gave a trusty account of what seemed to be a very promising debutante’s ball in all respects, even if it was a little on the late side.
Less than a week later, any thought of high society and parties or the reporting thereof was wiped away with one blow by shocking reports that the brand-new deemed-unsinkable flagship of the White Star Line, the RMS Titanic, had hit an iceberg on its way to New York and sunk. Fewer than 700 of the more than 2,220 people on board survived. Among the victims were many prominent New Yorkers, such as steel magnate Benjamin Guggenheim, Macy’s owner Isidor Straus, and John Jacob Astor. The papers had castigated Astor, a divorced man of forty-seven, for marrying an eighteen-year-old classmate of Greta’s, but now “Colonel Astor” was exalted by the same papers as a heroic figure.