AMERICAN BRIDES

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 5 February 1927, Page 11

AMERICAN BRIDES

SOME Americans like to pretend humorously that every peer or other member / of our “effete aristocracy’' who seeks an American bride is a tax-ridden landowner eager to marry any girl who is. willing (or whose parents are willing) to barter a. sufficiency of dollars for the right to be addressed as “Your grace” or “Your ladyship.”

But whatever Mrs Belmont may or may‘not have ■ said to her daughter before she became Duchess of Marlborough, the vast majority of these unions have proved completely happy and successful. And we must believe, with Congress, that the presiding genius of AngloAmerican courtships is Cupid and not the lawyers. who. draw up the marriage settlements. - <

“We marry your best men,” a fair New Yorker once said to a visiting Englishman. “Well, we marry your prettiest women,” was the reply—and if the best men and the prettiest girls may not fall in love with each other then the great Anglo-Saxon ideal of marriage is falsified.

Perhaps the first American bride to set London society agog was Lady Randolph Churchill, whose beauty and gaiety took the town by storm in 1874—and she was her husband’s helpmeet and companion until his death. Lady Randolph, as it were, set a fashion. The Prince of Wales (King Edward) was kind to the fair representative of the Republic, and before long another American beauty—the Countess of Essex—was a member of the “Marlborough House set.”

The Countess of Craven, the American, now Cornelia Lady Craven, was Miss BradleyMartin, and her parents found her so happy and our “effete aristocracy” so charming that they made England their home. It is impossible to recount all the TransAtlantic alliances that have been formed since that same Prince of Wales, like another Columbus, “discovered” American society. At least half the noble families of England now have American connections by marriage, and conversely almost all the' leading families in the States have at least one daughter married — and happily married—to an English husband.There have been—to mention a few—Miss

FOR BRITISH ARISTOCRATS

A DEFENCE OF THE SYSTEM s

May (Joel el, now the Duchess of Roxburghe. Miss Vivian Jay Could, now Lady Deeies, -Miss Beatrice Ogden Mills, the present Countess ot Oranard and Miss Kthel Marshal Field, who married Lord Beatty as long ago as 1901, when he was simply Captain Beatty, his glory and Ids earldom still to he won

Another marriage that helped to introduce American feminine charms to London society was that of Sir William \ ernon Harcourt. to the very pretty daughter of Mr Motley, the American historian and Ambassador. We can be sure that marriage was a success, for not only did Mr Motley’s two other daughters follow their sister’s example, but Sir William Harcourt’s son (the late Lord Harcourt) in due court chose a wife from his mother’s land.

One happy marriage is said to lead to another, and so it seems to be of Anglo-American marriages. After the Duke of Itoxburghe, his brother, Lord Alastair Innes-Kerr, also found a bride in New York. Viscount Deerhurst and his two brothers, the three elder sons of the Earl of Coventry, all have American wives. • Nor, on the other hand, can it be so very dreadful for an American girl to take an English husband. Besides the Motley girls, already mentioned, there were the three Miss Loiters of Washington. Mary became Lady Cur/.on and the first American-born Vicereine of India. Margaret is now the Dowager Countess of Suffolk, whose husband fell in action in 1917. The third, Nancy, married Captain Colin Campbell.

And quite recently we had a further example of this kind. In 1922 Miss Catherine Wendell, of New York, married the Hon. Michael Herbert, now Lord Carnarvon. Two years later her sister Pliillipa was led to the altar by the Earl of Galloway. .

But Cupid’s greatest triumph as international' marriage-maker was Marquis Curzoru who, after mourning one dearly-loved American wife, found equal happiness in the life-long devotion of another. The compliment has been returned by that gracious and charming lady whoy as Miss Mary Endicott. of U.S.A., married Mr Joseph Chamberlain, and is still with us as the wife of Canon Carnegie, of Westminster.