AMERICAN BRIDES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5088, 14 February 1927, Page 4

AMERICAN BRIDES.

MARRYING BRITISH. ARISTOCRATS

A DEFENCE OF THE SYSTEM.

Some Americans like to pretend humorously that every peer or other member of our “effete aristocracy who seeks an American bride is a taxridden landowner eager to marry any girl who is willing (or whose parents are willing) to, barter a sufficiency o! dollars for the right to be addressed as “your Grace” or “Your Ladyship.

But whatever Mrs Belmont may oi may not have said to her daughtei before she became. Duchess of Marlborough, the vast majority pf these unions have proved completely happy and successful. And we must believe, with Congress, that the presiding genius of Anglo-American courtships is Cupid, and not the lawyers who draw up the marriage settlements. “We marry your best men,” a fair New Yorker once s,aid 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, noiw Cornelia Lady Craven, was Miss Bradley-Martin, 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 Tr.ans-Atlantic alliances, that have been formed sijice 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—te mention a few —Miss May Goelet, now the Duchess of Roxburghe; Miss Vivian Jay Gould, now Lady Decies ; Miss Beatrice Ogden Mills, the present Countess of Granard ; and Miss Ethel Marshal Field, who married Lord Beatty as long ago as 1901, when, he was simply Captain Beatty, his glory and his, earldom still to be won.

Another marriage that helped to introduce American feminine charms to London society was that of Sir William Vernon Harcourt tc< the very pretty daughter of Mr Motley, the American historian and Ambassador. We can be sure that marriage was a success, Tor, not only did Mr Motley’s two other daughters follow their sister’s example, but Sir William Harcourt’s san (the late Lord Harcourt) in due course 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 Roxburghe, his brother, Lord Alastair Innes-Kerr, also found a bride, in New York. Viscount Deerhurst. and his. two brothers, the three elder sons o’f 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, ther.e were the .three. Miss Leiters, of Washington. Mary became Lady Curzon 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 ye.ars later her sister Phillipa was led to the altar by the Earl of Galloway. But Cupid’s greatest triumph as international marriage-maker was Marquis Curzon', who, after mourning one dearly-loved American wife, found equal happiness in the life-long devotion of another. The. compliment lias been returned by that gfhcious and charming lady who, as Miss Mary Endicott, of U.S.A., married Mr Joseph Chamberlain., and in. s ( till with us as the wife of Canon Carnegie, of Westminster.