Various

By Lady Willshire

The author of the following essay on “Americans in London” is one of the most distinguished of the leaders of English Society. She is the daughter of Sir Sanford Freeling, who was for a time military secretary at Gibraltar. Her husband, Sir Arthur Willshire, was an officer in the Guards. Lady Willshire, in addition to her social activities, is, without ostentation, a woman whose charities occupy a large part of her time. In appearance she is over middle height, rather fragile, with great charm of manner. She is an accomplished musician and linguist. Her favorite recreations are riding, driving and bicycling, and she is looked upon as the best dancer in London Society.

I can well remember the time when I could easily reckon up the whole list of my American acquaintances resident in London on the fingers of one hand, and most of those were the wives of English husbands.

That was certainly not more than ten years ago, and then the majority of Americans that one chanced to meet in England were travelers, who knew very little of, and cared less apparently to see or take part in, the doings of our London society.

In ten years, however, amazing changes can and do take place, especially where the natives of the States are concerned, and nowadays I find that not only does it require a great many leaves in my capacious address book to hold the names of the Americans—and the women most particularly—who live and move and have a large part of their social being in London, but that a very impressive majority of these attractive and prominent ladies are not the life partners of voting, title-holding British subjects at all.

The good work accomplished both ways by the international marriage goes merrily on. At the present moment we can claim not less than twenty-five peeresses of transatlantic birth, while we don’t pretend to keep anything like an exact record of the ever-increasing acquisitions, from American sources, to our gentry class; but, for all that, the present big average of American women who come across the ocean to conduct a successful siege of London no longer regard the English husband as a sort of necessary preliminary and essential ally to the business of getting on in our smart metropolitan society.

The fair and welcome invader from the land of the free and the home of the brave can, and does, “arrive” astonishingly well without masculine assistance and encouragement.

She may appear as maid, wife or widow; sometimes as divorcee; but, personally, she conducts her own campaign. Furthermore, she comes fully equipped to carry everything before her—she has wit, wealth and good looks at her command, and she works along approved and sensible lines of action.

If she has a thoroughgoing conquest of London planned out, she does not put up at a fashionable hotel and spread her fine plumage and wait for notice.

She usually begins by taking a house; she furnishes it with original but discreet good taste; she wears startlingly pretty gowns—quite the best, as a rule, that Paris can supply; she gives the most taking sorts of entertainments, and the ordinary result is that in one season she is not only launched and talked about, but securely placed and greatly admired.

And if you want to know why she does this thing, the answer you can get, as I did, from her own mouth; she simply “likes London and London society.”

As an amiable, broad-minded woman, she does not love her own country so much that she cannot find a place in her heart for London, too, and that which chiefly appeals to her in our elderly, sprawling, sooty, amusing and splendid old capital is the fact that she finds it interesting.

There you have one explanation, at least, of the apparent phenomenon of the ever-growing circle of American women in the very heart of our biggest city. But it becomes a Londoner to confess that another good reason why she is so familiar and conspicuous a figure among us is because we reciprocate her liking with the strongest possible warmth of admiration.

Not only do we regard our American colony with genuine enthusiasm, and take pride and pleasure in the fact that it is the largest of its kind in any European capital, but social London pleasantly feels its influence.

Now, influence is one of those qualities that the American woman carries about with her just as naturally as she carries her pretty airs of independence, or her capacity for easy and amusing speech, and it is a sad mistake for anyone to take it for granted that on her wealth or her pulchritude alone all her claim to success and popularity in England rests.

In no way that I know of has her influence been more sensibly and beneficially felt among us than in the introduction of a quick, vivacious tone to conversation.

Her gift for light, easy, semi-humorous talk, her gay, self-confident way of telling a good story, constitute her a leading and most lasting attraction in English estimation. From her the English woman has learned, first, that which it seems every transatlantic sister is aware by intuition, that one supreme duty of the sex, as it is represented in society, is to know how to talk a little to everybody, to talk always in sprightly fashion, and never to adopt the English woman’s depressing method of answering all conversational efforts and overtures with chilling monosyllables.

It is no exaggeration to say that since the tremendous enlargement of the American colony, the whole pace of London drawing-room talk has enormously improved. We British are not by nature a sprightly and speechful race, with the gift of gay gab, but under the American woman’s cheerful influence we are enjoying a sort of reformation.

We send our daughters even to a fashionable school in fashionable Kensington, which is kept by a long-headed American woman, who will very nearly guarantee to bid a door post discourse freely and be obeyed. And the women to whom first honors are due for having inspired London with a wholesome respect for what I may justly call the very superior American parts of speech, are Mrs. George Cornwallis-West—perhaps better known on both sides of the ocean as Lady Randolph Churchill—and Consuelo, the Dowager Duchess of Manchester.

It would be a superfluous and ungrateful task to try to recall the number of years that have flown since these two women, unusually attractive as they are, even for Americans, came over to literally take London by storm.

Suffice it to say that, as Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra, “age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite variety;” and in spite of the amazing influx of their young and lovely and accomplished countrywomen into London since their day of arrival, these two ladies still stand, as they have stood for years, at the very top of the entire American set abroad.

Both of them, by marriage or through years of long association, have become thoroughly identified with English society, but, unlike Lady Vernon-Harcourt, widow of the great leader of the Liberal party, and daughter of the famous historian Motley, they have never lost their strong American individuality.

Lady Vernon-Harcourt, to sight and hearing, seems almost a typical and thoroughgoing English woman, but Mrs. George Cornwallis-West and the Duchess Consuelo are, to all intents and purposes, as distinctly American as the day on which they were presented as brides and beauties at one of Queen Victoria’s drawing-rooms.

Then, as well as now, they were both fair to look upon, but they were also something more—they were the cleverest of talkers, and the beautiful Consuelo, in her soft, Southern voice, possessed a faculty for quaint and witty turns of phrase that made her an instant favorite.

At the time of her dÉbut, London had yet to meet the American woman who could not only chatter along cheerfully and intelligently, but who could artfully and unembarrassedly tell an amusing story before the big and critical audience that the average dinner table supplies. Our fair Creole and the fair New Yorker were, however, more than equal to all and any such emergencies and occasions.

It was with their capable tongues, quite as much as with their charming faces, that they scored their social triumphs in England, and it was mainly through their beguiling conversational powers that they both caught the attention of the present king and queen—at that time Prince and Princess of Wales—and aroused royalty’s prompt and lasting admiration.

Until that time no American could boast the fact that she was the friend of the queen, prince or princess, but the young duchess and Lady Randolph Churchill changed all that. They were the first of their nation to be asked to the Sandringham house parties, to be included in the lists of guests invited to meet royal folk at dinners, etc., and to inspire in the present king and queen the thoroughgoing liking they now cherish for American things in general and the American woman in particular.

A good deal of brown Thames water has flowed under London Bridge, it is true, since these exponents of two entirely different types of American womanhood came over to astonish even our blasÉ society, but no two of their sex and nation have succeeded in making a more deep and lasting impression upon London than these, or have done more to insure the social success of their countrywomen who followed in their footsteps.

Consuelo, the duchess, is a grandmother to-day, but she is almost as prominent a figure in the gay world as she ever was; unlike Mrs. George Cornwallis-West, she never went in, so to speak, for political prestige. She has cared for social gayety pure and simple, preserved much of her beauty, maintained her reputation as the most delightful house-party guest in England, and is noted nowadays as being, as well, the most skillful, tactful and serenely polite bridge-whist partner in the United Kingdom.

When, a few months ago, a house-party for royalty was given at Chatsworth by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, it was at the urgent request of both the king and queen that the Dowager Duchess of Manchester came over from Paris to spend a few days under the same roof with their majesties, whose affection for this low-voiced, sweet-tempered, witty American woman has never wavered. Every now and then one hears anew in London drawing rooms of some amusing saying of hers, for she is as gracious and graceful a conversationalist as of yore, and with three young and blooming American duchesses to rival her, still stands well apart from and ahead of them all, at least so far as the homage of our smart and titled society can be accepted as proof of a woman’s position.Of all the three young duchesses, I think her youthful Grace of Marlborough is far and away the most distinctly popular and influential. She has conquered even the most indifferent and the most prejudiced, by an exquisitely charming sweetness of manner that is quite irresistible.

She does not possess what a Frenchman would call the vif style of her average countrywomen, and she is not a very vigorous talker, but she is wonderfully sympathetic and attractive of manner; her porcelain fine, aristocratic prettiness makes her a distinguished figure wherever she goes, and from the first she presided at the head of her vast establishment, and took her rightful position in England with a natural dignity and a complete grasp of the situation that literally took the breath away from the rather skeptical British onlooker.

There is a story told, sub rosa, of the discomfiture of a high-nosed and rather too helpful aristocratic matron and relative, who, on the arrival of her shy looking, slim young Grace, undertook to set her right and well beforehand on points of etiquette, ducal duty and responsibilities, etc.

Nobody knows to this day just what passed between the fair girl and the stately matron, but the duchess was not very much bothered with unnecessary advice after one short interview with her rather officious social fairy-godmother. And if the duchess was not ready to take advice, it was simply because she did not need it. When she gave her first great house party at Blenheim, it rather outrivaled in splendor anything of the sort done in England in a long time, and her chief guests were royalties; nevertheless, there was not a hitch or a mistake in all the elaborate proceedings; and a critical peer, who enjoyed the magnificent hospitality of the Marlboroughs, was heard to remark afterward that to be born an American millionairess is to apparently know by instinct all that has to be taught from childhood to a native English duchess.

That Her Grace of Marlborough has a natural taste for splendid surroundings is shown by her fondness for big Blenheim and the marvelous luxury she has introduced into every part of that vast mansion; and when her indulgent father offered to buy for her a house in London, she imposed but two guiding conditions on his choice for her of a home in town.

“I want the biggest house on the most fashionable street,” she is said to have said. The result was that Mr. Vanderbilt purchased Sunderland House, in Curzon Street, and there the duchess is fittingly installed.

There the most sumptuous decorating and furnishing has been done, and when she entertains, her dinners will be the most splendid and her balls the largest and most luxurious of the season, for whatever the duchess does is done in almost regal style.

Eventually no London hostess can or will outshine her, and yet this first among the American duchesses is not very socially inclined. She prefers the country life and Blenheim to the best that London can give her, and this taste is to a great measure shared by many of our American peeresses and guests.

The Countess of Orford, Lady Monson, the Countess of Donoughmore, Mrs. Spender Clay, Lady Charles Ross and Mrs. Langhorne Shaw, for example, find English country life pre-eminently to their taste, and all but avoid the town, save in the very height of the season.

Lady Orford—who was Miss Corbin—lives at Waborne Hall, her husband’s magnificent Georgian place in Norfolk. There she gives shooting parties, from there she goes with her husband and pretty young daughter to fish in Scotland and Norway, and the chief interest that brings her up to London is her taste for music and the opera, which, she declares, is the only pleasure that one cannot gratify out of town.

Next after music, sport—fishing most especially—engages her particular interest. Though she rarely goes out with the guns, her husband declares she is a capital shot, and that she could and would ride to hounds with the most daring of our fox-hunting peeresses, if Norfolk was a hunting shire.

Prominent, however, among the hunting set is the handsome Countess of Donoughmore, whose father, the American millionaire Grace, owns Battle Abbey, and has made England his home for many years. His slender, pretty daughter, who was Miss Eleana Grace before she married an Irish earl, rode to hounds from her days of floating locks and short skirts.

Now, as a fair and fashionable peeress, she hunts Ireland and England both with all the zest and skill of a native-born Irish woman. Her keenest American competitor, in the art of hard cross-country riding, is a young and beautiful Virginian, Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, who comes over every year to hunt, and for no other purpose.

In spite of all her youth and beauty and charm, this fair sister-in-law of the famous American artist, Charles Dana Gibson, scarcely makes an appearance in London at all. She arrives in England at the season when the scent is best and the hounds at their briskest, and, American-wise, she takes a house in the very heart of the hunting district.

Sometimes she brings over her own string of horses from her native State, for she is a judge of sound and capable animals; and she has done more than any other one of her sex and race to prove that the American-built riding habit is a capital garment, and that when she is well mounted and in the field there are few in England who can surpass an American woman at hard and intelligent riding.

Lady Monson, though less of a sportswoman than Lady Donoughmore or Mrs. Langhorne-Shaw, is, if anything, more devoted to country life in England than either, for a very great part of every year she spends, by preference, at her husband’s beautiful home, “Barton Hall,” and there she entertains not only extensively and luxuriously, but chiefly the diplomats, domestic and foreign.

This capacity for gathering about her quite the most interesting among notable men has made her house parties rather famous in an enviable way, and has given Lady Monson a marked reputation as a hostess. Her husband is the nephew of Sir Edmund Monson, the well-known ambassador to France, and Lady Monson is herself a famous beauty. Before her first marriage, to a wealthy New Yorker, she was Miss Romaine Stone, and celebrated in London, Newport and New York for a uniquely delicate loveliness of face and form.

Her beauty was, indeed, as widely talked about and ardently admired in London as was that of Lady Naylor Leyland some years ago, or as we now very enthusiastically discuss the charming features of Mrs. Sam Chauncey or Lady Ross, who are prominent members of the younger American colony.

Both of the last-mentioned fair women hail from the State of Kentucky—Lady Ross was Miss Patricia Ellison, of Louisville, and Mrs. Chauncey belongs to the ever-growing class of American women who have created a deep impression on London society by making the very most of some particular talent or taste or feature.

Society in these days, like the professions of war, law or medicine, is in the hands of the specialists; and I think that the American women who came over to carve out their own social way saw this opportunity at once and have developed it in a quite remarkable fashion.

The arbiters of social place are not handing out any of the big prizes to the women who are just agreeable in a commonplace style. Do the striking thing in London, and do it well, is the rule for success at this time, and the energetic, quickly perceiving American woman loses not a week nor a day after her arrival in proving to us that she is a definite person indeed.

London society is made up of as many as ten different sets, all independent and powerful, each one in its own way, and the skill of the woman from New York or Chicago is displayed by her promptness in deciding on just the set into which she prefers to enter.

Mrs. Bradley Martin, Lady Deerhurst, Lady Bagot; Cora, Lady Strafford—now known by her new married title as Mrs. Kennard—Lady Newborough and a score of others one could mention, are to be included among the Americans who have devoted their talents entirely to the conquering of the smartest of smart sets. Most of these have married titles, it is true, but titles are not essential, after all, where natural social gifts are possessed; Mrs. Sam Chauncey, for instance, is a case in point.

Mrs. Chauncey is an American widow and a beauty, with a most agreeable manner and lively intelligence; she presides in a bewitching bijou of a little house in Hertford Street, and drives one of the smartest miniature victorias that appear in the park. But London’s first and most striking impression concerning this delightful acquisition from the States was derived from her wonderful and lovely gowns—her French frocks are, for taste and becomingness, quite paralyzing to even a breath of criticism, and from the first moment of her dÉbut in London they excited only the most whole-souled enthusiasm in the hearts of all beholders of both sexes.

To say that she is rather particularly famous as the best dressed woman in our great city is, perhaps, to make a pretty strong assertion, in the face of very serious competition offered by women notable for the perfection of their wardrobe, but this claim really stands on good grounds. Even among her compatriots, she seems always astonishingly well gowned, and really, if we are going to honestly give honor where honor is due, we must put natural pride and sentiment aside and agree that the presence of the American woman in London has had a marked and salutary influence on the whole dress problem as English women look at it.

Not to mince matters, we may as well confess that les Americaines do gown themselves with superlative taste. Our peeresses and visitors from the States know what to wear and how to wear it; they show so much tact in their choice of colors, they put on their gay gowns and hats with such a completeness of touch, and display so much instinct for style in the choice and use of small etceteras, that it is idle to say we English have not been compelled to notice and admire.

If imitation is truly the sincerest flattery, as some ancient wiseacre said years ago, then there is pretty clear evidence daily afforded to prove that we are complimenting our American sisters by slowly adopting their ideas of dress.

More and more each season does Paris send us the sort of gown and hatpin, belt and handkerchief and hair ornament, that goes to New York, and more and more is the saying, “She dresses quite like an American woman,” accepted as a kindly comment, wherever it is offered.

A general impression, also, is prevailing to the effect that one reason why our American cousins wear their fine frocks with such good results is because they hold their heads high and their backs flat and straight. There is even now, in London, a vastly popular corsetiÈre who does not hesitate to recommend herself as the only artiste in town who can persuade any form, stout or lean, to assume at once the exact outlines of the admired American figure.

The Duchess of Roxburghe, Mrs. Kennard and the Countess of Suffolk are all very fair examples, in our eyes, of the high perfection of line to which the feminine form divine can and does attain in America; for all these women hold themselves with the most superlative grace, wear gowns that would make Solomon in all his glory feel envious, and help to maintain the now fixed belief in England that all Americans are tall, straight, slender and born with a capacity for wearing diamond tiaras with as much ease as straw hats.

It would not be fair, though, to lay too much of the social success of King Edward’s fair new subjects and visitors wholly at their wardrobe doors, for the two most influential and prominent American women just now in London are neither of them titled, nor do they place too much stress on the gorgeousness of their frocks and frills.

Both Mrs. Arthur Paget—who was Miss Minnie Stevens, of New York—and Mrs. Ronalds are listed everywhere among the most popular of our hostesses, and Mrs. Ronalds, especially, is a distinct power in the musical world. Scarcely a famous artist comes to town but sooner or later he hears, to his advantage, of this wealthy American.

Her red and white music room—by far the most artistic and completely equipped private salon of its kind in London—has sheltered distinguished companies of the very fashionable and intellectual English music lovers; she has made her Sunday afternoons of something more than mere frivolous importance, and won for them, indeed, a decided and enviable celebrity, for Mrs. Ronalds is one of those American women who possess a genius for hospitality.

Mrs. Paget, it is true, takes due rank in the same category, and both these women have all the truly American tastes for featuring their entertainments most delightfully. To continue in the commonplace round of quite conventional functions, as approved by society, is not to be borne by these energetic and novelty-loving ladies, and a dinner, a supper party or a dance at Mrs. Paget’s is sure to develop some unexpected and charming phase.

It is to Mrs. Paget, for example, that we are indebted for the introduction of that purely American festivity, “The Ladies’ Luncheon.” “The Ladies’ Luncheon” is now quite acclimatized here; we have accepted it as we have also accepted “The Ladies’ Dinner-party,” which was wholly unknown previous to the American invasion. Whether Mrs. Paget was instrumental or not in making for the last-mentioned form of entertainment a place among our conservative hostesses is not quite proven, but it is safe to say that this tall, vivacious, energetic lady, who skates as well as she dances, golfs and drives a motor car, carries almost more social power in her small right hand than any other untitled woman in London.

She is heartily admired by our present king and queen, who find in her sparkling talk very much the same mental stimulus that one derives from the Duchess Consuelo’s gay epigrams, and, above everything else, the court and its circle of society reverence the charms of the woman whose brain bubbles over with ideas.

If a dance, a dinner, a bazaar or a picnic is on foot, Mrs. Paget can map out and put through the enterprise with amazing skill and readiness, and she shows all the American’s shrewd business instinct for profitably pleasing a ticket-purchasing public when a charity fund must be swelled or a hospital assisted.

With her vigor, high spirits and infinite variety of charm, she is enormously sought after and courted and fÊted, but it is noticeable, and none the less admirable, in English eyes, that the American woman established in a foreign land rarely or never fails in either her admiration or her affection for her country across the sea.

At the time of the Spanish-American War, this extreme loyalty to their native home and the land of their birth was made evident in not one but a dozen ways that never escaped the notice of English eyes. Expatriated though in a measure she is, the Anglicized American woman scarcely ever loses her sense of pride and profound satisfaction in being an American, after all, and so strong is this feeling in these delightful women that it is accepted quite as a matter of course, both by them and by their English friends, that their sons should frequently go back to the mothers’ land in order to find their wives.

Two notable instances of the son’s love for his mother’s country and his instinctive interest in her countrywomen have been supplied in the marriages of the young Duke of Manchester and the son of Sir William and Lady Vernon-Harcourt.

It seems scarcely more than natural that Mr. Lewis Vernon-Harcourt should marry pretty Miss Burns, of New York, though, through his mother as well as his father, all his interests and sympathies are naturally centered in England.Yet it is safe to say that when the average Englishman marries an American he does not feel in the least as though he was marrying, so to speak, outside the family circle.

The marvelous adaptability of the American woman robs the situation of any difficulty, and in no way, so far, has the American wife of the Englishman showed more astonishing adaptability than in the cordial interest with which she often identifies herself with her husband’s political interests, if he is in Parliament.

Three of the keenest politicians in petticoats that England possesses are American women by birth; and the first and leading spirit among them is the American wife of Mr. Chamberlain.

Mrs. Chamberlain cares little or nothing for society, and beyond the obligatory functions at which she has been obliged to preside or attend, she shows small taste for the frivolities of that special world of men and women where the main task and occupation of every day is to amuse one’s self. But in the affairs of state she feels a very burning interest indeed.

She is one of the two women in the British empire who are admitted by men to understand the mysterious and, to the average feminine mind, inexplicable fiscal problem; she knows all about tariff reform; she is her husband’s first secretary, confidante and adviser; she is said to be the most discreet lady in speech, where her husband’s political interests are concerned, and when he speaks in public Mrs. Chamberlain sits so near to him that, in case of a lapse of memory, she can play the part of stage prompter.

Every one of his speeches she commits to memory, and can, therefore, give him any missing word at any critical moment, and in this way she is even more helpful than the capable and intellectual Lady Vernon-Harcourt was to her distinguished husband.

There is still a third American woman to whose abilities her English husband is deeply indebted. This is Lady Curzon, who has very clearly defined diplomatic gifts, who is naturally highly ambitious, and who has, in her zeal to help her husband, learned to speak more East Indian dialects and Oriental tongues than any white woman in India.

Fourth, perhaps, of this list should be mentioned Lady Cheylesmore, who was in her girlhood, spent at Newport and New York, so well known and admired, especially for her wonderful red hair, which Whistler loved to paint.

Lady Cheylesmore was Miss Elizabeth French in those days, and now she is proud to be known as the wife of the mayor of Westminster, for her husband has lately been chosen for that very dignified position. As one of London’s lady mayoresses, she will dispense delightful hospitality in her handsome house in Upper Grosvenor Street, which is famous for its three wonderful drawing rooms, decorated by the Brothers Adam, and regarded by connoisseurs as one of the most perfect examples of their art and taste.

At her dinner parties Lady Cheylesmore entertains many politicians of note, and in one way or another, by her infinite tact and good sense, does much to aid and abet her husband’s well-known aspirations to a brilliant parliamentary place.

She is one of the ardently ambitious American women of whose very real and deserved triumphs we hear so much artistically as well as socially, these days. And let it be said here and now, to London’s credit, that there is no city in the world that gives to its resident daughters of Uncle Sam a heartier measure of praise and encouragement in all their accomplishments.

We may, some of us, cherish high tariff principles and believe in restricting the immigration. None of us, however, is ready to vote for any measures that will bar out or discourage one class of fair and accomplished aliens who cross the ocean bent on conquering London, and who in the end are so often conquered in turn by London’s charm, and who settle down to form an element in our society that is fast becoming as familiar and as welcome as it is admirable and indispensable.