Excerpt from the Book

“The glass sweeps the tiers,” observed the New York Herald of a November 1887 performance at the Metropolitan Opera House, “and rests upon the place where Mrs. Louis Hamersley generally sits to chat pleasantly through some heavy German opera. She is not present—for her ‘The Trompeter’ has had no charm.”¹

Lily Price Hamersley missed the New York premiere of Viktor Nessler’s Trompeter for what she considered a valid reason. Less than three weeks earlier she had met an attractive man who was leaving the country in three days time, and who knew when, or if, she would see him again. Opera was her passion, but it was worth foregoing an evening’s performance if she could spend more time in getting to understand her new acquaintance better and to assess his apparent interest.

Thirty-three-year-old Lily Price Hamersley was one of the wealthiest and most beautiful women in New York City. But the four years since the unexpected death of her husband had been a period of personal torment. His socially powerful family loathed her, and it was proving difficult for her to make her way as a widow in the city’s elite milieu that had been her home during her marriage. Despite the awkwardness of her position, conjecture about her romantic life was a staple of society gossip; less than a month earlier, a newspaper had reported that she would soon wed again. But such rumors had circulated before, and Lily had so far shown herself to be conspicuously free from serious attachments. Indeed, her most frequent companion in the prominent box she occupied at the opera was another young woman—one who, like her, had arrived in New York as an outsider, married into society, and lost her place when she lost her husband— although, in the companion’s case, the loss had been due to divorce and not to death.

The focus of Lily’s attention was George Charles Spencer-Churchill, the eighth Duke of Marlborough, who had arrived from England for an extended visit more than two months earlier. Marlborough held one of the most elevated titles in Britain, but he was a social pariah at home and had been dogged by derogatory journalistic attention since his arrival in New York. Everyone who followed society news was aware of his scandalous history, and public opinion painted him as a most unsavory character.

Some of Lily’s acquaintances would have been puzzled by her interest in the duke. They knew her as a cautious, conservative woman of impeccable background, certainly not as a “tuft-hunter”—one of those toadying arrivistes who sought to curry favor with the English nobility in order to enhance their own status. They had shunned the titled tourist, and assumed that Lily shared their attitude. But Lily had met him—and found him charming.

Lily was well aware that her looks and money made her a sought-after trophy in the marriage market. The Duke of Marlborough recognized his star status too, and knew that, despite his tarnished reputation, his position in the English peerage made him a desirable matrimonial catch in the United States for affluent American families with daughters and social aspirations. Indeed, it was rumored that the duke had come to the United States for the purpose of making a financially advantageous match. The offensive press treatment he suffered after his arrival little deterred motivated sponsors, and a number of wealthy girls had been thrown at him during the past months. But they were young, shallow, and, presumably, inexperienced. The duke had taken no real interest in any of them and was about to go home empty-handed.

The duke was perhaps as surprised to discover Lily at the close of his American tour as she was to discover him. Here was a mature but rich and comely woman whom he understood to have suffered a generous dose of demeaning publicity herself. Yet she seemed to have risen above her circumstances without bitterness and with grace and humor. Perhaps this was the bride he had been looking for?

Lily had a great deal to think about as she weighed the possible outcome of Marlborough’s sudden attentiveness. She believed she understood what he was after: a marriage of convenience that would provide him with access to the money he needed and seemed unable to raise otherwise. But what did she want? She had means, hard earned at that, but they had brought her little in the way of happiness or social recognition. Did her future lie in New York, often hostile to her now, or might she do better for herself on the other side of the Atlantic? She had no social entrée of her own in England, but would marriage to a social outcast with a lofty title enhance or weaken her position? And what about the duke himself? He presented himself as an amiable man, but she recognized that there were valid reasons for his reputation. Could she, and did she want to, handle—even try to tame—him?

While the British upper class discounted love as a motivation for marriage, its American counterpart, more elastic in its membership, allowed wider latitude to the sentimental feelings of the parties involved. But Lily, whose family had given her little direction or support when it came to choosing a husband, had not shown herself overly romantic in her first choice. Now she had an opportunity to take an even greater leap of faith. Was she ambitious and self-assertive enough to do so?

The answer, as proclaimed in the title of this book, was that she was. Lily married the Duke of Marlborough, and in doing so, became a celebrity. She was one of the first women in the United States to attract notice of the sort that film stars and popular singers enjoy today. The public on both sides of the Atlantic recognized her name, followed her comings and goings, and had opinions about her.

The improbable aspect of Lily’s story was that it happened at all. It was bold for a girl of her conventional upbringing to orchestrate a life so different from what was expected for her. Yet Lily did so, during a period in which, observed feminist scholar Linda Wagner-Martin, “the narrative of women’s lives remains a marriage plot.”² She did so, moreover, within the framework of that narrative. Her future would be beset by sorrow and defeat as well as by triumph.

1. New York Herald, 24 Nov 1887.
2. Wagner-Martin, Telling Women’s Lives, 121.