12. The Dollar Princesses Were Frequently Not Accepted in British Social Circles
The daughters of America’s nouveau rich had the latest and most magnificent amenities. Their houses were often entirely new and had running water, even a hot and cold tap. They were well insulated and heated so that drafts were not troublesome. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, the houses that they moved into were often centuries old. Taking a bath became a chore that involved servants making half a dozen trips from the basement bathtub to the kitchen, carrying buckets of boiling water. Life with nobility quickly proved to be less than the life of ease that they and their parents had anticipated that it would be.
So the daughters of enterprising entrepreneurs decided that they would be enterprising themselves and start renovating their houses. They wanted to modernize their estates, at least make their homes less dark and cold, but doing so was anathema to the tradition-rich nobility of Britain. Their peers saw them as snides and turned their noses up at the women whose roots were not aristocratic. They were frequently dismissed from the social circles that their parents had paid so much money for them to become a part of. Basically, they gave up their homes and families on one side of the Atlantic to be spurned on the other side.