Informal Ambassadors: American Women, Transatlantic Marriages, and Anglo-American Relations, 1865-1945

3. Drawing-Room Diplomat

68 informal ambassadors 68 chapter three Drawing-Room Diplomat Mary Endicott Chamberlain Carnegie I feel that if [my two countries] were to come into conflict it would be a crime against the civilized world. —Mary Endicott Chamberlain to Ellen Peabody Endicott, December 21, 1895 In the fall of 1933, Mary Endicott Chamberlain Carnegie informed her “beloved Miss May” that she had recently returned home and “during that week saw all my families.”1 Such a simple statement fails to reveal the sheer magnitude of the word “families” within the context of Mary’s remarkable Anglo-American life. Following her marriage to Joseph Chamberlain in 1888, she left her biological American family for her marital British one. Having joined the ranks of Lady Churchill and the Dollar Princesses, Mary seemingly became just another of the hundreds of American heiresses who married into the British poli-social elite during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But as Lady Churchill’s marriage and life in Britain demonstrate, to dismiss her marriage to Joseph Chamberlain as just another transatlantic union would be to miss an opportunity to examine the significant but subtle activities of one American-born, British-wed woman who wielded considerable soft power as a drawing-room diplomat. As the American bride of Joseph Chamberlain, an outspoken Anglo-American advocate, Mary assumed a high-profile position. Her marital status granted her consistent personal access to leaders at the highest levels of British government. But she began winning over the British public, just as Lady Churchill had before her, at her new home. Following her marriage, she accompanied her husband to a public meeting in his hometown of Birmingham, the crowd welcoming her with shouts of “Three cheers for our American cousin!”2 Though she was met warmly drawing-room diplomat 69 on this occasion, Mary soon discovered that her American identity would be both an asset and a detriment in her interactions with members of leading poli-social circles in England, something many Anglo-American brides learned through their public and private lives. Endicott’s marriage, however, differed slightly from other Anglo-American marriages, as her husband was a member of neither the British aristocracy nor the Conservative Party.3 As the wife of the British colonial secretary and the stepmother of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Austen Chamberlain, Mary exerted her own style of authority and influenced British perceptions of Americans until her death in London in 1957. Through an extensive transatlantic correspondence that spanned decades and growing familial relations that stretched across the Atlantic, Mary created an Anglo-American network on both a personal and a professional level. Furthermore, she made for herself a quiet and latent role as an informal ambassador by facilitating cordial relations among leaders of both of her beloved countries at a critical time in the history of U.S.-U.K. relations. Compared Mary Endicott Chamberlain Carnegie . Photograph by Lafayette. London, 1920. Colonial Society Photograph Collection . Photograph number 53.1. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. 70 informal ambassadors with other high-profile transatlantic brides, Mary has received very little attention by scholars, as evidenced by a sole biography published in 1965. The Endicott family traced its roots to the colonial period, an auspicious genealogy that served Mary particularly well following her marriage and permanent relocation to England. Her father, William Crowninshield Endicott Sr. (1826–1900), descended from John Endecott (1588–1665), a soldier, surgeon, and agent for the Massachusetts Bay Company, which brought him to the colony in 1629. He held a variety of positions in the settlement—colonial assistant, deputy governor, governor , chief military official—until his death. Mary’s father graduated from Harvard College in 1847, continued his legal studies at the same institution, and joined the MassachusettsBarAssociationin1850.4In1859,hemarriedacousin,EllenPeabody (1833–1927), daughter of renowned philanthropist George Peabody (1803–1892); thus, Mary came from “Puritan stock that . . . [could not] be excelled.”5 Mary’s parents hailed from two of the oldest and wealthiest families in Salem, Massachusetts , and they enjoyed great political and social successes both individually and as a couple. They began their own family in 1860, with a son, William Crowninshield Endicott Jr., and in 1864 they had a daughter, Mary Crowninshield, named for her paternal grandmother.6 Mary’s early years shaped her political, social, and religious perspectives in a manner distinct to affluent New England. Her parents and grandparents impressed upon her what it...