The poster girl of America’s Gilded Age, heiress Consuelo Vanderbilt married the 9th Duke of Marlborough in the ultimate cash for class transaction in 1895, orchestrated by her ferocious social climber mother, Alva Vanderbilt. She met the Duke at 17 years old at a dinner party given by Lady Paget. ‘My hostess had placed the Duke on her right and had put me next to him – a rather unnecessary public avowal of her intentions,’ she wrote in her memoir, The Glitter and the Gold.
The story goes that she was all but forced down the aisle, but once the deal was sealed, it secured financing for an increasingly dilapidated Blenheim. The heiress arrived in England and the fortunes of the palace began to change. The 9th Duke was given $2,500,000 of capital stock of the Beech Creek Railway Company in trust, and an annual income of four per cent guaranteed to him by the New York Central Railroad Company, which continued until his death — about £66 million in today’s money.
Now chatelaine of England’s most lavish estate, the Duchess set about integrating into the English social set. Winston Churchill was a regular guest, as was Nancy Astor – but ideally never at the same time. ‘She and Winston Churchill were actuated by a strong antipathy one for the other, so much so that one never invited them together, dreading the inevitable explosion,’ wrote Vanderbilt. ‘It was therefore unfortunate that on one of Lady Astor’s visits to Blenheim, when my son was host, Winston should have chosen to appear. Nancy, with a fevrour whose sincerity could not be doubted, shouted, “If I were your wife I would put poison in your coffee!” Whereupon Winston with equal heat and sincerity answered, ‘And if I were your husband I would drink it.’
In this world of balls and dinners and charity galas, with one of the world’s richest women at its helm, the drama was hot and the love affairs hotter. The union lasted only 11 years, and in 2019, a new letter emerged suggesting that Vanderbilt had engaged in many extramarital affairs. ‘Reading it today, almost 120 years after it was written, it is impossible not to feel the Duke’s anguish, or admire his dignified efforts to do the right thing by his adulterous young wife,’ wrote Hugo Vickers in the Daily Mail. Just another slice of the cinematic history of the palace.
