Playing the marriage market | 3 September 2005

In November 1895 the most eligible bachelor in London society, the ninth Duke of Marlborough, married Consuelo Vanderbilt, the richest American heiress available. It is sometimes assumed that the British aristocracy crossed the Atlantic en masse in search of heiresses who might replenish fortunes devastated by falling rents during the agricultural depression of the late 19th century. However, most titled aristocrats continued to marry within their class, as did American millionaires. But the Duke of Marlborough, relatively poor as dukes went, was strapped for cash which would enable him to restore the tarnished reputation of his family and the glories of Blenheim Palace. Consuelo’s mother, Alva, who in this book emerges as grimly determined to bend others to her will, forced her daughter to reject her lover in order to marry Marlborough. There was no question of love. It was a bargain: Marlborough got his cash, Alva an enviable position in American society.

Alva had married the grandson of Commodore Vanderbilt, a rough diamond, alleged to spit out his chewed tobacco in public. The commodore had founded a fortune twice as great as that of the Astors, the creation of an earlier rough diamond. The formidable Mrs Astor was determined to keep vulgar newcomers out of fashionable society. Alva and her husband used their fortune to entertain lavishly in their magnificent French-style mansions on Fifth Avenue and in Newport, the summer resort of smart New York society. All this is brought to life vividly here. But Alva’s triumph over Mrs Astor’s veto was imperilled by her scandalous divorce. As mother of the Duchess of Marlborough her position would be impregnable.

Amanda Mackenzie Stuart sees the marriage as a psychological and cultural misfit, doomed from the start. Consuelo could not share the duke’s obsession with restoring the glories of Blenheim, a palace without a single comfortable room; nor did she share his belief that displays of opulence — she had to wear magnificent jewellery — were necessary for the maintenance of his rank.