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.