The new face of the dynasty has plenty of Vanderbilts to learn from – not least her namesake. Consuelo Vanderbilt, the daughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s grandson, William Kissam Vanderbilt, and his wife, Alva Vanderbilt, was one of the original ‘dollar princesses’, young brides who were jostled into socially advantageous, but loveless, marriages with British aristocrats in need of some money.
Conseulo tied the knot with the 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895, for a dowry of $85 million. On their honeymoon, the Duke reportedly told his new bride that he had only married her to save Blenheim Palace from bankruptcy. While the marriage was frosty, the new Duchess was beloved by the poorer tenants on her estate, and she dedicated herself to philanthropy before her divorce in 1921. This story was, in part, the inspiration for a plotline in Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age: Taissa Farmiga’s character, Gladys Russell, seems heavily based on Consuelo Vanderbilt.
In the series, Gladys Russell – just like Consuelo – marries a Duke not for love, but to appease her mother
‘The women in my family were as entrepreneurial as the men, just in the realms they could access,’ mused Vanderbilt Costin, explaining how her namesake’s loveless marriage converted ‘money to land, wealth to title. The power behind the men in the family was really the women.’