Читать книгу The Real Life Downton Abbey - Jacky Hyams - Страница 21

Eighteen-year-old Consuelo’s dowry (part of which was paid in railroad stocks and shares) is equivalent to US $100 million today. Newspaper stories at the time carry gushing reports about her bridal undies: her pink lace corset (with real gold hooks) and her silk stockings (held up by diamond-encrusted garters).

Yet Consuelo is a very unhappy bride. For starters, she’s in love with someone else. However, so desperate is Consuelo’s conniving mother Alva to up the ante socially by being mum to a duchess that Alva pretends to be dying in order to convince Consuelo to go through with the match.

Consuelo cries all the way to the glittering wedding ceremony. Some stories claim she’s seen weeping at the altar. In their carriage afterwards, the Duke, close to bankruptcy, blithely informs her he’s given up the woman he loves to marry her money. The honeymoon isn’t even over when he orders a hugely expensive refurbishment of Blenheim.

Two sons are born. But the couple separate, a great society scandal in 1906 – even the King has insisted they should not divorce – and it isn’t until 1921 that a divorce is finally granted.

So has the cash from the American heiresses ‘saved’ the British cash-poor, land-rich aristocracy from financial ruin? It certainly helped. Once you’ve sold off the family silver, your valuable art collection and other costly items to pay your debts the last thing you want to do is give up the house and the land.