Consuelo Balsan (formerly, Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough; born Consuelo Vanderbilt) (2 March 1877 – 6 December 1964), was a member of the prominent American Vanderbilt Family, as well as an English aristocrat. She was seen as the ultimate marital prize of the Golden age. Her marriage to the ninth Duke of Marlborough was an international emblem for socially advantageous marriages.
Born in New York City, she was the only daughter of William Kiss...
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Consuelo Balsan (formerly, Consuelo, Duchess of Marlborough; born Consuelo Vanderbilt) (2 March 1877 – 6 December 1964), was a member of the prominent American Vanderbilt Family, as well as an English aristocrat. She was seen as the ultimate marital prize of the Golden age. Her marriage to the ninth Duke of Marlborough was an international emblem for socially advantageous marriages.
Born in New York City, she was the only daughter of William Kissam Vanderbilt, a New York railroad millionaire, and his first wife, a Mobile, Alabama belle and budding suffragist, Alva Erskine Smith (1853-1933, later Mrs. O. H. P. Belmont). Her Spanish name was in honor of her godmother, Maria Consuelo Iznaga Clemens (1858-1909), a half-Cuban, half-American socialite who created a social stir a year earlier when she married the fortune-hunting George Victor Drogo Montagu, Viscount Mandeville, a union of Old World and New World that caused the groom's father, the 7th duke of Manchester, to openly wonder if...
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