Balsan, Consuelo Vanderbilt, 1877-1964

Consuelo Vanderbilt-Balsan (formerly Consuelo Spencer-Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough; born Consuelo Vanderbilt; March 2, 1877 – December 6, 1964) Born in New York City, Consuelo Vanderbilt was the only daughter and eldest child of William Kissam Vanderbilt, a New York railroad millionaire, and his first wife, Southern belle and budding suffragist Alva Erskine Smith (1853–1933, who later married Oliver Belmont) from Mobile, Alabama (a daughter of Murray Forbes Smith). Her Spanish name was in honor of her godmother, Consuelo Yznaga (1853–1909), a half-Cuban, half-American socialite who created a social stir a year earlier when she married the fortune-hunting George, Viscount Mandeville, a union of Old World aristocracy and New World money that caused the groom's father, the 7th Duke of Manchester, to openly wonder if his son and heir had married a "Red Indian". Consuelo and her friends were the inspiration for Edith Wharton's unfinished novel The Buccaneers. Determined to secure the highest-ranking mate possible for her only daughter, a union that would emphasize the preeminence of the Vanderbilt family in New York society, Alva Vanderbilt engineered a meeting between Consuelo and the indebted, titled Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, chatelain of Blenheim Palace. Consuelo Vanderbilt married the 9th Duke of Marlborough at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York City, on November 6, 1895.[16] They had two sons, John Albert William Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of Blandford (who became 10th Duke of Marlborough), and Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill.[17] Consuelo's second marriage, on July 4, 1921, was to Lt. Col. Jacques Balsan, a record-breaking pioneer French balloon, aircraft, and hydroplane pilot who once worked with the Wright Brothers. Also a textile manufacturing heir, Balsan was a younger brother of Étienne Balsan, who was an early lover of Coco Chanel.[27] Their marriage lasted until Jacques Balsan died in 1956 at the age of 88.[28]

After the annulment of her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough, she still maintained ties with favorite Churchill relatives, particularly Winston Churchill. He was a frequent visitor at her château, in Saint-Georges-Motel, a small commune near Dreux about 50 miles from Paris, in the 1920s and 1930s, where he completed his last painting before the war.[29] Records in Florida show that in 1932 Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan built a home in Manalapan, Florida, just south of Palm Beach. It was designed as a love nest by Maurice Fatio. The dream home of 26,000 square feet is called Casa Alva, in honor of her mother. Although Consuelo sold the house in 1957 after Jacques Balsan's death, it still exists. Many believe[30] that, in 1946, Churchill polished his famous Iron Curtain Speech in the Florida house, as he visited his cousin's former wife on his way to Missouri, to deliver the address at Westminster College.[31]

As Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, she published her insightful but not entirely candid autobiography, The Glitter and the Gold, in 1953. In spite of suggestions that it was ghostwritten by Stuart Preston, an American writer who was an art critic for The New York Times, Preston consistently denied that role while admitting unspecified involvement with the book.[32] A reviewer in the Times called it "an ideal epitaph of the age of elegance."[33]

Consuelo Balsan died at Southampton, Long Island, New York, on December 6, 1964. She was buried alongside her younger son, Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, in the churchyard at St Martin's Church, Bladon, Oxfordshire, England, near her former home, Blenheim Palace.[34]

Public service
During World War I, Consuelo Vanderbilt worked as the chair of the Economic Relief Committee for the American Women's War Relief Fund.[35]