Re-gilding the Gold

Consuelo Vanderbilt in a Portrait by Paul Helleu

"Rank squanders money; trade makes it;--and then trade purchases rank by re-gilding its splendour."

--Anthony Trollope, The Way We Live Now 

Consuelo Vanderbilt, the most famous of the Dollar Princesses, was also the most beautiful. It should have been a win-win for her husband the Duke, nicknamed "Sunny" (but whose dreary personality was anything but). Yet lurking beneath Consuelo's lovely exterior was a brilliant mind and a sensitive disposition. Her autobiography The Glitter and the Gold  relates the story of this ill-fated marriage.