Association Copy, The Glitter and the Gold
[Association Copy] Balsan, Consuelo Vanderbilt. The Glitter and the Gold. First Edition. 1952. Book and dust jacket are both in very good minus condition. There is soiling to the upper page edges, mild discoloration to the flyleaf, a third-party gift inscription; and occasional pencil notations in the text. Th jacket shows mild soiling to the back cover, minor edge tears and light creasing. This is a difficult book to find in decent jacket, and this copy is an above-average example. The flyleaf contains an inscription from Sir Shane Leslie, a first cousin of Winston Churchill, which reads, “[A]s cousin and friend of the late Duke of Marlborough I should like to testify to the generosity and kindly tact of the authoress—Shane Leslie.”
The story behind this memoir is almost as interesting as the story within it. Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan was the most famous of the Gilded Age’s “dollar princesses,” the American heiresses whose fortunes purchased entry into Europe’s highest aristocratic circles. As she recounts here, her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough was less a romance than a dynastic arrangement engineered by her formidable mother, Alva Vanderbilt. The material was so compelling that Edith Wharton drew upon it for The Buccaneers. By the time this memoir appeared, however, the wounds it described were decades old. According to family accounts, portions of the manuscript were softened before publication by Consuelo’s son, then Duke of Marlborough, who wished to protect both his father’s memory and the reputation of the Marlborough family. That context makes the present inscription particularly intriguing. Written by Sir Shane Leslie, a cousin of Winston Churchill and a friend of the late Duke, it serves almost as a testimonial to Consuelo herself, praising her “generosity and kindly tact.” The result is a copy that preserves not only Consuelo’s version of events, but also a small piece of the family’s response to them.
“A title still evokes particular relish and ‘Your Grace’ is at times pronounced with almost reverent unction. I still recall with mirth an occasion when a clergyman before luncheon one day addressed my husband thus: ‘May I say grace, Your Grace?”
--Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan