The Glitter and the Gold

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing tale of an extraordinary life
Review: After taking a tour of Marble House, the author's family estate in Newport, RI, I was excited to read the life story of a descendant of the Commodore himself. What a snoozer! For someone with her vast fortune, she led the most boring life imaginable. This story is told without emotion, and you never feel like you get the real story or her true feelings on anything. Consuelo was too overly concerned about pleasing everyone, and she never really reveals anything controversial, like why she turned her back on America and lived her entire life in Europe, even after her divorce from the Duke of Marlborough. She met hundreds of important leaders of her era, and yet by the middle of the book you could care less. All she does is list who she met, at what party, and who they were related to. She basically writes a brief synopsis of at least a hundred different evenings in her life. She wrote this book like she had to write down every important person she ever met, but doesn't ever really let the reader feel like they get to know them too. Truly disappointing in today's era of E True Hollywood Story and A&E Biography.

Rating:
Summary: An Incredible Life!
Review: Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan had one of the most amazing, extraordinary lives of anyone in American history. Raised into mind-boggling wealth on Fifth Avenue, Consuelo had the misfortune of having Alva as her power-mad mother. Alva, in fact, locked away her strikingly tall, dark daughter and kept her prisoner until she agreed to marry the arrogant, weak and some say violent, Duke of Marlborough. She became the mistress, in l895, of Blenheim, a palace so big that she never even knew how many rooms it had. The author describes fascinating years of having royalty as her guests, visiting Czarist Russis before the Revolution, life as a dutchess, her divorce and subsequent marriage to Jacques Balsan. Unfortunately, Consuelo glosses over the sensational headlines in the 20s, caused by her divorce from the Duke. Even for a Vanderbilt woman, born into inconceivable wealth and power, Consuelo stood out with her extraordinary personality. Of all the "Dollar Princesses", those wealthy American women who wed royalty in the late l890s and early 20th Century, Consuelo is the only one who acted like she was born into royalty. This is a knockout memoir, despite its glossing over of sensitive segments of her life. By the way, the paperback edition curiously omits the great shots of Blenheim Palace found in the original hardback. A must-read. A genuine classic.

Rating:
Summary: Another world
Review: Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan's story is a marvelous tale of heartbreak and adventure. It's also a rare picture of a lifestyle that was as glamorous as it was unenviable.

I loved the language of this book. It's written the way upper class people talked in the early 20th Century -- that slightly formal English that seems to have fallen by the wayside in the age of sloppy grammatical constructions like "looking to" (as in "she's looking to marry") or "I was, like" (as in "I was, like, really angry") or the appalling lack of appropriate pronoun use in much modern writing ("He handed copies to her and I").

Like the lady she was, she has written a careful account of the people she knew, the places she went and the things she did, but has equally carefully omitted the highly personal details that modern autobiographies pretend to give their readers. When she expresses her dismay at being forced to marry a man she didn't love, she's quite cool about it all. That's the way ladies were back then. She had lovers (as did most of her social crowd) but she doesn't elaborate. She would have been appalled at the modern "tell all" kind of books we're used to seeing.

One of the outstanding things about this book is the view of a woman who did not put herself and her ambitions above everything else. The desire to marry a peer of the British realm seems to have been her Mother's, not hers, and the fact that she went along with it and made the best of the situation for such a long time illustrates a huge difference between the era she lived in and ours.

The book is a charming voyage into a social age -- different and yet in some ways not-so-different -- from the one we experience. It will provide the reader with an inside look into a specific social history along with glimpses of a life of riches, glamour and high adventure.

Rating:
Summary: Too much name dropping
Review: I've read alot about the Vanderbilts and thought this book would really give me an insiders view of the life of a Vanderbilt in the Victorian Age. While the book is interesting, it doesn't give alot of detail. Alot of important events are glossed over in a sentence or two, and there's very little personal introspective. Also, I found that starting somewhere in the middle of the book it gets bogged down with names and titles. It seems like there is page after page after page devoted to listing the titles and names of people who attended at party, or came for a weekend visit, etc., etc. It gets down right boring and I found myself skipping alot of pages.

Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Review: Parts of this book are interesting, but most of it is not. CVB goes on and on about her charitable works, and people she knows and says nothing at all about some things I had hoped to read about. I know, for example, that she bought a Faberge jeweled egg while in Russia. She never mentions it in the book. She also rarely seems to draw any conclusions about the events which surrounded her.

Rating:
Summary: A rare treasure
Review: The Glitter and the Gold is a rare look into the life of one of the most famous women in Victorian and Edwardian-era history. I can't say I enjoyed all of the chapters because the memoir covers Conseulo's entire life. I was more interested in her childhood through her marriage to the Duke of Marlborough.

However, the book is one of the most accurate glimpses into exactly what life was like for the priveleged class 100 years ago. It's filled with stories from her childhood spent with the famous Alva Vanderbilt, the details of her engagement and spetacular wedding, and then her tragic marriage to one of England's most powerful noblemen. Then, she goes on to detail how she found true love and joy later in life, reconciling her past. The reader follows Consuelo through the marble halls of life, glimpsing wealth and privlege in America and Englad as few, if any, other books can equal.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating Life
Review: The Glitter and the Gold serves as a compelling and fascinating account of turn-of-the-century aristocratic life from the intimate and candid memoirs of one of America's most famous heiresses, Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, the former Duchess of Marlborough and wealthy daughter of the American Vanderbilt legacy.

I decided to read this book after the enthusiastic advise of one of those English blue-badge guides on what must have been my third visit to the infamous Blenheim Palace, aristocratic home to all the Dukes of Marlborough since the first Duke was given the palace by royal decree from Queen Anne in the 18th Century.

I was immensely intrigued as to how a young nouveau riche American debutante from New York City came to be married to the very aristocratic and the very English 9th Duke of Marlborough in 1895. To this end the book delivers.

Although long on pretension and short on emotion and passion, Vanderbilt-Balsan is a fine writer. Through her words unfolds the mostly sad story of ambitious mothers, immense privilege, suitable marriages, exchanges of new money for old titles and heartbreaking loneliness. She cuts a rather sad and remote figure wandering alone and somewhat lost around the enormous and very cold Blenheim Palace - a loneliness that is foretold in the John Singer Sargent family portrait that still hangs today in the Duke's private quarters in the palace.

Extremely well educated and fluent in three languages, Vanderbilt-Balsan served her husband and her new country well. She delivered the "heir and the spare" that was expected of her and, in time, moved out of her husbands shadow and eventually his life. Through her own resilience we see emerge an extremely dignified, graceful and independent woman who became a tireless worker and philanthropist, both politically and socially, on behalf of the rights of women and children in England and later in France.

Vanderbilt-Balsan's accounts also serve as an eyewitness documentary to the golden age of Victorian and Edwardian society in England as well as America and France. She also lived and worked near the front lines of both World War I and II. She had access to some of the most intriguing artists, statesmen and celebrities of the early twentieth century as well as serving an assortment of English Kings, Queens and Princes. Her nephew by marriage, Winston Churchill, was prematurely born in her bedroom during one of the many weekend functions she was obliged to host as the Duchess of Marlborough. She remained close to Churchill throughout her life.

Her legacy to Blenheim Palace is still felt today; her son, the 10th Duke of Marlborough, was the first to open the gates of the stunning and historically significant palace to the public and those gates remain open today. I would suggest this book as a must-read for anyone planning a visit to Blenheim Palace or anyone curious to the social customs of the early 20th Century.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book!
Review: This book is so much fun. If you're interested in the history of the upper class in the US or England, it is well worth checking this book out. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny, such as the description of dinner with the Duke; others are edge-of-your-seat exciting, such has her escape from the oncoming Germans in WWI; and others are just poignant, such as some of the anecdotes from her childhood. Like other reviewers, I do wish she had given more detail. She is a classy lady, though, and only kisses and tells about those she thinks really deserve it (mainly her first husband). Less fun for the reader, but there's still enough juicy gossip to keep me interested.

It is inexpertly written, but I think this ads to the book's charm. Mrs. Balsan obviously wrote it herself instead of taking the modern route and finding a ghost-writer.

If you enjoy this book, check out "To Marry and English Lord," which expands on Consuelo's story by talking about many other young hieresses of the time who married abroad.

Rating:
Summary: I love this book!
Review: This book is so much fun. If you're interested in the history of the upper class in the US or England, it is well worth checking this book out. Parts of it are laugh-out-loud funny, such as the description of dinner with the Duke; others are edge-of-your-seat exciting, such has her escape from the oncoming Germans in WWI; and others are just poignant, such as some of the anecdotes from her childhood. Like other reviewers, I do wish she had given more detail. She is a classy lady, though, and only kisses and tells about those she thinks really deserve it (mainly her first husband). Less fun for the reader, but there's still enough juicy gossip to keep me interested.

It is inexpertly written, but I think this ads to the book's charm. Mrs. Balsan obviously wrote it herself instead of taking the modern route and finding a ghost-writer.

If you enjoy this book, check out "To Marry and English Lord," which expands on Consuelo's story by talking about many other young hieresses of the time who married abroad.

Rating:
Summary: Names, dates, and locations
Review: This did read more like a legerbook of facts and names than a memoir- I think Mrs. Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan was being particularly deliberate about the way this was structured. It was almost like a series of notes to herself- 1945, specific house, x and y were there. x was charming. I wonder if this is just how memoirs have changed- enh, but then again, I have read some much older memoirs that were more personal. Balsan did put a lot of herself into this, and her opinions were present, contrary to what others asserted in their reviews. The reader definitely gets an impression of her, however, we're only let so far in. I guess this kind of reads like the social column of a newspaper... 300+ pages of it. I have read a lot of contempory memoirs and they very much describe daily events, how they were, what they felt. Somehow this is different. She stops right before giving anything real away, I suppose. She is like so many older women I have known (not quite her contemporaries) who will tell you that something was unpleasant for them, and then won't tell you why or what they did about it, or how it's linked to other events. I don't think it's fair to call her a name-dropper. Her friends did happen to be people who are well known, and one can't write a memoir without talking about one's friends! I don't get the impression that she thought mentioning all of these people by names validated her life, but rather that she expected that's what would interest other people. She was wrong, in my case! I was most drawn in by the early part of the book, when she detailed how much she suffered at the hands of her mother. But she was sparse and careful there too. I admit to being bored reading this, but I learned a lot from it!