A Polish refugee who was told by Gladys that he would work for her-he was riding his bike, not looking for a job-and he did. Sometimes it’s just too much to keep track of.
Footnotes are often tangents, but can be more interesting then the writing itself. Hugo Vickers became friends with Gladys in the last few years of her life and wanted to tell her story. She is memorialised at Blenheim, home of the Duke of Marlborough, with eyes painted over the portico and the two sphinxes in the Italian water garden, which happens to be the place I bought this book. How her life unravels is sad and depressing. Ultimately (spoiler alert), after over a decade of being his mistress, they marry. Botched plastic surgery that involves wax disfiguring her face and convincing princes to paupers to fall in love with her. All while this happening Gladys makes it her life mission to marry the Duke of Marlborough, despite having just married Consuelo Vanderbilt in the society wedding of the year. Her father shortly after died in a mental hospital. She attended school in Europe where her mom kidnapped her. After his release he gains custody of two of his children, including Gladys. Her father was imprisoned at a young age for killing his wife’s lover. Most importantly with her mental health.īorn in Paris to Americans. People often described her as genius (perceived) but deep down she needed help. I would describe her similarly to Kanye West. Gladys (pronounced Glade-dis) is one of the more interesting people of her time. It's enough to make you grateful for lacking in beauty, class and wealth. Although she had known almost everyone worth knowing in the elite, friendships failed also she lived in increasingly eccentric squalor and ended her life, in her nineties, in an asylum. The marriage quickly and acrimoniously failed. When Gladys became duchess (and mistress of Blenheim, the second largest house in Britain and in the 1930s having only one bathroom) she filled her life and its grandeur with dogs, breeding them and letting them run everywhere. As for marriage, she held out until she was forty to achieve her ambition of marrying the Duke of Marlborough, who inconsiderately had an estranged wife already.
Duchess of marlborough gladys deacon skin#
Even her famous 'turquoise' eyes looked too bright against skin too pink and hair dyed too yellow. These hardened, destroyed her complexion, sank to give her a heavy jawline. But her beauty was not perfect enough for her and - an early warning against cosmetic surgery - she sought paraffin wax injections to give her the perfect Grecian profile. As Gladys began to grow into what was held to be remarkable beauty, she was dragged round Europe in the expectation of a glamorous marriage. She began with almost every advantage of position and privilege, but was still a child when her father shot her mother's lover dead (fortunately in Paris which took a relatively relaxed view of such things). Gladys had a life, half fairytale, half Greek tragedy. He once asked her, 'Where is Gladys Deacon?' She answered him slowly: 'Gladys Deacon?.
Duchess of marlborough gladys deacon archive#
In his fascinating and revealing biography, drawing on Gladys's personal archive and his own research all over Europe and America, Hugo Vickers uncovers a beguiling, clever, independent woman who was the brightest star of her age. There she was discovered by a young Hugo Vickers, who visited her for two years - intrigued and compelled to unmask the truth of her mysterious life. She was to spend her last 15 years in the psycho-geriatric ward of a mental hospital. The wax injections she'd had to straighten her nose when she was 22 had by now ravaged her beauty. When the Duke evicted her in 1933, the only remaining signs of Gladys were two sphinxes bearing her features on the west terraces and mysterious blue eyes in the grand portico. Now her circle included Lady Ottoline Morrell, Lytton Strachey and Winston Churchill, who described her as 'a strange, glittering being'. Divorced from fellow American Consuelo Vanderbilt in 1921 she became his second wife. It wasn't until she was 40 that she achieved the wish she had held since the age of 14 to marry the 9th Duke of Marlborough. She inspired love from diverse Dukes and Princes, and the interest of women such as Comtesse Greffulhe and Gertrude Stein. Marcel Proust wrote of her 'I never saw a girl with such beauty, such magnificent intelligence, such goodness and charm.' Berenson considered marrying her, Rodin and Monet befriended her, Boldini painted her and Epstein sculpted her. Educated in America, she returned to Europe, where she captivated and inspired some of the greatest literary and artistic names of the Belle Époque. One of the most beautiful and brilliant women of her time, Gladys Deacon dazzled, as much as she puzzled, the glittering social circles in which she moved.īorn in Paris to American parents in 1881, she suffered a traumatic childhood after her father shot her mother's lover dead.
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