Gladys deacon7/25/2023 ![]() ![]() Luckily for her the duke and his new duchess were in a loveless marriage. "I am too young though mature in the arts of woman's witchcraft," she proclaimed. Soon after her mother kidnapped her from a convent, fearing her father would gain custody of her.Īt 14 she read about Consuelo Vanderbilt's engagement to the Duke of Marlborough and declared that she would one day catch herself a duke. Her father shot her mother's lover dead in 1882 when Gladys was 11. She has also been immortalised as two matching stone sphinxes in the Lower Water Terraces and a lone photograph of her is framed in the Palace State Rooms.īut though she would live a life of glamour, the young Gladys' life was steeped in scandal. She was famed for her blue eyes which were painted on the portico ceiling in front of the main doors, by instruction of the 9th Duke of Marlborough. The property is still filled with reminders that she once lived there. I made friends with her and talked to her."Ī new exhibition at Blenheim Palace now seeks to bring Gladys Deacon's legacy back into the public eye decades after she was unceremoniously evicted from the palace grounds. "I eventually tracked her down there and was allowed to go see her. ![]() "It hadn't occurred to me that the reason she had disappeared was she was in fact in a psycho-geriatric hospital. He told the BBC: "I went to Blenheim aged 16 in 1968 and I asked the guides about her. Mr Vickers decided that he would find out what had happened to the American beauty who had been the toast of European society at the turn of the century. When teenager Hugo Vickers read the extract recounting this event in one of Channons' diaries it set off the start of an obsession. It dawned on him that he was looking at Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough, who he described as once being the world's most beautiful woman.īut as he went to say hello she dropped everything and fled from the shop. It was the 1960s and Conservative politician Sir Henry 'Chips' Channon was perusing a jewellery shop when he noticed a strange old lady. Gladys Deacon's childhood dream to marry a duke came true ![]()
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