(1) LADY HARCOURT. Elliot and Fry, Photo (2) LADY TERENCE BLACKWOOD. J. Thomson, Photo (3) THE DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH. Russell & Sons, Photo (4) LADY ARTHUR BUTLER. Faulkner, Photo
Unlike most Americans who have married Englishmen, Miss Consuelo Yznaga had only once paid a flying visit to London before her marriage. Her mother, who had been a noted belle of New Orleans in the fifties, on her marriage to a distinguished Spaniard went to Cuba, where the future British duchess was born in the little village of Sant Espiritu.
As has been the case with almost every family connected with Cuba, the Yznagas sustained great losses, which led to their settling once more in America, and it was there that Miss Yznaga first met Lord Mandeville, then travelling in the States. When visiting at her father's house he fell ill, and was very kindly nursed and entertained till his recovery. The engagement excited exceptional interest owing to the fact that Lady Mandeville, as she became, was the first Anglo-American peeress.
In spite of the fact that after their marriage Lord and Lady Mandeville had no London house, the latter soon took a very prominent place in society; she became a great favourite both with the Prince and with the Princess of Wales, and she was constantly included in the lists of house parties invited to meet their Royal Highnesses.
Many years of Lady Mandeville's married life were spent in Ireland. She was devoted to her three children, twin daughters and one son, known during his childhood as Lord Kimbolton; and though she often paid flying visits to London, she did not revisit America for a long time.
On the death of the seventh Duke of Manchester, in 1890, Lady Mandeville became at once the reigning Duchess of Manchester, and she was for a time the only American duchess in the peerage; during the two years which elapsed before the duke's death, the duchess gave a series of splendid entertainments both in her London house in Great Cumberland Street, and at Kimbolton Castle, in Huntingdonshire, the splendid place which was, for so many years, the home of poor Catherine of Arragon after her divorce from Henry VIII.
Her mother-in-law, now the Duchess of Devonshire, always proved a firm and loyal friend to her son's beautiful American wife; and on the death of the eighth duke, which occurred in the August of 1892, it was his mother who persuaded the young duchess that she should continue to live in London, and not retire, as she thought of doing, to her son's Irish seat.
The greatest grief of the Duchess of Manchester's life was the death of Lady Mary Montagu, one of her beautiful twin daughters, whose charming portraits by Lady Granby and Mr. Edward Hughes have made their features familiar. Since her death, which occurred very suddenly in Rome, the duchess has lived very quietly until this spring, only emerging from her retirement in order to introduce her young daughter to society.