![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Enter Lord Carnarvon, proprietor (despite a vexing lack of ready cash) of four estates, at least 6,000 acres, and Highclere Castle, the grandly Victorian monster-mansion best known today as Downton Abbey, home of the Granthams. Keen to cement a social position that was still slightly tricky for a Jewish banker, Rothschild announced that his fortune would be bestowed upon Almina. Unofficially, she was the beloved bantling of French Marie and her fabulously rich lover, Alfred de Rothschild. Officially, Almina was the daughter of Marie and Fred Wombwell. Lord Carnarvon, having rattled his way into £150,000 of debts (nothing remarkable back then for a man of his class, so the current Lady Carnarvon assures us) looked nearer to home. Mostly, these resourceful gentlemen offered their titles to the eager daughters of American industrialists. B ack in the 1890s, marrying socially ambitious heiresses was almost de rigueur for those feckless English lords whose taste for chorus girls, gambling, yachts and horses had exhausted the family capital. ![]()
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