Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl

Consuelo Vanderbilt Earl, a great-great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt and an heiress to the family's railroad fortune who became a notable breeder of Skye and silky terriers, died Feb. 21 2011 at her home in Ridgefield, Conn. At 107, she was among the last surviving links to an era when the Vanderbilts personified the opulence and grandeur of the country's gilded elite. Her first of four marriages merited front-page news in major newspapers, and her life was a whirl of bold-type activity in the highest echelons of American society for decades. Born Nov. 24, 1903, she was the product of a marriage that united two of country's richest families at the turn of the 20th century. Her father, William Kassam Vanderbilt II, was president of the New York Central Railroad and a renowned yachtsman and race-car driver. His sister, and Mrs. Earl's namesake, was the onetime Duchess of Marlborough. Her mother, Virginia Fair, was a daughter of U.S. Sen. James G. Fair of Nevada, who made his fortune as a part-owner of the Comstock Lode silver mine. "Consie" Vanderbilt, as she was sometimes called, grew up at her family's home on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. In the mid-1930s, she reportedly had a personal annual income of $1 million and spent the summers at her family's estate on Long Island, known as the Eagle's Nest, and in Newport, R.I. Her first marriage, to Earl E.T. Smith, on Jan. 7, 1926, received front-page coverage in The Washington Post and the New York Times. Smith was a Yale University student, polo player and champion boxer who served as U.S. ambassador to Cuba from 1957 to 1959. After they divorced in 1935, she was married the next year to Henry Gassaway Davis III, the heir to a coal fortune. He was recently divorced from her cousin, Grace Vanderbilt. Her marriage to Davis ended in divorce in 1940, and she took the name Consuelo Vanderbilt Fair before marrying William John Warburton in 1941. The Warburtons divorced in 1946. Her final husband was N. Clarkson Earl Jr., an executive with the Howard Johnson and Childs restaurant chains, who became president of Louis Sherry, an ice cream and candy manufacturer. He died in 1969 after 18 years of marriage. A daughter from her first marriage, Iris Christ, died in 2006. Survivors include a daughter from her first marriage, Virginia Consuelo Smith Burke of Palm Beach, Fla.; seven grandchildren; and 19 great-grandchildren. Mrs. Earl, a lifelong owner and breeder of terriers, helped the silky terrier breed gain official recognition from the American Kennel Club in 1959.