So the dollar princesses set to work making their new homes habitable. Consuelo installed bathrooms and electric light in Blenheim. Mary Leiter, the Chicago department-store heiress who married Lord Curzon, spent part of her dowry, which would have amounted to £50 million today, on modernizing Kedleston, his vast country seat. Their improvements were not always welcomed, however—some dowagers were heard to say that there was nothing more vulgar than a newfangled bathroom. Consuelo writes in her memoir about overhearing two senior aristocratic guests talking about the new water garden at Blenheim, which Sunny had built with the Vanderbilt millions: One buffer said to the other, “Well this is really very fine.” “Yes,” the other replied, “there are some uses for American money after all.” But some of these “improvements” were not so benign. Florence Sharon, a senator’s daughter from Nevada, was not impressed by the baroque grandeur of Easton Neston, the ancestral home of her new husband, Lord Hesketh. She found the architectural splendors of the famous double-height drawing room off-putting and decided to remodel it—putting in 
a false ceiling complete with Tudorbethan beams to make her new home a 
bit cozier.