The Richest Bride in America Married the Count Who Spent Her Fortune

She was the plainest rich girl in America — and one of the richest. When Anna Gould, daughter of the reviled robber baron Jay Gould, married the dazzling French Count Boni de Castellane in 1895, she handed the market exactly what it wanted: American railroad money for an old European title. Over the next eleven years, Boni spent as much as ten million dollars of her fortune — a pink marble palace on the Avenue Foch, parties that cost a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a night, and a river of gifts to his mistresses. Everyone knew the count who burned through a fortune. Almost nobody knew why it never destroyed her. Because a decision made by a dead man in 1892 — Jay Gould's will — meant the count could touch only the income, never the locked principal. Anna walked out of the marriage a duchess, stayed rich for fifty more years, and died wealthy in 1961. The man who spent the fortune ended his life poor, and wrote a memoir titled "The Art of Being Poor." This is the story of the richest bride in America, the count who spent her money, and the boring structure that beat the dazzling spender — because it was never how much the Goulds had. It was how it was locked. Chapters: 0:00 The Count Who Spent $10 Million 1:26 The Richest, Plainest Girl in America 4:51 Cash for a Coronet: Anna, Consuelo, and the Count 8:25 The Countdown of the Burn: Yacht and Chateaux 9:48 The Parties, and the Honest $10 Million 12:39 The Palais Rose: His Slide Into the Abyss 14:38 The Mistresses and the Man With No Brake 18:04 The Decision a Dead Man Made: Jay Gould's Will 22:01 The Art of Being Poor: How It Ended for Both 25:18 The Lesson: It Was Never How Much, It Was How It Was Locked Sources include American Heritage's "The Realms of Gould," contemporary New York press, Time magazine, Consuelo Vanderbilt's memoir "The Glitter and the Gold," and Boni de Castellane's own memoirs. #GildedAge #OldMoney #AnnaGould