Elinor Sutherland was born in St Helier, Jersey, the younger daughter of Douglas Sutherland (1838–1865), a civil engineer of Scottish descent, and his wife Elinor Saunders (1841–1937). Her father died when Elinor was two months old and her mother returned to the parental home in Guelph, Ontario, Canada with her two daughters, Lucy Christiana and Elinor. Back in Canada, Elinor was schooled by her grandmother, Lucy Anne Saunders, in the ways of upper-class society. This early training not only gave her an entrée into aristocratic circles on her return to Europe, but it led to her being considered an authority on style and breeding when she worked in Hollywood in the 1920s. Her mother remarried a Mr. Kennedy in 1871 and when Elinor was eight years old the family returned to Jersey. When there her schooling continued at home with a succession of governesses. Elinor married Clayton Louis Glyn (1857–1915), a wealthy but spendthrift landowner, on 27 April 1892. The couple had two daughters, Margot and Juliet, but the marriage apparently foundered on mutual incompatibility although the couple remained together. Less