The portrait of Bess that hung in the great hall of Welbeck in 1879 – and remains in the abbey to this day – reveals a woman with a broad forehead and a determined line to her mouth. She is handsome as opposed to beautiful, and her hands are shapely. Most importantly of all, the huge wealth acquired from her marriages is symbolized in the quadruple string of pearls that dangles around her neck, down to her waist. Bess had a passion for building, which amounted almost to the pathological. One biographer says of her: