The Dukes

by Brian Masters

  When the Duke of Manchester died, Louise became the "Double Duchess' by marring Devonshire, and when he died she shuffled into an awesome old age, her looks gone, but her imperiousness augmented. Consuelo Vanderbilt (Duchess of Marlborough) described her as "a raddled old woman, covering her wrinkles with paint, and her pate with a brown wig. Her mouth was a red gash, and from it, when she saw me, issued a stream of abuse."37 With her wigs, and her diamonds and her rouge, surrounded by minions, she was "rather like the half-ruinous shell of some castellated keep, with flower-boxes in full bloom on the crumbling sills . . . almost a piece of still life, expressionless, speechless, and motionless".38 She died after a stroke at Sandown races in 1911.

  For all that, Louise the Double Duchess was a faithful friend and wife. From the day they formed their romantic attachment to the day the Duke died, not once were they tempted elsewhere. Her love for him was touching; it alone was able to relax the features of her statuesque face, which generally showed no emotion at all in public. One who caught a glimpse of this love was Daisy Warwick, who wrote: "To all outward appearance both the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire were devoid of the normal human sympathies, but there was no other man in the world for her, and there was no other woman for him. They were not prepossessing people, but their love for one another was a very beautiful thing."39

  She used to say that when Devonshire died he would go straight to Heaven (pointing her first finger high above her head), but Lord Salisbury, on the other hand . . . (her finger dived to the floor).40 Little did she know that Salisbury's grand-daughter would herself become Duchess of Devonshire in time.

  The 8th Duke died in 1908, and was succeeded by his nephew as 9th Duke (1868-1938), who continued the family's political tradi­tions: he was Secretary of State for the Colonies, and Governor-General of Canada. His second son married Adele Astaire (Fred Astaire's sister), and his daughter Dorothy married Harold Mac- millan, the Prime Minister.

  The 10th Duke of Devonshire (1895-1950), who was deaf like the 6th Duke (Georgiana's son), suffered a period of family tragedies which made it seem that the Cavendishes were being pursued by a particularly malignant Fate. The son and heir, Marquess of Harting- ton, married a daughter of the American Ambassador, Joseph Ken­nedy, whose second son, Jack, would one day be President of the United States. She was Kathleen Kennedy, by every account the sweetest and most good-natured girl in the family. There was, however, one major difficulty. The Cavendishes, as one of the found­ing Whig families, had always been fiercely Protestant, and the Kennedys were as passionately Catholic.

  Opposition to the marriage from the Kennedy side continued for years. The Kennedys would not countenance the idea of future grand­children being educated in the Protestant tradition, and while the Duke's family was fond of Kathleen (or "Kick") personally, her religion did present an obstacle. "It amuses me to see how worried they all are," wrote Kick. Added to which, of course, the war had started, and Joe Kennedy was spending much of his time disparag­ing the British.

  The marriage eventually took place in 1944, six years after per­mission had first been sought. Four months later, Hartington was killed in action, and the new Marchioness was herself killed in an air crash in 1948. Chips Channon wrote: "Billy Hartington killed; my adorable Charlie Cavendish [that's Adele Astaire's husband, who also died in 1944]. And now Eddie [the 10th Duke] dead at fifty-five. What dread score has destiny to pay off against the Devonshires? ... Is it the end of Chatsworth and of Hardwick?"41

  If one were superstitious, it would be impossible to resist the infer­ence that the association with the Kennedy family had been fatal; it is well known that tragedy has consistently stalked the Kennedys. Lord Hartington was no ordinary loss - he was an extremely clever man with a promising future. His death made his brother, Andrew Robert Buxton Cavendish (born 1920), heir to the dukedom; he suc­ceeded as 11th Duke in 1950.

  In keeping with the family tradition of public service, the Duke of Devonshire has held political office. In fact, he is the only duke of the present generation to have done so after succeeding to his title. He was Minister of State for Commonwealth Relations from 1962 to 1964, then for Colonial Affairs for a year afterwards. Since leaving political life, he has devoted himself to other cherished duties, especi­ally his association with Manchester University. He is Vice-Lieutenant of Derbyshire, a Trustee of the National Gallery, President of the Royal Hospital and of the Home for Incurables, and sometime President of the Lawn Tennis Association. He was a major in the Coldstream Guards, with whom he served in World War II.

  To meet Devonshire is to have an uncanny feeling that one is in the presence of his formidable great-uncle the 8th Duke. A man of obvious ability and stature, he has authority in his style, and com­mands respect simply by his presence. Frivolity he abhors, flattery he would detest. He is not a man to receive or pay compliments easily. A certain diffidence allied to profound inherent probity make him a man of few words - abrupt and laconic. From his mother (a daughter of Lord Salisbury) he has inherited the Cecil voice with its rapid speech. (It has been said that a Cecil can get through more words in a minute than other people can in five.) Everything else about him is pure Cavendish, down to his impeccable suits. The Duchess of Devonshire is one of the famous Mitford sisters, daughters of the 2nd Lord Redesdale. It is odd how all the fasci­nating aristocratic women whose fame has endured over the centuries have come in clutches. In the seventeenth century there were the Jennings sisters, one of whom became Duchess of Tyrconnel, and the other was the redoubtable Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. In the eighteenth century there were the two Gunnings girls - Elizabeth was in turn Duchess of Hamilton and Duchess of Argyll, while her sister was Countess of Coventry - followed by the Spencer girls, Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire and her sister Lady Bessborough. Proceeding into the nineteenth century, we have the three grand­daughters of Richard Brinsley Sheridan (one of whom became Duchess of Somerset), all the seven Pattle girls - whose descendants include Virginia Woolf and the next Duke of Beaufort — and right at the end of the century, the Tennant sisters from Scotland, includ­ing Margot Asquith and two still alive, Baroness Elliot of Harewood, d.b.e., and Lady Wakehurst, d.b.e. The present-day representatives of this pattern are a hectic group of brilliant beautiful sisters, the Mitfords.

  The unorthodox upbringing of the Mitford girls in a household dominated by an explosive reactionary father and a vague compliant mother has been vividly narrated by two of the sisters: the nursery managed to produce a family of strong individuals, including one Communist, one Fascist, and eventually one duchess. The late Nancy Mitford made her name as novelist and biographer. Jessica Mitford emigrated to the United States, and has written a number of success­ful books. Unity was a personal friend of Hitler, and Diana married Sir Oswald Mosley. The fifth, "Debo", is Duchess of Devonshire.

  "Debo" decided at the age of eleven, according to sister Jessica's account, that she would marry a duke. While the other girls prayed that "Mr Right" would come along, she reserved her prayers for the "Duke of Right".* Thanks to Nancy, who clearly used her as a model for Linda in The Pursuit of Love, the Duchess is better known than almost any of her rank alive today. We know that she is senti­mental and romantic. She is astonishingly beautiful, with cornflower- blue eyes that bewitch the least impressionable.

  The Devonshires have a son and two daughters (one of whom has married into the ubiquitous Tennant family), and they live at Chatsworth, now a much quieter house. Seven gamekeepers are still employed there, and a domestic staff of fifteen, but over three- quarters of the house, a magnificent seventeenth-century mansion, is left alone for the public to enjoy. We tend to think of the "Stately Home business" as a twentieth-century necessity, but Chatsworth has been open to the public consistently since the eighteenth century. The archives are among the best kept in the country, and accommodate an endless stream of students. The Duke and Duchess have a floor to themselves, including two small but exquisite sitting-rooms in which they have kept alive the spir
it of Georgiana. The rooms are decorated in precisely the style Georgiana would recognise, and, apart from a Domenichino cartoon and a Poussin, are hung with pictures of her and her contemporaries. Georgiana spent more time in London than at Chatsworth, but no matter, it is at Chatsworth that her presence is still felt.

  At the coronation of 1953 "Debo" Devonshire wore Duchess Georgiana's eighteenth-century robes.

  * * *

  * It is fair to point out that when she married Captain Lord Andrew Cavendish he was the second son, and was not expected to inherit the titles.

  The Duke of Devonshire is descended from the second son of Bess of Hardwick by Sir William Cavendish. Their third son, Charles, went to Welbeck Abbey and was the father of the Duke of Newcastle in the Cavendish family.*

  The brother of the 1st Duke of Newcastle was the famous mathe­matician Sir Charles Cavendish, of Welbeck Abbey, and the wife of the 2 nd Duke was an even more famous writer - Margaret Caven­dish, Duchess of Newcastle (1624-1674). Sneered at by Walpole. who dismissed her as a "fertile pedant", the Duchess was highly regarded in her own time, and objective critics consider that her bio­graphy of her husband is very fine. Her output was enormous, includ­ing poetry, plays, and prose works, and most of her books are now extremely rare. She had an additional reputation for madness, fostered by her penchant for appearing in theatrical costume at the least appropriate time, and by her outrageously affected manners. Saner than many of her detractors, the Duchess was guilty of little more than a flair for display. There was no son and heir, so that the dukedom became extinct, but her daughter Henrietta married Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, and this marriage also produced a female heir, Margaret, who in 1734 married the 2nd Duke of Portland. Thus it was that the Dukes of Portland became owners of Welbeck Abbey, and of the Harley properties in London, which span an area of Marylebone now spattered with street names which recall this complicated past - Harley Street, Welbeck Street, Cavendish Square, Portland Place, Great Titchfield Street (the Duke of Port­land's second title is Marquess of Titchfield). Not only that, but it means the blood of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, flows in the veins of the Duke of Portland.

  The dukedom of Portland had been conferred upon the Bentinck family in 1716 in recognition of the capital role played by the 1st Duke's father, Hans Wilhelm Bentinck, in post-Stuart England. The story of the close friendship between William III and his protege Hans Bentinck provides an intriguing chapter in the history of the British monarchy.

  Hans Bentinck (1649-1709) was the son of a Dutch nobleman (the family continues in Holland today), who first came to the atten­tion of the Prince of Orange in 1664, when he was fourteen years

  *The seventeenth-century Duke of Newcastle was a Cavendish; the modern Duke of Newcastle is a Pelham-Clinton-Hope, and belongs to another chapter. They have nothing to do with one another. The first was Duke of Newcastle-upon- Tyne, the second is Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyme; the first line came to an end nearly 300 years ago, the second was not created until 1756 and continues into modern times.

  old and the Prince was fifteen. The Prince made Hans his personal Page of Honour, and later a Nobleman of the Chamber. Bentinck was ravishingly beautiful, and possessed the rare virtue of constancy. The friendship thus begun in adolescence lasted an entire lifetime, surviving the onslaughts of jealousy, the competition of marriage, and the resentment of the House of Commons.

  When they were both young men there occurred a critical event which was to secure the importance of their relationship. The Prince of Orange nearly died of smallpox, and were it not for the selfless attentions of Hans Bentinck he would almost certainly have suc­cumbed. Hans slept with the Prince for sixteen days and nights, not daring to leave his side, in an attempt to absorb into his own body some of the fever which threatened his friend's life. It was an act of courage and devotion, and it worked. Hans did catch the fever, but both men survived, and the affection which bound them grew stronger as a result.

  Hans was frequently sent to the Court of St James as William's personal envoy. It was he who negotiated William's marriage to Princess Mary of York, he who was instrumental in having the throne of England offered to William, he who was the Prince's most intimate counsellor. When William became King of England in 1689, Hans came to England with him, and established here the noble family of Bentinck.The King had manifest reasons to be thankful, and was lavish in his demonstrations of gratitude. A few days before his coronation he created his friend Earl of Portland in the peerage of England, and granted him lands too numerous to count. The flow of gifts to Bentinck hardly abated in the years to come, so that he was in time the richest subject in Europe. Unfortunately, Bentinck had neither the grace nor tact to acknowledge that the massive bestowal of gifts in his receptive lap might legitimately arouse the jealousy of the English, no matter how much he may have deserved them. He was, after all, a foreigner, yet he came into possession of more English lands than any Englishman. He showed none of the deferential politeness that one might expect from a guest in the country, but on the contrary flaunted his new wealth, exploited his closeness to the King, and treated the English with lofty disdain. He did not care for the English, and made no attempt to ingratiate himself. Conse­quently, they did not care for him. Everyone recognised and applauded his integrity, his devotion to the King, his pellucid honesty, but the English wished that he would learn to flatter (an art which they had been busy perfecting through centuries of Court life), and would try a little harder to dissemble. He did not dissemble at all, and was profoundly unpopular. Even in his native Holland he was considered a foreigner now; he conspicuously lacked the dexterity to appear sympathetic.

  There was a rumour that the King intended to create Bentinck Duke of Buckingham, which would have been asking for trouble. Already singularly disliked by the House of Commons, he would have exacerbated their mistrust by bearing the title created by James I for his lover George Villiers, and the plan was mercifully dropped. The Bentinck family had to wait until the second generation for their dukedom, conferred by George I in 1716.

  Surprisingly for one with such feeling for friendship, Bentinck showed few discernible signs of emotion. Marlborough called him "a wooden fellow", and subsequent cartoons of his descendants have depicted them as blocks of Portland stone. Swift said unkindly that he was "as great a Dunce as ever I knew", but Swift was most likely venting spleen; for Bentinck was no fool.

  At least his beauty was acknowledged by all, and his devotion to the King hardly in question. He was at the King's side on the death of Queen Mary, and with him at the disclosure of the assassination plot in 1696. His affection was real and not motivated by self- interest. It wavered only once, when William's attentions became engaged by a new favourite, Arnold van Keppel (created Earl of Albermarle).[7] Keppel's softer, more capricious nature captivated the King, who granted him favours which provoked a jealous rage in Bentinck of such ferocity that he seemed a different person. His customary cold control suddenly evaporated into a sulky sullenness. Quarrels erupted daily at Court, where Bentinck's naked nerves sparked scenes of lofty petulance, and the bluntness of hurt pride. He repelled William's attempts to make amends, refused to take his seat in the royal coach, and eventually resigned all his offices in a fit of umbrage. The King attempted to dissuade him, but he was firm. What really offended Bentinck were the shortcomings in his own character, cruelly highlighted by the contrast with Keppel's gentler graces, and about which he could do nothing. He deeply resented being passed over for being himself. He suffered the pain of rejection, in the knowledge that it was not for faults committed, but for transi­tory attractions with which he could not compete. Bentinck took refuge in an embassy in Paris, and William wrote him an affection­ate letter promising that his feelings for him would continue until death. There are over 200 of these letters from the King, which amply testify to the generosity of their love.

  The breach was not final. Bentinck was a close friend to the end of the King's life. On William's death
-bed his last words were to ask for Portland, who came immediately, gave William his hand, and, as Luttrell tells us, the King "carried it to his heart with great tender­ness".

  Bentinck himself is buried in Westminster Abbey, as is his son, the 1st Duke of Portland (1682-1726). It was Bentinck's grandson, the 2nd Duke (1709-1762), who married the Cavendish and Harley heiress and moved his principal seat from Bulstrode Park, Bucks, to Welbeck Abbey, Notts. Like father and grandfather, he too was a conspicuously beautiful man, "reported to be the handsomest man in England". With Bentinck, Harley and Cavendish lands in his posses­sion, he could afford the luxury of indifference to favours, and is said to have refused a position as Lord of the Bedchamber, because it was inconvenient; but he thanked the King nonetheless.43

  His son the 3rd Duke of Portland (1738-1809) consolidated the Cavendish connection by marrying Dorothy Cavendish, daughter of the 4th Duke of Devonshire, in 1766, and by changing his own name to Cavendish-Bentinck in 1801. He was therefore the brother-in-law of the 5th Duke of Devonshire (Georgiana's husband), and while Devonshire lived in Devonshire House, Piccadilly, Portland lived down the road at Burlington House, another of his brother-in-law's properties.

  The 3rd Duke was one of the best educated men in England, and the only member of the Bentinck family to assume high public office. He was Prime Minister in 1783 and 1807-9, and Home Secretary from 1794-1801. It is for his work as Home Secretary that his reputation should endure, for he belongs to the gallery of tolerant Englishmen who have helped establish the right to freedom of speech, not by noisy crusading, but by taking the principle for granted. As Home Secretary he had at his command vast arbitrary power which he refused to exert. He knew the value of leaving the expression of opinion untrammelled, and his achievement was quietly and stub­bornly to show respect for it against the more vociferous will of angry men. As Prime Minister he was less than successful. He had integrity and honour, but none of the rough ruthlessness that it takes to be a leader. His intentions were good, but weak his ability to push them. Consequently, he was regarded as a mere cypher. When he accepted the Premiership in 1807 it was with a reluctant heart, out of a sense of public duty. He was already old and gouty, feeble and unequal to the strain. The duel between Canning and Castlereagh on Wimbledon Common took place during his government, and the dis­honour and scandal were too much for him. He resigned in October 1809 and died the same month.