The Dukes (26 page)

His soul to virtue deaf, to beauty blind his Eyes"
⁸⁸

There is evidence that the lamentable Euston terrorised his tenants as well as his wife. Walpole told his correspondent "a new exploit of his barbarity". A tenant brought his rent to Lord Euston, who said it was 3s. 6d. short. The tenant protested that he thought he was correct, but he would examine the account again, and meanwhile was quite happy to give His Lordship the additional 3s. 6d. if he so wished. Euston flew into a rage and threatened to have the man removed from his job on the estate forthwith. "The poor man, who has six children, and knew nothing of my Lord's being on no terms of power with his father, went home and shot himself."
⁸⁶

Relief more than sorrow greeted the news of Euston's death in 1747, thus removing the threat that this monster might become Duke of Grafton. The 2nd Duke died ten years later, and was succeeded in the title by his grandson, Augustus Henry, who belongs to history for his period in office as Prime Minister, between 1767 and 1770, and for his scandalous affair with Nancy Parsons.

Augustus Henry, 3rd Duke of Grafton
 (1735-1811) was not meant for high office. He was full of good intentions and generous motives, but he possessed in abundance the inherited traits of sloth and venery. He was lazy and pleasure-seeking, timid in decision, weak in resolve. He became Prime Minister because the then Prime Minister, Chatham, suffered a serious breakdown in health (from which he later recovered to rescue Grafton from the concentrated attacks which made his years in office a nightmare). As Massey has written, "unsteady, capricious, and indolent, he had hardly any quality for a statesman ... he owed his elevation partly to accident, partly to his great rank and fortune".
⁸⁷
The Spectator
echoed this judgement: "a man of weak will, admirable purpose, and common intellect ... for politics he had not the smallest talent".
⁸⁸
Sir George Trevelyan has described him as "a most unlucky figure in history". Although much esteemed by some contemporaries, he was simply not equal to the tasks which were thrust upon him, and he suffered more than anyone from the cruel satire of Junius, whose
Letters
contain merciless attacks, in remorseless succession, made all the more deadly by the sharp purity of their style. I shall quote just one reference out of dozens :"It is not that you do wrong by design, but that you should never do right by mistake. It is not that your indolence and your activity have been equally misapplied, but that the first uniform principle, or, if I may call it the genius of your life, should have carried you through every possible change and contradiction of conduct, without the momentary imputation or colour of a virtue . . . [the ancestors] of your grace, for instance, left no distressing examples of virtue, even to their legitimate posterity, and you may look back with pleasure to an illustrious pedigree, in which heraldry has not left a single good quality upon record to insult or upbraid you. You have better proofs of your descent, my lord, than the register of a marriage, or any troublesome inheritance or reputation. There are some hereditary strokes of character by which a family may be as clearly distinguished as by the blackest features of the human face."
⁸⁹

Junius also pointed the finger at Grafton, with bitterest jest, for his affair with Nancy Parsons, which made him, while still Prime Minister, the laughing-stock of London.

Nancy Parsons was the daughter of a Bond Street tailor, who mar­ried a man called Horton, but had affairs with a goodly section of London's nobility. She is described as "the Duke of Grafton's Mrs Horton, the Duke of Dorset's Mrs Horton, everybody's Mrs Horton". She also had a relationship with the Duke of Bedford, who installed her for a time at Woburn Abbey. She eventually married Lord Maynard, not that that made any difference to her habits. Foolishly, Grafton escorted her quite blatantly in public, making no allowance for good taste or piety. Junius then wrote some unpublishable obscene verses on the affair, called
Harry and Nan,
which, together with the sustained invective of the letters, upset the Prime Minister deeply. He was thrown into agonies of embarrassment and indecision, the verses preyed on his mind, so that he was incapacitated for whole days and neglected the duties of office.
⁹⁰

He took the earliest opportunity to resign, when Chatham was well enough to resume work in 1770. No one was more relieved than he. But he had been, to say the least, indiscreet, and he deserved re­proach. The blood of Barbara Villiers pulsed through his veins, making him liable to drop everything for an indulgence of passion, which, with the influence of John Wesley just then being felt in the country, managed to outrage even those easygoing times. In the words of Walpole, he thought "the world should be postponed to a whore and a horse-race", and he "insulted the virtue and decency of mankind by the most unblushing violation of both".
Town and Country
was no less accusing; while Grafton was still Prime Minister, it published an issue condemning him as "a gamester who squandered the treasures of the nation upon horses and women, and who, left to guide the helm of fate, would soon plunge it into inevitable destruction".
⁹¹

"His fall was universally ascribed to his pusillanimity [wrote Walpole], but whether betrayed by his fears or his friends, he had cer­tainly been the chief author of his own disgrace. His haughtiness, indolence, reserve, and improvidence, had conjured up the storm; but his obstinacy and fickleness always relaying each other, and always
mal a propos,
were the radical causes of all the numerous absurdities that discoloured his conduct and exposed him to deserved reproaches; nor had he the depth of understanding to counterbalance the effects of his temper."
⁹²

The 3rd Duke of Grafton married twice, and had fourteen children, to whom he added an illegitimate offspring of a further eighteen according to one estimate.

Since then, successive Dukes of Grafton have settled down to less publicised lives, without high political office, but without too the con­stant calumnies on their name. In the nineteenth and twentieth cen­turies they have successfully thrown off the reputation of their ancestry to emerge modestly in their military careers. Only once did a brief flurry of publicity bring their name to general attention, and then it was quickly quashed. It was in connection with the Cleveland Street scandal of 1889 (see also Chapter 5). The Earl of Euston's name was mentioned by the
North London Press
as being a frequent visitor to the male brothel there, upon which he immediately brought an action for criminal libel against the newspaper. The editor and publisher were tried on 15th January 1890, bringing as their only substantial witness to show that the libel was true a dreadful young prostitute called John Saul, who gloried in the fuss. Saul testified that he had taken Lord Euston to 19 Cleveland Street and committed acts of indecency with him. Euston said he went there once, innocent of the purpose of the house, and had left immediately when he discovered that it was a brothel. Saul, who admitted that he was a professional "Mary-Anne" and earned £8 or £9 a week in this way, went into some sordid details about his craft, specifying the sort of pleasure that he alleged Euston enjoyed. But Saul was a loathsome creature, and his evidence was easily discredited. In the end, Euston won his case, cleared his name, and was given an apology by the
North London Press,
who nevertheless maintained that they had other evidence they were not at liberty to divulge. Saul, who ought logically to have been prosecuted for immorality or perjury, went scot free. And no mention was made during the trial of a statement made to the police by another boy, Newlove, who also, independently of John Saul, had mentioned Euston's name.
⁹³

Euston was the son of the 7th Duke of Grafton, who outlived him. The 8th Duke, Euston's brother, had a son who was killed in an air crash in 1918, thus passing the dukedom directly to his grandson, the 9th Duke, at the age of sixteen. He, too, died in tragic circumstances at the wheel of his racing car at the age of twenty-two. He was suc­ceeded by his cousin as 10th Duke in 1936.

The family still lives at Euston Hall, the property secured by marry­ing the infant 1st Duke to its owner. The house has undergone some changes in recent years. Evelyn described it in 1671 (before the 1st Duke of Grafton was born) as "a very noble pile . . . magnificent and commodious, as well within as without . . . but the soil dry, barren, and miserably sandy, which flies in drifts as the wind sits". The 10th Duke, who died in 1970, sold part of the Euston estate to meet death duties, leaving 11,000 acres which remain today; in 1950 he demolished two-thirds of Euston Hall itself with a view to economy, to save on running expenses and to modernise. At approxi­mately the same time, he bought 24,000 acres in Rhodesia.

His son, the 11th Duke, born in 1919, lives at Euston in seclu­sion and deep privacy. Only in 1975 did he decide to open his house to the public, in celebration of European Architectural Heri­tage Year. Quite unlike his forbears, however, he is one of the most active of the twenty-six dukes alive today. A trustee of the London Museum, of the National Portrait Gallery, and of the Sir John Soane Museum, his first attentions go to the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings, of which he is chairman. He is also connected with the Historic Churches Preservation Trust. The Duke's knowl­edge in these fields is immense; nobody knows more about Victorian building than he, and few care more passionately. He is also one of the half-dozen dukes who regularly appear in the House of Lords, where he speaks on his subject of conservation and preservation. He does not dabble in politics, but there are not many in his position who are so hard-working, or who have such a keen desire to contri­bute to national life.

The Duchess of Grafton,
d
.
c.v.o.,
has been Mistress of the Robes to the Queen since 1967.

The streets surrounding Euston Station to the north of Bloomsbury all bear names which testify to the Grafton past. The 1st Duke's wife inherited not only the Euston estate, but the manor of Tottenham Court (hence Tottenham Court Road). Fitzroy Square reminds us that the family surname is Fitzroy
(fil du roi),
of royal descent.

* * *

The Dukes of St Albans have not been, for the most part, illustri­ous or accomplished, though they have been well placed; the 4th Duke was a close friend of George III and sat next to him, by royal command, at the Jockey Club dinner, but he was only Duke for a year. Historical memoirs have some scattered remarks about the rest, usually disparaging. Lord Hervey said of the 2nd Duke that he was "one of the weakest men either of the legitimate or spurious brood of the Stuarts";
⁸⁴
he was grandson of Charles II and Nell Gwynn, both amenable and agreeable people, but not strong-willed.

The 3rd Duke was called by Walpole "the simple Duke of St Albans".
⁹⁵
Simple or not, he managed to pack his life with, in the words of the biographers of the family, "a glittering crescendo of feats of incompetence quite unparalleled in the lives of any other dukes in the eighteenth century".
⁹⁶
The soft sensuality of Charles II re-emerged in the 3 rd Duke of St Albans, who began well by apparently fathering a child while he himself was still a schoolboy. Thereafter, he had several children (the number is not precise) scat­tered in Paris, Brussels and Venice, whither he had fled to escape his creditors. According to Walpole, he gave his kitchen-maid a child, then gave it a sumptuous funeral in defiance of his debts. Returning to England, he was thrown into a debtors' gaol.
⁹⁷
By the time he died in 1786, the St Albans finances were chaotic. A contemporary epitaph had this to say about him:

"Immersed in Dissipation, knew not an Inclination

Which he forebore to gratify.

Contempt and Wretchedness

Closed the train of Dishonour, Riot and Sensuality.

He lamented his Mistakes, without reforming his Conduct;

And having lived a tyrannical Husband and an Insincere Friend,

Died an Exile, and a Mendicant."
⁹⁸

The 4th Duke was second cousin to the 3rd. He died unmarried at twenty-eight, and was succeeded as 5th Duke by his first cousin once removed, whose son, 6th Duke of St Albans, was "the most hideous, disagreeable little animal that I ever met with", in the words of Lady Harriet Cavendish.
⁹⁹
He in turn was succeeded by his only son, aged four months. Or was he ?

The child was born after twelve years of marriage, and during the course of a hectic affair the Duchess was having with one "Sinclair", who may have been Sir George Sinclair. The lovers were meeting again while the body of the late Duke was scarce cold, and in the next room, which gave rise, not unnaturally, to some comment. The Duchess announced another pregnancy after her husband's death, which was more than the family could take. Deli­cate investigations were made to prove that the foetus could not possibly belong to the late Duke. The whole business was resolved by fate in the end, as the little boy lived only ten months, to be suc­ceeded by his Uncle William, who had been making all the fuss about his paternity.