The Dukes (39 page)

Though he took no active part in political life, he was powerful enough by virtue of his name and possessions to be indifferent to status. He was known to decline a royal command, almost an unheard-of snub, because he had a party that evening at Chiswick which had been arranged long before.
²⁹
Hart would not regard this as anything but simple truth. It was not within him to be insulting or calculating.

The one passion of his life, conceived in childhood and subdued in maturity, was his affection for his bewitching cousin, Lady Caro­line Lamb, to whom he signed himself "Devilshire". Theirs was a puppy love grown into devotion, the letters between them full of eloquent endearments. The Duke did not marry, however; he was sometimes called the Bachelor Duke. No doubt his deafness made him uncertain in female company. His
affaires amoureuses
were reserved for Paris.

His fame rests not on an achievement of his, but on the achieve­ments of his protege, Sir Joseph Paxton. Were it not for Devonshire, Paxton may not have been discovered. Mr Paxton, a young man in his early twenties, was employed on the Duke's estate at Chatsworth as a gardener. The Duke recognised his special talents, and en­couraged him to give them expression; he commissioned Paxton to build at Chatsworth a giant conservatory, 300 feet long by 145 feet wide, by 60 feet high, covering in all one acre. This unique construc­tion soon attracted the world's notice to the young gardener, whose career culminated in the Crystal Palace built for the Exhibition of 1851, a vast glass building placed in Hyde Park, modelled to an extent on the conservatory at Chatsworth, and which now has a suburb of London named after it. Paxton and the Duke remained close friends all their lives, the one a brilliant worldly success, the other a disappointed and unhappy man. "I had rather all those plants were dead than have you ill", the Duke wrote to Paxton in 1835. "He is more kind to me than you can possibly imagine", said Paxton.
³⁰
In a way, the Duke enjoyed Paxton's achievements by proxy.

He was succeeded by a distant cousin, the 7th Duke of Devonshire (1808-1891), who had been a member of Parliament for the Uni­versity of Cambridge, a clever scholar with a scientific bent, and was subsequently Chancellor of the Universities of London and Cam­bridge. He liked being at Hardwick Hall because he could lead a more private life there. He married a grand-daughter of the 5th Duke, thus knitting the family together again, and was succeeded by his son Spencer Compton Cavendish (the first in the line not to be called William Cavendish after the founder of the family fortune), 8th Duke of Devonshire (1833-1908). For most of his life this man was Marquess of Hartington, coming to the dukedom at the age of fifty-eight, so it is by his nickname of "Harty-tarty" that the memory of him lingers.

Harty-tarty holds a place in the history of nineteenth-century politics far in excess of his achievements, by virtue of his solid common sense. He held many political offices, but grew to dislike them, and three times he refused to be Prime Minister. For forty years he was in and out of the Cabinet. He distrusted rhetoric and insincerity, of which he found all too much evidence in political life. His own mind worked slowly. He was not quick-witted, not elo­quent, not amusing, not engaging, but he was a first-rate adminis­trator, and had deep convictions, which he never compromised. Harty-tarty was boring, but right. Members would put up with his Interminable factual speeches, delivered without a glint of humour or relief of phrase, because they knew he was more conscientious than anyone else, and had better judgement. Margot Asquith said that his speaking "was the finest example of pile-driving the world has ever seen". He himself knew how boring and laborious he was. He once yawned in the middle of a speech in the House, and apologised by explaining that what he was saying was "so damned dull".
³¹
Duti­fully, Harty-tarty invited large numbers of house-guests to Chats- worth, but could rarely remember who they were. More than once there were nearly 500 people, including servants, staying in the house. He was a casual, easy-going man, impossible to impress. One of his guests wandered over to Pevensey Castle, a romantic ruin which belonged to the Duke
[6]
At dinner, the Duke asked him where he had been, and the guest said how impressed he had been with Pevensey Castle. "Pevensey?" said the Duke, to whom the name rang a bell. "Whose is Pevensey?"
³²
Such a casual attitude to wealth and possessions carried its own charm. Just as it was impossible to impress the Duke, so he never sought to impress anyone else. Status-seeking was trivial to him, but if you had status already, it was equally trivial not to use it. One of his father's agents was disquieted by the amount of money which Harty-tarty was spending, and conveyed his concern to the Duke who could not understand what all the fuss was about. "Well," he said,' 'isn't there plenty of it?"

Harty-tarty was not ambitious; he had nothing to be ambitious for. He did not know the feeling of enthusiasm in anything. He was reported to have said that the happiest moment in- his life was when his pig took first prize at an agricultural show. Whatever he said or did was based on principle, not gain or expediency. He had more probity and common sense, and was known to have them, than any of his contemporaries. Hence his enormous influence. "I don't know why it is," he said, "but whenever a man is caught cheating at cards the case is referred to me." However lightweight the remark, it shows that the Duke was reputed incorruptible, because he was above reward.

Margot Asquith has left us the best pen-portrait of this Duke. He was, she wrote, "a man whose like we shall never see again; he stood by himself and could have come from no country in the world but England. He had the figure and appearance of an artisan, with the brevity of a peasant, the courtesy of a king and the noisy sense of humour of a Falstaff . . . possessed of endless wisdom. He was per­fectly disengaged from himself, fearlessly truthful, and without petti­ness of any kind."
³³

As he grew older, Harty-tarty's constitutional somnolence became worse. He would fall asleep at dinner, during a speech, or at the top of the stairs. He fell asleep once in the House of Lords, woke up with a start, looked at the clock, and said, "Good heavens! What a bore! I shan't be in bed for another seven hours." On another occasion, he said, "I had a horrid nightmare. I dreamed I was making a speech in the House of Lords, and I woke up and found I was actually doing so."
³⁴
His last remark, as he lay dying, was typical of the man. "Well," he said, "the game is over, and I'm not sorry."
³⁵

A game, indeed, it had been, and played with a finesse which only the Victorians could master. For this upright, thoughtful and straightforward man had for thirty years been having a discreet, but not secret, affair with the Duchess of Manchester.

The Duchess of Manchester, afterwards Duchess of Devonshire, was a German aristocrat by birth - Countess Louise von Alten. It was said that nobody could understand how beautiful a woman could be unless they had seen the Duchess of Manchester at thirty. She quickly became the leader of the "fast set" in London (as opposed to the more sedentary "Victorian" set), gambled and danced the days and nights away. She bore the Duke of Manchester five children but her one true love was Harty-tarty, to whom she was devoted. They always addressed each other formally in public, by their titles. No whisper of scandal was allowed to follow them; they were scrupulously correct.

Louise was a remorseless lady of ambition. It was she who pushed Harrington into the position of influence which he held. She wanted desperately for him to be Prime Minister, and he, of course, did not give it a thought. They made an odd couple of conflicting elements, he sluggish and contented, she powerfully imperious. She had some­thing of the "unswerving relentlessness of a steam-roller about her, neither kindly nor unkindly, but crushing its way on, and flattening out the unevennesses of the road it intended to traverse". She prodded and drove him. Fortunately, he was possessed of such a large measure of common sense, that he did not allow himself to be influenced by her. As E. F. Benson has put it, "It was largely she who made him use his weight; he could use it equally well sitting down."
³⁸

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.