The Dukes (70 page)

Innocence informed the 4th Duke's arrogance, as it had fuelled the 1st Duke's insane comings-and-goings, and the 5th Duke's hopeless dealing with the Crimean tragedy. They have not been a mischievous or evil line; they simply did not know any better. They have been impulsive, impetuous, reaching decisions for emotional reasons and unable to reach them at all for rational ones.

Where have they come from, this erratic family ? The most ancient part of their surname is Clinton, which ascends to the days of William the Conqueror. The family was founded by one Renebald de Clinton, who took his surname from the place in which he lived, Glympton in Oxfordshire. He was the ancestor of the Earls of Lincoln, created in 1572, of whom the most illustrious member (the
only
illustrious member) was the 1st Earl (1512—1585). He was Lord High Admiral, and is credited with the rare accomplishment of having served under Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I, and having been respected and revered by all four. He is buried at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, beneath an ornate alabaster monument. The 2nd Lord Lincoln was insane, and the 4th married a daughter of Lord Saye and Sele, adopting her surname of Fiennes (pronounced Fynes) in addition to his own. And so eventually we come to the 9th Earl of Lincoln, whose name was Fiennes-Clinton, and who was subsequently, by a curious route, 2nd Duke of Newcastle. (The name Fiennes was dropped by his descendants.).

The 1st Duke, the neurotic Prime Minister, was created Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1715, because his mother, Grace Holies, had been a sister of a previous Duke of Newcastle, and he had inherited the Newcastle estate through her. Thus the 1st Duke of Newcastle of this creation is Thomas Pelham (or Pelham-Holles), who has nothing yet to do with Fiennes-Clinton, Earl of Lincoln. The Duke had a brother, Henry Pelham (also Prime Minister), and a sister, Lucy Pelham, who later married Lord Lincoln. Henry Pelham had a daughter, Catherine Pelham, but no sons, whereas Lord and Lady Lincoln (Lucy) had a son and heir, the 9th Earl of Lincoln. The Duke, meanwhile, had no offspring at all, no one to leave his estate to, and no one to inherit his dukedom. The patent of creation would not allow the dukedom to go to anyone but his son, and he had none. He would dearly have loved to leave the title to his nephew, the Earl of Lincoln. An ingenious solution was found.

In 1756 he was created Duke of Newcastle again, with special remainder to his nephew, but as he was already Duke of Newcastle- upon-Tyne, he would have a second dukedom, that of Newcastle- under-Lyme (or "under-Line", as the patent erroneously stated). Hence the dukedom of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was extinct with the 1st Duke's death in 1768, while the dukedom of Newcastle-under- Lyme is borne to this day by the Earls of Lincoln, descendants of the 1 st Duke's nephew. Lincoln consolidated the affair by marrying his own cousin, Catherine Pelham; he was the son of Lucy Pelham, she the daughter of Henry Pelham, and to both the 1st Duke of Newcastle was uncle. Their descendants were henceforth known as Pelham- Clinton, until the present Duke's father added the name Hope by Royal Licence in 1887. Of the three surnames, only Clinton is strictly accurate, since both Pelham and Hope have been adopted as the result of marriage.

Now the dukedom seems bound for extinction. The 9th Duke of Newcastle has two daughters. His heir is a cousin, Edward Charles Pelham-Clinton, born in 1920, who is Assistant Keeper of the Royal Scottish Museum in Edinburgh, and a bachelor. In all likelihood he will succeed as 1 oth Duke, and the title will cease with him.

The earldom of Lincoln will continue. There are dozens of Clintons descended from the earls before they married into the Pelham family in 1744, who are ready to lay claim to the title.

Of the Newcastle estate, nothing tangible now remains. Their principal seat was Clumber, one of the four great houses collectively known as "The Dukeries"* near Worksop. From the beginning of World War I, Clumber was rarely inhabited. In 11929 the 8th Duke, a lonely unconventional man, decided on a process of liquidation which would get rid of the Newcastle estate as it then stood. He persuaded the trustees to agree, and Clumber was demolished in 1938. "It was before the era of 'Stately Homes'," says his son the present Duke. "No institution wanted it. Demolition was the only answer."

As the family did not intend to live in another house as big, it was equally evident that they would have to off-load the contents. It took a whole year of auctions to sell the books from the Clumber library, fetching £64,000. The other contents were disposed of in a series of sales over the next few years. A policy of re-investment and renewal followed. The Duke died in 1941. His son and successor has led a some­what nomadic life. He left England for Rhodesia in 1948, bought a farm there, and settled down for a few years. He has also bought a house in Jamaica, and a house near Bath, both since sold. He has returned to England, having sold everything he held in Rhodesia, and now lives quietly in Lymington. He runs one farm; the trust owns three more.

* The other three were Welbeck (Duke of Portland), Worksop (Duke of Norfolk), and Thoresby (Duke of Kingston).

The Duke is not political, and rarely social. He has little connection with other dukes, or with the social zigzagging of London "society". He has never taken part in a coronation. He has no servants. "The fact that I might one day be Newcastle was never discussed," he

says. "I never gave it a thought."

* * *

In the summer of 1889 Princess Louise, eldest daughter of the Prince of Wales and grand-daughter of Queen Victoria, became engaged to the Earl of Fife, an obscure Scottish laird. Her cousin, Princess May of Teck (later Queen Mary), thought it a little odd. "What do you say to Louise's engagement to Lord Fife?" she wrote to her Aunt Augusta. "We are very glad for her because she has liked him for some years, but for a future Royal Princess to marry a subject seems rather strange don't you think so ?" Queen Victoria, who was both sentimental and had a keen eye for the advantages of any proposal, was thoroughly in favour. "It is a very brilliant marriage in a worldly point of view", she wrote, "as he is immensely rich."
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Besides which, he was handsome and likeable. Princess Louise, an apathetic, sickly creature, much given to whining, was unlikely to do better. That Fife was not of royal blood was a mere inconvenience, which the old Queen knew well she could remedy by the simple expedient of elevating him to the highest rank among her subjects. So, on the very day of the marriage, 27th July 1889, Louise's husband became 1st Duke of Fife, holder of the last dukedom to be created. (He had been offered the dukedom of Inverness, but had refused.)
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The wedding was a splendid, glittering occasion. A royal romance was guaranteed to catch the public imagination, but this was some­thing more. The Princess had not gone abroad to choose some German princeling whom nobody had ever heard of, but had chosen instead a Scot, whom she loved, and the Queen had given her blessing. It was certainly a departure from custom, and cause for wild enthusiasm. The wedding took place in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace, Louise still looking very pale, according to the Queen, who also disapproved of her dress. "She was too plainly dressed", she wrote, "and had her veil over her face, which
no Princess
ever has and which I think unbecoming and not right." The Queen was quite correct; today her rigid observance of royal practice is adhered to more strictly, as for example when Princess Anne married, with her face uncovered. The Fifes moved into a house in Richmond Park, called Sheen Lodge, where they led a very happy life, and where their two daughters were born.

The origins of the Fifes was by no means clear. They had extensive land in Scotland (none of it in Fife), were known to be pleasant and obliging, quite harmless, and small in build; one of them had been known as "Creely Duff" or "dwarf-like Duff". Duff was the family name. One theory averred descent from the Macduff Earls of Fife, one of whom is prominent in Shakespeare's
Macbeth.
But the connection has never successfully been traced. A second version claimed that the Duffs themselves were from a direct line dating from 1404. Unfortunately, a genealogical scholar showed that this theory rested on falsified evidence. In the mausoleum at Duff House, Banff, lay a stone effigy, purporting to be of the first Duff, and carrying the date 1404; the genealogist proved that the effigy had been removed from St Anne's Chapel in 1792, and that the inscription had been tampered with after its arrival at Duff House.
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With the best will, one must conclude that the origin of the Fifes is mysterious. They have always been ardent Scots, which alone would endear them to Queen Victoria; one of them had earth and gravel brought down from Scotland to fill the garden and paths of Fife House in Whitehall, on the Thames, so that he would only need to tread on Scottish soil.
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Less than two years after their marriage, H.R.H. Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife, and the Duke of Fife, were presented with a sudden crisis of succession which promised to engulf them both. The heir presumptive to the throne of England, Prince Eddy, Duke of Clarence, caught influenza and pneumonia, and within a few days lay dead. At his bedside on 14th January 1891 were his mother, the Princess of Wales (soon to be Queen Alexandra), holding his hand for hours on end, his brother Prince George, and his sister and brother-in-law, the Fifes. The tragedy resided not only in the premature death of a handsome and popular prince, but in the doubt which his death cast upon the future. For the heir to the throne, after the Prince of Wales, was Prince George, unmarried and poor in health. Next in line was his sister Louise. His life and his alone separated the throne from the Duchess of Fife, who, highly strung and mouse-like, would scarcely make an ideal Queen. All efforts were now concentrated on getting Prince George married and with a family.

In the forefront of these endeavours were the Fifes, desperate to avoid the throne. They encouraged Prince George to pursue his dead brother's fiancee, the estimable and ideal Princess May of Teck. Their house at Richmond was especially well suited as a rendezvous, quiet secluded, but very near London. Here the young couple met regularly, prodded by the anxious Fifes. One day the Duchess said to her brother, "Now, Georgie, don't you think you ought to take May into the garden to look at the frogs in the pond?" Beside the pond the future George V proposed to the future Queen Mary and was accepted. May noted in her diary that the Fifes were "delighted".

In the meantime, something had to be done about the Fifes' own future. They had two daughters, and were unlikely to have more children, which meant that the dukedom would be extinct after only one generation. There was one solution. The dukedom would have to be created again, with special remainder allowing the title to descend through the female line. The Queen obliged, and in 1900 the Duke of Fife became duke a second time; it is this title which is borne by his descendant, the previous dukedom and all other earlier titles being extinct with his death in 1912.In 1905, soon after her father became King, the Duchess was named Princess Royal, which entitled her daughters to carry the style of "Her Highness". They were not a family to be constantly in the public eye, although on one occasion there was no avoiding an avalanche of publicity. In December 1911 the family embarked on the P. & O. steamship
Delhi,
bound for Bombay. The Fifes were due to disembark in Egypt, whence they were repairing for the Duchess's health, always too fragile to withstand an English winter. On the night of 13th December a furious storm broke. Black clouds poured down torrents of rain, gales whipped up mountainous waves, and at 2 a.m. the ship began to go under. They were some miles off Cape Spartel, on the coast of Morocco. Signals soon brought other ships to the rescue, but the sea was too turbulent to attempt transferring passengers from one ship to another. The only hope was to get them into small craft and make as best one could for the shore. The Princess Royal and her husband refused to leave the
Delhi
until other women and children had been taken off, by which time the ship was filling fast. They had literally to be dropped from a height and caught in the small boats, wearing only nightclothes, as there had been no time to retrieve personal belongings. Their little boat was swamped by waves, in spite of frantic baling, obliging them to rely on lifebelts. Princess Alix disappeared under the water for a while. Louise tells the story herself in a letter to her brother King George. "We got on alright but waves were huge, they swept down on us and filled the boat, we baled, but not any good, water came up to our knees and she sank! flinging us all out! We floated in our belts - waves like iron walls tore over us, knocked us under, Admiral Cradock gripped my shoulder and
saved
me! - Thank God my Macduff and children both on beach but had been
under
too, it was an awful
moment,
our clothes so heavy, and we were breathless and shivery ... It is an extraordinary nightmare, and we are indeed grateful to be
all
here and alive still."
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Once on shore the Fife family walked to the lighthouse, where they were given coffee and whatever assortment of clothing could be found. The Princess Royal sent a telegram : "S.S. Delhi to Queen Alexandra, London. All safe. Louise." They then mounted on mules and, still shivering and drenched, trod their way painfully across rugged country to Tangier. The journey took three hours.
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